Matthew Carson Allen holds a PhD in French Studies from Warwick University. His dissertation examined the challenges to universalism offered by thinkers from the global periphery including Nikolai Marr and the Haitian intellectual Anténor Firmin. He currently teaches French at secondary school level.

Robert J.C. Young is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. His writings address literature, postcolonial theory, cultural and political history, and psychoanalysis; they are animated by an interest in the forms of thought adopted by people who are subject to marginalization.