Linked Histories: Postcolonial Studies in a Globalized World

During the past two decades, postcolonial studies has proven to be one of the fastest growing fields of critical inquiry. Postcolonialism has established itself as an important specialist field within literature disciplines, and it has strong resonances across other disciplines (history, sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies) and is a field which has inspired genuinely interdisciplinary research. These essays, collected from the journal ARIEL (A Review of International English Literataure), take up some of the most pressing issues in postcolonial debates: the challenges which new theories of globalization present for postcolonial studies, the difficulties of rethinking how "marginality" might be defined in a new globalized world, the problems of imagining social transformation within globalization. The editors' goal in bringing together this collection of articles is not to provide any definitive statement on these urgent questions; rather, it is to assemble a group of essays which "think through" the issues and which therefore has the potential to move the discipline forward. The contributors represented include a balance of senior scholars with international reputations and scholars who represent the next generation.