Introduction / Issue 13: After Post-Colonialism?
Issue 13: After Post-Colonialism? (Spring 2009) Maia Dauner and Cynthia Foo This issue of Invisible Culture addresses an enormous topic with a mix of trepidation and humility: what role do post-colonial theorizations of identity and politics play in contemporary visual culture? How are the methodologies of thinkers such as Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Edward Said, and Dipesh Chakrabarty (amongst many others) articulated today? What possibilities and limitations do various forms of theorization (post-colonial, neo-colonial, post-post-colonialism, or Cosmopolitanism) offer to a consideration of visual and cultural practice concerned with identity and place? As guest editors, we chose this topic because it is one that we find ourselves grappling with in our own research. Maia Dauner’s doctoral dissertation work addresses the tactics of artists who creatively stage racial identities in order to highlight the very unstable ground upon which these identities rest. She wonders, how is race deployed in these practices and how does it continue to be performed? Cynthia Foo’s work also explores similar territory, seeking to consider the role of chaotic, amateurish, audience-involved …