Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Postcolonialism - Arif Dirlik (essay date Spring 1999)

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Arif Dirlik (essay date Spring 1999)

SOURCE: “Is There History after Eurocentrism: Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,” Cultural Critique, Vol. 42, Spring, 1999, pp. 1-34.

[In the following essay, Dirlik discusses Eurocentrism as a modern historical phenomenon that has influenced many postmodern movements, including postcolonialism.]

Ours would seem to be another age of paradoxes. Localization accompanies globalization, cultural homogenization is challenged by insistence on cultural heterogeneity, denationalization is more than matched by ethnicization. Capitalism at its moment of victory over socialism finds itself wondering about different cultures of capitalism at odds with one another. There is a preoccupation with history when history seems to be increasingly irrelevant to understanding the present. Worked over by postmodernism, among other things, the past itself seems to be up for grabs, and will say...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Criticism: Overviews And General Studies
   1. Deepika Bahri (essay date January 1995)
   2. Shaobo Xie (essay date 1997)
4. Criticism: African Postcolonial Literature
   1. Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah (essay date September/December 1995)
   2. Clive Barnett (essay date June 1999)
5. Criticism: Asian/Pacific Postcolonial Literature
   1. Stephen H. Sumida (essay date 1997)
6. Criticism: Postcolonial Literary Theory
   1. Revathi Krishnaswamy (essay date January 1995)
   2. Arnold Krupat (essay date 1996)
   3. Arif Dirlik (essay date Spring 1999)
7. Criticism: Postcolonial Women's Writing
   1. Louise Viljoen (essay date Winter 1996)
   2. Gina Wisker (essay date 2000)
8. Further Reading
9. Copyright

1. Literary Theory