AustLit

(Jean-François Vernay International perspectives on Australian literature : Introduction)

'The idea of unbalanced power relations between (post)colonial centres and peripheries lies at the heart of postcolonial studies. In this pattern, Europe, through colonial discourses, has constructed itself as the centre, whereas former colonized spaces – or what is nowadays frequently referred to as the Global South – are conceived as geographical, economic, and cultural peripheries. The centre/periphery binary, as Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (2007) put it in Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, “has been one of the most contentious ideas” in the field (2007, 32). Not only does it attempt to define the pattern, but those asserting the independence of the periphery run the risk of perpetuating the binary and continue to subscribe to the very idea of the centre instead of destabilizing it. The centre/periphery model has mostly been associated with world-systems analysis as theorized by scholars such as Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1970s. This theory “locates the center of gravity of historical agency in north-western Europe” (Kaps and Komlosy 2013, 238), and, with its allusions to notions such as development and backwardness, the model echoes colonial discourses (240–241).' (Introduction)

'As this special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing goes to print, fear of the life-changing and life-taking SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads worldwide faster than the virus itself. The volume’s very gestation has coincided with the tightening grip of the current global pandemic, unprecedented in its deadly, unstoppable spread, from which it will take the world months, if not years, to emerge. Planetary precarity, environmental degradation or eco-precarity, and the precarious society or the “precariat”, already looming problems of the new millennium, and for long major areas of concern of researchers everywhere, have been overtaken by this invisible threat that has subjected the health of populations throughout the world to new levels of vulnerability and risk. The chimera of hope offered by a magic vaccination, elimination of the virus or its disappearance, is for many the only way to imagine a far off “new normal” as a new spike or second wave is anticipated, even as this issue of the journal is finalized. Among the perplexed – some even denying – and slow-moving governmental machineries, COVID-19 heightens new and unprecedented forms of precarity – in terms of the medical and human resources urgently needed to fight it and the anticipated economic recession which will follow, amplifying the already existing “great divide”, as Joseph Stiglitz (2015) puts it, between rich and poor, global south and global north, haves and have-nots.' (Introduction)

'I would like to take a moment here to celebrate the truly international nature of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. In this issue alone we are proud to publish the work of colleagues from across the globe: Canada, India, Australia, Norway and Portugal as well as the UK. This is a tremendous achievement. Postcolonial studies, rather than being subsumed under broader and seemingly more comprehensive categories such as world, global or transnational literary studies, has instead continued to explore, from a variety of locations and socio-political contexts, the cultural manifestations that come about as a result of power imbalances across the world.' (Anastasia Valassopoulos, Editor's note introduction)

'On May 23, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected in India with the largest democratic majority in decades. The victory made him the first Indian prime minister in nearly half a century to win and hold parliamentary majorities in consecutive elections. Frequently likened to Donald Trump, Modi campaigns and rules on a populist ticket. He has emboldened extreme Hindu nationalists bent on “purifying” India of its Muslim population: mob lynchings, gang beatings and other often fatal hate crimes are now commonplace, both in rural and urban provinces. Mosques are razed and new Hindu temples are built in their place; Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution are subject to hardening borders and indiscriminate deportations; the violent ostracisation of Dalit communities is entrenched by budget cuts and political rhetoric. The militarization of the state of Jammu and Kashmir continues, its devolved authority seized by Delhi in the name of a “united India” in August 2019 with a view to the territory’s Hinduization. Many have argued that this act in particular threatens not only the existence of Kashmir, but the integrity of Indian democracy itself. Meanwhile, Modi continues to flirt with war with Pakistan, to strengthen ties to Trump’s America and to threaten academics, writers and activists with censorship and imprisonment.'  (Editorial Introduction)

Forms of affective thinking that place at their heart the “primal responsibility we bear towards others”, he argued, can help constitute “a transformational practice that points beyond unsustainable arrangements towards better ones from which, in turn, richer conceptions of the human, untrammelled by racial styles of thought, may have already started to emerge”. Gilroy is not alone in his call for new modes of thinking in a fast-changing and increasingly uncertain contemporary world: over the past decade the humanities have seen a surge in critical work that calls for new approaches to theorizing 21st-century culture: affect studies, post-postmodernism, posthumanism, metamodernism, and the like.' (Editorial introduction)

'Instead of looking at the past by viewing the remains of ancient settlements or by inspecting inscriptions left in caves by early humans, future generations will gather information about current times by the imprint that neo-liberal capitalism is leaving on everything. Plastic bottles, chewing gum, electronic components and even medical waste will provide them with a portrait of the Anthropocene, the age shaped by the climate changes we have caused and now inhabit.' (María Alonso Alonso & María Jesús Cabarcos Traseira, Editorial introduction)

'This Ordinary Issue brings together articles that range geographically from Africa to India and historically from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, addressing short stories, novels, social media and journalistic writing. They share an interest in the politics of representation, genre and aesthetics, moving from pressing issues of world politics to the formal issues of representation. The issue starts with Dobrota Pucherova’s “Wizard of the Crow (2006) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o as a Postcommunist Novel”, which discusses the Marxist core of Ngũgĩ’s writing in the context of his growing scepticism about the role played by African socialism while simultaneously trying to retain his neo-Marxist advocacy of working-class rights. Pucherova places the novel in relation to works by postcommunist writers, and the “postcommunist picaresque novel”, which critiques both communist and capitalist narratives. Analysing the manner in which modernity is figured across Ngũgĩ’s literary work, Pucherova draws on research from sociology and political science to argue that global forces of capitalism are presented in Wizard of the Crow as political players that disenfranchise those formerly colonized. The novel presents the power of the political as a force that stifles revolutionary impulses. The resulting sense of disempowerment is reinforced by the novel’s multiple narrators, who struggle for control of the text. The article closes with a reading of some recent postcommunist novels from former eastern bloc countries that take a similarly critical look at politics before and after the Cold War.' (Editor's note : introduction)

'“We are what we eat”, or so we are often told, but we are also how we eat and how we talk and write about food. This special focus on Food and the Postcolonial originated as a Symposium called “Culinary Cultures”, held in conjunction with the Northern Postcolonial Network at York St John University (UK) in May 2017. Starting from the premise that one of the most visible growth areas of interdisciplinary research in the last quarter century has been the popular and academic study of food, it sought to examine why postcolonial studies has been relatively slow to embrace the study of postcolonial culinary cultures and food histories  and it sought to “bridge the gap” by inviting critical explorations of the intersections between the two discourses from a variety of perspectives. The resulting papers revealed a rich vein of thinking about food and the postcolonial and a provided a vibrant snapshot of young and established scholars working across and between different disciplines and making a significant contribution to the emerging strand of postcolonial food studies. Papers considered food preparation, cooking and/or consumption in selected literary, filmic, sacred and visual texts, including the complex history and meanings of barbecue as traditional and “authentic” food in the Deep South of America; travel writing and the tourist gaze in Bali; advertising and the politics of the Fair Trade movement in Palestine; life writing, gender and oral histories in African and Pakistani diasporic communities in Britain; constructions of nation in colonial as well as contemporary menus and cookbooks; Keralan and Indo-Caribbean foodways and food histories; the hotly contested issue of culinary “authenticity”; postcolonial ecologies and environmentalism; intergenerational differences, food memories and nostalgia; gustatory experiences and the politics of taste.' (Sarah Lawson Welsh : Introduction)