1. Postcolonial Literary Theory

2. What is Colonialism?

3. What Happened during Colonialism?
During the colonial era white Europeans ventured into the so-called underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia and dominated a lot of geographical spaces there.

4. Impact of Colonialism
White Europeans:

5. How do Colonial Powers Justify their Actions?

6. Justifying Colonialism
The colonized are savages

7. Justifying Colonialism
The culture of the colonized is not up to the standard of the colonizer

8. Justifying Colonialism
The colonized nation is unable to manage and run itself properly

9. Justifying Colonialism
The colonized nation embraces a set of heathen religious beliefs

10. How did the Colonists Stay in Power?
OPPRESSION

11. Oppressions Oppression is a basic ingredient of colonialism.
Oppression dehumanizes
Colonialism spawned national movements

12. Response to Oppression
Thus in the thickness of colonialism, national movements, and most of them were radical and violent in their approaches, emerged to encounter the aggression of colonialism.
 Che Guavara

13. What was the Impact of Colonialism?

14. Impact of Colonialism
The total or partial erosion of the colonized culture

15. Impact of Colonialism
The total rejection by some elements among the colonized

16. Impact of Colonialism
The categorization of the world into ranks

17. Impact of Colonialism
The emergence of different forms of fundamentalism

18. Impact of Colonialism
The emergence of bourgeoisie classes

19. Impact of Colonialism
The emergence of societies with a lot of contradictions and split loyalties.

20. So What is Postcolonialism?
To put it simply, postcolonialism examines what happens socially, economically, politically, and culturally to former colonies once they become independent.

21. What are the Assumptions of Post-colonialism?

22. Cultural Relativism

23. Ambivalence towards Authority

24. Alienation
Colonialism and Postcolonialism leads to the alienation of the native in his own land.

25. Resurrecting Culture
Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt to both resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about their culture.

26. So What is Postcolonial Literary Theory?
Postcolonial literary theory involves the analysis of literary texts

27. So What is Postcolonial Literary Theory?
Alternatively, it can refer to the analysis of texts

28. What does Postcolonial Theory Focus On?

29. Cultural Distortion
The way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people.

30. Literature of the Colonized
On literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness.

31. Impact on the Colonizers
It can also deal with the way in which literature in colonizing countries appropriates the language, images, scenes, traditions and so forth of colonized countries.

32. Mixing of Cultures
This mixing of cultures is another principal theme in postcolonial fiction, and it is often developed in the broader context of establishing identity.

33. Important Figures in Postcolonial Literary Theory

34. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) Most Important Works: Black Skin, White Masks
The Wretched of the Earth

35. Edward Said (1935-2003) Most Important Works: Orientalism
Culture and Imperialism

36. Homi Bhabha (1949-present)
In his essay "Postcolonial Criticism" (1992), Bhabha has shown how certain cultures (mis)represent other cultures, thereby extending their political and social domination in the modern world order.

37. Gayatri Spivak (1942-present)
In her article "Can the Subaltern Speak?“ Spivak reveals the tendency of institutional and cultural practices to exclude and marginalize the subaltern, especially subaltern women.

38. Important Colonial and Postcolonial Novelists

39. Daniel Defoe ( )
Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), tells of a man's shipwreck on a desert island and his subsequent adventures.

40. Joseph Conrad ( )
In his novella, Heart of Darkness, tells the story of a man named Marlow who details a visit he took up the Congo River to investigate the work of Kurtz, a Belgian trader in ivory in the Congo Free State.

41. E. M. Forster ( )
In his novel, A Passage to India, Forster tells the story of a British woman who accuses an Indian doctor of sexually assaulting her. The ensuing court trial increases the racial tension between the Indians and the British and foreshadows the end of the British Raj.

42. Salman Rushdie (1947-present)
Important Works:
Midnight's Children
The Satanic Verses
The Moor's Last Sigh
Shalimar the Clown

43. V. S. Naipaul (1932-present) Important Works The Mystic Masseur
A House for Mr. Biswas
The Mimic Men
A Bend in the River

44. Chinua Achebe (1930-present)
Important Works
Things Fall Apart
Arrow of God
A Man of the People
Anthills of the Savannah

45. Zadie Smith (1975-present)
Important Works
White Teeth
The Autograph Man
On Beauty

46. Arundhati Roy Important Works The God of Small Things
The Greater Common Good
The Algebra of Infinite Justice

47. Postcolonial Themes
Struggle towards independence (both by an individual and/or a community)
Dominating influence of foreign culture in postcolonial society
Construction/demolition of a house an attempt to build a new place/new identity or eradicate the past

48. Themes continued
Journey of a European through unfamiliar landscape with a guide
Theme of exile and displacement

49. Questions Postcolonial Critics Ask about Literature

50. Postcolonial Questions
How did the experience of colonization affect the colonizers and the colonized in the story?

51. Postcolonial Questions
How are the colonialists and their cohorts presented in the narratives? Are they tolerant, oppressive, violent, charitable, cute, white, brave, religious, hypocrites, etc?

52. Postcolonial Questions
Are there stereotypes presented in the narratives? For example are the local inhabitants seen as savages, cannibals, polygamous, dirty, violent, irrational, etc.?

53. Postcolonial Questions
What are the forms of resistance against colonial control?

54. Postcolonial Questions
What were the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers?

55. Postcolonial Questions
Do the narratives depict natives versus settlers, vice versa? How?

56. Postcolonial Questions
Have new forms of imperialism replaced colonization in this story?

57. Postcolonial Questions
What does the narrative reveal about the problematics of postcolonial identity, including such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?

58. Postcolonial Questions
What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?

59. Are there stereotypes presented in the narratives
Are there stereotypes presented in the narratives? For example are the local inhabitants seen as savages, cannibals, polygamous, dirty, violent, irrational, etc.?

60. How are the colonialists and their cohorts presented in the narratives
How are the colonialists and their cohorts presented in the narratives? Are they tolerant, oppressive, violent, charitable, cute, white, brave, religious, hypocrites, etc?