Robert J. C. Young

Robert Joseph Young

Postcolonialism explores the political, social, and cultural effects of decolonization, continuing the anti-colonial challenge to western dominance. This account discusses its importance as an historical condition, and as a means of changing the way we think about the world.

A Very Short Introduction

Postcolonialism

Robert Young

"This book is concerned with the revolutionary history of the non-Western world and its centuries-long struggle to overthrow Western imperialism: from slow beginnings in the eighteenth century, the last half of the twentieth century witnessed more than a quarter of the world's population win their freedom. It was written before the momentous political events of the twenty-first century: published two months before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and ten years before the Arab revolutions that erupted across the Arab world in 2011. It had been originally commissioned as an introduction to postcolonialism at a time when 'postcolonial theory' formed an innovative body of thinking that was making waves beyond its own disciplinary location. That interest was the mark of a new phase within many Western societies in which immigrants from the global South had begun to emerge as influential cultural voices challenging the basis of the manner in which European and North American societies represented themselves and their own histories. The late Edward Said and Stuart Hall both symbolized the ways in which intellectuals who had been born in former colonies became spokespersons for a popular radical re-evaluation of contemporary culture: a profound transformation of society and its values was underway. That revolution involved the consensus of an equality amongst different people and cultures rather than the hierarchy that had been developed since the beginning of the nineteenth century as a central feature of Western imperialism. Postcolonial critique has been so successful"--Provided by publisher.

An Historical Introduction

Namera Nous

Arianna M

I think the reading of this book should be mandatory in order to understand the world we live in.
Reading this book helped me reaffirm and understand ideas that were already present in my head, expanding them with new concepts and facts or defining them in better terms.

Shelved for now
Read:
Introduction
Section 1
Section 4

Luca Conti

Sophie Shrimpton

Skim read certain chapters for my Honours essay. 

Was very disappointed. I understand the need to tell stories from the perspectives of the subaltern, and to be complex, but the stories were not told in a way that elucidated the core concerns and ideas within postcolonialism in a way that would explain postcolonialism sufficiently to a layperson. Was disjointed and erratic. 

"Self-government is our right – a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld … than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers or to love our kind."
- Sir Roger Casement, Irish nationalist, during his trial for treason, 1916

Postcolonialism A Very Short Introduction

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