Colonialism without colonies: examining blank spaces in colonial studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgments

The guest editors thank the editorial board of National Identities for making this issue possible. This special issue was initiated at a workshop on ‘colonialism without colonies' that took place in June 2013 at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. We would like to thank the attendants for the stimulating discussion that helped us to further develop this concept as well as the Swiss National Science Foundation, whose support made the workshop possible.

Notes on contributors

Barbara Lüthi is Assistant Professor of North American History and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cologne. Her fields of research include U.S. and European Social and Cultural History, Migration History, Postcolonial Theory, Security Studies. Selected Publications include Invading Bodies: Medicine and Immigration in the USA (1880-1920) (2009); Postkoloniale Schweiz: Formen und Folgens eines Kolonialismus ohne Kolonien, 2nd ed. (2013), with Patricia Purtschert/Francesca Falk (eds.).

Francesca Falk is a senior lecturer and research scholar in Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg. Her areas of special interest are History of Modern Europe and its Global Contexts, Migration, Protest, (Post-) Colonialism, Gender History, Visual Culture, Political Theory. Selected publications include Eine gestische Geschichte der Grenze. Wie der Liberalismus an der Grenze an seine Grenzen kommt (2011); Postkoloniale Schweiz: Formen und Folgens eines Kolonialismus ohne Kolonien, 2nd ed. (2013), with Barbara Lüthi and Francesca Falk (eds.).

Patricia Purtschert is a philosopher and a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. Her research and teaching interests are feminist theory, gender studies, postcolonial studies, queer studies, poststructuralism and deconstruction. Selected publications include Grenzfiguren. Kultur, Geschlecht und Subjekt bei Hegel und Nietzsche (2006); Postkoloniale Schweiz: Formen und Folgens eines Kolonialismus ohne Kolonien, 2nd ed. (2013), with Barbara Lüthi and Francesca Falk (eds.); Colonial Switzerland; Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins (2015), with Harald Fischer-Tiné (eds.).

Notes

1. Such early critique is voiced, for example, by Dirlik (1997) and McClintock (1992).

2. This also counts, for example, for Scandinavian countries (see Keskinen, Tuori, Irni, & Mulinari, 2009).

3. The example of race has no exclusive status but rather points to the necessity to explore the intersections of several other categories such as gender, sexuality, class and religion.

4. In this context, it is important to point to the early phase of colonialism with its main actors Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Just as well, the growing debate on postcolonial studies in and concerning Latin America have brought forth a productive body of literature. See, for example, Morana, Dussel, and Jáuregui (2008) and Mignolo (2005).

5. See, for example, the British example where a differentiated empire studies developed under the Cambridge History producing monumental histories such as Rose, Newton, Benians, (1929–1968), Lonsdale (1975), and Mungeam (1966). In France the histoire coloniale starting off early twentieth century partly took a more critical stance towards imperialism and colonialism after 1945, yet only had a marginal position within French historiography. See, for example, Julien (1931), Brunschwig (1960) and Brahm (2010).

6. The volumes edited by Stoler, McGranahan, and Perdue (2007) or Lüdtke, Kraft, and Martschukat (2010) also point to ‘non-classical' and/or non-European empires – such as Japan, China and Russia – which often are also forgotten from a European perspective.