Issue #0

Reading after empire

Plot

This issue takes up the challenge of making renewed historical sense of reading in our postcolonial present. While reading seems remote from the urgency of our times-being slow, staggeringly inefficient, disconcertingly beyond measure, lacking substance-reading acts also persist as a central plank of postcolonial critique. However, the possibilities of reading itself, for empire and its aftermath remain surprisingly under-examined, a situation which our contributors seek to redress. Following readers and reading acts from a variety of perspectives, contributors converge on the apparently insular act of reading, relocating it at intersections with anthropology, cultural history, cultural studies, literary studies and sociology.