In The Rest Write Back: Discourse and Decolonization, Esmaeil Zeiny brings together a collection of essays that interrogate the colonial legacies, the contemporary power structure and the geopolitics of knowledge production. The scholars in this collection illustrate how the writing-back paradigm engages in a conversation and paves the way for a “dialogical and pluri-versal” world where the Rest is no longer excluded. Among the important features of this book is that it presents ways for “decoloniality” and “epistemic disobedience.” This book will be of interest to scholars and students of all Social Science and Humanities disciplines but it is particularly important for those in the disciplines of sociology, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, literature, and theory and philosophy of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Contributors include: Dustin J. Byrd, Ciarunji Chesaina, Hiba Ghanem, Mladjo Ivanovic, Masumi Hashimoto Odari, Arjuna Parakrama, JM. Persánch, Andrew Ridgeway, Rudolf J. Siebert, and Esmaeil Zeiny.
Esmaeil Zeiny, Ph.D. (2013), is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National University of Malaysia (UKM). He has recently co-edited Seen and Unseen: Visual Cultures of Imperialism (Brill, 2018, with Sanaz Fotouhi).
Foreword: Whose Rest is Best? (Un)Learning Binaries from Subalternity
Arjuna Parakrama
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Rest and Decolonial Epistemologies
Esmaeil Zeiny
Part 1: Positioning New Paradigms
1 Must Non-Europeans Think Like Us? A Critique of Modern Thoughtlessness in Western and Resten Societies
Dustin J. Byrd
2 End or Continuation of World History: the European, Slavic and American World – A New Paradigm?
Rudolf J. Siebert
3 Echoes of the Past: Colonial Legacy and Eurocentric Humanitarianism
Mladjo Ivanovic
Part 2: Positioning Counter-discourses
4 Women Refashion Iran: Decolonizing the Rehistoricized Narratives
Esmaeil Zeiny
5 African Literature: Leadership, Plight of the Majority and Hope
Masumi Hashimoto Odari and Ciarunji Chesaina
6 Aesthetic Hospitality: Mustafa Saʾeed as Guest in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North Hiba Ghanem
7 The Rest in the White West: After the Empire is Buried, Shadows of Your Black Memory Are Born
JM. Persánch
8 The Topography of Nostalgia: Imaginative Geographies and the Rise of Nationalism
Andrew Ridgeway
Index
This book will interest scholars and students in the disciplines of sociology, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, literature, and theory and philosophy of Social Sciences and Humanities.