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, critique, 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.

List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction NADIA ATIA AND KATE HOULDEN PART I The Radical Popular 1 'Welcome to The University of Brixton': BBC Radio and the West Indian Everyday RACHAEL GILMOUR 2 FUTURE HISTORIES - an Activist Practice of Archiving ALDA TERRACCIANO 3 Sequential Art in the Age of Postcolonial Production: Comics Collectives in Israel and South Africa CHARLOTTA SALMI PART II The Middlebrow 4 Murder in Mesopotamia: Agatha Christie's Life and Work in the Middle East NADIA ATIA 5 'Junior Romantic Anthropologist Bore': Colin MacInnes's Critical Adventures in Post-war Multiracial Britain ALICE FERREBE 6 Tarzan the Ape Man: Screening 'the subordination of women, nature and colonies' in the 1930s CHRIS CAMPBELL PART III Commodification 7 Subcultural Fiction and the Market for Multiculturalism SARAH ILOTT 8 Everything Must Go: Popularity and the Postcolonial Novel SAM GOODMAN 9 Consuming Post-millennial Indian Chick Lit: Visuality and the Popular in Post-millennial India E. DAWSON VARUGHESE PART IV Technology 10 Monster Mines and Pipelines: Frankenstein Figures of Tar Sands Technology in Canadian Popular Culture MARK A. MCCUTCHEON 11 African or Virtual, Popular or Poetry: The Spoken Word Platform Word N Sound Series RICARDA DE HAAS 12 The Postcolonial Geek and Popular Culture in a Global Era WENDY KNEPPER Index