Postcolonialism

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Postcolonialism or postcolonial studies is an academic discipline

featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain, and
respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism.
Postcolonialism responds towards the human consequences of
controlling a country and establishing settlers for the economic
exploitation of the native people and their land. Drawing from
postmodern schools of thought, postcolonial studies analyse the
politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by
analyzing the functional relations of social and political power that
sustain colonialism and neocolonialismthe how and the why of an
imperial regime's representations (social, political, cultural) of the
imperial colonizer and of the colonized people.
As a genre of contemporary history, postcolonialism questions and
reinvents the modes of cultural perceptionthe ways of viewing and
of being viewed. As anthropology, postcolonialism records human
relations among the colonial nations and the subaltern peoples
exploited by colonial rule.[1] As critical theory, postcolonialism
presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of
neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanitieshistory
and political science, philosophy and Marxist theory, sociology,
anthropology, and human geography; the cinema, religion, and
theology; feminism, linguistics, and postcolonial literature, of which
the anti-conquest narrative genre presents the stories of colonial
subjugation of the subaltern man and woman.

Contents
1 Colonialism
2 Definition
2.1 Postcolonial identity
3 Characteristics
4 Critical purpose
5 Notable theoreticians
5.1 Frantz Fanon
5.2 Edward Said
5.3 Gayatri Spivak
5.4 R. Siva Kumar

The Motherland and her dependant

colonial offspring. (William-Adolphe
Bouguereau, 1883)

5.5 Dipesh Chakrabarty

5.6 Derek Gregory
6 Postcolonial nations
7 The Middle East
8 Africa
9 Criticism of Postcolonial Theory
9.1 Undermining of universal values
9.2 National Identity
9.3 Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs)
10 Literature of postcolonialism
11 See also
12 Notes
13 References
14 External links

Colonialism
Colonialism was presented as "the extension of Civilization", which ideologically justified the self-ascribed
superiority (racial and cultural) of the European Western World over the non-Western world. This concept
was espoused by Joseph-Ernest Renan in La Rforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial
stewardship was thought to effect the intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser
cultures of the world. That such a divinely established, natural harmony among the human races of the world
would be possible, because everyone (colonizer and colonized) has an assigned cultural identity, a social
place, and an economic role within an imperial colony; thus:

In La Rforme intellectuelle et morale

(1871), the Orientalist Joseph-Ernest
Renan, advocated imperial
stewardship for civilising the non
Western peoples of the world.

The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races, by the superior races is part of the
providential order of things for humanity. . . . Regere imperio populos is our vocation. Pour
forth this all-consuming activity onto countries, which, like China, are crying aloud for foreign
conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European society into a ver sacrum, a horde like
those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role.
Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity, and
almost no sense of honour; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the
blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be
satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all
will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. . . . Let each do what he is
made for, and all will be well.
La Rforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), by Joseph-Ernest Renan [2]
From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century, such racialist group-identity language was the cultural
common-currency justifying geopolitical competition, among the European and American empires, meant to
protect their over-extended economies. Especially in the colonisation of the Far East and in the Scramble for
Africa (18701914), the representation of a homogeneous European identity justified colonisation. Hence,
Belgium and Britain, and France and Germany proffered theories of national superiority that justified
colonialism as delivering the light of civilisation to benighted peoples. Notably, la mission civilisatrice, the
self-ascribed 'civilising mission' of the French Empire, proposed that some races and cultures have a higher
purpose in life, whereby the more powerful, more developed, and more civilised races have the right to
colonise other peoples, in service to the noble idea of "civilisation" and its economic benefits.[3][4][5]

Definition

As an epistemology (the study of knowledge, its nature and verifiability), as an ethics (moral philosophy),
and as a politics (affairs of the citizenry), the field of postcolonialism address the politics of knowledgethe
matters that constitute the postcolonial identity of a decolonised people, which derives from: (i) the
coloniser's generation of cultural knowledge about the colonised people; and (ii) how that Western cultural
knowledge was applied to subjugate a nonEuropean people into a colony of the European Mother Country,
which, after initial invasion, was effected by means of the cultural identities of "coloniser" and "colonised".

Postcolonial identity
A decolonised people develop a postcolonial identity from the cultural interactions among the types of
identity (cultural, national, ethnic) and the social relations of sex, class, and caste; determined by the gender
and the race of the colonised person; and the racism inherent to the structures of a colonial society. In
postcolonial literature, the anti-conquest narrative analyses the identity politics that are the social and
cultural perspectives of the subaltern colonial subjectstheir creative resistance to the culture of the
coloniser; how such cultural resistance complicated the establishment of a colonial society; how the
colonisers developed their postcolonial identity; and how neocolonialism actively employs the Us-and-Them
binary social relation to view the non-Western world as inhabited by The Other.
The neocolonial discourse of geopolitical homogeneity conflates the decolonised peoples, their cultures, and
their countries, into an imaginary place, such as "the Third World", an over-inclusive term that usually
comprises continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. The postcolonial critique
analyses the self-justifying discourse of neocolonialism and the functions (philosophic and political) of its
over-inclusive terms, to establish the factual and cultural inaccuracy of homogeneous concepts, such as "the
Arabs" and "the First World", "Christendom" and "the Islamic World", actually comprise heterogeneous
peoples, cultures, and geography, and that realistic descriptions of the world's peoples, places, and things
require nuanced and accurate terms.[6]

Characteristics
Postcolonialism is the critical destabilization of the theories (intellectual and linguistic, social and economic)
that support the ways of Western thoughtdeductive reasoning, rule of law and monotheismby means of
which colonialists "perceive", "understand", and "know" the world. Postcolonial theory thus establishes
intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, and thus produce
cultural discourses of philosophy, language, society and economy, balancing the imbalanced us-and-them
binary power-relationship between the colonist and the colonial subjects.
As a contemporary-history term, postcolonialism occasionally is applied temporally, to denote the
immediate time after colonialism, which is a problematic application of the term, because the immediate,
historical, political time is not included to the categories of critical identity-discourse, which deals with overinclusive terms of cultural representation, which are abrogated and replaced by postcolonial criticism. As
such, the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism denote aspects of the subject matter, which indicate that the
decolonised world is an intellectual space "of contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of
hybridity, and of liminalities".[7]
In Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996), Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins clarified the
denotational functions, among which:

The term post-colonialismaccording to a too-rigid etymologyis frequently misunderstood

as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the
politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance
by another state. Not a nave teleological sequence, which supersedes colonialism, postcolonialism is, rather, an engagement with, and contestation of, colonialism's discourses, power
structures, and social hierarchies. . . . A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more
than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the
discursive experience of imperialism.
Post-Colonial Drama (1996).[8]
The term post-colonialism is also applied to denote the Mother Country's neocolonial control of the
decolonised country, effected by the legalistic continuation of the economic, cultural, and linguistic power
relationships that controlled the colonial politics of knowledge (the generation, production, and distribution
of knowledge) about the colonised peoples of the nonWestern world.[7][9]
The cultural and religious assumptions of colonialist logic remain active practices in contemporary society,
and are the bases of the Mother Country's neocolonial attitude towards her former colonial subjectsan
economical source of labour and raw materials.[10] Hence, in The Location of Culture (1994), the
theoretician Homi K. Bhabha argued that so long as the way of viewing the human world, as composed of
separate and unequal cultures, rather than as an integral human world, perpetuates the belief in the existence
of imaginary peoples and places"Christendom" and "The Islamic World", "The First World", "The Second
World", and "The Third World". To counter such linguistic and sociologic reductionism, postcolonial praxis
establishes the philosophic value of hybrid intellectual-spaces, wherein ambiguity abrogates truth and
authenticity; thereby, hybridity is the philosophic condition that most substantively challenges the
ideological validity of colonialism.[11]

Critical purpose
The critical purpose of postcolonial studies is to account for, and to combat, the residual effects (social,
political, and cultural) of colonialism upon the peoples once ruled by the Mother Country.[10] To that end,
postcolonial theoreticians establish social and cultural spaces for the nonWestern peoplesespecially the
subaltern peopleswhose native cultures were often suppressed by the Western value systems promoted and
established as the dominant ideology of the colonial enterprise, said cultural suppression was meant to
civilise the natives in the European image, as proposed and justified by the French philosopher JosephErnest Renan in the book La Rforme intellectuelle et morale (1871),[2] and by the German philosopher G.
F. W. Hegel, in the essay "The African Character" (1830).[12]
The critical perspectives and analyses presented in the book Orientalism (1978), by Edward Sad, argued
that, in dealing with nonWestern peoples, European scholars applied the high-abstraction idealism inherent
to the concept of "The Orient", in order to disregard the existing native societies, and their social,
intellectual, and cultural ways of life, in Asia, the Middle East, and of the Muslim peoples. That, in their
stead, Orientalist academics substituted their European interpretations and representations of what is and
what is not "Oriental", and of who is and who is not "an Oriental". That Orientalism supported the selfascribed cultural superiority of The West, and so allowed Europeans to name, describe, and define, and
thereby control, nonEuropean peoples, places, and things.

To that end, postcolonialism critically destabilizes the dominant

ideologies of the West, by challenging the "inherent assumptions . . .
[and the] material and discursive legacies of colonialism", by
working with tangible social factors such as:
Anthropology, by means of which Western intellectuals
generated knowledge about non-Western peoples, which
colonial institutions then used to subjugate them into a colony
to serve the economic, social, and cultural interests of the
imperial power.
Colonialist literature, wherein the writers ideologically
justified imperialism and colonialism with cultural
representations (literary and pictorial) of the colonised country
and its people, as perpetually inferior, which the imperial
steward must organise into a colonial society to be guided
In the essay "The African Character"
towards European modernity.
(1830), Hegel says that some cultures
Postcolonial literature, wherein writers articulate and celebrate
lagged in their development, and
the postcolonial identity of the decolonised, native society (an
identity often reclaimed from the coloniser) whilst maintaining
needed ChristianEuropean
the independent nation's pragmatic connections (economic and
stewardship to mature towards
social, linguistic and cultural) with the Mother Country.
civilisation.
Native cultural-identity in a colonised society, and the
dilemmas inherent to developing a postcolonial national
identity after the de-colonisation of the country, whilst avoiding the counter-productive extremes of
nationalism.[7]

In the novel Things Fall Apart (1958),

the writer Chinua Achebe described
native life in the British colony of
Nigeria.

In the definition and establishment of a postcolonial identity, the

literature of the anti-conquest narrative genre is the praxis of
"indigenous decolonisation", whereby writers explain, analyse, and
transcend the personal and societal experiences of imperial
subjugation, of having endured the imposed identity of "a colonial
subject". By means of their postcolonial literature, the subaltern
peoples reply to the Mother Country's perceived misrepresentation of
their humanity; an African example is the novel Things Fall Apart
(1958), by Chinua Achebe, about the Nigerian experience of being
part of the British Empire. Using the native varieties of the colonial
languages, the Anti-conquest narrative addresses the Mother
Country's cultural hegemony; by "writing back to the centre" of the
empire, the natives create their own national histories in service to
forming and establishing a national identity after decolonisation.[13]
[14]

Notable theoreticians
Frantz Fanon
In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon analysed and medically described the
nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its societal effectsthe imposition of a subjugating colonial
identityare harmful to the mental health of the native peoples who were subjugated into colonies. Fanon
wrote the ideological essence of colonialism is the systematic denial of "all attributes of humanity" of the
colonised people. Such dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, by which the colonist

means to inculcate a servile mentality upon the natives. For Fanon the natives must violently resist colonial
subjugation.[13] Hence, Fanon describes violent resistance to colonialism as a mentally cathartic practice,
which purges colonial servility from the native psyche, and restores self-respect to the subjugated. Thus he
supported the Front de Libration Nationale (FLN) in the Algerian War (195462) for independence from
France.[15]
As postcolonial praxis, Fanon's mental-health analyses of colonialism and imperialism, and the supporting
economic theories, were partly derived from the essay Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916),
wherein Vladimir Lenin described colonial imperialism as a degenerate form of capitalism, which requires
greater degrees of human exploitation to ensure continually consistent profit for investment.[16]

Edward Said
To describe the us-and-them "binary social relation" with which Western Europe intellectually divided the
worldinto the "Occident" and the "Orient"the cultural critic Edward Said developed the denotations and
connotations of the term Orientalism (an art-history term for Western depictions and the study of the Orient).
This is the concept that the cultural representations generated with the us-and-them binary relation are social
constructs, which are mutually constitutive and cannot exist independent of each other, because each exists
on account of and for the other.[17]
Notably, "the West" created the cultural concept of "the East", which according to Said allowed the
Europeans to suppress the peoples of the Middle East, of the Indian Subcontinent, and of Asia, from
expressing and representing themselves as discrete peoples and cultures. Orientalism thus conflated and
reduced the nonWestern world into the homogeneous cultural entity known as "the East". Therefore, in
service to the colonial type of imperialism, the us-and-them Orientalist paradigm allowed European scholars
to represent the Oriental World as inferior and backward, irrational and wild, as opposed to a Western
Europe that was superior and progressive, rational and civilthe opposite of the Oriental Other. In "Edward
Said: The Exile as Interpreter" (1993), about Said's Orientalism (1978), A. Madhavan said that "Said's
passionate thesis in that book, now an 'almost canonical study', represented Orientalism as a 'style of
thought' based on the antinomy of East and West in their world-views, and also as a 'corporate institution' for
dealing with the Orient."[18]
In concordance with the philosopher Michel Foucault, Sad established that power and knowledge are the
inseparable components of the intellectual binary relationship with which Occidentals claim "knowledge of
the Orient". That the applied power of such cultural knowledge allowed Europeans to rename, re-define, and
thereby control Oriental peoples, places, and things, into imperial colonies.[9] The powerknowledge binary
relation is conceptually essential to identify and understand colonialism in general, and European
colonialism in particular. Hence,
To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or Oriental
movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated
by the Orientalist, brought into reality by them, or as a kind of cultural and international
proletariat useful for the Orientalist's grander interpretive activity.
Orientalism (1978), p. 208.[19]

Nonetheless, critics of the homogeneous "OccidentOrient" binary social relation, said that Orientalism is of
limited descriptive capability and practical application, and proposed that there are variants of Orientalism
that apply to Africa and to Latin America. To which Sad replied that the European West applied Orientalism
as a homogeneous form of The Other, in order to facilitate the formation of the cohesive, collective
European cultural identity denoted by the term "The West".[20]

Gayatri Spivak
In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term Subaltern, the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against assigning an over-broad connotation; that:
. . . subaltern is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for somebody who's not
getting a piece of the pie. . . . In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to
the cultural imperialism is subalterna space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the
oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern. . . . Many people want to claim
subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a
discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern' . .
. They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic
discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the
hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern.
Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South
Africa (1992) [21]
Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic
essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism.
The term essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to
reviving subaltern voices in ways that might (over) simplify the
cultural identity of heterogeneous social groups, and, thereby,
create stereotyped representations of the different identities of
the people who compose a given social group. The term
strategic essentialism denotes a temporary, essential groupidentity used in the praxis of discourse among peoples.
Furthermore, essentialism can occasionally be appliedby the
so-described peopleto facilitate the subaltern's communication
in being heeded, heard, and understood, because a strategic
essentialism (a fixed and established subaltern identity) is more
readily grasped, and accepted, by the popular majority, in the
course of inter-group discourse. The important distinction,
between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore
the diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group,
but that, in its practical function, strategic essentialism
temporarily minimizes inter-group diversity to pragmatically
support the essential

group-identity.[6]

Engaging the voice of the Subaltern: the

philosopher and theoretician Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, at Goldsmith College.

Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic

violence to describe the destruction of nonWestern ways of
perceiving the world, and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world.
Conceptually, epistemic violence specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must

always be caught in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself", because the colonial power's
destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her nonWestern ways of perceiving, understanding,
and knowing the world.[6]
In June of the year 1600, the AfroIberian woman Francisca de Figueroa requested from the King of Spain
his permission for her to emigrate from Europe to New Spain, and reunite with her daughter, Juana de
Figueroa. As a subaltern woman, Francisca repressed her native African language, and spoke her request in
Peninsular Spanish, the official language of Colonial Latin America. As a subaltern woman, she applied to
her voice the Spanish cultural filters of sexism, Christian monotheism, and servile language, in addressing
her colonial master:
I, Francisca de Figueroa, mulatta in colour, declare that I have, in the city of Cartagena, a
daughter named Juana de Figueroa; and she has written, to call for me, in order to help me. I
will take with me, in my company, a daughter of mine, her sister, named Mara, of the said
colour; and for this, I must write to Our Lord the King to petition that he favour me with a
licence, so that I, and my said daughter, can go and reside in the said city of Cartagena. For this,
I will give an account of what is put down in this report; and of how I, Francisca de Figueroa,
am a woman of sound body, and mulatta in colour . . . And my daughter Mara is twenty-yearsold, and of the said colour, and of medium size. Once given, I attest to this. I beg your Lordship
to approve, and order it done. I ask for justice in this. [On the twenty-first day of the month of
June 1600, Your Majesty's Lords Presidents and Official Judges of this House of Contract
Employment order that the account she offers be received, and that testimony for the purpose
she requests given.]
AfroLatino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern IberoAtlantic World: 15501812
(2009) [22]
Moreover, Spivak further cautioned against ignoring subaltern peoples as "cultural Others", and said that the
West could progressbeyond the colonial perspectiveby means of introspective self-criticism of the basic
ideals and investigative methods that establish a culturally superior West studying the culturally inferior
nonWestern peoples.[6][23] Hence, the integration of the subaltern voice to the intellectual spaces of social
studies is problematic, because of the unrealistic opposition to the idea of studying "Others"; Spivak rejected
such an anti-intellectual stance by social scientists, and about them said that "to refuse to represent a cultural
Other is salving your conscience . . . allowing you not to do any homework."[24] Moreover, postcolonial
studies also reject the colonial cultural depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mimics of the European
colonists and their Western ways; and rejects the depiction of subaltern peoples as the passive recipientvessels of the imperial and colonial power of the Mother Country. Consequent to Foucaults philosophic
model of the binary relationship of power and knowledge, scholars from the Subaltern Studies Collective,
proposed that anti-colonial resistance always counters every exercise of colonial power.

R. Siva Kumar
In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's Independence, Santiniketan: The Making of a
Contextual Modernism was an important exhibition curated by R. Siva Kumar at the National Gallery of
Modern Art.[25]

In his catalogue essay R. Siva Kumar introduced the term Contextual Modernism which later emerged as a
postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of Indian art, specifically the works of Nandalal Bose,
Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee.[26]
Siva Kumar argues that the Santiniketan artists did not believe that to be indigenous one has to be historicist
either in theme or in style, and similarly to be modern one has to adopt a particular trans-national formal
language or technique. Modernism was to them neither a style nor a form of internationalism. It was critical
re-engagement with the foundational aspects of art necessitated by changes in ones unique historical
position.[27]
In the postcolonial history of art, this marked the departure from Eurocentric unilateral idea of Modernism to
alternative context sensitive Modernisms.
The brief survey of the individual works of the core Santiniketan artists and the thought
perspectives they open up makes clear that though there were various contact points in the work
they were not bound by a continuity of style but buy a community of ideas. Which they not only
shared but also interpreted and carried forward. Thus they do not represent a school but a
movement.
Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism, 1997
Several terms including Paul Gilroys counter culture of modernity and Tani Barlow's Colonial modernity
have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non-European contexts.
Professor Gall argues that Contextual Modernism is a more suited term because the colonial in colonial
modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority.
Santiniketans artist teachers refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which
sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western
modernity and modernism. Those European modernities, projected through a triumphant British colonial
power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar
essentialisms.[28]

Dipesh Chakrabarty
In Provincializing Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty charted the subaltern history of the Indian struggle
for independence, and countered Eurocentric, Western scholarship about non-Western peoples and cultures,
by proposing that Western Europe simply be considered as culturally equal to the other cultures of the world,
that is, as "one region among many" in human geography.[29] [30]

Derek Gregory
Derek Gregory argues the long traces in history of British and American colonization is an ongoing process
happening even today. In The Colonial Present, Gregory traces connections between the geopolitics of
events happening in modern-day Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq and links it back to the us-and-them binary
relation between the Western and Eastern world. Building upon the ideas of the other and Said's work on
orientialism, Gregory critiques the economic policy, military apparatus, and transnational corporations as
vehicles driving present day colonialism. Emphasizing ideas of discussing ideas around colonialism in the
present tense, Gregory utilizes modern events such as the September 11 attacks to tell spatial stories around
the colonial behavior happening due to the War on Terror.[31]

Postcolonial nations
As a literary theory, postcolonialism deals with the literatures produced by the peoples who once were
colonies of the European imperial powers (e.g. Britain, France, and Spain); and the literatures of the
decolonised countries engaged in contemporary, postcolonial arrangements (e.g. Francophonie and the
British Commonwealth) with their former mother countries.[32][33] Postcolonial literary criticism
comprehends the literatures written by the coloniser and the colonised, wherein the subject matter includes
portraits of the colonised peoples and their lives as imperial subjects. In Dutch literature, the Indies
Literature includes the colonial and postcolonial genres, which examine and analyse the formation of a
postcolonial identity, and the postcolonial culture produced by the diaspora of the Indo-European peoples,
the Eurasian folk who originated from Indonesia; the peoples who were the colony of the Dutch East Indies;
in the literature, the notable author is Tjalie Robinson.[34]
To perpetuate and facilitate control of the colonial enterprise, some colonised people, especially from among
the subaltern peoples of the British Empire, were sent to attend university in the Imperial Motherland; they
were to become the native-born, but Europeanised, ruling class of colonial satraps. Yet, after decolonisation,
their bicultural educations originated postcolonial criticism of empire and colonialism, and of the
representations of the colonist and the colonised. In the late twentieth century, after the dissolution of the
USSR (1991), the constituent soviet socialist republics became the literary subjects of postcolonial criticism,
wherein the writers dealt with the legacies (cultural, social, economic) of the Russification of their peoples,
countries, and cultures in service to Greater Russia.[35]
Postcolonial literary study is in two categories: (i) that of the postcolonial nations, and (ii) that of the nations
who continue forging a postcolonial national identity. The first category of literature presents and analyses
the internal challenges inherent to determining an ethnic identity in a decolonised nation. The second
category of literature presents and analyses the degeneration of civic and nationalist unities consequent to
ethnic parochialism, usually manifested as the demagoguery of "protecting the nation", a variant of the Usand-Them binary social relation. Civic and national unity degenerate when a patriarchal rgime unilaterally
defines what is and what is not "the national culture" of the decolonised country; the nation-state collapses,
either into communal movements, espousing grand political goals for the postcolonial nation; or into
ethnically mixed communal movements, espousing political separatism, as occurred in decolonised Rwanda,
the Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; thus the postcolonial extremes against which Frantz
Fanon warned in 1961.

The Middle East

In the essays "Overstating the Arab State" (2001), by Nazih Ayubi, and "Is Jordan Palestine?" (2003), by
Raphael Israel, the authors deal with the psychologically fragmented postcolonial identity, as determined by
the effects (political and social, cultural and economic) of Western colonialism in the Middle East. As such,
the fragmented national identity remains a characteristic of such societies, consequence of the imperially
convenient, but arbitrary, colonial boundaries (geographic and cultural) demarcated by the Europeans, with
which they ignored the tribal and clan relations that determined the geographic borders of the Middle East
countries, before the arrival of European imperialists.[36] Hence, the postcolonial literature about the Middle
East examines and analyses the Western discourses about identity formation, the existence and inconsistent
nature of a postcolonial national-identity among the peoples of the contemporary Middle East.[37]
In the essay Who Am I?: The Identity Crisis in the Middle East (2006), P.R. Kumaraswamy said:

"The Middle East" is the Western name for

the countries of South-western Asia.

Most countries of the Middle East, suffered from the fundamental problems over their national
identities. More than three-quarters of a century after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire,
from which most of them emerged, these states have been unable to define, project, and
maintain a national identity that is both inclusive and representative.[38]
Independence and the end of colonialism did not end social fragmentation and war (civil and international)
in the Middle East. [37] In The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (2004),
Larbi Sadiki said that the problems of national identity in the Middle East are consequence of the Orientalist
indifference of the European empires when they demarcated the political borders of their colonies, which
ignored the local history and the geographic and tribal boundaries observed by the natives, in the course of
establishing the Western version of the Middle East.
In the event, "in places like Iraq and Jordan, leaders of the new sovereign states were brought in from the
outside, [and] tailored to suit colonial interests and commitments. Likewise, most states in the Persian Gulf
were handed over to those [Europeanised colonial subjects] who could protect and safeguard imperial
interests in the post-withdrawal phase." [38] Moreover, "with notable exceptions like Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and
Syria, most [countries] . . . [have] had to [re]invent, their historical roots" after decolonisation, and, "like its
colonial predecessor, postcolonial identity owes its existence to force."[39]

Africa
In the late 19th century, the Scramble for Africa (18741914) proved to be the tail end of mercantilist
colonialism of the European imperial powers, yet, for the Africans, the consequences were greater than
elsewhere in the colonised nonWestern world. To facilitate the colonisationthe European empires laid
railroads where the rivers and the land proved impassable. To wit, the Imperial British railroad effort proved
overambitious in the effort of traversing continental Africa, yet succeeded only in connecting colonial North
Africa (Cairo) with the colonial south of Africa (Cape Town).

Upon arriving to Africa, the Europeans encountered the native African civilisations of the Ashanti Empire,
the Benin Empire, the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Buganda Kingdom (Uganda), and the Kingdom of Kongo,
all of which annexed by imperial powers under the belief that they required European stewardship, as
proposed and justified in the essay "The African Character" (1830), by G. W. F. Hegel, in keeping with his
philosophic opinion that cultures were stages in the course of the historical unfolding of The Absolute.[40]
Nigeria was the homeland of the Hausa people, the Yoruba people and the [Igbo people]; which last were
among the first people to develop their history in constructing a postcolonial identity. (See: Things Fall
Apart, 1958).
About East Africa, the Kenyan writer Ngg wa Thiong'o wrote
Weep Not, Child (1964), the first postcolonial novel about the East
African experience of colonial imperialism; in The River Between
(1965), as James Ngugi, with the Mau Mau uprising (195260) as
political background, he addressed the postcolonial matters of native
religious culture, and the consequences of the imposition of
Christianity, a religion culturally foreign to Kenya and to Africa; and
the essay Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in
African Literature (1986).
In postcolonial countries of Africa, the Africans and the non
Africans live in a world of genders, ethnicities, classes and
languages, of ages, families, professions, religions and nations. There
is a suggestion that individualism and postcolonialism are essentially
discontinuous and divergent cultural phenomena.[41]

Colonialism in 1913: the African

colonies of the European empires; and
the postcolonial, contemporary
political boundaries of the
decolonized countries. (Click image
for key)

Criticism of Postcolonial Theory

Undermining of universal values
Indian Marxist scholar Vivek Chibber has critiqued some foundational logics of Postcolonial Theory in his
book Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. Postcolonial Theory, he argues, essentializes cultures,
painting them as fixed and static categories. Moreover, it presents the difference between East and West as
unbridgeable, hence denying people's "universal aspirations" and "universal interests". He also criticized the
postcolonial tendency to characterize all of Enlightenment values as Eurocentric. According to him, the
theory will be remembered "for its revival of cultural essentialism and its acting as an endorsement of
orientalism, rather than being an antidote to it." [42]

National Identity
The concentration of postcolonial studies upon the subject of national identity has determined it is essential
to the creation and establishment of a stable nation and country in the aftermath of decolonisation; yet
indicates that either an indeterminate or an ambiguous national identity has tended to limit the social,
cultural, and economic progress of a decolonised people. In Overstating the Arab State (2001), by Nazih
Ayubi, the Moroccan scholar Bin 'Abd al-'Ali proposed that the existence of "a pathological obsession with .
. . identity" is a cultural theme common to the contemporary academic field Middle Eastern Studies.[43]
Nevertheless, Kumaraswamy and Sadiki said that such a common sociologic problemthat of an
indeterminate national identityamong the countries of the Middle East is an important aspect that must be
accounted in order to have an understanding the politics of the contemporary Middle East.[38] In the event,

Ayubi asks if what 'Bin Abd al'Ali sociologically described as an obsession with national identity might be
explained by "the absence of a championing social class?"[44]

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs)

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) implemented by the World Bank and IMF is viewed by many as
the modern procedure of colonization. Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) calls for trade
liberalization,privatization of banks, health care, and educational institutions.[45] These implementations
minimized governments role, paved pathways for corporate companies to enter Africa and exploit resources.
Limited to production and exportation of cash crops, many African nations acquired more debt, and were
left stranded in a position where acquiring more loan and continuing to pay high interest became an endless
cycle.[46]
The Dictionary of Human Geography uses Osterhammel's definition of colonialism as "enduring relationship
of domination and mode of dispossession, usually (or at least initially) between an indigenous (or enslaved)
majority and a minority of interlopers (colonizers), who are convinced of their own superiority, pursue their
own interests, and exercise power through a mixture of coercion, persuasion, conflict and collaboration".[47]
The definition adopted by The Dictionary of Human Geography suggests that the Structural adjustment
programmes implemented by the Washington Consensus is indeed an act of colonization.

Literature of postcolonialism
Foundation works
Discourse on Colonialism (1950), by Aim Csaire
Black Skin, White Masks (1952), by Frantz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth (1961), by Frantz Fanon
The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965), by Albert Memmi
Consciencism (1970), by Kwame Nkrumah
Orientalism (1978), by Edward Sad
Important works
The Myth of the Lazy Native (1977), by Syed Hussein Alatas.
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983, 1991), by
Benedict Anderson. London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-329-5.
Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations, by G. Ankerl. Geneva INU PRESS; 2000 ISBN 2-88155-0045.
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature (1990), by B. Ashcroft, G.
Griffiths, and H. Tiffin.
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995), B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, Eds. London:
Routledge ISBN 0-415-09621-9.
Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (1998), B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, Eds. London:
Routledge.
L'eurocentrisme (Eurocentrism, 1988), by Samir Amin.
The Heathen in his Blindness. . ." Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion. (1994, 2005), by S. N.
Balagangadhara. ISBN 90-04-09943-3.
The Location of Culture (1994), H.K. Bhabha.
Cahiers du CEDREF on Decolonial Feminist and Queer Theories (2012), by Paola Bachetta.
The Post-Colonial Question (1996), I. Chambers and L. Curti, Eds. Routledge.
Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, P. Chatterjee, Princeton University

Press.
Iran: A People Interrupted (2007), by Hamid Dabashi.
At the Risk of Being Heard: Indigenous Rights, Identity, and Postcolonial States (2003), B. Dean and
J. Levi, Eds. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06736-2.
Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (1998), by Leela Gandhi, Columbia University Press:
ISBN 0-231-11273-4.
"Postkolonial Theorie. Eine kritische Einfhrung" (Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Enquiry, 2005), by
N. Dhawan.
Colonialism is Doomed, by Ernesto Guevara.
The Commonwealth, Comparative Literature and the World: Two Lectures (1998), by Alamgir
Hashmi. Islamabad: Gulmohar.
Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2008), Ph. C. Salzman and D. Robinson Divine,
Eds. Routledge.
African Philosophy: Myth & Reality (1983), Paulin J. Hountondji.
Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa (1988), A. JanMohamed.
Inventing Ireland (1995), by Declan Kiberd.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), by Lenin.
Prospero and Caliban, the Psychology of Colonization Octave Mannoni and P. Powesland.
The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (1983), by Ashis Nandy.
Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness (1987), by Ashis Nandy.
On the Postcolony (2000), by Achille Mbembe. The Regents of the University of California.
"The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term 'Postcolonialism' " (1994), by Anne McClintock, in
Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial Theory (1994), M. Baker, P. Hulme, and M. Iverson, Eds.
Beginning Postcolonialism (2010), by J. McLeod, second edition, Manchester University Press.
The Idea of Latin Amrica" (2005), by Walter Mignolo.
Local Histories/Global designs: Coloniality (1999), by Walter Mignolo.
** "New Orientations:Post Colonial Literature in English" by Jaydeep Sarangi, Authorspress,New
Delhi
Infinite Layers/Third World? (1989), by Trinh T. Minh-ha.
Under Western Eyes (1986), by Chandra Talpade Mohanty.
The Invention of Africa (1988), by V. Y. Mudimbe.
Dislocating Cultures (1997), by Uma Narayan.
Contesting Cultures(1997), by Uma Narayan.
"The Postcolonial Ghetto" (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3q91f9gv/) (2010), by L Paperson.
Delusions and Discoveries (1983), B. Parry.
The Disappointed Bridge: Ireland and the Post-Colonial World (2014), by Richard Pine
Prem Poddar and David Johnson, ed. (2008). A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in
English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-3602-0. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
Postcolonial Student: Learning the Ethics of Global Solidarity in an English Classroom
(http://docs.google.com/viewer?
a=v&q=cache:BToWs4i_Vy4J:130.102.44.245/journals/radical_teacher/v082/82.raja.pdf+masood+ash
raf+raja&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgT66N1vwQ0U2XVxbSTIoppFIQ8L5UsJVI0zNU
mL8CrXpkUqqUZ4EntVzzQZKO0IBifp1pgZd2xNyvQCwylM4YTiZzQ3RkUDAfYidXUw8RUwC
NFxcWDx_2ecCNcwpd-zAzUBxhY&sig=AHIEtbRzeG0WEUciyi_S-9kBpTeoMRIYIw/The), by
Masood Ashraf Raja.
"Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality" (1991), in Globalizations and Modernities (1999), by Anbal
Quijano.
"Calibn: Apuntes sobre la cultura de Nuestra Amrica" (Caliban: Notes About the Culture of Our
America, 1971), in Calibn and Other Essays (1989), by Roberto Fernndez Retamar
Culture and Imperialism (1993), by Edward W. Sad [48]
Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (1986), by Kumari Jayawardena.
Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
The Postcolonial Critic (1990), by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Selected Subaltern Studies (1988), by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (1999), by Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak.
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), by Ngg wa Thiong'o.
White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (1990), by Robert J.C. Young. [49]
Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (1995), by Robert J.C. Young.
Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001), by Robert J.C. Young.
"Presentations of Postcolonialism: New Orientations" (2007),Jaydeep Sarangi,Authorspress,New
Delhi

See also
Burn! (1969), directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Cultural cringe
Critical theory
Cross-culturalism
The Dogs of War (1980), directed by John Irvin
Ethnology
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1975), by Chinua Achebe
Inversion in postcolonial theory
Linguistic imperialism
Nation-building
Postcolonial anarchism
Postcolonial feminism
Postcolonial literature
Post-Communism
Ranajit Guha
Ranjit Hoskote
Robert J.C. Young
Subaltern
Vivek Chibber

Notes
1.
1. Fischer-Tin 2011, Lead; Quayson 2000, p. 2-.
2. Edward Sad, "Nationalism, Human Rights, and Interpretation", Reflections on Exile, and Other Essays (2000) pp.
41819
3. "Colonialism", The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (1998) Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, p.
79
4. "Imperialism", The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (1998), by Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham.
p. 244
5. "The Clash of Definitions", in Reflections on Exile, and Other Essays (2000), Edward W. Sad. p. 574.
6. Sharp, J. (2008). "Chapter 6, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" ". Geographies of Postcolonialism. SAGE Publications.
7. Dictionary of Human Geography 2007, p. 561.
8. Gilbert, Helen; Tompkins, Joanne (1996). Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics. Routledge. ISBN 0-41509023-7.
9. Sharp, J. (2008). "Chapter 1, On Orientalism". Geographies of Postcolonialism. SAGE Publications.
10. Fischer-Tin 2011, Lead.
11. Bhabha, 1994: 113
12. Paul B. Armstrong, Editor. Heart of Darkness: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Context, Criticism (Fourth
Edition), 2006, pp. 208212.
13. Fanon 1963, p. 250.

14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.

35.
36.

37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.

Ashcroft, Bill (1990). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature.
Fanon 1961.
The Globalization of World Politics (2005), by John Baylis and Steve Smith, pp. 23135
Said 1978.
Madhavan, A. (1993). "Review: Edward Said: The Exile As Interpreter". Culture and Imperialism Representations of
the Intellectual: the Reith Lectures 20 (4): 183186.
Sad, 1978: 208
Said 1978, Chapter Three: Latent and Manifest Orientalism, pp. 201225.
de Kock, Leon. "Interview With Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa."
ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. 23(3) 1992: 29-47. ARIEL:
http://ariel.synergiesprairies.ca/ariel/index.php/ariel/article/viewFile/2505/2458.
McKnight, Kathryn Joy (2009). Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern IberoAtlantic World, 1550
1812. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company. p. 59.
Spivak 1990, p. 62-63-.
Spivak 1990, p. 6263-.
"Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism - Asia Art Archive".
"Finding an expression of its own".
"humanities underground All The Shared Experiences Of The Lived World II".
http://www.huichawaii.org/assets/gall,-david---overcoming-polarized-modernities.pdf
Fischer-Tin 2011, # 9.
Fischer-Tin 2011, # 10, 11.
Gregory, Derek. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Blackwell Pub., 2004.
Hart & Goldie 1993, p. 155.
The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (1998) Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, pp. 8384, 18283
Rob, Nieuwenhuys (1978). "Oost-Indische spiegel. Wat Nederlandse schrijvers en dichters over Indonesi hebben
geschreven vanaf de eerste jaren der Compagnie tot op heden" [Indian mirror. Some Dutch writers and poets have
written about Indonesia from the first year of the Company to date.] (in Dutch). Amsterdam: Querido. Retrieved
2016-02-23.
Gaurav Gajanan Desai, Supriya Nair (2005). Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism.
Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-3552-4. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
"Is Jordan Palestine", by Raphael Israel, in Israel, Hashemites, and the Palestinians: The Fateful Triangle, Efraim
Karsh and P.R. Kumaraswamy (eds.) (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 4966; and Overstating the Arab State, by
Nazih Ayubi (Bodmin: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001) pp. 86123
Sadiki 2004.
Kumaraswamy 2006, p. 1.
Sadiki 2004, p. 122.
Heart of Darkness: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Context, Criticism (Fourth Edition), Paul B. Armstrong,
Editor. (2006), pp. 208212.
Extravagant Postcolonialism: Ethics and Individualism in Anglophonic, Anglocentric Postcolonial Fiction; Or,
"What was (this) Postcolonialism?", ELH 75.4 (2008):899-937. ProQuest Research Library. Web.
"Who speaks for the Subaltern?". jacobinmag.
Overstating the Arab State (2001), by Nazih Ayubi, Bodmin: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd. p. 148
Nazih Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State (Bodmin: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001) p. 148
McGregor,S (2005-05-03). "Structural adjustment programmes and human well-being".
journals2.scholarsportal.info. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
McGregor, S (2005-05-03). "Structural adjustment programmes and human well-being".
journals2.scholarsportal.info. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
Osterhammel (1997). "The Dictionary of Human Geography" (PDF).
Quayson 2000, p. 4.
Quayson 2000, p. 3.

References
Gregory, Derek (2009). "Dictionary of Human Geography". Hoboken,NJ.: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Fanon, Frantz (1963). "The Wretched of the Earth". New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-5083-7.
Fischer-Tin, Harald (2011). "Postcolonial Studies". European History Online.

Hart, Jonathan; Goldie, Terrie (1993). "Post-colonial Theory". In Makaryk, Irene Rima; Hutcheon, Linda; Perron,
Paul. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto, Canada: University of
Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-5914-7. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
Kumaraswamy, P. R. (March 2006). "Who am I?: The Identity Crisis in the Middle East". The Middle East Review of
International Affairs 10 (1, Article 5)
Quayson, Ato (2000). Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process?. Polity Press, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
ISBN 0-7456-1712-3. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
Sadiki, Larbi (2004). The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses. India: C. Hurst & Co.
Ltd. ISBN 1-85065-494-8.
Said, Edward (1978). "Orientalism". New York: Pantheon. ISBN 0394428145.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1990). "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on January
5, 2012.

External links
Contemporary Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature (http://www.postcolonialweb.org/)
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