Beyond Postcolonial Theory

by San Juan, E.

• ISBN13: 9780312224783
• ISBN10: 0312224788
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Opposing the orthodoxies of establishment postcolonialism, Beyond Postcolonial Theory posits acts of resistance and subversion by people of color as central to the unfolding dialogue with Western hegemony. The testimonies and signifying practices of Rigoberta Menchu, C.L.R. James, various "minority" writers in the United States, and intellectuals from Africa, Latin America, and Asia are counterposed against the dogmas of contingency, borderland nomadism, panethnicity, and the ideology of identity politics and transcultural postmodern pastiche. Reappropriating ideas from Gramsci, Bakhtin, Althusser, Freire, and others in the radical democratic tradition, San Juan deploys them to recover the memory of national liberation struggles (Fanon, Cabral, Che Guevara) on the face of the triumphal march of globalized capitalism.

Author Biography

E. San Juan, Jr. is director of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center at Storrs, Connecticut, USA. He was recently Fulbright professor of American Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and a visiting Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Wesleyan University. He is an internationally recognized cultural critic, scholar and creative artist. Among his recent books are Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression (SUNY), Racism and Cultural Studies (Duke), After Postcolonialism (Rowman and Littlefield) which won the Gustavus Myers Human Rights Center Outstanding Book Award, and the forthcoming collection of essays, Working Through the Contradictions: From Cultural Theory to Critical Practice (Bucknell).

Table of Contents

Interrogations and Interventions: Who Speaks for Whom? * Postcolonial Theory versus the Revolutionary Process in the Philippines * "Unspeakable" Subalterns: Lessons from Gramsci, El Saadawi, Freire, Silko * The Multicultural Imaginary: Problematizing Identity and the Ideology of Racism * Revisiting an "Internal Colony": U.S. Asian Cultural Formations and the Metamorphosis of Ethnic Discourse * Globalization, Dialogic Nation, Diaspora * Beyond Postcolonial Theory: The Mass Line in C.L.R. James's Work * Imagining the End of Empire: Emergencies and Breakthroughs

Interrogations and Interventions: Who Speaks for Whom? * Postcolonial Theory versus the Revolutionary Process in the Philippines * "Unspeakable" Subalterns: Lessons from Gramsci, El Saadawi, Freire, Silko * The Multicultural Imaginary: Problematizing Identity and the Ideology of Racism * Revisiting an "Internal Colony": U.S. Asian Cultural Formations and the Metamorphosis of Ethnic Discourse * Globalization, Dialogic Nation, Diaspora * Beyond Postcolonial Theory: The Mass Line in C.L.R. James's Work * Imagining the End of Empire: Emergencies and Breakthroughs