Postcolonial Modernities
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Date
2014
Authors
Ashcroft, Bill
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Abstract
A major feature of post-colonial theory has been its ability to analyse historical
developments of culture: expressions of anti-colonial nationalism; the paradoxical
dissolution of the idea of nation along with the continuous persistence of national
concerns; the question of language and appropriation; of the transformation of literary
genres; the question of ethnicity and its relation to the state. But the broader question
for this century concerns the way in which postcolonial theory is positioned to approach
the continuing issues of global power, global interaction and cultural difference in the
coming century. One answer to this has been a growing, and now well-established,
interest in cultural and ethnic mobility, of diaspora, of transnational and cosmopolitan
interactions. This article goes beyond this to analyse modernity using the tools of
postcolonial theory to argue for the multiplicity of modernities. Modernities proceed in
various ways, but the process of transformation demonstrated by the literary model can
be adapted to examine the proliferation of alternative and multiple modernities. Special
attention shall be given to India and China as alternative modernities to help to re-think
the nature of modernity itself.
Description
Keywords
postcolonial, modernities, Western modernity, transformation, India, China, Afro‑modernity
Citation
Ashcroft Bill. Postcolonial Modernities [electronic resource] / Bill Ashcroft // Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal. - 2014. - № 1. - P. 3-26.