MA Postcolonial Culture & Global Policy

From Ferguson to Gaza, from the local to the global, this module proposes that we are faced with the necessity to revisit the canonical texts of postcolonial theory in order to make sense of our contemporary world. The aim of the module is to introduce you to a selection of these founding texts, and to consider the manner in which the spectre of colonialism persists in our present, both in our material reality and as a ‘spectropoetics’ that haunts the unconscious.

In this sense, you will read classic postcolonial texts of the twentieth century together with contemporary academic, activist and artistic interventions and countersignatures. Close, first-hand reading of texts is emphasised and you are required to probe the whole spectrum of postcolonial thinking—from literary theory, politics, psychoanalysis, diaspora studies, race and gender studies to philosophy, art, anthropology and history—and as such interrogate the production and circulation of knowledge from diverse positionalities. We seek to problematize the very notion of post-coloniality, understood not as a temporal marker but more as a style of thought—as a problem, a question and an option, an ‘epistemic and political project’.

We begin the module from the present, with a questioning of the links and divergences between postcolonial theory and current decolonial thinking (in particular where this concerns struggles across today’s global south), in order to invest our readings of canonical postcolonial texts with a sense of urgency and to set out a disciplinary framework.

Weekly topics are organised conceptually and across geographical and temporal boundaries through the themes such as the following, each of which re-inflects the next: objectivity; recognition; representation; ecology; relation; translation; ambivalence, appropriation; repair and reconciliation.

This module aims to provide students with the theoretical tools necessary for understanding postcolonial transformations in today’s Global South. The political imperative behind Postcolonial Studies – which emerged as an academic discipline in the 1980s – was metropolitan multiculturalism. Multiculturalism emerged as a key agenda of progressive politics – responding largely to mobilizations around race, diaspora and the politics of gender. Grounded in certain notions of representation, discourse and text, it enabled the theorist to mount an attack on the ethico-political enterprise of post-Enlightenment humanism on behalf of those who were excluded from its universalist schema. The module seeks to familiarise students with both analytical tools and activist models developed over the last few decades to comprehend, analyse and intervene in these transformations.

Media, both old and new, are fast changing not just the way we perceive the world but also the way we experience our being-in-world and our interventions into the world. In view of this, elements of the module are concerned with studying the cultural aspects of globalization, including ‘the politics of aesthetics’, ‘sensible politics’ and the visual cultures of non-governmental activism. Globalization has also seen to a remapping of cultural and artistic fields, and the emergence of new cultural and commodity imaginaries. The globalization of art has resulted in the culture of spectacular biennales and new practices of curating. Museums and collections have become major tools for educating and disciplining populations.

Drawing from the tools provided during the ‘Postcolonial Theory’ module, and supplementing these with the ‘thinking and doing’ that has arisen from the ‘decolonial turn’, the module approaches many of the weekly topics through the framework of ‘decoloniality’ and what Boaventura de Sousa Santos et al have named ‘epistemologies of the South’. In addition to this, a key component of the module is the new socio-political theory developed after the end of the Cold War, which aims to understand the decline of the nation-state and the enhanced power of supranational institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. This requires a critical examination of a range of agendas, namely: Global Civil Society and Governance, Human Rights, Non-Governmental Organisations, Sovereignty, New Social Movements, (Intellectual) Property Rights, Environmentalism, Biopiracy, the Commons, Social Capital, etc. The module seeks to ground these concepts in political/cultural theory rather than treating them as ad-hoc ideas. Students are encouraged to draw from the critical theory tradition of cultural theory and to question the normative claims of liberal theory in the age of neoliberal globalization.

The dissertation is an opportunity to write an extended piece of work (10,000-12,000 words) on a topic of particular interest under the guidance of an allocated supervisor within the Centre for Cultural Studies.