Notes on the «Post-Colonial»

Abstract

My intention in this essay is not merely to anatomize the term “post-colonial” semantically, but situate it geographically, historically and institutionally, while raising doubts about its political agency. The question at stake is this. Which perspectives are being advanced in the “post-colonial?” For what purposes? And with what slippages? In this brief discussion, my point is neither to examine the variety of provocative writings produced under the rubric post-colonial theory, nor simply to essentialize the term “post-colonial”, but rather to unfold its slippery political significations, which occasionally escape the clearly oppositional intentions of its theoretical practitioners. Here I will argue for a more limited, historically and theoretically specific usage of the term “post0colonial”, one which situates it is a relational context vis-à-vis other (equally problematic) categories.