SOCIAL SCIENTIST theorised terms). For if PC scholars (obviously) are not some kind of payrolled agents, the enthusiastic embracement in the metropole academe of these discourse-friendly frameworks of analysis applied to geopolitical phenomena - and the bracketing out of other forces, factors and contradictions including those operant 'on the spot' within ex-colonised societies, many of the latter still benighted by the inherited colonial shadow of scandalous disparities, dark-ages disenfranchisements, and unresolved tensions of interest and identity - do remain issues to be pondered. After all, if theories cannot be summarily convicted, neither can they be altogether freely absolved with regard to their ulterior appropriations and deployments. For if it is not quite fair to blame its malafide adherents on a theory, one may still ask what in the immanent protocol of a theoretical construct makes it vulnerable to an 'illegitimate adoption'. It might for this very reason have been wished that as part of her otherwise extensive detailing of the fascinating new zones opened out by postcolonial studies - such as the harlequinised subjectivities compounded or neuroses triggered by transdiasporic cohabitings -Loomba had incorporated a slightly fuller intimation of what else remains to be opened out. Where, if at all, might one find the significant absences and blindspots in postcolonial studies as presently constituted? Why, to bite one notable apparent hiatus, does such a subtle and (as Loomba puts it) "nuanced" method of interpreting cultural significational systems as postcolonialism seemingly say little about the media-packaged mass-cultural modes of imagistic and ideatic penetration that have accompanied the globalising drive of recent times? This becomes an especially piquant problematic since the current propulsion towards cultural and imagistic homogenisation - and geopolitical unipolarity - underwritten by the corporate conglomerates, technosystems and political centres of today's hegemonistic world system, runs contrary to the multiculturalist, hybridistic and pluralising urges adduced by postcolonialism. Such an "oxymoron5 pointedly invites theorisation. It is "missing themes' such as these that could with advantage propel prospective investigation. This very signalling, even in its silences, towards the forays that lie ahead/beyond, makes Loomba's study one that spurs further reading and work. Topnotch in terms of get-up, layout and printing quality (despite the minor irritants of fast-turnover proofing/editing in a few places) and available at an affordable Indian price, the book's virtues include solid bibliographical, indexing and annotational