Postcolonial Theory, Multiculturalism and the Israeli Left: A Critique of Post-Zionism

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nada Matta
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Hebrew Language

This article is a theoretical critique of the post-Zionist discourse that emerged in Israel in the early 1990s. It examines articles published by a group of leading Israeli intellectuals in Teoriya vi-Bekorit (Theory and Criticism), a Hebrew-language journal which promotes post-Zionist discourse. It focuses on three major components of the discourse: postcolonial theory, identity-politics and multiculturalism. It examines how these terms were imported into Israeli culture and society. The article highlights the problematic of applying these terms to Israel, and applies existing Marxist critique of the three theoretical dimensions. Finally, it argues for a distinctive post-Zionist critique, one that is based on solidarity among people, rather than difference and multiplicity.

Postcolonial Theory and Criticism

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Stuart Murray ◽  
Laura Chrisman ◽  
Benita Parry
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Theory And Criticism

5. New Waves of Theorizing in Global Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Almost All

This chapter evaluates new modes of theorizing in global politics. These are based on long-standing concerns in social and political theory and all of them involve identity politics in one way or another—a form of politics in which an individual’s membership of a group, based on certain distinctive characteristics such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality, acquires significant political salience and is implicated in hierarchies of power. It follows that identity itself involves issues of both who an individual is, and who that individual is not. This involves not just self-identification or self-definition, but is also mediated by the perceptions of others. In some cases there are connections with social movements concerned with issues of justice and equality in both domestic and global spheres. In almost all cases the specific issues of concern, and their theorization, have come relatively late to the agenda of global politics and so may be said to constitute a ‘new wave’ of theorizing in the discipline. The chapter looks at feminism, gender theory, racism, cultural theory, colonialism, and postcolonial theory.

scholarly journals “Westernization” and the Politics of Islam in Senegal

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-149
Author(s):  
Tejas Parasher
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
French Colonial

In much postcolonial theory, identity-politics is considered a means of subversion and possible emancipation. Consciously moving away from the political culture of the colonizer towards a rediscovery and reassertion of indigenous norms is seen as an important part of the larger postcolonial project of claiming political agency. This article problematizes this argument, and makes the case for a more critical analysis of the assertion of indigenous identity. The article turns to the work of one particular theorist—Ed van Hoven—and one particular case—Islamist politics in Senegal. Charting the development of politicized Islam since independence, it draws attention to how Senegalese governments have re-enacted the attitudes of the French colonial state.

Old and New Names. Afropolitanism, Failed-State Fiction and World Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-124
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Mari
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Failed State ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Theory And Criticism

AbstractSince its establishment more than a decade ago, the cultural and political debate on Afropolitanism has been characterized by several different positions. In particular, the Afropolitan opposition to any kind of essentialism (Eze 2014) has been counterweighed by the necessity of a connection to “knowable African communities, nations and traditions” (Gikandi 2011, 9). This debate has been reproducing a typical oscillation of postcolonial theory and criticism between the celebration of hybridity (Bhabha 1994) and the interpretation of postcolonial texts as “national allegories” (Jameson 1986). At the same time, Afropolitanism appears to be related to a more recent phenomenon, which has been defined as “national failure” in political analysis (Zartman 1995; Rotberg 2004) and “failed-state fiction” in literary criticism (Marx 2008). The latter sheds a different light on Afropolitanism, by showing its advantages and its limits both on a national and transnational level. In view of this, Afropolitan literature – including the paradigmatic works by Helon Habila (2002, 2007, 2010) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006, 2013) here analyzed – appears to be based on the persistence of “old names,” or categories, in an uneven but fruitful coexistence with the “new” ones (Eze 2016).

scholarly journals Words and objects in transposing desire and making space

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 263-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nishat Awan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Social Space ◽  
The Self ◽  
Postcolonial Identity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

In this article I will explore the relationship between space, language and objects and interrogate the role of language as a signifier for the transformation of space through cultural difference. My work is informed by the context and the methods of postcolonialism and specifically the notion of hybridity. If the hybridity of a postcolonial identity is acknowledged, then the space where these identities are negotiated could also be seen as sharing qualities of overlap and mixing. Influenced by psychoanalytic theories of the self and its relation to others, postcolonial theory has used strategies of ‘mimicry’ and ‘hybridity’ as motifs to provide a vocabulary that shifts colonial relations out of the dialectic of oppressor and oppressed. But following Lefebvre's idea that all space is social space, and Foucault's spatialisation of power, the move from the historic preoccupation with time to a spatialisation of the processes of knowledge production, allows postcolonial thinking to go beyond the complicities of identity politics, which has been one of the major criticisms of this mode of thought. As an architect, this opens up certain possibilities of interrogating postcolonial subjectivity through the spaces that are occupied and used by those who are implicated within it. This paper will focus on one such space: a park in East London.

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