Lars Jensen, Julia Suárez-Krabbe, Christian Groes, Zoran Lee Pecic (eds.), Postcolonial Europe : comparative reflections after the empires [book review]

Abstract

Postcolonial Europe is a volume of 13 chapters, consisting of a series of case studies of how postcolonial legacies and dynamics play out in contemporary times. Different chapters focus on: racialization in Italy, in view also of the North-South divide; on the notion of el moro in Spanish and Catalan society; on the disempowerment of Roma people in Europe; on the contemporary effects of Dutch coloniality; on how the work of the Santomean poet Conceição Lima raises critical questions on Portugal’s colonial past; on the relation between ‘geo-linguistics’ and colonialism with regard to the idea of a ‘Lusophone community’; on critical questions raised by translations of Fanon’s texts and their role in Anglophone postcolonial studies; on contemporary relations between France and African nations, particularly the 2013 French military operation in Mali and its aftermath; on the question of Greenland’s relation to Denmark; on Belgium’s colonial past in Congo and its contemporary legacy; on the postcolonial backlash in Poland’s contemporary conservative politicians; and on the relation between China and a postcolonial Europe. [excerpt]