This essay examines theoretical arguments surrounding the use of post-colonial theory as a way to fill in the epistemological lacuna in the studies of post-socialism. It reviews the various streams of this theoretical development and employs Edward Said’s notion of “traveling theory” to demonstrate that theoretical claims made by proponents and opponents of this particular comparative perspective are historically, socially, and geographically situated, although not fixed. Disciplinary, national, and institutional affiliations, instead of theoretical justifications, are (...) identified as important factors in the propensity to accept or resist the introduction of post-colonial perspective on Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The essay concludes by acknowledging the potential usefulness as well as the limits of post-colonialism in the conceptualization of the post- socialist space. (shrink)

In what follows, I attempt to show that a look at some curious examples of translations from European texts makes us think about issues in translation theory and post-colonial theory from a slightly different angle. The metaphor of translation can very well be employed for understanding the relation between European texts, and some texts and some social and political practices in India in the colonial period, and this in turn helps us look critically at what (...) I shall call our fuzzy post-colonialism. I also argue that Walter Benjamin's metaphor of translation as the after-life of a work can be extended to posit two basic modes of after-life. (shrink)

The post-colonial has often functioned as a code word for a form of French post-theory. In more recent efforts to reconstruct linkages between metropolitan Marxism and counter-colonialism, the post-colonial refers to an open-ended research field for investigating the present weight of colonial histories. But even in these reformulations, post-colonial research presents formidable challenges to Euro-American urban Marxism. In this context, this paper redirects Henri Lefebvre’s work to analyse post-colonial situations. (...) It traces in particular the notion of ‘colonisation’ as it develops from his critique of everyday life to his work on the state. We argue that Lefebvre’s notion of ‘colonisation’ presents a promising opening to understanding the ‘colonial’ aspects of urbanisation today. Still, for this promise to be realised, Lefebvre’s notion must be refracted through dialectical-humanist counter-colonial traditions. (shrink)

This book explores the postcolonial discourse and decolonization processes in modern Kazakhstan and beyond. It pays particular attention to such areas as national and religious identity, language, literature, and historical narratives. Despite the fact that the post-colonial theory initially emerged in other regions of the world, it has increasingly been applied in the scholarship on Central Asia. Exploring recent debates on post-coloniality in Kazakhstan, this book is an attempt to bring together two bodies of scholarly literature: (...) scholarship on culture and society in post-Soviet Central Asia and research on post-colonial theory. This volume will be of interest to scholars of Eurasian studies as well as researchers and students of post-colonialism in various contexts beyond Eurasia. (shrink)

This article discusses the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre on Frantz Fanon’s political thinking. Sartre presents a dialectical social theory, based on the progressive-regressive method, considering the interplay between individual and collective, history and contemporary action, past and future. This philosophy has had a critical impact on Fanon’s political theory of neocolonialism, race, and intersectionality. Fanon studied colonialism based on Sartre’s philosophy and analyzed the problems of racism and oppression. He developed the concept of the colonial gaze as (...) internalization of the gaze of the colonial order as self-oppressive othering of the self. The point of departure for the article is a short presentation of Fanon’s biography. From this the article discusses the famous meeting between Fanon and Sartre in Rome in 1961. Finally, the article places this encounter within the development of a critical philosophy of race, as proposed in the work of Robert Bernasconi. (shrink)

Rather than ‘superbugs’ signifying recalcitrant forms of life that withstand biomedical treatment, drug resistant infections emerge within and are intricate with the exercise of social and medical power. The distinction is important, as it provides a means to understand and critique current methods employed to confront the threat of widespread antimicrobial resistance. A global health regime that seeks to extend social and medical power, through technical and market integration, risks reproducing a form of triumphalism and exceptionalism that resistance itself should (...) have us pause to question. An alternative approach, based on a postcolonial as well as a ‘post-colony’ approach to health and microbes, provides impetus to challenge the assumptions and norms of global health. It highlights the potential contribution that vernacular approaches to human and animal health can play in altering the milieu of resistance. (shrink)

Almost none of the critical theory concerned with the secular addresses it in relation to sub-Saharan Africa. This is notable not least given the extent to which other post-colonial regions, such as North Africa and South Asia, are central to such discussions. It is not, however, that the critical theorists are ignoring Africanists' work; indeed, looking at the Africanist literature in any depth makes it clear that there is not, and has never been, a field of “secular (...) studies.” Taking this observation as a point of departure, and considering it in relation to a range of classic and contemporary ethnographic cases, this paper aims to shed light on some of the key terms in current debates about the secular—terms such as immanence, the mundane, critique, and doubt. In doing so, it calls for further considerations of how to figure the Africanist canon in relation to the terms of critical theory. (shrink)

Qualifying post-Westphalian sovereign statehood as a 'power' as argued for in Hendrik Berkhoff's political theology, this book addresses the decades-long theological-spiritual debate between Christian realism and Christian pacifism in U.S. foreign policy and global Christian circles. It approaches the debate by delving into the pacifist Anabaptist political theology and delineates empirically how sovereign statehood in post-colonial Africa and Asia has fallen into the hands of the devil Satan, as a 'fallen power' in the Foucaultian terms of power (...) structures, techniques and episteme. While the book offers intervention schemes and options, it holds that Christian statecraft remains the source of hope to effectively address a number of serious global issues. By extension, the book is thus an invitation to ignite debates on the suitability of Christian statecraft and the nexus between spirituality and world politics, making it especially interesting for scholars and students in the fields of International Politics, Politics of Asian and African States, Post-colonial Studies and Political Theology.. (shrink)

. Avataric evolutionism is the idea that ancient Hindu myths of Vishnu's ten incarnations foreshadowed Darwinian evolution. In a previous essay I examined the late nineteenth‐century origins of the theory in the works of Keshub Chunder Sen and Madame Blavatsky. Here I consider two major figures in the history of avataric evolutionism in the early twentieth century, N. B. Pavgee, a Marathi Brahmin deeply involved in the question of Aryan origins, and Aurobindo Ghose, political activist turned mystic. Pavgee, unlike (...) Keshub, used avataric evolutionism in expounding his nationalistic goals for an independent India. His rationale was bolstered by the idea that India was the fountainhead of all science and civilization. Aurobindo saw in avataric evolutionism a possible key to understanding the involution and evolution of the supreme spirit in the realm of matter as taught in traditional Vedanta. This material‐spiritual evolution represented for Aurobindo the necessary knowledge for the true liberation of India, transcending purely political independence. Such knowledge he also saw as the means for the spiritual liberation of the whole of humankind. The processes of involution and evolution he claimed were not in conflict with modern science, and Western evolutionary thinking seems to have inspired many of his own evolutionary reflections, even though in the end he rejected the Darwinian transmutation of species. I conclude with an overview and assessment of recent, post‐colonial Hindu assimilations of avataric evolutionism. (shrink)

This study conducts a corpus-assisted discourse study of the representations of post-colonial Hong Kong in The Times over the past 20 years. The primary purpose is to reveal its preferential ways of representing Hong Kong and explicate the intricate relations between language use and the historical and socio-political contexts. Through an integration of the methods and theories associated with critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, this study conducts both synchronic and diachronic analyses of the representations of Hong Kong (...) from 1997 to 2017. The findings suggest that The Times’ representations of Hong Kong tend to be crisis- and conflict-oriented. While evoking constant fear about the future of Hong Kong, it still suggests that it is Britain’s duty and moral obligation to protect the former British colony. The same trend can also be identified in The Times’ representations of the mass protests against the proposed extradition bill in 2019. (shrink)

How should nursing knowledge advance? This exploration contextualizes its evolution past and present. In addressing how it evolved in the past, a probable historical evolution of its development draws on the perspectives of Frank & Gills's World System Theory, Kuhn's treatise on Scientific Revolutions, and Foucault's notions of Discontinuities in scientific knowledge development. By describing plausible scenarios of how nursing knowledge evolved, I create a case for why nursing knowledge developers should adopt a post‐structural stance in prioritizing their (...) research agenda(s). Further, by adopting a post‐structural stance, I create a case on how nurses can advance their disciplinary knowledge using an engaging post‐colonial strategy. Given an interrupted history caused by influence(s) constraining nursing's knowledge development by power structures external, and internal, to nursing, knowledge development can evolve in the future by drawing on post‐structural interpretation, and post‐colonial strategy. The post‐structural writings of Deleuze & Guattari's understanding of ‘Nomadology’ as a subtle means to resist being constrained by existing knowledge development structures, might be a useful stance to understanding the urgency of why nursing knowledge should advance addressing the structural influences on its development. Furthermore, Bhabha's post‐colonial elucidation of ‘Hybridity’ as an equally discreet means to change the culture of those constraining structures is an appropriate strategy to enact how nursing knowledge developers can engage with existing power structures, and simultaneously influence that engagement. Taken together, ‘post‐structural stance’ and ‘post‐colonial strategy’ can refocus nursing scholarship to learn from its past, in order to develop relevant disciplinary knowledge in its future. (shrink)

Intersecting authority-language-and-symbolic power, this article tells the story of a group of continental Francophone African youth who find themselves in an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Through their narrative, one is confronted by the trauma of one's own language being declared an illegitimate child, hence becoming a ‘deceptive fluency’ in the ‘eyes of power’ thanks to race and post-coloniality. They are fully consciousness of this situation and their ‘linguistic return’, thus gazing back at the eyes of (...) power and declaring themselves ‘subjects’ capable of love and desire. I briefly address questions of hospitality and language ownership and conclude by addressing the need to re-think the connection between race, power and language. (shrink)

This book is a theoretically and historically informed exploration of 'secularism' in Muslim contexts. It does this through a critical assessment of an influential tradition of thinking about Islam and secularism, derived from the work of anthropologist Talal Asad and his followers. The study employs the tools of comparative historical sociology and sociology of knowledge to engage with the assumptions of Asadian theory. Ultimately, Enayat argues against nativist assertions drawn from the experience of Western modernity and provides a qualified (...) defense of secularism. (shrink)

This essay explores the possibilities and limits of decentering Europe by examining the Haitian Revolution and contemporary invocations of its legacy among political theorists and historians. Recent accounts of the Haitian Revolution have celebrated its universalism as a realization of French revolutionary ideals. As I argue in the essay, this interpretation undermines the Haitian Revolution’s specificity as the first and only successful revolution against colonial slavery. I offer an alternative interpretation that begins from the specificity of colonial slavery (...) and explores how Haitian revolutionaries inaugurated another universalism linked to individual and collective autonomy. Haitian revolutionaries offered a radical account of black citizenship and envisioned a world order in which both slavery and colonial rule would be transcended. This reinterpretation of the Haitian Revolution offers an alternative approach to what it might mean to decenter Europe—one that begins from the specific political problems subaltern actors encountered and illustrates how ideals are remade in diverse contexts. (shrink)

The recent resurgence of extreme-right movements and the nationalist turn of many governments across the world have reignited the relevance of discussions within educational philosophy about the teaching of national identity in schools. However, the conceptualisation of national identity in previous iterations of these debates have been largely Western and Eurocentric, making the past theoretical literature about these questions less relevant for post-colonial settings. In this paper, I imagine a new approach for teaching national identity in post- (...) colonial contexts, founded on postcolonial conceptions of identity and in particular, the concept of hybridity. I first develop a postcolonial account of national identity by drawing on Homi Bhabha’s thinking about cultural identity, drawing on his concepts of liminality, splitting, and ambivalence. Then, building on Bhabha’s notion of hybridity, I propose a distinction between national identity portrayals as either fixed or malleable. Finally, I demonstrate the implications of such a conceptual distinction on the way that national identity is taught in post-colonial schools; by way of an example, I envision a concrete approach to teaching national identity that views national identity as malleable rather than fixed, set in a hypothetical postcolonial school in the Philippines. By beginning from postcolonial assumptions about national identity, I hope to indicate new directions that the debates about the teaching of national identity in schools might proceed. (shrink)

This article examines dominant socio-political questions regarding migration, ‘multiculturalism’, and ‘integration’, as a politics of citizenship (and race) in contemporary (post-colonial) Europe. The argument unfolds through a critique of the nationalist complacencies and racial complicities in Jürgen Habermas’s remarks on ‘multiculturalism’ during the 1990s. With recourse to ‘underclass’ discourse, Habermas’s reflections were themselves a trans-Atlantic metastasis of a distinctly US ‘American’ hegemonic sociological commonsense with regard to, but actively disregarding, the fact of white supremacy. Habermas’s thoughts are critically (...) situated alongside their subsequent metastasis, back across the Atlantic, into Francis Fukuyama’s recent invocations of ‘terrorism’ and his advocacy of the ‘American melting pot’ model as a trans-Atlantic prescription for Europe’s ailments. Treating ‘immigrants’ as a kind of societal illness, both are preoccupied by the same ‘problem’ — non-Europeans (as disaffected ‘minorities’). Thus, these discourses of ‘immigration’ manifest a distinctly post-colonial cancer coursing restlessly through the larger social formation of ‘the West’. (shrink)

Michael Haneke's film Hidden ( Caché, 2005) raises questions about responsibility and guilt in the context of post-colonial inequities that are profoundly discomfiting for the viewer, framing a meditation on identity, consciousness and responsibility that is at once visceral and intellectual. On the reading presented here, this film makes visible and palpable some of the effects of the ' strange suppositions' about personal responsibility and memory that were first articulated by a philosopher who also felt called upon to (...) justify colonialism: John Locke. The perspective provided by the film casts light both on the unpleasant emotional resonances of Locke's theory of personal identity and points to the likely source of its structure in his celebrated theory of private property. (shrink)

In this post‐9/11 era marked by religious and ethnic conflicts and the rise of cultural intolerance, ambiguities arising from the conflation of multiculturalism, sexism, and religious fundamentalism jeopardize the delivery of culturally safe nursing care to non‐Western populations. This new social reality requires nurses to develop a heightened awareness of health issues pertaining to racism and ethnocentrism to provide culturally safe care to non‐Western immigrants or refugees. Through the lens of post‐colonial feminism, this paper explores the challenge (...) of providing culturally safe nursing care in the context of the post‐9/11 in Canadian healthcare settings. A critical appraisal of the literature demonstrates that post‐colonial feminism, despite some limitations, remains a valuable theoretical perspective to apply in cultural nursing research and develop culturally safe nursing practice. Post‐colonial feminism offers the analytical lens to understand how health, social and cultural context, race and gender intersect to impact on non‐Western populations’ health. However, an uncritical application of post‐colonial feminism may not serve racialized men's and women's interests because of its essentialist risk. Post‐colonial feminism must expand its epistemological assumptions to integrate Taylor's concept of identity and recognition and Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism and unfinalizability to explore non‐Western populations’ health issues and the context of nursing practice. This would strengthen the theoretical adequacy of post‐colonial feminist approaches in unveiling the process of racialization that arises from the conflation of multiculturalism, sexism, and religious fundamentalism in Western healthcare settings. (shrink)

In this article I analyze some of the cultural factors that have determined and influenced the teaching profession and its evolution in African countries. Firstly, I use an historical approach to review conceptual issues on teachers, teaching and learning; secondly, I examine salient features of the idea and practices of teachers and teaching in the pre-colonial and less Westernized contemporary African contexts and elements of Quranic schools; thirdly, I offer an account of how teachers were introduced to formal learning (...) of European education in the colonial era; and, fourthly, I examine the declining prestige and other outstanding issues of teaching and the teaching profession amidst the call of quality Education for All. In the main, most African countries have to grapple with the daunting challenges of providing quality education to the entire school-age populations in African countries, especially with the approaching 2015 date for meeting the second Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of achieving universal primary education and Education For All (EFA). At the secondary level and even more clearly articulated for higher education, there is a sense of urgency in providing quality education particularly in science and technology to position Africa with competent human resources in the global economy. Paradoxically, however, the perceived and actual prestige of the teaching profession and the social status of the teacher as a professional category, especially at the lower levels of the educational systems, have not consistently been positive. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to address the question: is the end of development possible? Post-development theorists declare the end of development. They insist that the problematisation of poverty by development theory is one of the key defects of development. The irony in this problematisation is that development practice as an offshoot of development theory does not actually alleviate poverty, particularly in colonial spaces. Rather, the agents of development have perpetuated underdevelopment at the fringes of (...) the colonial metropolis. Given this perpetuation of underdevelopment, post-development theorists argue, the idea of development has run its course and is no longer efficient; it should be put to an end. We assess this declaration of post-development theory from the perspective of Agbakoba’s intercultural philosophy of development. Using the philosophical methods of analysis and critique, we argue that Agbakoba’s intercultural proposal for a transition to development in Africa holds more prospects and is more feasible in addressing the concerns of post-development scholars. This is because, Agbakoba’s intercultural philosophy of development does not insist on the end of development, but on hybridity as the end of development. (shrink)

Post-colonial theories present narratives of discontent based on resentment toward colonial exploitation and cultural hegemony. The substance matter of post-colonial narratives (their first-order argument) is sound. Post-colonial theories often rely on a post-modern philosophical argumentative structure (their second-order argument). The second-order argument is not able to support the first-order argument. In particular, the nihilist consequences of post-modernism make impossible the construction of a (post-colonial) discourse through which the discontent is (...) transformed in a basis for a reasonable political action. The lack of such a discourse is a source of intellectual despair and predisposes to political fragmentation. Moreover, protest without arguments often coincides with violence. Within a liberal view of justice it is possible to represent post-colonialism as a critical stance. (shrink)

Decolonial/anti-colonial Black, Indigenous and Mestiza feminist movements and scholar-activists foreground how the oft-touted apocalypse that the Covid-19 pandemic heralds is not new, nor does it signify the great rupture into chaos that those from within modernity-coloniality often claim it to be. Rather Covid-19 is preceded by and will be out-lived by the apocalyptic anti-life onto-epistemological logics that are foundational to the (re)production of hetero-patriarchal capitalist-(settler) coloniality. However, one would commit the violence of reproduction of the epistemological logics and (ir)rationalities (...) constitutive of the current system if the story ended there. We have survived (despite our losses) and our survival points to the urgent necessity and responsibility of (critical) social theory to listen to the story of the pandemic from a Black/Indigenous genealogy and to begin the sense-making of the Covid-19 pandemic, from prior to this particular virus, outside, against and beyond the politics of knowledge of critical social theory itself. Thus, I invite you to journey to an affirmative re-enfleshment of reason and theory-making in relation to and dialogue with Black, Indigenous, and subaltern Mestiza feminist movements in southwest Colombia and in southeast so-called Australia in the unceded lands of the Awabakal and the Worimi. I explore this through the metaphor, the materiality, the cosmology and the herstory of the mangrove swamps a knowing-being otherwise (in)visible to the dehumanising gave of Whiteness and bring to thought three stories of a politics of knowledge of/as the Black/racialised and feminised body/flesh. To do this is to suggest that the co-creation of pathways which are life affirming and life making beyond and out of the post-Covid 19 conjuncture involves an epistemological-political project which decolonises and feminises the containments of reason and knowing (non)being of coloniality/modernity. (shrink)

This article is a meditation on the overlaps between environmentalism, post-colonial theory, and the practice of history. It takes as a case study the writings of the explorer-scientist-abolitionist Alexander von Humboldt , the founder of a humane, socially conscious ecology. The post-colonial critique has provided a necessary corrective to the global environmental movement, by focusing it on enduring colonialist power dynamics, but at the same time it has crippled the field of environmental history, by dooming (...) us to a model of the past in which all Euro-American elites, devoid of personal agency, are always already in an exploitative relationship with the people and natural resources of the developing world. A close reading of Humboldt’s work, however, suggests that it could provide the basis for a healthy post-colonial environmentalism, if only post-colonial critics were willing to see beyond Humboldt’s complicity in colonial structures. In particular, this article attempts to rehabilitate Humboldt’s reputation in the face of Mary Louise Pratt’s canonical post-colonial study, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Humboldt’s efforts to inspire communion with Nature while simultaneously recognizing Nature’s “otherness” can be seen as radical both in his day and in ours. In addition his analysis of the link between the exploitation of natural resources and the exploitation of certain social groups anticipates the global environmental justice movement. (shrink)

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

This book investigates modern global civilization, offering an alternative to post-colonial theories and the "multiple modernities" approach (as well as the civilizational theory linked to it). It argues that modernity has become a global civilization that is heterogeneous and intertwined with other civilizations, and also aims at a renewal of critical theory that is not US-centric and Eurocentric, focusing instead on China, South Asia (India) and Latin America (Brazil). Dealing with the themes of centre-periphery relations, complexity (...) (including culture and religion), democracy and emancipatory possibilities, this book is based on general theoretical ideas such as collective subjectivity, the interplay of memory and creativity, and the concept of "modernizing moves," so as to deal with historical contingency. (shrink)

This essay works at the intersection of two trends, one longstanding and one relatively more recent. First, it takes place against the background of the overwhelming influence that the category of ‘identity’ exercises on both contemporary knowledge production and political practice. Second, it responds to what has been called the ‘decolonial turn’ in theory. We compare the work of Gayatri Spivak, Aijaz Ahmad, and Walter Mignolo in terms of the following question: What kind of reflexive method do they deploy (...) in response to their recognition of the politics of knowledge production, that is, the existence of a relationship between social position and epistemic position? We then develop a novel distinction between post-colonial, anti-colonial, and de-colonial perspectives, one based not on backward-looking intellectual genealogies but on forward-looking political practices. (shrink)

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education (CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender relations. A threefold model of gender (...) structures, relations of power, production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical literature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine university provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university. (shrink)

Post-colonial ist theory was produced by authors born in India, and who were living in the United States. After they produced their writings, a new line of thought appeared, which explored Latin America from the same perspective. The pretext is based on Derrida´s works, in which the purpose is to s..

The landscape of social theory has changed significantly over the three decades since the publication of Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner’s seminal Social Theory Today. Sociologists in the twenty-first century desperately need a new agenda centered around central questions of social theory. In Social Theory Now, Claudio E. Benzecry, Monika Krause, and Isaac Ariail Reed set a new course for sociologists, bringing together contributions from the most distinctive sociological traditions in an ambitious survey of where social (...) theory is today and where it might be going. The book provides a strategic window onto social theory based on current research, examining trends in classical traditions and the cutting edge of more recent approaches. From distinctive theoretical positions, contributors address questions about how social order is accomplished; the role of materiality, practice, and meaning; as well as the conditions for the knowledge of the social world. The theoretical traditions presented include cultural sociology, microsociologies, world-system theory and post-colonial theory, gender and feminism, actor network and network theory, systems theory, field theory, rational choice, poststructuralism, pragmatism, and the sociology of conventions. Each chapter introduces a tradition and presents an agenda for further theoretical development. Social Theory Now is an essential tool for sociologists. It will be central to the discussion and teaching of contemporary social theory for years to come. (shrink)

While there is little doubt that Algeria was of enormous importance to the theoretical output that is often recognized as French, here I would like to ask: what is at stake in re-inscribing these French intellectuals as postcolonial? In what ways did the particularities of Algerian history impact French philosophy? Indeed, if the term postcolonial is meant to describe those who were influenced by events in Algeria, then an entire generation of French thinkers might be considered postcolonial to varying degrees. (...) Surely Derrida’s oeuvre was influenced by his experiences in Algeria, but does this make him postcolonial in the same way as Jean-Paul Sartre or Pierre Bourideu, who have also become important figures in postcolonial theory? . (shrink)

In this paper, the author presents Fanon’s analysis of decolonization in order to present an explicit conception of resistance based upon Fanon’s concept of decolonization, which is aligned with the lived experience of the colonized: their racial, sociopolitical, and economic condition as well as their existential condition. The author contrasts Fanon’s analysis with Sartre’s critique of colonialism as it appears in The Critique. Ultimately, through the presentation of Sartre’s and Fanon’s theories, the author attempts to show a feminist analysis of (...) French colonial resistance as a criticism of Sartre’s and Fanon’s theories and of the analysis their male contemporaries within the field of Post/Colonial Theories. (shrink)

This book makes the powerful argument that Latin America needs to be a more central part of the discourse on emerging globalities and in the pursuit of an inter-civilizational focus to avoid West-centric perspectives. It deploys a cultural political economy approach that sees the global political economy as inescapably cultural and allows us to avoid the hyper-rational analysis of economics. It explores various aspects of contemporary Latin America from the revival of dependency theory, the ‘pink tide’ governments since 2000 (...) and, in particular, the potential of the Andean Buen Vivir political philosophy, to offer a distinctive paradigm for sustainable global development. The book provides a de-colonial frame and shows how many recent and new social science perspectives emerging globally are connected with Latin American scholars and Latin American social experiments: namely, dependency, decolonial and post-colonial epistemologies, post-neoliberalism, and the notion ofPluriverse. The book focuses on the cultural, the ethical, the economic and the political, and environmental dimensions of this transformation, which represents a reaction and alternative to the Western cultural, including ethical, economic, political, environmental crises. The readership for this book includes all who are fascinated by the globalization lens on the one hand, and the experience and lessons of Latin America on the other hand. (shrink)

Sara Mills offers a trenchant analysis of the complexities of social relations--including notions of class, nationality and gender--and spatial relations, landscape, topography and travel, in post-colonial contexts.

_Indigeneity and Political Theory_ engages some of the profound challenges to traditions of modern political theory that have been posed over the past two decades. Karena Shaw is especially concerned with practices of sovereignty as they are embedded in and shape Indigenous politics, and responses to Indigenous politics. Drawing on theories of post-coloniality, feminism, globalization, and international politics, and using examples of contemporary political practice including court cases and specific controversies, Shaw seeks to illustrate and argue for a (...) way of doing political theory that is more responsive to the challenges posed by a range of contemporary issues. An engaging and highly original analysis of Indigenenity and sovereignty, this book enables the reader to develop a more robust consideration of relationships between theory and practice, and thus the politics of theorizing. (shrink)

This paper uses a semiotic, performative theory of language and post-colonial theory to argue that nursing's representations of ‘multiculturalism’ need to be grounded in a theory of whiteness, an historicized understanding of how ethnic/cultural differences come to be represented in the ways they are and informed by Foucault's notions of power/knowledge. Using nursing education and ‘cultural compentency’ as examples, the paper draws on a range of literatures to suggest more critical and politically productive ways of (...) approaching difference from within nursing's largely white interpretive framework. (shrink)

The precondition of any feminist politics – a usable category of ‘woman’ – has proved to be difficult to construct, even proposed to be impossible, given the ‘problem of exclusion’. This is the inevitable exclusion of at least some women, as their lives or experiences do not fit into the necessary and sufficient condition(s) that denotes group membership. In this paper, I propose that the problem of exclusion arises not because of inappropriate category membership criteria, but because of the presumption (...) that categories can only be organised by identity relations or shared properties among their members. This criterion of sameness as well as the characterisation of this exclusion as essentialism attests to a metaphysics that is not conducive to resistance and liberatory projects. Following a strain of hybrid thinking in feminist and post-colonial theory, I outline an alternative pluralist logic that confronts oppressive binaries that impede theory work in gender, sexuality, and race theory, and limit political action and resistance. The problem of exclusion is neither irresolvable nor is it essentialism. Instead it is a denial of subjectivity due to pseudodualistic self/Other dichotomies that can be resisted by adopting a new categorial logic. While this paper focuses on the specific problem of formulating a category of ‘woman’, it has implications for other areas of gender, critical race, and postcolonial theory. Rather than working toward an inclusive category founded on sameness, theorists need to develop independent and positive categories grounded in difference. Our current categorial logic does not permit such a project, and therefore a new metaphysics must be adopted. (shrink)

Details developments in feminist theory since 1970, with chapters on aspects such as feminist social theory, political theory, and jurisprudence, black feminisms, post-colonial feminist theory, lesbian theory, and feminist linguistic theories. Other topics include psychoanalytic feminist theory, postmodernism and feminism, feminist literary theory, feminist media and film theory, and women's studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Despite the increasing interest in translation in the last two decades, there has been no investigation of the translation of historiography and its transformation from one language to another. This article takes as a case study the translation into French of Ibn Khaldûn, the fourteenth-century North African historian. It considers specifically the translation done by William de Slane in the context of the colonization of Algeria. The Histoire des Berbères, the French narrative of Ibn Khaldûn that relates to the history (...) of Arabs and Berbers in the Maghreb, has become since then the source of French knowledge of North Africa. It is upon that French narrative that colonial and post-colonial historians have constructed their knowledge of North Africa, of Arabs, and of Berbers. The article shows how a portion of the writing of Ibn Khaldûn was translated and transformed in the process in such a way as to become a French narrative with colonial categories specific to the nineteenth century. Using a semiotic approach and analyzing both the French text and its original, the article shows how colonialism introduced what Castoriadis calls an "imaginary" by transforming local knowledge and converting it into colonial knowledge. In showing this the essay reveals that not only is translation not the transmission of a message from one language to another, it is indeed the production of a new text. For translation is itself the product of an imaginary, a creation--in Ricoeur's words, a "restructuring of semantic fields.". (shrink)