Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe: Critics, Artists, Movements, and their Publics

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Diasporic, migrant, and/or non-white intellectuals have always played an important role in European societies, at least since the figure of the public intellectual emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century; yet, they have often remained unsung. This volume reengages with influential figures through a postcolonial lens. It does so, not only by offering portraits of 'traditional' intellectuals such as cultivated academics and philosophers, but also by bringing to the fore artists, writers and activists, as well as social movements and new forms of mobilization, who/that belong (and contribute) to the intellectual scene. The book, explores figures of postcolonial intellectuals in Europe and, in doing so, questions the very definition of 'public intellectual', on the one hand, and the meaning of such a thing as 'Europe', on the other.

Reviews

Here postcolonialperspectives sequence into a heterogeneityof cultural and political practices that rework the archives of the West in another key, critically challenging thecontinuing colonial formation of thepresent. -- Iain Chambers, Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at the Oriental University in Naples
Ponzanesi and Habed have given us that rare gift in trying times: a wide-ranging and broadly comparative examination of the significance of the work of postcolonial scholars and public thinkers in debates on the various problems that afflict Europe today. Providing us with signposts and fresh research agendas, Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe will prove to be one of the most innovative volumes on the question of postcolonial scholarship in a very long time. -- Ato Quayson, Professor of English, University of Toronto
This is a fascinating and timely book. Anticolonial Lebanese princes and West Indian revolutionary black Marxists, thinkers like Arendt and Derrida and contemporary social movements, artistic activists and writers like Rushdie stage engaging and often displacing dialogues across the pages of Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe. And the postcolonial intellectual becomes a prism that allows us to rethink at the same time both Europe and the postcolonial. Opening up new angles on a politics of liberation in these hard times. -- Sandro Mezzadra, Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Bologna

Author Bio

Sandra Ponzanesi is Professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Adriano Jos Habed is a doctoral student in Political Philosophy and Gender Studies at the Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Italy, and the Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.