Postcolonial Literary Theory. What is Colonialism?

Postcolonial Literary Theory

What is Colonialism?

What Happened during Colonialism?

• During the colonial era white Europeans ventured into the so-called underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia and dominated a lot of geographical spaces there.

Impact of Colonialism

• White Europeans:

How do Colonial Powers Justify their Actions?

Justifying Colonialism

• The colonized are savages


• The culture of the colonized is not up to the standard of the colonizer


• The colonized nation is unable to manage and run itself properly


• The colonized nation embraces a set of heathen religious beliefs

How did the Colonists Stay in Power?

OPPRESSION

Oppressions

• Oppression is a basic ingredient of colonialism.

• Oppression dehumanizes

• Colonialism spawned national movements

Response to Oppression

• Thus in the thickness of colonialism, national movements, and most of them were radical and violent in their approaches, emerged to encounter the aggression of colonialism.

Che Guavara

What was the Impact of Colonialism?


• The total or partial erosion of the colonized culture


• The total rejection by some elements among the colonized


• The categorization of the world into ranks


• The emergence of different forms of fundamentalism


• The emergence of bourgeoisie classes


• The emergence of societies with a lot of contradictions and split loyalties.

So What is Postcolonialism?

• To put it simply, postcolonialism examines what happens socially, economically, politically, and culturally to former colonies once they become independent.

What are the Assumptions of Post-colonialism?

Cultural Relativism

Ambivalence towards Authority

Alienation

• Colonialism and Postcolonialism leads to the alienation of the native in his own land.

Resurrecting Culture

• Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt to both resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about their culture.

So What is Postcolonial Literary Theory?

• Postcolonial literary theory involves the analysis of literary texts

So What is Postcolonial Literary Theory?

• Alternatively, it can refer to the analysis of texts

What does Postcolonial Theory Focus On?

Cultural Distortion

• The way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people.

Literature of the Colonized

• On literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness.

Impact on the Colonizers

• It can also deal with the way in which literature in colonizing countries appropriates the language, images, scenes, traditions and so forth of colonized countries.

Mixing of Cultures

• This mixing of cultures is another principal theme in postcolonial fiction, and it is often developed in the broader context of establishing identity.

Important Figures in

Postcolonial Literary Theory

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)

• Most Important Works: Black Skin, White

Masks The Wretched of the

Earth

Edward Said (1935-2003)

• Most Important Works: Orientalism Culture and

Imperialism

Homi Bhabha (1949-present)

• In his essay "Postcolonial Criticism" (1992), Bhabha has shown how certain cultures (mis)represent other cultures, thereby extending their political and social domination in the modern world order.

Gayatri Spivak (1942-present)

• In her article "Can the Subaltern Speak?“ Spivak reveals the tendency of institutional and cultural practices to exclude and marginalize the subaltern, especially subaltern women.

Important Colonial and Postcolonial

Novelists

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

• Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), tells of a man's shipwreck on a desert island and his subsequent adventures.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

• In his novella, Heart of Darkness, tells the story of a man named Marlow who details a visit he took up the Congo River to investigate the work of Kurtz, a Belgian trader in ivory in the Congo Free State.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

• In his novel, A Passage to India, Forster tells the story of a British woman who accuses an Indian doctor of sexually assaulting her. The ensuing court trial increases the racial tension between the Indians and the British and foreshadows the end of the British Raj.

Salman Rushdie (1947-present)

• Important Works: Midnight's Children The Satanic Verses The Moor's Last

Sigh Shalimar the Clown

V. S. Naipaul (1932-present)

• Important Works The Mystic Masseur A House for Mr.

Biswas The Mimic Men A Bend in the River

Chinua Achebe (1930-present)

• Important Works Things Fall Apart Arrow of God A Man of the People Anthills of the

Savannah

Zadie Smith (1975-present)

• Important Works White Teeth The Autograph Man On Beauty

Arundhati Roy

• Important Works The God of Small

Things The Greater Common

Good The Algebra of Infinite

Justice

Postcolonial Themes

• Struggle towards independence (both by an individual and/or a community)

• Dominating influence of foreign culture in postcolonial society

• Construction/demolition of a house an attempt to build a new place/new identity or eradicate the past

Themes continued

• Journey of a European through unfamiliar landscape with a guide

• Theme of exile and displacement

Questions Postcolonial Critics Ask about Literature

Postcolonial Questions

• How did the experience of colonization affect the colonizers and the colonized in the story?


• How are the colonialists and their cohorts presented in the narratives? Are they tolerant, oppressive, violent, charitable, cute, white, brave, religious, hypocrites, etc?


• Are there stereotypes presented in the narratives? For example are the local inhabitants seen as savages, cannibals, polygamous, dirty, violent, irrational, etc.?


• What are the forms of resistance against colonial control?


• What were the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers?


• Do the narratives depict natives versus settlers, vice versa? How?


• Have new forms of imperialism replaced colonization in this story?


• What does the narrative reveal about the problematics of postcolonial identity, including such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?


• What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?

• Are there stereotypes presented in the narratives? For example are the local inhabitants seen as savages, cannibals, polygamous, dirty, violent, irrational, etc.?

• How are the colonialists and their cohorts presented in the narratives? Are they tolerant, oppressive, violent, charitable, cute, white, brave, religious, hypocrites, etc?

Postcolonial Literary Theory. What is Colonialism?

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