1. Lecture Code: PS_L.3
MA English Semester ii (Fall 2018) Postcolonial Studies – Definitions, Issues & Theorists
Min Pun, PhD, Associate Professor
Dept of English, PN Campus
Pokhara
24 Sept. 2018

2. Colonizing Countries (European Colonizers)
Where and When
Colonizing Countries (European Colonizers)
British, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese
COLONY
POST-COLONY
1947- the present
Colonized Countries
Asia, Africa, Middle East, Caribbean, Americas (Canada, US), Australia, New Zealand, etc.
Settler countries = Canada, Australia, US, etc.; Non-settler countries = india, Jamaica, Nigeira, Senegal, SriLanka, etc.; Partially both = South Africa, Zimbabwe
Colonialism Postcolonialism
Neo-Colonialism
(British Raj in India )

3. Terminologies
Postcolonial studies
Postcolonialism
Postcolonial theory

4. Definitions
Postcolonial studies is the study of the interactions between the colonizers (European nations) and the societies they colonized in the modern period (usually after the second world war).
Postcolonialism refers to the period after colonialism (compared to modernism vs postmodernism)
Postcolonial theory is a literary theory or a critical approach that deals with the reading and writing of literature written in colonized countries, or literature written in colonizing countries which deals with colonization or colonized peoples.

5. Major Focus
The focus of the postcolonial studies/postclolonialism/postcolonial theory is on:
the way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people
literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the ace of that past’s inevitable otherness.

6. Major Issues in Postcolonial Studies
Otherness/marginality
Identity
Diaspora
Hibridity
Nationalism
Eurocentrism
Imperialism

7. Questions that suggest postcolonial issues
How did the experience of colonization affect those who were colonized while also influencing the colonizers?
How were colonial powers able to gain control over so large a portion of the non-Western world?
What traces have been left by colonial education, science and technology in postcolonial societies?
How do these traces affect decisions about development and modernization in postcolonies?
What were the forms of resistance against colonial control?
How did colonial education and language influence the culture and identity of the colonized?

8. Contd…
How did Western science, technology, and medicine change existing knowledge systems?
What are the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers?
To what extent has decolonization (a reconstruction free from colonial influence) been possible?
Are Western formulations of postcolonialism overemphasizing hybridity at the expense of material realities?
Should decolonization proceed through an aggressive return to the pre-colonial past (related topic: Essentialism)?
How do gender, race, and class function in colonial and postcolonial discourse? Are new forms of imperialism replacing colonization and how?

9. Contd…
Should the writer use a colonial language to reach a wider audience or return to a native language more relevant to groups in the postcolony?
Which writers should be included in the postcolonial canon?
How can texts in translation from non-colonial languages enrich our understanding of postcolonial issues?
Has the preponderance of the postcolonial novel led to a neglect of other genres? 
In light of the material and political context of postcolonial production, how should postcolonial literature be approached in a way that honors its aesthetic dimensions?

10. Major Postcolonial Theorists and Practisners
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)
Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, Can the Subalterns Speak? (1983)
Bill Ascroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989)
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (1994)

11. Major Postcolonial Writers
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)
Leslie Silko, Ceremony (1977)
Salman Ruschdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind (1986)
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (1988)
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (1996)

12. Associate Professor, Dept of English Tribhuvan University
Min Pun, PhD
Associate Professor, Dept of English
Tribhuvan University
Prithvi Narayan Campus, Pokhara
Website: