Post Colonial Theories/Colonial Discourse/Post Colonial Criticism

Post Colonial Theories/Colonial
Discourse/Post Colonial Criticism

 (Colonialism can be defined as conquest and control of other people’s land and goods)
 Analysis of cultural dimension of colonialism.
 Such works have been a staple of anti colonial movements.
 Entered the agenda of metropolitan (the colonizers believed that their own Anglo-
European culture was civilized, sophisticated or as post colonial critics put it,
metropolitan) intellectuals-new consciousness. (Indian independence, third world
struggles)
The Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon, 1961)

 Inspirational key text regarding post colonialism.
 Indicted colonialist countries for using force to exploit raw material and labor from
colonized countries. To justify their actions they stereotyped natives as savages.
 Proclaimed European culture as ideal for natives.
 Fanon advocates violence against settler to regain self respect.
 Rejected dehumanizing domination of western culture.
Black Skin, White Masks (1967)

 Describes the experience of black men and women in white controlled society.
 Explores the relationship between race, language and culture.
 Language provides entry into culture, when someone speaks French; they are taking on
the French culture.
 Can never be fully French; don’t have civilized language of their own.
 Creates inferiority complex and want to become superior by becoming white.
 Black men and women may take white as lover in order to get access to white culture for
advantages and privileges.
 But they can never leave behind the fact of their blackness, fleeing from their race is also
fleeing from themselves.
 Inferiority complex arises because they are constantly reminded that they are black first
and people second.
 They are depicted as bodies rather than as people with minds and feelings.
 Blackness depicted as ‘evil other’ hence white need protection from them.
 He wants social solutions that transform the racist society that produced the conditions of
inequality.
Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978)
 Trilogy with more polemical works e.g. Question of Palestine (1980) and Covering Islam
(1982)
 Term originally refers to the scholarly study of Middle East during 19th century when
region was known as orient.
 Orientalism is the ways that people in the western cultures imagine and interpret the
difference between themselves and the people of eastern cultures.
 Orientalism is process in which western and Europeans have not discovered but
invented.
 They needed a reason to go in, take the land and change the culture, so they painted the
people and the culture as inferior and back word and in need of outside intervention.
 Scholars were in service of colonialism-western scholars and literary people
characterized the whole region as exotic, picturesque, sensuous, feminized, ignorant and
backward.
 It was mechanism of control and exploitation.
Chapter: 1 The Scope of Orientalism
 “The orient was almost a European invention”. Said

 Orientalists divided the world into two by using the concepts of ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’.
 Orients were incapable of taking care of themselves as they were lazy, lustful, irrational,
and violent. It was their duty to civilize them.
 The defined themselves by defining the Orientals (orient lazy, they active).They shaped
them as they perceived them, orientalizing the orients.
 Eastern culture explained with western culture-if Christianity to Christ, Islam was called
Mohammadism.
Chapter: 2 Orientalist Structures and Restructures
 Orietal land was highly romanticized by the western literary writers, a place of pure
human culture.
 Unspoiled innocent form of human existence was compared with highly civilized
unnatural world.
 Purity of orients made them inferior.
 Too naïve to deal with cruel world hence needed fatherly role to assist.
 Darwin’s theories were put forward to justify their superiority. “They developed sooner
than orietals as nation, Europeans discovered them, not orient.”
 Analysis of Sacy and Renan works, bias and prejudice inherited.
Chapter: 3 Orientalism Now
 Talks about 20th century politics and change of relationship between East and West.
 The earlier orientalists were silent observers but new orientalists took part in the
everyday life of the orients. Earlier did not interact a lot but new live with them as if one
of them.
 It was to know about them, to gain more knowledge in order to rule them properly.
 After world war the center of orientalism moved from Europe to USA. Assisting in
governance policies.
 After WW2,it was believed that there will be no concept of orientals and occidentals
but…
 Even in the age of globalization, all Arabs are considered as cruel and violent, all
Japanese associated with karate and all Muslims considered to be terrorist.
Question of Palestine (1992)

Chapter: 1 who are Palestinians?
 People on a land and people displaced from a land who are not recognized as legitimately
tied to that land.
 Those who are excluded from a land, excluded from rights, excluded from anti racist
consideration, excluded from media coverage.
Chapter: 2 what is Zionism?
 Israel is an apartheid state. Chapter 3 future possibilities

 Culture and imperialism (1993)…traces the connection between culture and imperialism.
 They are in attempt to expand the agenda of orientalism…how did they used novels for
their imperialistic designs.
 The content of Mansfield Park and Heart of Darkness is imperialism.
Can a Subaltern Speak? (1988, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak-third world

woman)
 Relates to the manner in which western cultures investigate other cultures.
 Western academic thinking is produced in order to support western political economical
interests.
 Knowledge is never innocent as it expresses the interests of its producers…just like a
commodity taken to third world.
 Research is in a way always colonial, in defining the ‘other’, the ‘over there’ subject.
 Knowledge, research serves as prime justification for the conquest of other cultures and
their enslavement as part of European colonial project.
 West is talking to itself, and in its own language, about the other.
 Answer: “no”, they can’t, not when the western academic field is unabale to relate to the
other with anything than its own paradigm.
Homi K. Bhabha Concepts:

Post Colonial Theories/Colonial Discourse/Post Colonial Criticism

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Post Colonial Theories/Colonial Discourse/Post Colonial Criticism

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Post Colonial Theories/Colonial

Discourse/Post Colonial Criticism

The Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon, 1961)

Black Skin, White Masks (1967)

Chapter: 1 The Scope of Orientalism

 “The orient was almost a European invention”. Said

Chapter: 2 Orientalist Structures and Restructures

Question of Palestine (1992)

Chapter: 2 what is Zionism?

 Israel is an apartheid state. Chapter 3 future possibilities

Can a Subaltern Speak? (1988, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak-third world

Homi K. Bhabha Concepts:

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