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POSTCOLONIALISM. Definition Context Themes Literature: Representants Text Today. POST -. - COLONIAL -. - ISM. Post-colonialism is an umbrella term.
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Definition • Context • Themes • Literature: • Representants • Text • Today
POST - - COLONIAL - - ISM Post-colonialism is an umbrella term It is a Latinate prefix referring to something coming after something and, therefore, Post-colonialism is a movement referring to something previous. The suffix ism generally brings with it a critical attitude. As a matter of fact, when a new movement rises, since it sounds rather strange and it is not immediately well accepted. Post The second part of the term refers to Colonialism. Since Post-colonialism comes after Colonialism. Postcolonialism, like other post-isms, does not signal a closing off of that which it contains (colonialism), or even a rejection, but rather an opening of a field of inquiry and understanding following a period of relative closure.
Postcolonialism and Postcolonial Literature • a period of time after colonialism • postcolonial literature characterized by its opposition to the colonial. • It deals with literature produced in countries that once were colonies of other countries, bEuropean colonial powers (Britain, France, and Spain) • in some contexts, it includes countries still in colonial arrangements. • it also deals with literature written in colonial countries • It is about their citizens: colonized people as subject matter.
Further definition the social, political, economic, and cultural practices which arise in response and resistance to colonialism → an always present tendency in any literature of subjugation marked by a systematic process of cultural domination through the imposition of imperial structures of power.
European colonialism began in the 15th century, with Portugal's conquest of Ceuta, Portuguese and Spanish exploration of the Americas, and the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia. • The latter half of the sixteenth century witnessed the expansion of the English state throughout Ireland • the 17th century France and the Netherlands successfully established their own overseas empires • The end of the 18th and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization • Britain, France and the Netherlands turned their attention to the Old World • The industrialization of the 19th century led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism.
Postcolonialism includes a vast array of writers and subjects. It mainly focuses on: • the need in nations or groups which have been colonized to achieve an uncontaminated identity; • the relations and the effects of racism; • racism or history of genocide, including slavery, apartheid and mass extinction; • the relationship between postcolonialism and feminism • how a colonized people's knowledge served the colonizer’s interests, and how the subordinate people's knowledge is generated and used • the ways in which the colonist's literature justified colonialism via images of the colonized as a perpetually inferior person, society, and culture
Summarizing the need, in nations, or groups which have been victims of imperialism to achieve an identity uncontaminated by universalist or Eurocentric concepts or images.
Postcolonial texts will incorporate culturally specific details, often not offering translations or explanations of non-European practices, de-centering the European-based reading. In addition, the texts very often decenter the white characters, who become faceless, nameless representatives of a dominating power, shifting the power relationships within the text. Finally, it is most important to stress the ever changing nature of postcolonialism as a defining term, as it responds to the material conditions under which people live in colonial and neo-colonial situations.
J.M. Coetzee • Daniel Defoe
Foe (J.M.Coetzee) • Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
Colonization as a modern phenomenon: • modern colonialism was not a discrete occurrence • an examination of pre-modern colonial activities will allow for more complex understanding of modern structures of power and domination, • they may illuminate the operation of older histories in the context of both modern colonialism and contemporary race and global political relations.
