'Theoretically sophisticated and meticulously situated at the fraught scene of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in contemporary Australia, Postcolonial Agency is an inspiring manifesto for non-imperial mutuality. Bignall's advocacy of an ethics of joy opens up a new direction for postcolonial studies.'

Professor Leela Gandhi, Department of English, University of Chicago

This book complements and balances the attention given by postcolonial theory to the revitalisation and recognition of the agency of colonised peoples. It offers new conceptual scaffolding to those who have inherited the legacy of colonial privilege, and who now seek to responsibly transform this historical injustice. Simone Bignall attends to a minor tradition within Western philosophy including Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson and Deleuze, to argue that a non-imperial concept of ethical and political agency and a postcolonial philosophy of material transformation are embedded within aspects of poststructuralist social philosophy.

Postcolonial Agency provides readers with a significantly new understanding of the processes of social transformation faced by many societies as they struggle with the aftermath of empire. It does so by engaging readers with respect to their affective communities and their concrete ethics of relationship, providing them with a valuable new way of conceptualising practices of postcolonial sociability. It will be of interest to students and researchers in political and postcolonial studies, cultural studies, critical theory and Continental philosophy.

Simone Bignall is A Visiting Fellow in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is the co-editor, with Paul Patton, of Deleuze and the Postcolonial.

Simone Bignall is an adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She has published widely on issues concerning colonialism and postcolonialism. She is the author of Postcolonial Agency (2010) and the co-editor, with Paul Patton, of Deleuze and the Postcolonial (2010), both published by Edinburgh University Press.

Introduction; I:Critique; 1. The Problem of the Negative; 2. Postcolonial Appropriations;3. The Problem of the Actual; II:Constructivism; 4.Power/Desire; 5.Subjectivity; 6.What is 'Postcolonial'?; Conclusion: Postcolonial Agency; Bibliography; Index.