Postcolonial Studies

Debates over nationalism have intensified studies of anticolonial resistance in general. The conventional historical distinction between primary resistance (physical opposition to initial colonial invasion) and secondary resistance (constitutionalist struggles against an established colonial administration) has been augmented and contested by a broad range of studies. These have examined spontaneous political uprisings, local insurgencies, and industrial action, and have tended to focus analysis on the consciousness of the resisters. The indirect, everyday, cultural, religious articulations of anticolonial resistance have also been energetically analyzed and theorized, as have women's resistances. In this context, Bhabha's notions of "sly civility" and "mimicry" have been widely circulated.

Some practitioners have been prompted by a postmodern politics of difference, while others have seen their work as an extension of Marxist and nationalist politics. Both tendencies, however, evaluate the material value of culture and debate the relationship between cultural and political expressions of resistance. Some have analyzed a dialectical relationship; others have seen culture as necessarily preceding political forms. Still others have seen culture as following from politics.

In general, recent critical studies of resistance have disputed developmental models that posit a qualitative linear progression of resistance and consciousness "from protest to challenge." For some, this model denies the heterogeneity of resistant currents at work in any one historical movement or moment; others object to the teleological worldview, or belief in the idea of progress, to which this model subscribes.