Postcolonialism.doc

I. Definitions: 

Colonialism:

The term colonialism refers to the state of being a colony. It is derived from the Latin colonia: farm of settlement. It shares a common root with the word culture through Latin colere (past. Part. Cultum: meaning to grow). Colonialism refers to the practice by which a powerful country controls another country or other countries. This is achieved by means of a military, economic, cultural oppression or domination of one country over another. Colonialism aims at controlling not only the people’s wealth (what they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed) in order to control the entire realm of real life’s language; but it aims also at dominating the colonized country through out imposing the dominance of their mental universe. In other words, it is a control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world: to control a people’s culture is to control its tools of self-definition in relationship to others. For colonialism this control involves tow aspects of the same process:  The destruction or deliberate undervaluing of a people’s culture.  The domination of a people’s language by that of colonizing nation.

 Neo-colonialism: The term neo-colonialism refers to new-style colonialism, and generally means the exercise of international power through economic and commercial rather than military means.

 Postcolonialism: Literally, Postcolonialism refers to the period following the decline of colonialism. Postcolonialism more narrowly and historically defined, is usually understood to refer to those countries which achieved formal political independence from Britain (and from other Western European powers such as Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, and Germany) from the mid-twentieth century onwards. As far as Britain is concerned, many of these countries become -and still are- members of the British Commonwealth (first recognized in 1931). Postcolonialism refers also to the social, political, economic, and cultural practices which arise in response and resistance to colonialism. In literary theory, Postcolonialism deals with the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries, or literature written in colonizing countries which deals with colonization or colonized peoples. Postcolonialism focuses particularly on:  The way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority of the colonized people.  Literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past. Postcolonialism considers culture as a strategy of survival. It gives it tow dimensions: a transnational one and a translational one. On the one hand, it is transnational because contemporary postcolonial discourses are rooted in specific histories of cultural displacement. On the other hand, culture is translational because such spatial histories of displacement -now

1

accompanied by territorial ambitions of global media technologies- make the question of how culture signifies, or what is signified by culture, a rather complex issue. The transnational dimension of culture transformation –migration, Diaspora, displacement, relocation- makes the process of cultural translation a complex form of signification. Postcolonial major theorists are:  Edward Said  Gayatri Spivak  Homi Bhabha  Stuart Hall  Sara Suleri  Frantz Fanon

II. Principles and Issues of Concern: Postcolonialism focuses on:  Race relations and the effects of racism and combating the residual effects of colonialism on cultures. In other words, it is not simply concerned with salvaging past worlds, but it aims also at learning how they can move beyond this period.  Illegitimating the idea of establishing power through conquest.  Building a national identity.  Demonstrating the heterogeneity of colonized places.  Discussing issues of otherness, resistance, opposition, mimicry aiming at establishing values of human freedom, liberty, identity, and individuality.  Celebrating their culture’s ancient yet transformed heritage, and at the same time integrating and mingling the cultural signs and practices of both the colonizing and the colonized cultures (hybridity).

III. Major Figuers’ Contributions: o Frantz Fanon: Fanon is one of the earliest writers associated with Postcolonialism. He analyzed the nature of colonialism and those subjugated by it. He described colonialism as a source of violence, and offered a less bright and more violent prescription for moving beyond the colonial mindset. He argued that previously colonized peoples would remain hybrids with a miserably schizophrenic identity unless they revolt violently against their oppressors. Fanon’s important contribution to the struggle against colonialism is his concern with history. For him, the work of the struggle against colonialism involves the claiming back of their own history by the colonized from the negative or non-existent versions of it produced by the colonisers. He stressed the vital importance of the culture and representations of their past being central to the creation of both new positive forms of subject formation and new forms of social organisation which are necessary in the newly independent post-colonial era. He introduced also concepts of colonial space and ideas surrounding the role of the middle-class intelligentsia in these new nations; in order to develop new forms of social

2

democracy rather than utilise existing colonial institutions and simply fill existing administrative positions with indigenous people.

o Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak:

Spivak’s main contribution to postcolonial theory came with her specific definition of the term subaltern. She also introduced terms such as essentialism and strategic essentialism. The former term refers to the dangers of reviving subaltern voices in ways that might simplify heterogeneous groups, creating stereotyped impressions of their diverse group. Spivak, however, believes that essentialism can sometimes be used strategically by these groups to make it easier for the subaltern to be heard and understood when a clear identity can be created and accepted by the majority. Spivak also introduced the term epistemic violence which refers to the destruction of the non-western ways of knowing and thereby the domination of western ways of understanding. She also criticized those who ignored “the cultural other” or subaltern.

o Homi K. Bhabha: Bhabha introduced the idea that postcolonial world should valorise spaces of mixing, spaces where truth and authenticity move aside from ambiguity. He introduced also the concept of hybridity to capture the sense that many writers have of belonging to both cultures. For Homi Bhabha, hybridity occurs in postcolonial societies both: as a result of conscious movement of cultural suppression, as when the colonial power invades to consolidate political and economic control, or when settler-invaders dispose indigenous peoples and force them to “assimilate” to new social patterns. It may also occur in later periods when patterns of immigration from metropolitan societies and from other imperial areas of influence continue to produce complex cultural palimpsests with the post-colonial world.

o Edward Said: Said introduced the term orientalism describing the binary between the Orient and the Occident. He argued that the Occident could not exist without the Orient, and vice versa.

IV. Main Postcolonial Key Terms: As we have seen so far, Postcolonial theory is the product of a whole nation’s opposition to the Colonialism’s and Neo-Colonialism’s residual effects. Throughout its process of addressing matters of identity, gender, race and ethnicity, Postcolonial theory encourages thought about the colonised’s creative resistance to the coloniser. As a result of this, Postcolonial theory introduced a wide range of terms such as: writing back, re-writing and re-reading aiming at coming up with a new interpretation of well-known literature under the perspective of the formerly colonised. Postcolonial theory introduced also major key terms that are deemed to be the core of this theory:

3

 

  

   

 

Mimicry: refers to a sign of a double articulation, which appropriates the other as it visualizes power. It is also a sign of the inappropriate (mockery) to disrupt its authority. Hybridity: refers to the integration (mingling) of cultural signs and practices from the colonizing and the colonized cultures so that people adapt themselves to the necessities and opportunities of more or less oppressive or invasive cultural impositions. The Third Space: refers to the non-synchronous temporality of global and national cultures that opens up a cultural space – a third space or in betweeness space- where the negotiation of differences creates a tension peculiar to the borderline existences. Alterity: refers to the lack of identification with some part of one’s personality or one’s community. It also refers to the concept of otherness and differences. Eurocentrism: refers to the action of placing emphasis on European (western) concerns, culture and values at the expense of those of other cultures. It’s an instance of Ethnocentrism, perhaps especially relevant because of its alignment with current and past real power structures in the world. Imperialism: refers to the policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires through direct or indirect methods. Diaspora: refers to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands, being dispersed throughout other parts of the world, and the developments in their dispersal and culture. Otherness: the term otherness includes doubleness, both identity and difference. It considers the values and meanings of the colonizing culture but rejects its power. Ethnicity: refers to those aspects of social relationships and processes in which cultural difference is communicated. It is to be understood as the articulation of internal and external networks of exchange. The development of the term ethnicity in current postcolonial theory marks a shift from earlier discussions of race. Ethnicity recognises the social cultural and religious practices which help to constitute a cultural identity and is less reductive than the more physically based concept of race. Identity formation: Colonialism left some social and cultural changes. As a result of these changes, the dominant question after independence is: what is the new cultural identity? Multiculturalism: refers to the attempt both to respond to and to control the dynamic process of the articulation of cultural difference, administrating a consensus based on a norm that propagates cultural diversity. It is defined as the awareness of the distinctively plural and hybrid nature of all cultures. There are various views of what the concept multicultural can mean. It can mean:  Multiracial: the emphasis is on perceived differences in people’s “colour”, hair texture and physical build (white, black, yellow) race is the core term here.  Multi-ethnic: the emphasis is on people’s social organisation and cultural practices. Ethnicity is derived from Greek ethnos: nation. It refers to the fact that people can be born into a certain group, but that they may subsequently take up the cultural practices of another group. It offers the possibility of cultural change and variation. Ethnicity is a term which is positively valued. Ethnocentrism, conversely, is negatively charged because, it refers to the tendency to privilege or centre one culture before others, which thereby become marginalised or ignored.

4

 Cultural differences of all kinds: including differences of class, rank, caste, sexuality, gender, occupation, region, age, dis/ability…as well as race and ethnicity. Though broad and potentially bland, this extended sense of multiculturalism has the great advantage that it does not concentrate upon one cultural difference to the potential exclusion of others. It recognises cultural differences to be plural and complexly interrelated.  Location: it is less concerned with the analysis of a particular geographical area and its relationships to identity; but rather, with the analysis of the social, cultural, religious and linguistic processes which constitute a cultural identity regardless of the specific location in which these occur. This concern with the non-geographical aspects of cultural location results in a more sophisticated analysis of political struggles against racism and colonialism and takes into account both the migrations of Diaspora communities and their interaction with other social groups, being indigenous peoples or other cultural Diasporas. Postcolonial theory introduced also some basic terms that are considered to be of a great help when analysing literary works. These key terms are as follow:  the colonizer vs. the colonized  white & western superiority vs. coloured & colonial inferiority  black vs. white  slave vs. master  East vs. West  Absence vs. presence  Centres vs. margins  Identity vs. difference  Self vs. other  Foreground vs. background  Standards vs. varieties  Foreigners vs. natives  Literacy vs. illiteracy

Conclusion: To conclude what was said before, it is of a great importance to highlight the fact that what makes defining the origins of post-colonialism quite impossible is the variety of ideas that tell different stories about how it came to life. There are scholars who claim that postcolonialism dates back to Marxism in relation to the Marxist idea of anti-imperialism. Defining the concept of the term is not the only complex and difficult thing to do, even the orthography of the term creates much debate as there is the hyphenised one (post-colonialism) referring to the period after independence and one without a hyphen (postcolonialism) indicating the period during which interaction exists between the colonizer and colonized. Post-colonial theory came as an invitation to consider, redefine, deconstruct and construct our understanding of the notions of identity, culture and history that were tarnished by western colonization and its aftermaths. Many scholars address the issue of post-colonialism as Edward Said’s fruit of his work on “Orientalism”. For this claim, the 1980s are considered to be the birth of the counterdiscourse and pots-colonial writings that aim at questioning the idea of Eurocentrism and the hegemony of western discourse. These writings not only attack or criticize western discourse, but also attempt at answering back this discourse. A very famous example for this is Edward Said’s “Orientalism” in which he attacks the west for “othering” and stigmatizing the orient (the orient for post-colonial studies refers not only to the geographical Orient, but to the third

5

world and colonized communities in general); whereas, others give it another interpretation; that is, they assume that Frantz Fanon is the one who initiated the discourse with “Black Skin, White Mask” in 1952, followed by the unprecedented “The Wretched of The Earth” in 1961. After 17 years came “orientalism” by Edward Said. Later, an inundation of publications in the field took place including Homi Bhabha “Nation and Narration”, Benedict Anderson “Imagined Communities” and Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin “The Empire Writes Back”. When applying post-colonial approach on a text, we are supposed to take into consideration different components of a given text:

6