Charting an Itinerary for Postcolonial Communication and Media Studies

Abstract

This article presents a pathway for forging “postcolonial communication and media studies,” an area of inquiry that emerges from collaborations between communication and media studies and postcolonial theory. We aim to show the affinities between these two fields and explore how our discipline can benefit from postcolonial theory’s commitment to understanding the legacies of colonialism’s vast historical reach. This article’s itinerary has three stops. At the first stop, we make a case for the insights that a historicized understanding of global “cultural power” can yield. The second stop outlines the contours of a vigilant approach to alterity that can unpack the hegemonic identity politics of Western modernity. At the third and most important stop, we point to a future research trajectory for postcolonial communication and media studies, an agenda that avoids the limitations of existing postcolonial theory and fosters a robust conversation with the larger interdisciplinary project of postcolonial studies.