| Unit name | Postcolonial Matters |
|---|---|
| Unit code | GEOGM0028 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Jackson |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
| Faculty | Faculty of Science |
This unit will explore the emerging need to re-think and extend the theoretical and empirical domains of postcolonial studies, and postcolonial geographies in particular. The need comes from two inter-related conceptual and empirical advances in the humanities and social sciences: political ontology and posthumanism. Ecological, environmental, and technological questions – and pronouncements that we are, and are in, the Anthropocene – increasingly challenge the anthropocentric analyses that dominate the traditional attention of the social sciences and humanities. Human-centred orthodoxies in postcolonial analysis, whose focus has been on topics like identity, cultural hybridity, and political heterogeneity, are now also being asked to account for how human beings are entangled ontological aspects of wider relational and ecological processes. The criteria for making these relational and material claims about human entanglement also challenge constructionist and textual approaches still taken for granted in postcolonial studies. As a result, postcolonial theory, and postcolonial studies more generally, have struggled to respond effectively to new conceptual and empirical demands. Some authors have even argued that postcolonialism has either run its course, or has entered a contradictory period of decline. Despite this view, global genealogies of ongoing colonial violence, exclusion, and inequality continue to be more relevant than ever. It is clear we continue to need postcolonial critique, but in a form more responsive to contemporary theoretical demands about who we are, who are our ‘others’ (human and non-human), and how research may be done with them.
The unit will explore how postcolonial geographies are renewing themselves to meet the theoretical and empirical demands of a more-than-human world. It will address the continued relevance of postcolonial politics and ethics, but within the need for new analytical questions, methodologies, and representational strategies that draw from diverse interdisciplinary approaches, including: political ecology; indigenous studies; anthropology; material studies; agro-ecology; social movement studies; cultural and historical geography; and critical political economy.
Sites of empirical encounter will include research drawn from the Global South and Global North, urban and rural. Specific geographies could include sites in Central America (El Salvador and Guatemala), South America (Brazil, Peru, Bolivia), North America (Canada, USA, Greenland), South Asia (India), South East Asia (Indonesia), Australia, Aotearoa-New Zealand, the UK (Bristol, South West England, Wales), and, Western Asia (Israel/Palestine).
This unit will:
Enable students to engage critically with a wide range of theoretically and empirically-focused material
At the completion of this unit, students will able to:
Identify the relevance of key concepts and categories of postcolonialism and materiality to their individual research agendas and wider social politics.
The unit comprises eight, two-hour discussion-based seminars based on set readings, with a two hour introduction and two hour conclusion. Participation in discussions will contribute to student success in the course and preparation is essential. Key readings for the week should be done in advance.
Formative: Each student will present in one seminar on that seminar’s assigned readings for about fifteen minutes in length. Each presentation summarizes central themes in the reading for that week and poses issues for discussion. A copy of the presentation will be distributed to the class at the beginning of the two-hour seminar. Feedback will be given to the students within one week of their presentation.
Summative: One 4000-word essay (100%). Students may choose to examine either: an object or text through which engage key topics and concepts within the unit via a creative/productive means; or, examine a self-chosen topic on a subject of their interest arising from the unit. Guidance will be provided on an individual basis for each student, and students will be supported in their development of ideas and design of the research papers.
There is no core text-book for this unit. Instead students will be required to read a selection of journal articles, book chapters and books as specified on the reading list circulated at the start of the course.
