Title
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
4-2015
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Abstract
Rather than agreeing to any one meaning or referent, most critics these days speak of ‘post-colonialisms’ to refer principally to ‘historical, social and economic material conditions’ and at other times to ‘historically-situated imaginative products’ and ‘aesthetic practices: representations, discourses and values’ (McLeod 2000: 254). Arising from subaltern studies, its theorists embrace hybridity, indict alterity, analyze colonial discourse, and employ strategic essentialism to promote identity politics. Under its influence, a strain of self-interrogation has for decades run as an undercurrent through much of anthropology and archaeology. Topics including looting, repatriation, stewardship, and the transformation of disciplinary identity are now persistent tropes in the field. Indigenous archaeology, emergent cosmopolitanisms, building up knowledge from below—these now occupy ongoing archaeological work. Limiting its applicability, though, are charges against its homogenization of colonial experience, its perpetuation of academic imperialism, and its relative neglect, until recently, of regions such as Latin America.
Chapter of
Oxford Handbook of Archeological Theory
Editor
Ulrike Sommer
Andrew Gardner
Recommended Citation
Hawley, J. C. (2015) Postcolonial Theory. In U. Sommer & A. Gardner (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199567942.013.035
Comments
Copyright © 2015 Oxford University Press. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. This material was originally published in Oxford Handbook of Archeological Theory edited by Ulrike Sommer & Andrew Gardner, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/rights/permissions.