Duress

"Duress: Imperial Durabilities In Our Times is a timely book. It can be read as both a work of postcolonial analysis and a methodological guide to conceptual history. Ann Laura Stoler's willingness to wrestle uneasy mercurial modern terminologies into valuable approaches to the histories of imperial formations is refreshing and exemplary." -- Ed Jones * LSE Review of Books *
"Stoler adds different insights and contexts to much material that is not new. Perhaps one test of the value of this is that it is difficult to read Duress without applying its insights both to the ways we engage in ethnographic enterprises and to current situations. Stoler provides the reader with much to consider and underscores the urgency of doing so." -- James Phillips * American Ethnologist *
"Stoler's book is both timely and innovative. . . . [Duress] takes us on a journey that looks at the genealogy of imperial violence, its traces in the present and its continuous re-shaping of contemporary societies on the one hand, and on the other, how new stories emerge and counterdiscourse shapes imperial violence." -- Olivette Otele * Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History *
"Innovative and thoughtful. . . . Stoler has for a long time now moved between different concepts, disciplines, and subdisciplines with an agility that is inspiring. . . . A pressing and timely book that will be of interest to all concerned with questions on liberation and entrapment." -- Shirin Saeidi * Journal of International and Global Studies *
"Stoler casts her net wide and deep and convincingly shows that colonialism is more complex, and more present, than most histories acknowledge." -- Aviva Chomsky * American Historical Review *
"A tour de force. Stoler's encyclopedic knowledge of the literature is impressive and the book might be used as a reference for those hoping to move the needle in postcolonial studies-to advance the agenda of the subfield . . . Stoler has ably demonstrated that Foucault's work is relevant to locales beyond France. And yet, I am left to ask whether, in a sense, Stoler might simply stand alone, without Foucault, now more than ever as her own theoretical proficiencies are brought to bear on our colonial present." -- Anne-Maria Makhulu * Anthropological Quarterly *