Description
Book SynopsisThis bold intervention in debates about the role of theory in the humanities advocates the development of a reciprocal, relational, and intersectional critical methodology attentive to the legacies of colonialism.
Trade Review“
The Creolization of Theory is a highly significant, originally and thoughtfully conceived volume. It advances contemporary debates about the place of theory in cultural criticism in the aftermath of postmodernism, decolonization, and globalization. One of its greatest contributions is to critically decenter European theory in order to highlight the plurality of theories that emerges out of the material processes of decolonization.”—
Lisa Lowe, University of California, San Diego
“Showcasing considerable critical vision and rigorous inquiry,
The Creolization of Theory is an ambitious collective endeavor to rethink the notion of theory, which has been instrumental in reshaping humanistic studies in North America in the past few decades. The contributors help to develop an understanding of theory as an evolving, rather than completed, phenomenon, one that must continue to be subject to new historical and cross-cultural challenges.”—
Rey Chow, author of
The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work“The essays in
The Creolization of Theory present us with an excess of lucidity on the complex issues that grow out of the mixings, interrelations, and multidirectionalities of theory in today’s world. Their implications range far beyond the academy. Several of the essays here are destined to be returned to again and again. A volume to be celebrated.”—
Ato Quayson, author of
Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation“[T]he essays investigate entanglements in knowledge systems, offering productive approaches rather than misleading dichotomies. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.” -- R. D. Newman * Choice *
“This rich and impressively broad-ranging book lives up to its interdisciplinary billing, embodying, often within the same essay, a multiplicity of approaches and methods. It is testament to the fact that reports of theory’s death have not only been exaggerated, but indeed positively misplaced.” -- Maeve McCusker * Modern Language Review *
“As a whole,
The Creolization of Theory is extremely well-written. While the contributors specialize in fields as diverse as political philosophy, comparative literature, gender studies, and Area Studies, they successfully present their ideas using terminology comprehensible for general scholars. Moreover, the book is more than the sum of its parts: the deliberate cross-dialogue between the essays will forward future thought.” -- Jonathan Fleck * E3W Review of Books *
"The essays of this volume, which constantly reflect upon the place of theory in the academy, as well as the origins and future of postcolonial, ethnic and Francophone studies, constitute a landmark of postcolonial studies that will no doubt be of great interest to students and scholars alike." -- Roxanna Curto * SubStance *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Creolization of Theory / Shu-mei Shih and Françoise Lionnet 1
Part 1. Creolizing Methodologies
1. Symptomatically Black: A Creolization of the Political / Barnor Hesse 37
2. Postslavery and Postcolonial Representations: Comparative Approaches / Anne Donadey 62
3. Crises of Money / Pheng Cheah 83
4. Material Histories of Transcolonial Loss: Creolizing Psychoanalytic Theories of Melancholia? / Liz Constable 112
5. From Multicultural to Creole Subjects: David Henry Hwang's Collaborative Works with Philip Glass / Ping-hui Liao 142
Part 2. Epistemological Locations
6. I Am Where I Think: Remapping the Order of Knowing / Walter Mignolo 159
7. Taiwan in Modernity/Coloniality:
Orphan of Asia and the Colonial Difference / Leo Ching 193
8. Toward a Diasporic Citizen? From Internationalism to Cosmopolitics / Etienne Balibar 207
9. "The Forces of Creolization": Colorblindness and Visible Minorities in the New Europe / Fatima El-Tayeb 226
Part 3. Appendix
A. Europe and the Antilles: An Interview with Edouard Glissant / Andrea Schwieger Hiepko (Translated by Julin Everett) 255
B. Creolization: Definition and Critique / Dominique Chancé (Translated by Julin Everett) 262
References 269
Contributors 293
Index 297
