Browse Hierarchy INRL7013: Postcolonial Perspectives: Security, Violence and Resistance

This module sheds light on questions of security, violence and resistance from a postcolonial perspective. It explores how phenomena such as terrorism, migration, violent conflict and racism, as well as political responses to these phenomena, can only be understood in relation to past colonial contexts, including the inscription of racial identities and material exploitation that these contexts entailed. The module discusses how contemporary notions such as 'Islamic extremism', the 'oppressed Muslim woman' or the 'developing/Third world' are used to elevate Western societies to a status of cultural and political superiority. This gives legitimacy to strategies such as the waging of war to defend 'our' way of life, and the pacification and 'development' of other societies; however, it also gives rise to violent as well as non-violent resistances. The module aims to provide space for an in-depth reading of some central texts of postcolonial theory, but even more so for exploring their relation to a variety of practical political and cultural sites around questions of security, violence and resistance.