The Empire writes back to the center

1
The Empire writes back to the center

• Phrase coined by Salman Rushdie
• Refers to members of British colonies (before or
  after independence) responding, or talking back,
  to the imperial center by telling their own
  story or expressing their own point of view

2
The Center

• Britain was referred to as a colonial center as
  early as the 16th century, a period of colonial
  expansion
• Britain was crystallized as Imperial Center in
  the 19th century, when English literature became
  an academic study throughout Britain's colonies.
  The academic study of English propagated ideas of
  center vs. margin, civilization vs.
  savagery.

3
Postcolonialism

• Writing back to the center is a form of
  postcolonial writing theoretical and creative
  writings that examine the culture of former
  colonies and the construction of colonial and
  postcolonial subjects.
• Postcolonial writing presents counter-narratives
  to European imperial discourses.

4

• Postcolonial can therefore refer, temporally,
  to the period after independence, or can refer,
  conceptually, to cultures affected by European
  imperial expansion, from the moment the cultures
  were colonized to the present.

5

• Postcolonial literature includes writing from
  locations including Africa, India, Pakistan,
  Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the West Indies, and
  settler colonies such as Canada and Australia.
• The U.S., too, constitutes a settler colony,
  though many postcolonial critics do not count it
  among postcolonial countries because of its
  neocolonial, hegemonic power (to borrow Chantal
  Zabus's terms).

6
Postcolonialism and its fellow isms

• Postcolonial, feminist, and postmodern writing
  share a dedication to exploring the constructed
  nature of historical narratives and rewriting
  history from silenced perspectives.

7
Wide Sargasso Sea

• In some ways, Wide Sargasso Sea is a paradigmatic
  instance of writing back
• - a deliberate response to an icon of Victorian
  literature
• - a supplement or alternative to Bronte's
  narrative
• Some Caribbean writers, ex. Edward Kamau
  Braithwaite (1974), rejected Wide Sargasso Sea as
  a postcolonial or Caribbean novel on the premise
  that it is sympathetic to the white
  plantation-owning class and therefore fails to
  meaningfully identify with the world of black
  Jamaicans of the 19th century.