Postcolonialism or postcolonial studies is
the academic study of the cultural legacy
of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on
the human consequences of the control and
exploitation of colonized people and their
lands.
Post colonialism is a critical theory analysis
of the history, culture, literature, and discourse
of European imperial power.
The name postcolonialism is modeled on postmodernism,
with which it shares certain concepts and
methods, and may be thought of as a reaction
to or departure from colonialism in the same
way postmodernism is a reaction to modernism.
The ambiguous term colonialism may refer either
to a system of government or to an ideology
or world view underlying that system—in
general postcolonialism represents an ideological
response to colonialist thought, rather than
simply describing a system that comes after
colonialism. The term postcolonial studies
may be preferred for this reason.
Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety
of approaches, and theoreticians may not always
agree on a common set of definitions. On a
simple level, it may seek through anthropological
study to build a better understanding of colonial
life from the point of view of the colonized
people, based on the assumption that the colonial
rulers are unreliable narrators.
On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines
the social and political power relationships
that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism,
including the social, political and cultural
narratives surrounding the colonizer and the
colonized. This approach may overlap with
contemporary history and critical theory,
and may also draw examples from history, political
science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology,
and human geography.
Sub-disciplines of postcolonial studies examine
the effects of colonial rule on the practice
of feminism, anarchism, literature and Christian
thought.
== Purpose and basic concepts ==
As an epistemology (the study of knowledge,
its nature and verifiability), as an ethics
(moral philosophy), and as a politics (affairs
of the citizenry), the field of postcolonialism
addresses the politics of knowledge—the
matters that constitute the postcolonial identity
of a decolonized people, which derives from:
(i) the colonizer's generation of cultural
knowledge about the colonized people; and
(ii) how that Western cultural knowledge was
applied to subjugate a non–European people
into a colony of the European mother country,
which, after initial invasion, was effected
by means of the cultural identities of 'colonizer'
and 'colonized'.Postcolonialism is aimed at
destabilizing these theories (intellectual
and linguistic, social and economic) by means
of which colonialists "perceive", "understand",
and "know" the world. Postcolonial theory
thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern
peoples to speak for themselves, in their
own voices, and thus produce cultural discourses
of philosophy, language, society and economy,
balancing the imbalanced us-and-them binary
power-relationship between the colonist and
the colonial subjects.
=== Colonialist discourse ===
Colonialism was presented as "the extension
of civilization", which ideologically justified
the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority
of the Western world over the non-Western
world. This concept was espoused by Joseph-Ernest
Renan in La Réforme intellectuelle et morale
(1871), whereby imperial stewardship was thought
to affect the intellectual and moral reformation
of the coloured peoples of the lesser cultures
of the world. That such a divinely established,
natural harmony among the human races of the
world would be possible, because everyone
has an assigned cultural identity, a social
place, and an economic role within an imperial
colony. Thus:
The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate
races, by the superior races is part of the
providential order of things for humanity....
Regere imperio populos is our vocation. Pour
forth this all-consuming activity onto countries,
which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign
conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb
European society into a ver sacrum, a horde
like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or
the Normans, and every man will be in his
right role. Nature has made a race of workers,
the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual
dexterity, and almost no sense of honour;
govern them with justice, levying from them,
in return for the blessing of such a government,
an ample allowance for the conquering race,
and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers
of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness
and humanity, and all will be as it should;
a race of masters and soldiers, the European
race.... Let each do what he is made for,
and all will be well.
From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century,
such racialist group-identity language was
the cultural common-currency justifying geopolitical
competition amongst the European and American
empires and meant to protect their over-extended
economies. Especially in the colonization
of the Far East and in the late-nineteenth
century Scramble for Africa, the representation
of a homogeneous European identity justified
colonization. Hence, Belgium and Britain,
and France and Germany proffered theories
of national superiority that justified colonialism
as delivering the light of civilization to
unenlightened peoples. Notably, la mission
civilisatrice, the self-ascribed 'civilizing
mission' of the French Empire, proposed that
some races and cultures have a higher purpose
in life, whereby the more powerful, more developed,
and more civilized races have the right to
colonize other peoples, in service to the
noble idea of "civilization" and its economic
benefits.
=== Postcolonial identity ===
Decolonized people develop a postcolonial
identity that is based on cultural interactions
between different identities (cultural, national,
and ethnic as well as gender and class based)
which are assigned varying degrees of social
power by the colonial society. In postcolonial
literature, the anti-conquest narrative analyzes
the identity politics that are the social
and cultural perspectives of the subaltern
colonial subjects—their creative resistance
to the culture of the colonizer; how such
cultural resistance complicated the establishment
of a colonial society; how the colonizers
developed their postcolonial identity; and
how neocolonialism actively employs the Us-and-Them
binary social relation to view the non-Western
world as inhabited by The Other.
The neocolonial discourse of geopolitical
homogeneity relegating the decolonized peoples,
their cultures, and their countries, to an
imaginary place, such as "the Third World",
an over-inclusive term that usually comprises
continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin
America, and Oceania. The postcolonial critique
analyzes the self-justifying discourse of
neocolonialism and the functions (philosophic
and political) of its over-inclusive terms,
to establish the factual and cultural inaccuracy
of homogeneous concepts, such as "the Arabs"
and "the First World", "Christendom" and "the
Ummah", actually comprise heterogeneous peoples,
cultures, and geography, and that accurate
descriptions of the world's peoples, places,
and things require nuanced and accurate terms.
=== Difficulty of definition ===
As a contemporary-history term, postcolonialism
occasionally is applied temporally, to denote
the immediate time after colonialism, which
is a problematic application of the term,
because the immediate, historical, political
time is not included in the categories of
critical identity-discourse, which deals with
over-inclusive terms of cultural representation,
which are abrogated and replaced by postcolonial
criticism. As such, the terms postcolonial
and postcolonialism denote aspects of the
subject matter, which indicate that the decolonized
world is an intellectual space "of contradictions,
of half-finished processes, of confusions,
of hybridity, and of liminalities".In Post-Colonial
Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996),
Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins clarified
the denotational functions, among which:
The term post-colonialism—according to a
too-rigid etymology—is frequently misunderstood
as a temporal concept, meaning the time after
colonialism has ceased, or the time following
the politically determined Independence Day
on which a country breaks away from its governance
by another state. Not a naïve teleological
sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post-colonialism
is, rather, an engagement with, and contestation
of, colonialism's discourses, power structures,
and social hierarchies.... A theory of post-colonialism
must, then, respond to more than the merely
chronological construction of post-independence,
and to more than just the discursive experience
of imperialism.
The term post-colonialism is also applied
to denote the Mother Country's neocolonial
control of the decolonized country, effected
by the legalistic continuation of the economic,
cultural, and linguistic power relationships
that controlled the colonial politics of knowledge
(the generation, production, and distribution
of knowledge) about the colonized peoples
of the non–Western world. The cultural and
religious assumptions of colonialist logic
remain active practices in contemporary society,
and are the basis of the Mother Country's
neocolonial attitude towards her former colonial
subjects—an economical source of labour
and raw materials.
== Notable theoreticians ==
=== 
Frantz Fanon ===
In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), the psychiatrist
and philosopher Frantz Fanon analyzed and
medically described the nature of colonialism
as essentially destructive. Its societal effects—the
imposition of a subjugating colonial identity—are
harmful to the mental health of the native
peoples who were subjugated into colonies.
Fanon wrote the ideological essence of colonialism
is the systematic denial of "all attributes
of humanity" of the colonized people. Such
dehumanization is achieved with physical and
mental violence, by which the colonist means
to inculcate a servile mentality upon the
natives. For Fanon the natives must violently
resist colonial subjugation. Hence, Fanon
describes violent resistance to colonialism
as a mentally cathartic practice, which purges
colonial servility from the native psyche,
and restores self-respect to the subjugated.
Thus, Fanon actively supported and participated
in the Algerian Revolution (1954–62) for
independence from France as a member and representative
of the Front de Libération Nationale.As postcolonial
praxis, Fanon's mental-health analyses of
colonialism and imperialism, and the supporting
economic theories, were partly derived from
the essay Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism (1916), wherein Vladimir Lenin
described colonial imperialism as a degenerate
form of capitalism, which requires greater
degrees of human exploitation to ensure continually
consistent profit for investment.
=== Edward Said ===
Cultural critic Edward Said is considered
by E. San Juan, Jr. as "the originator and
inspiring patron-saint of postcolonial theory
and discourse" due to his theory of Orientalism
explained in his 1978 book of the same name.
To describe the us-and-them "binary social
relation" with which Western Europe intellectually
divided the world—into the "Occident" and
the "Orient"— Said developed the denotations
and connotations of the term Orientalism (an
art-history term for Western depictions and
the study of the Orient). Said's concept (which
he also termed "Orientalism") is that the
cultural representations generated with the
us-and-them binary relation are social constructs,
which are mutually constitutive and cannot
exist independent of each other, because each
exists on account of and for the other.Notably,
"the West" created the cultural concept of
"the East", which according to Said allowed
the Europeans to suppress the peoples of the
Middle East, of the Indian Subcontinent, and
of Asia, from expressing and representing
themselves as discrete peoples and cultures.
Orientalism thus conflated and reduced the
non–Western world into the homogeneous cultural
entity known as "the East". Therefore, in
service to the colonial type of imperialism,
the us-and-them Orientalist paradigm allowed
European scholars to represent the Oriental
World as inferior and backward, irrational
and wild, as opposed to a Western Europe that
was superior and progressive, rational and
civil—the opposite of the Oriental Other.
In "Edward Said: The Exile as Interpreter"
(1993), about Said's Orientalism (1978), A.
Madhavan said that "Said's passionate thesis
in that book, now an 'almost canonical study',
represented Orientalism as a 'style of thought'
based on the antinomy of East and West in
their world-views, and also as a 'corporate
institution' for dealing with the Orient."In
concordance with the philosopher Michel Foucault,
Said established that power and knowledge
are the inseparable components of the intellectual
binary relationship with which Occidentals
claim "knowledge of the Orient". That the
applied power of such cultural knowledge allowed
Europeans to rename, re-define, and thereby
control Oriental peoples, places, and things,
into imperial colonies. The power–knowledge
binary relation is conceptually essential
to identify and understand colonialism in
general, and European colonialism in particular.
Hence,
To the extent that Western scholars were aware
of contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements
of thought and culture, these were perceived
either as silent shadows to be animated by
the Orientalist, brought into reality by them,
or as a kind of cultural and international
proletariat useful for the Orientalist's grander
interpretive activity.
Nonetheless, critics of the homogeneous "Occident–Orient"
binary social relation, said that Orientalism
is of limited descriptive capability and practical
application, and proposed that there are variants
of Orientalism that apply to Africa and to
Latin America. Said replied that the European
West applied Orientalism as a homogeneous
form of The Other, in order to facilitate
the formation of the cohesive, collective
European cultural identity denoted by the
term "The West".With this described binary
logic, the West generally constructs the Orient
subconsciously as its alter ego. Therefore,
descriptions of the Orient by the Occident
lack material attributes, grounded within
land. This inventive, or imaginative interpretation
subscribes female characteristics to the Orient
and plays into fantasies that are inherent
within the West's alter ego. It should be
understood that this process draws creativity,
amounting an entire domain and discourse.
In Orientalism, Said mentions the production
of "philology [the study of the history of
languages], lexicography [dictionary making],
history, biology, political and economic theory,
novel-writing and lyric poetry" (p. 6). Therefore,
there is an entire industry that exploits
the Orient for its own subjective purposes
that lack a native and intimate understanding.
Such industries become institutionalized and
eventually become a resource for manifest
Orientalism, or a compilation of misinformation
about the Orient. The ideology of Empire was
hardly ever a brute jingoism; rather, it made
subtle use of reason, and recruited science
and history to serve its ends. —Imperial
Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient (p. 6)
These subjective fields of academia now synthesize
the political resources and think-tanks that
are so common in the West today. Orientalism
is self-perpetuating to the extent that it
becomes normalized within common discourse,
making people say things that are latent,
impulsive, or not fully conscious of its own
self.
=== Gayatri Spivak ===
In establishing the Postcolonial definition
of the term subaltern, the philosopher and
theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned
against assigning an over-broad connotation.
She argues:
... subaltern is not just a classy word for
"oppressed", for The Other, for somebody who's
not getting a piece of the pie. ... In postcolonial
terms, everything that has limited or no access
to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a
space of difference. Now, who would say that's
just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed.
It's not subaltern. ... Many people want to
claim subalternity. They are the least interesting
and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being
a discriminated-against minority on the university
campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern'
... They should see what the mechanics of
the discrimination are. They're within the
hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the
pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak,
use the hegemonic discourse. They should not
call themselves subaltern.
Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism
and strategic essentialism to describe the
social functions of postcolonialism. The term
essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers
inherent to reviving subaltern voices in ways
that might (over) simplify the cultural identity
of heterogeneous social groups and, thereby,
create stereotyped representations of the
different identities of the people who compose
a given social group. The term strategic essentialism
denotes a temporary, essential group-identity
used in the praxis of discourse among peoples.
Furthermore, essentialism can occasionally
be applied—by the so-described people—to
facilitate the subaltern's communication in
being heeded, heard, and understood, because
a strategic essentialism (a fixed and established
subaltern identity) is more readily grasped,
and accepted, by the popular majority, in
the course of inter-group discourse. The important
distinction, between the terms, is that strategic
essentialism does not ignore the diversity
of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social
group, but that, in its practical function,
strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes
inter-group diversity to pragmatically support
the essential group-identity.Spivak developed
and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence
to describe the destruction of non–Western
ways of perceiving the world and the resultant
dominance of the Western ways of perceiving
the world. Conceptually, epistemic violence
specifically relates to women, whereby the
"Subaltern [woman] must always be caught in
translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing
herself", because the colonial power's destruction
of her culture pushed to the social margins
her non–Western ways of perceiving, understanding,
and knowing the world.In June of the year
1600, the Afro–Iberian woman Francisca de
Figueroa requested from the King of Spain
his permission for her to emigrate from Europe
to New Spain, and reunite with her daughter,
Juana de Figueroa. As a subaltern woman, Francisca
repressed her native African language, and
spoke her request in Peninsular Spanish, the
official language of Colonial Latin America.
As a subaltern woman, she applied to her voice
the Spanish cultural filters of sexism, Christian
monotheism, and servile language, in addressing
her colonial master:
I, Francisca de Figueroa, mulatta in colour,
declare that I have, in the city of Cartagena,
a daughter named Juana de Figueroa; and she
has written, to call for me, in order to help
me. I will take with me, in my company, a
daughter of mine, her sister, named María,
of the said colour; and for this, I must write
to Our Lord the King to petition that he favour
me with a licence, so that I, and my said
daughter, can go and reside in the said city
of Cartagena. For this, I will give an account
of what is put down in this report; and of
how I, Francisca de Figueroa, am a woman of
sound body, and mulatta in colour […] And
my daughter María is twenty-years-old, and
of the said colour, and of medium size. Once
given, I attest to this. I beg your Lordship
to approve, and order it done. I ask for justice
in this.
[On the twenty-first day of the month of June
1600, Your Majesty's Lords Presidents and
Official Judges of this House of Contract
Employment order that the account she offers
be received, and that testimony for the purpose
she requests given.]
Moreover, Spivak further cautioned against
ignoring subaltern peoples as "cultural Others",
and said that the West could progress—beyond
the colonial perspective—by means of introspective
self-criticism of the basic ideals and investigative
methods that establish a culturally superior
West studying the culturally inferior non–Western
peoples. Hence, the integration of the subaltern
voice to the intellectual spaces of social
studies is problematic, because of the unrealistic
opposition to the idea of studying "Others";
Spivak rejected such an anti-intellectual
stance by social scientists, and about them
said that "to refuse to represent a cultural
Other is salving your conscience […] allowing
you not to do any homework." Moreover, postcolonial
studies also reject the colonial cultural
depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mimics
of the European colonists and their Western
ways; and rejects the depiction of subaltern
peoples as the passive recipient-vessels of
the imperial and colonial power of the Mother
Country. Consequent to Foucault's philosophic
model of the binary relationship of power
and knowledge, scholars from the Subaltern
Studies Collective, proposed that anti-colonial
resistance always counters every exercise
of colonial power.
=== Homi K. Bhabha ===
In The Location of Culture (1994), the theoretician
Homi K. Bhabha argued that viewing the human
world as composed of separate and unequal
cultures, rather than as an integral human
world, perpetuates the belief in the existence
of imaginary peoples and places—"Christendom"
and "The Islamic World", "The First World",
"The Second World", and "The Third World".
To counter such linguistic and sociologic
reductionism, postcolonial praxis establishes
the philosophic value of hybrid intellectual
spaces, wherein ambiguity abrogates truth
and authenticity; thereby, hybridity is the
philosophic condition that most substantively
challenges the ideological validity of colonialism.
=== R. Siva Kumar ===
In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary
of India's Independence, Santiniketan: The
Making of a Contextual Modernism was an important
exhibition curated by R. Siva Kumar at the
National Gallery of Modern Art.In his catalogue
essay, Kumar introduced the term Contextual
Modernism, which later emerged as a postcolonial
critical tool in the understanding of Indian
art, specifically the works of Nandalal Bose,
Rabindranath Tagore, Ramkinkar Baij and Benode
Behari Mukherjee.
Santiniketan artists did not believe that
to be indigenous one has to be historicist
either in theme or in style, and similarly
to be modern one has to adopt a particular
trans-national formal language or technique.
Modernism was to them neither a style nor
a form of internationalism. It was critical
re-engagement with the foundational aspects
of art necessitated by changes in one's unique
historical position.
In the postcolonial history of art, this marked
the departure from Eurocentric unilateral
idea of Modernism to alternative context sensitive
Modernisms.
The brief survey of the individual works of
the core Santiniketan artists and the thought
perspectives they open up makes clear that
though there were various contact points in
the work they were not bound by a continuity
of style but buy a community of ideas. Which
they not only shared but also interpreted
and carried forward. Thus they do not represent
a school but a movement.
Several terms including Paul Gilroy's counter
culture of modernity and Tani E. Barlow's
Colonial modernity have been used to describe
the kind of alternative modernity that emerged
in non-European contexts. Professor Gall argues
that 'Contextual Modernism' is a more suited
term because "the colonial in colonial modernity
does not accommodate the refusal of many in
colonized situations to internalize inferiority.
Santiniketan's artist teachers' refusal of
subordination incorporated a counter vision
of modernity, which sought to correct the
racial and cultural essentialism that drove
and characterized imperial Western modernity
and modernism. Those European modernities,
projected through a triumphant British colonial
power, provoked nationalist responses, equally
problematic when they incorporated similar
essentialisms."
=== 
Dipesh Chakrabarty ===
In Provincializing Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty
charted the subaltern history of the Indian
struggle for independence, and countered Eurocentric,
Western scholarship about non-Western peoples
and cultures, by proposing that Western Europe
simply be considered as culturally equal to
the other cultures of the world, that is,
as "one region among many" in human geography.
=== Derek Gregory ===
Derek Gregory argues the long trajectory through
history of British and American colonization
is an ongoing process still happening today.
In The Colonial Present, Gregory traces connections
between the geopolitics of events happening
in modern-day Afghanistan, Palestine, and
Iraq and links it back to the us-and-them
binary relation between the Western and Eastern
world. Building upon the ideas of the other
and Said's work on orientalism, Gregory critiques
the economic policy, military apparatus, and
transnational corporations as vehicles driving
present day colonialism. Emphasizing ideas
of discussing ideas around colonialism in
the present tense, Gregory utilizes modern
events such as the September 11 attacks to
tell spatial stories around the colonial behavior
happening due to the War on Terror.
=== Amar Acheraiou ===
Acheraiou argues that colonialism was a capitalist
venture moved by appropriation and plundering
of foreign lands and was supported by military
force and a discourse that legitimized violence
in the name of progress and a universal civilizing
mission. This discourse is complex and multi-faceted.
It was elaborated in the 19th century by colonial
ideologues such as Joseph-Ernest Renan and
Arthur de Gobineau, but its roots reach far
back in history. In Rethinking Postcolonialism:
Colonialist Discourse in Modern Literature
and the Legacy of Classical Writers, Amar
Acheraiou discusses the history of colonialist
discourse and traces its spirit to ancient
Greece, including Europe's claim to racial
supremacy and right to rule over non-Europeans
harboured by Renan and other 19th century
colonial ideologues. He argues that modern
colonial representations of the colonized
as "inferior", "stagnant" and "degenerate"
were borrowed from Greek and Latin authors
like Lysias (440–380 BC), Isocrates (436–338
BC), Plato (427–327 BC), Aristotle (384—322
BC), Cicero (106–43 BC), and Sallust (86–34
BC), who all considered their racial others
– the Persians, Scythians, Egyptians as
"backward", "inferior", and "effeminate".
Among these ancient writers Aristotle is the
one who articulated more thoroughly these
ancient racial assumptions, which served as
a source of inspiration for modern colonists.
In The Politics, he established a racial classification
and ranked the Greeks superior to the rest.
He considered them as an ideal race to rule
over Asian and other 'barbarian' peoples,
for they knew how to blend the spirit of the
European "war-like races" with Asiatic "intelligence"
and "competence".Ancient Rome was a source
of admiration in Europe since the enlightenment.
In France, Voltaire (1694-1778) was one of
the most fervent admirers of Rome. He regarded
highly the Roman republican values of rationality,
democracy, order and justice. In early-eighteenth
century Britain, it was poets and politicians
like Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard
Glover (1712 –1785) who were vocal advocates
of these ancient republican values.
It was in the mid-eighteenth century that
ancient Greece became a source of admiration
among the French and British. This enthusiasm
gained prominence in the late-eighteenth century.
It was spurred by German Hellenist scholars
and English romantic poets: Johann Joachim
Winckelmann (1717–1768), Wilhelm von Humboldt
(1767–1835), and Goethe (1749–1832), Lord
Byron (1788–1824), Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772–1834), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822),
and John Keats (1795–1821). These scholars
and poets regarded ancient Greece as the matrix
of Western civilization and a model of beauty
and democracy.In the nineteenth century when
Europe began to expand across the globe and
establish colonies, ancient Greece and Rome
were used as a source of empowerment and justification
to Western civilizing mission. At this period,
many French and British imperial ideologues
identified strongly with the ancient empires
and invoked ancient Greece and Rome to justify
the colonial civilizing project. They urged
European colonizers to emulate these "ideal"
classical conquerors, whom they regarded as
"universal instructors". For Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805–1859), an ardent and influential advocate
of la "Grande France," the classical empires
were model conquerors to imitate. He advised
the French colonists in Algeria to follow
the ancient imperial example. In 1841, he
stated: 'what matters most when we want to
set up and develop a colony is to make sure
that those who arrive in it are as less estranged
as possible, that these newcomers meet a perfect
image of their homeland….the thousand colonies
that the Greeks founded on the Mediterranean
coasts were all exact copies of the Greek
cities on which they had been modelled. The
Romans established in almost all parts of
the globe known to them municipalities which
were no more than miniature Romes. Among modern
colonizers, the English did the same. Who
can prevent us from emulating these European
peoples?'. The Greeks and Romans were deemed
exemplary conquerors and "heuristic teachers",
whose lessons were invaluable for modern colonists
ideologues. John-Robert Seeley (1834-1895),
a history professor at Cambridge and proponent
of imperialism stated in a rhetoric which
echoed that of Renan that the role of the
British Empire was 'similar to that of Rome,
in which we hold the position of not merely
of ruling but of an educating and civilizing
race."The incorporation of ancient concepts
and racial and cultural assumptions into modern
imperial ideology bolstered colonial claims
to supremacy and right to colonize non-Europeans.
Because of these numerous ramifications between
ancient representations and modern colonial
rhetoric, 19th century's colonialist discourse
acquires a "multi-layered" or "palimpsestic"
structure. It forms a "historical, ideological
and narcissistic continuum," in which modern
theories of domination feed upon and blend
with "ancient myths of supremacy and grandeur".
== "Postcolonial literary study" ==
As a literary theory, postcolonialism deals
with the literatures produced by the peoples
who once were colonies of the European imperial
powers (e.g. Britain, France, and Spain) and
the literatures of the decolonized countries
engaged in contemporary, postcolonial arrangements
(e.g. Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
and the Commonwealth of Nations) with their
former mother countries. Postcolonial literary
criticism comprehends the literatures written
by the colonizer and the colonized, wherein
the subject matter includes portraits of the
colonized peoples and their lives as imperial
subjects. In Dutch literature, the Indies
Literature includes the colonial and postcolonial
genres, which examine and analyze the formation
of a postcolonial identity, and the postcolonial
culture produced by the diaspora of the Indo-European
peoples, the Eurasian folk who originated
from Indonesia; the peoples who were the colony
of the Dutch East Indies; in the literature,
the notable author is Tjalie Robinson.J.M
Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians(1980)
depicts the unfair and inhuman situation of
people dominated by settlers.
To perpetuate and facilitate control of the
colonial enterprise, some colonized people,
especially from among the subaltern peoples
of the British Empire, were sent to attend
university in the Imperial Motherland; they
were to become the native-born, but Europeanised,
ruling class of colonial satraps. Yet, after
decolonization, their bicultural educations
originated postcolonial criticism of empire
and colonialism, and of the representations
of the colonist and the colonized. In the
late twentieth century, after the dissolution
of the USSR (1991), the constituent soviet
socialist republics became the literary subjects
of postcolonial criticism, wherein the writers
dealt with the legacies (cultural, social,
economic) of the Russification of their peoples,
countries, and cultures in service to Greater
Russia.Postcolonial literary study is in two
categories: (i) that of the postcolonial nations,
and (ii) that of the nations who continue
forging a postcolonial national identity.
The first category of literature presents
and analyzes the internal challenges inherent
to determining an ethnic identity in a decolonized
nation. The second category of literature
presents and analyzes the degeneration of
civic and nationalist unities consequent to
ethnic parochialism, usually manifested as
the demagoguery of "protecting the nation",
a variant of the Us-and-Them binary social
relation. Civic and national unity degenerate
when a patriarchal régime unilaterally defines
what is and what is not "the national culture"
of the decolonized country; the nation-state
collapses, either into communal movements,
espousing grand political goals for the postcolonial
nation; or into ethnically mixed communal
movements, espousing political separatism,
as occurred in decolonized Rwanda, the Sudan,
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo;
thus the postcolonial extremes against which
Frantz Fanon warned in 1961.
Regarding sociolinguistic interpretations
of literary texts through postcolonial lenses
we may refer to Jaydeep Sarangi's book, Indian
Novels in English: A Sociolinguistic Study
(2005).
== Application ==
=== The Middle East ===
In the essays "Overstating the Arab State"
(2001), by Nazih Ayubi, and "Is Jordan Palestine?"
(2003), by Raphael Israel, the authors deal
with the psychologically fragmented postcolonial
identity, as determined by the effects (political
and social, cultural and economic) of Western
colonialism in the Middle East. As such, the
fragmented national identity remains a characteristic
of such societies, consequence of the imperially
convenient, but arbitrary, colonial boundaries
(geographic and cultural) demarcated by the
Europeans, with which they ignored the tribal
and clan relations that determined the geographic
borders of the Middle East countries, before
the arrival of European imperialists. Hence,
the postcolonial literature about the Middle
East examines and analyzes the Western discourses
about identity formation, the existence and
inconsistent nature of a postcolonial national-identity
among the peoples of the contemporary Middle
East.
In the essay "Who Am I?: The Identity Crisis
in the Middle East" (2006), P.R. Kumaraswamy
said:
Most countries of the Middle East, suffered
from the fundamental problems over their national
identities. More than three-quarters of a
century after the disintegration of the Ottoman
Empire, from which most of them emerged, these
states have been unable to define, project,
and maintain a national identity that is both
inclusive and representative.
Independence and the end of colonialism did
not end social fragmentation and war (civil
and international) in the Middle East. In
The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses
and Counter-Discourses (2004), Larbi Sadiki
said that the problems of national identity
in the Middle East are a consequence of the
Orientalist indifference of the European empires
when they demarcated the political borders
of their colonies, which ignored the local
history and the geographic and tribal boundaries
observed by the natives, in the course of
establishing the Western version of the Middle
East.
In the event, "in places like Iraq and Jordan,
leaders of the new sovereign states were brought
in from the outside, [and] tailored to suit
colonial interests and commitments. Likewise,
most states in the Persian Gulf were handed
over to those [Europeanised colonial subjects]
who could protect and safeguard imperial interests
in the post-withdrawal phase." Moreover, "with
notable exceptions like Egypt, Iran, Iraq,
and Syria, most [countries] ... [have] had
to [re]invent, their historical roots" after
decolonization, and, "like its colonial predecessor,
postcolonial identity owes its existence to
force."
=== Africa ===
In the late 19th century, the Scramble for
Africa (1874–1914) proved to be the tail
end of mercantilist colonialism of the European
imperial powers, yet, for the Africans, the
consequences were greater than elsewhere in
the colonized non–Western world. To facilitate
the colonization the European empires laid
railroads where the rivers and the land proved
impassable. The Imperial British railroad
effort proved overambitious in the effort
of traversing continental Africa, yet succeeded
only in connecting colonial North Africa (Cairo)
with the colonial south of Africa (Cape Town).
Upon arriving to Africa, the Europeans encountered
the native African civilizations of the Ashanti
Empire, the Benin Empire, the Kingdom of Dahomey,
the Buganda Kingdom (Uganda), and the Kingdom
of Kongo, all of which were annexed by imperial
powers under the belief that they required
European stewardship, as proposed and justified
in the essay "The African Character" (1830),
by G. W. F. Hegel, in keeping with his philosophic
opinion that cultures were stages in the course
of the historical unfolding of The Absolute.
Nigeria was the homeland of the Hausa people,
the Yoruba people and the Igbo people; which
last were among the first people to develop
their history in constructing a postcolonial
identity. (See: Things Fall Apart, 1958).
About East Africa, the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong'o wrote Weep Not, Child (1964),
the first postcolonial novel about the East
African experience of colonial imperialism;
in The River Between (1965), with the Mau
Mau Uprising (1952–60) as political background,
he addressed the postcolonial matters of native
religious culture, and the consequences of
the imposition of Christianity, a religion
culturally foreign to Kenya and to most of
Africa; and the essay Decolonizing the Mind:
The Politics of Language in African Literature
(1986).
In postcolonial countries of Africa, the Africans
and the non–Africans live in a world of
genders, ethnicities, classes and languages,
of ages, families, professions, religions
and nations. There is a suggestion that individualism
and postcolonialism are essentially discontinuous
and divergent cultural phenomena.
=== Asia ===
French Indochina was divided into five subdivisions:
Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos.
Cochinchina (southern Vietnam) was the first
territory under French Control. Saigon was
conquered in 1859. Then, in 1887, the Indochinese
Union (Union indochinoise) was established.
In 1924, Nguyen Ai Quoc Ho Chi Minh wrote
the first critical text against the French
colonization: Le Procès de la colonization
française (French Colonization on Trial)
Trinh T. Minh-ha has been developing her innovative
theories about postcolonialism in various
means of expression, literature, films, and
teaching. She is best known for her film "Reassemblage",
made in 1982, in which she tried to deconstruct
anthropology, as a "western male hegemonic
ideology". In 1989 she wrote "Woman, Native,
Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism",
where she focuses on the acknowledgement of
oral tradition.
=== Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs)
===
Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) implemented
by the World Bank and IMF are viewed by some
postcolonialists as the modern procedure of
colonization. Structural adjustment programmes
(SAPs) calls for trade liberalization, privatization
of banks, health care, and educational institutions.
These implementations minimized government's
role, paved pathways for companies to enter
Africa for its resources. Limited to production
and exportation of cash crops, many African
nations acquired more debt, and were left
stranded in a position where acquiring more
loan and continuing to pay high interest became
an endless cycle.Osterhammel's The Dictionary
of Human Geography uses the definition of
colonialism as "enduring relationship of domination
and mode of dispossession, usually (or at
least initially) between an indigenous (or
enslaved) majority and a minority of interlopers
(colonizers), who are convinced of their own
superiority, pursue their own interests, and
exercise power through a mixture of coercion,
persuasion, conflict and collaboration". The
definition adopted by The Dictionary of Human
Geography suggests that the Structural adjustment
programmes implemented by the Washington Consensus
is indeed an act of colonization.
== Criticism ==
=== 
Undermining of universal values ===
Indian Marxist scholar Vivek Chibber has critiqued
some foundational logics of postcolonial theory
in his book Postcolonial Theory and the Specter
of Capital. Developing on Aijaz Ahmad's earlier
critique of Said's Orientalism and Sumit Sarkar's
critique of the subaltern studies scholars.
Chibber focuses on and refutes the principal
historical claims made by the subaltern studies
scholars, claims which are representative
of the whole of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial
theory, he argues, essentializes cultures,
painting them as fixed and static categories.
Moreover, it presents the difference between
East and West as unbridgeable, hence denying
people's "universal aspirations" and "universal
interests". He also criticized the postcolonial
tendency to characterize all of Enlightenment
values as Eurocentric. According to him, the
theory will be remembered "for its revival
of cultural essentialism and its acting as
an endorsement of orientalism, rather than
being an antidote to it."
=== 
Fixation on national identity ===
The concentration of postcolonial studies
upon the subject of national identity has
determined it is essential to the creation
and establishment of a stable nation and country
in the aftermath of decolonization; yet indicates
that either an indeterminate or an ambiguous
national identity has tended to limit the
social, cultural, and economic progress of
a decolonized people. In Overstating the Arab
State (2001), by Nazih Ayubi, the Moroccan
scholar Bin 'Abd al-'Ali proposed that the
existence of "a pathological obsession with
... identity" is a cultural theme common to
the contemporary academic field Middle Eastern
Studies.Nevertheless, Kumaraswamy and Sadiki
said that such a common sociological problem—that
of an indeterminate national identity—among
the countries of the Middle East is an important
aspect that must be accounted in order to
have an understanding of the politics of the
contemporary Middle East. In the event, Ayubi
asks if what 'Bin Abd al–'Ali sociologically
described as an obsession with national identity
might be explained by "the absence of a championing
social class?"
== Foundation works ==
Le Procès de la colonization française (French
Colonization on Trial) (1924), by Nguyen Ai
Quoc known as Ho Chi Minh
Discourse on Colonialism (1950), by Aimé
Césaire
Black Skin, White Masks (1952), by Frantz
Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth (1961), by Frantz
Fanon
The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965), by
Albert Memmi
Consciencism (1970), by Kwame Nkrumah
Orientalism (1978), by Edward Said
Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), by Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak
== 
Postcolonial literature ==
=== 
Contemporary authors of postcolonial fiction
===
Chinua Achebe (1930–2013)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977–)
Ama Ata Aidoo(1942–)
Mariama Ba (1929–1981)
Giannina Braschi(1953–)
Edwidge Danticat(1969–)
Buchi Emecheta (1944–2018)
Amitav Ghosh (1956–)
Mohsin Hamid (1971–)
Jamaica Kincaid (1949–)
Jhumpa Lahiri (1967–)
Ben Okri (1959–)
Michael Ondaatje (1943–)
Arundhati Roy (1961–)
Jean Rhys (1890–1979)
Salman Rushdie (1947–)
Sam Selvon (1923–1994)
Ousmane Sembene (1923–2007)
Bapsi Sidhwa (1938–)
Zadie Smith (1975–)
Wole Soyinka (1934–)
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938–)
Derek Walcott (1930–)
== Postcolonial works of non-fiction until
2000 ==
The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977), by Syed
Hussein Alatas.
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (1983, 1991), by
Benedict Anderson. London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-329-5
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice
in Post-Colonial Literature (1990), by B.
Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin.
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995), B.
Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, Eds.
London: Routledge ISBN 0-415-09621-9.
Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (1998),
B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin,
Eds. London: Routledge.
L'eurocentrisme (Eurocentrism, 1988), by Samir
Amin.
The Heathen in his Blindness. . ." Asia, the
West, and the Dynamic of Religion. (1994,
2005), by S. N. Balagangadhara. ISBN 90-04-09943-3.
The Location of Culture (1994), H.K. Bhabha.
The Post-Colonial Question (1996), I. Chambers
and L. Curti, Eds. Routledge.
Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories, P. Chatterjee, Princeton University
Press.
Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction
(1998), by Leela Gandhi, Columbia University
Press: ISBN 0-231-11273-4.
Colonialism is Doomed, by Ernesto Guevara.
Woman, Native, Other. Writing postcoloniality
and feminism (Indiana University Press, 1989)German
Edition: trans. Kathrina Menke, Vienna & Berlin:
Verlag Turia & Kant, 2010.
Japanese Edition: trans. Kazuko Takemura,
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995. by Trinh T. Minh-haThe
Commonwealth, Comparative Literature and the
World: Two Lectures (1998), by Alamgir Hashmi.
Islamabad: Gulmohar.
African Philosophy: Myth & Reality (1983),
Paulin J. Hountondji.
Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World
(1986), by Kumari Jayawardena.
Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature
in Colonial Africa (1988), A. JanMohamed.
Inventing Ireland (1995), by Declan Kiberd.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"
(1916), by Lenin.
Prospero and Caliban, the Psychology of Colonization
Octave Mannoni and P. Powesland.
The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self
Under Colonialism (1983), by Ashis Nandy.
Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in
the Politics of Awareness (1987), by Ashis
Nandy.
"The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term
'Postcolonialism' " (1994), by Anne McClintock,
in Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial Theory
(1994), M. Baker, P. Hulme, and M. Iverson,
Eds.
Local Histories/Global designs: Coloniality
(1999), by Walter Mignolo.
Infinite Layers/Third World? (1989), by Trinh
T. Minh-ha.
Under Western Eyes (1986), by Chandra Talpade
Mohanty.
The Invention of Africa (1988), by V. Y. Mudimbe.
Dislocating Cultures (1997), by Uma Narayan.
Contesting Cultures(1997), by Uma Narayan.
Delusions and Discoveries (1983), B. Parry.
Postcolonial Student: Learning the Ethics
of Global Solidarity in an English Classroom,
by Masood Ashraf Raja.
"Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality" (1991),
in Globalizations and Modernities (1999),
by Aníbal Quijano.
"Calibán: Apuntes sobre la cultura de Nuestra
América" (Caliban: Notes About the Culture
of Our America, 1971), in Calibán and Other
Essays (1989), by Roberto Fernández Retamar
Culture and Imperialism (1993), by Edward
Said
"New Orientations:Post Colonial Literature
in English" by Jaydeep Sarangi, Authorspress,
New Delhi
Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), by Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak.
The Postcolonial Critic (1990), by Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak.
Selected Subaltern Studies (1988), by Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak.
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards
a History of the Vanishing Present (1999),
by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language
in African Literature (1986), by Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong'o.
White Mythologies: Writing History and the
West (1990), by Robert J.C. Young.
Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture
and Race (1995), by Robert J.C. Young.
== Postcolonial works of non-fiction after
2000 ==
Cahiers du CEDREF on Decolonial Feminist and
Queer Theories (2012), by Paola Bachetta
Iran: A People Interrupted (2007), by Hamid
Dabashi.
At the Risk of Being Heard: Indigenous Rights,
Identity, and Postcolonial States (2003),
B. Dean and J. Levi, Eds. University of Michigan
Press. ISBN 0-472-06736-2.
"Postkolonial Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung"
(Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Enquiry,
2005), by N. Dhawan
Beginning Postcolonialism (2010), by J. McLeod,
second edition, Manchester University Press.
The Idea of Latin América" (2005), by Walter
Mignolo.
"The Postcolonial Ghetto" (2010), by L Paperson
Prem Poddar and David Johnson, ed. (2008).
A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures
in English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-3602-0. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
The Disappointed Bridge: Ireland and the Post-Colonial
World (2014), by Richard Pine
New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities
in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (2018), by
Roopika Risam
Postcolonial Theory and the Arab–Israeli
Conflict (2008), Ph. C. Salzman and D. Robinson
Divine, Eds. Routledge.
Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction
(2001), by Robert J.C. Young.
"Presentations of Postcolonialism: New Orientations"
(2007),Jaydeep Sarangi,Authorspress,New Delhi
Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations, by
G. Ankerl. Geneva INU PRESS; 2000 ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
On the Postcolony (2000), by Achille Mbembe.
The Regents of the University of California.
== Scholarly projects ==
In an effort to understand postcolonialism
through scholarship and technology, in addition
to important literature, many stakeholders
have published projects about the subject.
Here is an incomplete list of projects.
Bodies and Structure (2019), on the spatial
history of Japan and its empire
Chicana Diasporic (2018), a research hub that
highlights the Chicana Caucus of the National
Women's Caucus from 1973–1979
Harlem Shadows (2018), an open source collection
of Claude McKay's 1922 collection of poems
Passamaquoddy People: At Home on the Oceans
and Lakes (2014), a digital archive of photos
and recordings of the Passamaquaddy people
Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds (2017), critical
reading of Black and Asian British literature
Torn Apart/Separados (2018), visualizations
and scholarly journal tracking global crisis
situations
W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing
Black America (2019), charts from W.E.B. Du
Bois in color about the lives of Black Americans
== 
See also ==
Ali Shariati
Amina Wadud
Audre Lorde
Burn! (1969), directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Cultural cringe
Cross-culturalism
Decolonization
The Dogs of War (1980), directed by John Irvin
Ethnology
Fatima Mernissi
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart
of Darkness" (1975), by Chinua Achebe
Inversion in postcolonial theory
Leila Ahmed
Linguistic imperialism
Lila Abu-Lughod
Kimberle Crenshaw
Kecia Ali
Nation-building
Paulo Freire
Postcolonial anarchism
Postcolonial feminism
Postcolonial theology
Post-communism
Ranajit Guha
Ranjit Hoskote
Robert J.C. Young
Saba Mahmood
Talal Asad
Teju Cole, "The White-Savior Industrial Complex,"
The Atlantic
