Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time - by Amanda Lagji (Hardcover)

About the Book

Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time reveals the fundamental, constitutive role of the temporal dimensions of waiting in colonial regimes of time, as well as in postcolonial framings of time, history and agency.

Book Synopsis

Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time reveals the fundamental, constitutive role of the temporal dimensions of waiting in colonial regimes of time, as well as in postcolonial framings of time, history and agency. Drawing from critical time and postcolonial studies alike, this book argues that the temporality of waiting is an essential concept to theorise the relationship between time and power in postcolonial fiction across the long twentieth century - one that illuminates the contradictory temporalities that underlie narratives of progress, modernization and development. The book contributes to the resurgence of interest in time within literary studies by demonstrating that waiting is also integral to postcolonial temporalities, from anticolonial nationalist movements for independence to forms of reconciliation after conflict. In addition to innovative readings of both classic and contemporary postcolonial novels, this study challenges the dominant narrative of the twentieth century as a time of acceleration and movement by arguing for the centrality of waiting to time-consciousness in the postcolonial world.

From the Back Cover

First book-length study to examine colonial and postcolonial temporalities through the analytic of waiting Drawing from critical time and postcolonial studies, this book argues that 'waiting' is an essential concept in theorising the relationship between time and power in postcolonial fiction across the long twentieth century - one that illuminates the contradictory temporalities that underlie narratives of colonial progress, modernisation and development. This study contributes to the resurgence of interest in time within literary studies by contending that waiting is integral to postcolonial temporalities, from anticolonial nationalist movements to forms of reconciliation after conflict. In addition to innovative readings of both classic and contemporary postcolonial novels, ranging from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Ishmael Beah's Radiance of Tomorrow, Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time challenges characterisations of the twentieth century as a time of acceleration by arguing for the centrality of waiting to time-consciousness in the postcolonial world. Amanda Lagji is Assistant Professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. Her research interests include postcolonial literatures, critical time studies, and terrorism and literature. She publishes widely on postcolonial literatures, including chapters in Transnational Africana Women's Fictions (2021), Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the 21st Century (2021), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law (2021) and Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral (2019).

Review Quotes

In this theoretically invigorating study, Amanda Lagji offers comparative close readings of work by authors from Conrad to Ishmael Beah, Armah to Coetzee (amongst others), that presses reset on our tendency to read waiting as stasis, instead recasting apparent impasse as productively disruptive to hegemonic temporalities. A timely and important work.

--Andrew van der Vlies, University of Adelaide

About the Author

Amanda Lagji is Assistant Professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. Her research interests include postcolonial literatures, critical time studies and terrorism and literature. She publishes widely on postcolonial literatures, including chapters in Transnational Africana Women's Fictions (2021), Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the 21st Century (2021), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law (2021), and Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral(2019). Recent articles have been published in Studies in the Novel (2020), Mobilities (2019), Safundi (2018), South Asian Review (2018), and African Literature Today (2016). Her book manuscript won the Northeast Modern Language Association's 2020 Book Award for the Best Unpublished Book Manuscript.