1. Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israeli Conflict is a 2008 book edited by Philip Carl
Salzman and Donna Robinson Divine and published by Routledge Press.
The book is based on the proceedings of a conference on "Postcolonial Theory and the Middle
East" held at Case Western Reserve University in 2005. 1
The essays were first published in a
special issue of the journal Israel Affairs.
Postcolonial theory is one of the main frameworks for thinking about the world and acting to
change the world. Arising in academia and reshaping humanities and social sciences disciplines,
postcolonial theory argues that our ideas about foreigners, particularly our negative ideas about
them, are determined not by a true will to understand, but rather by our desire to conquer,
dominate, and exploit them. According to postcolonial theory, the cause of poverty, tyranny, and
misery in the world, and of failed societies around the world, is Euro-American imperialism and
colonialism. Previously published as a special issue of Israel Affairs, this work examines and
challenges postcolonial theory. In scholarly, research-based papers, the specialist authors
examine various facets of postcolonial theory and application. First, the theoretical assumption
and formulations of postcolonial theory are scrutinized and found dubious. Second, the
deleterious impact on academicdisciplines of postcolonial theory is demonstrated. Third, the
distorted postcolonial view of history, its obsession with current events to the exclusion of the
historical basis of events, is exposed and corrected. Fourth, an examination of Middle Eastern
culture challenges the assumption that these societies have been shaped entirely, and victimized,
by Western intrusion. Finally, exploring the Arab-Israel conflict, the one-sided case of
postcolonial Arabism is explored and found to be faulty.
1
[www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=2787]

2. The book contains the following essays:
Irfan Khawaja “Essentialism, Consistency, and Islam: A Critique of Edward Said‟s
Orientalism”
Ronald Niezen “Postcolonialism and the Utopian Imagination”
Ed Morgan “Orientalism and the Foreign Sovereign: Today I am a Man of Law”
Laurie Zoloth “Mistaken-ness and the Nature of the „Post”: The Ethics and the
Inevitability of Error in theoretical Work”
Herbert Lewis “The Influence of Edward Said and Orientalism on Anthropology, or: Can
the Anthropologist Speak?”
Gerald M. Steinberg “Postcolonial theory and the Ideology of Peace Studies”
Efraim Karsh “The Missing Piece: Islamic Imperialism”
David Cook “The Muslim Man‟s Burden: Muslim Intellectuals confront their Imperialist
Past”
Andrew Bostom “Negating the Legacy of Jihad in Palestine”
Philip Carl Salzman “Arab Culture and Postcolonial Theory”
Richard Landes “Edward Said and the Culture of Honor and Shame: Orientalism and our
Misperceptions of the Arab-Israeli Conflict”
Gideon Shimoni “Postcolonial Theory and the History of Zionism”
S. IlanTroen “De-Judaising the Homeland: Academic Politics in Re-Writing the History
of Palestine”

3. Donna Robinson Divine “The Middle East Conflict and its Postcolonial Discontents”
Irwin J. Mansdorf “The Political Psychology of Postcolonial Ideology in the Arab World: an
analysis of „Occupation‟ and the „Right of Return‟”
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing
Present(published 28 Jan2000, edition 1)
GayatriChakravortySpivak, one of the foremost thinkers in postcolonial theory, looks at the
place of her discipline in the academic "culture wars." A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason
includes a reworking of her most influential essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" which has
previously appeared in only one anthology.
GayatriSpivak's long-awaited book...sets out to challenge the very fields Spivak has herself
been most associated with--postcolonial studies and third world feminism...[A Critique of
Postcolonial Reason] is remarkble for the warnings it provides--powerful critiques of diverse
positions structure the author's stance--as guardian in the margin. Spivak forcefully
interrogates the practices, politics and subterfuges of intellectual formations ranging from
nativism, elite poststructuralist theory, metropolitan feminism, cultural Marxism, global
hybridism, and "white boys talking postcoloniality2
."
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason is almost above all else self-conscious, self-aware, self-
deprecating. In 139 brilliant footnotes to "Culture," Spivak carries on a running engagement
with the flotsam and jetsam (what Walter Benjamin called the "detritus" of culture or "Trash
of History") of what passes for public life and the attendant information and culture industry
in this global thing we live in: ad campaigns by clothing designers, articles and stories from
the New York Times or "Good Morning America"...Spivak's tone makes the book a constant
pleasure. A mocking smile seems always present, along with sincere engagement with
important issues...From the first page of the preface to her footnote almost 400 pages later
2
-YogitaGoyal

4. about the exchange with the World Bank official at the European Parliament, Spivak focuses
on the ignorant, arrogant Eurocentric destruction of people and the environment and the
enabling practices of culture that make it possible...This is a most important and significant
book3
.
Spivak focuses on the relationship of debates in philosophy, history, and literature to the
emergence of a postcolonial problematic. Overall, she seeks to distance herself from
mainstream postcolonial literature and to reassert the value of earlier theorists such as Kant
and Marx...Those already interested in the postmodern and postcolonial debates may find
her style invigorating4
.
A founder of postcolonial studies surveys the current state of the field and finds much to
criticize. This is vintage Spivak--dazzling, often exasperating, but unfailingly powerful.
--Partha Chatterjee, author of The Nation and Its Fragments
In these pages GayatriSpivak performs what often seems either impossible or purely
gestural--a critique of transnational globalization which manages to be equally attuned to its
cultural and economic effects. This book deserves to be read for its modulated defense of
Marxism and feminism alone. It will be welcomed as the clearest statement to date of
Spivak's own relationship to the postcolonial theory with which she herself--wrongly, as she
forcefully argues here--is so often identified. With a brilliance that is uniquely hers, Spivak
issues a challenge which will be very hard to avoid to the limits of theory and of academic
institutions alike5
.
3
--David S. Gross (World Literature Today )
4
--Kent Worcester (Library Journal )
5
--Jacqueline Rose, author of States of Fantasy

5. GayatriSpivak tells us that here she charts her progress from colonial discourse studies to
transnational cutlural studies. She does so brilliantly. And she does so much more. She
constructs this extraordinary progress through an intricate labyrinth, but one with blazing
lights in every corner6
.
GayatriSpivak works with remarkable complexity and skill to evoke the local details of
emergent agency in an international frame. Her extraordinary attention to the texts she
reads and her ability to track the reach of global power make her one of the unparalleled
intellectuals of our time7
.
GayatriSpivak's most recent text, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, brings together in a
single volume a wide range of her work in postcolonial studies…She weaves together these
multiple levels of critique brilliantly, presenting a rigorous reading of the discourses of
imperialism… A Critique of Postcolonial Reason presents a scrupulous discussion of
imperialism in European philosophy, literature, history, and culture8
.
Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction
Publication Date: July 16, 2001
Robert Young's Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction is indisputably the best reader on the
subject. Young's book eschews the usual narrative history of anticolonial resistance and
postcolonial theory in favour of a genealogical one, focusing on social, political and cultural
origins of resistance and the academic discipline of postcolonialism.He is also careful not to
6
--SaskiaSassen, author of Globalization and its Discontents
7
--Judith Butler, author of The Psychic Life of Power
8
--Rachel Riedner (American Studies International )

6. discourage students from 'theory', and effectively combines the thematic survey mode (seen in
AniaLoomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism and Leela Gandhi's Postcolonial Theory: An
Introduction, among others). Beginning with a brilliant exposition of the terms colonialism,
imperialism and neo-imperialism, Young moves on to discuss Latin American, Asian and
African colonisations by France, England and other European powers from the 18th century.
Young historicises the rise of anticolonial thought by looking closely at the moments in which
these emerged. Further, Young is careful to locate the economic, administrative and social
variations in the 'native' cultural formations. Young thus skirts the danger of homogenising
colonialism when he is able to distinguish between, say, French and British 'empires'. Young's
genealogy also takes into account figures and moments persistently ignored by postcolonial
thinkers and critics: Fanon, Nkrumah, Cesaire among others. He thus locates the 'holy trinity' of
postcolonial studies (SPivak, Bhabha, Said) in terms of this 'tradition'. Written in lucid prose,
with a keen sense of historical 'engagements' (by which i mean cross-fertilisation and 'borrowing'
of ideas during the various nationalist movements across the world) in the anticolonial struggles,
Young's work is easily a text book for students and researches. If one may inject the personal,
what i found fascinating in the book was Young's constant interrogation of the evolution of
certain meanings,associations,and tropes in anticolonialism and postcolonialism. With a finesse
that he no doubt owes to his poststructuralist 'training', Youn is able to unravel the threads of
terms like 'empire' and 'colony' in terms of etymology and patterns of usage. the concluding
sections, with essays on Foucault and Tunisia and Derrida and ALgeria, Young once more
underscores the ideological and intellectual debt that contemporary postcolonal theory owes to
deconstruction and poststructuralism. Young retains the verve, respect for differences and varied
formations (cultural, linguistic, political) and brilliance of his previous White Mythologies and
Colonial Desire, and adds precision of language, a fine 'historical sense', and smoothness of style

7. to his already considerable repertoire. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction is an
indispensable book for anyone interested in the area.
On the Postcolony
University of California Press, May 18, 2001
AchilleMbembe is one of the most brilliant theorists of postcolonial studies writing today. In On
the Postcolony he profoundly renews our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. In a
series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests diehard Africanist and nativist perspectives as
well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory. This thought-provoking and
groundbreaking collection of essays—his first book to be published in English—develops and
extends debates first ignited by his well-known 1992 article "Provisional Notes on the
Postcolony," in which he developed his notion of the "banality of power" in contemporary
Africa. Mbembe reinterprets the meanings of death, utopia, and the divine libido as part of the
new theoretical perspectives he offers on the constitution of power. He works with the complex
registers of bodily subjectivity — violence, wonder, and laughter — to profoundly contest
categories of oppression and resistance, autonomy and subjection, and state and civil society that
marked the social theory of the late twentieth century. This provocative book will surely attract
attention with its signal contribution to the rich interdisciplinary arena of scholarship on colonial
and postcolonial discourse, history, anthropology, philosophy, political science, psychoanalysis,
and literary criticism.