Postcolonial contraventions : cultural readings of race, imperialism, and transnationalism / Laura Chrisman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chrisman, Laura.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Colonies.

Decolonization.

Postcolonialism.

Physical Description:

viii, 200 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2003.

Summary:

Laura Chrisman's Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader was published in 1993. It quickly became a landmark of postcolonial studies. This timely new book offers insights into the field she helped establish. Both polemical and scholarly, Postcolonial contraventions is sure to provoke with its challenging analysis of black Atlantic studies, colonial discourse analysis and postcolonial theory. Chrisman provides important new paradigms for understanding imperial literature, Englishness, and black transnationalism. Her concerns range from the metropolitan centre of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, to fatherhood in Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk; from the marketing of South African literature to cosmopolitanism in Chinua Achebe; from utopian discourse in Benita Parry to Fredric Jameson's theorisation of empire. Chrisman also critically engages with the postcolonial intellectuals Paul Gilroy, David Lloyd, Anne McClintock, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Robert Young, uncovering conservatism within unexpected quarters. The book joins a growing chorus of materialist voices within postcolonial studies, and addresses an urgent need for greater attention to the political, historical and socio-economic elements of cultural production. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of postcolonial studies, theory and literature; black diaspora and Atlantic studies; imperialism, and British literature of the nineteenth century.

Contents:

Part I Imperialism

1 Tale of the city: the imperial metropolis of Heart of Darkness 21

2 Gendering imperialism: Anne McClintock and H. Rider Haggard 39

3 Empire's culture in Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak 51

Part II Transnationalism and race

4 Journeying to death: Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic 73

5 Black Atlantic nationalism: Sol Plaatje and W.E.B. Du Bois 89

6 Transnational productions of Englishness: South Africa in the post-imperial metropole 107

Part III Postcolonial theoretical politics

7 Theorising race, racism and culture: David Lloyd's work 127

8 Robert Young and the ironic authority of postcolonial criticism 138

9 Cultural studies in the new South Africa 145

10 'The Killer That Doesn't Pay Back': Chinua Achebe's critique of cosmopolitics 157

11 You can get there from here: critique and utopia in Benita Parry's thought 164.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [175]-194) and index.

ISBN:

0719058279

0719058287

OCLC:

51519704