Postcolonial theory and Cultural Study

ASSIGNMENT

PAPER No. 4

The Cultural Study

• Name :- Dabhi Rita A.
• M. A Sem :- 2
• Roll no. :- 20
• Topic :-  Postcolonial study.
• email : dabhirita1198@gmail.com
• Enrollment no. :- 2069108420200007
• Submitted :-Department of English

              Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji       Bhavnagar University

💠 Postcolonial theory and cultural            study.

💠 Beginning :-

                     Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century. Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by third world war countries after the decline of colonialism : for example when countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the, Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves. Many third world writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt both to resurrect their culture and combat the preconception about their culture.

💠 Postcolonial theory :-

                         A theoretical approach to analyzing the literature produced in countries that were once colonies, especially of European power such as Britain, France and Spain. Postcolonial theory also looks at the broader interaction between European nations and the societies they colonized by dealing with issues such as identity (including gender and class), language, representation, and history. Because native language and culture were replaced or superseded by European traditions in colonial society, part of the past colonialist  project is reclamation. At first glance postcolonial studies would seem to be a matter of history and political science, rather than literary criticism.

                         In literature we find many great postcolonial critics like, the  Palestinian American cultural critic Edward Said was a mejor figure of postcolonial thought, and his book Orientalism is often credited is founding text. And also we find that the other postcolonial critics like Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Frantz Fanon etc. So, let's discuss many critics' views about postcolonialism one by one.

♦️  Edward Said :-  

  

"You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit"

   

~ Edward Said

            

                     Edward said's concept of Orientalism was an important touchstone to postcolonial studies. Said's ingenious argument that the Orient was a hegemonic "European invention", a "European representation" as "a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscape, remarkable experiences" that had nothing to do with actual reality, has played a major role in disjuncturing the prevailing discourse of empires and conquest. The postcolonial theory is a contemporary school of thoughts.

                           Said sharply critiques the western image of the Oriental as " irrational, depraved (fallen), child- like 'different'," which has allowed the west to define itself as "rational, virtuous, mature,' normal'." Most importantly, postcolonial theory reveals the hidden structures of power and knowledge that govern the social construction of the "Orient" as other Said discusses in" Orientalism".  The West's claim to knowledge of the East gave it the power to control it, and represent it. Postcolonialism is a theory contains poststructuralist nuances of power/ knowledge (Foucault), hegemony ( Gramsci), difference/ differAnce, deconstruction (Derrida) and other such critical theoretical frameworks. Said's approach to postcolonialism is characterised by his emphasis on historicism and empiricism. He questions the theoretical orthodoxy of postmodernism by challenging Jean Francois Lyotard's theory (1978) that  the era of grand narratives of emancipation has ended in the present, postmodernist age.

                          Said contends that for many people in non Western world, the grand narrative still dominates the psyche of colonized subjects and still exists in various shapes and forms is hegemonic western imposition on the mind.  Said want the west to open up "the culture to experience of the other which have reminded "outside" the norms manufacture by the "insiders". ( Orientalism p. 24)

♦️ Frantz Fanon :-

                        

                    The French Algerian Frantz Fanon's anti - colonial works, Black Skins/White Masks and The Wretched Of The Earth, have considered the building blocks in which postcolonial theory was constructed. And also Fanon was a Caribbean Marxist, humanist thinker who has analyzed the "Psychopathology of colonization". Fanon's most famous work "Wretched Of The Earth" was a study of how anti colonial movement can work towards decolonization. In it Fanon closely analyzed the suffering and sense of lost identity of the 'native' and the the dubious role played by the 'native elite' who mimic and admire colonizers and also behave like the oppressors.

     

                 Fanon's anti-colonial critical work had a great impact on the liberationist movement  across the globe. And also his book "Wretched Of The Earth" has been an important inspiration for postcolonial cultural critics and literary critics who seek to understand the decolonizing project of Third World writers especially those interested in African and African American text.

♦️ Homi K. Bhabha :-

Homi k. Bhabha has been praised as a leading postcolonial critic and also he is one of the most important thinker in postcolonial criticism.  He is highly influenced by western poststructuralists theory, notably Jecques Derrida, Jecques Lacan and Michel Foucault. He has contributed a set of challenging concepts such as Hybridity, Mimicry, Ambivalence, the stereotypes, the Uncanny, the Nation otherness etc. to postcolonial theory. Bhabha critiques the presumed dichotomies between center and peripheries; colonized and colonizer. He proposes instead a dialogic model of nationalities, ethnicities and identities characterized by what he called hybridity; they are something new, emerging from a '' Third Space" to interrogate the givens of the past. Perhaps his most important contribution has been to stress that colonialism is not a one way Street, that because it involves an interaction between colonizer and colonized, the colonizer is as much affected by its systems as the colonized. The colonized subjects often mimics the colonizer, desiring to take on the 'superior' persona of the colonizer. Bhabha calle this " syndrome Mimicry" but very often this Mimicry can be ironic, almost becoming a mockery.

♦️ Gayatri Chakravorty spivak :-

           Gayatri Chakravorty spivak is a very important figure in postcolonial feminism, who examines the effect of political independence upon "subaltern" or subproletarian women in the Third World. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's subaltern studies reveals how female subjects are silenced by the dialogue between the male-dominated Waste and the male-dominated East. The question of identity is front and centre for Spivak, with a cult following built up in the 1980s, Spivak mediates an identity for subaltern by creating a counter discourse that undercuts the dominant structures. Like Said she is fluent in several languages and literatures, crossing the intellectual border between North America, Europe and India, the place of her birth.

              Like Said, Spivak has often  been the target of criticism from small minded critics for her privileged and elitist background, her use of theory and her persona. " Strategic essentialism" is another mejor concept in postcolonial theory that spivak has contributed. Spivak rejects the notion of Identity based on national or regional affiliations both Said and Spivak believe in a secular identity. Both Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty spivak discuss the need for postcolonial intellectuals to become responsible public intellectuals and represent those who are oppressed, but both also realize that intellectuals may also be compromised by their influence and positions. "A Critique of Postcolonial Reason"  is a very important book by Spivak.  Spivak wrote her book as an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the “native informant” through various cultural practices—philosophy, history, literature—to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide.

♦️ To sum up :-

                               So. Frantz Fanon's foundational work provided a manifesto for understanding the psyche and condition of colonialism. Postcolonial theory has been built upon this foundation with the use of Said's theory of Orientalism as a systemic and  systematic super structure. As postcolonial theory has grown and circulated over the last three decades, it has acquired various standards and new areas of critique. Said and other two contem6 critics Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, are generally considered to form the holy trinity in postcolonial theory. According to Robert Young (1995).

                             The Postcolonial literature deals with framing identities, the politics of rewriting, translations, relation between nation and nationalism. Postcolonial critics accordingly study diasporic texts outside the usual Western genres, especially productions by aboriginal authors, marginalized ethnicities, immigrants, and refugees. Postcolonial literatures from emerging nations by such writers

as Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie are read alongside European responses to colonialism by writers such as George Orwell and Albert Camus.

💠 Work cited :-

Burney, Shehla. “CHAPTER TWO: Edward Said and Postcolonial Theory: Disjunctured Identities and the Subaltern Voice.” Counterpoints, vol. 417, 2012, pp. 41–60. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42981699. Accessed 8 Mar. 2020.

Guerine, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Harvard Univ. Press, 2003.