Experiments with Empire

“Justin Izzo's fascinating study brings to life the experimental ethnographic fictions created by writers and filmmakers in French colonial spaces on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing alternative modes of life and ways of knowing the world that arise within empire from below. He shows us how these twentieth-century experimentations open potential avenues for developing democratic futures in our time.” - Michael Hardt, coauthor of Assembly

“Taking up a set of important issues regarding anthropology, colonialism, and the politics of representation, Justin Izzo shows how ethnographic fictions not only demonstrate the limitations of anthropological knowledge, they become alternative anthropologies of colonial and postcolonial encounters. Experiments with Empire should be read by scholars interested in questions of empire, knowledge production, and aesthetics. It grapples with the kind of political and epistemological questions that should be central to the next generation of postcolonial studies.” - Gary Wilder, author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World

"Experiments with Empire deserves an audience beyond the academic. Izzo makes some perceptive points about how seeing the connections between ethnography and fiction can help us reimagine the world."  - Emilie de Brigard, The Arts Fuse

“The book’s scope is bold and impressive…. Izzo’s study is an important contribution to research on the French Atlantic and on speculative forms in general, and it offers a fresh look at the crossings between ethnography and fiction that go beyond questions of truth and veracity, mimicry and resistance.” - Christina Kullberg, New West Indian Guide