The Postcolonial Unconscious

by Neil Lazarus

Overview

The Postcolonial Unconscious is a major attempt to reconstruct the whole field of postcolonial studies. In this magisterial and, at times, polemical study, Neil Lazarus argues that the key critical concepts that form the very foundation of the field need to be re-assessed and questioned. Drawing on a vast range of literary sources, Lazarus investigates works and authors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Arab world, South, Southeast and East Asia, to reconsider them from a postcolonial perspective. Alongside this, he offers bold new readings of some of the most influential figures in the field: Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon. A tour de force of postcolonial studies, this book will set the agenda for the future, probing how the field has come to develop in the directions it has and why and how it can grow further.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107006560
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2011
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Neil Lazarus is Professor of English at the University of Warwick. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies (2004).

Table of Contents

Introduction: the political unconscious of postcolonial studies; 1. The politics of postcolonial modernism; 2. Fredric Jameson on 'third-world literature': a qualified defence; 3. 'A figure glimpsed in a rear-view mirror': the question of representation in 'postcolonial' fiction; 4. Frantz Fanon after the 'postcolonial prerogative'; 5. The battle over Edward Said.

Editorial Reviews

"For more than two decades, Lazarus (Univ. of Wisconsin) has been a major figure in postcolonial studies . . . Yet here he sets out to demonstrate that 'in its prevailing and consolidated aspect,' postcolonial studies has 'not been adequate' to the realities of the postcolonial world; indeed, it has 'served fairly systematically to mystify it.' . . . Highly recommended."
--Choice

From the Publisher