Introduction: Locating the Mutations of Colonial Violence in the Postcolonial World

This introduction identifies some of the main features and incarnations of colonial violence, including some of its physical, psychological, and epistemic avatars, which have mutated through time and space and still find expression in the supposedly postcolonial world. Through considering philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s analysis of colonial and decolonial violence in the The Wretched of the Earth together with the work of anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom on terror warfare in postcolonial Mozambique, this chapter argues that it is important to move away from conceptualizing violence as thing-like but rather understand it as residing in the body and forming a fluid cultural construct.
The chapter then focuses on the ethical implications of theorizing and narrating violence, both of which involve the risk of perpetuating this violence. Finally, the introduction suggests that understanding how violence is narrated in postcolonial fiction, drama, and film requires a combination of conceptual knowledge, awareness of historical and social context, and close textual analysis. The chapter ends with an outline of the book, which is divided into three sections: “Intimate and Gender Violence,” “Violence and War,” and “Violence on the Move.”