This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Our contemporary world has been shaped decisively by the histories of colonialism and imperialism and, concomitantly, of postcolonialism. Nationhood, hybridity and identity, globalism and regionalism, diasporas, the politics of gender and cultural diversity and difference have emerged as topics central not only to postcolonial studies but also to the interplay of regional and global societies and their cultural practices. However, when reviewing the engagement with postcolonial issues in Anglo-American academia, it is striking that there is a pronounced bias towards Anglophone postcolonial artistic, literary, and cinematic production. This obviously is a distorted perspective since not only do essential theoretical texts on colonialism and postcolonialism originate in other linguistic and cultural contexts (and have, like the writings of Frantz Fanon or Albert Memmi made their mark at least to a degree in postcolonial studies), but the cultural practices of other postcolonial spheres are no less versatile and varied.
While it is not practicable, nor even desirable or possible, to include 'all' postcolonial contexts, this module still aims at developing a distinctly comparative perspective on the various developments and interactions between the Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic spheres of postcolonial cultures, all of which originate from the confrontation with European colonialisms and imperialisms. It will highlight contexts, histories and locations of postcolonial cultures, it will investigate theorisations of postcolonial literatures and cultures and it will situate postcolonial cultural practices and theoretical writings within the complex, diverse histories and cultures which make up the 'postcolonial' world. To knit the various, linguistically defined, sections of this module together, texts have been chosen to allow the discussion of four central topics as they occur in different postcolonial cultures: language, identity, gender and nationhood. With Shakespeare's The Tempest and the essays by Rodó ("Ariel") and Retamar ("Calibán"), a frame is provided which introduces, encompasses and concludes the module's thematic concerns.
2 hours per week
Essay - 100%
Any edition of the following:
Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Fictions;
J.M. Coetzee, 'Foe' (1986);
Frantz Fanon, 'A Dying Colonialism' (1959);
Roberto Fernandez Retamar, 'Caliban' (1971);
Carlos Fuentes, 'Aura' (1962);
Jose Enrique Rodo, 'Ariel' (1900);
Salman Rushdie, 'Midnight's Children' (1981);
William Shakepeare, 'The Tempest' (c. 1610/11)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of different postcolonial cultures;
Students will be able to recognise and describe postcolonial cultural practices as interdisciplinary and cross-cultural phenomena;
Students will be able to evaluate the political, historical, social and artistic factors in the cultural production of postcolonial societies;
Students will be able to understand, assess and compare different theoretical conceptions of the 'postcolonial' and postcolonial cultural practices;
Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of postcolonial theories and concepts (including nationhood, hybridity and identity, globalism and regionalism, diasporas, the politics of gender, and cultural diversity and difference);
Students will be able to demonstrate analytical and close reading skills in postcolonial cultural practices;
Students will be able to dispaly a sharpened awareness of cross-disciplinary and intercultural influences between cultural practices;
Students will be able to appreciate various formal characteristics of postcolonial cultural production.
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