Naoki Sakai is a distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Asian Studies Emeritus at Cornell University, USA, and has published in the fields of comparative literature, intellectual history, translation studies, the studies of racism and nationalism, and the histories of textuality.

Jon Solomon is a professor of Chinese literature at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France, and a researcher attached to the Centre de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires et Multilingues, Université de Paris Nanterre, France.

Peter Button is an independent researcher living in New York City, USA. He has published Configurations of the Real in Chinese Literary and Aesthetic Modernity (2009).

This book critically analyzes the global hegemony of the United States - a hegemony whose innovative aspect consists in articulating postcoloniality to imperial control - in relation to knowledge and knowledge production.

1. Introduction: Epistemic Decolonization During the New Cold War 2. Area Studies and Civilizational Transfer: Epistemic Decolonization at the End of Pax Americana 3. The Third Nomos of the Earth: The Decline of Western Hegemony and the Continuity of Capitalism 4. Exploring the Landscapes of Extraction. Colonial Continuities, Postcolonial Assemblages of Power, Anticolonial Struggles. 5. The Ambiguous Status of Eastern Europe and the Criminalization of Communism in Europe. 6. Feeling Freedom: Japanese and American Wartime Films on the Liberation of the Philippines, 1943 - 45 7. What Comes After 'Area'? The Nomos of the Modern in Times of Crisis 8. Theory, Institution, and the North American Field of Modern Chinese Literary Studies: Some Preliminary Reflections 9. Between Studium and Punctum: Tomatsu Shomei and Nakahira Takuma between "Japan" and "Okinawa" 10. Lucian Pye and the Foundations of Area Studies in White Settler Colonialism