ABSTRACT
This book is an essential introduction to significant texts in postcolonial theory. It looks at seminal works in the ‘moments of their making’ and delineates the different threads that bind postcolonial studies. Each chapter presents a comprehensive discussion of a major text and contextualises it in the wake of contemporary themes and debates. The volume:
- Studies major texts by foremost scholars — Edward W. Said, Chinua Achebe, Albert Memmi, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Paul Carter, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Ashis Nandy, Robert J. C. Young, Ngugi wa Thiongo, and Sara Suleri
- Shifts focus from colonial experience to underlying principles of critical engagement
- Uses accessible, jargon-free language
Focused, engaging and critically insightful, this book will be indispensable to students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, comparative literature, and postcolonial studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |7 pages
Introduction
chapter |21 pages
Albert Memmi: The Colonizer and the Colonized
Albert Memmi and Francophone critical theory
chapter |24 pages
Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon: registers, impact and the question of theory
chapter |20 pages
Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Decolonising the Mind
Ngugi and the language question in African literature
chapter |23 pages
Edward W. Said: Orientalism
The framing of the case: Said's ‘introduction’ to Orientalism
chapter |22 pages
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Worlds
Forms of engagement and cultures of reading
chapter |21 pages
Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture
The question of agency: Bhabha's postcolonial imperative
chapter |22 pages
Robert J. C. Young: White Mythologies
Robert Young and the critical context of White Mythologies
chapter |21 pages
Sara Suleri: The Rhetoric of English India
Unreadable India: difficulties of mapping a nation and its culture