The scholarly work of
the Institute of Postcolonial Studies is underpinned by our international
refereed journal "Postcolonial Studies"
Postcolonial Studies
Postcolonial Studies is the first journal specifically
aimed at publishing work which explores the various facets - textual,
figural, spatial, historical, political and economic - of the colonial
encounter, and the ways in which this encounter shaped the West
and non-West alike.
A growing academic literature, recognises that the
colonial encounter was a seminal event in the history of both the
West and the non-Western world, shaping culture and literature,
politics and history. From being the provenance of the "area
studies" scholar, it has become the site of numerous investigations
from many disciplines, as well as a theoretical perspective from
which to view a variety of concerns.
"Postcolonialism" is the name which such
investigations have acquired, and Postcolonial Studies provides
a forum for them. Postcolonial Studies does not confine its attentions
to any single place, region or discipline. It publishes original
and challenging contributions from all over the world, informed
by a variety of theoretical perspectives, including postmodernism,
marxism, feminism and queer theory. Its aim is to generate a productive
dialogue and exchange between theorists and writers in disparate
locations.
Postcolonial Studies is published 4 times a year by Taylor
and Francis under the Routledge imprint. An electronic version
of Postcolonial Studies is available free to Journal subscribers.
Taylor and Francis maintains a website which provides subscription
information, submissions guidelines, contents pages and the electronic
version of Postcolonial Studies. Click
here to access the Taylor and Francis Postcolonial Studies website.
Current Journal Happenings
The IPCS journal is on the move in more than one sense. Several
of the founding editorial group who have successfully steered Postcolonial
Studies through its first ten years of publication, and all of whom
have been Melbourne-based until now, have now taken up overseas
appointments. Sanjay Seth joins Michael Dutton at Goldsmiths in
London, while Leela Gandhi heads to University of Chicago. The other
members of the editorial team (Michele Grossman, Amanda Macdonald,
and Nishad Pandey in Melbourne, Tim Watson in Miami) remain in situ.
A decade after its founding, the journal's international reputation
as an innovative player in contemporary postcolonial debate and
inquiry has gone from strength to strength, as reflected by the
quality and profile of its contributors, the large number of submissions
it receives every year, and its citing as a top-ranked international
journal by a number of key universities both nationally and abroad.
In keeping with the Institute's desire to broaden and diversify
one of its most successful links with the international project
of postcolonial scholarship and intervention, a new editorial group
has been formed to join the existing two editorial teams that currently
produce Postcolonial Studies (the founding group and the Santa Cruz
team). Beginning in 2008/9, a Melbourne-based group of editors consisting
of David Bennett, John Cash, R. (Hari) Harindranath and Rachel Hughes
will become part of the PCS journal’s editorial collective.
Several meetings about the structure, focus and continued strength
and development of PCS have already occurred and more discussions
are underway. At a time when the Institute can look back on a decade
of thriving success for PCS and celebrate the contributions of the
founding editorial group, it also looks forward to the ways in which
these new arrangements will contribute to the continuing difference
that the journal makes on the Institute's behalf in the international
arena of postcolonial studies.
Since the last issue of this newsletter, a special issue, 10.2,
devoted to the history of theory (guest editor Ian Hunter), has
appeared – the first of two miscellany issues for the year.
Leela Gandhi’s introduction groups the issue’s diverse
essays under the rubric of “exception”. The issue includes
an important historical essay by Patrick Wolfe, “Corpus nullius:
the exception of Indians and other aliens in US constitutional discourse”,
in which the constitutional antecedents of the judicial and rights
exclusions being perpetrated at Guantánamo Bay are shown,
through a close reading of constitutional and case-law history,
to be part of the constitutive exclusionary structure upon which
is founded the United States of America. We are also pleased to
give long-overdue attention to the publication of an essay addressing
one of the key issues of the postcolonial République, by
one of the most eminent scholars of contemporary French culture,
Mireille Rosello: “Laïcité, grammar, fable: secular
teaching of secularism” comes at the problem of the “headscarf
affair”, and its attendant exceptionalisms, via a narratological
interrogation of the principal reports, statutes, political utterances
and intellectual pronouncements shaping the educational reforms
that have flowed from the affaire in order to save Republican secularism
via the correctives of Republican grammars of citizenship.
Meanwhile, issue 10.3, another strong miscellany, is in press. It
will feature a lovely reflective essay by Robert Young, “Ghost
train”, plus a valuable analysis by a young scholar, Yaakov
Perry, of Achille Mbembe’s too-little-studied work, under
the title “Law’s violations: the formalization of authority
in Achille Mbembe’s reading of the postcolony”. Pal
Ahluwalia writes his reflections on theory post-9/11 in “Afterlives
of post-colonialism” and Lorenzo Veracini considers Australia
as a “settler colonial collective” in a piece entitled
“Historylessness”.
Finally, we flag a forthcoming special issue on “Hong Kong:
10 years after colonialism”, guest edited by Laikwan Pang,
with which we will close volume 10.
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