State of the Field: Postcolonial Literature, Dead and Alive (ACLA 2023)
Postcolonial literature has died and been resurrected more times than a zombie in modern film. Often dubbed the Franken-child of Marxism’s commitment to real material conditions and deconstruction’s obsession with textuality, postcolonial studies has been schismed between its economic and political commitments, and its preoccupation with the politics of language and translation. It also emerged alongside the rise of theories of globalization and has been a primary field for thinking about the uneven movements of local practices and global processes.