Ella Shohat

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20056464
AutoresPadmini Mongia (autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Páginas321-334
Fecha de publicación2021-01-07
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoCHAPTER
RevistaContemporary Postcolonial Theory (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781003135593-20
OpenAlexW2327418188
ISBN9781003135593
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas154

The academic opposition to Gulf War mobilized a number of familiar terms imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-imperialism in a verbal counter-strike against New World Order. But conspicuously absent from discussion was term post-colonial, even from speeches made by its otherwise prominent advocates. Given extraordinary circulation of term in recent academic conferences, publications and curricular reformulations, this sudden invisibility was somewhat puzzling. Was this absence sheer coincidence? Or is there something about term that does not lend itself to a geopolitical or to a critique of dominant media's Gulf War macro-narratives? When lines drawn in sand still haunt Third World geographies, it is urgent to ask how we can chart meaning of post-colonial. It is from my particular position as an academic ArabJew whose cultural topographies are (dis)located in Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and U.S.A. that I would like to explore some of theoretical and political ambiguities of post-colonial. Despite its dizzying multiplicity of positionalities, theory has curiously not addressed politics of location of very term post-colonial. In what follows, I propose to begin an interrogation of term post-colonial, raising questions about its ahistorical and universalizing deployments, and its potentially depoliticizing implications. The rising institutional endorsement of term and of studies as an emergent discipline (evident in MLA job announcements calling for specialization in post-colonial literature) is fraught with ambiguities. My recent experience as a member of multicultural international studies committee at one of CUNY branches illustrates some of these ambiguities. In response to our proposal, generally conservative members of college curriculum committee strongly resisted any language invoking issues such as and third worldist critique, and resisting cultural practices, and the geopolitics of cultural exchange. They were visibly relieved, however, at sight of word post-colonial. Only diplomatic gesture of relinquishing terrorizing terms imperialism and neo-colonialism in favor of pastoral guaranteed approval

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Philosophy