Michael Sprinker's was a singular voice within the chorus of those speaking for Marxist theory and socialist activism: intellectually disciplined, acerbically humorous and, above all, intransigently revolutionary. This volume gathers together some of Sprinker's best work: his recent writings, such as "The Grand Hotel Abyss", on Marxist revolutionary aesthetics; the essays like "You've Got a Lot of Nerve" which raise urgent questions about what activist responsibilities should be shouldered by those claiming to be politically radical intellectuals; his sensitive and diligent readings of exemplary Third- and First-World texts, such as those on Said, Ahmad and Jameson; and finally a section which depicts the course of his own intellectual-political journey. The book closes with a brief collection of his correspondence, witness to the righteous savagery, insight and extraordinary generosity displayed so often in the letters which were central to his friendships and his life. With a preface by Aijaz Ahmad and an afterward by Fred Pfeil, A Singular Voice is a memorial to a luminous figure on the US Left who leaves an inspiring example to all those who come remain.
Spanning time and space from late Victorian Britain and Ireland to postwar America and Latin America, Late Imperial Culture maps crucial regions in the terrain of imperial cultural practices including theater, film, photography, fiction, autobiography, and body art. The forms reviewed in this lively collection range from those which accept and reproduce empire's dominant self-images to scathing critiques of the oppressions that colonialism has visited upon its subjects and the price it continues to exact from them. A diverse range of theoretically sophisticated and historically informed contributors take as given two fundamental facts about the culture of imperialism: firstly, that it has a long and complex history which, in the present epoch, merits its being designated "late"; and, secondly, that its impact on the contemporary world is far from exhausted. Together they highlight the contradictions in the serried cultural practices of imperialism in its different historical periods. Contributors: Aijaz Ahmad, Steven Cagan, Romn de la Campa, David Glover, May Joseph, Caren Kaplan, Rob Nixon, Ella Shohat, Robert Stam, and Marianna Torgovnick.
After the Second World War, nationalism emerged as the principle expression of resistance to Western imperialism in a variety of regions from the Indian subcontinent to Africa, to parts of Latin America and the Pacific Rim. With the Bandung Conference and the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, many of Europe's former colonies banded together to form a common bloc, aligned with neither the advanced capitalist "First World" nor with the socialist "Second World." In this historical context, the category of "Third World literature" emerged, a category that has itself spawned a whole industry of scholarly and critical studies, particularly in the metropolitan West, but increasingly in the homelands of the Third World itself. Setting himself against the growing tendency to homogenize "Third World" literature and cultures, Aijaz Ahmad has produced a spirited critique of the major theoretical statements on "colonial discourse" and "post-colonialism," dismantling many of the commonplaces and conceits that dominate contemporary cultural criticism. With lengthy considerations of, among others, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, and the Subaltern Studies group, In Theory also contains brilliant analyses of the concept of Indian literature, of the genealogy of the term "Third World," and of the conditions under which so-called "colonial discourse theory" emerged in metropolitan intellectual circles. Erudite and lucid, Ahmad's remapping of the terrain of cultural theory is certain to provoke passionate response.
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