eurozine
The
faults in Europe's universalism, especially when confronting its colonial
history, have nurtured a variety of critical perspectives in the West. Talking
to French magazine Esprit, theorist Achille Mbembe says that
postcolonial thinking looks so original because it developed in a
transnational, eclectic vein from the very start. This enabled it to combine
the anti-imperialist tradition with the fledgling subaltern studies and a
specific take on globalization, he says.
Esprit: "Postcolonial
theory" is present in Africa, India, Great Britain, Australia and the
United States, but hardly at all in France. Can you tell us what it is all
about and what lies behind it? How, in particular, does it differ from
anti-western and third-world currents of thought?
Achille Mbembe: What's known in the English-speaking world as "postcolonial studies" and "postcolonial theory" is characterised by its heterogeneity, so what constitutes its originality cannot be summed up easily in a few words.
Achille Mbembe: What's known in the English-speaking world as "postcolonial studies" and "postcolonial theory" is characterised by its heterogeneity, so what constitutes its originality cannot be summed up easily in a few words.
