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Postcolonial Problems

July 15th, 2010

Thijs Willaert & Floris Biskamp: Postcolonial Problems, or: Why The Kite Runner Does (not) Matter

Many authors from former colonies consider their literary works a means of resistance to foreign domination – a tendency which has not gone unnoticed, neither in academia nor in your own local bookstore. Yet, while some critics have heralded this postcolonial movement as the liberation of the former colonies, others have accused it of being politically irrelevant, or even of consolidating the dominance of the West. Through a parallel analysis of current positions in academia and the paradigmatic case of The Kite Runner, our lecture aims to shed light on some central concepts and controversies within the polemical field of postcolonial studies and to provide a practical point of entry into this crucial debate.

Thijs Willaert studied English and Spanish literature at the CatholicUniversity of Louvain. After obtaining a Master’s degree in Western literature and a postgraduate degree in Literary Sciences, he joined the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) to begin work on his PhD dissertation, the subject of which is the interconnection between postcolonial studies and the works of Michel Foucault.
Floris Biskamp has studied Physics and Political Science in Gießen andBoston, Massachusetts. He is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Political Science in Gießen and a doctoral student at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), writing his dissertation on the relation between critical theory and postcolonial deconstruction.