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"The Postcolonial Cultural Industry makes a much needed intervention into the field of postcolonial studies by unpacking its relation to the cultural industry. It analyses cultural productions not as aesthetic objects, or as pure disposable commodities, but as 'practices' that engage the local and the global in specific ways. Starting from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's critical notion of the cultural industry, the book moves toward a more contemporary understanding of the cultural industry as a site of co-production, co-shaping and conflict between producers and consumers, marketing experts, readers and audiences, in order to arrive at a more dynamic and paradoxical take on the cultural industry as a cultural field, imbibed concomitantly by economic, political and aesthetic motifs. It explores how institutions such as literary prizes have influenced the level of production, consumption and distribution of postcolonial texts, how the adaptation industry has contributed to the economy of prestige andhow ethnic feminist bestsellers convey new issues around postfeminism and the rearticulation of race, ethnicity, class and neo-liberal capitalism in local and transnational contexts.By connecting cultural analysis to marketing strategies and theories of globalization this book offers an invaluable contribution to the field of postcolonial studies, film studies, migration studies, gender studies, cultural studies and critical theory, among others. "--
List of contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Postcolonial Cultural Industry: Notes on Theory and Practice 2. Literary Prizes and the Award Industry 3. Boutique Postcolonialism: Cultural Value and the Canon 4. Advertising the Margins: Translation and Minority Cultures 5. The Adaptation Industry. The Cultural Economy of Postcolonial Film Adaptations 6. Postcolonial Chick Lit: Postfeminism or Consumerism? Bibliography
Report
'In the many 'scattered speculations' on a robust global marketplace for cultural exotica, repeatedly the stress has fallen on the appropriation, reification, and commodification of postcolonial artworks. Sandra Ponzanesi's The Postcolonial Cultural Industry offers a refreshingly new take on the contemporary scene. Even as she investigates precisely how culture industries (film studios to presses) capitalize on all things postcolonial, Ponzanesi highlights those artworks that routinely escape commodification through their canny renegotiation of the culture games. A must read for scholars of cultural globalization, The Postcolonial Cultural Industry is a critically astute and intellectually lively book on the political economy of postcolonial studies.' - Bishnupriya Ghosh, University of California, USA
