Seminar Introduction to Postcolonial Theory Einführung in die Postkoloniale Theorie

Die ist ein bilingualer Einführungskurs. Die Seminarlektüre wird vorrangig auf Deutsch zur Verfügung gestellt. Studierende können sich auf Deutsch oder Englisch an den Seminardiskussionen beteiligen. Postcolonialism may be defined, following Robert Young, as the perspective provided by theories that analyze the material and epistemological conditions of postcoloniality and seek to combat the continuing, often covert operation of an imperialist system of economic, political and cultural domination. Hence, postcolonialism arose as the answer to the question of the false representations in colonial documentations and within a perceived globalised world. Postcolonial studies as an institutionalised field of academic specialisation did not exist before the late 1970s. -The modern history of postcolonial criticism, informed by poststructuralism, began seriously in the early 1980s. Its early exponents (Said, Spivak, Bhabha) focused their critique on Eurocentrism and cultural racism of the West- (Mirón, 1999). This course explores the formations of postocolonial theory. These include how the history of the colonized people have been written through essentialization, thus creating histories that reduce the complexity of the dominated people into a homoginized representation. The course will be an introduction to different ways in which international economic policies and legal instruments, governance and politics of aid create a postcolonial situation of global power asymmetries and dependence. Most of the postcolonial theories came out from the field of literary studies. Students and scholars interested in global economics, trade, politics, governance and development however equally need to explore the relationships between governance, economic development, and postcoloniality. This introductory course is aimed at exposing key readings that will form a foundation for further thinking and explorations in postcolonial and development studies. FB 05 Gesellschaftswissenschaften Uni Kassel WiSe 2016/17 Politik und Wirtschaft Sr Idika Christiana Sr