Thresholds of Western Culture

Exploring three closely related topics that contest received attitudes about cultural identity, this book opens with two complementary challenges from within the West: the critique of orthodox positions on subjectivity and the cultural meltdown that accompanied fascism. This book explores identity, postcoloniality and transnationalism - three closely related issues which redefine contemporary cultural identity. It opens with an analysis of subjectivity and the cultural meltdown that accompanied fascism in the West. The situation in Africa is then explored which, while recalling modernity's dark side, highlights the intricacy of postcolonial identity. Post-Soviet Eastern Europe presents a separate case of neglected postcoloniality which emphasises how ethnocentrism and cultural tensions have exposed the fragility of transnationalism. The book concludes with an examination of East Asia, a region which offers transnational options potentially much more fruitful than Balkanization.