The Post-Colonial Studies Reader

by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin

The Post-Colonial Studies Reader is the most comprehensive selection of key texts in post-colonial theory and criticism yet compiled. This collection covers a huge range of topics, featuring nearly ninety of the discipline's most widely read works.

The Reader's 90 extracts are designed to introduce the major issues and debates in the field of post-colonial literary studies. This field itself, however, has become so varied that no collection of readings could encompass every voice which is now giving itself the name "post-colonial." The editors, in order to avoid a volume which is simply a critical canon, have selected works representing arguments with which they do not necessarily agree, but rather which above all stimulate discussion, thought and further exploration.

Post-colonial "theory" has occurred in all societies into which the imperial force of Europe has intruded, though not always in the official form of theoretical text. Like the description of any other field the term has come to mean many things, but this volume hinges on one incontestable phenomenon: the "historical fact"of colonialism, and the palpable consequences to which this phenomenon gave rise. The topic involves talk about experience of various kinds: migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place, and reaction to the European influence, and about the fundamental experiences of speaking and writing by which all these come into being. In compiling this reader, the editors have sought to stimulate people to ask: "How might a genuinely post-colonial literary enterprise proceed?"

The fourteen sections include: Issues and Debates; Universality and Difference; Textual Representation and Resistance; Postmodernism and Post-Colonialism; Nationalism; Hybridity; Ethnicity and Indigenity; Feminism and Post-Colonialism; Language; The Body and Performance; History; Place; Education; and Production and Consumption.

Contributors include many of the leading post-colonial theorists and critics--such as Franz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Homi Bhabba, Derek Walcott, Edward Said, and Trinh T. Minh-ha--in addition to a number of the discourse's newer voices. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader will prove an authoritative compilation, representing an invaluable contribution to the study of post-colonial theory and criticism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Reference, Politics, Post Colonial, Cultural Studies, School

526 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[rory (jess' version)]

i hope my prof will explain this thoroughly or i would lose my mind

[Ryan Brady]

Essays Read:

Edward Said - "From Orientalism"
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak - "Can the Subaltern Speak? (Abbreviation)"
Tsenay Serequeberhan - "The Critique of Eurocentrism"
Helen Tiffin - "Post-Colonial Literatures and Counter-Discourse"
Frantz Fanon - "National Culture"
Benedict Anderson - "Imagined Communities"
Timothy Brennan - "The National Longing for Form"
Kristen Holst Petersen - "First Things First: Problems of a Feminist Approach to African Literature"
Ketu H. Katrak - "Decolonizing Culture: Toward a Theory for Postcolonial Women's Texts"
Chandra Talpade Mohanty - "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Eyes and Colonial Discourses"
Peter Hulme - "Columbus and the Cannibals"
Derek Walcott - "The Muse of History"
Thomas MaCaulay - "Minute on Indian Education"
Alfred W. Crosby - "Ecological Imperialism"
Richard Grove - "Green Imperialism"
Val Plumwood - "Decolonizing Relationships With Nature"
William Baldridge - "Reclaiming Our Histories"
R.S. Sugirtharajah - "Postcolonializing Biblical Interpretation"

Read for Dr. Shumona Dasgupta's Postcolonial Literature course - UMW - Fall 2015.

[José Gouveia]

Great resource for research.

[gina]

dense af but a great foundational text

[Madison]

Useful resource.

[Raina Isabela]

Thanks to my prof for not explaining it at all in class :)

[Dave]

This group of essays wants, more than anything, both depth and breadth. But can you have both in a 500-page reader? Ashcroft and company do a great job at assembling all kinds of brief excerpts from post-colonial discourse. At the same time, there's so much missing. It's not really their fault, as creating any anthology is a thankless and never-ending chore. I just wonder whether ALL the articles in some of the sections were necessary, and where the potent demonstration of a certain aspect of post-colonial studies' evolution (delightfully shown in chapters on Hybridity or Representation and Resistance) disappeared to in the very superficial treatments of other subjects like the Body, the Environment or, especially, the Sacred.

[Sandra]

There's no use posting updates for this reader, as I won't be reading the entire thing (nowhere close to it, I'm afraid). It's full of excerpts of 121 of the more important texts related to post-colonial studies. As judged by the page numbers, each text only gets a few pages to itself. As such, the book is very good for orientation, but mostly leaves out a good part of the original argumentation.

Then again, you simply can't put everything into one single reader. It is what it is, a very good organised reader: you can find excerpts per topic, which is extremely handy and gives you most relevant texts within seconds. Definitely can be put to good use when you're studying about post-colonial theory.

[Simone Roberts]

Pretty much finding what I knew I'd find. Which means moving on to reading far afield with these debates in mind can begin now. Most of my problems with some critics who shall go unnamed for now have to do with matters of authenticity and the Western demand for its performance by the other and the concomitant view that learning about the other is not possible (a view of difference that I find rather conveniently radical).

[Mujibur Rohman]

buku yang ingin mencakup semua penulis poskolonial. namun sayang, sebagai bunga rampai penulisan poskolonialisme buku ini hanya memuat sebagai kecil gagasan masing-masing penulisnya.

[Vin]

Glad I read it, good intro to postcolonial theory and provides insight into the major issues...many of the articles are over 30 years old now so this is a good starting point but don't stop there.

[Mills College Library]

820.9358 P857 2006