"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." So E. M. Forster famously observed in his Two Cheers for Democracy. Forster's epigrammatic manifesto, where the idea of the "friend" stands as a metaphor for dissident cross-cultural collaboration, holds the key, Leela Gandhi argues in Affective Communities, to the hitherto neglected history of western anti-imperialism. Focusing on individuals and groups who renounced the privileges of imperialism to elect affinity with victims of their own expansionist...

A provocative and exemplary introduction to the field of postcolonial studies. Leela Gandhi surveys the entire field of postcolonial studies and outlines the connections beween postcolonial theory and poststructuralism, postmodernism, marxism and feminism. She assesses the contribution of major theorists such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha as well as highlighting postcolonialism's relationship to earlier thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Mahatma Gandhi. Both a useful starting point for new readers and an incisive account for lecturers, this book will open up debate still...