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Decolonising Political Communication in Africa: Reframing Ontologies (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Beschara Karam Bruce MutsvairoThis book uses decolonisation as a lens to interrogate political communication styles, performance, and practice in Africa and the diaspora. The book interrogates the theory and practice of political communication, using decolonial research methods to begin a process of self-reflexivity and the creation of a new approach to knowledge production about African political communication. In doing so, it explores political communication approaches that might until recently have been considered subversive or dissident: forms of political communication that served to challenge imposed western norms and to empower African citizens and their histories. Centring African scholarship, the book draws on case studies from across the continent, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, media and communication in Africa.
Decolonising Political Communication in Africa: Reframing Ontologies (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Beschara Karam Bruce MutsvairoThis book uses decolonisation as a lens to interrogate political communication styles, performance, and practice in Africa and the diaspora. The book interrogates the theory and practice of political communication, using decolonial research methods to begin a process of self-reflexivity and the creation of a new approach to knowledge production about African political communication. In doing so, it explores political communication approaches that might until recently have been considered subversive or dissident: forms of political communication that served to challenge imposed western norms and to empower African citizens and their histories. Centring African scholarship, the book draws on case studies from across the continent, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, media and communication in Africa.
Decolonising the Conrad Canon (English Association Monographs: English at the Interface #8)
by Alice M. KellyWith the pressing work of decolonising our reading lists gaining traction in UK higher educational contexts, Decolonising the Conrad Canon shows how those author-Gods most associated with the colonial literary canon can also be retooled through decolonial, queer, feminist readings. This book finds pockets of powerful anti-colonial resistance and queer dissonance in Joseph Conrad’s lesser-known works – breathing spaces from the colonial rhetoric that dominates his novels – and traces the female characters who voice them off the page and into their transmedia (digital/illustrative/cinematic) afterlives. From Immada and Edith’s queer gaze in The Rescue and the periodical illustrations that accompanied its initial serialization, to Aïssa’s sustained critique of imperialism in An Outcast of the Islands and her portrayal on mass-market paperback book covers, to the structural female bonds of Almayer’s Folly and Nina’s embodiment in Chantal Akerman’s adaptation La Folie Almayer, this book centres Conrad’s female characters as viable, meaning-making citizens of the canon. Through this intervention, Decolonising the Conrad Canon proposes an innovative model for teaching, reading and studying not just Joseph Conrad’s work but the colonial literary canon more broadly.
Decolonising the Intellectual: Politics, Culture, and Humanism at the End of the French Empire (Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures #33)
by Jane HiddlestonFrancophone intellectuals writing in the lead-up to the decolonisation were faced with an impossible dilemma. How could they redefine their culture, and the ‘humanity’ they felt had been denied by the colonial project, in terms that did not replicate the French thinking by which they were formed? Figures such as Senghor, Césaire, Fanon, Amrouche, Feraoun and Kateb were all educated, indeed immersed, in French culture and language, yet they intervened forcefully in political debates surrounding decolonisation and sought to contribute to the reinvention of local cultures in a gesture of resistance to the ongoing French presence. Despite their pivotal role during this period of upheaval, then, their project was fraught with tensions that form the focus of this study. In particular, these writers reflected on the relation between universality and particularity in intellectual work, and struggled to avoid the traps associated with an over-investment in either domain. They also all learned from metropolitan French humanist thought but strove continually to reinvent that humanism so as to account for colonised experience and culture. Their work also readdresses the ongoing question of the relation between literature or culture and politics, and testifies to a moment of intense dialogue, and potential conflict, between contrasting but complementary spheres of activity.
Decolonising the Literature Curriculum (Teaching the New English)
by Charlotte BeyerThis book explores pedagogical approaches to decolonising the literature curriculum through a range of practical and theoretically-informed case studies. Although decolonising the curriculum has been widely discussed in the academe and the media, sustained examinations of pedagogies involved in decolonising the literature at university level are still lacking in English and related subjects. This book makes a crucial contribution to these evolving discussions, presenting current and critically engaged pedagogical scholarship on decolonising the literature curriculum. Offering a broad spectrum of accessible chapters authored by experienced national and international academics, the book is structured into two parts, Texts and Contexts, presenting case studies on decolonising the literature curriculum which range from the undergraduate classroom, university writing centres, through to the literary doctorate.
Decolonization Agonistics in Postcolonial Fiction
by C. OkonkwoThis book explores through theory and in-depth textual criticism how novelists from formerly colonised societies have exploited indigenous codes and conventions of aesthetic representation to transform the novel into an effective medium for cultural and political resistance to (neo)colonialism. Concentrating on novels written between the late 1940s and early 1990s in Africa, Polynesia, and the West Indies, it offers a fresh mode of postcolonial critique which takes account of the ideological impulses behind the novelists' interpretation of the colonial experience.
Decolonization of Psychiatry in Jamaica: Madnificent Irations
by Frederick W. HicklingThis book traces the historical postcolonial journey of four generations of Jamaican psychiatrists challenging the European colonial ‘civilizing mission’ of psychiatric care. It details the process of deinstitutionizing patients with chronic mental illness using psychohistoriographic cultural therapy, by engaging them in creating sociodrama and poetry writing, not only to express and reverse the stigma contributing to their marginalized status, but also to reconnect them to a centuries-long history of oppression. The author thereby demonstrates that psychological decolonization requires a seminal understanding of the complex mental inter-relationship between slaves and slaveowners. Further, it is shown how the model analyzes the antipodal dialectic history of descendants of Africans enslaved in the New World by brutish British Imperialists suffering from the European psychosis of white supremacy. Drawing together a detailed description of the sociopoem Madnificent Irations, with an examination of Jamaica’s political and social history, and the author’s personal experience, this compelling work marks an important contribution to decolonial literature. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of postcolonial studies, critical race theory, the history of psychology and community psychology.
Decolonizing Applied Linguistics Research in Latin America: Moving to a Multilingual Mindset (Routledge Studies in Language and Intercultural Communication)
by Harold Castañeda-Peña Paola Gamboa Claire KramschThis collection explores the critical decolonial practices of applied linguistics researchers from Latin America and the Latin American diaspora, shedding light on the processes of epistemological decolonization and moving from a monolingual to a multilingual stance. The volume brings together participants from an AILA 2021 symposium, in which researchers reflected on applied linguistics in Latin America, and on the ways in which it brought concerns around social justice, the legacy of coloniality, and the role of monolingual English in education to the fore. Each chapter is composed of four parts: an autobiographical section written both in Spanish or Portuguese and in English followed by a reflection on the epistemological differences between versions; a discussion in English of the research project; a critical reflection on the epistemic practices and critical pedagogies enacted in the project; and the author(s)’ understanding of the concept of decolonization and recommendations for further decolonizing the monolingual mindset of language teachers and learners. At once linguistic, epistemological, and political, the collection aims to diversify the concept of decoloniality itself and showcase other ways in which decolonial thought can be implemented in language education. This book will be of interest to scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education.
Decolonizing Applied Linguistics Research in Latin America: Moving to a Multilingual Mindset (Routledge Studies in Language and Intercultural Communication)
This collection explores the critical decolonial practices of applied linguistics researchers from Latin America and the Latin American diaspora, shedding light on the processes of epistemological decolonization and moving from a monolingual to a multilingual stance. The volume brings together participants from an AILA 2021 symposium, in which researchers reflected on applied linguistics in Latin America, and on the ways in which it brought concerns around social justice, the legacy of coloniality, and the role of monolingual English in education to the fore. Each chapter is composed of four parts: an autobiographical section written both in Spanish or Portuguese and in English followed by a reflection on the epistemological differences between versions; a discussion in English of the research project; a critical reflection on the epistemic practices and critical pedagogies enacted in the project; and the author(s)’ understanding of the concept of decolonization and recommendations for further decolonizing the monolingual mindset of language teachers and learners. At once linguistic, epistemological, and political, the collection aims to diversify the concept of decoloniality itself and showcase other ways in which decolonial thought can be implemented in language education. This book will be of interest to scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education.
Decolonizing Education: Towards Reconstructing a Theory of Citizenship Education for Postcolonial Africa (Bürgerbewusstsein)
by Norah Barongo-MuwekeNorah Barongo-Muweke aims to reconstruct a theory of citizenship education for the postcolonial South. She works towards fostering scientific construction and mainstreaming of postcoloniality as analytical category, dimension of gender, policy, sustainable learning and societal transformation. A consistent conceptual framework for theorising together gender and postcoloniality is absent so far. In her analyses citizenship awareness and its bedrock institutions are eroded.
Decolonizing Linguistics
by Mary Bucholtz Christine Mallinson Anne H. Charity HudleyThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Decolonizing Linguistics, the companion volume to Inclusion in Linguistics, is designed to uncover and intervene in the history and ongoing legacy of colonization and colonial thinking in linguistics and related fields. Taken together, the two volumes are the first comprehensive, action-oriented, book-length discussions of how to advance social justice in all aspects of the discipline. The introduction to Decolonizing Linguistics theorizes decolonization as the process of centering Black, Native, and Indigenous perspectives, describes the extensive dialogic and collaborative process through which the volume was developed, and lays out key principles for decolonizing linguistic research and teaching. The twenty chapters cover a wide range of languages and linguistic contexts (e.g., Bantu languages, Creoles, Dominican Spanish, Francophone Africa, Zapotec) as well as various disciplines and subfields (applied linguistics, communication, historical linguistics, language documentation and revitalization/reclamation, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, syntax). Contributors address such topics as refusing settler-colonial practices and centering community goals in research on Indigenous languages; decolonizing research partnerships between the Global South and the Global North; and prioritizing Black Diasporic perspectives in linguistics. The volume's conclusion lays out specific actions that linguists can take through research, teaching, and institutional structures to refuse coloniality in linguistics and to move the field toward a decolonized future.
Decolonizing Linguistics
by Mary Bucholtz Christine Mallinson Anne H. Charity HudleyThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Decolonizing Linguistics, the companion volume to Inclusion in Linguistics, is designed to uncover and intervene in the history and ongoing legacy of colonization and colonial thinking in linguistics and related fields. Taken together, the two volumes are the first comprehensive, action-oriented, book-length discussions of how to advance social justice in all aspects of the discipline. The introduction to Decolonizing Linguistics theorizes decolonization as the process of centering Black, Native, and Indigenous perspectives, describes the extensive dialogic and collaborative process through which the volume was developed, and lays out key principles for decolonizing linguistic research and teaching. The twenty chapters cover a wide range of languages and linguistic contexts (e.g., Bantu languages, Creoles, Dominican Spanish, Francophone Africa, Zapotec) as well as various disciplines and subfields (applied linguistics, communication, historical linguistics, language documentation and revitalization/reclamation, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, syntax). Contributors address such topics as refusing settler-colonial practices and centering community goals in research on Indigenous languages; decolonizing research partnerships between the Global South and the Global North; and prioritizing Black Diasporic perspectives in linguistics. The volume's conclusion lays out specific actions that linguists can take through research, teaching, and institutional structures to refuse coloniality in linguistics and to move the field toward a decolonized future.
Decolonizing Literacies: Disrupting, Reclaiming, and Remembering Relationship in Literacy Education (Routledge Research in Decolonizing Education)
by Towani Duchscher Kimberly LentersThis volume examines the ways in literacy has been used as a weapon and a means for settler colonialism, challenging colonized definitions of literacy and centring relationships as key to broadening understandings. It begins by confronting the multiple ways that settler colonialism has used literacy and definitions of literacy as a gatekeeper to participation in society. In response to settler colonialism’s violent acts of extraction, displacement, and replacement enacted upon the land, the resources, the people, and understandings of literacy, the editors propose a unique approach to decolonizing understandings of literacy through a triangulation of disruption, reclamation, and remembering relationships. This is enacted and explored through a range of diverse chapter contributions, written in the form of stories, poems, artworks, theatres, and essays, allowing the authentic voices of the authors to shine through, and opening up the English Language Arts as a space for engagement and interpretation with diverse, racialized understandings of literacy. Disrupting Eurocentric, colonized understandings that narrowly define literacy as reading and writing the colonial word, and advancing the movement to decolonize education, it will be of key interest to scholars, researchers, and educators with interest in literacy education, decolonizing education, anti-racist education, inclusive education, land-based literacy, and arts-based literacy.
Decolonizing Literacies: Disrupting, Reclaiming, and Remembering Relationship in Literacy Education (Routledge Research in Decolonizing Education)
by Towani Duchscher Kimberly LentersThis volume examines the ways in literacy has been used as a weapon and a means for settler colonialism, challenging colonized definitions of literacy and centring relationships as key to broadening understandings. It begins by confronting the multiple ways that settler colonialism has used literacy and definitions of literacy as a gatekeeper to participation in society. In response to settler colonialism’s violent acts of extraction, displacement, and replacement enacted upon the land, the resources, the people, and understandings of literacy, the editors propose a unique approach to decolonizing understandings of literacy through a triangulation of disruption, reclamation, and remembering relationships. This is enacted and explored through a range of diverse chapter contributions, written in the form of stories, poems, artworks, theatres, and essays, allowing the authentic voices of the authors to shine through, and opening up the English Language Arts as a space for engagement and interpretation with diverse, racialized understandings of literacy. Disrupting Eurocentric, colonized understandings that narrowly define literacy as reading and writing the colonial word, and advancing the movement to decolonize education, it will be of key interest to scholars, researchers, and educators with interest in literacy education, decolonizing education, anti-racist education, inclusive education, land-based literacy, and arts-based literacy.
Decolonizing Literature: An Introduction (Decolonizing the Curriculum)
by Anna BernardRecent efforts to diversify and decentre the literary canon taught at universities have been moderately successful. Yet this expansion of our reading lists is only the start of a broader decolonization of literary studies as a discipline; there is much left to be done. How can students and educators best participate in this urgent intellectual and political project? Anna Bernard argues that the decolonization of literary studies requires a change to not only what, but how, we read. In lively prose, she explores work that has already been done, both within and beyond the academy, and challenges readers to think about where we go from here. She suggests ways to recognize and respond to the political work that texts do, considering questions of language and translation, comparative reading, ideological argument, and genre in relation to the history of anticolonial struggle. Above all, Bernard shows that although we still have far to go, the work of decolonizing literary studies is already under way. Decolonizing Literature is a must-have resource for all those concerned by the development and future of the field.
Decolonizing Middle Level Literacy Instruction: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Methods
by Michael Domínguez Robyn SeglemThis text offers pre-service and in-service teachers pragmatic strategies for teaching middle-grades literacy in culturally proactive and sustaining ways. By demystifying big ideas and complex concepts, Domínguez and Seglem provide clear pathways and lessons for illuminating and engaging with race, ethnicity, culture, and identity in the middle-grade English Language Arts classroom. While addressing social justice, equity, diversity, and liberation can seem intimidating or unrelated to classroom practice, the authors demonstrate how weaving such questions into instruction benefits students’ development. The guidance, strategies, and lessons in this book provide an answer to the question: What does decolonial literacy teaching look like? Concrete but not prescriptive, the authors encourage us to reconsider accepted logics of schooling, so that we can better support adolescents as they navigate complex identity landscapes. Bringing together disparate conversations around reading, writing, identity, and decolonial thinking, and specifically tailored to the middle grades, this book serves as a comprehensive toolkit for praxis and covers such topics as cultural change, community connections, and racial literacy. Each chapter features tips on reading and writing instruction, Teacher Spotlights, Planning Questions, and Additional Resources to make it easy for educators to apply the strategies to their own contexts. An accessible entry to addressing challenging questions around identity in the classroom, this book is essential reading in courses and professional development on ELA and literacy methods as well as teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. For teachers looking to push toward equity and reshape literacy education so that it serves all middle-grade students, Domínguez and Seglem offer plenty of accessible and motivating places to start.
Decolonizing Middle Level Literacy Instruction: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Methods
by Michael Domínguez Robyn SeglemThis text offers pre-service and in-service teachers pragmatic strategies for teaching middle-grades literacy in culturally proactive and sustaining ways. By demystifying big ideas and complex concepts, Domínguez and Seglem provide clear pathways and lessons for illuminating and engaging with race, ethnicity, culture, and identity in the middle-grade English Language Arts classroom. While addressing social justice, equity, diversity, and liberation can seem intimidating or unrelated to classroom practice, the authors demonstrate how weaving such questions into instruction benefits students’ development. The guidance, strategies, and lessons in this book provide an answer to the question: What does decolonial literacy teaching look like? Concrete but not prescriptive, the authors encourage us to reconsider accepted logics of schooling, so that we can better support adolescents as they navigate complex identity landscapes. Bringing together disparate conversations around reading, writing, identity, and decolonial thinking, and specifically tailored to the middle grades, this book serves as a comprehensive toolkit for praxis and covers such topics as cultural change, community connections, and racial literacy. Each chapter features tips on reading and writing instruction, Teacher Spotlights, Planning Questions, and Additional Resources to make it easy for educators to apply the strategies to their own contexts. An accessible entry to addressing challenging questions around identity in the classroom, this book is essential reading in courses and professional development on ELA and literacy methods as well as teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. For teachers looking to push toward equity and reshape literacy education so that it serves all middle-grade students, Domínguez and Seglem offer plenty of accessible and motivating places to start.
Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy
by Iris D. Ruiz Raúl SánchezThis book brings together Latinx scholars in Rhetoric and Composition to discuss keywords that have been misused or appropriated by forces working against the interests of minority students. For example, in educational and political forums, rhetorics of identity and civil rights have been used to justify ideas and policies that reaffirm the myth of a normative US culture that is white, Eurocentric, and monolinguistically English. Such attempts amount to a project of neo-colonization, if we understand colonization to mean not only the taking of land but also the taking of culture, of which language is a crucial part. The editors introduce the concept of epistemic delinking and argue for its use in conceptualizing a kind of rhetorical and discursive decolonization, and contributors offer examples of this decolonization in action through detailed work on specific terms. Specifically, they draw on their training in rhetoric and on their own experiences as people of color to help reset the field's agenda. They also theorize new keywords to shed light on the great varieties of Latinx writing, rhetoric, and literacies that continue to emerge and circulate in the culture at large, in the hope that the field will feel more urgently the need to recognize, theorize, and teach the intersections of writing, pedagogy, and politics.
Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords for Theory and Pedagogy
by Iris D. Ruiz Raúl SánchezThis book brings together Latinx scholars in Rhetoric and Composition to discuss keywords that have been misused or appropriated by forces working against the interests of minority students. For example, in educational and political forums, rhetorics of identity and civil rights have been used to justify ideas and policies that reaffirm the myth of a normative US culture that is white, Eurocentric, and monolinguistically English. Such attempts amount to a project of neo-colonization, if we understand colonization to mean not only the taking of land but also the taking of culture, of which language is a crucial part. The editors introduce the concept of epistemic delinking and argue for its use in conceptualizing a kind of rhetorical and discursive decolonization, and contributors offer examples of this decolonization in action through detailed work on specific terms. Specifically, they draw on their training in rhetoric and on their own experiences as people of color tohelp reset the field's agenda. They also theorize new keywords to shed light on the great varieties of Latinx writing, rhetoric, and literacies that continue to emerge and circulate in the culture at large, in the hope that the field will feel more urgently the need to recognize, theorize, and teach the intersections of writing, pedagogy, and politics.
Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media
by Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas, and Stephen ShapiroLooking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing its cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial, and neoliberal discourses. Taking stock of zombies as they appear in literature, film, and television from the Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, and Iraq, this book explores how the undead reflect a plethora of experiences previously obscured by western preoccupations and anxieties. These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural, historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones. Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture (such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet) contributors examine such writers as Lowell R. Torres, Diego Velázquez Betancourt, Hemendra Kumar Roy, and Manabendra Pal; works like China Mieville's Covehithe, Reza Negarestani's Cycolonopedia, Julio Ortega's novel Adiós, Ayacucho, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad; and films by Alejandro Brugués, Michael James Rowland, Steve McQueen, and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in this universally recognized figure of the undead.
Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media
Looking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing its cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial, and neoliberal discourses. Taking stock of zombies as they appear in literature, film, and television from the Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, and Iraq, this book explores how the undead reflect a plethora of experiences previously obscured by western preoccupations and anxieties. These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural, historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones. Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture (such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet) contributors examine such writers as Lowell R. Torres, Diego Velázquez Betancourt, Hemendra Kumar Roy, and Manabendra Pal; works like China Mieville's Covehithe, Reza Negarestani's Cycolonopedia, Julio Ortega's novel Adiós, Ayacucho, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad; and films by Alejandro Brugués, Michael James Rowland, Steve McQueen, and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in this universally recognized figure of the undead.
Decolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions
by Aditya NigamDecolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions aims at disentangling theory from its exclusively Western provenance, drawing insights and concepts from other thought traditions, connecting to what it argues is a new global moment in the reconstitution of theory. The key argument, which is the point of departure of the book, is that any serious theorizing in the non-West should be fundamentally suspicious of any theory that only gives you one result-that four-fifths of the world does not and cannot do anything right. Everything in the non-West, from itsmodernity and secularism to its democracy and even capitalism, is always seen to be deficient. In other words, all it tells us is that we do not live up to the standards set by Western modernity. From this point of departure, it seeks to create a conceptual space outside (Western) modernity and capitalism, by insisting on a rethink of non-synchronous synchronicities. The book takes three key themes around which the whole story of modernity can be unraveled, namely the question of the political, capital and historical time, and secularism for a detailed discussion. It does so by bracketing, in a sense, the autobiographical story that Western modernity gives itself. In each case, it tries to show that past forms never simply disappear, without residue, to be fully supplanted by the modern, and merely applying theory produced in one context to another is, therefore, very misleading.
Decolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions
by Aditya NigamDecolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions aims at disentangling theory from its exclusively Western provenance, drawing insights and concepts from other thought traditions, connecting to what it argues is a new global moment in the reconstitution of theory. The key argument, which is the point of departure of the book, is that any serious theorizing in the non-West should be fundamentally suspicious of any theory that only gives you one result-that four-fifths of the world does not and cannot do anything right. Everything in the non-West, from itsmodernity and secularism to its democracy and even capitalism, is always seen to be deficient. In other words, all it tells us is that we do not live up to the standards set by Western modernity. From this point of departure, it seeks to create a conceptual space outside (Western) modernity and capitalism, by insisting on a rethink of non-synchronous synchronicities. The book takes three key themes around which the whole story of modernity can be unraveled, namely the question of the political, capital and historical time, and secularism for a detailed discussion. It does so by bracketing, in a sense, the autobiographical story that Western modernity gives itself. In each case, it tries to show that past forms never simply disappear, without residue, to be fully supplanted by the modern, and merely applying theory produced in one context to another is, therefore, very misleading.
Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation
by Kathryn BatchelorThe linguistically innovative aspect of Francophone African literature has been recognized and studied from a variety of angles over recent decades, yet little attention has been paid to what happens to such literature when it is translated into another language. Taking as its corpus all sub-Saharan Francophone African texts that have ever been published in English, this book explores the ways in which translators approach innovative features such as African-language borrowings, neologisms and other deliberate manipulations of French, depictions of sociolinguistic variation, and a variety of types of wordplay. The implications of their translation decisions are drawn out with reference to the broader significances that are often accorded to postcolonial literature, and earlier critics' calls for a decolonized translation practice are explored from both a practical and theoretical angle. These findings are used to push towards a detailed investigation of the postcolonial turn in translation studies, drawing on the work of key postcolonial theorists such has Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. This is a timely and incisive critical assessment of contemporary discourses on the ethics and politics of translation.
Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation
by Kathryn BatchelorThe linguistically innovative aspect of Francophone African literature has been recognized and studied from a variety of angles over recent decades, yet little attention has been paid to what happens to such literature when it is translated into another language. Taking as its corpus all sub-Saharan Francophone African texts that have ever been published in English, this book explores the ways in which translators approach innovative features such as African-language borrowings, neologisms and other deliberate manipulations of French, depictions of sociolinguistic variation, and a variety of types of wordplay. The implications of their translation decisions are drawn out with reference to the broader significances that are often accorded to postcolonial literature, and earlier critics' calls for a decolonized translation practice are explored from both a practical and theoretical angle. These findings are used to push towards a detailed investigation of the postcolonial turn in translation studies, drawing on the work of key postcolonial theorists such has Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. This is a timely and incisive critical assessment of contemporary discourses on the ethics and politics of translation.