Beyond Britain

Lars Jensen is associate professor of cultural encounters in the Department of Culture and Identity at Roskilde University in Denmark. He is author of Unsettling Australia: Readings in Australian Cultural History (Atlantic, 2010) and co-editor of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and its Empires (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), Postcolonialising the Nordic (Ashgate, 2012) and the forthcoming collection Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond (Ashgate 2014).

This is an incisive study of the relationship between two of paradigm-shifting fields of enquiry to emerge from the second-half of the 20th century: Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Lars Jensen presents a compelling analysis of the disciplining of the fields of scholarship, locating each in its specific history of institutionalisation and political and ideological orientation, while demonstrating the ways in which the fields developed a parallel focus around the place of the individual in terms of race, ethnicity, class and gender. The figure of Stuart Hall looms large, providing the intellectual structure for a comparative study as well as acting as a political barometer for the struggle by a Black British intellectual moving between Britain and the Caribbean. An original and provocative book that explains the continuing value of critiquing power and disciplinary practices.

• Introduction: The Evolution of Postcolonial Studies and British Cultural Studies/ 1 National Culture and the Origins of British Cultural Studies/ 2 Intellectual Influences: Marxist Debates and Commonwealth Critiques/ 3 Antonio Gramsci: Bridging the Gap Between Postcolonial Studies and Cultural Studies/ 4 Subaltern Studies and Cross Cultural Approaches/ 5 Talking about the Caribbean: Terminology, Postcolonial Theory and Cultural Studies/ Conclusion: The Legacy of Stuart Hall/Bibliography/Index