Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History

A collection of probing essays raising myriad conceptual and historical issues. They invite us to revise a number of established conceptual categories in social sciences, by demonstrating their contingent historical origins. They include the ubiquity of the nation state, the centrality of modernity as an all embracing notion, the relevance of identity and globalisation as explanations for stability or alternatively for change. The aim is to question the univocal interpretation of capacious concepts that encompass a multiplicity of meanings thus losing in the process their analytical sharpness. By criticising these theoretical constructs the author brings some refreshing insights into aspects of the colonial and post colonial situations. The text incorporates cultural, sociological, political and economic analyses, about the exercise of power and the resistance to power that transcend Marxist, Foucaldian, and Liberal interpretations.