Place after Postcolonial Studies

Implied in the title of this chapter are two symmetrically related questions. First, how has our understanding of place changed since the advent of postcolonial studies? That is, what do the central themes and methodologies of postcolonial studies contribute to the theory of place? Second, to what extent has it become necessary today to move beyond postcolonial approaches to the study of place? This second, more controversial question is motivated not by some desire to contest the legitimacy of postcolonial studies as a field but by my sense that it might now be necessary to think about how to reintegrate the themes, problems, and methodologies associated with the field into the larger discipline of cultural studies, making possible a postpostcolonial phase of the field or, better yet, making it possible to drop that frustratingly backward-looking “post” prefix altogether, moving instead in the direction of world literature or transnational or global studies.

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