Postcolonial Theory
• Postcolonialism is an academic discipline
that comprises methods of intellectual
discourse that present analyses of, and
responses to, the cultural legacies of
colonialism and imperialism.
Commonwealth Literature
• 1960s – former colonies - produced
literatures of their own in English
• English Literature – mutating into
literatures in English
• Concentrated on ‘Meaning’ (Interpretation)
• Liberal Humanism
Postcolonial Literatures
• 1980s – the term ‘Commonwealth
Literature’ was not desired anymore when
the former British colonies found that
writers of the Colonizer (England) did not
form a part of this body of literature.
• Hence, a new term, Post-colonial literature
was coined to suggest the decentring of
colonial literature.
Postcolonialism - Focus
• Cultural displacement – its consequences
for personal and communal identities
• How the displaced have defended
themselves
• Employs a non-Eurocentric perspective
• Questions the values that supported
Imperialism
Originating Texts
• The Wretched of the Earth (1961)-Frantz
Fanon
• Orientalism (1978) – Edward Said
• The Empire Writes Back (1989)- Ashcroft,
Griffiths and Tiffin
Characteristics of Postcolonial Theory
• An awareness of representation of the non-
European as exotic or immoral ‘other’
• Linguistic deference
• Emphasis on identity as ‘doubled’ or
‘hybrid’ or unstable
• Cross-cultural interactions
• Special and distinctive regional
characteristics
Three phases
• Adopt Phase
• Adapt Phase
• Adept Phase
• The discourse of Postcolonialism is not
about the former colonizer, but about the
colonized Other.
• For the first time the non-West is placed at
the centre of the dominant discourse of the
western academy
Time and locale
• Ella Shohat’s question: “When exactly
does the post-colonial begin?”
• Arif Dirlik’s answer: When Third world
intellectuals have arrived in First World
academe.
The Empire Writes Back
• “… the literature of African countries,
Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean
countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New
Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South
Pacific island countries and Sri lanka are
all postcolonial literatures.”
“The literature of the USA should also be
placed in this category. Perhaps because
of its current position of power, and neo-
colonizing role it has played its
postcolonial nature has not been generally
recognized.’
Edward Said (1935-2003)
• A Palestinian-American literary
theoretician
• Professor of English & Comparative
Literature at Columbia University
• Founding figure of post-colonialism
Orientalism (1978)
• A critique of how through the ages,
western texts have represented the
East (Orient)
• Works of literature, political tracts,
journalistic texts, travel books,
religious and philosophical studies
• These writings form a Foucaultian
Discourse – a loose system of statements
and claims that constitute a field of
supposed knowledge
• Although seemingly interested in
knowledge, such discourses always
establish relationships of power
• Serving Hegemonic purposes
Hegemony (Cultural)
Term adopted from Antonio Gramsci
Domination by consent
The way the ruling class oppresses other
classes with their approval
Velvet domination
Orientalism has served two purposes:
• It has legitimized western expansionism
and imperialism in the eyes of western
governments
• It has worked to convince the ‘natives’ that
western culture represented universal
civilization
West Orient
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Homi K. Bhabha (1949- )
• Indian Postcolonial theorist
• Professor of English and American
Literature & Language at Harvard
University
• What happens in the cultural
interaction between the
colonizer and the colonized?
• Aime Cesaire
• Discourse on Colonialism (1955)
• No human contact
• Relation of domination and submission
Colonizers’ Point of View:
• More benign
• They remain their civilized and disciplined
European selves even in the most trying
circumstances
• Their presence affects the natives (not the
reverse)
Bhabha: The encounter affects both
• Colonialism- a radically unsettling,
affective experience of marginality
• Indeterminacy and fragmentation
• Lacan’s views of the way in which identity
gets constructed
Three Stages (proposed by Lacan)
• The Imaginary Stage
• The Mirror Stage
• The Symbolic Stage
Identity – inherently unstable
• The Colonizer partly constructs his identity
through ‘his’ interaction with the Colonized
• Identity of the Colonizer cannot be
separated from the identity of the
Colonized
• The Colonizer’s identity – differential, a
meaning generated by difference
Racial Stereotyping
• Construes not only those who are
stereotyped but also the stereotyper
• Continuing uncertainty in the stereotyper
• Has to convince himself of the truthfulness
of the stereotype
Mimicry
• The always slightly alien and distorted way
in which the Colonized, either out of
choice or duress, repeats the colonizer’s
ways and discourse
• The Colonizer sees himself in a mirror that
distorts his own identity
• Also a sly weapon of anti-colonial civility, a
mixture of deference and disobedience
• Colonizer’s language – always subject to
the effects of Derridean ‘difference’, and is
therefore never fully under his control
• Colonial power – always under the threat
of destabilization
Bhabha sees movements in the interaction
between the Colonizer and the Colonized
going both ways
• It is not just the noisy command of colonial
authority
• Nor the silent repression of native tradition
• But a colonial Hybrid
A fusion of cultural forms that
• Confirms the power of the colonial
presence
• Also unsettles the mimetic or narcissistic
demands of colonial power
• Hybridity – a kind of negotiation
(political and cultural) between
the colonizer and the colonized
• Marxist and Feminist critics: There cannot
be a generalized encounter.
• The differences between the social
classes and sex must be paid serious
attention
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak(1942- )
• Indian theorist, philosopher & Professor at
Columbia University
• Famous Essay: Can the Subaltern Speak?
• Translator of Derrida’s De la
grammatologie (Of Grammatology)
• Spivak draws our attention to that large
majority of the Colonized that has left no
mark upon history because it could not, or
was not allowed to, make itself heard
Spivak – first postcolonial theorist with a fully
feminist agenda
The Subaltern
• Literally, the category of those who are
lower in position or who, in the military
terms, are lower in rank
• Spivak employs the term to describe the
lower layers of colonial and postcolonial
society – the homeless, the unemployed, the
subsistence farmers, the day labourers and
so on
The Colonized Subaltern- irretrievably
heterogeneous
The Female Subaltern – doubly
marginalized
• Spivak combines a Marxist perspective with
a deconstructionist approach to texts and to
identity
• Analyses how colonial texts attain
coherence by setting up false oppositions
between a supposed centre and an equally
fictive margin and how their language
deconstructs the coherence they try to
establish
THANK YOU
