...Postcolonialism By Patricia Waugh Summarized by Syed Saad Mukhtar M.Phil English Literature 1st Semester The Islamia University of Bahawalpur An academic discipline and theory featuring the methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain and respond to legacies of colonialism and imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country and establishing settlers for economic exploitation of native people and their land. The term postcolonialism addresses itself to historical, political, cultural and textual branches of colonial encounter between West and Non-West dating from 16th century to present day. Postcolonialism is thus a name for a critical theoretical approach in literary and cultural studies but it also designates a politics of transformational resistance to unjust and unequal forms of political and cultural authority which extends back across 20th century and beyond. The two very different traditions of Postcolonial thinking — the theoretical Post-Structuralist and Practical Political are thus linked in so far as some of the key concepts in postcolonialism. Postcolonialism therefore refers to those theories, texts, political strategies that engage in such questioning that aim to challenge structural inequalities and bring about social justice. It is often helpful to view Postcolonialism in comparative framework alongside political practices, with which it shares key objectives and expressions: Feminism. It is possible broadly speaking to trace three...
Words: 1124 - Pages: 5
...Definition of Postcolonialism Postcolonialism is the study of the legacy of the era of European, and sometimes American, direct global domination, which ended roughly in the mid-20th century, and the residual political, socio-economic, and psychological effects of that colonial history. Postcolonialism examines the manner in which emerging societies grapple with the challenges of self-determination and how they incorporate or reject the Western norms and conventions, such as legal or political systems, left in place after direct administration by colonial powers ended. Ironically, much early postcolonial theory, with its emphasis on overt rejection of imposed Western norms, was tied to Marxist theory, which also originated in Europe. Contemporary studies focus more on the effects of postcolonial globalization and the development of indigenous solutions to local needs. INTRODUCTION (Enote) By definition, postcolonialism is a period of time after colonialism, and postcolonial literature is typically characterized by its opposition to the colonial. However, some critics have argued that any literature that expresses an opposition to colonialism, even if it is produced during a colonial period, may be defined as postcolonial, primarily due to its oppositional nature. Postcolonial literature often focuses on race relations and the effects of racism and usually indicts white and/or colonial societies. Despite a basic consensus on the general themes of postcolonial writing, however...
Words: 859 - Pages: 4
...Splenetic Ogres and Heroic Cannibals in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) Ahsan Chowdhury University of Alberta I. Cannibalism: Ethnic Defamation or a Trope of Liberation? In A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to eir Parents and Country, and for Making em Beneficial to the Public () Swift exploits the age-old discourse of ethnic defamation against the Irish that had legitimated the English colonization of Ireland for centuries. One of the most damning elements in Swift’s use of this discourse is that of cannibalism. e discourse of ethnic defamation arose out of the Norman conquest of Ireland in the twelfth century. Clare Carroll points out that “the colonization of the Americas and the reformation as events … generated new discourses inflecting the inherited discourse of barbarism” in early-modern English writing about Ireland (). Narratives of native cannibalism were an indispensable part of these new discourses and practices. For the English authors as well as their continental counterparts, the cannibalistic other of the New World became a yardstick by which to measure the threat posed by internal enemies, be it the indigenous Irish, the French Catholics, or the Moorish inhabitants of Spain.¹ us, it was against the backdrop of the reforma Carroll demonstrates that while continental authors like Bartolomé de Las Casas and Jean de Léry could treat the Amerindians and their cannibalistic practices ...
Words: 11492 - Pages: 46
...POSTCOLONIAL THEORY & LITERATURE Postcolonial theory: John McLeod in Beginning Postcolonialism (2000) states that it “involves the challenge to colonial ways of knowing, ‘writing back’ in opposition to such views” (32). Within a literary context it involves “reading texts produced by writers from countries with a history of colonialism” (McLeod, 33). From ‘Commonwealth’ to ‘Postcolonial’: 1950’s-60’s—Field of ‘Commonwealth Literature’: Studies of individual national literatures Late 1970’s-80’s—Theories of colonial discourse: Frantz Fanon and Edward Said 1980’s—Turn to postcolonial theory Founding Work: Albert Memmi—The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957) Frantz Fanon—Black Skin, White Masks (1952), The Wretched of the Earth (1961) Edward Said—Orientalism (1978) Notable Theorist: Homi Bhabha—The Location of Culture (1994) Gayatri Spivak—“Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) Writing Back—Some Examples of Postcolonial Literature: Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back: Theory, and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989) express that the“…crucial function of language as a medium of power demands that post-colonial writing define itself by seizing the language of the centre and replacing it in a discourse fully adapted to the colonized place” (38). Naguib Mahfouz—Palace Walk (1956) Chinua Achebe—Things Fall Apart (1958) V.S. Naipaul—Mystic Masseur (1959) Jean Rhys—Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) Gabriel García Márquez—One Hundred...
Words: 283 - Pages: 2
...In Search of Her: A Postcolonial/ Feminist Enquiry into the Identity of Indian Woman Kochurani Abraham “The home was the principal site for expressing the spiritual quality of the nation’s culture and women must take the main responsibility of protecting and nurturing this quality. No matter what the changes in the external conditions of life for women, they must not lose their essentially spiritual (ie feminine) virtues; they must not, in other words, become essentially westernized.” - Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question”* “What was gradually and carefully constituted, brick by brick, in the interaction between colonialism and nationalism is now so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the middle classes that ideas about the past have assumed the status of revealed truths…It has led to a narrow and limiting circle in which the image of Indian womanhood has become, both a shackle and a rhetorical device that nevertheless functions as a historical truth.” - Uma Chakravarti “Whatever happened to the Vedic Dasi?: Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past.”* Who/where is the Indian woman? Since this conference focuses on the theme “Identity, Difference and...
Words: 4288 - Pages: 18
...Beteckning: Humanities and Social Sciences Double Oppression in the Color Purple and Wide Sargasso Sea. A Comparison between the main characters Celie and Antoinette/Bertha. Ingela Lundin 2008 C-essay English Literature Supervisor: Dr Maria Mårdberg Examinator: Dr Helena Wahlström Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose and main questions ............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Method and material......................................................................................................... 1 1.3 Theoretical approach ........................................................................................................ 2 1.4 Previous research – an overview ...................................................................................... 3 1.5 Introducing the novels ...................................................................................................... 4 2. A comparison of the double oppression in the two protagonists’ marriages.................. 6 2.1 The diminishing and isolation of Celie and Antoinette/Bertha........................................ 6 2.2 The upholding of the white man’s norm ........................................................................ 14 Conclusion..........................................................
Words: 10734 - Pages: 43
...Philosophy of the Human Spring Term 2012 Prof. Meyer Suggested Paper Topics Write a 5-7 page paper double spaced with one inch margins in Times font on one of the following questions, or a topic of your own design. Papers are due by April 30 at midnight for electronic submission. Temple plagiarism policies apply to this assignment. 1. What does Sartre mean by existentialism, and how does an individual's freedom to act in the world appear to affect the chances of being able to lead a meaningful life? Why might it be important to be able to act in a way that is meaningful, and that allows people to lead a life that is in keeping with their own character? How well do you think the European world after the second world war accommodated the striving for freedom among its inhabitants? What happens when our absolute freedom is put to use in social or political contexts, and how enthusiastically have those contexts responded to the presence of free human action and thought since the time of Sartre’s writing in your view? 2. Why does nationality matter according to Fanon, and under what conditions do we see it manifested in the human world according to his account? What kinds of culture, character, identity, and consciousness emerge from the presence of nationality, and what kinds of struggle does Fanon believe allow for the development of nationality in people's lived experience? Do intellectuals perform a different role when they participate in such forms...
Words: 709 - Pages: 3
...CONTEMPORARY INDIA: Technology and the New City Course Description: The term ‘citizen’ has two overlapping meanings: as the bearer of political/juridical rights and a more diffuse sense of belonging, to a collectivity or an existing social order. The question of citizenship, statutory or anticipated, moreover has a special resonance with the city. The idea of the peasant mutating into the industrial worker in order to become a true citizen of the nation, for example, was an underlying theme of much of modern European social thought. The imagined move from a status of subordination to full citizenship was, of course, also the motive force of the anti-colonial struggles of the 18th to 20th centuries. A further fact to keep in mind is that the largest cities in the world today, especially those that grew most rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century, are not Western cities. Our course will examine concepts of citizenship and the new urban spaces that emerged, along with the crucial third term of the triad, technology. Moreover in the new grid of electronic capital, as the globe is re-drawn by virtual lines, the histories of the global South are being flattened out in very specific ways. The pervasive NGO culture of our times with its impatient philanthropy and electronic databasing needs more than ever to be ‘supplemented’ by the skill of slow and patient reading that is the unique mandate of Literature. Through our analyses of some of the new institutions...
Words: 802 - Pages: 4
...Can the subaltern speak? Subaltern, meaning ‘of inferior rank’, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to those groups in society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes. Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other groups denied access to ‘hegemonic’ power. Since the history of the ruling classes is realized in the state, history being the history of states and dominant groups, Gramsci was interested in the historiography of the subaltern classes. In ‘Notes on Italian history’ (1934—5) he outlined a six point plan for studying the history of the subaltern classes which included: (1) their objective formation (2) their active or passive affiliation to the dominant political formations (3) the birth of new parties and dominant groups (4) the formations that the subaltern groups produce to press their claims (5) new formations within the old framework that assert the autonomy of the subaltern classes; and (6) other points referring to trade unions and political parties. Gramsci claimed that the history of the subaltern classes was just as complex as the history of the dominant classes, although the history of the latter is usually that which is accepted as ‘official’ history. For him, the history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented and episodic, since they are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they rebel. Clearly they have less access to the means by which they may control their own representation...
Words: 1331 - Pages: 6
...Identity is a much debated term in postcolonial literature. The historical, cultural and ideological circumstances prevalent in the alien and native societies enmesh the protagonists. They become victims of despair and loneliness as they feel the people around them asking them, Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here? The perplexity of the protagonists caused by the binary opposition results in identity crisis. Arvind Adiga, a contemporary Indian English novelist who poured in his novel The White Tiger, the extraordinary heartrending feelings for the downtrodden section of the Indian society delineating the two contradictory opposite sides of India: the India of underdogs and the India of elites, India of light and India of darkness. Adiga in his debut novel realistically paints on the one hand the nation as the dark, the corrupt, the wasteland, the Subaltern and the illiterate on the other hand the nation is seasoned with affluent luxury, extravagant lifestyle and as an emerging and booming India. Like Charles Dickens’s novels of the Victorian age, Adiga’s novel The White Tiger also portrays the real India, the incredible India as well as the India of “Big Bellies and the Small Bellies” (64). Arvind Adiga’s the Man Booker prize winning novel The White Tiger (2008) depicts the Balaram Hawai as a post modern hero and a subaltern protagonist who raises his voice and proves that subaltern can speak. I want to prove in this paper the dictum that the subaltern can speak...
Words: 2207 - Pages: 9
...The Location of Culture, by Homi K. Bhabha; 285 pp. New York: Routledge, 1994, $49.95. This book assembles several of Homi Bhabha's most significant essays, allowing for an examination of his contribution to contemporary literary theory. As a self-described postcolonial critic, often compared with Edward Said or Gayatri Spivak, Bhabha is perhaps most well-known for his theory of cultural hybridity, which he develops in "Signs Taken For Wonders" and several other essays included in this collection. Bhabha argues that hybridity results from various forms of colonization, which lead to cultural collisions and interchanges. In the attempt to assert colonial power in order to create anglicized subjects, "[t]he trace of what is disavowed is not repressed but repeated as something different--a mutation, a hybrid" (p. 111). This hybrid trace contradicts both the attempt to fix and control indigenous cultures and the illusion of cultural isolation or purity. His project thus adapts poststructuralist challenges to stable or fixed identities, attempting to "rename" postmodernism from a postcolonial perspective (p. 175), and allowing sustained attention to the ways in which race, gender, community, and nationality converge. One of his major contributions to theories of cultural production and identity is that he examines these various intersections closely, and avoids simply listing them or elevating one aspect of his analysis over others. Eight of the twelve chapters in this volume have...
Words: 1233 - Pages: 5
...Jasmine Williams English 103 Professor Bryan Henery 16 December 2015 Postcolonial Criticism When analyzing stories from a postcolonial criticism viewpoint, oftentimes one will see and oppressed group along with a dominant group. Postcolonial critics also see stereotypes in text as people without power are portrayed as the inferior ones. Oppressed individuals as seen from this viewpoint can also develop feelings of alienation. Postcolonial criticism can be similar to cultural studies, however it can have a unique perspective on literature and politics. This type of criticism can look at certain issues of power, politics, economics, and culture. Moreover, the authors can often reinforce colonial hegemonic ideology, such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Western critics might consider Heart of Darkness an effective critique of colonial behavior. But post-colonial theorists and authors might disagree with this perspective: "...as Chinua Achebe observes, the novel's condemnation of European is based on a definition of Africans as savages: beneath their veneer of civilization, the Europeans are, the novel tells us, as barbaric as the Africans. And indeed, Achebe notes, the novel portrays Africans as a pre-historic mass of frenzied, howling, incomprehensible barbarians..." (Tyson 374-375). In many works of literature, specifically those coming out of Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian Subcontinent, we meet characters that are struggling with their identities in the wake...
Words: 545 - Pages: 3
...Post-colonialism theory is focused on analyzing and explaining how the effects of colonization and imperialism have on people and nations (. In a simple sense, this theory can be broken down into three categories: person, nation, and world. These three categories examine how imperialism impacted the psyche of humans from a micro level (person) up to a macro level (world). While the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is most likely analyzed through a feminist lens, the core of the story does allow it to be examined through a post-colonialism lens also. At its center, the story is about the other (a woman seemingly held captive in a man’s world). We see three key characteristics displayed by our other, self-doubt, her inability to protect/provide...
Words: 273 - Pages: 2
...*Daryoosh Hayati Lecturer of English Language, Lamerd Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran Journal of Subcontinent Researches University of Sistan and Baluchestan Vol. 3, No.7, summer 2011 (p.p 31-52) East meets West: a Study of Dual Identity in Mohsin Hamid’s the Reluctant Fundamentalist Abstract This essay will present a postcolonial study of how Eastern identity and Western identity clash in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, the Pakistani- American novelist, and make the character of the protagonist a glocal one, (A mixture of global and local), a term newly coined by Postcolonial scholars to show the ever clashing mixture of global and local dualities in immigrants’ personalities. The basis for this research paper is the postcolonial theories of Edward Said, Fanon and Homi K. Bhabha. The aim is to question simply and sardonically the human cost of empire building, moreover it is discussed how the people in a totally alien culture are faced with different cultural predicaments, dilemmas as well as contradictions threatening their identity. Identity is supposed to be stable, while as this novel indicates, it is more of glocal identity which is at risk due to the cultural conflicts, as a result of which identity and ethnicity are subjected to change for the benefit of the hegemony. In line with Edward Said’s: “the East writes back” it is shown how this novel is a reaction to the discourse of colonization from the Pakistani side (which stands for the East)...
Words: 7519 - Pages: 31
...Review of SEAN MILLS’ "The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal" "The following people are to be released from their captors. In Northern Ireland, the seven members of the New Provo Front. In Canada, the five imprisoned leaders of Liberte de Quebec. In Sri Lanka, the nine members of the Asian Dawn movement…” (Die Hard) There is no doubt that Sean Mills would have felt a flash of amusement at this mention of the (incorrectly identified) FLQ, uttered by super-villain Hans Gruber in his list of demands, in 1988's Die Hard, lumped together with other such revolutionary entities. Indeed, in The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, Sean Mills attempts to argue that revolutionary trends and theories in various regions of the world made their way across the globe, bypassing borders and mutually influencing the areas that they managed to reach. More specifically, his intention is to analyze this notion with respects to the situation in Montreal during the 1960's and early 1970's. He does so after outlining three purposes which his work aims to address. Firstly, Mills states his desire to bring about an alternative way of observing Montreal's "political upheavals" during the aforementioned time period, whereby events on an international scale are taken into account. Secondly, he wishes to make clear the ways in which the ideas of various groups and movements were inter-linked and influenced...
Words: 926 - Pages: 4
