Course info

In the contemporary world, it is essential for students and researchers, or even the general public to engage with the postcolonial. This “postcolonial challenge” calls the conventional understandings about (almost) everything in the present into question, including state boundaries, identity, gender and sexuality, political and legal systems, arts, fashion and modes, environment, social behaviours and scientific research. Historical research and history writing is not an exception to this. There is a growing demand for alternative narratives in history writing, non-Eurocentric historiographies and the “unsilencing” of previously marginalised historical actors. In this Übung, we will read and discuss selected works categorised as “classics” of the postcolonial studies, including those by Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Aimé Césaire, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The focus of the discussion will be on the question of the impact of postcolonial studies on history research today and how to ask questions from the postcolonial perspective.