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Post Colonialism

Postcolonialism refers to the field of literary study that emerged after colonialism to examine works from formerly colonized nations and regions. It involves resisting and reconstructing narratives that were imposed by colonial powers. Postcolonialism can be understood temporally as the period after colonial rule, or ideologically as an implicit tendency of resistance within colonial discourses. There are various theoretical perspectives within postcolonialism, including anti-colonial, feminist, Marxist, and discourse analyses. Postcolonial literature aims to give voice to marginalized groups and uncover histories lost under colonial rule by questioning existing power structures around the world.

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81 views

Post Colonialism

Postcolonialism refers to the field of literary study that emerged after colonialism to examine works from formerly colonized nations and regions. It involves resisting and reconstructing narratives that were imposed by colonial powers. Postcolonialism can be understood temporally as the period after colonial rule, or ideologically as an implicit tendency of resistance within colonial discourses. There are various theoretical perspectives within postcolonialism, including anti-colonial, feminist, Marxist, and discourse analyses. Postcolonial literature aims to give voice to marginalized groups and uncover histories lost under colonial rule by questioning existing power structures around the world.

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Postcolonialism as a Literary Theory

The term ‘postcolonial’ first appeared in its composite form in the Oxford English
Dictionary of 1959 and without hyphen in the American Heritage Dictionary of 1959. It
refers to the field of study which came into being by enlarging the field of English studies to
include American studies and more contemporary national and regional literatures such as
Australian, Canadian or Caribbean literatures. Though the postcolonial studies may be said to
have emerged with the writings such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-
Colonial Literature (1989), it was things like the Algerian and Vietnam wars, the Black
Power Movement in the United States of America, the rise of the Women’s movement, and
anti-war radicalism etc. that set the social agenda for it.

In its temporal sense, the “post” in post colonialism denotes the end of colonialism
(generally written with a hyphen), whereas in its ideological sense, post colonialism, as put
by Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge is “an always present tendency in any literature of
subjugation marked by a systemic process of cultural domination through the imposition of
imperial structures of power. … This form of “post colonialism” is not “post” something or
other but is already implicit in the discourses of colonialism themselves.”. On the contrary,
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, view post colonialism as “a continuous
process of resistance and reconstruction” and consider the prefix “post” as “more logical than
chronological.”. The least that can be said about the term “postcolonial” is that it is “a
definition in progress”, defined sometimes with regard to history, sometimes with regard to
ideology, sometimes with regard to geography, sometimes with regard to writing, sometimes
with regard to reading and at other times with regard to teaching.

Theoretically, Postcolonialism is the textual form of ‘resistance’ that emerged after


the Second World War in what is known as the ‘third world’ countries, the countries that
were largely under the European imperial domination. This textual resistance in the literary
world came to be called variously as Commonwealth literature, New English literatures,
Literatures in English, Third World Literature or Postcolonial Literature, with other cognate
terms also used, such as World Fiction, World Literature written in English, multicultural
literature, minority literature, resistance literature, etc. However, temporality is not what
characterizes postcolonial literature as Deepika Bahri in “Once More with Feeling: What is
Postcolonialism?” remarks that “it is used not merely to characterize that which succeeds the
colonial, but also the chapter of history following the Second World War, whether or not
such a period accommodates the still-colonized, the neo-colonized, or the always colonized”.
She observes that the present moment in ‘postcolonial’ nations is not “post”: the “colonial” in
any genuine, or even cursory sense, as covert mercantile neo-colonialism, potent successor to
modern colonialism, continues its virtually unchallenged march across the face of the earth,
ensuring that the wretched will remain so, colluding in, as they did before, but now also
embracing, the process of economic and cultural annexation, this time well-disguised under
the name of modernization. Thus it is more relevant to characterize postcolonialism in the
theoretical or ideological sense of the term.

John McLeod attempts to define post colonialism as a reading mode that undertakes
to fulfill the following three functions or three ways of interpretation:
Reading texts produced by writers from countries with a history of colonialism,

primarily those texts concerned with the workings and legacy of colonialism in either

the past or the present.

Reading texts produced by those that have migrated from countries with a history of

colonialism, or those descended from migrant families, which deal in the main with

diaspora experience and its many consequences.

In the light of theories of colonial discourses, re-reading texts produced during

colonialism; both those that directly address the experiences of Empire, and those that

seem not to.

One of the characteristics of postcolonial literature is the abundance of parallel


theories on postcolonialism that mark out its dislocated space and its sinuous path. There are
at least seven categories of theoreticians who somewhat can be grouped under the umbrella
term postcolonialism on theoretical grounds: anti-colonial revolutionaries, the Subaltern
studies group, feminists, Marxists, discourse analysts, major theoreticians and general
theoreticians who study ethnicity, race, society, culture, nation, geography, non-anglophone
worlds and globalization.
Postcolonialism, like feminism or socialism, is not a theory in the strict sense of the
term. It is better to call it ‘postcolonial politics’ rather than ‘postcolonial theory’ since it is
comprised of related perspectives and addresses the issues of a varied range of disciplines
particularly the issues of gender, racial, and social hierarchies, the lopsided developments, the
environment and ecology, the power and privileges. Above all it attempts to dissect the power
structures and status quos – western as well as non-western. Its radical agenda, as outlined by
Robert J. C. Young in as brief as possible is “to demand equality and well-being for all
human beings on earth.”.
Postcolonialism’s fundamental sympathies lie with the outcastes of all kinds trapped
in any sort of power hierarchy – the poor, the subaltern, the women, the colonized, the
refugees, the migrants, the diasporas. It deals with the problems of slavery, suppression and
representation. In short, its interests and sympathies lie with those who are forced to live on
the margins of the society and who are powerless to fight for themselves. It aims to transform
the societies with a view to bring in more equitable distribution of wealth and power, to
eliminate social, racial, cultural and gendered hierarchies wherever they exist and in whatever
form they are. Since postcolonial conditions vary according to location and situation, there
cannot be a single form of postcolonial politics. Thus anything can fall under the purview of
postcolonialism from the appropriation of natural resources, to unjust prices for commodities
and crops, to the international sex trade, to the provision of basic amenities – security,
sanitation, health care, food, and education – to all irrespective of their race, class, caste,
religion, gender, or ethnicity. It unearths and gives value and attention to subaltern,
marginalized cultures and fields of knowledge which have historically been considered to be
of little or no value, and make efforts to restore the histories lost under long European
colonization and occupation.

References:

Ashcroft, Bill. Gareth Griffiths, & Helen Tiffin. The Postcolonial Studies Reader New York:

Routledge, 1995. Print.

Bahri, Deepika. “Once More with Feeling: What is Postcolonialism”. Ariel: A Review of

International English Literature. 26.1 (1995), pp. 51-82. Print.


McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Print.

Mishra, Vijay & Bob Hodge. “What is Post(-)Colonialism?”. Textual Practice 5.3 (1991): pp.

399-414. Print.

Young, Robert J. C. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2003. Print.

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