Indeed, the stranger has unusual customs. The white man held the paper like a sacred thing. His hands shook, and we mistrusted him... For how many moons will the stranger be among us? (Vera 43) The stranger still lives among the people of Zimbabwe, though the colonial political authority has left. Yet I wonder if the town elder speaking in the above passage from Yvonne Vera's Nehanda would recognize current Zimbabwean authorities as strangers or countrymen. Could he relate to today's government officials and understand the languages which they speak? Would he feel at home in an African country with borders defined by European imperial powers without regard to the various ethnic nations involved? Post-colonial theory attempts to explain problems such as these, yet it does so almost exclusively in the languages of the European colonial powers. Europeans even created the word Africa. "To name the world is to 'understand' it, to know it and to have control over it" (Ashcroft 283). Because knowledge is power, and words, whether written or spoken, are the medium of exchange, using words incurs responsibility. One must use special care with broadly defined words and terms, such as post-colonial. Post-colonial literature describes a wide array of experiences set in the contexts of heterogeneous societies which themselves represent many different ethnic groups. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin define post-colonial theory as discussion of "migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place, and responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe... and the fundamental experiences of speaking and writing by which all these come into being" (Ashcroft 2). The wide-ranging nature of the term post-colonial threatens to weaken its usefulness by "diffusion... so extreme that it is used to refer to not only vastly different but even opposed activities" (Ashcroft 2). Post-colonialism encompasses many of the issues encountered in the work we have discussed thus far in the semester. Yet because vague and generalized theories have limits and tend to oversimplify, clouding over real problems, one must handle the term with care. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin suggest that we should restrict the term post-colonial to signify after colonialism. "All post-colonial societies are still subject in one way or another to overt or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination, and independence has not solved the problem" (Ashcroft 2). After colonialism, new elites, often in the form of dictators, frequently rose and still rise to power in post-colonial countries.
Post-colonialism is a discourse draped in history. In one point in time or another, European colonialism dominated most non-European lands since the end of the Renaissance. Naturally, colonialists depicted the cultures of non-Europeans incorrectly and inferior. Traditionally, the canon has misappropriated and misrepresented these cultures, but also the Western academia has yet to teach us the valuable and basic lessons that allow true representations to develop. Partly in response, Post-colonialism arose. Though this term is a broad one, Post-colonialists generally agree on certain key principles. They understand that colonialism exploits the dominated people or country in one way or another, evoking inequalities. Examples of past inequalities include “genocide, economic exploitation, cultural decimation and political exclusion…” (Loomba 9-10). They abhor traditional colonialism but also believe that every people, through the context of their own cultures, have something to contribute to our understanding of human nature (Loomba 1-20). This is the theme that Lewis prescribes in his, self described, “satirical fantasy”, Out of the Silent Planet (Of Other 77).
The cornerstone that anti-colonialism was built upon in the years after World War II is the general consensus among the world that each man and woman is entitled to a basic level of freedom to live their lives that is not unique to any one nation. This ideal is solidified in the preamble of
In the course of Colonization, the world was divided into binary categories of the colonizer and colonized. These binary groups were based on a division of class, gender, race, ethnicity and the oppression of cultural traditions. Traditions of language, religion, labor, and social values were based on theologies of the colonizers, enforced upon the colonized. These binaries can be associated with the Manichean binaries discussed by Frantz Fanon in his book entitled The Wretched of the Earth. In Post-Coloniality, societies gain independence either through diplomatic political transitions or violent revolutions against the occupying force. Regardless of how independence is achieved, these societies undergo a multitude of socio-cultural changes. The colonized populations struggle to rebuild their communities, individual identities and national identities. The process of this decolonization is a long-term and strenuous procedure that varies from one culture to the next. Periods of colonial oppression have negative repercussions on social structures and prohibit certain cultural growth. It is the nationalism that bonds individuals together in creating a national identity, rebuilding the state while imagining the community and representing it in the traditional cultural affiliations of the indigenous populations.
Until recently, world history has been a history of empires. From the Mongols to the Ottomans, empires have always sought to push their physical boundaries, yet none have achieved the success of the British. With colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, 19th century Britons were able to claim that the sun never set on their empire. This far-reaching and wide-encompassing empire allowed the British to establish a global movement of people, goods, ideas, and capital. This global movement not only asserted Britain’s financial dominance, but it also enabled the British to project their western ideology on to the rest of the world. However, the British visions of empire did not always match up with reality. Although there was a British presence across a large part of the globe, the diversity of people and their treatment created sharp distinctions among
There are variations in the degree and type of ethnic conflict, and much of it is thought to be due to the colonial governing style. In the African post-colonial era there has been everything from cases of ongoing conflict, occasional violent inter-ethnic encounters, and countries that are relatively free of any significant ethnic violence.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 66-111.
...balisation can turn into colonisation with the spark of a desire for power. It promotes the idea of globalisation and sheds light to the situation found three centuries later in the present day, for globalisation is a post-colonial phenomena as well as the spark that started colonialism. It is true the age of colonies are over, but its ghost still continues to haunt the former colonies under the name of globalisation, especially those which were mostly exploited at the time.
Colonialism is a relationship of ascendency between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of transcontinental invaders. Colonial rulers have the power to make the essential decisions that affect the lives of the colonised people, which are implemented in pursuit of interests defined in a distant metropolis. Through the ability of rejecting cultural compromises with the colonised population, the colonisers extend their supremacy and their ordained mandate to rule. Nonetheless, Colonial conquest is a term that undermines the complexity within colonialism. To fully understand this period of time, you need to recognize and accept the complication of the motives, methods, the events that occurred and the history involved.
This essay will be about a comparative study of the representation of colonialism as a positive or negative force. The texts that are being used are my core text ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad and ‘Collected Poems’ by Rudyard Kipling. The partner text will be ‘Swami and Friends’ by R. K. Narayan.
In this paper feminist aspect of post colonization will be studied in “Season of Migration to the North” novel by Tayeb Salih. Postcolonial feminism can be defined as seeks to compute for the way that racism and the long-lasting economic, cultural, and political influences of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world, according to Oxford dictionary. As it mentioned earlier about the application of Feminism theory in literature, the provided definition of postcolonial feminism also is not applicable in literature analysis. Therefore, Oxford defines another applic...
Colonialism, which was a major cause of the north-south gap that occurred in the period following the Second World War, is the takeover by a nation of foreign territories; making them part of it to aid its own economic, social and political structures. The mother countries succeed in doing that by using the colony’s natural resources, money savings, and their lands, which leads the colony to rely on the mother country and therefore, leaving the country underdeveloped. Hence, the worldwide scramble for colonies, particularly in the late 19th – early 20th century, had a tremendous negative effect on the economic, social, and political structures of indigenous, non-industrialized peoples. Mother countries tend to take their colony’s natural resources, raw materials, and agricultural products, and then use them to manufacture their own products. This process causes the colony to depend on their mother country’s products rather than their own, which in turn leads to a tremendous deterioration of the colony’s local goods and products.
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
the prefix "post"....implies an "aftermath" in two senses - temporal, as in coming after, and ideological, as in supplanting. It is the second implication which critics of the term have found contestable: if the inequities of colonial rule have not been erased, it is perhaps premature to proclaim the demise of colonialism. A country may be both postcolonial (in the sense of being formally independent) and neo-colonial (in the sense of remaining economically and/or culturally dependant) at the same time. (7)
All the countries deemed as third world has had a history of colonial rule, most were exploited through colonialism, imperialism, neo colonialism etc. while the third world countries were annexed and had direct government of a first country through colonialism; it was seen as a cost by the imperial powers rather than a benefit and one that was unavoidable. Imperialism was creating the condition for industrial capitalism and a modern nation-state and would produce the same consequences as it had of the colonizers i.e. the development of the society’s productive force s and misery and degradation for its workers. It failed to complete the institution of private property, and drained the colonies of capital while enforcing the dependence on agriculture to supply the needs of the industrial world. Neo – colonialism appeared on the outside to grant the c...
Aschcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. 'The Post-Colonial Studies Reader'. London; Routledge, 1995.