Resisting Colonialist Discourse (Second Edition)

Resisting Colonialist Discourse (Second Edition). 2003. ISBN 967-942-628-9 (Paperback). 236pgs. RM25.00. Zawiah Yahya

This book proposes a method of resistance as a reading strategy for colonialist discourse. The procedure involves resistance to institutionalised reading conventions that have for so long upheld Eurocentric values as universal and guaranteed textual cohesion, authorial control and make the ideological, historical and cultural specificities of the colonised count in interpretation. This is done through a combined process of inter-textualtiy across disciplines and close reading of the type that concentrated on the uncounscious of the text, its omissions and silences, its ideological inconsistencies and slippages, its conflicting discourses. The first strategy, using Althusser, Foucault and Said aims at dismantling power-structures in colonialist discourse to make readers aware of what they are up against. The second strategy works through the silences of the text to construct the colonised version of the colonalist story in a process of cultural dialogistion adapted from Bakhtin.

Zawiah Yahya, Ph.D is an associate professor and the Dean of the Faculty of Language Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Published by:

Penerbit UKM

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

43600, Bangi, Selangor,

Malaysia.

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