This innovative and lively book is quite unlike any other introduction to postcolonialism. Robert Young examines the political, social, and cultural after-effects of decolonization by presenting situations, experiences, and testimony rather than going through the theory at an abstract level. He situates the debate in a wide cultural context, discussing its importance as an historical condition, with examples such as the status of aboriginal people, of those dispossessed from their land, Algerian rai music, postcolonial feminism, and global social and ecological movements. Above all, Young argues, postcolonialism offers a political philosophy of activism that contests the current situation of global inequality, and so in a new way continues the anti-colonial struggles of the past.

Author Biography

Robert J. C. Young is Professor of English and Critical Theory at Oxford University and a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. Recent publications include Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Culture, Theory and Race (Routledge, 1995), and Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, 2001). He is also General Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (Routledge).