Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics

This is a comprehensive survey of the field of postcolonial theory. The book systematically examines the objections that have been raised against postcolonial theory, revealing the simplifications and exagerations on both sides of the argument. It provides a detailed institutional history of the ways in which the relationship between culture and colonialism has been traditionally studied of alternative forms of postcolonial analysis of such questions. Much controversy has recently come to surround the status and value of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has been challenged on several fronts: on its interdisciplinary competence, on the politics of its institutional location, and on its implicit domination of others of postcolonial analysis, many of which have been established for much longer than postcolonial theory itself. The ensuing debate has often become so heated, even presonalized, that the issues at stake have been obscured. The book presents the complex work of the three principal representatives of postcolonial theory, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, and considers the criticisms they have faced, from an alleged Eurocentrism to an obfuscatory prose style. Finally, Bart Moore-Gilbert assesses the overlaps and differences between postcolonial theory and other forms of postcolonial criticism, and considers the ways in which postcolonial analysis may be connected with different histories of oppression. Bart Moore-Gilbert is the author of "Kipling and 'Orientalism'", and editor of "Literature and Imperialism", "Cultural Revolution?", "The Challenge of the Arts in the 1960s", "The Arts in the 1970s: Cultural Closure?", "Writing India: British Representations of India 1857-1990" and "Postcolonial Theory: A Reader".