The course investigates postcolonialism as a relatively new but influential field of study, and focuses mainly on its theoretical interventions through socio- and politico-cultural analyses. Colonial discourse, orientalism, cultural hybridity, sexuality, gender, subalternity, indigeneity, critiques of the West, language and race, and the politics of theory are some of the themes examined. The work of postcolonial theorists who have shaped the field, such as Fanon, Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Chakrabarty and Parry, amongst others, is engaged through representative texts. New aspects of postcolonial theory are explored as represented in the title of the course, such as "Latin American postcolonialism," that provoke questions about the spatial and temporal dislocations of theory, subjectivity and different kinds of reason, and the territoriality of knowledge. Students will grapple with how the categories of oppression, subjectivity and agency have shifted historically; the way postcolonial thinkers have addressed contingency; and the processes of contemporary forms of colonial power. The course also addresses a tension that is symptomatic of cultural studies generally, and of a variety of disciplines more widely – that pertaining to the relation between materialist & Marxist, and poststructuralist & foucaultdian/Derridean approaches.