London's histories of migration and settlement and the resulting diverse, hybrid communities have engendered new forms of social and cultural activity reflected in a wealth of novels, poems, films and songs. Postcolonial London explores the imaginative transformation of the city by African, Asian, Caribbean and South Pacific writers since the 1950s. John McLeod engages freshly with the work of both well-known and emergent writers, including Sam Selvon, Doris Lessing, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Colin MacInnes, Bernardine Evaristo, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Fred D'Aguiar. In reading a select body of writing in its social contexts and exploring contrasting attitudes to London's diasporic transformation, he traces an exciting history of resistance to the prejudice and racism that have at least in part characterised the postcolonial city. Rewritings of London, he argues, bear witness to the determination, imagination and creativity of the city's migrants and their descendants. This is a superb study of the ways in which 'imperial centre' might be rewritten as postcolonial metropolis. It represents essential reading for those interested in British or postcolonial literature, or in theorisations of the city and metropolitan culture.

Alongside the major postcolonial writers, the book provides analytical study of newer writers who have to date received little critical attention, eg. Linton Kwesi Johnson, Bernardine Evaristo, Fred D'Aguiar Postcolonial studies and contemporary fiction are among the most popular courses at undergraduate level Published to coincide with our major postcolonial studies promotions in 2004, including a full colour postcolonial mini-catalogue mailed to academics worldwide, and inserts at conferences in Canterbury (UK), Frankfurt (Germany) and Hyderabad (India) The book's relevance expands beyond London; the 'city' is a trendy topic in literary and cultural studies and this book uses theories of the metropolis to explore ideas of empire and the nation. uses theories of the metropolis to explore ideas of empire and the nation.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1, University of Marburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Postmodern and/or Postcolonial: Contemporary Writing from Britain and the Commonwealth, language: English, abstract: Zadie Smith's novel "White Teeth" deals with families and generations from diverse ethnic backgrounds; and in the four main chapters Archie 1974, 1945, Samad 1984, 1857, Irie 1990, 1907, and Magid, Millat and Marcus 1992, 1999, she approaches them from several angles. As a result, there has been a discussion on who is to be treated as the central character in this novel. One possible answer to this is offered by Nina Shen Rastogi: The main character in White Teeth isn't a character in any traditional sense - it's the city of London itself. Smith's goal is less to paint a portrait of any particular character than it is to create a large-scale character sketch of a particular place and a particular time. White Teeth is about the foibles of a community of near-strangers and almost-friends as it collectively stumbles towards an uncertain future. The paper will investigate this approach by dealing with London as it is depicted in this postcolonial novel. After a working definition on the diversely discussed notion of postcolonialism (I.1), there will be a closer look on London, both as a physical location (I.2.a) and a literary region (I.2.b). The main issues will be the history of immigration, facts about multiculturalism today, and a brief look on how the colonial legacy has been depicted in postcolonial literature in London. A conclusion (I.3) will summarize the results and present some main questions for the analysis of White Teeth (II). Here, the paper will take a look on the role of the characters interacting with each other and on how they compromise between their cultural legacy and London's society (II.1). This will be the major part of the analysis. In two sho

This book considers twentieth and twenty-first century literary and cultural formations of the postcolonial city and the constitution of new subjects within it. Varma offers a reading of both historical and contemporary debates on urbanism through the filter of postcolonial fictions and the cultural fields surrounding and containing them. In particular, she presents a representational history of London, Nairobi and Bombay in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and engages three key theoretical frameworks—the city within postcolonial theory and culture (its troubled salience in the construction of postcolonial public spheres and identities, from local, rural, ethnic/"tribal", and regional to "national", cosmopolitan and transnational subjects and spaces); postcolonial fictions as constituting a new world literary space and as a site of the articulation of contending narratives of urban space, global culture and postcolonial development; and postcolonial feminist citizenship as a universal political project challenging current neo-liberal and post neo-liberal contractions and eviscerations of public spaces and rights.

This study analyses four new genres of literature and film that have evolved to accommodate and negotiate the changing face of postcolonial Britain since 1990: British Muslim Bildungsromane, gothic tales of postcolonial England, the subcultural urban novel and multicultural British comedy.

This is a critical survey of contemporary South Asian Britain. The book combines analysis with empirically rich studies to map out the diversity of the British Asian way of life. The contributors provide insights & information on the Asian British experience in its socio-economic & cultural dimensions.

Imagining London examines representations of the English metropolis in Canadian, West Indian, South Asian, and second-generation 'black British' novels written in the last half of the twentieth century.

Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalizing categories of the Enlightenment. In this devastating critique, mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory. Focusing on the hugely popular Subaltern Studies project, Chibber shows that its foundational arguments are based on a series of analytical and historical misapprehensions. He demonstrates that it is possible to affirm a universalizing theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital promises to be a historical milestone in contemporary social theory.

Enoch Powell's explosive rhetoric against black immigration and anti-discrimination law transformed the terrain of British race politics and cast a long shadow over British society. Using extensive archival research, Camilla Schofield offers a radical reappraisal of Powell's political career and insists that his historical significance is inseparable from the political generation he sought to represent. Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain follows Powell's trajectory from an officer in the British Raj to the centre of British politics and, finally, to his turn to Ulster Unionism. She argues that Powell and the mass movement against 'New Commonwealth' immigration that he inspired shed light on Britain's war generation, popular understandings of the welfare state and the significance of memories of war and empire in the making of postcolonial Britain. Through Powell, Schofield illuminates the complex relationship between British social democracy, racism and the politics of imperial decline in Britain.

In an effort to deny the ongoing effect of colonialism and imperialism on contemporary political life, the death knell for a multicultural society has been sounded from all sides. That's the provocative argument Paul Gilroy makes in this unorthodox defense of the multiculture. Gilroy's searing analyses of race, politics, and culture have always remained attentive to the material conditions of black people and the ways in which blacks have defaced the "clean edifice of white supremacy." In Postcolonial Melancholia, he continues the conversation he began in the landmark study of race and nation 'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack' by once again departing from conventional wisdom to examine—and defend—multiculturalism within the context of the post-9/11 "politics of security." This book adapts the concept of melancholia from its Freudian origins and applies it not to individual grief but to the social pathology of neoimperialist politics. The melancholic reactions that have obstructed the process of working through the legacy of colonialism are implicated not only in hostility and violence directed at blacks, immigrants, and aliens but in an inability to value the ordinary, unruly multiculture that has evolved organically and unnoticed in urban centers. Drawing on the seminal discussions of race begun by Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, and George Orwell, Gilroy crafts a nuanced argument with far-reaching implications. Ultimately, Postcolonial Melancholia goes beyond the idea of mere tolerance to propose that it is possible to celebrate the multiculture and live with otherness without becoming anxious, fearful, or violent.