Introduction to the Term Postcolonialism

1. Introduction to the Term Postcolonialism Chapter One

2. What’s the Connection Between Colonialism and Capitalism? • Colonialism was first and foremost a commercial venture of Western nations. • The seizing of foreign lands for government and settlement was in part motivated by the desire to create and control markets for Western goods, as well as to secure the natural resources and labor power of different lands and people at the lowest possible cost.

3. How is Imperialism related to Colonialism? • Imperialism is an ideological concept which upholds the legitimacy of the economic and military control of one nation by another • Colonialism is one form of imperialism – specifically, colonialism concerns the settlement of one group of people in a new location. • While colonialism is virtually over today, imperialism continues apace as Western Nations, and in particular the U.S., still engage in imperial acts, securing wealth and power through the exploitation of other nations.

4. Definition of Colonialism The settlement of territory, the exploitation or development of resources, and the attempt to govern the indigenous inhabitants of occupied lands. • A – emphasis on settlement of the land • B – economic relationship is the heart of colonialism • C – unequal relations of power are constructed by colonialism

5. What are the Three Periods of Decolonization? • 1. Loss of the American colonies (late 18th century) • 2. Dominions, or settler nations (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), formed through large movement of Europeans to colonized country, displacing and destroying native populations, begin to gain freedom. (late 19th early 20th Century) • 3. Colonized South Asia, Africa and Carribbean, not settled by large numbers of Europeans, but instead by small numbers of British Colonial Elites, fight for independence. (Post WW II)

6. Reasons for Decolonization • 1. Nationalism • 2. Europe’s declining power in the world • 3. Rise of the U.S. and the Soviet Union as major powers • 4. Expense of maintaining Empire.

7. Commonwealth Literature • Definition: Literature in English emerging from colonized countries – excepting the U.S. and Ireland • Shift from imperial or colonial to commonwealth as nations developed their independence. • However, one of the primary assumptions of scholars of commonwealth literature was that the writers brought new insights to Western readers. The focus is on the West, on English speakers.

8. Issues in Commonwealth Literature • 1. Nationalism or the creation of a nation • 2. Connections between commonwealth nations – similarities of their experiences • 3. Cultural differences between commonwealth nations, and between those nations and the West • Relationship to English Literature/Classics • Universal condition of Human kind • Historical, cultural, geographical sense of time/place

9. Ngugi wa Thiong’o • Colonizing the Mind – justifying to those in the colonizing nation that it is right and proper for them to be ruled over by other people • Getting the colonized people to accept their lower ranking in the colonial order of things. • Encouraging people to internalize the logic and speak the language of colonial dominance. • Traumatizes the colonized, who are taught to look negatively on themselves, their people and their culture.

10. Frantz Fanon • Psychologist, writing about the effects of colonialism by the French on Algerians. • Born in French Antilles in 1925. Educated in Martinique and France. • Colonized encouraged to see themselves as objects, rather than as subjects, as at the mercy of the colonizer, as inferior, not fully human. Their identity is created by the other, not by themselves. • To decolonize, means not just to get rid of colonial rule, but to destroy this internalized version of the self.

11. Edward Said • Palestinian, author of Orientalism, the seminal or originating text for postcolonial theory. • The theory posits that the Occidental (West) creates the Oriental (other) as a place of exoticism, moral laxity, sexual degeneracy, etc., then presents this creation as scientific truth. This truth is then used to oppress the indigenous peoples of colonized lands

12. Overturning Empire • Is about more than giving people back their land. • It’s about overturning the Western ways of seeing the world which have been inculcated into indigenous people by the colonizers. • Those seeking “freedom” must decolonize their minds. • They and the West, must seek other truths, discover an alternate order of things, work to alter the dominate patterns of thought that colonization sewed into the fabric of culture, history and language.

13. Theory Re-reading canonical English literature – looking for ways in which it perpetuated or questioned the assumptions of colonial discourses. • Heart of Darkness, for example. • Mansfield Park, for example. • Jane Eyre, for example.

14. Theory cont. • How are colonized subjects represented in texts? • Where and how does the colonized subject resist this representation in texts? • Bhabha – and mimicry • Spivak – and the subaltern • Can the subaltern speak? • Can the subaltern be read as disruptive and subversive?

15. The Empire Writes Back • Literature that writes back to the center – questions, challenges colonial discourse • Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin • New englishes, such as creoles, untranslatable words, unusual syntax. These new englishes expressed new values and identities and rejected old colonial values. • But, they neglected gender, class and national differences in their definitions. • And, they assumed that all writing from the ex-colonies was concerned with postcolonial issues, colonial history, colonial discourses, decolonizing the mind. Sometimes, claim critics, postcolonial writers don’t have empire on their minds.

16. Postcolonialism at the Millennium • Readers have found Spivak, Said and Bhabha difficult to read. In response, a wealth of criticism interpreting and responding to this “Holy Trinity” has been published. • Most recent theory focuses not on homogenizing postcolonial literature, but on looking at its particular cultural and historical situation. • Comparative criticism has also found a place -- what brings works from such disparate cultural and historical sites together in terms of ideas, plots, style? How do differences in particular settings and histories create differences in texts?

17. Postcolonialism: Definitions and Dangers • Colonialism doesn’t stop with political independence. So, how can we even think about the concept of “post” in terms of colonialism? (Native Americans, African Americans, South Africans, Palestinians, Aboriginal Australians) • Internal Colonialism still exists after colonialists take off. • Post doesn’t necessarily mean “after.”

18. So here’s what we imply about postcolonial texts: • 1. They are produced by writers from countries with a history of colonialism, about that colonialism, or about the struggle to escape it. • 2. They are produced by writers who have migrated from countries with a history of colonialism or those descended from migrant families and they deal with the diaspora experience and its consequences. • 3. We may reread colonial texts looking for ways that they address the idea of empire and the consequences of colonization on the colonized and the colonizer.