Postcolonial Criticism

Postcolonial Criticism Estudios Literarios II Narváez, Pilar, -Zamudio Elizabeth

Postcolonial Criticism • The Key Concepts of • Postcolonial Criticism • The ThreePillars of Postcolonialism • Poems : • White Comedy by BejaminZephaniah • An Introduction by Kamala Das

Postcolonial Criticism • Study of cultures formerly (or currently) colonized • Postcolonial Criticism • Subjetc matter • Theoretical Framework Main concern

19th century – Britain emerged as as the largest imperial power • 20th century- The British Empire ruled one quarter of the earth’s surface. • British colonial domination continued until the end of World War II • By 1980 Britain had lost all but a few of its colonial holdings

Postcolonial Theory The Three Pillars of Postcolonialsm • Edward W. Said • GayatriChakravortySpivak • Homi K. Bhabha

GayatriSpivak when, where, and why “When exactly does the postcolonial begin? ‘When third world intellectuals have arrived in the first world academe’” (Arif Dirlik) Edward Said HomiBhabha

Edward Said • Probably the most important figure for the rise of postcolonial studies and theory. • Born in 1935 in Jerusalem and dies 2003 • Palestinian-American scholar, critic, and writer • Moved colonial discourse into the first world academy and into literary and cultural theory • Said, raised as an Anglican, attended a British school in Cairo then at Princeton and Harvard, he became an academic literary critic. • From 1963 until his death he was a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born in 1942 • Is thought of as one of the three co-founders of postcolonial theory. • Her main work on the postcolonial theory was her Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1999) • Her work combines Marxism, feminism, and deconstruction. • “Can the Subaltern Speak” (1988) “My position is generally a reactive one. I am viewed by Marxists as too codic, by feminists as too male-identified, by indigenous theorists as too committed to Western Theory. I am uneasily pleased about this”

Homi Bhabha (1949) • Homi Bhabha was born in India and educated at Bombay University and Christ Church College, Oxford. • argues against the tendency to essentialize Third World countries into a homogenous identity. (Nation and Narration (1990) • has coined a number of key concepts, such as hybridity, mimicry, difference, ambivalence. • One of his central ideas is that of "hybridisation," which, taking up from Edward Said's work, describes the emergence of new cultural forms from multiculturalism

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism • Othering: the assumption that those who are different from oneself are inferior • Demonic other: view that those who are different from oneself are not only backward but also savage, even evil • Exotic other: view that those who are different from oneself possess an inherent dignity and beauty, perhaps because of their more undeveloped, natural state of being

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism • Orientalism :Its purpose is to produce a positive national self-definition for Western nations by contrast with Eastern nations • Colonial Subjects :colonized persons who did not resist colonial subjugation because they were taught to believe in British superiority and, therefore, in their own inferiority.

Orientalism Along with all other peoples variously designated as backward, degenerate, uncivilized, and retarded, the Orientals were viewed in a framework constructed out of biological determinism and moral-political admonishment. The Oriental was linked thus to elements in western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor) having in common an identity best described as lamentably alien. Orientals were rarely seen or looked at; they were seen through, analyzed not as citizen, or even people, but as problem to be solved or confined or-as the colonial powers openly coveted their territory-taken over. (Said, 1978:207)

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism • Eurocentrismview that European (including American) ideals and experiences are the standard • Universalim: belief that a great work of literature deals with certain themes and characters that are common in European literature--Eurocentric in nature.

Mimicry: imitation of the dress, manners, and language of the dominant culture by the oppressed • Double vision/double consciousness: sense of being part of both colonized and colonizing cultures.

Diaspora: separated from their original homeland • Unhomeliness: the sense of being culturally displaced, of being caught between two cultures and not “at home” in either

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism • Hybridity/syncretism: quality of cultures that have characteristics of both the colonizers and the colonized • Nativism: the attempt to eliminate Western influences

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism • Neocolonialism: domination of a developing nation by international corporations attracted by cheap labor and manipulable political and legal systems.

Key Concepts of Postcolonial Criticism Cultural Imperialism: a direct result of economic domination, consists of the “takeover” of one culture by another

Edward Said (1993) defines colonialism as, • As I shall be using the term, “imperialism” means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory; “colonialism,” which is always a consequence of imperialism, is implanting of settlements on distant territory. Culture and Imperalism

Benjamin Zephaniah • Born in Birmingham, England in 1958, Zephaniah spent some of his early years in Jamaica, his parents’ homeland, where he was strongly influenced by Jamaican folk music. • Since the age of 22, he’s been writing, publishing and mostly “performing” his poetry in tours all over the world, performances which combine recitation with reggae rhythm. He now devotes much of his time to visiting schools, prisons, universities and teacher training centres. Benjamin Zephaniah in Argentina Zephaniah has visited Argentina three times and performed at the Buenos Aires Book Fair in April 2000. In 2002 he performed at Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires – Colección Costantini) and in Córdoba for teachers and learners of English.

Kamala Das • Das was born into an aristocratic Nair Hindu family in Malabar (now Kerala), India, on March 31, 1934. • Has written under the pseudonyms Madhavikutty and Kamala Suraiyya • Indian poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, nonfiction writer, children's writer, and autobiographer. • Summer in Calcutta (1965),Das has been considered an important voice of her generation who exemplifies a break from the past by writing in a distinctly Indian persona rather than adopting the techniques of the English modernists. • Das's provocative poems are known for their unflinchingly honest explorations of the self and female sexuality, urban life, women's roles • in traditional Indian society, issues of postcolonial identity, and the political and personal struggles of marginalized people.

Sarup, MadamRace, Ethnicity and Nation-ness Race: can be culturalized Ethnicity: can be biologised It appears natural and inevitable we are made ethnic subjects we acquire an ethnic identity

THIRDSPACEEdward W.Soja Postmodernism and space

THIRDSPACEEdward W.Soja • Perceived space, Soja's Firstspace: This materialized, "physical," socially produced, empirically measurable space is space that can be directly sensed and is open to relatively accurate measurement and description. • Conceived space (Soja's Secondspace) is that space that is constructed in mental or cognitive forms • Lived space (Soja's Thirdspace)consists of actual social and spatial practices, the immediate material world of experience and realization.

Conclusion Tyson states that post-colonialism is “particularly effective at helping us see connections among all the domains of our experience—the psychological, ideological, social, political, and aesthetic—in ways that show us just how inseparable these categories are in our lived experiences of ourselves and our world” (417).

References Said,E(1978) Orientalism , Penguin Books Said,E (1993) Culture and Imperalism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf Sarup, Madan (1996) Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Soja, Edward (1996) Thirdspace: Journeys To Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places.Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

References Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. London: Routledge, 1990. Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User’s Friendly Guide. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Postcolonial Criticism