Interdisciplinary Measures

Graham Huggan is Professor of Postcolonial and Commonwealth Literatures at the University of Leeds. He is author of the influential volume The Postcolonial Exotic (Routledge, 2001) among many previous books.

The book is published by Liverpool University Press, which has come from nowhere in recent years to being one of the leading publishers of postcolonial studies in the United Kingdom. Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol 18.1, 2010 At first glance Graham Huggan's Interdisciplinary Measures appears hostile to the book-bound approach of Fraser et al. Indeed, the text explicitly names Fraser as representative of a more conservative literary criticism. However, Huggan's is not a simple abandonment of English Studies, and his take on interdisciplinary is more 'measured' than first appears. The book is published by Liverpool University Press, which has come from nowhere in recent years to being one of the leading publishers of postcolonial studies in the United Kingdom. In addition to strong representations under the headings of slavery, Latin American Studies and Francophone Studies, 2008 sees the Press launch a new series edited by Graham Huggan and Andrew Thompson: 'Postcolonialism Across the Disciplines'. As this title suggests, the series harnesses the recent interest in cross-disciplinary postcolonial research, and opens with two publications, including Huggan's. (The other, Chris Bongie's Friends and Enemies: The Scribal Politics of Post/Colonial Literature was not, unfortunately, received in time for review.) Interdisciplinary Measures is a collection of essays, most of which were written between 1990 and 2005. The book raises interesting and important questions around the 'generalisability' of postcolonial studies, and what emerging interests in trans disciplinary, and multilingual research mean for the 'enveloped' discipline of literary studies. His lively and informed introduction retains a healthy skepticism around interdisciplinarity, which he notes can imply 'an ideal form of institutionalized co-operation that is belied both by the "textual excesses" of humanities studies and by the "continuing inhibitions" of the social sciences towards an analysis of cultural forms' (p. 5). At the same time he takes seriously the possibilities of combining what the series editors call 'different, discontinuously structured disciplinary knowledges'. He goes on to argue that if first-wave postcolonialism (by which he means the literature-led discipline of the 1980s and early 1990s) has been overly anxious about roaming beyond the field 'Eng Lit', 'second-wave' postcolonialism (by which he means the more politically motivated interdisciplinary studies of the present), has not been concerned enough about disciplinary differences, a fact which has led to 'symptomatic' literary readings: 'Postcolonialism's more immediate future surely lies in a patient, mutually transformative dialogue between the disciplines rather than in triumphalist announcements of the imminent end of disciplinarity tout court' (p. 13). Within this context, Huggan argues for the value of a literature-centred approach to cross-disciplinary postcolonial studies. Literary studies, he suggests, provides self-reflexivity and subtlety, helping to illuminate the complexities and contradictions of colonialism, even if it can no longer do this on its own. Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol 18.1

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionSection I. Literature, Geography, Environment1 Decolonizing the Map: Postcolonialism, Poststructuralism and the Cartographic Connection2 Unsettled Settlers: Postcolonialism, Travelling Theory and the New Migrant Aesthetics3 Postcolonial Geography, Travel Writing and the Myth of Wild Africa4 ‘Greening’ Postcolonialism: Ecocritical PerspectivesSection II. Literature, Culture, Anthropology5 Anthropologists and Other Frauds6 African Literature and the Anthropological Exotic7 (Post)Colonialism, Anthropology and the Magic of Mimesis8 Maps, Dreams and the Presentation of Ethnographic NarrativeSection III. Literature, History, Memory9 Philomela’s Retold Story: Silence, Music and the Postcolonial Text10 Ghost Stories, Bone Flutes, Cannibal Counter-memory11 Cultural Memory in Postcolonial Fiction: The Uses and Abuses of Ned Kelly12 (Not) Reading OrientalismIndex