1. TEXT & MEANING Postcolonial Theory

2. Postcolonial Theory –What it is Focuses on the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries. The literature is composed of colonizing countries that deals with colonization or colonized peoples Greatly interested in the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized, postcolonial theory seeks to critically investigate what happens when two cultures clash and one of them ideologically fashions itself as superior and assumes dominance and control over the other.

3. The 3 Pillars of Postcolonial Theory Edward W. Said Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Homi K. Bhabha

4. “Said suggested that Orientalists are treated as others—in this case, Muslims and Asians—and as objects defined not in terms of their own discourses, but solely in terms of standards and definitions imposed on them from outside. Among the influences underlying these definitions was, in Said's view, a long-standing Western concern with presenting Islam as opposed to Christianity.

5. Key Terms in Postcolonial Theory Hegemony: the power of the ruling class to convince other classes that their interests are the interests of all, often not only through means of economic and political control but more subtly through the control of education and media. Hybridity: new transcultural forms that arise from cross-cultural exchange. Hybridity can be social, political, linguistic, religious, etc. It is not necessarily a peaceful mixture, for it can be contentious and disruptive in its experience.

6. Ideology: "a system of values, beliefs, or ideas shared by some social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true" (Bordwell & Thompson, 494) Language: In the context of colonialism and post-colonialism, language has often become a site for both colonization and resistance. In particular, a return to the original indigenous language is often advocated since the language was suppressed by colonizing forces. The use of European languages is a much debated issue among postcolonial authors. abrogation: a refusal to use the language of the colonizer in a correct or standard way. appropriation: "the process by which the language is made to 'bear the burden' of one's own cultural experience."

7. Other: the social and/or psychological ways in which one group excludes or marginalizes another group. By declaring someone "Other," persons tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from or opposite of another, and this carries over into the way they represent others, especially through stereotypical images. Race: the division and classification of human beings by physical and biological characteristics. Race often is used by various groups to either maintain power or to stress solidarity. In the 18th and19th centuries, it was often used as a pretext by European colonial powers for slavery and/or the "white man's burden.

8. Subaltern: the lower or colonized classes who have little access to their own means of expression and are thus dependent upon the language and methods of the ruling class to express themselves. For more of these postcolonial terms, please visit: http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/postcold.htm

9. Marxist Literary Theory

10. Historical Development - Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) - Friedrich Engles (1820-1895) - German Writers, Philosophers, Social Critics - Co-authored The Communist Manifesto - Declared that the capitalists, or the bourgeoisie, had successfully enslaved the working class, or the proletariat, through economic policies and control of the production of goods

11. Who was Karl Marx? Born in Trier, Germany in 1818 Criticized the injustice inherent in the European class/capitalist system of economics operating in the 19th Century. Believed that capitalism allowed the bourgeoisie to benefit at the expense of the workers. The Communist Manifesto.

12. Assumptions In a capitalist society, the capitalists exploit the working classes, determine their salaries and working conditions, and other elements of their lives. From this base, arises the superstructure—a multitude of social and legal institutions, political and education systems, religious beliefs, values, and a body of art and literature that one social class uses to keep members of the working class in check.

13. Marxist Criticism A Marxist critic may begin such an analysis by showing how an author’s text reflects his or her ideology through an examination of the fictional world’s characters, settings, society, or any other aspect of the text. The critic may then launch an investigation into …

14. Marxist Criticism 1.The author’s social class 2.Its effects upon the author’s society 3.Examining the history and the culture of the times as reflected in the text 4.Investigate how the author either correctly or incorrectly pictures this historical period

15. Marxist Literary Theory Focuses on the representation of class distinctions and class conflict in literature Focuses more on social and political elements than artistic and visual (aesthetic) elements of a text

16. Questions raised by the Marxist Literary Lens How does the author’s social and economic class show through the work? Does the work support the economic and social status quo, or does it advocate change? What roles does the class system play in the work?

17. Questions raised by the Marxist Literary Lens What role does class play in the work; what is the author’s analysis of class relations? How do characters overcome oppression? What does the work say about oppression; or are social conflicts ignored or blamed elsewhere?

18. Key Terms Materialism Classism Commodification $ Proletariat Bourgeoisie Capitalism

19. How to Use Expose class conflict Who or what is the dominant class? What does the dominant class believe? How do they impose their beliefs on others? Show how the working class is trapped Show how the working class is oppressed Show how the working class can end their own oppression

20. Activity Re-cap What should we expect to see through a Marxist lens? the political context of the text itself (places the study of literature in the context of important social questions) that we as readers are socially constructed subjects the idea that literature is a part of ideology

21. “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!” Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

22. “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

23. “And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

24. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”

25. FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM

26. There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman. Pythagoras

27. “It is only males who are created directly by the gods and are given souls. Those who live rightly return to the stars, but those who are ‘cowards or [lead unrighteous lives] may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation’. This downward progress may continue through successive reincarnations unless reversed. In this situation, obviously it is only men who are complete human beings and can hope for ultimate fulfilment; the best a woman can hope for is to become a man” (Plato, Timaeus 90e).

28. ‘It is the best for all tame animals to be ruled by human beings. For this is how they are kept alive. In the same way, the relationship between the male and the female is by nature such that the male is higher, the female lower, that the male rules and the female is ruled.’ (Aristotle, Politica, ed. Loeb Classical Library, 1254 b 10-14).

29. ‘A male is male in virtue of a particular ability, and a female in virtue of a particular inability’ (Generation of Animals, I, 82f).

30. …Moreover, in accord with his society's custom of allowing girls and women to eat only half as much as boys and men, he added that woman "requires a smaller quantity of nutriment" (History of Animals, 608b. 14). Prescinding from his talent as a nutritionist, if one looks again at the traits Aristotle attributed to woman, what stands out in most of them is what he apparently considered the empirical manifestation of what nature intended, namely, that a woman always requires the guidance of a free, adult man. Every woman requires such outside authority because nature has made her not only physically deficient but also intellectually and morally so. The principle of life for woman, as for man, Aristotle argued, is a soul with capacities for both rational faculties (deliberation and decision) and irrational faculties (emotions and appetites); however, in the soul of woman, unlike that of man, the rational power is not strong enough to govern the irrational one.

31. This explains the need for woman to be subject to the being that "the order of nature" itself has made her ruler, man. From the "permanent inequality" that exists between woman and man, moreover, it follows that the virtues of each must be different. For example, "The courage of man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying" (Politics, 1259b. 1, 1260a. 24). Such reasoning so impressed the thirteenth-century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas that he made it the keystone of his argument on why women could not be priests, an argument that, in turn, impressed officials of the Catholic Church into the twentieth century.

32. What is Feminism?

33. “A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.” Gloria Steinem “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ” Roseanne Barr “It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.” Warsan Shire

34. Feminist Theory

35. Examines women’s social roles and experience in a variety of fields: Education, Family and the Workforce Focuses on the Gender Inequalities in society, specifically towards women. Discrimination (Unjust treatment of a group of people because they belong to that group) Objectification (Someone is regarded as an object and can therefore be treated as less important) Oppression (Where women are treated unjustly and strongly encouraged to occupy gender-based social roles) Stereotyping (Where all women are viewed under the same over-simplified image)

36. Three Waves of Feminism The First Wave (1830’s –early 1900’s); Women’s fightfor equal contract and property rights Suffragettes (women realized that they must first gain political power) The right to Vote! First Wave Feminism focused on Political Inequalities! "The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race." Susan B. Anthony

37. The second Wave (1960’s -1980’s): Broadening the debate Coming of the heels of World War II, the second wave feminism focused on the workplace, sexuality, family and reproductive rights. Concerned with fighting social and cultural inequalities Second-wave feminists saw women’s cultural and political inequalities as inextricably linked and encouraged women to understand aspects of their personal lives as deeply politicized and as reflecting sexist power structures.

38. “In almost every professional field, in business and in the arts and sciences, women are still treated as second-class citizens. It would be a great service to tell girls who plan to work in society to expect this subtle, uncomfortable discrimination--tell them not to be quiet, and hope it will go away, but fight it. A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she "adjust" to prejudice and discrimination” Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

40. Third-wave (1990’s – present): The “micropolitics” of gender equality Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave’s essentialist definitions of femininity, which (according to them) over- emphasize the experiences of upper middle-class white women. Challenges the second wave’s paradigm as to what is, or is not good for females.

41. Feminist Concerns Gender difference (Social categorization and expectations of the sexes) Gender Inequality (Social biases, Workplace inequality, Family etc) Gender Oppression (Women are not only seen as different from or viewed as unequal to men, but are often oppressed or subordinated and even abused; Patriarchal societies and Power)

42. Gender and sex categories are used to define what is socially acceptable for every individual. Men are expected to be active participants in society, while women are expected to be more passive.

43. Important Concepts Under Feminist Literary Lens Patriarchy: a system of beliefs and social practices that supports male dominance by denying women access to power, privileging issues/voices that are seen as “masculine” over those that are “feminine,” and exerting control over women’s bodies and sexualities. Gender: A socially constructed set of expectations for what is “masculine” and what is “feminine.” (As opposed to “sex,” which is biological.) Essentialism: The belief that every woman is inherently different because she is a woman. (Some early feminists used this idea to say that these differences should be identified and celebrated, but many feminists now see essentialism as outdated and prone to abuse.)

44. What questions might a feminist critic ask? 1.In what ways is patriarchy present in a particular work? How are the effects of patriarchy evident in the lives and attitudes of the characters? 2.Do female characters show signs of resistance to patriarchy? If so, how is this resistance portrayed? 3.How are the concerns unique to women in a particular place/time portrayed in the work? To what extent does this portrayal value those concerns?