In its current form, postcolonial theory has emerged out of what has been called the “cultural turn” in the social sciences, although the term postcolonial itself has a longer history. It was widely used by historians after World War II to designate the postindependence period. In this sense, postcolonialism has a chronological meaning, referring to national formations after the colonial period had formally ended. Since the 1970s, however, postcolonial theory has involved debates over the manner in which colonial experiences are represented and about the ways in which European colonization has left residual and persistent effects on both the colonized and colonizing people. Located largely in the disciplines of literary and cultural studies, recent postcolonial theory has been used to interrogate the discursive origins of ...