Postcolonialism

Introduction

The term "Postcolonialism" refers broadly to the ways in which race, ethnicity, culture, and human identity itself are represented in the modern era, after many colonized countries gained their independence. However, some critics use the term to refer to all culture and cultural products influenced by imperialism from the moment of colonization until today. Postcolonial literature seeks to describe the interactions between European nations and the peoples they colonized. By the middle of the twentieth century, the vast majority of the world was under the control of European countries.

At one time, Great Britain, for example, ruled almost 50 percent of the world. During the twentieth century, countries such as India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Canada, and Australia won independence from their European colonizers. The literature and art produced in these countries after independence has become the object of "Postcolonial Studies," a term coined in and for academia, initially in British universities.

Discussion

The most significant movement that began postcolonial work was (and still is) file subaltern studies group that (re)examined Indian history and historiography. Coming from a Gramscian perspective of the subaltern coupled with the insights of various post structuralist analyses, writers like Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha and Dipesh Chakraparty sought to transform the ways in which the subaltern was located within discourse, history and philosophy. It was in fact the emergence of subaltern studies that was seen as a signifier of postcolonial criticism and discourse. Its project, as Gyan Prakash elaborates, 'seeks to undo the Eurocentrism produced by the institution of the West's trajectory, its appropriation of the other as History'.

Another important influence upon postcolonial theory, but of a different character and time period was Edward Said's Orientalism. This work is perhaps file most significant (and successful) reworking of Foucault's discourse analysis. Said examined the way in which the East (the Orient) had been constructed in relation to the West in terms of discursive practices. The whole idea of a binary opposite (ie east/west) was the overarching legacy of Orientalism in Said's eyes, which determined any interaction between the West and the other.

Orientalism became, 'an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness'. Said concentrated on the intellectual and pedagogical ramifications of imperialism, and while obviously acknowledging the economic and territorial forms, sought to distance their explicit 'interrelatedness' (and in some cases over-determining influence) (Martina 83-101).

A (hypothetical) moment in postcolonialism

If postcolonialism is the result of colonial practices, or at least the interaction of those practices, it seems worth providing an example of a moment in which some of these forces can be detected. A very useful example is the flag raising ceremony of a decolonised country. Many images exist of the final moment of the British or Belgian or French flags descending the flag pole at midnight to be replaced by the new colours of an independent nation, all of this occurring in front of a cheering crowd. This is the moment of national liberation; finally, after many years of struggle, the nation ...