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8 - The limits of postcolonialism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2025

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Summary

This final chapter assists readers in reaching some conclusions about the extent to which 'postcolonialism' is an enabling term. Several of the critiques of postcolonialism given in the chapter confront postcolonialism at its possible limits - limits of temporality, geography such as Commonwealth mappings, history, theory and others. Postcolonialism is a Western practice using Western theories that is performed in 'First World' universities in the main by privileged migrants from the once-colonised nations. The chapter briefly examines Robert J. C. Young's model of the 'tricontinental', which was inspired by the 1966 conference in Havana of the Organisation of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. It explores whether advent of courses in postcolonial literatures is a part of a containment strategy which pays lip-service to the ideas of postcolonialism while delimiting their impact in a new intellectual 'ghetto'. When globalisation represents imperialism, postcolonialism becomes interested in globalisation.

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Publisher: Manchester University Press
First published in: 2025

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