The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823280071 ISBN 13: 9780823280070

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2018

Synopsis

This volume invokes the “postcolonial contemporary” in order to recognize and reflect upon the postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, as well as to inquire into whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, the book seeks to cut across this false alternative and to think with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity.
Many of the most influential frameworks of postcolonial theory were developed from the 1970s to 1990s, during what we may now recognize as the twilight of the postwar period. If forms of capitalist imperialism are entering into new configurations of neoliberal privatization, wars-without-end, xenophobic nationalism, and unsustainable extraction, what aspects of postcolonial inquiry must be reworked or revised in order to grasp our political present?
In twelve essays that draw from a number of disciplines―history, anthropology, literature, geography, indigenous studies― and regional locations (the Black Atlantic, South Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Australia, Argentina) The Postcolonial Contemporary seeks to move beyond the habitual oppositions that have often characterized the field: universal vs. particular; Marxism vs. postcolonialism; politics vs. culture. The essays reckon with new and persisting postcolonial predicaments, doing so under four interrelated analytics: postcolonial temporality; deprovincializing the global south; beyond Marxism versus postcolonial studies; and postcolonial spatiality and new political imaginaries.
From the book’s powerful and substantial Introduction through its dozen compelling chapters, The Postcolonial Contemporary will be a landmark volume for reassessing a crucial critical framework for today’s world.
Contributors: Sadia Abbas, Anthony C. Alessandrini, Sharad Chari, Carlos A. Forment, Vinay Gidwani, Peter Hitchcock, Laurie Lambert, Stephen Muecke, Anupama Rao, Adam Spanos, Jini Kim Watson, Gary Wilder

About this title

About the Authors

Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present.

Gary Wilder is Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is Professor in the PhD Program of Anthropology, with cross appointments in History and French. He is the author of Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity (Fordham University Press, 2022), Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015), and The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). He is coauthor of Theses on Theory and History (special issue of History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History, 2020) and two edited volumes, The Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter (Duke University Press, 2019) and The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present (Fordham University Press, 2018). He is currently writing a book on the political thought of C. L. R. James.

Peter Hitchcock is professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York. His books include Dialogics of the Oppressed (1992); Oscillate Wildly: Space, Body, and Spirit of Millennial Materialism (1999); Imaginary States: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism (2003); The Long Space: Transnationalism and Postcolonial Form (2009); The New Public Intellectual: Politics, Theory, and the Public Sphere (2016; coedited with Jeffrey R. Di Leo); Labor in Culture, or, Worker of the World(s) (2017); and, most recently, The Debt Age (2018; coedited with Jeffrey R. Di Leo and Sophia McClennen).

Anupama Rao is Associate Professor of History at Barnard College. She is the author of The Caste Question (California, 2009).

From the Back Cover

"The Postcolonial Contemporary offers a striking set of vantage points to rethink the postcolonial present―at once a rich set of insights about the temporalities that postcolonial critique can animate and a riveting attentiveness to the political resources of earlier anticolonial struggles for grappling with new forms of imperial and capitalist subsumption. A set of beautifully written and conceptually creative chapters call upon literature, poetry, markets, and things to develop a grammar of dissensus in pursuit of a flourishing politics and 'plebian citizenry'―-so urgent and vital for today."―Ann Laura Stoler, The New School
"The Postcolonial Contemporary is without doubt the most comprehensive, engaging, and provocative reflection on the status of the postcolonial thinking and the crisis of the present. Informed by sophisticated theoretical thinking and a solid grasp of colonial and postcolonial history, this book will serve as a model for how collective conversations and scholarly debates can intervene in the politics of an unsettled moment."―Simon Gikandi, Princeton University
This volume seeks to recognize and reflect upon the postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, while asking whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, The Postcolonial Contemporary cuts across this false alternative, thinking with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity.
Many of the most influential frameworks of postcolonial theory were developed from the 1970s to 1990s, during what we may now recognize as the twilight of the postwar period. If forms of capitalist imperialism are entering into new configurations of neoliberal privatization, wars-without-end, xenophobic nationalism, and unsustainable extraction, what aspects of postcolonial inquiry must be reworked or revised in order to grasp our political present?
The book’s twelve contributors, from a range of disciplines and regional locations―history, anthropology, literature, geography, indigenous studies; the Black Atlantic, South Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Australia, Argentina―push past our habitual oppositions: universal vs. particular; Marxism vs. postcolonialism; politics vs. culture. They reckon with new and persisting postcolonial predicaments, doing so under four interrelated analytics: postcolonial temporality; deprovincializing the global south; beyond Marxism versus postcolonial studies; and postcolonial spatiality and new political imaginaries.
From the book’s powerful and substantial Introduction through its dozen compelling chapters, The Postcolonial Contemporary will be a landmark volume for reassessing a crucial critical framework for today’s world.
Contributors: Sadia Abbas, Anthony C. Alessandrini, Sharad Chari, Carlos A. Forment, Vinay Gidwani, Peter Hitchcock, Laurie Lambert, Stephen Muecke, Anupama Rao, Adam Spanos, Jini Kim Watson, Gary Wilder
Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University.
Gary Wilder is a Professor of Anthropology and History and Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

From the Inside Flap

"The Postcolonial Contemporary offers a striking set of vantage points to rethink the postcolonial present―at once a rich set of insights about the temporalities that postcolonial critique can animate and a riveting attentiveness to the political resources of earlier anticolonial struggles for grappling with new forms of imperial and capitalist subsumption. A set of beautifully written and conceptually creative chapters call upon literature, poetry, markets, and things to develop a grammar of dissensus in pursuit of a flourishing politics and 'plebian citizenry'―-so urgent and vital for today."―Ann Laura Stoler, The New School

"The Postcolonial Contemporary is without doubt the most comprehensive, engaging, and provocative reflection on the status of the postcolonial thinking and the crisis of the present. Informed by sophisticated theoretical thinking and a solid grasp of colonial and postcolonial history, this book will serve as a model for how collective conversations and scholarly debates can intervene in the politics of an unsettled moment."―Simon Gikandi, Princeton University

This volume seeks to recognize and reflect upon the postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, while asking whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, The Postcolonial Contemporary cuts across this false alternative, thinking with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity.

Many of the most influential frameworks of postcolonial theory were developed from the 1970s to 1990s, during what we may now recognize as the twilight of the postwar period. If forms of capitalist imperialism are entering into new configurations of neoliberal privatization, wars-without-end, xenophobic nationalism, and unsustainable extraction, what aspects of postcolonial inquiry must be reworked or revised in order to grasp our political present?

The book’s twelve contributors, from a range of disciplines and regional locations―history, anthropology, literature, geography, indigenous studies; the Black Atlantic, South Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Australia, Argentina―push past our habitual oppositions: universal vs. particular; Marxism vs. postcolonialism; politics vs. culture. They reckon with new and persisting postcolonial predicaments, doing so under four interrelated analytics: postcolonial temporality; deprovincializing the global south; beyond Marxism versus postcolonial studies; and postcolonial spatiality and new political imaginaries.

From the book’s powerful and substantial Introduction through its dozen compelling chapters, The Postcolonial Contemporary will be a landmark volume for reassessing a crucial critical framework for today’s world.

Contributors: Sadia Abbas, Anthony C. Alessandrini, Sharad Chari, Carlos A. Forment, Vinay Gidwani, Peter Hitchcock, Laurie Lambert, Stephen Muecke, Anupama Rao, Adam Spanos, Jini Kim Watson, Gary Wilder

Jini Kim Watson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University.

Gary Wilder is a Professor of Anthropology and History and Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823280071
• ISBN 13: 9780823280070
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Watson Jini Kim, Wilder Gary