Remembering the Postcolonial: Past Paradigms, Present Perceptions

Guest lecture by Professor John McLeod, University of Leeds.

The conceptual and critical gains of postcolonial thought have been hard won since the emergence of the field in the 1980s.  Yet these days the wisdom and impact of the postcolonial are often forgotten or disparaged as new paradigms are asserted instead (e.g. ‘the decolonial’, ‘world-literature’).  Such perceptions threaten to unmoor the present from postcolonialism’s vital modes of critique, and at a moment when its tools seem especially needed.

This presentation confronts and contests the crisis of memory concerning postcolonial thought, and challenges the worrying fading from view of its critical resources at this crucial time.’