Subversión y moraleja

Zachariah has argued that the term 'postcolonial' increasingly appears to be devoid of the polemical and political charge that it once carried, and that it presents serious limitations as an approach to writing history. But assuming that postcolonialism is inadequate in its task or insufficiently elaborated seems to perpetuate notions of the 'new humanities' (gender studies, cultural studies, and the like) as subjugated knowledges versus the 'universality' and 'dominant' knowledge of conventional, 'proper' history. After defining what is meant by postcolonialism and presenting the case of subaltern studies, this essay will argue that because it challenges long-established (and still prevalent) historiographies and because it provides alternatives to the study of history, postcolonialism does not only provide a way forward but also sideways and upward,  and for that reason still proves to be fertile to historical discourse . Postcolonialism has...

In her famous article 'Gender as a Postmodern Category of Paralysis,' Joan Hoff exposed some of the aspects of poststructuralism that may negatively affect the progress made by scholars of women's history. But her caricature of poststructuralism, athough raising some valid concerns, mostly rested on an essentialist view of women's history that ignored the variety of postmodern theory and the important and thoughtful criticism that it has brought to feminist history as illustrated by Mary Poovey. Although there is a risk of feminist marginalisation in the move from women's to gender history, rethinking the previous feminist assertions about poststructuralism's politically paralysing effects can highlight the problems of dichotomising the linguistic/discursive and material/prediscursive dimensions of analysis. Ultimately, the poststructuralist strain of gender analysis need not damage the purposes of feminist history if undertaken under a self-aware and self-crit...

Because it has affected men and women differently, and because it has relied on gendered structures and relationships, migration has always been a gendered phenomenon . Thus, that most migration studies up to the 1970s failed to see the gendered nature of migration (and their own gendered assumptions) is surprising, although probably related to the fact that it was the work of men that defined those forms of knowledge understood as theory. That being said, and although much valuable work in feminist migration studies has been dedicated to make migrant women 'visible,' gender cannot be reduced to an 'add-women-and-stir' approach but has to be seen as relational, contextualised and multiscalar , and better understood through interdisciplinary approaches. Current studies of gender and migration in general and gender and African migration to Europe in particular have tended to stress what Castles and Miller have called the 'feminization of migration', a phenomeno...

Amidst the current climate and the predominant view in the media that Europe is facing an 'unprecedented refugee crisis,' historians have tended to emphasise the historical precedents of the current 'crisis.' Widening the scope both in time AND space can provide insights on the legacies of colonial boundaries and decolonisation , on how refugees have been dealt with before, on the impact of international humanitarian responses , and on how interconnected the artificial boundaries of global North/South really are. However, a historical perspective can not only provide past examples of other migratory movements and their reception in the host societies, or grand narratives of the building up to the current crisis, but also a questioning of socially and historically constructed categories such as 'refugee' and 'crisis.' This essay recognises the many times inadequate distinction between refugees and (economic) migrants, and although aware of how the media...