POST COLONIAL THEORY

Post-colonial - nations affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. Ambiguities in the term Post-colonial- end of colonization? Post - refers to the period after colonialism began rather than after colonialism endedthe cultural struggles between imperial and dominated societies continue into the present.

Post colonial theory investigates the culture and political impact of European conquest upon colonized societies

African countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka ex- European colonies

Colonization Two kinds Physical conquest Conquest of territories Colonization of the minds, selves and cultures. The first mode is violent, transparent in its self interest and greed. The second mode is that of the rationalists, modernists and the liberals who claim to have the responsibility of civilizing the uncivilized world.

Post colonial theory concerned with : The effects of European master-discourses on colonized societies The effect of imperial language The consequences of colonial education western knowledge The resistance of the natives against the colonial agenda

Edward Said

Edward Said Palestinian Christian Professor in Columbia University - New York Orientalism (1978) Culture and imperialism (1993 ) Orientalism Construction of the Orient as against the Occident The project of Orientalism Warren Hastings Governor General of India 1770s William Jones Asiatic society Bengal To study and understand the culture of the natives

Linguistic supremacy of Sanskrit William Jones considered Sanskrit more perfect and copious than Greek and Latin in terms of structure and grammar Scholars worked on the link between Sanskrit ,Greek and Latin The Indo European group of languages indo German supposedly originated round Lake Aries in Asia Arian - Aryan

Indo European group of languages peoples as diverse as Indians , Persians ,Anglo- Saxons Separate language separate racial /national origin Source of strict racial divisions / polarizations The project of Orientalism was to construct a primitive, exotic and mysterious- Oriental Other as against the European self which was suppose to be civilized, refined and rational

Foucaults concept of the linkage of power and knowledge European knowledge by constructing the subject of orient - able to maintain hegemonic power Dissemination of the colonizers culture far reaching effects continues till date

John Stuart Mill because India requires us ,that these are territories and peoples, who beseech domination from us and that ..without the English India would fall into ruin

Excerpts from Macaulays Minute(1835)

I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education

Excerpts from Macaulays Minute

We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mothertongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West.

Excerpts from Macaulays Minute

We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.[8]

Post Colonial Theory Edward Said

Resistance develop a critical consciousness two

methods the know the orient outside the discourse of the orient metaphoric exile from home to represent and present the knowledge speak truth to power to write back to the power Structural approach - Against Post-structural theory Analysis of colonial discourse the need to locate the centre (imperial power) and peripherals (colonized societies) Worldliness of the text material reality of textual production

Contrapuntal reading reveals the filiation / affiliation Filiation natural lineage of texts to the traditional canon affliation the history, culture and society within which it comes into being and is read We brought the English and we keep them. Why do we forget that our adoption of their civilization makes their presence in India at all possible ? Your hatred against theirs ought to be transferred to their civilization (Gandhi, Mahatma 66)

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon Psychiatrist from Martinique A French colony- Black Skins White masks (1961) Wretched of the Earth (1963) Probes deeper into the colonizers psychology and the diabolic effects of racism and colonialism on the minds of the colonized people denigrates native culture and silence their voices Effects - a paralysis of consciousness - psychological dependency, loss of self and identity and culture.- Anger is replaced by surrender and voice is replaced by silence or mutedness. The European values and traditions gain absolute superiority and greater authority over the colonized

Reclamation of the past a search for nativism and the recovery of past through the celebration of the indigenous values and traditions- views past as a resource of alternative history Conditions of marginality/subalternity positions of energy and potential change Oppositional discourses against repressive ethnocentrism De-colonization Through violence complete cleansing of the remnants of colonization Lumpen-proletariat landless peasants - capable of bringing in revolution

Psychology of the indigenous after liberation Oppressed always imitates the oppressor internalization of the dominant National bourgeoisie acts very much like the colonizer colonizers tools for governance Obliged to keep the economic channels established by the colonial regime - rely on colonial financiers' loans (IMF, World Bank) neo imperialism of the present

Ngugi Wa Thiong Kenyan writer - Decolonising the Mind ( 1986 ) Hegemony of the west operating through linguistic globalisation The language of the colonised is no longer the language of the indigenous culture. Kenyans compelled to replace Gikuyu with English language to cultivate the colonizer's culture Resistance against Linguistic colonization Speak and write only in the native language

Language is a carrier of a peoples culture, culture is a carrier of a peoples values; values are the basis of a peoples self definition the basis of their consciousness. And when you destroy a peoples language, you are destroying that very important aspect of their heritage you are in fact destroying that which helps them to be themselves that which embodies their collective memory as a people (Journal of Commonwealth Literature 26:1).

Homi K.Bhaba

Born in Mumbai A Parsi -Doctorate from Oxford University Director of Humanities Centre, Harvard University Psychological analysis of the project of Orientalism of the colonizer What does the colonial discourse want? The colonial authority unconsciously knows that the colonized is the same as the colonizer

The west is troubled by its doubles in the East The repressed anxiety of the colonizer is pushed to the unconscious This anxiety ambivalence - underlying reason for constructing the orient It is this anxiety that opens a space for the colonized to show resistance Saids Orientalism focuses on the methodology of the colonizer to contain the colonized

Bhabha focuses on the spaces of resistance the voices of oppressed peoples falling outside histories of colonialism The active agency of the colonized Cultural materialist /post-strcuturalist approach Distinct divisions of colonizer/colonized not possible Negotiation of cultural meaning Colonizers cultural meanings are open to transformation - the meaning of the colonial text the construction of stereotypes - cannot be controlled by its authors.

Mimesis and Mimicry adopt and adapt the colonizers culture Not slavish imitation of the colonizers language, culture, manners or ideas A form of mockery a comic approach both resemblance and menace to the colonizer Abrogation and appropriation indifferent to the standard forms and appropriate it the way you want. English Vs englishes

Hybridization of cultures happens in a liminal spaces Hybridization and liminality hybridized identitiesundermines the notion of culture as pure and static Culture a constant state of flux fluidity of identities Liminality in post colonial social spaces constant process of creating new identities. Hybridization not to be celebrated implies the constant negotiations

Gayatri Chakravarthi Spivak

Born in Bengal student of Paul De Man translated Jacques Derridas works- Professor at Columbia university Strategic - Essentialism Can the subaltern speak? Subaltern studies project reclamation and documentation of muted voices in history

Marginalised Indigenous Histories

Destabilization of racial hierarchies common in African American and Post colonial theory Bell Hooks, Henry Louis Gates - contributed to Post colonial theory Includes Native Americans, First Nations, Australian Aboriginees, Maoris in New Zealand, Dravidians in India Post colonial theory opened up spaces for a revival of subjugated histories to establish the fact that the colonized were the original inhabitants of the land.

Post colonial criticism

Examines colonizers/colonized relationship in literature Does the text reinforce or resist colonialist ideology How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression? What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?

What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and treated? What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance? Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial populations?