European Postcolonial Studies and Ireland: Towards a Conversation amongst the Colonized of Europe

In the 1980s, key Irish Studies scholars proposed that Irish culture, politics and economics – both past and present – are most usefully viewed in the context of imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism. The result of this intervention is an Irish postcolonial studies which, over the past 35 years, has produced an influential body of scholarship premised on the idea that Ireland is a colony/former colony of the British Empire. Notwithstanding its considerable impact, Irish postcolonial studies has not been without its detractors, with the country's location within Europe forming the basis for one of most persistent objections to the application of a postcolonial framework to Ireland. Given the key role assigned to geography in the postcolonial debate in Ireland, this article explores the implications for Ireland of an emerging postcolonial critique centred on Europe. In addition to discussing the concept of internal colonisation as applied to such Western European countries as Italy and Britain, the article makes reference to postcolonial analyses of the region of Eastern and Central Europe and its relationship with both Russia and Western Europe. The article acknowledges that the branch of European postcolonial studies that focuses on uneven power relationships within and between European countries offers a useful challenge to the argument that Ireland should either be examined within a European framework or a postcolonial one, but argues that the categorisation of a greater number of European societies as colonies or former colonies raises important questions that require further debate.     

A Postcolonial Critique of Community Energy: Searching for Community as Solidarity in India and Scotland

Community renewable energy (CRE) represents a growing empirical and academic turn towards community‐based sustainability and climate change interventions. This paper brings together postcolonial theory and CRE for the first time to outline fundamental tensions in the conceptualisation and application of the idea of community. The understanding of community within the CRE discourse is largely: (1) location‐based; and/or (2) a community of choice that is consciously opted into. Driven by postcolonial theory, this paper counterpoises both as a form of community as contract against an idea of community as solidarity. Its central thesis is that actually existing community, contrary to how the bulk of CRE literature commonly understands it, is a combination of bonds of solidarity and emergent purposes. The paper conceptualises community as fluid bonds of solidarity that align and realign differently around different purposes.     

The Causes of Iran's 1953 Coup: A Critique of Darioush Bayandor's Iran and the CIA

This article presents a detailed criticism of Darioush Bayandor's book Iran and the CIA. Bayandor argues that certain Shi'a clerics, rather than the US Central Intelligence Agency, were the main actors responsible for overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953. Bayandor presents no major new evidence to support this claim. He gives too much weight to certain statements, draws unwarranted inferences from others, and discounts or disregards a wealth of evidence that conflicts with his account. He overemphasizes the role of civilian crowds in the overthrow of Mosaddeq and underemphasizes the role of Iranian military units organized by the CIA. And he fails to acknowledge the importance of US and especially British efforts to foment opposition to Mosaddeq before the coup.     

Quebec and Canada at the Crossroads: A Nation within a Nation

Abstract. I argue first that there are many different concepts of the nation, and advocate a certain conceptual pluralism. I also argue that a population as a whole cannot constitute a nation unless it has a certain national consciousness. I then show that we must adopt a fundamental principle of tolerance. I also try to attend to the complexities of the relations between Quebec and Canada, and argue that different populations represent themselves as nations in different ways and with different concepts. 1 show that Quebec constitutes a nation within a nation. I then wonder what it would mean for Canadians to accept a Quebec nation. Finally, I try to explain why a very large proportion of the population of Quebec has increasingly been favourable to sovereignty, and favourable to making a partnership proposal to Canada.     

Encounter with the Past: Design Work for a Postcolonial Commemoration

The bicentennial of Captain Vancouver's arrival was the occasion for a series of festivities in Vancouver during the summer of 1992. This paper analyzes the major event commissioned by the city which, contrary to most commemorations of colonial histories, focused on immigrants' experiences of arrival and encounter with local inhabitants. Writing as a member of the firm that was responsible for creating temporary architecture for this event, the author analyzes the attempt to work through notions of heteroglossia in a civic commemoration.     

Transcending Borders: Objects on the Move

Does the demand for archaeological artefacts in the legal marketplace in Israel increase the looting of archaeological sites in the region? Through the course of investigating this question it became apparent that while consumer demand may be at the heart of the trade in antiquities, the nature and driving forces behind looting are far more complex than is often understood. The motivations for looting involve notions of nationalism, the forces of globalism, conflicting preservation and management plans, colonialism, and long-entrenched traditional practices. It is an examination of this complexity (i.e. the multiple forms of and incentives for looting), which forms the focus of this paper. This is an exploration of the multivocality of the various agents who make it possible for objects to transcend borders.     

Borders and banknotes: the national perspective

Replacing a banknotes series is meaningful for politicians and the general public even today, while most transactions are executed through virtual means. The choice of images carried on banknotes represents the limits of the State's sovereign border and becomes a means of banal nationalism. Moreover, by utilising scopic regimes, the hegemony portrays the cultural and political borders: historical figures from the country's past on one side, and an imagined or physical border, expressed through the illustrations on the back. This paper addresses the latter and examines the case of the State of Israel. The analysis of sites and landscapes that appear on national banknotes can decipher the construction process of a ‘territorial identity’ which, along with struggles for maintaining identity, provides the basis of the nation‐state. Using Williams's typology of selective tradition, we argue that Israeli banknotes demonstrate a mixture of residual and new cultural content.     

The Rise of the Francophone Postcolonial Intellectual: The Emergence of a Tradition

Although discussions of the French intellectual often address engagement with anti-colonialism and the decolonisation process more generally, most notably in relation to the Algerian War of Independence, critical attention is rarely directed at the existence of a wider yet related intellectual culture that may connect the disparate parts of the French-speaking world. This article explores the rise of the postcolonial intellectual in this politico-cultural and linguistic space, and asks whether such a figure may be seen as part of a coherent tradition. Foregrounding the interdependency and regular overlap of ‘French’ and ‘Francophone’ intellectual cultures, the study creates connections between thinkers in metropolitan France and its former colonies, placed here in a dialectical, conjunctive rather than in a binary, disjunctive relationship. The article explores three case studies – those of Victor Segalen (central to the work of such key postcolonial thinkers as Edouard Glissant and Abdelkebir Khatibi), Léopold Sédar Senghor and Frantz Fanon – in order to underline the complex genealogies of the emergent tradition it identifies. It concludes with a consideration of the definitive role of the postcolonial intellectual in debates regarding the legacy of colonialism in contemporary France.     

Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa: Breaking the Silence

Postcolonial archaeologies in Africa are engaged in a variety of agendas including the decolonization of everyday practices in the field and in the classroom. Postcolonial theory, concerned with issues of power and the Other, is increasingly being invoked to examine how archaeologists conduct their field research and how archaeology is used to dismantle essentialized histories—the metanarratives that arose in the colonial as well as the postcolonial era. Easily misunderstood, however, is the passion expressed by some African archaeologists who are voicing their own views while simultaneously trying to free themselves from dominating “expert” voices. These occurrences create tensions in archaeological discourse that are a natural part of decolonizing archaeology, joining other forms of disenchantment, particularly the disenchantments arising in contemporary African communities about social services, civil society, and human rights. Archaeologists are also implicated in disenchantments as they conduct investigations in the midst of people who may be without water or are suffering from HIV/AIDS—conditions that starkly contrast with their own comfortable lives. We may also need to reconsider how to deal with states that see archaeological research as contrary to nation building. This essay responds to some current misunderstandings that have arisen over these and related issues.