Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Bibliographic Data

ID19980893
AuthorsVivek Chibber (corresponding author)
Year2013
Pages256
Publication date2013-03-12
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
Reviewed byPostcolonial theory and the specter of capital, Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, 2014
VenuePostcolonial theory and the specter of capital (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherVerso (PUBLISHER)
OpenAlexW561325106
Open LibraryOL28143947M
ISBN9781844679768
LanguageEN
Citations received204

In recent years, postcolonial theory has emerged as the most influential scholarly explanation for the historical trajectory and social anatomy of the Global South. Its leading proponents - many of whom have become academic superstars - not only reject Enlightenment political and economic theories, especially Marxism, but accuse them of complicity in Europe's imperial project. In this devastating critique, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition. Focusing on the hugely popular Subaltern Studies project, Chibber carefully examines this project's core arguments about the specificity of the Global South and the deficiencies of Western thought. He shows that their foundational arguments are based on a series of analytical and historical errors, chief among which is a flawed understanding of capitalism's universalizing tendency. Once the real history of capital's universalization is reconstructed, aspects of modernity that appear to be unique to the South turn out to be shared with the North - - and the history of the Global South can be explained by the very theories that postcolonial theorists urge us to reject. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital promises to be a turning point in contemporary social theory

Aesthetics · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Complicity · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Modernity · Political economy · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Social theory · Sociology · Subaltern · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · 325/.3 · Developing countries · Jv51 .c475 2013 · politics and government · Postcolonialism

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LibgenOpen Access