Transcript POSTCOLONIALISM THEORY - School District of Sheboygan Falls

POSTCOLONIALIST
CRITICISM
*Material gratefully adapted from Gemma Costa’s 2010
“Postcolonialism” via Slideshare
Post… what?
Colonialism:
¤ An extension of a nation’s rule over
territory beyond its borders
¤ a population that is subjected to the
political domination of another population
• Militaristic ( the physical conquest and
occupation of territories)
• Civilizational (the conquest and
occupation of minds, selves, and cultures)
Most classical literature
comes from the voices of
DWG’s (dead white guys),
and that means it’s
usually written from the
perspective of
colonialism.
The ugly reality of colonialist views…
¤ the historical story whereby
the “West” attempts
systematically to cancel or
negate the cultural difference
and value of the “non-West”
(Leela Gandhi,1998)
This makes it “okay” to colonize!
Postcolonialism?
¤ Acknowledges an evolution in academia to
consider the untold stories of the oppressed.
¤ Postcolonialism = a literary lens! The focus
of this lens is upon exposing the injustices
suffered by oppressed groups and the
contrast between their worldviews/the
oppressors’.
Topics and terms for the
postcolonial scholar
-Social Darwinism
-Eurocentrism
-White Man’s Burden
* What was thought to be an obligation to
“civilize” non-European people
-Racism
-Hegemony
-Exploitation
-Counter-narrative
-Cultural borderlands
Postcolonialist Criticism: The Literary Lens
►Examining colonizers/colonized relationship in
literature
■ Is the work pro/anti colonialist? Why?
■ Does the text reinforce or resist colonialist
ideology?
► Types of oppression
■ What tools do the colonizers
use to demean or oppress the
colonized?
■ What psychological aftermath
are the colonized people left
with?
■ Considering the present as well as the past
■ Is the author using the language of a colonizer?
Questions to prompt
postcolonial analysis:
• 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 within cultural
borderlands?
• 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?
• What does the text reveal about the
operations of cultural difference - the ways
in which race, religion, class, cultural beliefs,
and customs combine to form individual
identity - in shaping our perceptions of
ourselves, others, and the world in which we
live?
• How does a literary text in the Western
canon reinforce or undermine colonialist
ideology through its representation of
colonization and/or its inappropriate silence
about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
Warnings for the amateur
• Don’t be afraid to be critical of an author’s portrayal of
race. If it makes you uncomfortable, there’s probably
something wrong with it.
• Do not get sucked in to “positive stereotyping.” Casting
the colonized person as a purely innocent, angelic
culture to be pitied is almost as bad as demonizing.
That’s not acknowledging complexity.
• If you are white, this legacy can be difficult to accept.
But it’s the history you inherited, so learn to deal with it
now.
• Any text, even one that doesn’t seem to be “about”
race/culture, can be examined from a postcolonial lens.