Call for Papers

Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies

Vol. II, Issue 1 (January 2017)

A few years ago, Stephen Greenblatt had noted,

“In the latter half of the twentieth century many in the social sciences and humanities gleefully proclaimed the demise of a set of traditional assumptions about cultural identity. Notions of wholeness, teleological development, evolutionary progress, and ethnic authenticity were said to have been dismantled forever. A few lamented their passing, but most scholars energetically grappled with brave new theories of hybridity, network theory, and the complex “flows” of people, goods, money, and information across endlessly shifting social landscapes. But as the new century unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that the bodies of the deceased have refused to stay buried: those who thought to have bid farewell once and for all to the heavily guarded borders of the nation-state and to the atavistic passions of religious and ethnic identity find themselves confronting a global political landscape in which neither nationalism nor identity politics shows any intention of disappearing” (Cultural Mobility 1-2).

While on the one hand recessions and the Syrian migrant crisis have given further fillip to the growth of right-wing neo-nationalist politics across Europe and the United States, evident from Brexit and other similar political phenomena, in various countries of Asia and Africa there continues to be an alarming growth of religious fundamentalism and associated violence as well as the rise of atavistic visions of nationalist politics. All of this creates a turbulent cauldron of racist prejudice and colonial stereotypes, growth of terrorist modules, increasing violence against women and a menacing insistence on compulsive homogeneity which keeps threatening ethnic/religious minorities in one way or another. J.K. Rowling, in acknowledgment of this crisis has recently remarked:

Every nationalist will tell you that their nationalism is different, a natural, benign response to their country's own particular needs and challenges, nothing to do with that nationalism of yore that ended up killing people, yet every academic study of nationalism has revealed the same key features. Your country is the greatest in the world, the nationalist cries, and anyone who isn't chanting that is a traitor! Drape yourself in the flag: doesn't that make you feel bigger and more powerful? Finding the present scary? We've got a golden past to sell you, a mythical age that will dawn again once we've got rid of the Mexicans/left the EU/annexed Ukraine! Now place your trust in our simplistic slogans and enjoy your rage against the Other! (“On Monsters, Villains and the EU Referendum”)

In contrast, across the world we also keep witnessing an excavation and assemblage of what Tad Tuleja calls ‘usable pasts’ which in many ways serve to discursively and performatively resist the surging currents of religious fundamentalism and neo-nationalist belligerence. Such usable pasts belong as much as to majority communities and ruling elites as they do to ethnic minorities and politically powerless groups. They often serve to emphasise notions of plurality and amity as well as resistant solidarities which contemporary reality either ignores or grotesquely contradicts. Yet such usable pasts continue to prefigure fruitful possibilities for refashioning the nation space and forging such paradigms of identity that nurture inclusive channels of belongingness and cohesion.

Vol. II, Issue 1 of Postcolonial Interventions would focus on all such issues and more by exploring both the threat of religious fundamentalism and neo-nationalism and the potentialities of usable pasts in the constructions of selfhood and communities. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Being migrants in the face of rising neonationalism
• Race and gender in neonationalist discourse
• Islamophobia and the rise of the far-right
• ISIS and its impact
• Peripheral visions of inclusion and harmony
• Nation in the eyes of aborigines and ethnic minorities
• Traditions of syncretic religiosity/heterogeneous nationality
• Women’s negotiation with religious fundamentalism
• Revisiting instances of international solidarity
• Censorship and repression by neonationalist/fundamentalist forces

Submissions should be sent to the postcolonialinterventions@gmail.com by 30th September, 2016.

Submissions 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
3. Between 4000-7000 words, inclusive of all citations.
4. With parenthetic citations and a Works Cited list complying with MLA format
5. Without footnotes; endnotes only if absolutely unavoidable
6. A separate cover page should include the author’s name, designation and an abstract of 250 words with a maximum of 5 keywords
7. The main article should not in any way contain the author’s name. Otherwise the article will not be considered.
8. The contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material, including photographs and illustrations for which they do not hold copyright.