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"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.… (more)
User reviews
Quoting Mao will not win it any new fans, I assume and hope; nor will borderline moronic statements like "fatty beef is not necessarily the healthiest thing to be eating in an era of BSE and animals pumped with growth hormones. Why do people always grow taller in the United States? Think about it." Uh... better nutrition? Oh, no, I get it, it's because they've all been eating beef pumped with growth hormones. Never mind that the chapter on feminism is mainly about Gandhi, or that the problems with nationalism are traced, perversely, to "the German Romantic account of the nation, developed at state level in Europe by Nazi Germany" - yes, the Hitler-bomb!- and not to, say, the inevitably exclusionary and elitist results of the idea of a nation.
So his good intentions don't really help you. Nice as it is that he is writing this 'from below,' (below what? below the *third* floor of Wadham College?), and nice as it is that he doesn't use theory as a battering ram to cave in your skull, some rigor and selectivity would have been nice.
PS: A few weeks later, I think I've decided that this is a Very Short Introduction to the Historical Reasons that People Like the Theories of Postcolonialism. Nothing wrong with that I guess.