Impact Of Post Colonialism In Literature

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Post-Colonialism is one of the literary fields which subverts and disrupts the hegemony of the dominant and the supposed (?) superior of the social, political, economic, educational system. As the term suggests, it represents time and literature produced after a colonial reign of the erstwhile colonized nation. Colonization thus being the marker or the point of distinction based on which literature in this case is categorized. Colonization leaves an indelible mark on the colonized even after the colonial reign is politically over. This mark is seen in various fields with literature being no exception. It is probably in literature where the effect of colonization is most felt as literature, traditionally reflects the society at large. …show more content…

His trilogy which include books like ‘Things Fall Apart’, ‘Arrow of God’ and ‘No Longer at Ease’ was written as a response to Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ which portrayed the native Africans as ‘savages’ and ‘barbarous’ and ‘uncivilized’. In ‘Key Concepts in Post Colonial Studies’, by Ashcroft, Tiffin and Griffiths, explain the term ambivalence as “a discourse theory by Homi Bhabha, it describes the complex mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and the colonized. The relationship is ambivalent because the colonized subject is never simply and completely opposed to the colonizer. Rather than assuming that some colonized subjects are ‘complicit’ and some ‘resistant’, ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance exist in a fluctuating relation within the colonial subject. Ambivalence also characterizes the way in which colonial discourse relate to the colonized subject, for it may be both exploitative or represent itself as nurturing at the same time. Most importantly in Bhaha’s theory however ambivalence disrupts the clear- cut authority of the colonial domination because it disrupts the complex relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Ambivalence is therefore an unwelcome aspect of colonial discourse for the colonizer. The problem for the colonial discourse is that it wants to produce subjects ‘mimic’ the colonizer. But instead it produces ambivalent subjects whose mimicry is not far from mockery…..The effect of this ambivalence is to produce a profound disturbance of authority of colonial

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