Suggestions for a Post-colonial Theory Reading List?

[skybythelight]

Hi everyone,

 

So I'm going to be starting my MA project in the fall and plan on using the summer to read, read, read and read some more. My project is specifically on Biafran War literature, but I need to develop my background in postcolonial theory more generally, as well as in relation to Africa specifically. I'll of course be doing my own research and working with my advisor to construct my summer reading list, but I thought it couldn't hurt to check in with my fellow students: do you have any texts you'd recommend as "must-reads" for a student interested in post-colonial theory? (other than Orientalism!)

[poliscar]

Achille Mbembe's On the Postcolony is the best book in the area.

Other than that, as a somewhat brief list:

• Fanon — everything, anything
• Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism 
• C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins 
• Spivak — I think there's a collection/reader of essays now, but "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is the most common starting point. 
• Bhabha, The Location of Culture
• the Subaltern Studies group (Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ranajit Guha, etc) — Provincializing Europe and The Nation and Its Fragments are probably the most commonly read books
• Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind
• Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic + Against Race
• Balibar & Wallerstein's Race, Class, and Nation
• Denise Ferreira da Silva, Toward a Global Idea of Race
• Bill Ashcroft's anthology, The Empire Writes Back
• Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study

If you google there are also a few lists available, like http://www.english.ucla.edu/part-i-reading-lists/146-postcolonial-studies-department-reading-list and https://english.unm.edu/resources/documents/post-colonial.pdf. Lurking syllabi is also helpful. 

[skybythelight]

Thank you! I had some of those but a few are new to me. I appreciate it. 

[Between Fields]

Derek Walcott's Omeros and Assia Djebar's Fantasia are not theory books, but they do engage in reflection on the postcolonial experience quite explicitly. I'd recommend them, to help break up any heavy-duty theoretical reading binges.

[Mattie Roh]

I would add Postcolonial Literature: A reader's guide to essential criticism by Justin D. Edwards. It's a bit dry, but gives a great overview.