1 Post-Colonial Literature

Colonialism
“Colonialism is the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses
their resources to increase its own power and wealth.”

colonialism began in the fifteenth century when the Spanish and Portuguese began exploring the Americas, and
the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia.

Historians often distinguish between various overlapping forms of colonialism, which are classified into
four types: settler colonialism, exploitation colonialism, surrogate colonialism, and internal colonialism.

Post-Colonialism
“Postcolonialism speaks about the human consequences of external control and economic exploitation of native
people and their lands”.

In many works of literature, specifically those coming out of Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian
subcontinent, we meet characters who are struggling with their identities in the wake of colonization, or the
establishment of colonies in another nation. For example, the British had a colonial presence in India from the 1700s
until India gained its independence in 1947. As you can imagine, the people of India, as well as the characters in Indian
novels, must deal with the economic, political, and emotional effects that the British brought and left behind. This is true
for literature that comes out of any colonized nation. In many cases, the literature stemming from these events is both
emotional and political.

Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries. It exists on all continents
except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a
country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and
themes such as racialism and colonialism.

Imperialism “The word imperialism derives from the Latin ‘imperium,’ which has numerous meanings including power,
authority, command, dominion, realm, and empire.”
Colonization is a process by which a central system of power dominates the surrounding land and its components.
Colonizer is one who establishes or joins a colony; a colonist.
Colonized is subject to the rule of an another country, ecology inhabited by newly established plants or animals.
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy)

Theorists of post-colonialism
Edward Said
He was political activist, and literary critic who examined literature in light of social and cultural politics. He
wrote book postcolonialism “Orientalism”.

Orientalism," as defined by Edward Said, is the Western attitude that views Eastern societies as exotic, primitive,
and inferior. Basically, an Orientalist mindset centers the Western (European/American) world and views the Eastern
world as "the Other."

Gayatri Chakravarty
Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak a postcolonial Theory calls herself “a practical Marxist feminist deconstructionist”.
Subaltern according to Spivak is those who belong to the third world countries. It is impossible for them to speak up as
they are divided by gender, class, caste, region, religion and other narratives.

Homi K Bhabha
At a basic level, hybridity refers to any mixing of east and western culture. Within colonial and postcolonial literature, it
most commonly refers to colonial subjects from Asia or Africa who have found a balance between eastern and western
cultural attributes.

Frantz Fanon

Researched by M. Arif M.A English Part-2 Govt. College Civil Lines Multan
2 Post-Colonial Literature

Frantz Fanon through his seminal works, The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1967))
analyzed the psychological effects of colonialism on both the colonizer and the colonized. Fanon argued that the native
develops a sense of 'self' as defined by the colonial master' through representation and discourse, while the colonizer
develops a sense of superiority. Fanon thus develops a psychoanalytical theory of postcolonialism where he suggests
that the European "Self" develops in its relation and encounter with the "Other."

Post-colonial's theory that attempts to focus on the oppression of those who were ruled under
colonization.

Factors

1) Political Oppression
2) Economic oppression
3) Social/cultural oppression
4) Psychological oppression

Themes of Post-colonialism
Cultural dominance is also called cultural imperialism.

Racism is the belief in which the certain group of people are considered superior of their skin, color, culture or power.

Quest for identity refers to the existential struggle of man in order to attain meaning and value in his life.

Racial discrimination is any discrimination against individuals on the basis of their skin colour, or racial or ethnic origin.

Inequality: The far majority of cross-country studies including a land inequality variable concentrate on the inequality-
growth rather than the land inequality-income inequality relationship.

Hybridity: new trans-cultural forms that arise from cross-cultural exchange. Hybridity can be social, political, linguistic,
religious, etc. It is not necessarily a peaceful mixture, for it can be contentious and disruptive in its experience. Note the
two related definitions:

1) Catalysis: the (specifically New World) experience of several ethnic groups interacting and mixing
with each other often in a contentious environment that gives way to new forms of identity and experience.

2) Creolization: societies that arise from a mixture of ethnic and racial mixing to form a new material,
psychological, and spiritual self-definition.

Third World: After the Second World War, the post-independence period was denominated by the historians through
the term ‘Post-colonialism’ as ‘post-colonial state’. Nevertheless, later on the literary expositors employed this term to
confer numerous cultural effects and outcomes of colonization. After 1978, though with Orientalism, Edward Said
initiated the study of regulating the colonized societies, which directed towards the expansion of ‘Colonialist Discourse
Theory’ in the work of critics like Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, they didn’t employ the term ‘postcolonial’ so far. But
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this term was frequently visible and used, focusing the political aspect of both text and
context of this literature, replacing the term ‘Commonwealth literature’ or ‘Third World Literature’, coined by Alfred
Sauvy.

Importance of Post-colonialism

1) Deals with framing identities, the politics of rewriting, translation and relation between national &
nationalism.
2) Deals with concept like cultural, political, geographical, psychological & post-structural.
3) Helpful in understanding both colonizer & colonized.

Purposes of Colonialism
1)To find and re-establish their lost identity.
2) History & Literature.

Researched by M. Arif M.A English Part-2 Govt. College Civil Lines Multan
3 Post-Colonial Literature

3) To open a space where the residual effects of colonialism can be resisted.

Characteristics
1. Anti-imperialistic in character.
2. Post implies opposition and chronological sequence.
3. Denotes period after colony has become independent.
4. Connotates political and moral attitudes opposing colonization.
5. Silencing and marginalization of post-colonial voice by imperial center.
6. Abrogation of imperial Centre within the next.
7. Active appropriation of language and culture of that Centre.

Researched by M. Arif M.A English Part-2 Govt. College Civil Lines Multan