Postcolonialism Introductory Lecture

Quote 1 “You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once – there has to be a limit.” ~ Edward Said, lecture (1998)

Quotes 2 and 3 “Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.” ~Edward Said, article (2003) “They weren’t like us and for that reason deserved to be ruled.” ~Edward Said, book (1994)

Quotes 4 and 5 “The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definitions of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low; and challenge normative expectations of development and progress.” ~Homi K. Bhabha, book (2004) “The appropriation of history, the historicization of the past, the narrativization of society, all of which give the novel its force, include the accumulation and differentiation of social space, space to be used for social purposes.” ~Edward Said, book (1994)

Quote 6 “Instead of revealing the true essence of past reality, historical narrative imposes a mythic structure on events it purports to describe. [. . . These events call] into question the inherited categories and conventions that the twentieth century West is most familiar with.” ~ Hayden White, book (1990)

Quote 7 “American prejudice against Muslims and Arabs was one of the few culturally sanctioned forms of bigotry before September 11, and that has made the situation after the towers fell that much more dangerous. […] I don’t know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel that he or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United States at this moment provides us with an especially unpleasant experience of alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted, hostility.” ~ Edward Said, lecture (2002)

Quote 8 “The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. The ‘right’ to signify from the periphery of authorized power and privilege does not depend on the persistence of tradition; it is resources by the power of tradition to be reinscribed through the conditions of contingency and contradictoriness that attend upon the lives of those who are ‘in the minority’.” ~ Homi K. Bhabha, book (2004)

Quote 9 “In times of sociocultural stress, when the need for positive self-definition asserts itself but no compelling criterion of self-identification appears, it is always possible to say something like: ‘I may not know the precise content of my own felt humanity, but I am most certainly not like that,’ and simply point to something in the landscape that is manifestly different from oneself. This might be called the technique of ostensive self-definition by negation.” ~Hayden White, book (1978)

Quote 10 “If we do not know what we think ‘civilization’ is, we can always find an example of what it is not. If we are unsure of what sanity is, we can at least identify madness when we see it.” ~Hayden White, book (1978)

The term: Postcolonial Postcolonial refers to the theory; post-colonial refers to the political power structure Theoretically, postcolonialism was born from examination of what happens to nations post-colonization. (Period when everything they have known has been replaced by the colonizing force. Former structures still exist, yet the power structures now in place are those of the colonizer.) Creates the us / them binary.

Edward Said (Israel (Palestinian)) Father of postcolonialism Began with his book Orientalism (1978) Begins with the academic study of the Orient This study creates a “style of thought” whereby the West [Occident from Latin occidens meaning West / Sunset] defines itself against an imaginative difference it has to the East West then uses crafted truths as real in study, examination, thought, literature, etc. The process of Orientalism is a process of Othering

Hayden White (America) Intellectual contemporary of Said Tropics of Discourse (1978) introduced the idea of “self-definition by negation” Theoretical assumption that we understand other cultures by perceived differences from our own. (The validity of the differences does not matter as much as our belief in the differences.)

Homi K. Bhabha (India) Introduces the importance of cultural hybridity (The Location of Culture, 1994) Rarely are people in the modern world uni-cultural Cultural hybridity creates an indefinable Other and therefore a fear that leads to the Other / the hybrid existing in liminal space (simultaneously both and nothing)

Assumptions Importance of binaries in understanding ourselves and in locating meaning in the world around us. Humans operate within a hierarchical social system similar to that identified by Marx. (This is a system that is reinforced / dictated by cultural superstructures.) Implications are cultural, social, and political.

Postcolonial Examinations of Literature Most basic – tales of “other” places and / or stories of colonization Look at who is given voice and agency and who isn’t Examine how characters or cultures are Othered Interpret what Othering says about self/majority/Occident/privileged, etc

Works Cited Bhabha, Homi K. Locations of Culture. UK: Routledge, 2004. Print. Said, Edward. “Blind Imperial Arrogance.” Los Angeles Times 20 Jul. 2003. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. - - -. Culture and Imperialism. UK: Vintage, 1994. Print. - - -. The Myth of the ‘Clash of Civilizations.’ Media Education Foundation. Northampton, MA. 1998. Transcript. - - -. Orientalism. UK: Vintage, 1979. Print. - - -. Peace Lecture Series. Chapman University, Orange, CA. 28 Feb. 2002. Lecture. White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990. Print. - - -. Tropics of Discourse. MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. Print.