Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies

by Graham Huggan

Interdisciplinary Measures makes the case for a cross-disciplinary, but literature-centred, approach to postcolonial studies. Despite the anxieties that interdisciplinarity brings with it, a combination of different, discontinuously structured disciplinary knowledges is arguably best suited to address the tangled concerns of both the globalised present and the colonial past. The book looks specifically at the intersections between literary criticism, history, anthropology, geography and environmental studies, while arguing more specifically for a postcolonialism across the disciplines in the service of informed (cross-) cultural critique. Bringing together a wide range of literary material from Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, New Zealand and South Asia, the book also considers the different, but sometimes related, cultural contexts within which the key debates in postcolonial studies - e.g. those around globalisation, North-South relations and the new imperialism - are
currently taking place. These debates suggest the need for a multi-sited, multilinguistic and, not least, multidisciplinary appraoch to postcolonial studies that consolidates its status as a comparative field.

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2008