Introduction to the Term Postcolonialism

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Introduction to the Term Postcolonialism

• Chapter One

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Whats the Connection Between Colonialism and
Capitalism?

• Colonialism was first and foremost a commercial
  venture of Western nations.
• The seizing of foreign lands for government and
  settlement was in part motivated by the desire to
  create and control markets for Western goods, as
  well as to secure the natural resources and labor
  power of different lands and people at the lowest
  possible cost.

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How is Imperialism related to Colonialism?

• Imperialism is an ideological concept which
  upholds the legitimacy of the economic and
  military control of one nation by another
• Colonialism is one form of imperialism
  specifically, colonialism concerns the settlement
  of one group of people in a new location.
• While colonialism is virtually over today,
  imperialism continues apace as Western Nations,
  and in particular the U.S., still engage in
  imperial acts, securing wealth and power through
  the exploitation of other nations.

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Definition of Colonialism

• The settlement of territory, the exploitation or
  development of resources, and the attempt to
  govern the indigenous inhabitants of occupied
  lands.
• A emphasis on settlement of the land
• B economic relationship is the heart of
  colonialism
• C unequal relations of power are constructed by
  colonialism

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What are the Three Periods of Decolonization?

• 1. Loss of the American colonies (late 18th
  century)
• 2. Dominions, or settler nations (Canada,
  Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), formed
  through large movement of Europeans to colonized
  country, displacing and destroying native
  populations, begin to gain freedom. (late 19th
  early 20th Century)
• 3. Colonized South Asia, Africa and Carribbean,
  not settled by large numbers of Europeans, but
  instead by small numbers of British Colonial
  Elites, fight for independence. (Post WW II)

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Reasons for Decolonization

• 1. Nationalism
• 2. Europes declining power in the world
• 3. Rise of the U.S. and the Soviet Union as
  major powers
• 4. Expense of maintaining Empire.

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Commonwealth Literature

• Definition Literature in English emerging from
  colonized countries excepting the U.S. and
  Ireland
• Shift from imperial or colonial to commonwealth
  as nations developed their independence.
• However, one of the primary assumptions of
  scholars of commonwealth literature was that the
  writers brought new insights to Western readers.
  The focus is on the West, on English speakers.

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Issues in Commonwealth Literature

• 1. Nationalism or the creation of a nation
• 2. Connections between commonwealth nations
  similarities of their experiences
• 3. Cultural differences between commonwealth
  nations, and between those nations and the West
• Relationship to English Literature/Classics
• Universal condition of Human kind
• Historical, cultural, geographical sense of
  time/place

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Ngugi wa Thiongo

• Colonizing the Mind justifying to those in the
  colonizing nation that it is right and proper for
  them to be ruled over by other people
• Getting the colonized people to accept their
  lower ranking in the colonial order of things.
• Encouraging people to internalize the logic and
  speak the language of colonial dominance.
• Traumatizes the colonized, who are taught to look
  negatively on themselves, their people and their
  culture.

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Frantz Fanon

• Psychologist, writing about the effects of
  colonialism by the French on Algerians.
• Born in French Antilles in 1925. Educated in
  Martinique and France.
• Colonized encouraged to see themselves as
  objects, rather than as subjects, as at the mercy
  of the colonizer, as inferior, not fully human.
  Their identity is created by the other, not by
  themselves.
• To decolonize, means not just to get rid of
  colonial rule, but to destroy this internalized
  version of the self.

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Edward Said

• Palestinian, author of Orientalism, the seminal
  or originating text for postcolonial theory.
• The theory posits that the Occidental (West)
  creates the Oriental (other) as a place of
  exoticism, moral laxity, sexual degeneracy, etc.,
  then presents this creation as scientific truth.
  This truth is then used to oppress the indigenous
  peoples of colonized lands

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Overturning Empire

• Is about more than giving people back their land.
• Its about overturning the Western ways of seeing
  the world which have been inculcated into
  indigenous people by the colonizers.
• Those seeking freedom must decolonize their
  minds.
• They and the West, must seek other truths,
  discover an alternate order of things, work to
  alter the dominate patterns of thought that
  colonization sewed into the fabric of culture,
  history and language.

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Theory

• Re-reading canonical English literature
  looking for ways in which it perpetuated or
  questioned the assumptions of colonial
  discourses.
• Heart of Darkness, for example.
• Mansfield Park, for example.
• Jane Eyre, for example.

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Theory cont.

• How are colonized subjects represented in texts?
  
• Where and how does the colonized subject resist
  this representation in texts?
• Bhabha and mimicry
• Spivak and the subaltern
• Can the subaltern speak?
• Can the subaltern be read as disruptive and
  subversive?

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The Empire Writes Back

• Literature that writes back to the center
  questions, challenges colonial discourse
• Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin
• New englishes, such as creoles, untranslatable
  words, unusual syntax. These new englishes
  expressed new values and identities and rejected
  old colonial values.
• But, they neglected gender, class and national
  differences in their definitions.
• And, they assumed that all writing from the
  ex-colonies was concerned with postcolonial
  issues, colonial history, colonial discourses,
  decolonizing the mind. Sometimes, claim critics,
  postcolonial writers dont have empire on their
  minds.

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Postcolonialism at the Millennium

• Readers have found Spivak, Said and Bhabha
  difficult to read. In response, a wealth of
  criticism interpreting and responding to this
  Holy Trinity has been published.
• Most recent theory focuses not on homogenizing
  postcolonial literature, but on looking at its
  particular cultural and historical situation.
• Comparative criticism has also found a place --
  what brings works from such disparate cultural
  and historical sites together in terms of ideas,
  plots, style? How do differences in particular
  settings and histories create differences in
  texts?

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Postcolonialism Definitions and Dangers

• Colonialism doesnt stop with political
  independence. So, how can we even think about the
  concept of post in terms of colonialism?
  (Native Americans, African Americans, South
  Africans, Palestinians, Aboriginal Australians)
• Internal Colonialism still exists after
  colonialists take off.
• Post doesnt necessarily mean after.

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So heres what we imply about postcolonial texts

• 1. They are produced by writers from countries
  with a history of colonialism, about that
  colonialism, or about the struggle to escape it.
• 2. They are produced by writers who have
  migrated from countries with a history of
  colonialism or those descended from migrant
  families and they deal with the diaspora
  experience and its consequences.
• 3. We may reread colonial texts looking for ways
  that they address the idea of empire and the
  consequences of colonization on the colonized and
  the colonizer.