Postcolonialism and Popular Cultures

Noting the general neglect of popular cultures in contemporary postcolonial studies, the chapter uses case studies drawn from Kenyan athletics in the 1950s and Jamaican music of the 1970s and 1990s to explore the complex political engagements of colonial and postcolonial body cultures and oral performances. It argues that the cultures embodied by the runners Lazaro Chepkwony and Nyandika Maiyoro and by the musicians Bob Marley and Buju Banton show the capacity of such performances to generate theory as well as to be objects of theorizing and illustrate the cross-disciplinary dialogues necessary to postcolonialism both as a field of academic study and of popular experience.