Bhabha's Contribution to Postcolonial Theory

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Colonialism is and has been a reality during previous centuries. As a political and economical reality it entailed significant consequences in the colonized country's politics, geographical maps, and people's lives, fates and temperaments. As the consequences are hard to ignore the writers of the formerly colonized countries never forgot to write about it and their people's lives before, during and after their country's colonization. As Emecheta is one of these writer who is born and brought up in Nigeria, a colony of British Empire until 1960, postcolonial approach is one of the most appropriate critical methods to deal with her narratives. Besides, since she is focusing on women in the colonial and postcolonial setting trying to foreground their subjugation, utilizing ideas proposed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty as pioneers of postcolonial feminism are helpful in coming to the desired conclusion in this thesis. In addition to Mohanty and Spivak Homi K. Bhabha's propositions regarding the colonized self and her/his dual subjectivity also are helpful. Central to feminist concerns among the postcolonial scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Talapde Mohanty is Western feminism's inattention to the differences among women. Spivak exposes how the world is presented from the dominant perspective and geopolitical location of the First World to the exclusion of other disenfranchised groups. Regarding women in the Third World countries she believes that the everyday lives of many Third World women are so complex and unsystematic that they cannot be known or represented in a straightforward way by the vocabulary of Western critical theory. In this respect, the lived experiences of such women can be seen to pres... ... middle of paper ... ...2 (2004):365-373. Schneider, Gregory. “R.K Narayan’s The Guide and Buchi Emecheta’s Kehinde” www.assosiatedcontent.com/article. Stanford Friedman, Susa. “Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies, and Geopolitical Literacy”. www. Women.it/cyberarchive/files/Stanford.htm Ure Mezu, Rose. “The Perspective of the Other: Rape and Women in Buchi Emecheta's The Rape of Shavi". Bookbird 36.1 (1998): 12-16. Ure Mezu, Rose. Buchi Emecheta's "The Bride Price" and "The Slave Girl": A Schizoanalytic Perspective. Van Judith Alan. “Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and the Last Political Institutions of Igbo Women”. Canadian Journal of American Studies. 28.2 (1972): 165-71. Ward, Cynthia. “What They Told Buchi Emecheta: Oral Subjectivity and The Joys of Motherhood.” PMLA 105.1(1990): 83-97.

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