Cultural Geography

dependency or post-dependency theories and

others (Featherstone et al., 1995; Simon, 1998;

Yeoh, 2001).Each of these can be of value but in

specific and limited contexts. The dangers are in

attempting to use the concept in a totalizing fash-

ion or, indeed, attempting to explain everything

from a postcolonial framework or perspective.

As for the world of cities, we conclude by

asking two questions. How persistent are post-

colonial (imperial or neoimperial) forces in

impacting urban space, not only in postcolonial

and postimperial cities but in other cities else-

where? And are these conceptual categories the

most useful, valid or appropriate to describe con-

temporary urban transformations? Some scholars

have suggested that the ‘postcolonial city’ is

an ‘unusual and transitory experience’ (Yeoh,

2001: 462). In this case, Yeoh asks, can the

‘postcolonial’ endure as a meaningful category?

(See also Simon, 1998.) Less frequently asked is

whether a new form of diasporic colonial city

(i.e. a social and spatial formation ascribable to

imperialism) is being re-established in the one-

time metropole (Philo and Kearns, 1993) or in

urban settlements in other parts of the one-time

colonial empire, not least the USA, generated not

only from European imperialisms but rather by

US imperialism itself (King, 2000b).

NOTES

Many thanks to Jane Jacobs for her thoughtful editing and

innumerable perceptive suggestions. Abidin Kusno and

Steve Pile also gave many helpful comments on earlier

drafts.

1 ‘Postcolonialism’ and ‘postcolonial studies’ are used

here to cover different theoretical and methodological

orientations including colonial discourse analysis,

postcolonial theory and postcolonial criticism, and the

use of the hyphenated ‘post-colonial’ (see Ashcroft

et al., 1998; Moore-Gilbert, 1997; Williams and

Chrisman, 1994). The use of the hyphen is not consis-

tent in the literature.

2 What I have referred to, drawing on the work of soci-

ologist John Useem, as those of the colonial third

culture (King, 1976: 58–66).

3 For other comments on Cohn’s work and influence on

the power/knowledge issue, see the preface in

Rabinow (1989). Ranajit Guha, cofounder of the

Subaltern Studies group, in his introduction to an

earlier collection of Cohn’s essays, cites a passage

from one of them: ‘Anthropological “others” are part

of the colonial world. In the historical situation of

colonialism, both white rulers and indigenous peoples

were constantly involved in representing to each other

what they were doing. Whites everywhere came into

other people’s worlds with models and logics, means

of representation, forms of knowledge and action, with

which they adapted to the construction of new envi-

ronments, peoples, by new “others”. By the same

token those “others” had to restructure their worlds to

encompass the fact of white domination and their own

powerlessness.’ Guha goes on to comment: ‘It follows,

therefore, that according to this approach, the

interpenetration of knowledge and power constitutes

the very fabric of colonialism’ (1987: xx). This is a

key to the main point of this chapter.

4 I list some 40 of these in the 20 years following 1954:

see King (1976: 22).

5 Homi Bhabha (1983); an earlier reference reflecting

Foucauldian influences is Peter Hulme (1981). In the

humanities, Edward Said’s utilization of Foucault’s

notion of discourse in his Orientalism(1978) is used

by a number of authors to suggest this title as the foun-

dational text in the analysis of ‘colonial discourse’.

Williams and Chrisman note, for example, that ‘it is

perhaps no exaggeration to say that Edward Said’s

Orientalism, published in l978, single-handedly

‘inaugurates a new area of academic inquiry, colonial

discourse, also referred to as colonial discourse theory

or colonial discourse analysis’ (1994: 5). The writings

of Gayatri Spivak (e.g. 1985; 1988; 1990) are central

to the canon.

6 The primary aim of Gilroy’s book is to address the

representation of the black presence in Britain, and to

provide ‘a corrective to the more ethnocentric dimen-

sions of [cultural studies]’ (1987: 11–12). In a penulti-

mate chapter on ‘Diaspora, utopia and the critique of

capitalism’, Gilroy states, ‘it is impossible to theorize

black culture in Britain without developing a new per-

spective on British culture as a whole. This must be

able to see behind contemporary manifestations into

the cultural struggles which characterized the imperial

and colonial period’ (1987: 156). Gilroy’s second

major work, The Black Atlantic, setting out the space

of cultural studies (especially black music) delineated

by his title, was published in l993. Confirming his the-

sis, Gilroy subsequently crossed the black Atlantic to

a position in the American academy.

7 Starkey (1994: 24–5) gives figures of 20–27 per cent

black African population, and of 10–12 black

Caribbean, for the boroughs of Lewisham and South-

wark, the immediate environs of Goldsmiths’ College.

Data on the percentage of non-white faculty in indi-

vidual British universities has only become available

in the 1990s. In 1998, 4.8 per cent of female academics

were black (1.2 per cent) or Asian (3.6 per cent), and

6.1 per cent of male academics (1.1 per cent black,

5.0 per cent Asian) (Young, 1998: 17).

8 An early text, Bill Ashcroft et al. The Empire Writes

Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literature

(1989), was followed a few years later by two readers

(Williams and Chrisman, 1994; Ashcroft et al., 1995),

a minor marker in the institutionalization of new acade-

mic paradigms. Some conception of the extensive

publication through the l980s and 1990s is indicated in

these texts, as well as the bibliography here.

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