Post-imperialism, postcolonialism and beyond: Towards a periodization of cultural discourse about colonial legacies

G�ttsche, Dirk

Abstract

Taking German history and culture as a starting point, this essay suggests a historical approach to reconceptualising different forms of literary engagement with colonial discourse, colonial legacies and (post-) colonial memory in the context of Comparative Postcolonial Studies. The deliberate blending of a historical, a conceptual and a political understanding of the ‘postcolonial’ in postcolonial scholarship raises problems of periodisation and historical terminology when, for example, anti-colonial discourse from the colonial period or colonialist discourse in Weimar Germany are labelled ‘postcolonial’. The colonial revisionism of Germany’s interwar period is more usefully classed as post-imperial, as are particular strands of retrospective engagement with colonial history and legacy in British, French and other European literatures and cultures after 1945. At the same time, some recent developments in Francophone, Anglophone and German literature, e.g. Afropolitan writing, move beyond defining features of postcolonial discourse and raise the question of the post-postcolonial.

Citation

Göttsche, D. (2017). Post-imperialism, postcolonialism and beyond: Towards a periodization of cultural discourse about colonial legacies. Journal of European Studies, 47(2), 111-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047244117700070

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 18, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 26, 2017
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Nov 1, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 1, 2017
• Journal: Journal of European Studies
• Print ISSN: 0047-2441
• Electronic ISSN: 1740-2379
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 111-128
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0047244117700070
• Keywords: Colonialism, Imperialism, Postcolonialism, Comparative postcolonial studies, Memory, Afropolitanism
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/863043
• Publisher URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0047244117700070
• Contract Date: Nov 1, 2017