Popular Postcolonialisms: Discourses of Empire and Popular Culture

288 Pages·2018·6.48 MB·English

by  Nadia Atia, Kate Houlden

Popular Postcolonialisms
Drawing together the insights of postcolonial scholarship and cultural
studies, Popular Postcolonialisms questions the place of ‘the popular’
in the postcolonial paradigm. Multidisciplinary in focus, this collection
explores the extent to which popular forms are infused with colonial
logics and whether they can be employed by those advocating for change.
It considers a range of fiction, film and non-hegemonic cultural forms,
engaging with topics such as environmental change, language activism
and cultural imperialism, alongside analysis of figures like Tarzan and
Frankenstein. Building on the work of cultural theorists, it asks whether
the popular is actually where elite conceptions of the world may best be
challenged. It also addresses middlebrow cultural production, which has
tended to be seen as antithetical to radical traditions, asking whether
this might, in fact, form an unlikely realm from which to question, cri-
tique or challenge colonial tropes. Examining the ways in which the
imprint of colonial history is in evidence (interrogated, mythologized or
sublimated) within popular cultural production, this book raises a series
of speculative questions exploring the interrelation of the popular and
the postcolonial.
Nadia Atia is Senior Lecturer in World Literature in the Department of
English at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Kate Houlden is Senior Lecturer in World Literature in the Department
of English, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.
Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial
Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury, this series presents a wide
range of research into postcolonial literatures by specialists in the field.
Volumes will concentrate on writers and writing originating in pre-
viously (or presently) colonized areas, and will include material from
non-anglophone as well as anglophone colonies and literatures. Series
editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney
58 Olive Schreiner and African Modernism
Allegory, Empire and Postcolonial Writing
Jade Munslow Ong
59 Narrating Postcolonial Arab Nations
Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine
Lindsey Moore
60 Critical Branding
Postcolonial Studies and the Market
Caroline Koegler
61 Anglo-American Imperialism and the Pacific
Discourses of Encounter
Edited by Michelle Keown, Andrew Taylor and Mandy Treagus
62 Popular Postcolonialisms
Discourses of Empire and Popular Culture
Edited by Nadia Atia and Kate Houlden
For a full list of titles published in the series, please visit www. routledge.com
Popular Postcolonialisms
Discourses of Empire and Popular
Culture
Edited by Nadia Atia and
Kate Houlden
First published 2019
by Routledge
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CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-1-138-12505-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64777-7 (ebk)
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For kindred spirits in thanks for conversations yet to be had

Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
NADIA ATIA AND KATE HOULDEN
PARt I
the Radical Popular 25
1 ‘Welcome to the University of Brixton’: BBC Radio and
the West Indian Everyday 27
RACHAEL GILMOUR
2 FUtURE HIStORIES – An Activist Practice of Archiving 47
ALDA TERRACCIANO
3 Sequential Art in the Age of Postcolonial Production:
Comics Collectives in Israel and South Africa 70
CHARLOTTA SALMI
PARt II
the Middlebrow 87
4 Murder in Mesopotamia: Agatha Christie’s Life and
Work in the Middle East 89
NADIA ATIA
5 ‘Junior Romantic Anthropologist Bore’: Colin
MacInnes’s Critical Adventures in Post-War
Multiracial Britain 108
ALICE FERREBE
viii Contents
6 Tarzan the Ape Man: Screening ‘The Subordination of
Women, Nature and Colonies’ in the 1930s 130
CHRIS CAMPBELL
ParT III
Commodification 147
7 Subcultural Fiction and the Market for Multiculturalism 149
SARAH ILOTT
8 Everything Must Go: Popularity and the Postcolonial Novel 170
SAM GOODMAN
9 Consuming Post-Millennial Indian Chick Lit: Visuality
and the Popular in Post-Millennial India 193
E. DAWSON VARUGHESE
ParT IV
Technology 211
10 Monster Mines and Pipelines: Frankenstein Figures of
Tar Sands Technology in Canadian Popular Culture 213
MARK A. McCUTCHEON
11 african or Virtual, Popular or Poetry: The Spoken Word
Platform Word N Sound Series 238
RICARDA DE HAAS
12 The Postcolonial Geek and Popular Culture in a Global Era 253
WENDY KNEPPER
List of Figures
9.1 The Zoya Factor, HarperCollins India (2008a) 196
9.2 The Zoya Factor, HarperCollins India (2008b) 197
9.3 Battle for Bittora, HarperCollins India (2010) 197
9.4 Those Pricey Thakur Girls, HarperCollins India (2013) 198
9.5 The House That BJ Built, Westland Books Ltd (2015) 198
10.1 Edward Burtynsky, Alberta Oil Sands #6. Photo
© Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier
Gallery, Toronto 222
10.2 ‘The Mine is in Sight.’ Author’s artistic rendering
of scene at runtime 00:03:59 from Avatar (2009) 227
10.3 Bucketwheel excavator. Author’s artistic rendering
of scene at runtime 00:04:07 from Avatar (2009) 228
11.1 Word N Sound Live Literature Co. Homepage,
September 2016. Permission courtesy of Thabiso
Steven Mohare and Qhakaza Mbali Mthembu CEOs 239
11.2 Word N Sound Live Literature Co. Permission
courtesy of Thabiso Steven Mohare and Qhakaza
Mbali Mthembu CEOs 241
12.1 Postcolonial DH. NO. 10 by kind permission of
Adeline Koh 269
12.2 Postcolonial DH. NO. 2 by kind permission of
Adeline Koh 269