Abstract

Postcolonial intellectuals have engaged with and deeply impacted upon European society since the figure of the intellectual emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yet a critical assessment and overview of their influential roles is long overdue, particularly in the light of contemporary debates in Europe and beyond.

This book offers an innovative take on the role of intellectuals in Europe through a postcolonial lens and, in doing so, questions the very definition of "public intellectual," on the one hand, and the meaning of such a thing as "Europe," on the other. It does so not only by offering portraits of charismatic figures such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, and Hannah Arendt, among others, but also by exploring their lasting legacies and the many dialogues they have generated. The notion of the ‘classic’ intellectual is further challenged by bringing to the fore artists, writers, and activists, as well as social movements, networks, and new forms of mobilization and collective engagement that are part of the intellectual scene.
Sandra Ponzanesi is Professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Adriano José Habed, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands
Ponzanesi and Habed have given us that rare gift in trying times: a wide-ranging and broadly comparative examination of the significance of the work of postcolonial scholars and public thinkers in debates on the various problems that afflict Europe today. Providing us with signposts and fresh research agendas, Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe will prove to be one of the most innovative volumes on the question of postcolonial scholarship in a very long time.
Ato Quayson, Professor of English, University of Toronto

Here postcolonial perspectives sequence into a heterogeneity of cultural and political practices that rework the archives of the West in another key, critically challenging the continuing colonial formation of thepresent.

Iain Chambers, Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at the Oriental University in Naples
Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe offers a refreshing new set of perspectives on the engagement of intellectuals in questions of colonial history and postcolonial politics in contemporary Europe. Far from acquiescing to the oft-repeated affirmation that the intellectual is dead, the volume displays the reinvention and reinvigoration of intellectual work in the twenty-first century at the same time as it lucidly articulates its ambiguities and tensions.
Jane Hiddleston, Professor of Literatures in French, University of Oxford
This is a fascinating and timely book. Anticolonial Lebanese princes and West Indian revolutionary black Marxists, thinkers like Arendt and Derrida and contemporary social movements, artistic activists and writers like Rushdie stage engaging and often displacing dialogues across the pages of Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe. And the “postcolonial intellectual” becomes a prism that allows us to rethink at the same time both “Europe” and “the postcolonial.” Opening up new angles on a politics of liberation in these hard times.
Sandro Mezzadra, Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Bologna