Deconstruction New Criticism Education vs Learning
Colonialism
Gynocriticism
History of English Languiage
Postcolonialism,
the period after imperialism is more of a mental state rather than
periodisation. The term ‘Postcolonial’ was first used in 1959 in a British
newspaper article referring to India which had its independence in 1947. Then
it came to refer to the colonised areas of Asia and Africa and others.
In the book 20th
Centaury Literary Criticism Bijay Kumar Das says,
Postcoloniality
is a condition of mind which looks into the past as a historical perspective
and links it with the present from the standpoint of political as well as
cultural imperialism.
Therefore,
the postcolonial literature often refers to literature written in a
postcolonial period, generally by people of the colonized areas. It is supposed
to take cognizance of the socio-cultural phenomena in former colonies and
consider issues that confront the world today. It takes note of the strange
admixture of orthodoxy, nationalism, feminism, ethnic peculiarities and
modernism. The emphasis here is on multicultural aspects of societies in the
postcolonial era that defy the logic of injustice, oppression and inequality
and global developments thought to be the after effects of empire. The
postcolonial studies began to focus on how the nationalist project in colonial
times and the decolonised nation replicated certain fundamental oppressive
structures in class, gender and caste. Therefore, Postcolonialism relies on
theories that constantly shift focus and question the validity of easily
acceptable solutions.
Trinity
of Postcolonial theory
Edward Said,
Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha are said to be the trinity of Postcolonial
theory.
(1) Orientalism: Edward Said’s book Orientalism
(1978) is considered as pivotal in the shaping of postcolonial studies.
In the book, he establishes that stereotypes and general ideology about the
orient as ‘the Other’ have helped to produce myths about the laziness, deceit
and irrationality of Orientals. By means of the discourse of orientalism,
Western cultural institutions are responsible for the creation of those
‘Others’.
(2) Subalternity: Gayatri Spivak’s essay Can
the Subaltern Speak? addressed the way the ‘subaltern’ (of lower rank) women
is constructed, as absent or silent or not listened to. The muteness of women in
postcolonial societies is the main issue which her work confronts. Spivak
argues in the essay that between patriarchy and imperialism, subject
constitution and object formation, the figure of woman disappears not into a
pristine nothingness; but into a marginal position between tradition and
modernization. To the question in the title, her answer was ‘No’.
(3) Mimicry: Homi Bhabha’s theorizing about ‘Mimicry’
designates a gap between the norm of civility as presented by European
Enlightenment and its distorted colonial imitation. It not only displaces the
history that creates it, but sets up new structures of authority and generates
new political initiatives. It undermines authority because it imitates it only
outwardly.
Coming to Postcolonial writers and
their works, there are numerous who represents the above mentioned conditions
and come from various inspirations across the globe. To name few: Arundhati Roy’s
The God of Small Things, Chimananda Ngozi Adichi’s Half of
a Yellow Sun, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Tayeb
Salih’s Season of Migration, Derek Walcott’s Dream on
Monkey Mountain, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, J. M. Cotzee’s Waiting
for the Barbarians and many more.
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