'Thinking the Postcolonial as Political' Published by Borderlands, 1 October 2007. ISSN: 1447-0810 http://www.borderlands.net.au/issues/vol6no2.html

This publication was developed from my keynote address to the international conference Postcolonial Politics at the University of Otago, New Zealand (2006).

The text argues that post-colonial political theory has been limited as a consequence of an unresolved theoretical debate between Marxism and post-structuralism. I contend that the changing organisation of production, reproduction and political representation at the global level entails the need to come to terms with new forms of property law, the global restructuring of labour, an emergent politics of age and disease, and an accountancy of life. In this respect this text compliments my previously published work which develops an ethical approach from a post-Marxist political perspective. The consequence of this perspective for post-colonial politics and theory are threefold: critics must come to terms with the differential valuation of lives and the technologies of such evaluation; post-colonial politics can no longer be limited to either a statist conception of political struggle, or a version of politics premised on a politics of difference; politics must address new forms of property in the body, as well as the re-conceptualisation of the body politic in genetic and informational terms.

This critique advances a fundamentally new intellectual agenda, both of the analysis and practice of contemporary politics. The method of dissemination via free access e-publication in a journal of international repute which maintains the conventions of peer review,  rigorously reflects and reinforces critical concepts embedded in a framework of intended inclusiveness as opposed to privileged access.