Postcolonial and Global Neo-Victorianisms

The theoretical and practical twin interventions of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” have proven programmatic for neo-Victorianism’s ambivalent relation with colonial legacies. As such, these two texts, as well as their reception histories, provide significant inroads to chart the relationships between neo-Victorianism and notions of the postcolonial and the global, with a particular emphasis on critiques of neo-Victorianism’s hegemonic whiteness. Exemplary and necessarily brief outlines of Indian, Black British, African, and Indigenous South Pacific imaginations of the long nineteenth century—many of which have received widespread academic attention outside of neo-Victorian studies—complement such critical engagement with neo-Victorianism’s own coloniality. These case studies do not primarily chart possible future research areas for neo-Victorian Studies but rather pose questions about neo-Victorianism’s (currently lacking) potential to generate insight for disciplines such as Indigenous studies, African studies, or Black studies, which are already acutely aware of how contemporary hegemonies and paradigms relate to the long nineteenth century’s coloniality.