Literary Theory Post-Colonialism

Literary Theory Defined: systematic study of the nature of literature and methods for analyzing literature developed as a means to understand the various ways people read texts most important issues in literary theory are authorial intention and interpretive objectivity Also called ‘literary criticism’

Literary Theory proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory In reality, we read texts according to several different theories at one time. Lens through which we can see a text There is no true evidence to say that one theory is ‘better’ than another, but it is interesting to ‘decide’ to read a text with one in mind because it can provide an entirely new perspective on your reading.

Sampling of Different Literary Theories Marxist Criticism Feminist Criticism Mythic/Archetypal Criticism Psychoanalytic Criticism Reader Response Historical Criticism Post-Colonialism

deals with cultural identity in colonized societies Post Colonialism deals with cultural identity in colonized societies Who are we now? NOT a reference solely to time, as in after colonization or after ‘independence’ from colonists Deals with the legacy of colonial rule through literature (and other forms of expression)

Literature and colonialism For a very long time, authors, poets, critics, and scholars have made the case that literature reflects cultural heritage. Largely as a result of this understanding, literature study has traditionally been divided into literature of historical periods and national literatures. Dominant societies created images of themselves by publicly recognizing what they thought to be the best representations of their arts and sciences. Featured among these representations were literary masterworks thought to capture the essence of who we were and what our societies stood for at various points and places in the past.

Postcolonialism Lois Tyson (2006) summarizes the origin of the problem—the construction of a worldview that inherently privileges the perspectives of those who constructed it: The colonizers believed that only their own Anglo-European culture was civilized, sophisticated, or, as postcolonial critics put it, metropolitan. Therefore, native peoples were defined as savage, backward, and undeveloped. Because their technology was more highly advanced, the colonizers believed their whole culture was more highly advanced, and they ignored or swept aside the religions, customs, and codes of behavior of the peoples they subjugated. So the colonizers saw themselves at the center of the world; the colonized were at the margins (p. 419).

This colonist ideology constructs a world that imprisons both sides. Postcolonialism This colonist ideology constructs a world that imprisons both sides. It precludes any ability for Western peoples to learn from histories and cultures of the colonized and to incorporate ideas and values that have successfully sustained non- Western societies for centuries, often with less detrimental effects than those of Eurocentric cultural practices.

Stages of postcolonialism Phase 1: Analyze white representation of colonial countries…uncover bias Phase 2: Postcolonial writers explore selves and society (The empire writes back)

What postcolonial critics do Reject claims of universalism Examine representation of other cultures Show how literature is silent on matters of imperialism and colonialism Foreground questions of diversity and cultural difference Celebrate ‘cultural polyvancy (belonging to more than one culture) Assert that marginality, plurality and ‘Otherness’ are sources of energy and potential change

Post-colonialist Questions for white teeth How does one form an authentic identity in a multicultural society? How do the characters establish a new national identity in postcolonial Britain?

Postcolonial Characterization Characters who are trying to hold onto their history are portrayed satirically. Samad and Hortense cling to the beliefs and practices of their homelands, trying to hold onto a culture they no longer inhibit. They are very concerned with the corruption of their descendants in England. Hortense feels Irie isn’t black enough. Samad is concerned his sons are not Muslim enough. Samad struggles with the changes to his nationality. Goes from Indian Pakistani Bengladeshi So, Islam becomes his identity, but his view is too pious and different from his homeland. This is shown through the radical and independent Alsana.

Those who haven’t actually experienced their cultures in the native country are in love with an image of the culture that they imagine for it and are ignorant of the real state of it. White Teeth portrays the immigrant or migrant intracultural conflict of assimilation to the dominant culture (white society that automatically labels them as different or the Other). Dichotomy of traditional parents and their Westernized children. How is this shown so far?

Salman Rushdie Quote from Imaginary Homelands “Our identity is at once plural and partial.  Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.  But however ambiguous and shifting this ground may be, it is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy if literature is in part the business of finding new angles at which to enter reality, then once again our distance, our long geographical perspective may provide us with such an angles.”