The first collection of essays by Ella Shohat, an internationally renowned theorist of transnational feminism and anti-imperialism

Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices brings together for the first time a selection of trailblazing essays by Ella Shohat, an internationally renowned theorist of postcolonial and cultural studies of Iraqi-Jewish background. Written over the past two decades, these twelve essays—some classic, some less known, some new—trace a powerful intellectual trajectory as Shohat rigorously teases out the consequences of a deep critique of Eurocentric epistemology, whether to rethink feminism through race, nationalism through ethnicity, or colonialism through sexuality.

Shohat’s critical method boldly transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries. She explores such issues as the relations between ethnic studies and area studies, the paradoxical repercussions for audio-visual media of the “graven images” taboo, the allegorization of race through the refiguring of Cleopatra, the allure of imperial popular culture, and the gender politics of medical technologies. She also examines the resistant poetics of exile and displacement; the staging of historical memory through the commemorations of the two 1492s, the anomalies of the “national” in Zionist discourse, the implications of the hyphen in the concept “Arab-Jew,” and the translation of the debates on orientalism and postcolonialism across geographies. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices not only illuminates many of the concerns that have animated the study of cultural politics over the past two decades; it also points toward new scholarly possibilities.

"“[T]he collection functions as a window onto the issues and dilemmas confronted by an interdisciplinary cultural studies since the late 1980s, namely, the concerns raised by multiculturalism, transnational feminism, diaspora, and postcolonialism. However, the larger accomplishment of the volume is that it reveals a pioneering mode of cultural criticism that may be definitively viewed as a ‘post-orientalist’ practice of knowledge. . . . As an essayist, [Shohat] has a knack for constructing a platform of inquiry through a prism of complexities and interrelationships, and for scrutinizing a given phenomenon of culture along multiple axes, investments, and stakes. These qualities make this a valuable book, and we may hope that more from Shohat is in the works.”" - CAA Reviews