Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

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

G�ttsche, Dirk

Authors

Dirk G�ttsche



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 Mar 28, 2024
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

Files





Downloadable Citations