Introduction: Postcolonial modernity and the rest of history

Abstract

Postcolonial studies have often based their critiques of colonialism on critiques of modernity. As a result, they tend to limit their purview to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. challenges these conventional limits by questioning prevailing assumptions about periodization. We take inspiration in our own critique of modernity’s role in postcolonial studies from R. Radhakrishan’s "Postmodernism and the Rest of the World." For Radhakrishan, postmodern studies disavow their links to the modern in order to avoid grappling with the enduring effects of colonial histories.1 Similarly, postcolonial studies claim distance from premodern histories so as to deny the relevance of premodern dynamics of conquest and settlement to subsequent expansionist projects. Indeed, postcolonial critics question the very existence of colonialism in the absence of modernity. We argue here for a reconceptualization of colonial temporality such that postcolonial studies can enter into new kinds of historical dialogue.