ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that primers, introductions, programmatic texts, and anthologies provide not only excellent formats for branding postcolonialism or postcolonial studies, but are also central for the self-branding pursuits of individual scholars. Robert Young essay is based on the process of a strategic selection of suitable examples and themes that indicate the currency of postcolonialism. Brand narratives of postcolonialism and of individual scholars are reciprocally related and strategically arranged for forms of symbolic capital accumulation that converge in a mutual capitalisation of selves and discourse. Meta-discursive works fill the particular niche where incommensurability meets delineation, and 'incommensurability meets delineation' becomes itself a brand narrative. The chapter examines the mobilising capacities of branding, even in its reductive incarnations. Brand narratives, central in consolidating and challenging identities, research fields, productions, and so forth, potentially incorporate marginalisation and othering or may have unintended marginalising and othering effects.
