POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM

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 Colonialism is simply the subjection of one
population to another usually reflected through
physical conquest but its reign is also deeply
embedded in political, cultural and economic
domination.
 Postcolonialism is then birthed by colonized
peoples’ frustration with the conquering culture
and their hopes and dreams about their own
future and identities as they search for a common
ground because the formal termination of
colonial rule does not wipe out its legacy, and
what is left is a culture which is mixture of the
colonized and that of the colonizer.
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 Therefore, postcolonialism is an
intellectual discourse that consists of
reactions, and analysis of the cultural
legacy of colonialist.
 Postcolonial studies excludes literature
that represents either British or American
viewpoints and concentrate on writings
from colonized or formerly colonized
cultures.
 How the colonized respond to the
changes brought by colonization becomes
the context and practices of
postcolonialism.
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 Basically postcolonial theorists
investigate what happens when two
cultures clash and one of them with its
accessory ideology, empowers and
deems itself superior to the other.
 It is deeply rooted in colonial power
and prejudice looking back at strained
relationships between colonies in Africa
and Asia and the Western world.

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 Understanding the term
 Post-colonialism spelled with a hyphen implies a
chronological order from colonial to post-colonial
state.
 Without a hyphen postcolonial refers to “writing
that sets out in one way or another to resist
colonialist perspectives” both before and after the
period of colonization.
 Some critics believe that the third variant
post/colonial is more relevant because it stresses
the interrelatedness between an indeterminate
number of literatures whether they Anglophone or
not because of their “entangled condition”.
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 The term postcolonial generally covers all the
cultures affected by the imperial process from
the moment of colonization to the present
day.
 Postcolonial theory emerged from the
inability of European theory to deal
adequately with the complexities and varied
cultural provenance of postcolonial writing.
 It provides a framework that destabilizes
dominant discourses of in the West,
challenges inherent assumptions, and
critiques the legacies of colonialism.
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Postcolonial criticism
• The ancestry of post colonial
criticism can be traced to Frantz
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
(1961)whereby Fanon argued that
the first step for colonized people is
in finding their voice and an
identity is to reclaim their own past.
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 Edward Said’s Orientalism(1978) is
seen as another major contributor to
postcolonialism.
 It is a specific expose of the
Eurocentric universalism which takes
for granted both the superiority of
what is European or Western, and the
inferiority of what is not.

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 “The Orient was almost a European invention,
and had been since antiquity a place of romance,
exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes,
remarkable experiences…The Orient is not only
adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe´s
greatest and richest and of its deepest and most
recurring images of the Other. In addition, the
Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West)
as its contrasting image, idea, personality,
experiences. Yet none of this Orient is merely
imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of
European material civilization and culture”. (Said,
1978:1-2 in Blunt, 2000:184)
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It simply means that the image
of the east was constructed on
western standards. The east was
for instance seen as corrupt,
mysterious and exotic.
According to Said this image
doesn’t describe the real life of
the east.
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 He feels that this discourse about the Orient
has served hegemonic purposes
- The way the ruling class succeeds in
oppressing other classes with their apparent
approval.
-The ruling class makes it own values and
interests central in what it presents as a
common ,neutral, culture.
- Accepting this ‘common’ culture, the other
classes become complicit in their
oppression.
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 Homi Bhabha , another prominent post
colonial theorist in his work introduced
the notion of mimicry.
Mimicry, means the manner how
colonized people take over the customs,
lifestyles and values of the colonizing
countries, same yet quite different.

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 Another notion introduced by Bhabha, is
hybridity. With this notion he means the
process in which certain elements of a
dominant culture are taken over by
migrants in this dominant culture(often
colonized people).
 For example – how Indian migrants who live
all together in the same district in London.
These people don't integrate, but they take
certain parts (often unconscious ) from the
English culture. On this way there arises a
mix of Indian and British culture; a hybrid
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culture.
Colonialism has also brought to
existence of diasporic
communities -the movement,
migration or scattering of
people away from an
established or ancestral
homeland

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 Subaltern – a marginalized group – lower
in position (social class) such as the
homeless, the unemployed and women.
According to Gayathri Spivak – the female
subaltern has doubly marginalized, she
argues, “ If in the context of colonial
production, the subaltern has no history
and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is
even more deeply in shadow.”

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What postcolonial critics do
 They reject the claims to
universalism made on behalf of
canonical Western literature and
seek to show its limitations of
outlook, especially its general
inability to empathize across
boundaries of cultural and ethnic
differences.

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 They examine the representation of
other cultures in literature as a way of
achieving /proving their own identity

 They show how literature is often

evasively and crucially silent on matters
concerned with colonisation and
imperialism.

 They foreground questions of cultural

difference and diversity and examine
their treatment in relevant literary works.
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 They celebrate hybridity and
‘cultural polyvalency’ that is the
situation whereby groups belong
simultaneously to more than one
culture.

 They develop a perspective , not just

applicable to postcolonial literatures,
whereby states of marginality,
plurality and perceived ‘Otherness’
are seen as sources of energy and
potential change.
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Common themes/ Issues in postcolonial literatures
Place and displacement

 Resulting in migration, the experience of

enslavement or ‘voluntary’ for indentured
labour.
 Cultural denigration – the conscious and
unconscious oppression of the indigenous
personality and culture by a supposedly
superior race or culture.
 Displacement- in understanding with the
culture of their adopted nation and nation
of their birth poses a dilemma, hence
creating a sense of rootlessness.
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 Language
 It is through language that we create and
construct / define our culture, identity and
existence.
 So, through literature, writers question if
their language is inadequate to describe
their place.
 What about those whose language is
systematically destroyed by enslavement?

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 What about those whose language has
been rendered underprivileged by the
imposition of language of a colonizing
power?

 By using the dominant language, are we

being double marginalized ?

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Identity

 Identity is seen as fluid- especially when

there is tension between races and cultures
– thus blocking the formation of a ‘concrete’
identity.
 Western influences has blurred in creating
identity especially in a pluralistic society-
particularly the sense of belonging is
essential in forming a national identity
through common points such as national
symbols, language, culture, music, cuisine
etc.
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The creation of nationhood
 The predicament faced by many colonised
countries is the creation of nationhood –
the ability of the communities to disregard
cultural roots and adopt a common ground
of doing things.
“ A nation is , a large scale solidarity,
constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices
that one has made in the past and of those
that one is prepared to make in future” –
Renan Ernest
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 Culture
human knowledge, belief, and behavior that : the
customary beliefs, social forms, and material
traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also :
the characteristic features of everyday existence :
the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and
practices that characterizes an institution or
organization

 Social Structure in a society

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The ultimate goal of
postcolonialism is accounting for
and combating the residual effects
of colonialism on cultures because
with its interaction with the
conquering culture , the colonized
or indigenous culture is forced to
go underground or to be
obliterated.
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Points to ponder when analysing…
 What happens  What are the forms
when two cultures of resistance to
clash, when one is colonial control?
superior to  How do the
another? colonized view
 How are the themselves? Does
cultures different? this view change?
 Who is the “other”  What are the
in the text? characteristics of
 What are their the language of the
worldviews? two cultures?
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Points to ponder when analysing…
 Is the language of  Are they any
the dominant emergent forms of
culture used as a postcolonial
form of identity after the
oppression? departure of the
colonizers?

 In what ways is the  How do gender,

colonized culture race, or social class
silenced? function in the
colonial and
postcolonial
elements in the
text?
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 Basic assumptions
 Colonizers not only physically conquer
territories but also practice cultural
colonization by replacing the practices
and beliefs of the native culture with
their own values, governance and
belief. The consequence is loss or
modification of the precolonial culture.

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Basic assumptions
 When one’s native culture is
devalued, natives see themselves
as inferiors. Therefore, they adopt
cultural practices those of the
assumedly more superior.

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Basic assumptions
 Colonial subjects practice mimicry-
imitation of dress, behavior etc.-instead of
resistance.
 The European colonizer assumed the
superiority of their own culture and the
inferiority of the conquered ones. Hence,
using their own culture as the standard for
what any culture should be, known as
Eurocentrism imposing on those they
deemed of lesser status the subalterns.
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Basic assumptions
 The practice of ‘othering’ vs the ‘exotic
other’.
 Colonizers also become the colonized as
they too were affected with their contact
with other cultures.
 The rise of neocolonialism
 Hybridity

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Postcolonialism is all about
the empire writing back

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Task
 Revisit The Lion and The Jewel
 Read and analyze from a postcolonial perspective critically.
 Select an issue that you would like to discuss.
 Share the discussion in a SNOWBALL DISCUSSION
 Share with a pair
 Then join another pair, creating a group of four, eight, and so on
until the whole class joins in

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