Crossfire: postcolonial theory between Marxist and decolonial critiques

Marxist Media Theory

In Britain and Europe, neo-Marxist approaches were common amongst media theorists from the late '60s until around the early '80s, and Marxist influences, though less dominant, remain widespread. So it is important to be aware of key Marxist concepts in analysing the mass media. However, there is no single Marxist school of thought, and the jargon often seems impenetrable to the uninitiated. The...

Ireland and Postcolonial Theory

The question at the heart of Ireland and Postcolonial Theory was Ireland a colony? is a simple one. How it is answered, however, has enormous repercussions for understanding just about every aspect of Irish history and society: culture, economics, politics, demographics and a whole array of everyday rituals, ranging from patterns of speech through the inhabiting of physical space to daily praye...

Postcolonial translation: theory and practice

PosTcolonIal sTudIes and TRanslaTIon TheoRy

What distinguishes postcolonial approaches to translation is that they examine intercultural encounters in contexts marked by unequal power relations. Herein lie their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Their major contribution has been to illuminate the role of power in the production and reception of translation. But it is not certain that the postcolonial framework can be applied to othe...

Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory

Any modern approach to a Marxist theory of culture must begin by considering the proposition of a determining base and a determined superstructure. From a strictly theoretical point of view this is not, in fact, where we might choose to begin.1 It would be in many ways preferable if we could begin from a proposition which originally was equally central, equally authentic: namely the proposition...