Argues that the psychoanalytic self was constituted through the specifically national-colonial encounters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and that therefore somewhat paradoxically perhaps, psychoanalysis is crucial for understanding postcoloniality and decolonization

"Ranjana Khanna articulates and outlines a transnational feminist ethics. Such an ethics is badly needed and awaited with eagerness by many. Dark Continents is, indeed, a terrific integration of psychoanalytic thought with postcolonial and feminist politics by way of a critical intimacy with the combined ethics of ambiguity and difference "-Mieke Bal, University of Amsterdam