Colonialism and Post-Colonial Response

1. Colonialism and Post-Colonial Response

2. Scramble for Africa • Slave trade ended 1805, replaced by other trade • Late 1880s, European countries suddenly wanted colonies in Africa: • To build national prestige • To gain raw materials for factories • To gain markets for manufactured goods • To gain mineral wealth and prevent other European countries from acquiring such wealth • Europeans cooperated among themselves and divided Africa up

4. Scramble for Africa • Able to colonize late 19th century because: • Better medicines • Better guns

5. Postcolonial Literary Theory • Postcolonial Literature – body of literature written by authors with roots in countries once occupied by European nations • Postcolonial Theory – intellectual inquiry exploring and interrogating the situation of colonized people during and after colonization.

6. Characteristics of Postcolonialism • Anti-imperialist in character • Post (prefix) implies opposition and chronological sequence • Denotes period after colony has become independent • Connotes political and moral attitudes opposing colonization

7. Cultural Roots of Postcolonial Literature • South Asia • Africa • The Carribbean • Australia • New Zealand • Canada • Ireland

8. Postcolonial Theory • Raises and explores historical, cultural, political, and moral issues surrounding the establishment and disintegration of colonies and the empires they fueled.

9. Leading Postcolonial Theorists • Edward Said (politically active scholar of Palestinian descent teaching in the U.S.) • GayatriChakravortySpivak (Indianliterary critic, theorist teaches at Columbia University) • Homi K. Bhabha (Indian Professor of English and American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Humanities Center, at Harvard University)

10. Causes and Effects • Stereotypes of dominated culture contributes to establishment and domination through colonization • Gender and Class complicate understanding of impact of colonization • Silencing of women • Subjugation of “lower classes”

11. Terms • Agency – the ability to choose and speak independently • Hybridity – how colonized peoples coopted and transformed various elements of the colonizing culture adapting it into their new (hybrid) culture • Diaspora – the dispersion of peoples from their homelands

12. Leading Postcolonial Writers • Edward Ricardo Braithwaite (Guyana) To Sir with Love • Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) Things Fall Apart • Aime Cesaire (the Caribbean) Poet and Playwright • Frantz Fanon (the Caribbean and North Africa) Black Skin, White Masks

13. Concluding Thought… How is The Bridepricea post-colonial text?