Colonial domination represents a powerful event of such magnitude that it is no surprise that post-colonial studies are currently among the most influential critical interventions. Post-colonial theory is aimed at analyzing the various levels of colonial interactions from textual, figural, spatial, historical, political, and economic perspectives. This is never done focusing only on single regions or disciplines - it is rather the goal to work out the historical inter-dependencies and intertwining among the countries of the »South« and the »North«. Nevertheless, the term »post-colonial« resists an exact marking: It neither refers to a specific historical period nor to a concrete content or a clearly identifiable political program. This introduction opens up the vast and dynamic field of post-colonial theory formation via a critical debate of the writings by the three most prominent post-colonial voices - Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. The thoroughly revised and updated second edition especially takes a critical look at the new writings by Spivak and Bhabha, but also deals with the current discussions about globalization, religion, and decolonization in detail.