Postcolonial Translocations: Cultural Representation and Critical Spatial Thinking (Cross/Cultures)

The sites from which postcolonial cultural articulations develop and the sites at which they are received have undergone profound transformations within the last decades. This book traces the accelerating emergence of cultural crossovers and overlaps in a global perspective and through a variety of disciplinary approaches. It starts from the premise that after the ‘spatial turn’ human action and cultural representations can no longer be grasped as firmly located in or clearly demarcated by territorial entities. The collection of essays investigates postcolonial articulations of various genres and media in their spatiality and locatedness while envisaging acts of location as dynamic cultural processes. It explores the ways in which critical spatial thinking can be made productive: Testing the uses and limitations of ‘translocation’ as an open exploratory model for a critically spatialized postcolonial studies, it covers a wide range of cultural expressions from the anglophone world and beyond – literature, film, TV, photography and other forms of visual art, philosophy, historical memory, and tourism.
The extensive introductory chapter charts various facets of spatial thinking from a variety of disciplines, and critically discusses their implications for postcolonial studies. The contributors’ essays range from theoretical interventions into the critical routines of postcolonial criticism to case studies of specific cultural texts, objects, and events reflecting temporal and spatial, material and intellectual, physical and spiritual mobility. What emerges is a fascinating survey of the multiple directions postcolonial translocations can take in the future.
This book is aimed at students and scholars of postcolonial literary and cultural studies, diaspora studies, migration studies, transnational studies, globalisation studies, critical space studies, urban studies, film studies, media studies, art history, philosophy, history, and anthropology.
Contributors: Diana Brydon, Lars Eckstein, Paloma Fresno-Calleja, Lucia Krämer, Gesa Mackenthun, Thomas Martinek, Sandra Meyer, Therese-M. Meyer, Marga Munkelt, Lynda Ng, Claudia Perner, Katharina Rennhak, Gundo Rial y Costas, Markus Schmitz, Mark Stein, Silke Stroh, Kathy-Ann Tan, Petra Tournay-Theodotou, Daria Tunca, Jessica Voges, Roland Walter, Dirk Wiemann.

All four co-editors, Marga Munkelt, Markus Schmitz, Mark Stein, and Silke Stroh, are based in the English Department of the University of Münster.