Baleful Postcoloniality and Auto/Biography

This Introduction suggests how the essays in this Special Issue explore the continued relevance of the term postcoloniality by critically engaging with both postcolonial studies and life writing. By understanding postcoloniality as the global condition of the current baleful historic conjuncture—as the paradoxical global condition in which classes, peoples, and nations are subject to residual and often overt manifestations of imperialism and colonialism at a time when no contemporary government, state, international or supranational body, or ideology defines itself as imperialist or colonialist—past critical practices and celebratory tendencies in postcolonial studies can be corrected to recognize the dire conditions of global politics in the present.