Introduction
This activity will introduce you to postcolonial studies. Postcolonial critics analyze, evaluate, and respond to the representations of colonialism in literature with the purpose of combatting the continued effects of colonialism upon once colonized peoples. Colonized peoples are often seen as The Other and depicted by the colonizers in ways unfair to the reality, and postcolonial critique plays close attention to these depictions to expose prejudice, challenge established narratives, and recover works of the colonized that have been neglected by the canon.
Note that as you read through some of these materials, you will most likely encounter words you don’t know or use often. It will be worth your time to look these words up as you find them. Keep your phone or dictionary handy to look up words, jot down definitions, and understand their use in context. This will not be the last time you see many of these words, so take a couple extra minutes to learn them now.
Caswell, T. (August 29, 2011) Major British Writers Postcolonial [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRg6almNMa4
Postcolonial Criticism
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism or postcolonial studies is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country and establishing settlers for the economic exploitation of the native people and their land. Drawing from postmodern schools of thought, postcolonial studies analyse the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analyzing the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism—the how and the why of an imperial regime’s representations (social, political, cultural) of the imperial colonizer and of the colonized people.
As critical theory, postcolonialism presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities—history and political science, philosophy and Marxist theory, sociology, anthropology, and human geography; the cinema, religion, and theology; feminism, linguistics, and postcolonial literature, of which the anti-conquest narrative genre presents the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman.
Colonialism
Antique map of AfricaColonialism was presented as “the extension of Civilization,” which ideologically justified the self-ascribed superiority (racial and cultural) of the European Western World over the non-Western world. This concept was espoused by Joseph-Ernest Renan in La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial stewardship was thought to effect the intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser cultures of the world. He felt that such a divinely established, natural harmony among the human races of the world would be possible, because everyone—colonizer and colonized—has an assigned cultural identity, a social place, and an economic role within an imperial colony.
Postcolonial Identity
A decolonised people develop a postcolonial identity from the cultural interactions among the types of identity (cultural, national, ethnic) and the social relations of sex, class, and caste; determined by the gender and the race of the colonised person; and the racism inherent to the structures of a colonial society. In postcolonial literature, the anti-conquest narrative analyses the identity politics that are the social and cultural perspectives of the subaltern colonial subjects—their creative resistance to the culture of the coloniser; how such cultural resistance complicated the establishment of a colonial society; how the colonisers developed their postcolonial identity; and how neocolonialism actively employs the Us-and-Them binary social relation to view the non-Western world as inhabited by The Other.
The neocolonial discourse of geopolitical homogeneity conflates the decolonised peoples, their cultures, and their countries, into an imaginary place, such as “the Third World,” an over-inclusive term that usually comprises continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. The postcolonial critique analyses the self-justifying discourse of neocolonialism and the functions (philosophic and political) of its over-inclusive terms, to establish the factual and cultural inaccuracy of homogeneous concepts, such as “the Arabs” and “the First World,” “Christendom” and “the Islamic World,” actually comprise heterogeneous peoples, cultures, and geography, and that realistic descriptions of the world’s peoples, places, and things require nuanced and accurate terms.[1]
Critical Purpose
The critical purpose of postcolonial studies is to account for, and to combat, the residual effects (social, political, and cultural) of colonialism upon the peoples once ruled by the Mother Country.[2] To that end, postcolonial theoreticians establish social and cultural spaces for the non–Western peoples—especially the subaltern peoples—whose native cultures were often suppressed by the Western value systems promoted and established as the dominant ideology of the colonial enterprise, said cultural suppression was meant to civilise the natives in the European image.
Postcolonialism. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
How to do a Postcolonial Reading. Authored by: Brian Hartt. Located at: https://youtu.be/xrB4_9dmOLs. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License
Questions to Consider
When you want to read with an eye toward racial, ethnic, or postcolonial issues, you should consider the following questions:
- How does this work represent different groups of people? Does it valorize one particular culture at the expense of another? Are characters from particular groups portrayed positively or negatively? Does the work employ stereotypes or broad generalizations?
- How does this work present political power and/or domination? Are there clear lines drawn between conquerors and conquered people in the work? Does the work seem to argue that these lines are appropriate, or does it challenge the divisions between colonizer and colonized?
- What is the historical or cultural context of the work? Is the story set during a time of conflict or peace? Is the story set in a location where one culture colonized another? Does the story unfold before the colonial period, during the colonial period, or after the colonial period?
- Can you discern any particular political agendas at work in the text? That is, does the novel, story, poem, play, or essay seem to make an argument about racial relations, ethnic identity, or political oppression?
Postcolonial, Racial, and Ethnic Theory: An Overview. (December 20, 2012) In Creating Literary Analysis. Retrieved from https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/creating-literary-analysis/s09-02-postcolonial-racial-and-ethnic.html
Summary
As you’ve seen in this activity, postcolonial criticism takes a social and cultural approach to the analysis of literature. Throughout history, the colonization of many areas of the world significantly impacted the people, customs, and literature of both the colonized and colonizing groups. Postcolonial criticism seeks to highlight and investigate those effects in light of the power dynamics at play. These critiques point out generalized, reductive narratives of The Other and ask us to instead see the nuanced cultures, experiences, and peoples colonization ignores.
Since postcolonial criticism evaluates the effects of domination and colonization, it is worthwhile to consider this method of literary criticism when you begin to notice power differentials in literature. Ask some of the guiding questions provided in this activity to see if a postcolonial reading could help you resist the dominant rhetoric and question the way colonized groups were and still are portrayed in literature.
