Post-Colonialism

2. Post-Colonialism

4. Colonialism An Age of Empires

5. What puts the “post” in Postcolonialism? • Considering “post” is a prefix meaning after, we need to first discuss the history behind colonialism. • What is colonialism? • An extension of a nations rule over territory beyond its borders • A population that is subjected to the political domination of another population

6. This is the world at what is considered the height of colonialism. What do you notice?

7. How long did it last and why did it end? • 15th Century to 20th century (arguably, it is still going on). • WWII • Right to sovereignty • Lack of resources • Independence movements

8. At its peak, the British Empire ruled roughly one-quarter of the earth’s land and population. • Economically and culturally, British power fed off of British conquest • Yet, until the last few decades, the study of British history and literature ignored the implications of this • Westerners had a stake, however unconscious, in not owning up to colonialism and not thinking about it critically • As Americans, how often do we think about what we did to the Indians? • Erasure – Do we even acknowledge a people’s history before we got there?

9. Two kinds of Colonies • Settler Colonies • Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States • Settlers move in permanently, their descendents usually grow up more numerous than the people they’ve colonized • Occupation Colonies – Exploitation colonies or colonies of conquest • Colonial India and Nigeria • Colonist remain a small proportion of the population. • Just want the locals labor or stuff

10. Justification? • Social Darwinism • Eurocentrism • Universalism • Colonialism is nature • “White Man’s Burden” • What was thought to be an obligation to “civilize” non-European peoples • “Great White Father” • At one point it was even the title of Peter Pan

11. What is going on here?

12. Following the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, the wave of newly independent nations inspired excitement and hope across south Asia, southeast Asia, Africa and the middle east. • Some colonies fought for independence • Some got it peacefully • Some set up successful democracies • Some shift back and forth between elected and imposed governments

13. gaddafi mubarak gbagbo

14. Syria • 1918 Arab troops supported by British forces end 400 years of Ottoman rule. • 1920 June - San Remo conference splits up newly-created Arab kingdom by placing Syria-Lebanon under a French mandate • 1920 July - French forces occupy Damascus • 1925- agitation against French rule develops into uprising. • 1936 - France agrees to Syrian independence but signs an agreement maintaining French military dominance. • 1940 - World War II: Syria comes under the control of the Axis powers after France falls to German forces. • 1941 - British and Free French troops occupy Syria. • 1946 - Last French troops leave Syria. • 1949 - Syria's national government was overthrown by a military coup • Later that year the coup got couped • 1954 - the couping coup got couped • 1970 - the coup that couped the couping coup got couped • 2000 - the 1970 couper dies and his son takes over • 2010 Dec – Arab spring begins in Tunisia after the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi • 2011 Jan – Uprisings begin in Syria • This is the fallout of power vacuum left in the wake of a deposed colonial power

15. neocolonialism • In many countries local oligarchs and dictators betrayed the promise of independence by exploiting the divisions and disarray left by colonialism • Including the concentration of capital and resources in a few privileged hands • we call this neocolonialism

16. Post-Colonialism

17. When • Developed out of two earlier branches of study • Commonwealth literature • Commonwealth - an association of self-governing autonomous states more or less loosely associated in a common allegiance (as to the British crown) • Third world studies • Became a major theoretical force in the 1990’s • Spivak’sIn Other Worlds (1987) • Ashcroft’s The Empire Writes Back (1989) • Bhaba’sNation and Narration (1990)

18. Ok, so what is POSTcolonialism? • Postcolonial theory attempts to focus on the oppression of those who were ruled under colonization. • Factors include • Political oppression • Economic oppression • Social/ cultural oppression • Psychological oppression

19. Who are the oppressed? • Those who were formerly colonized. • In postcolonial theory, the word colonized can mean many things. • Literal colonization • India, Australia • More abstract “colonization” • African-Americans

20. How were the colonized oppressed? • Postcolonial theorists believe that the colonizers (generally Europeans): • Imposed their own values onto those colonized so that they were internalized • How does one culture convince another that theirs is superior? • The role of literature in indoctrination • The construction of race and nationality • How are distinctions made, circulated and enforced? • “signifying system” • Skin color becomes a signifier • Athleticism, math skills, musical talent, financial skill • Foucault – Discourse

21. Examples • Social/ Cultural - Spanish language/ Catholic religion in the Caribbean • Political – Drew the boundaries of Africa based on European politics rather than tribal interests

22. Where does time begin?

24. Focus • Analyze the global effects of European colonialism • postcolonial criticism defines formerly colonized peoples as any population that has been subjected to the political domination of another population • African Americans • Aboriginal Australians • the formerly colonized population of India • The United States • Nineteenth century American lit was marked by an attempt to build a cannon that was not dominated by British Literature • Children? • All cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day

25. A field of theory concerning itself with the fallout of colonialism and the relationship between colonizers and colonized. • How colonized people maintain or fail to maintain their cultural identity while under colonial rule • How a people reestablish or create their national after the colonizers leave

26. post colonialism fills the need to seek and understand the operations – politically, socially, culturally, and psychologically – of colonialist and anti-colonialist ideologies. • The forces that pressed the colonized to internalized the colonizers values • Resistance, to understand the antagonism between colonizer and colonized • To understand the cultural colonization that remains long after the colonizers are gone • Denigration of the native culture, morals, appearance • Colonialism erases pre-colonialist history, history starts with “us” • “America” was here for thousands of years before the pilgrims got here, what was going on? • Exactly • Postcolonial nations need to rediscover their identity

27. Vocab Post-Colonialist

31. Orientalism • Precursor to “the other” • A concept introduced by Edward Said (1978) • Attempted to explain how the European/ Western colonizers looked upon the “Orient” • What is the Orient? • A mystical place that was stereotyped due to lack of knowledge and imagination • Opium smoking, mysterious, heathen, exotic • These are negatives when compared to their binary opposites: known, Christian, familiar • These are things the west considers negative, things that need to be repressed • We build the “other” out of all the identity traits we wish to deny in ourselves • The Orient becomes the place where body (as opposed to mind), evil (as opposed to good) and the feminine (as opposed to masculine) all reside.

33. Consider Mr. Miyagi and Jackie Chan • Represent American assumptions about typical Japanese males • Asexual • no wife or girlfriend • Cultivates bonsai trees • Practices marshal arts • Speaks in broken English (despite having lived in California for 30 years!) • Have “inscrutable” behaviors, such as catching flies with chopsticks.

36. The Other and Orientalism • Other – looking at the colonized subject as essentially different from the colonizer • Almost the same but not quite • Almost the same but not white • The colonized other is never seen as equal to the colonizer • Colonizer and Colonized, white and other, is the core binary dissected by Post colonialism • Othering – The process of creating that artificial difference.

37. Colonial conquests resulted in an attempt to know and administer colonial subjects which inaugurated an “othering” generating the pervasive images of effeminate Indians (from India), savage Africans, and inscrutably sinister Orientals that are common in the literature of the British empire. Frankenstein has a diabolical turk.

38. Others Continued • Colonizers assumed their own superiority and the inferiority of natives • That they (the colonizers) are the embodiment of civilization • The “white man’s burden” • Technology helps to naturalize the illusion of superiority • Natives are considered other, less human • Divides world between us and them, establishing a binary white and not quite • savage typically evil • sometimes assumes a primitive beauty or nobility (the exotic other or noble savage) • Indians in TEWWG

39. binary

40. The colonialist ideology was a part of established colony schools, locals were indoctrinated into the culture, made to feel almost equal but forever inferior • hegemony • The practice of othering has the unfortunate effect of making a reality of the often contrived (fake) differences it depends on

41. HomiBhaba and the Location of Culture • With Said, we see how “race” is created by the discursive connection between certain signifiers • Discursive -> discourse = “talking about it” • Signifier, remember structuralism: sign = signifier, + signified • But what is ethnicity?

42. What is the difference between race and ethnicity? • Ethnicity • Less definite • Signifiers of ethnicity are less fixed • But more important to modern world? • Wars in eastern europe, bosnia and serbia • Ethnic cleansing • Turkish massacre of Armenians • Nazi genocide of jews • Tutsi vs Hutu in Africa • Pashtus, Kurds and Arabs in what we call the middle east

43. Ethnicity seems to have something to do with national identity • What is the relationship between race, ethnicity and nationality? • How can you tell what nationality someone is? • When is that connected to race or ethnicity? • What makes someone american? • Born in america? • Living in america? • Speaking english?

44. In the humanist model “identity” had been an essentialist concept • For the humanist, you have a core self which is consistent over time • I am male, white, 30, atheist, teacher, husband • For the poststructuralist (deconstruction), you are constructed as a subject of those different discourses. • You are a subject from within the ideology of gender, age, etc.

45. In poststructuralist and post colonialism, subjects do not inhabit unified or stable positions or categories. • Obama? • Hybridity • Not just race/ethnicity, but gender, religion, all sorts of things

46. In our post-colonial world, “nations” are carved out of territories that had previously been colonial provinces or tribal or ethnic homelands • Israel born out of British Palestine • “Arabs” imagined themselves as being part of various tribal communities until the early twentieth century when they worked together to resist British colonial rule. Staying united as a nation has proven difficult. • Capitalism helps glue nations together “made in _____” • What happens to those who are excluded from this idea of nation? • How can the construction of race, ethnicity, hybridity be used against you?

47. Anyway… Back to straight vocab

48. The modern face of orientalism and othering

49. hybridity Deconstructing the binary between colonizer/colonized Colonized people and colonizers have taken on many of each others ways of living and thinking Colonized peoples move to the lands of their colonizers

50. Mimicry • Mimicry, the attempt of the colonized to become the colonizer. This only reinforces notions of natural superiorly and the imposters realize they will never quite be those that they impersonate. • Desire and shame • Bhabha initially defines this as “almost the same but not white” and later problematizes this with “almost the same but not quite” • When the powerful mimic the weak, it reinforces ideas of superiority, consider black face in early 20th century America • When the weak mimic the strong, it may demonstrate ambivalence, reinforce the colonizers assumption of their superiority, or even challenge it if the mimicry demonstrates complete enough mastery of the factors that initially provided the colonizers with their illusion of superiority