Call for Papers

Postcolonial Interventions (ISSN 2455 6465)

Vol. III, Issue 1, January 2018

In her recently published book, Postcolonialism and Postsocialism in Fiction and Art: Resistance and Re-existence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Madina Tlostanova proposes an intersection between postcolonialism and postsocialism by foregrounding how the subjects of the former Soviet Bloc, exposed to the vicissitudes of a neo-liberal capitalist world order, are experiencing a sense of pervasive socio-economic deprivation that is accompanied by racial and ethnic fundamentalisms, growing gender-inequalities and a certain invisibility in the dominant narratives of the global order where they continue to be subjected to derogatory stereotyping and systemic erasure – an experience that resembles that of many subjects in postcolonial states. She argues that “Tricked into believing that the only legitimate modernity is the neoliberal capitalist one, we have doomed ourselves to the next twenty-five years of stagnation, catching up and forever emerging” (7). She therefore echoes the thoughts of Romanian social theorist Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, who claims that “the post-1989 civilizational promise of Europe and Occidentalism has currently reached a critical point of saturation in Eastern Europe… Consequently, one is faced today with the historical task of decolonizing the imaginary and rebuilding alliances, against the dissemination of cynicism, ethnocentric nationalism, and postcommunist racism”. Considering the fact that the problems of neo-liberal capitalist deprivation, racism and ethnocentric nationalism continue to be major concerns for postcolonial studies, especially in the wake of growing xenophobia and Islamophobia in large parts of the world, a proposed intersection between postcolonialism and postsocialism certainly seems promising and may even be tied to Ngugi wa Thiongo’s calls for globalism and globalist social consciousness. Such a consciousness is also seen by Ngugi as a critique of neo-liberal capitalism and religious fundamentalism at once because he asserts, “Capitalist fundamentalism generates religious fundamentalisms in alliance with it or in opposition to it.  But such religious fundamentalism, to the extent that it divides labor into religious camps, objectively works for and in concert with capitalist fundamentalism in its Financial Robes”. Exposing these networks is crucial for understanding either the growth of Hindutva in India or the ISIS in Philippines or the Christian extremists in Russia. This concerted enterprise, based on the task of “decolonizing the imaginary and rebuilding alliances” seems particularly significant in 2017 which marks a hundred years of the Bolshevik Revolution is Russia which of course had a significant influence on anti-colonial liberation movements around the world. Raja Rao’s Kanthapura offers a brief glimpse of this appeal as the text glowingly speaks of ‘the country of hammer and sickle and electricity’. The eventual disintegration of those ideals and the role of Soviet Russia as an imperial force in various parts of Asia, most notably Afghanistan, of constitutes one of the great ironies of history. The conjunction of postcolonialism and postsocialism might investigate these ironies as well while being mindful of both resistance and co-existence.

Vol. III, Issue 1 of Postcolonial Interventions invites scholarly papers that would investigate such possibilities and more in an effort to expand critical horizons while remaining open to the nuances of multi-spatial hermeneutics within a pluriversal critique.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Neo-liberal capitalism and the postcolonial state
• Subaltern resistances and negotiations
• The legacy of 1917 – socialist possibilities in a post-Soviet era
• Ethnocentric nationalism and religious fundamentalism
• Revivalist patriarchies and resistance
• Alternate modernities
• Globalectics and utopian possibilities
• Postcolonial cyberture

Please send your submissions to postcolonialinterventions@gmail.com within 08 October 2017 in accordance with the following guidelines:

1. Articles must be original and unpublished. Submission will imply that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
2. Written in Times New Roman 12, double spaced with 1″ margin on all sides, in doc/docx format
3. Between 4000-7000 words, inclusive of all citations.
4. With in-text citations and a Works Cited list complying with latest Chicago Manual of Style specifications.
5. A separate cover page should include the author’s name, designation, an abstract of 250 words with a maximum of 5 keywords and a short bio-note of 50 words.
6. The main article should not in any way contain the author’s name. Otherwise the article will not be considered.
7. The contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material, including photographs and illustrations for which they do not hold copyright.

Please visit postcolonialinterventions.com for further details.