Postcolonialism

Post-Colonialism/Postcolonialism 2 meanings: a) Post-colonial states & societies – those which experienced (and liberated themselves from) Western colonial rule, mainly after World War II. b) Postcolonial/’postcolonialist’ thought – a body of critical reflection on the colonial experience of most societies on the planet, and the long-term effects of colonial rule.

Postcolonialism: an expansive category Postcolonial thought does not study the period after colonialism. In fact, ‘postcolonial’ histories largely concerned with the study of colonialism and its effects. Postcolonial thought not confined to colonized societies – it can be equally vital for understanding former imperial powers, like Britain and France. Not a rigidly defined ‘school’ of thought: often intermixed with Marxism, feminism, post-modernism/post-structuralism. Certain characteristic themes: European/Western domination of ‘the East’ or the colonized world. Modes of domination: not just economic, political, but also cultural. Focus on forms of European knowledge about the rest of the world, and how this knowledge is itself a form of power: theory of ‘colonia discourse’.

Before postcolonialism: Economic critiques of imperialism Early 20th century: European colonialism reaches its peak and its terminal crisis: 2 world wars; end of empire. However, global inequalities continue. Early critiques of imperialism: 2 examples Late 19th century: Indian nationalists critiquing colonialism as a form of economic exploitation. Eg. Dadabhai Naoroji. Revolutionary Marxism: imperialism analysed as a logical consequence of capitalist production and competition on a global scale. Lenin one of the major proponents of this analysis. After decolonization in 1950s and 1960s: ‘dependency theory’, ‘world-systems theory’: left-wing analyses of the continuing economic imperialism of the ‘First World’.

Before postcolonialism: the ‘psychological’ critique of colonialism During decolonization period, several writers and activists write about colonialism as not just an economic and political, but also a psychological mechanism Frantz Fanon, Martinican psychiatrist, involved with Algerian war of independence in late 1950s. 2 major insights: The colonized person becomes an ‘object’ for the colonizer; loses his/her own autonomy. “I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects”. The colonized and colonizer are locked in a mutually destructive cycle of violence where they define each other, in a way which threatens the humanity of both. The only way out is the decisive defeat of colonial rule.

Edward Said: Orientalism (1978) Traced the way in which European colonizers treated the history, customs, literature, languages of ‘the East’ as ‘proofs’ of the superiority of the West “Orientalism” defined as ‘a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical and philological texts’. Orientalism is also defined as a style of domination: ‘dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it […]’. ‘East’ and ‘West’ defined as permanent, binary opposites of each other.

“Subaltern Studies” and the advance of postcolonialism since the 1980s Other than Said’s work, this is the most influential variant of ‘postcolonial’ thought. A historians’ project, originally trying to analyse colonial Indian history, and the history of anticolonial nationalism, ‘from below’ – from the perspective of peasants, workers, tribals. Influenced by critical varieties of Marxism. Mid-1980s onwards: Subaltern Studies comes into contact with Said and critique of Orientalism. New focus: critique of colonial ‘constructions’ of India and ‘the East’. Partha Chatterjee: anticolonial nationalism itself unable to fully break free from the colonialism it confronts. Imprisoned by its categories, forms of thought. Ashis Nandy: colonialism as ‘cultural violence’.