Post colonial theory

Post colonial theory

It deals with the effects of colonialism on cultures& societies.  Writers such as Albert Memmi, Aime Cesaire and particularly Franz Fanon in 1950's provided foundations of Post colonialism.

Edward W. Said( Palestinian-American professor) applied Marxist theory to study cultural documents of European empires in his book "Orientalism” .According to John M. Lyle Post colonial theory focuses on

 i) How the colonizing culture, disserts the reality of people.

(ii) How people articulate their identity, reclaim their past.

At the end of WW II in 1945 there occurred a large scale process of Decolonization, beginning with independence of India. Colonial struggle was hardly dead.

Critics & Books

Henry Louis Gates Jr.( Afro-American)

Black Literature and Literary Theory (1984)

Race, Writing and Difference (1986)

Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997)

Figures in Black: Words, Signs and Racial self (1987)

The signifying monkey: A theory of African, American Literary Criticism (1988)

Salman Rushdie :

Common wealth Literature does not Exist (in Imaginary Homelands)  an essay

Imagining Homelands:  is a collection of essays, reviews, interviews (which made between 1981-96.

Common Wealth is group of 54 countries, which were formally part of British Empire.

Common wealth literature refers to the literature of these colonies excluding British literature.

He argues “common wealth literature means master- slave Relationship”.

He talks about the idea of language politics since commonwealth literature is placed below British literature.

Magic realism is a style of literary fiction and art. It paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.[1] Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly found in novels and dramatic performances.

Edward W Said:  is known as father of Post colonial theory.

Power Politics and Culture

Orientalism (1978)

Culture and Imperialism.

Gayathri Spivak :.

In other words: Essay in cultured politics (1988)

Can the subaltern speak? are her best known essay.

She developed the term “strategic essentialism"

The Post Colonial critic (1990)

Critic of Post colonial Reason (1999)

She coined the terms Worlding, Othering

Homi K Bhaba:  The concept of Hybridity, Mimicry Ambivalence ,

Nation and Narration:

 Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of Colonial Discourse  -an essay

Sign Taken from wonders Essay-about discovery of English in colonial India.

Franz Fanon: Black skins and White masks (1952): It explored the effects of Colonialism and imposing servile (slavery) psychology upon the colonised people.

The Wretched of the Earth (1961): it provides the psychoanalysis of the de-humanizing effects of colonization.

Aime Cesaire: French poet, author. He was one of the founders of the Negritude movement in Francophone literature.

 Discoure sur le colonialisme (1950) (Discourse on Colonialism). It challenges the narrative of colonizer and the colonised.

George Lamming:  The pleasures of Exile (1960) The Pleasures of Exile, an essay attempts to define the place of the West Indian in the post-colonial world, re-interpreting Shakespeare's The Tempest and the characters of Prospero and Caliban in terms of personal identity and the history of the Caribbean.

Aishcroft, Grilliths, and Tiffin-  The Empire Writes Back(1989) The title refers to Salman Rushdie's 1982 article "The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance".

NguigiWa Thiong’O: On the abolition of English Department (1968)

 Benedict Anderson : The concept of "Imagined Community"

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is a book about the development of national feeling in different eras and throughout different geographies across the world. It introduced the term "imagined communities" as a descriptor of a social group—specifically nations—and the term has since entered standard usage in myriad political and social science fields.

 Dipesh Chatrabarthy 

Bengali literary historian. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000)

V.S Naipaul : 

An Area of Darkness is a book written by V. S. Naipaul in 1964. It is a travelogue detailing Naipaul's trip through India in the early sixties. It was the first of Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy that includes India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)

The Mimic Men is a novel by Naipaul. The plot centres on Ralph Ranjit Kripal Singh

Edward Soja: 

First space is the physical built environment, which can be mapped, quantifiably measured and 'seen' in the real world. Second space is conceptual space- how that space is conceived in the minds of the people who inhabit it

Third space is 'real and imagined' space, lived space, the way that people actually live in and experience that urban space.

Key Terms

Catalysis: term adopted by Guyanese novelist and critic Denis Williams to describe processes of racial change and racial intermixing in New world societies.

A catalyst is a body which changes its surrounding substance without itself under going any change.

Chromatism: "of or belonging to colour or colours" term used to distinction between people on the bias

Colonial desire: term employed by Robert Young in 1995

Colonial discourse: Brought in to usage by Edward Said following Foucault’s notion of a discourse.

 Best known colonial discourse theorist Homi K Baha

Who coined Hybridity, ambivalance,

Comprador: Portuguese word meaning purchaser originally used to refers to a local merchant acting as middleman between foreign producers and a local market. In Marxist theory he is a capitalist in past colonial theory he is an intelligentsia.

Contact zone: first used by Mary Louise Pratt, to describe social space where disparate cultures meet clash & grapple with other

 Contrapuntal Reading: Coined by Eward Said to describe the way of reading the texts of Eng literature so as to reveal deep implication in imperialism and the colonial process. - Borrowed from music

Abrogation: rejection of the "correct" or "standard" by the past colonial writers.

Alterity: Latin word alteritas' meaning the state of being.

-Marks otherness in skin colour, geography, sex.

 ambivalence: adopted by Homi K Baba, describes the complex mix of attraction and repulsion, that characterizes the relationship between colonizer  colonized ambi-valent two powered (repulsion & attraction)

Ex. Charles Grant's Introduction of Christianity to Indians

 Appropriation: the ways in which post colonial societies take over those aspects of the imperial culture, language, form of writing film theatre, modes of though, logic analysis that may be used by them in articulating their own social and cultural identities .

Ethnicity term used to show the human variations in terms of culture, tradition, language, social patterns & ancestry

Exotic first used in 1599 to mean ‘alien’ introduced from abroad, not indigenous Extended to mean a foreigner.

Fanonism term for anti-colonial liberationist critique coined by martiniquan psychiatrist Fram Fanon His "Black shins, white Masks (1952) is a study of Psychology of racism and colonial domination. The wretched of the Earth (1961)' about anti-colonial sentiment.

Filiation/Affliation: This pair of terms was brought to prominence by Edward Said. He says filiation (heritage) refers to the times of descent in nature. Affiliation refers to the process of identification through culture.

Frontier: a boundary, Limiting zone to distinguish one space or people from another one.  Began with Turner thesis by Frederick Jackson .

Glocalization: popularised by British sociologist Roland Robertson in 1990's, developed by Zygmaunt Bauman  (glocal= global + local)

This concept is present in slogans like "Think globally, and act locally.

 Going native: The colonizers fear of contamination by absorb in to native life and customs

Going Fantee (in west Africa), EpingTroppo, (in Australia)

Best example of going native is Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness"

Hegemony: Initially this term refers to domination of one state within a in confederation but now generally used as domination by consent.

Broader meaning was popularised by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in 1930's

It is the power of ruling class to convince other classes.

Hybridity (in betweenness), theorized by Homi K Bhabha

It is creation of new transcultural forms with in the contact Zone produced by colonization.

As it is used in horticulture, the term refers to the breeding of two species by grafting or cross polling to form a third Hybridity.

Hybridization takes in many forms: Political, racial

 etc. In Linguistic   Pidgin & Creole languages

It echoes the Mikhael Barktin's concept of polyphony

Magic Realism: first used in wider post colonial content

in the foundational essay by Jacques Stephen Alexis "of the magical realism of the Haitians (1956)*

The term became popular with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 Rashdie's  Midnight children.

Benokris   The Famished Road

Keri Hulme's The Bone People

Thomas King’s - Green Grass, Running Water

Mestizo/Mestizaje/Metisse - idea of mixing of races/ cultures

Metropolics/Metropolitan. refers to the centre in relation to a Colonial periphery. In Greek history the term refers to parent state of a county. Metropolitan means belonging to constituting the mother country

Negritude: a theory of the distinctiveness of African personality and culture.

Leopold Sedor senghor, Birago&Aime Cesaire developed the theory of Negritude in Paris after W.WII

Neo colonialism: Coined by Kwame Nkrumah, the former president Jew imperialism) of former president of Ghana in his "Neo colonialism: The last stage of Imperialism (1965)

widely used to refer to any form of control of the Ex-colonies after political independence Neo

Neo liberalism: theory & practice of liberalization of market forces sometimes synonymous with globalization late capitalism. Free trade has been the economic policy of choice for the British & US empires because free trade favours the richest.

New literatures: is a term alternative to "commonwealth literature and later "post colonial literature during 1970's and 80's

Orientalism: popularised by Said's "Orientalism (1978)

-Orientalism derived from a Latin word Oriens = east [literally rising sun]

Orientalism is study of near & far eastern social and cultures, languages and peoples by western culture. Simply western ideas about the Middle east and about East and southeast Asia

Occident: Countries of the west. Especially Eurpe& America

Othering: Coined by Gayathri Spivak, for the process by which imperial discourse creats it's others'

 She adheres to the Lacanian distinction between (capital) other and (small) other.

Othering is a dialectical Process because the colonial Other is established at the same time as its colony. "Others are produced as subjects.”

Palimpsest Originally the term for a parchment on which several inscriptions had been made after earlier ones had been erased. characteristic of the palimpsest is that, despite Such erasers, there are always traces of prior inscriptions that have been overwritten. The term illustrates the ways of precolonial culture as well as experience of colonization in cultural identity.

Pidgins/creoles: Pidgin are languages serving as lingua franca. It is reduced in grammar & vocabulary and is not a native to either side of its users.

Creole arises when a pidgin becomes the native language of speech Community as in the Caribbean. a Pidgin is developed out of trade languages and may evolve into creoles.  Pidgins do not have native speakers while creoles have. Creole is more developed than pidgin.

Post colonialism: deals with effects of colonization on cultures and societies, originally used by historians after WW-II. The study of controlling power of representation in colonized societies had begun in 1970's with texts such as Said's "Orientalism” and led to the development of colonialist discourse theory by Spivak&Bhaba, but the actual term wasn't employed in these early studies.

Spivak was first used the term’ post colonial' in The collection of interviews." The past colonial critic “(1990)

Post colonial state: often used by historians, economists, and political

theorists as synonym for “past-independence state"

post colony: largely associated with Cameroonian critic Achille Mbembe who wrote about the post colonial state of Africa in "On the post colony" (2001)

The term is used in studies of African states and in studies of the on going violence perpetrated in those states by those in power during & after colonization.

Rasta farianism: A Black Nationalist religion that emerged in Jamaica in 1930's.

It drew inspiration from Old Testament prophecy.

 Rhizome: A botanical term for a root system that spreads across the ground (as in bamboo) rather than downward and grows from several points rather than a single tap root. This metaphor was popularised by critiques of Psychoanalysis Deleuze and Guattari. The term demonstrate that imperial power operates rhizomically rather than monolithically.

Speciesism: Coined by animal rights philosopher 'Peter Singer' to designate the belief of most human cultures that they are superior to animals.

Subaltem: meaning of inferior rank adopted by Gramsci to refer to those group in society who are subject to domination (hegemony) of the ruling classes.

In Notes on station history he outlined a six Point plan for studying the history of the subaltern.

Subaltem studies:

Study of subordination in south Asian society –Subaltern was adopted to post Colonial studies by subaltern studies group of historians headed by Ranajit Guha and included Shahid Amin, David Amold, Partha Chatterjee. David Hardiman and Gyanpandey, Who produced five volumes of "Sub-Altern studies: essays relating to the history.

Subject/ subjectivity:

Colonized people’s perception of their identities and their capacities to resist the conditions of their domination.

Ideology: Louis Althuser's theory of subject construction.

Psychoanalysis: Freud's theory of consciousness.  Lacan's combination of psychoanalysis and structuralist analyses of language.

Discourse: Foccault’s construction of Subjectivity

Syncretism: Used to avoid problems with dea of hybridity in identifying the fusion of two distinct traditions to produce a new.

Synergy: Product of two con more forces that contribute to a new and complex cultural formation

Testimonia: is a novel of novella length narrative, told in first person by a narrator who is also the actual protagonist or Witness of the events he/she recounts. Generally associates with Latin America.

First World: Dominant economic powers of the

Second World: refers to soviet union and its satellites.

Third World : countries against US &USSR, first used in 1952 by Alfred Sauvy.

The word is used as a general metaphor for any under developed Society with poverty, diseases, and war.

Transculturation:  refers to reciprocal influences of modes of representation and cultural practices.

It is a phenomenon of the contact zone of Pratt. Coined by Cuban Sociologist Fernard Ortiz in relation to Afro-Cuban culture.

Wording: Coined by Gayatri Spivak, to describe the way in which colonized space is brought in to world that is to made to exist as a part of world by Euro- centrism.

This is one of the many different processes othering which characterize Colonial contact zone.

Third space is a way of understanding and acting to change the spatiality of human life.

Everything comes together subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract- and concrete, the real op Imagined, the middy by body the conscious and unconscious. - It says every person is a hybrid of their unique set of affinities (Identity factors).

 It's a theory of Identity and community.

Attributed to Hami K Bhabha, developed by Soja.