Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A general introduction to the subject(s) of “imperialism, colonialism and postcolonialism” ought to be a fairly straightforward matter of marshaling the best, or most influential definitions and theoretical illuminations of these terms according to the vaguely historical sequence already implied in this triad. (“Colonialism, imperialism, postcolonialism” would, from this point of view, be the more appropriate sequence.) But this is already a problematic undertaking. However current or fashionable in academic circles, “postcolonialism” is, by anyone's reckoning, a term whose use is also virtually restricted to the metropolitan academy and its satellites. Indeed, its circulation within this academy itself is still far from universal, being further limited mainly to the discourse of literature departments and “cultural studies.” (The superficial circumstance of its origins as a term in a 1970s debate between political scientists ( Ahmad, 1995 ) and the fact that historians, sociologists, and even journalists may have now begun to adopt it is largely irrelevant here. The generic use of the term to refer to any formerly colonized political or social entity brings into play none of the polemical and often refractory questions – especially those, as we shall see, regarding the nation – that the term or concept evokes within the humanities, or in volumes such as this one (see Ashcroft ... log in or subscribe to read full text