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This book explores the impossible dilemma facing Francophone intellectuals writing in the lead-up to decolonisation: How could they redefine their culture, and the ‘humanity’ they felt had been denied by the colonial project, in terms that did not replicate the French thinking by which they were formed?
Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought.
Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought.
"During recent years critics have increasingly expressed their loss of faith in existing cultural and political collective frameworks, drawing attention instead to irreducible singularity and to radical incommensurability between diverse positions or groups. Hiddleston analyses and challenges this trend, bringing together political, theoretical and literary analysis and juxtaposing the works of critical theorists such as Derrida, Lyotard and Nancy with literature by writers of North African immigrant origin. She presents a critique of those writers who underline the absence of communal identification, proposes a new emphasis on relational networks interconnecting diverse cultural groups, and argues for a more subtle understanding of the complex interplay of the singular and the collective in contemporary French writing."
This book explores the relation between poststructuralist thought and postcoloniality, and identifies in that interaction the expression of a particular anxiety concerning the form of theoretical writing.Many so-called poststructuralist thinkers, such as Derrida, Cixous, Lyotard, Barthes, Kristeva and Spivak, have turned their attention at some point in their career towards questions either of postcolonialism, or of cultural domination and difference. For all these thinkers, however, a reflection on such questions has generated a sense of unease concerning the assumed neutrality of theoretical discourse, and the inevitable subjective or autobiographical investments of the writing self.The book argues that this anxiety betrays an unprecedented lucidity concerning the particular challenges of writing about ourselves and others at a time of postcolonial upheaval.
For more than fifty years, Assia Djebar has used the tools of poetry, fiction, drama, and film to vividly portray the complex world of Muslim women. In the process, she has become one of the most important figures in North African literature. In Assia Djebar, Jane Hiddleston traces Djebar’s development as a writer against the backdrop of North Africa’s tumultuous history. Djebar’s early writings were largely an attempt to delineate the experience of being a woman, an intellectual, and an Algerian, but her more recent work evinces a growing sense that the influence of French culture on Algerian letters may make such a project impossible. The first book-length study of this indispensable writer, Assia Djebar will interest scholars of post-colonial literature, women’s studies, or Francophone culture.
Abdelkébir Khatibi is one of the most important voices to emerge from North Africa in postcolonial studies. This book is the first to offer a thoroughgoing analysis in English of all aspects of his multifaceted thought, as it ranges from Moroccan politics to Arabic calligraphy, and from decolonisation to interculturality.
Frantz Fanon remains one of the greatest and most influential postcolonial thinkers. If he has been analysed by turns as a political thinker, a philosopher and a psychiatrist, however, he has less often been examined as a reader of literature. Yet his writing is littered with references to literary works, he is often cited by postcolonial literary critics as a reference point, and his own work is a richly textured aesthetic enterprise. Literary texts are woven into his philosophical, political, and psychological analyses, and repeatedly serve as springboards and interlocutors for his own, interdisciplinary reflections on racism, colonialism, and revolution. Hiddleston offers a rigorous analy...
Contemporary Moroccan Thought offers a new and broad coverage of the intellectual dynamics and scholarly output of what is presented here as the Rabat School since the 1950s. Geographically situated at the western edge of the classical Arab-Islamic world, Moroccan scholarship has made a belated yet vigorous comeback on the modern Arab intellectual scene, attracting wider reception beyond the Arabic-speaking world, through influential contributions in philosophical, theological, social and cultural studies. This volume sets a new standard in the study of Moroccan, North African, and Middle Eastern societies, and will undoubtedly remain an important scholarly reference for generations to come....
Responding to calls to focus on postcolonial literature's literary qualities instead of merely its political content, this volume investigates the idiosyncrasies of postcolonial poetics. However, rather than privileging the literary at the expense of the political, the essays collected here analyze how texts use genre and form to offer multiple and distinct ways of responding to political and historical questions. By probing how different kinds of literary writing can blur with other discourses, the contributors offer key insights into postcolonial literature's power to imagine alternative identities and societies.