Ania Loomba received her B. A. (Hons),
M. A. and M. Phil. degrees from the University of Delhi, India and her Ph. D.
from the University of Sussex, U.K. Ania Loomba currently holds the Catherine
Bryson Chair, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Ania
Loomba’s research focuses on Renaissance literature and history, which she
examines through the lenses of gender studies and colonial and postcolonial
studies. She is currently working on a book which examines real and imagined
English exchanges with Turkey, the Moluccas, North Africa and India in the
early modern period. These early global conversations are crucial for
understanding English drama and culture as well as for rethinking the histories
of race and colonialism in the present moment when empire has again become a
fashionable term.
She examines the key features of the
ideologies and history of colonialism, the relationship of colonial discourse
to literature, the challenges to colonialism, surveying anti-colonial
discourses and recent developments in post-colonial theories and histories and
how sexuality is figured in the text of colonialism, and also how contemporary
feminist ideas and concepts intersect with those of post-colonialist thought.
Her achievement, in some senses, is the most considerable of all, because she
works mainly in the most prolifically minded and competitive field within
English Studies, namely Shakespeare. Loomba's achievement, in some senses, is
the most considerable of all. Her book, entitled Colonialism/Postcolonialism,
has been translated into Italian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.
Postcolonial theory deals with the
reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized
countries, or literature written in colonizing countries which deals with
colonized peoples. It focuses particularly on:
Ø The
way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and
realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people.
Ø On
literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and
reclaim their past in the face of that past‘s inevitable otherness.
Ø It
can also deal with the way in which literature in colonizing countries
appropriates the language, images, scenes, traditions and so forth of colonized
countries.
In
Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Ania
Loomba discusses the different meanings of terms such as colonialism, imperialism
and postcolonialism. Here she also discusses the controversies around these
concepts. She further introduces the readers to aspects of post-structuralist,
Marxist, feminist and postmodern thought which have become important or
controversial in relation to postcolonial studies. Ania Loomba also considers
the complexities of colonial and postcolonial subjects and identities. She asks
many questions with a view to opening up the larger debate on the relationship
between material and economic processes and human subjectivities. She has
examined the processes of decolonization and the problems of recovering the
viewpoint of colonized subjects from a ‘postcolonial’ perspective. Various
theories of resistance are observed for considering the crucial debates they
engender about authenticity and hybridity, the nation, ethnicity and colonial
identities. Theories of nationalism and pan-nationalism and how they are
fractured by gender, class and ideological divides are considered. Finally she
considers the place of postcolonial studies in the context of globalization.
This book, for some years, has been accepted as the essential introduction to
vibrant and politically charged area of literary and cultural study. With new
coverage of emerging debates around globalization, this book will continue to
serve as the ideal guide for advanced students and teachers in regard with
colonial discourse theory, postcolonial studies or postcolonial theory.
Colonialism/Postcolonialism
is a remarkably comprehensive yet accessible guide to the historical and
theoretical dimensions of colonial and postcolonial discourses. It is the
essential introduction to the vibrant, crucially important areas of literary
and cultural study usually known as postcolonial theory, postcolonial studies
and colonial discourse theory. Building on her widely acclaimed first edition,
Ania Loomba examines: the key features of the ideologies and history of
colonialism, the relationship of colonial discourse to literature, challenges
to colonialism, including anti-colonial discourses, recent developments in
postcolonial theories and histories, issues of sexuality and colonialism, and
the intersection of feminist and postcolonial thought, debates about
globalization and postcolonialism, and fully updated for the second edition,
with an entirely new discussion of globalization. Colonialism/Postcolonialism
should be on the shelf of every student of literature, culture or history.
Loomba argues
that post-modernists and post-colonialists celebrate and mystify the workings of
global capitalism. She adds ahead that the narratives of women, colonized
people, and non-Europeans revise our understanding of colonialism, capitalism
and modernity. These global narratives do not disappear but can now be read
differently. Finally she expects that critics across many language communities
should have a dialogue about the genuine difficulties generated by the
interdisciplinary, cross-cultural nature of colonialism/postcolonialism,
because in the wake of recent developments, it is clear that the issues raised
by the study of colonialism remain urgent and vital today.
Reference:
https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/4107/10/10_chapter%205.pdf
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