Interview with Bill Ashcroft (School of the Arts & Media, University of New South Wales, Australia)

Interview with Bill Ashcroft (School of the Arts & Media, University of New South Wales, Australia)

This took place 26 July 2018 after the ICL 2018 conference at the Eastin Hotel in Penang Malaysia, conducted by Dr Hsu Li-hsin (Department of English, National Chungchi University, Taiwan); some of the interview questions were kindly provided by Dr Shizen Ozawa (Department of English, Tamkang University, Taiwan), and the recording was transcribed by Sean McHugh (College of Liberal Arts, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China). HLH Hello Bill, it's really nice to have you with us. BA Nice to be here. HLH I do appreciate your willingness to accept this interview with our Wenshan Review. BA My pleasure. HLH I enjoyed your talk at the conference about the utility of hope. As I'm currently organizing a research group with my colleagues on the Enlightenment and Romantic thinking, I'm wondering if you can say something about the relationship between colonialism and Enlightenment thinking, together with Romanticism. Do you think the postcolonial period in a way is a distant product of the Enlightenment or is it really the opposite?