From the University of Sydney comes a new postgraduate journal Ex Plus Ultra, which means ‘nothing further beyond’.

The journal sets out to question the categories of ‘colonial and ‘post-colonial’:

There was no cataclysmic rupture heralding the arrival of the ‘post-colonial’ nor was the advent of colonialism defined, uncontested or in some cases even as significant for the colonised as has previously been assumed. The very categories of ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial,’ insofar as they subscribe to linear, progressive time, are themselves imperial legacies.

This seems to be an attempt to de-centre the role of the British empire in the development of post-colonial theory.

In their aim to pluralise this field, the editors seek to reintroduce the concept of the national:

Beyond transnationalism
What are the problems with transnational histories? Is there an implicit masculinisation of the global and feminisation of the local? Does a transnational approach simply reinstate the national? Does it forget about the minutiae or the nationless? Is it really new? Are the terms global, supranational or cosmopolitan more useful?

It will be very interesting to see what perspectives emerge from this new opening. There’s an obvious danger. In the turn to particularities, will the only connecting element in this direction be its reaction to previous universalisms? Let’s see how they do it.