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The Postcolonial Unconscious
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.
- GenresCriticismPost Colonial
311 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 22, 2015
Brilliant. Must read for anyone interested in postcolonialism.
June 18, 2019
A very striking account of the tensions between postcolonial literature and postcolonial theory . From a more general survey of conceptual conflicts of representation, subaltern expression and the place for class analysis, to engaged mappings of the fate of canonical thinkers like Said and Fanon, Lazarus' text is a highly useful primer for recent developments within the field. Strongly recommend for those interested in Marxist and materialist renderings of post-colonial literature and thought.
November 5, 2024
The worst part of this book is not its ideas, but how inaccessibly it is written. For a book that is offering such harsh (even if deserved) critique of the academy, it would take years of education and even more patience to be able to even *understand* what his ideas are because of how he has chosen to present them. It's a shame since his argument is insightful and important both in and out of the academy, but he seems to only be speaking to those with enough patience and esoteric knowledge to figure out what he's trying to say.
The core of Lazarus’ argument is to reevaluate what we’ve associated with postcolonial studies since the 1990s. Specifically, Lazarus wants postcolonial criticism to focus on “repressed” elements of culture, away from strict, continentalist boundaries. Lazarus believes “migrancy, liminality, hybridity, and multiculturality” have been underrepresented or ignored entirely by postcolonial critics, creating a more ethnocentric version of postcolonial criticism that is then touted as universal. Lazarus believes that fields of thought like Marxism and Eurocentrism have lead to representation that treats previously colonized people as though they are victims, rejecting any notion of bias or subjectivity that leads to this representation. He traces the history of imperialism and capitalism, giving examples like that of U.S. militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq (or, U.S. invasion in general) have, “exposed the contradictions of this established postcolonialist understanding to stark and unforgiving light. For, conjoining violence and military conquest with expropriation, pillage, and undisguised grabbing for resources, these developments have demonstrably rejoined the twenty-first century to a long and as yet unbroken history, wrongly supposed by postcolonial theory to have come to a close circa 1975. This is the history of capitalist imperialism.” This quote is succinct in its ideas: colonization is not over, it has only evolved and is now spreading under the veil of capitalist gain and imperialist bravado.
Lazarus argues that paying attention to literature can be a way to help remedy this broken element of postcolonial criticism. In other words, Lazarus is campaigning for the prioritization of literature over rules of theory to achieve a less-Eurocentric view of postcolonial nations and cultures. This mentality is one that some authors from postcolonial nations seem to be in line with. For example, Danticat’s focus in both Krik? Krak! (1995) and Create Dangerously (2010) of restoring Haitian voice would be a prime example of what Lazarus is advocating for: taking the evolution of postcolonial countries/cultures out of the binds of postcolonial theory and placing it into the hands of the literature born from these regions. Lazarus’ argument is spiritually tied to the rhetoric that infiltrated colonialism, mainly, Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden.” After colonization, the “White Man’s Burden” shifted from “civilizing” other nations and, instead, turned into a more commonly recognized “White Savior” complex. By evaluating culture, literature, or art with a traditional postcolonial lens, the result is the same: an ethnocentric interpretation that waters down the original meaning by the creator by maintaining the West as locus. In the most basic of terms, Lazarus believes that to be anticolonial, the voices of the colonized are what need focused upon in the academy.
The core of Lazarus’ argument is to reevaluate what we’ve associated with postcolonial studies since the 1990s. Specifically, Lazarus wants postcolonial criticism to focus on “repressed” elements of culture, away from strict, continentalist boundaries. Lazarus believes “migrancy, liminality, hybridity, and multiculturality” have been underrepresented or ignored entirely by postcolonial critics, creating a more ethnocentric version of postcolonial criticism that is then touted as universal. Lazarus believes that fields of thought like Marxism and Eurocentrism have lead to representation that treats previously colonized people as though they are victims, rejecting any notion of bias or subjectivity that leads to this representation. He traces the history of imperialism and capitalism, giving examples like that of U.S. militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq (or, U.S. invasion in general) have, “exposed the contradictions of this established postcolonialist understanding to stark and unforgiving light. For, conjoining violence and military conquest with expropriation, pillage, and undisguised grabbing for resources, these developments have demonstrably rejoined the twenty-first century to a long and as yet unbroken history, wrongly supposed by postcolonial theory to have come to a close circa 1975. This is the history of capitalist imperialism.” This quote is succinct in its ideas: colonization is not over, it has only evolved and is now spreading under the veil of capitalist gain and imperialist bravado.
Lazarus argues that paying attention to literature can be a way to help remedy this broken element of postcolonial criticism. In other words, Lazarus is campaigning for the prioritization of literature over rules of theory to achieve a less-Eurocentric view of postcolonial nations and cultures. This mentality is one that some authors from postcolonial nations seem to be in line with. For example, Danticat’s focus in both Krik? Krak! (1995) and Create Dangerously (2010) of restoring Haitian voice would be a prime example of what Lazarus is advocating for: taking the evolution of postcolonial countries/cultures out of the binds of postcolonial theory and placing it into the hands of the literature born from these regions. Lazarus’ argument is spiritually tied to the rhetoric that infiltrated colonialism, mainly, Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden.” After colonization, the “White Man’s Burden” shifted from “civilizing” other nations and, instead, turned into a more commonly recognized “White Savior” complex. By evaluating culture, literature, or art with a traditional postcolonial lens, the result is the same: an ethnocentric interpretation that waters down the original meaning by the creator by maintaining the West as locus. In the most basic of terms, Lazarus believes that to be anticolonial, the voices of the colonized are what need focused upon in the academy.
May 8, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews