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Pedagogies of Crossing
Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred
M. Jacqui Alexander
Duke University Press, 2005
M. Jacqui Alexander is one of the most important theorists of transnational feminism working today. Pedagogies of Crossing brings together essays she has written over the past decade, uniting her incisive critiques, which have had such a profound impact on feminist, queer, and critical race theories, with some of her more recent work. In this landmark interdisciplinary volume, Alexander points to a number of critical imperatives made all the more urgent by contemporary manifestations of neoimperialism and neocolonialism. Among these are the need for North American feminism and queer studies to take up transnational frameworks that foreground questions of colonialism, political economy, and racial formation; for a thorough re-conceptualization of modernity to account for the heteronormative regulatory practices of modern state formations; and for feminists to wrestle with the spiritual dimensions of experience and the meaning of sacred subjectivity.

In these meditations, Alexander deftly unites large, often contradictory, historical processes across time and space. She focuses on the criminalization of queer communities in both the United States and the Caribbean in ways that prompt us to rethink how modernity invents its own traditions; she juxtaposes the political organizing and consciousness of women workers in global factories in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada with the pressing need for those in the academic factory to teach for social justice; she reflects on the limits and failures of liberal pluralism; and she presents original and compelling arguments that show how and why transgenerational memory is an indispensable spiritual practice within differently constituted women-of-color communities as it operates as a powerful antidote to oppression. In this multifaceted, visionary book, Alexander maps the terrain of alternative histories and offers new forms of knowledge with which to mold alternative futures.

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Pedagogy of Democracy
Feminism and the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan
Mire Koikari
Temple University Press, 2009

Pedagogy of Democracy re-interprets the U.S. occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952 as a problematic instance of Cold War feminist mobilization rather than a successful democratization of Japanese women as previously argued. By combining three fields of research—occupation, Cold War, and postcolonial feminist studies—and examining occupation records and other archival sources, Koikari argues that postwar gender reform was one of the Cold War containment strategies that undermined rather than promoted women’s political and economic rights.

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Persophilia
Persian Culture on the Global Scene
Hamid Dabashi
Harvard University Press, 2015

From the Biblical period and Classical Antiquity to the rise of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, aspects of Persian culture have been integral to European history. A diverse constellation of European artists, poets, and thinkers have looked to Persia for inspiration, finding there a rich cultural counterpoint and frame of reference. Interest in all things Persian was no passing fancy but an enduring fascination that has shaped not just Western views but the self-image of Iranians up to the present day. Persophilia maps the changing geography of connections between Persia and the West over the centuries and shows that traffic in ideas about Persia and Persians did not travel on a one-way street.

How did Iranians respond when they saw themselves reflected in Western mirrors? Expanding on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, and overcoming the limits of Edward Said, Hamid Dabashi answers this critical question by tracing the formation of a civic discursive space in Iran, seeing it as a prime example of a modern nation-state emerging from an ancient civilization in the context of European colonialism. The modern Iranian public sphere, Dabashi argues, cannot be understood apart from this dynamic interaction.

Persophilia takes into its purview works as varied as Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Handel’s Xerxes and Puccini’s Turandot, and Gauguin and Matisse’s fascination with Persian art. The result is a provocative reading of world history that dismantles normative historiography and alters our understanding of postcolonial nations.

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Planetary Longings
Mary Louise Pratt
Duke University Press, 2022
In Planetary Longings eminent cultural theorist Mary Louise Pratt posits that the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first mark a turning point in the human and planetary condition. Examining the forces of modernity, neoliberalism, coloniality, and indigeneity in their pre- and postmillennial forms, Pratt reflects on the crisis of futurity that accompanies the millennial turn in relation to environmental disaster and to the new forms of thinking it has catalyzed. She turns to 1990s Latin American vernacular culture, literary fiction, and social movements, which simultaneously registered neoliberalism’s devastating effects and pursued alternate ways of knowing and living. Tracing the workings of colonialism alongside the history of anticolonial struggles and Indigenous mobilizations in the Americas, Pratt analyzes indigeneity both as a key index of coloniality, neoliberal extraction, and ecological destruction, and as a source for alternative modes of thought and being. Ultimately, Pratt demonstrates that the changes on either side of the millennium have catalyzed new forms of world-making and knowledge-making in the face of an unknowable and catastrophic future.
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The Politics of Decolonial Investigations
Walter D. Mignolo
Duke University Press, 2021
In The Politics of Decolonial Investigations Walter D. Mignolo provides a sweeping examination of how coloniality has operated around the world in its myriad forms from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Decolonial border thinking allows Mignolo to outline how the combination of the self-fashioned narratives of Western civilization and the hegemony of Eurocentric thought served to eradicate all knowledges in non-European languages and praxes of living and being. Mignolo also traces the geopolitical origins of racialized and gendered classifications, modernity, globalization, and cosmopolitanism, placing them all within the framework of coloniality. Drawing on the work of theorists and decolonial practitioners from the Global South and the Global East, Mignolo shows how coloniality has provoked the emergence of decolonial politics initiated by delinking from all forms of Western knowledge and subjectivities. The urgent task, Mignolo stresses, is the epistemic reconstitution of categories of thought and praxes of living destituted in the very process of building Western civilization and the idea of modernity. The overcoming of the long-lasting hegemony of the West and its distorted legacies is already underway in all areas of human existence. Mignolo underscores the relevance of the politics of decolonial investigations, in and outside the academy, to liberate ourselves from canonized knowledge, ways of knowing, and praxes of living.
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The Politics of Operations
Excavating Contemporary Capitalism
Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson
Duke University Press, 2019
In The Politics of Operations Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson investigate how capital reshapes its relation with politics through operations that enable the extraction and exploitation of mineral resources, labor, data, and cultures. They show how capital—which they theorize as a direct political actor—operates through the logistical organization of relations between people, property, and objects as well as through the penetration of financialization into all realms of economic life. Mezzadra and Neilson present a capacious analysis of a wide range of issues, from racial capitalism, the convergence of neoliberalism and nationalism, and Marx's concept of aggregate capital to the financial crisis of 2008 and how colonialism, empire, and globalization have shaped the modern state since World War II. In so doing, they illustrate the distinctive rationality and logics of contemporary capitalism while calling for a politics based on collective institutions that exist outside the state.
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Postcolonial America
Edited by C. Richard King
University of Illinois Press, 2000
Scholars from a wide array of disciplines describe and debate postcolonialism as it applies to America in this authoritative and timely collection. Investigating topics such as law and public policy, immigration and tourism, narratives and discourses, race relations, and virtual communities, Postcolonial America clarifies and challenges prevailing conceptualizations of postcolonialism and accepted understandings of American culture.
 
Advancing multiple, even conflicted visions of postcolonial America, this important volume interrogates postcolonial theory and traces the emergence and significance of postcolonial practices and precepts in the United States. Contributors discuss how the unique status of the United States as the colony that became a superpower has shaped its sense of itself. They assess the global networks of inequality that have displaced neocolonial systems of conquest, exploitation, and occupation. They also examine how individuals and groups use music, the Internet, and other media to reconfigure, reinvent, and resist postcoloniality in American culture.
 
Candidly facing the inherent contradictions of "the American experience," this collection demonstrates the patterns, connections, and histories characteristic of postcoloniality in America and initiates important discussions about how these conditions might be changed.
 
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The Postcolonial and the Global
Revathi Krishnaswamy
University of Minnesota Press, 2007

This interdisciplinary work brings the humanities and social sciences into dialogue by examining issues such as globalized capital, discourses of antiterrorism, and identity politics. Essayists from the fields of postcolonial studies and globalization theory address the ethical and pragmatic ramifications of opposing interpretations of these issues and, for the first time, seek common ground.

Contributors: Pal Ahluwalia, U of California, San Diego; Arjun Appadurai, New School U; Geoffrey Bowker, Santa Clara U; Timothy Brennan, U of Minnesota; Ruth Buchanan, U of British Columbia; Verity Burgmann, U of Melbourne; Pheng Cheah, U of California, Berkeley; Inderpal Grewal, U of California, Irvine; Ramon Grosfoguel, U of California, Berkeley; Barbara Harlow, U of Texas, Austin; Anouar Majid, U of New England; John McMurtry, U of Guelph; Walter D. Mignolo, Duke U; Sundhya Pahuja, U of Melbourne; R. Radhakrishnan, U of California, Irvine; Ileana Rodriguez, Ohio State U; E. San Juan, Philippine Forum, New York; Saskia Sassen, U of Chicago; Ella Shohat, New York U; Leslie Sklair, London School of Economics; Robert Stam, New York U; Madina Tlostanova, Russian Peoples’ Friendship U; Harish Trivedi, U of Delhi.

Revathi Krishnaswamy is associate professor of English at San Jose State University.

John C. Hawley is professor and chair of English at Santa Clara University.

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Postcolonial Dublin
Imperial Legacies And The Built Environment
Andrew Kincaid
University of Minnesota Press, 2006
For hundreds of years, Ireland has been a testing ground for colonizing techniques. Postcolonial Dublin shows how perpetrators of colonialism have made use of urban planning and architecture to underscore and legitimate ideologies. From suburban development to building facades, the conflict between nationalists and colonialists has inscribed itself on Dublin’s landscape. Andrew Kincaid illustrates how the architecture and urban planning of Dublin have been integral to debates about nationalism, modernism, and Ireland’s relationship to the rest of the world. Looking at objects such as Londonderry’s Market House, Patrick Abercrombie’s Dublin of the Future, and the urban renewal project of today’s Temple Bar, Kincaid highlights Ireland’s colonial history and the significance of architecture in the evolution of national identity. In doing so, he demonstrates how ideology “spatializes” itself. Postcolonial Dublin engages the prevailing historical representations of Irish nationalism, arguing that the evolving city reflected a debate over who would hold the reins of power. Bringing the tools of literary criticism and postcolonial theory to bear on the field of urban studies, Kincaid places Dublin at the forefront of debates over modernism, modernity, and globalization.Andrew Kincaid is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
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Postcolonial France
The Question of Race and the Future of the Republic
Paul Silverstein
Pluto Press, 2018
France has in recent years emerged as a bellwether for worldwide anxieties around postcolonialism and multiculturalism, and the rise of right-wing populism. This book offers a detailed exploration of the dynamics and dilemmas of the present moment of crisis and hope in France through an exploration of a number of recent moral panics. Paul Silverstein here examines urban racial violence, female Islamic dress and male public prayer, anti-system gangster rap, and sports—all of which have triggered major national debates over France’s multicultural future. Silverstein shows convincingly that these conflicts can be traced back to unresolved tensions around France's imperial project, the present-day effects of which are still being felt.
 
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Postcolonial Modernism
Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria
Chika Okeke-Agulu
Duke University Press, 2015
Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive "postcolonial modernism" that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.
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The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader
Sandra Harding, ed.
Duke University Press, 2011
For twenty years, the renowned philosopher of science Sandra Harding has argued that science and technology studies, postcolonial studies, and feminist critique must inform one another. In The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader, Harding puts those fields in critical conversation, assembling the anthology that she has long wanted for classroom use. In classic and recent essays, international scholars from a range of disciplines think through a broad array of science and technology philosophies and practices. The contributors reevaluate conventional accounts of the West’s scientific and technological projects in the past and present, rethink the strengths and limitations of non-Western societies’ knowledge traditions, and assess the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. The collection concludes with forward-looking essays, which explore strategies for cultivating new visions of a multicultural, democratic world of sciences and for turning those visions into realities. Feminist science and technology concerns run throughout the reader and are the focus of several essays. Harding provides helpful background for each essay in her introductions to the reader’s four sections.

Contributors
Helen Appleton
Karen Bäckstrand
Lucille H. Brockway
Stephen B. Brush
Judith Carney
Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment
Arturo Escobar
Maria E. Fernandez
Ward H. Goodenough
Susantha Goonatilake
Sandra Harding
Steven J. Harris
Betsy Hartmann
Cori Hayden
Catherine L. M. Hill
John M. Hobson
Peter Mühlhäusler
Catherine A. Odora Hoppers
Consuelo Quiroz
Jenny Reardon
Ella Reitsma
Ziauddin Sardar
Daniel Sarewitz
Londa Schiebinger
Catherine V. Scott
Colin Scott
Mary Terrall
D. Michael Warren

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The Postcolonial State in Africa
Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010
Crawford Young
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012
In The Postcolonial State in Africa, Crawford Young offers an informed and authoritative comparative overview of fifty years of African independence, drawing on his decades of research and first-hand experience on the African continent.
    Young identifies three cycles of hope and disappointment common to many of the African states (including those in North Africa) over the last half-century: initial euphoria at independence in the 1960s followed by disillusionment with a lapse into single-party autocracies and military rule; a period of renewed confidence, radicalization, and ambitious state expansion in the 1970s preceding state crisis and even failure in the disastrous 1980s; and a phase of reborn optimism during the continental wave of democratization beginning around 1990. He explores in depth the many African civil wars—especially those since 1990—and three key tracks of identity: Africanism, territorial nationalism, and ethnicity.
    Only more recently, Young argues, have the paths of the fifty-three African states begun to diverge more dramatically, with some leading to liberalization and others to political, social, and economic collapse—outcomes impossible to predict at the outset of independence.

“This book is the best volume to date on the politics of the last 50 years of African independence.”—International Affairs

“The book shares Young’s encyclopedic knowledge of African politics, providing in a single volume a comprehensive rendering of the first 50 years of independence. The book is sprinkled with anecdotes from his vast experience in Africa and that of his many students, and quotations from all of the relevant literature published over the past five decades. Students and scholars of African politics alike will benefit immensely from and enjoy reading The Postcolonial State in Africa.”—Political Science Quarterly

“The study of African politics will continue to be enriched if practitioners pay homage to the erudition and the nobility of spirit that has anchored the engagement of this most esteemed doyen of Africanists with the continent.”—African History Review

“The book’s strongest attribute is the careful way that comparative political theory is woven into historical storytelling throughout the text. . . . Written with great clarity even for all its detail, and its interwoven use of theory makes it a great choice for new students of African studies.”—Australasian Review of African Studies
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Postcolonial Studies and Beyond
Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, and Jed Esty, eds.
Duke University Press, 2005
An interdisciplinary collection of essays designed to map out a wide-ranging and productive future for postcolonial studies, this volume assesses the current state of the field and points toward its most promising new developments. In addressing questions about the definition and relevance of postcolonial scholarship, many of the essays consider its relation to the study of globalization. While some contributors offer broad reflections on the existing two-way influence between postcolonial theory and established university disciplines such as literary criticism and history, others forge ahead into some vital, if nascent, areas for postcolonial research such as media studies, environmental studies, religious studies, and linguistic and semantic analysis.

The contributors represent many of the fields altered by postcolonial studies over the past two decades, including literary studies, history, anthropology, Asian and African studies, and political science. They model diverse applications of postcolonial theory to Latin America, East Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Postcolonial Studies and Beyond propels the field forward. It showcases scholars coming from intellectual precincts usually considered outside the purview of the postcolonial finding new ways to deploy classic techniques of postcolonial analysis, and scholars strongly associated with postcolonial studies offering substantial critiques designed to challenge the field’s most fundamental assumptions.

Contributors. Tani E. Barlow, Ali Behdad, Daniel Boyarin, Timothy Brennan, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, Laura Chrisman, Jean Comaroff, Frederick Cooper, Vilashini Cooppan, Jed Esty, James Ferguson, Peter Hulme, Suvir Kaul, Neil Lazarus, Ania Loomba, Florencia E. Mallon, Nivedita Menon, Rob Nixon, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, David Scott, Ella Shohat, Kelwyn Sole, Robert Stam, Rebecca L. Stein

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Postcolonial Subjects
Francophone Women Writers
Mary Green
University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Explores French-language writing by women outside France.

This groundbreaking volume highlights the work of contemporary women writing in French whose cultural links, ethnic identities, and historical roots lie outside France. The writings of these women emanate from the cultures of Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Quebec and other French-speaking regions of Canada.

By writing in French, the writers discussed in Postcolonial Subjects both acknowledge and write against the cultural heritage of France. In doing so, they participate in the subversion of European literary traditions and take part in various forms of cultural and linguistic blending, generating new artistic currents. Each of these essays articulates contemporary debates about the politics and cultural effects of sexism, homophobia, racism, and essentialism, as well as pointing out connections and points of resistance among such diverse strains as feminism, nationalism, and ethnicity. Contributors: Eloise A. Brière, U of Albany; Miriam Cooke, Duke U; Irène Assiba d’Almeida, U of Arizona; Joan Dayan, U of Arizona; John D. Erickson, U of Kentucky; Françoise Lionnet, Northwestern U; Christiane Makward, Pennsylvania State U; Kitzie McKinney, Bentley College; Christopher L. Miller, Yale U; Mary-Kay Miller, Vanderbilt U; Jane Moss, Colby College; Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Stanford U; Lori Saint-Martin, U du Québec à Montréal; Ronnie Scharfman, Purchase College, SUNY.
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Postcolonialism and the Hebrew Bible
The Next Step
Roland Boer
SBL Press, 2013
This volume returns to where initial interest in postcolonial biblical criticism began: the Hebrew Bible. It does so not to celebrate the significant achievements of postcolonial analysis over the last few decades but to ask what the next step might be. In these essays, established and newer scholars, many from the interstices of global scholarship, discuss specific texts, neo/post/colonial situations, and theoretical issues. Moving from the Caribbean to Greenland, from Ezra-Nehemiah to the Gibeonites, this collection seeks out new territory, new questions, and possibly some new answers. The contributors are Roland Boer, Steed Davidson, Richard Horsley, Uriah Y. Kim, Judith McKinlay, Johnny Miles, Althea Spencer-Miller, Leo Perdue, Christina Petterson, Joerg Rieger, and Gerald West.
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Postcolonialism and the Past, Volume 65
Barbara Fuchs and David J. Baker
Duke University Press

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Postcolonialisms
An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism
Desai, Gaurav
Rutgers University Press, 2005

Bringing together thirty-seven essays that have helped define the study of colonial and postcolonial cultures, this expansive and thoughtfully organized anthology offers an up-to-date and in-depth overview of this rapidly developing field.

Canonical articles, most unexcerpted, explore postcolonialism’s key themes—power and knowledge—while articles by contemporary scholars expand the discipline to include discussions of the discovery of the New World, Native American and indigenous identities in Latin America and the Pacific, settler colonies in Africa and Australia, English colonialism in Ireland, and feminism in Nigeria and Egypt. The inclusion of a broad sampling of histories and theories attests to multiple, even competing postcolonialisms, while the skillful organization of the volume provides a useful map of the field in terms of recognizable patterns, shared family resemblances, and common genealogies.

The book is divided into nine sections: Ideologies of Imperialism, The Critique of Colonial Discourse, The Politics of Language and Literary Studies, Nationalisms and Nativisms, Hybrid Identities, Gender and Sexualities, Reading the Subaltern, Comparative (Post)colonialisms, and Globalization and Postcoloniality. Detailed introductions to each section serve to develop key themes, encourage debate, and contextualize the wide-ranging voices that contribute to the topic.

The most cogent and teachable collection of postcolonial texts yet compiled, this anthology is equally suitable for undergraduate students and seasoned scholars.

 

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Postcoloniality-Decoloniality-Black Critique
Joints and Fissures
Edited by Sabine Broeck and Carsten Junker
Campus Verlag, 2014
Can Western modernity be analyzed and critiqued through the lens of enslavement and colonial history? As this volume reveals, such analysis is not only possible, it is essential to our understanding of contemporary race relations and society generally. Drawing from the fields of  postcolonial, decolonial, and black studies, this book assembles contributions from renowned scholars that offer timely and critical perspectives from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, gender studies, cultural and literary studies, and philosophy.
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The Pre-occupation of Postcolonial Studies
Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, eds.
Duke University Press, 2000
The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies contains essays by both leading figures and younger scholars engaged in the field of postcolonial studies. In this state-of-the-field reader, editors Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks have created a dynamic forum for contributors from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary vantage points to question both the limits and the limitations of postcolonial thought.
Since it burst on the academic scene as the “hot” new disciplinary field during the final decade of the twentieth century, postcolonial studies has faced criticism from those who question its “troubling” trajectories, its sometimes suspect epistemological and pedagogical methods, and its relatively narrow focus. With diverse essays that emerge from such disciplines as South Asian, Latin American, Arab, and Jewish studies, this volume responds to skeptics and adherers alike, addressing not only the broad theoretical issues at stake within the field but also the position of the field itself within the academy, as well as its relationship to modern, postmodern, and Marxist discourses. Contributors offer critiques on ahistorical and universalizing tendencies in postcolonial work and confront the need for scholars to attend to issues of class, ideology, and the effects of neocolonial practices. Seeking to broaden the field’s traditionally literary spectrum of methodologies, these essayists take up large thematic issues to examine specific sites of colonial activities with all of their historical, political, and cultural significance. Closing the volume is an insightful interview with Homi Bhabha, in which he discusses postcolonial studies in the context of contemporary cultural politics and theory.
The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies not only offers an overview of the discipline but also pushes and pulls at the edges of postcolonial studies, offering a comprehensive view of the field’s diversity of thought and envisioning clear pathways for its future.

Contributors. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Ali Behdad, Homi Bhabha, Daniel Boyarin, Neil Larsen, Saree Makdisi, Joseph Massad, Walter Mignolo, Hamid Naficy, Ngugi Wa Thingo, Timothy B. Powell, R. Radhakrishnan, Bruce Robbins, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Ella Shohat, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

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