Politics And Post Colonial Theory

This groundbreaking book makes sense of the complexities and dynamics of post-colonial politics, illustrating how post-colonial theory has marginalised a huge part of its constituency, namely Africa. Politics and Post-Colonial Theory traces how African identity has been constituted and reconstituted by examining issues such as: * negritude * the rise of nationalism * decolonisation. The book also questions how helpful post-colonial analysis can be in understanding the complexities which define institutions including: * the nation-state * civil society * human rights * citizenship. Politics and Post-colonial Theory bravely breaks down disciplinary boundaries. Its radical vision will be essential reading for all those engaged in Politics, post-colonial studies and African studies.

Postcolonialism and Political Theory explores the intersection between the political and the postcolonial through an engagement with, critique of, and challenge to some of the prevalent, restrictive tenets and frameworks of Western political and social thought. It is a response to the call by postcolonial studies, as well as to the urgent need within world politics, to turn towards a multiplicity--largely excluded from globally dominant discourses of community, subjectivity, power and prosperity--constituted by otherness, radical alterity, or subordination to the newly reconsolidated West. The book offers a diverse range of essays that re-examine and open the boundaries of political and cultural modernity's historical domain; that look at how the racialized and gendered and cultured subject visualizes the social from elsewhere; that critique the limits of postcolonial theory and its claim to celebrate diversity; and that complicate the notion of postcolonial politics within settler societies that continue to practice exile of the indigenous. Postcolonialism and Political Theory is an ideal book for graduate and advanced undergraduate level study and for those working both disciplinarily and interdisciplinarily, both inside and outside academia.

The first book of its kind in the field, this timely introduction to post- colonial theory offers lucid and accessible summaries of the major work of key theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Edward Said.Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. The Guide also Explores the lines of resistance against colonialism and highlights the theories of post-colonial identity that have been responsible for generating some of the most influential and challenging critical work of recent decades. Designed for undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses related to colonialisn or post-colonialism, the book summarieses the major topics and issues as well as covering the contributions of major and less familiar figures in the field.

Political Theories of Decolonization provides an introduction to some of the seminal texts of postcolonial political theory. Many theorists have pointed out that the colonized subject was a divided subject. This book argues that the postcolonial state was a divided state. Providing readers access to texts that add to our understanding of contemporary political life and global political dynamics, it illuminates how many of the central questions of political theory such as land, religion, freedom, law, and sovereignty are imaginatively explored by postcolonial thinkers.

Postcolonial Politics and Theology seeks to reform and reimagine the field of political theology—uprooting it from the colonial soil—using the comparative lenses of postcolonial politics and theology to bring attention to the realities of the Global South. Kwok Pui-lan traces the history of the political impacts of Western theological development, especially developments in the U.S. context, and the need to shift these interlocking fields toward non-Western traditions in theory and practice. A special focus of the book is on the changing sociopolitical realities of American Empire and Sino-American competition, illustrated in Donald Trump's slogan of "Make America Great Again" and Xi Jinping’s hope for a “China Dream.” The shifting of U.S. and Asian relationships highlights the need to move our theological and political categories away from a vision of strongman domination and toward a postmodern, postcolonial, and transnational world, especially exemplified in the Asia Pacific context. Throughout, Kwok overturns the idea of centering one cultural framework and marginalizing others in favor of living into a multiplicity of deeply contextual theologies. She explores how these theologies are being developed in global, postcolonial contexts, through struggles for democracy and civil disobedience in Hong Kong, by efforts to reclaim selfhood and sexual identity from exploitative colonial desire, through the work of interreligious solidarity and peacebuilding, and in the practice of earth care in the face of ecological crisis.

Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalizing categories of the Enlightenment. In this devastating critique, mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory. Focusing on the hugely popular Subaltern Studies project, Chibber shows that its foundational arguments are based on a series of analytical and historical misapprehensions. He demonstrates that it is possible to affirm a universalizing theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital promises to be a historical milestone in contemporary social theory.

As the scholarly world attunes itself once again to the specifically political, this book rethinks the political significance of literary realism within a postcolonial context. Generally, postcolonial studies has either ignored realism or criticized it as being naïve, anachronistic, deceptive, or complicit with colonial discourse; in other words—incongruous with the postcolonial. This book argues that postcolonial realism is intimately connected to the specifically political in the sense that realist form is premised on the idea of a collective reality. Discussing a range of literary and theoretical works, Dr. Sorensen exemplifies that many postcolonial writers were often faced with the realities of an unstable state, a divided community inhabiting a contested social space, the challenges of constructing a notion of ‘the people,’ often out of a myriad of local communities with different traditions and languages brought together arbitrarily through colonization. The book demonstrates that the political context of realism is the sphere or possibility of civil war, divided societies, and unstable communities. Postcolonial realism is prompted by disturbing political circumstances, and it gestures toward a commonly imagined world, precisely because such a notion is under pressure or absent.

Postcolonial theory has had the most impact in disciplines such as literature and, to some degree, history, and perhaps the least impact in the discipline of politics. However, there is growing interest in postcolonial theory within politics, and interest in especially high in the subfield of international relations. This text provides a comprehensive survey of how postoclonial theory shapes our understanding of international relations.