Special Issue on: "Confronting Postcoloniality"

Guest Editor: Angana P. Chatterji

Call Close Date: Jul 2008

Postcolonial justice is a fiction in so many ways. There is a dearth of public discussion on how the structure of the modern nation-state itself supports and makes necessary violent action. Or how national interest has failed the marginalized. For postcoloniality, an emergent and urgent question is how the ongoing legacies of colonization impact thought, action, history. This issue is an invitation for us to assess the effects of histories of oppression, their persistence and multiple strategies that oppose injustice in the present.

Somewhere in worlds simultaneously pre and post modern, conflicted histories must be rigorously addressed. Democratization and secularization of nations requires rethinking the very economic, cultural, military and political structures that currently organize states. Radicalized participation of the citizenry, particularly its most marginalized sections, is necessary to adequately address such diverse concerns as cultural survival, environmental justice, social equity, human rights and economic sustainability.

This special issue is an invitation to explore critical and contradictory issues in postcolonial nationalism and nation building as negotiated within complex power dynamics mediated by race, class, gender, identity, religion, and larger North-South relations. It is an invitation to explore issues of globalization, development and culture, as they impact and are shaped by the fabric of nation building. It is an invitation to explore the politics of dominance, marginality, and resistance and the precarious alliances that result.

Papers need to be reviewed and selected by May 2008 so they can be typeset by Jul 2008 and printed and mailed by end of 2008.

Contact for Submissions:

Angana P. Chatterji

Professor, Social and Cultural Anthropology

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Address: 4th Floor. 1453 Mission Street.

San Francisco, California - 94103. USA

Phone: (415) 575 6100. Ext. 442

E-mail: Angana@aol.com