{"title":"Postcolonialism as leftist firing squad and procrustean bed: a communicative take","authors":"Gregory Stephens","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2188602","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As a point of departure for reconsidering the “troubled concept” of postcolonialism, Stephens proposes a cultural analysis in which Communication Studies, ethnographic approaches, and transnational Writing Studies are on speaking terms. This revisioning is routed through an aspirational “reclaiming” of communication, which would a) practice Bazerman’s ”disciplined interdisciplinarity”; b) use the positionality of what anthropologists call ”halfies.” Stephens recounts instances of ”editorial bullying” in which U.S. editors project postcolonial theory onto all Puerto Rican contexts. He then surveys recent Marxist critiques of postcolonialism. Finally he distills Mignolo's arguments for three openings leading away from essentialized, binary versions of postcolonial theory, and towards more historically grounded, ethnographically oriented approaches such as decoloniality.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal for Cultural Research","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2188602","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT As a point of departure for reconsidering the “troubled concept” of postcolonialism, Stephens proposes a cultural analysis in which Communication Studies, ethnographic approaches, and transnational Writing Studies are on speaking terms. This revisioning is routed through an aspirational “reclaiming” of communication, which would a) practice Bazerman’s ”disciplined interdisciplinarity”; b) use the positionality of what anthropologists call ”halfies.” Stephens recounts instances of ”editorial bullying” in which U.S. editors project postcolonial theory onto all Puerto Rican contexts. He then surveys recent Marxist critiques of postcolonialism. Finally he distills Mignolo's arguments for three openings leading away from essentialized, binary versions of postcolonial theory, and towards more historically grounded, ethnographically oriented approaches such as decoloniality.
期刊介绍:
JouJournal for Cultural Research is an international journal, based in Lancaster University"s Institute for Cultural Research. It is interested in essays concerned with the conjuncture between culture and the many domains and practices in relation to which it is usually defined, including, for example, media, politics, technology, economics, society, art and the sacred. Culture is no longer, if it ever was, singular. It denotes a shifting multiplicity of signifying practices and value systems that provide a potentially infinite resource of academic critique, investigation and ethnographic or market research into cultural difference, cultural autonomy, cultural emancipation and the cultural aspects of power.