Introduction: Decolonization and Eighteenth-Century Studies

Abstract:Calls to decolonize intellectual disciplines and their attendant institutions are predicated on the understanding that change only arises through a deconstruction of the very systems that construct knowledge. "Decolonization and Eighteenth-century Studies" takes up this project with a specific focus on eighteenth-century studies as a field of inquiry and on the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) as one of the principal learned societies in the field. This cluster participates in a recent move on the part of some eighteenth-century studies scholars to connect the field's temporal focus and major concerns—among them concepts of enlightenment and liberty; histories of colonialism, enslavement, and genocide; and cultural productions including literature, political and economic writing, works of art, and material culture—with the current conditions of academic scholarship. Together these essays treat the historic legacy of Western scholarship—an early modern structure for knowledge production, intellectual community, and pedagogy that was intertwined with capitalist and colonialist enterprises—as of a piece with its contemporary practitioners and output.