Overview

Full Product Details

9780822326410

Table of Contents

Reviews

A thoroughly original work. Subject to Colonialism establishes Desai as a new authority in the study of African letters and thought across the twentieth century. - David William Cohen, author of The Combing of History 'Engaging' is how I would describe the effect of Desai's original reading of an original selection from the colonial library. With its unassuming honesty, clarity of style, and fine balance of argument and information-virtues not often displayed in 'postcolonial' writing-this book is bound to find the readers it deserves beyond the narrow circle of the experts and the converted. - Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam Gaurav Desai has adopted in this study an original and productive approach to postcolonial literature by situating the discursive practices generated by the colonial encounter in a more comprehensive perspective than is usually offered in studies of this kind. He places the work of Africans such as the Kikuyu Jomo Kenyatta and the Tiv Akiga Sai in immediate relation to the western representations of Africa, seeing the literature produced on both sides of the colonial divide as an essential and constitutive part of the 'colonial library.' This comes to define in his interpretation an area of contending discourses, so that what Desai presents in this book is nothing less than Bakhtin's 'logosphere,' in the specific context of the colonial situation. - F. Abiola Irele, Ohio State University [We do have permission to shorten this.]

Author Information

Gaurav Desai is Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Program of African and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available