ABSTRACT
The invasion of Iraq, the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, and the wall in the West Bank, make it seem absurd that we can talk in any spatiotemporal way as ‘post’ or as having moved beyond. In the face of the continuing effects of imperialism, the project of postcolonial studies which makes visible the long history of colonialism, empire, those who have opposed it, and contemporary sites of resistance, seem more urgent than ever. In the past decade postcolonial theory has generated extensive discussions in varied disciplines ranging from anthropology, history, geography, political science, and art, to literary, film, gender, cultural, psychoanalytical, and queer studies. Shome and Hegde (2002), in a special issue on postcolonial theory of the journal, Communication Theory, made a plea to communication scholars to “recognise the relevance of this interdisciplinary area and why engaging the postcolonial enables us to rethink communication through new visions and revisions, through new histories and geographies” (p. 249). Such a plea must now be integrated into the varied theoretical corners of the vast, often times shifting terrains, of the discipline. While Shome and Hegde began the dialogue on postcolonial theory and globalisation within the communication discipline, I take on the task forwarded by Shome and Hegde and focus our attention in this paper on one specific area of communication studies, namely media ethics.
