Description
Book SynopsisEmploying literary, historical, and anthropological techniques, this title attempts to generate a new understanding of issues that permeate discussions of Africa by disrupting the centrality of postcolonial texts and focusing instead on the cultural and intellectual production of colonial Africans.
Trade Review“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“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.”—F. Abiola Irele, Ohio State University
“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
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Dangerous Supplements
1. “Race,” Rationality, and the Pedagogical Imperative
2. Dangerous Liaisons? Frustrated Radicals, Master Professionals
3. Colonial Self-Fashioning and the Production of History
Coda
Bibliography
Index
