Book discussed in this essay:<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Meyer, ed. Word and Image in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures.\u00a0Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2009.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Lucy Weir is a PhD candidate in the department of history of art at the University of Glasgow, researching Orientalist tendencies in the development of 20th\u00a0century contemporary dance.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The legacy of colonialism has undoubtedly had a tremendous effect on the development of visual and literary cultures across the globe, leaving its mark on the societies of both the colonised and the colonisers. In view of this, Michael Meyer\u2019s dense anthology brings together a broad range of texts illustrating the significance of linguistic and visual representation in inter-cultural relations. His collection explores not just a range of time periods and civilisations, but also an impressive variety of media, from photography and feature film to children\u2019s picture books and pop music. The volume is roughly divided into two sections, \u2018Colonial\u2019 and \u2018Post-Colonial Representations,\u2019 though the majority of material falls under the latter category. The assorted articles are certainly diverse in subject matter, yet can be loosely grouped together by continent; the \u2018Postcolonial\u2019 section begins with a range of essays exploring African text\/image representation, before moving on to Asian diasporas, and finally the Anglo-Aboriginal world.<\/p>\n

The articles within Meyer\u2019s collection highlight markers of colonialism and cross-cultural influence in a combination of literary and visual media. Certain essays stand out as particularly engaging; for instance, Gisela Feurle\u2019s text regarding African studio photography is poignant and enlightening, containing beautiful reproductions of the Malian, Ghanaian, and Kenyan photographers she describes in some detail. Such images represent the merging of traditionalism and modernity, but also social aspiration; couples in national dress wearing Western wristwatches, or men in sharp suits posing with icons of modern living such as telephones, alarm clocks, and radios. Susan Arndt\u2019s piece on J. M. Coetzee\u2019s novel\u00a0Disgrace\u00a0and the issue of \u2018racialised markers\u2019 is also excellent, investigating the idea of the implied racial \u2018Other\u2019 in South Africa\u2019s post-colonial landscape\u2013that is, the identification of a character\u2019s race through the use of careful linguistic word play and racial symbolism the reader is arguably socialised to inherently understand. In a similar vein, Jens Martin Gurr\u2019s essay rounds off the collection, discussing representation of Native American massacres in Jim Jarmusch\u2019s revisionist Western\u00a0Dead Man; his is another exploration of the explicitly unsaid but implicitly revealed, through the use of striking visual clues.<\/p>\n

As an anthology of what could perhaps be termed \u2018imagology\u2019 issues in colonial and postcolonial studies, Meyer\u2019s collection succeeds in gathering a great range of material covering extensive stretches of time and space. While this benefits the reader in terms of the breadth of writing surveyed, groupings of essays can be slightly too eclectic at times. Nonetheless, while much of the material is disparate in focus, as one works through the volume, certain common themes emerge, and it is perhaps unsurprising that the ghost of Edward Said is palpable throughout the texts in this collection, his theory of \u2018Orientalism\u2019 being applied to new contexts and territories. Overall, Meyer\u2019s collection is not aimed at the (post) colonial studies initiate, given the very specific subject matter of each essay concerned. Equally, certain contributions are stronger than others in terms of theoretical engagement or writing structure. Despite these minor points, taken as a whole,\u00a0Word and Image\u00a0is a weighty and thorough anthology that explores a number of niche elements of colonial and post-colonial image and literary culture, adding fresh voices to the ongoing dialogue between cultural studies and anthropological themes.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book discussed in this essay: Michael Meyer, ed. Word and Image in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures.\u00a0Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2009. Lucy Weir is a PhD candidate in the department of history of art at the University of Glasgow, researching Orientalist tendencies in the development of 20th\u00a0century contemporary dance. The legacy of colonialism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4062,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[119,6,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-elicitations","category-reviews","wpautop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p707hj-1Lf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4062"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6773"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6775,"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6773\/revisions\/6775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}