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RR 2001/198 Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology Edited by Gregory Castle Blackwell Publishers Oxford and Maiden, MA 2001 xxv + 526 pp. hardback ISBN 0 631 21004 0; 0 631 21005 9 paperback
L60.00; L15.99 paperback
Keywords National cultures, History, Race
Postcolonialism refers to the era after colonialism, to a range of critical attitudes taken towards colonialism, and to a growing historiography in which these attitudes have taken historical and critical form. Gregory Castle teaches English and Irish literature at Arizona State University and has assembled a rich collection of key texts which will succeed in introducing postcolonialism to newcomers (above all students) while at the same time provide a useful store of critical materials for those further into the field (above all lecturers, researchers and scholars). Information and library specialists, particularly those involved in identifying source materials to support courses in historical and literary studies, and especially where ideology and hegemony, gender and race, identity and indigenous cultures provide important theses in them, will find this useful.
This is a well-gathered collection, representing significant writing over the last 20 or so years, and demonstrating excellent research and a sure knowledge of the field in its choice and arrangement of material. Castle's approach is to introduce the subject (a useful introduction) and guide readers through six clearly sign-posted sections with helpful background notes and a useful glossary (terms like universalism, poststructuralism, diaspora, hybridity complicity and primitivism, all central concepts). His introduction sets...