POSTCOLONIALISM

POSTCOLONIALISM

is an intellectual direction (sometimes also called an “era” or the “post-colonial theory”) that exists since around the middle of the 20th century. It developed from and mainly refers to the time after colonialism.

DESCRIPTIONSParticular areas of emphasis

include the Indian subcontinent, northern and central Africa, and southeast Asia. These regions were under the control of colonial powers like England, the United States, and France.

also deals with literature written by citizens of colonial countries that portrays colonized people as its subject matter.

DESCRIPTIONSdeals with the conflicts between

ruler and subject, mainstream and marginalized, oppressors and oppressed and, at the same time, celebrates the suppressed "other," challenging the dominant culture and questioning concepts of established authority.

This literature that has been produced in former colonies reflects changes in the social, political, economic, and cultural practices in freed regions and rebellion against anything that reminds of the colonizer. 

Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak are important exponents of postcolonial criticism.

DESCRIPTIONS

CHARACTERISTICSAn awareness of representations

of the non-European as exotic or immoral 'Other'.

An awareness of the tainted nature of the colonizers' language (thus using it involves acquiescing to colonial structures).

An awareness of the double nature of identity of both colonizer and colonized.

CHARACTERISTICSAn awareness of cross-cultural interactions

as demonstrated in the three stages:1. Adopt European form and subject

matter (similar to the feminine stage in feminism)

2. Adapt European form to African subject matter (similar to the feminist stage in feminism)

3. Adept or independent form and subject matter (similar to the female stage in feminism)

What postcolonial critics do:Reject claims to universalism and

seek to show its general inability to empathize across boundaries of cultural and ethnic differences.

Examine representation of other cultures in literature.

Show how such literature is silent on matters concerned with colonization and imperialism.

Foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity.

Celebrate hybridity whereby individuals and groups belong simultaneously to more than one culture.

See states of marginality, plurality and perceived 'Otherness" as sources of energy and potential change.

What postcolonial critics do:

PURPOSESto find and re-establish their lost

national identity, history and literature, and to define the authors’ relationship with the land and language of their former masters. 

to open a space where the residual effects of colonialism can be resisted.

Books that influenced postcolonial criticism:1961: Frantz Fanon’s The

Wretched of the Earth argues that the first term for colonized to find voice is to reclaim their own past that has long been devalued by European colonizers.

1978: Edward Said’s Orientalism argues that the West identifies the East as its ‘Other’ and as such it is exotic, seductive, and feminine.