Postcolonial (Literary Criticism) 2

Post-Colonial & Postcolonial Literatures
Difference between post-colonial and postcolonial
a. ØThe consensus in the field is that "post-colonial" (with a hyphen) signifies a period that comes
chronologically "after" colonialism.
b. Ø "Postcolonial," on the other hand, signals the persisting impact of colonisation across time
periods and geographical regions.
c. Ø While the hyphen implies that history unfolds in neatly distinguishable stages from pre- to
post-colonial, omitting the hyphen creates a comparative framework by which to understand the
varieties of local resistance to colonial impact.
d. Ø Arguments in favor of the hyphen suggest that the term "postcolonial" dilutes differences
between colonial histories in different parts of the world and that it homogenizes colonial
societies.
e. Ø The body of critical writing that participates in these debates is called Postcolonial theory.
f. Rise of the term post-colonial
g. Ø Post-colonialism (or often postcolonialism) deals with the effects of colonisation on cultures
and societies.
h. Ø It was originally used by historians after the Second World War in terms such as the post-
colonial state. Here, ‘post-colonial’ had a clearly chronological meaning, designating the post-
independence period.
i. Ø However, from the late 1970s the term has been used by literary critics to discuss the various
cultural effects of colonisation.
Key Texts and Concepts
Centre/ Margin (Periphery)
Contentious idea, but serves to help represent the relationships between peoples as a result of the
colonial period. Colonialism could exist only if there was an idea of binary opposition according
to which the world was divided. To establish an empire, there had to be a hierarchical relationship
in which the colonised existed as an ‘other’ of the colonising culture.
Savage/Civilized
The concept of a savage/civilised dichotomy is traceable at least as far back as Homer’s Odyssey.
In ‘An Image of Africa’, Chinua Achebe, citing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, notes how
Africa is used by the West to define and establish its own superiority as a ‘civilised’ culture
against the ‘darkness’ of a ‘primitive’ Africa (Achebe 1988). But in the modern world, the West’s
construction of itself may be regarded as being dependent on the savage/civilised dichotomy in
more complex ways.
Noble savage
The best-known expression of the idea of the ‘noble savage’ is in Rousseau’s A Discourse on
Inequality (1755). The concept arises in the eighteenth century as a European nostalgia for a
simple, pure, idyllic state of the natural, posed against rising industrialism and the notion of over
complications and sophistications of European urban society.
Decolonisation
It is the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms. It includes
dismantling the hidden aspects of those institutional and cultural forces that had maintained the
colonialist power and that remain even after political independence is achieved. Initially, many
colonies carried out resistance in terms of institutions appropriated from colonial culture. Early
nationalists were taught to perceive themselves as potential heirs to European political systems
and models of culture. Macaulay’s infamous 1835 Minute on Indian Education had proposed the
deliberate creation of 'brown white men’ in India, educated to value European culture above their
own.
Ambivalence
It was first developed in psychoanalysis to describe wanting one thing and also wanting its
opposite. Homi Babha adapted it into colonial discourse theory- to describe the relationship
between coloniser and colonised.
• Relationship is ambivalent because the colonised subject is never fully opposed to the coloniser.
• The concept is disruptive of clear cut, simple relationship between the coloniser and colonised
where one simply dominates the other.
Mimicry
It describes ambivalent relationship between coloniser and colonised. When colonial discourse
encourages the colonised subject to ‘mimic’ the coloniser, by adopting the coloniser’s cultural
habits, assumptions, institutions and values, the result is never a simple reproduction of those
traits.
• The result is a ‘blurred copy’ of the coloniser that can be quite threatening. This is because
mimicry is never very far from mockery.
• Mimicry therefore locates a crack in the certainty of colonial dominance, an uncertainty in its
control.
• For Bhabha, the consequence of suggestions such as Macaulay’s is that mimicry is the process
by which the colonised subject is reproduced as ‘almost the same, but not quite.’
Hybridity
Hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone
produced by colonization. The term ‘hybridity’ has been most recently associated with the work
of Homi K. Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer–colonized relations stresses their
interdependence and the mutual construction of their subjectivities (see mimicry and
ambivalence).
• Bhabha contends that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in a space that he calls
the ‘Third Space of enunciation.

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Post-Colonial & Postcolonial Literatures

Difference between post-colonial and postcolonial

Key Texts and Concepts

Centre/ Margin (Periphery)

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