The Postcolonial Exotic

Travel writing, it has been said, helped produce the rest of the world for a Western audience. Could the same be said more recently of so-called postcolonial writing? In The Postcolonial Exotic, Graham Huggan examines some of the processes by which value is given to postcolonial works within their cultural field. Using both literary-critical and sociological methods of analysis, Huggan discusses both the exoticist discourses that run through postcolonial studies, and the means by which postcolonial "products" are marketed and domesticated for Western consumption. This timely and challenging volume examines everything from well-meaning multiculturalism, tourism, and pseudo-anthropology, to the Booker prize, anthologies, and academic texts. It points to the urgent need for a more carefully grounded understanding of the processes of production, dissemination and consumption that have surrounded the rapid development of the postcolonial field.

Graham Huggan is Professor of English at the University of Munich.