For editors Faulkner (history of art and design, Manchester Metropolitan U., UK) and Ramamurthy (media and cultural history, U. of Central Lancashire, UK), and presumably their contributors, decolonization means much more than formal constitutional decolonization, instead referring to "the interrelationships and conflicts between those complex historical forces that have been involved with the ongoing deconstruction of empire, and those that have defended colonialism and reconstructed imperialism in new contexts," as well as ongoing cultural processes through which lingering aspects of colonialism and imperialism in the cultural sphere are critiqued or defended. It is the visual aspects of this latter meaning (as they relate to the decolonization of the British Empire) to which the nine historical essays presented attend, although obviously not in isolation from the former. Individual chapters discuss the re-articulation of otherness in feature film images of Africa, photographic representations of Caribbean migrants in England, corporate advertisements concerning large industrializing project in the decolonizing world as a form of "controlling gaze," and the appropriation of colonial imagery in pro-Zionist films, among other topics. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
