Post Colonial Theory

"""Postcolonialism is now an extensive body of theoretical and empirical knowledge that draws on Edward Said's critique of Orientalism, the Subaltern Studies collective, and other critical anti-colonial scholarship. While postcolonial scholars have significantly shaped humanistic disciplines such as history, comparative literature, and anthropology, their impact on political science has been rather limited. The resistance to postcolonialism is strongly associated with the perpetuation of Eurocentric perspectives on ex-colonial territories. Contemporary understandings of the state and democracy remain trapped in outdated Eurocentric theory that sheds scarcely any light on postcolonial realities. Mass democracy in India remains a puzzle for political scientists today much as it did for their predecessors n the '50s and '60s Likewise, recent scholarship on civil wars and ethnic conflict has renewed older colonial stereotypes of opportunistic native rebels and primordial divisions in non-Western societies. From the top-down perspective of mainstream US political science, just as for former colonial rulers, rebels and ethnic divides are merely impediments to state-building and economic growth.

The case for a postcolonial approach to the study of politics is thus stronger than ever before. A postcolonial approach can take many forms: critiques of existing Eurocentric theories of comparative politics; bottom-up ethnographic and historical understandings of politics in particular contexts; re-evaluations of commonplace political concepts such as the state, democracy, nationalism, and war in the light of different non-Western experiences. Such an approach calls for a sustained engagement with specific non-Western contexts as well as an openness to anthropological, historical, and area studies knowledge about them. In the same vein, it calls for "provincializing Europe," as Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued recently, in order to avoid treating European experiences as universals. These tasks are simultaneously theoretical and empirical as well as intellectual and practical. As such, they supplement ongoing efforts within the United States and Europe to produce critical scholarship on racial, gender, and sexual minorities, inequalities of class and status, and the interpenetration of power and knowledge in mainstream political science. A postcolonial approach is thus a radical endeavor that seeks to challenge mainstream knowledge on non-Western societies via sustained engagements with them. """

Este estudo tem como objecto central a análise histórica da proclamada «missão civilizadora» do colonialismo português entre 1870 e 1930, período marcante da história colonial nacional e internacional. Os seus fundamentos, os seus princípios e justificações, assim como as suas reais concretizações, são avaliados na sua relação com o aspecto fundamental do colonialismo português de finais de Oitocentos e de princípios de Novecentos: a questão do trabalho indígena.

"Little more than a decade ago, Cambodia witnessed a series of rapid transitions, from civil war to peace, from a socialist-style authoritarianism to multi-party democracy, and from geographic isolation to a free-market economy. Requiring the United Nations to undertake its biggest ever peace-time operation, the elections of 1993 triggered an influx of foreign aid unparalleled in Southeast Asia. Intense international interest since then has been accompanied by a re-emerging field of scholarship that has principally sought explanations for genocide and war, or attempted to map more recent economic and political developments. The social and cultural
implications of a society that has undergone such profound change has received little scholarly examination until now.
Drawing upon multidisciplinary theoretical perspectives and up-to-date empirical research, Expressions of Cambodia reveals the tensions and contradictions involved in post-conflict nation building and socio-cultural recovery. Together a team of international contributors take scholarship on the country in new directions, focusing on the politics of tradition and modernity, tourism, the performance of identity, post-conflict nation building, and the on-going renewal of ties between diaspora and home. Timely and much needed, the book brings Cambodia back into dialogue with its
neighbors and as such, makes a valuable contribution to the growing field of cultural studies in Asia. Written in an accessible style, Expressions of Cambodia will be of particular interest to those working in the fields of Asian studies, tourism, diaspora, and postcolonial and cultural studies."

Cet ouvrage regroupe vingt et un articles de dix à vingt pages sur le thème du genre dans différents contextes coloniaux. Divisé en trois parties, l’ouvrage possède aussi une préface et une postface, qui analysent les apports de ces travaux pour le champ d’étude de la World History. Cette discipline, qui se consacre à l’étude de grands phénomènes transversaux comme l’esclavage, la colonisation ou la migration, cherche à mettre en avant les relations historiques qu’entretiennent différentes parties du globe les unes avec les autres plutôt que de traiter de différentes aires géographiques et temporelles de manière séparée, comme le font d’autres disciplines des sciences sociales telles que la sociologie ou l’anthropologie.

En proposant un aller-retour entre l’Europe et l’Amérique latine sur la question d’une nouvelle critique sociale, cet ouvrage offre un milieu d’expérimentation. Il propose de tester concrètement le rôle d’un déplacement vers une perspective posée en extériorité de l’occidentalité de la raison critique. Selon certains travaux sociologiques, la critique sociale tendrait à s’affaiblir progressivement parce qu’elle finit par s’adapter aux objets qu’elle prend pour cible en reproduisant certains aspects de leurs limites et de leur logique de fonctionnement. En symbiose avec le processus qu’elle dénonce, la critique favoriserait ainsi son internalisation par le renouvellement théorique de l’appareil idéologique du capitalisme. L’issue à cette tendance à l’internalisation et à l’autoréférentialité pourrait résider dans la confrontation à une extériorité. Il s’agirait de déplacer la critique sociale vers une pratique qui se veut extérieure à la raison occidentale et qui, en conséquence, l’amènerait à désobéir aux cadres épistémiques qu’elle s’est elle-même imposés. En choisissant une telle voie, cet ouvrage essaie de mettre en pratique ce que des penseurs latino-américains ont nommé une « option décoloniale ». En suivant leurs critiques de la « colonialité du pouvoir » à la fois intériorisée et admise comme non optionnelle, il s’agit de produire les conditions de genèse d’une position tierce irréductible tant à l’identité qu’à l’altérité qui l’interrompt, une position d’issue à l’enfermement et à sa négation. Bref, renouer avec l’optionalité radicale du pouvoir. - See more at: http://www.polimetrica.com/wp/negozio/nouvelle-critique-sociale-europe-amerique-latine-aller-retour-marc-maesschalck-et-alain-loute-eds/#sthash.PaON4C5H.dpuf

In its brutality, its narratives of sectarianism and its refusal to recognise the political legitimacy of the Syrian people’s call for freedom, the Assad regime bears an uncanny resemblance to its French counterpart of the 1920s, which suppressed a series of uprisings against its occupation of the country as it implemented its official mandate from the League of Nations. During the anti-colonial uprising, Syrian rebels formed a decentralised umbrella body comprising units from individual villages and neighbourhoods, a structure echoed by today’s Free Syrian Army (FSA), which shares many of the same structural problems faced by its revolutionary predecessors.