Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narratives

Overview & Synopsis

From climate change to global pandemics, some of the most vexing questions facing postcolonial societies are entangled with the contradictory role of science in postcolonial contexts. Science is connected to histories of colonial oppression but also to promises of improvement and emancipation; it may be the cause of environmental degradation but also its remedy. This volume engages with the cultural imagination of science and problematises the role of narrative at the intersection of culture and the sciences. Bridging postcolonial studies, literature and science studies, and other traditions, the contributors examine cultural narratives as well as texts from 19th-century utopianism to postcolonial 'science novels' and contemporary science fiction.