Marxism, Modernity and Post Colonial Studies

Marxism Modernity and Post Colonial Studies Cultural Margins by Adie Marzuki

The fetish of “the West” in postcolonial theory

by Neil Lazarus, 2004

In a commentary entitled “East isn’t East,” which appeared not long

ago in the Times Literary Supplement, Edward Said proposed that one

of the essential gestures of postcolonial criticism, and one of its enduring

achievements, rested in what he called its “consistent critique

of Eurocentrism” (1995: 5). In the pages that follow, I would like to

put some pressure on this assessment. My intention is not, of course,

to suggest that the postcolonialist critique of Eurocentrism has not

been significant in helping to expose the tendentiousness, chauvinism,

and sheer pervasiveness of the ideological formation that Said

himself, in his seminal study of 1978, addressed under the rubric of

Orientalism. I take it for granted that it has, and believe moreover that

to argue otherwise would be simply perverse. Rather, my aim in this

chapter is to suggest that in the field of postcolonial studies at large,

including in the work of some of the field’s most audacious and theoretically

sophisticated practitioners, Eurocentrism has typically been

viewed not as an ideology or mode of representation but as itself the

very basis of domination in the colonial and modern imperial contexts.

Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World

by Neil Lazarus, 1999

This wide-ranging study contains individual chapers on modernity, globalization and the "West," nationalism and decolonization, cricket and popular consciousness in the English-speaking Caribbean, and African pop music. Neil Lazarus offers extended discussions of the work of such influential writers, critics and activists as Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Samir Amin, Raymond Williams, Paul Gilroy and Partha Chatterjee. This book is a politically focused, materialist intervention into postcolonial and cultural studies, and constitutes a major reappraisal of the debates on politics and culture in these fields.

The Postcolonial Unconsciousness

The Postcolonial Unconsciousness

by Neil Lazarus, Cambridge, 2011

The Postcolonial Unconscious is a major attempt to reconstruct the whole field of postcolonial studies. In this magisterial and, at times, polemical study, Neil Lazarus argues that the key critical concepts that form the very foundation of the field need to be re-assessed and questioned. Drawing on a vast range of literary sources, Lazarus investigates works and authors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Arab world, South, Southeast and East Asia, to reconsider them from a postcolonial perspective. Alongside this, he offers bold new readings of some of the most influential figures in the field: Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon.