Helen Tiffin

The Post-colonial Studies Reader

The essential introduction to the most important texts in post-colonial theory and criticism, this second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include 121 extracts from key works in the field. Leading, as well as lesser known figures in the fields of writing, theory and criticism contribute to this inspiring body of work that includes sections on nationalism, hybridity, diaspora and globalization. The Readers wide-ranging approach reflects the remarkable diversity of work in the discipline along with the vibrancy of anti-imperialist writing both within and without the metropolitan centres. Covering more debates, topics and critics than any comparable book in its field, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader is the ideal starting point for students and issues a potent challenge to the ways in which we think and write about literature and culture.

3. Post-Colonialism, Post-Modernism and the Rehabilitation of Post-Colonial History:

Continental European thinkers from Valery and Heidegger to Sartre, Levi-Strauss and Michel Foucault have cast serious doubts on the value of a specifically ‘ ‘historical&dquo; consciousness, stressed the fictive character of historical reconstructions, and challenged history’s claims to a place among the sciences. At the same time, AngloAmerican philosophers have produced a massive body of literature on the epistemological status and cultural function of historical thinking which justifies serious doubts about history’s status ...

Editorial: Green Postcolonialism

The incursion of Europeans into other areas of the world from the fifteenth century onwards catastrophically resulted in genocide or the dispossession and marginalization of indigenous peoples across the globe. It also caused drastic changes in extra-European temperate as well as tropical environments. As Alfred Crosby argues, environmental impact in the form of disease human, plant and animal forest felling, the casual or systematic slaughter of indigenous animals, and the introduction of European crops and livestock were both prime cause and continuing consequence of environmental change incurred through the post-1492 European diasporic intrusions

Melanesian Cargo Cults in Tourmaline and Visitants

Apart from orthodox Christian reference, two mystical trends are apparent in recent Australian fiction. Firstly, Australian writers have felt the need to come to terms with the spirits of place which remain unappeased by an imported Christianity attuned over the centuries to a very different physical and social environment. A corollary of this in Australian writing has been an interest in the religions of the aboriginal inhabitants whose intimate understanding of the land might provide the European interloper with a key to its metaphysical rhythms. In works as diverse as Patrick White’s Voss, David Kaye’s The Australian and Randolph Stow’s To the Islands, the &dquo;European&dquo; is inducted into the mysteries of the new land and its meaning through the agency of its aboriginal inhabitants. A second religious trend in Australian writing is a pervasive interest in the so-called