Blackwell Reference Online

Terror and the Postcolonial is a major new comparative study of terrorism and its representations in postcolonial theory, literature and culture. Through a series of thematically-linked, original essays, the volume critically analyzes the figuration of terrorism in a variety of postcolonial literary texts from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The essays also consider a variety of controversial political events such as the London shooting of Brazilian national Jean Charles de Menezes and the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. In doing so, this ground-breaking study questions, complicates, and, above all, historicizes the deep divisions between western and non-western cultures and their writings, that often underpin the contemporary rhetoric of terrorism. At the same time, the collection investigates the widely disparate value systems which are held to reinforce the recourse to ‘terror’ in global literature and culture.

With theoretical sophistication, Terror and the Postcolonial offers provocative new insights that will broaden our understanding of global terrorism and the cultural and literary responses to terrorism that have emerged throughout the post-colonial world.