Siting Postcoloniality

The contributors to Siting Postcoloniality reevaluate the notion of the postcolonial by focusing on the Sinosphere-the region of East and Southeast Asia that has been significantly shaped by relations with China throughout history. Pointing out that the history of imperialism in China and Southeast Asia is longer and more complex than Euro-American imperialism, the contributors complicate the traditional postcolonial binaries of center-periphery, colonizer-colonized, and developed-developing. Among other topics, they examine socialist China's attempts to break with Soviet cultural hegemony; the postcoloniality of Taiwan as it negotiates the legacy of Japanese colonial rule; Southeast Asian and South Asian diasporic experiences of colonialism; and Hong Kong's complex colonial experiences under the British, the Japanese, and mainland China. The contributors show how postcolonial theory's central concepts cannot adequately explain colonialism in the Sinosphere. Challenging fundamental axioms of postcolonial studies, this volume forcefully suggests that postcolonial theory needs to be rethought.

Contributors. Pheng Cheah, Dai Jinhua, Caroline S. Hau, Elaine Yee Lin Ho, Wendy Larson, Liao Ping-hui, Lin Pei-yin, Lo Kwai-Cheung, Lui Tai-lok, Pang Laikwan, Lisa Rofel, David Der-wei Wang, Erebus Wong, Robert J. C. Young

"Siting Postcoloniality should be most appreciated for its vanguard effort to nuance and update postcolonial theory by unpacking the illuminating relevance of the Sinosphere experiences. Correcting the field’s long-standing geographical bias against Sinitic-influenced regions, the volume brims with insights on fluid subjectivities rooted in the dialectics of coloniality and temporality."

- Chan Cheow Thia (Southeast Asian Studies) "Overall, this is a strong volume that both augments existing discourses and suggests new possibilities for postcolonial studies across a portion of the Sinosphere. . . . [T]he clarity and quality of writing is, on the whole, excellent, and chapters are either accessible as introductory pieces to specific topics or make clear and compelling intellectual contributions to their relevant fields." - Kyle Shernuk (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture) "Peng Cheah and Caroline Hau, together with the other contributors, have successfully worked towards remedying a grave problem within the field of postcolonialism, and they justly point out that East and Southeast Asia have an important and rightful place within this academic field . . . it is an important vantage point for further study, and invaluable to anyone interested in postcolonialism and/or East and Southeast Asia." - Tijs Hopman (IIAS Review)

Pheng Cheah is Professor of Rhetoric and Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature, also published by Duke University Press.

Caroline S. Hau is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University and author of The Chinese Question: Ethnicity, Nation, and Region in and beyond the Philippines.

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