Etymology and Meanings of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
Etymologically, the term, postcolonialism, comprises two words; post- which is a prefix and colonialism which means the philosophy of making and occupying colonies. Colonialism also comprises two words; colonial which means related to a colony and -ism which is a suffix. It means a type of philosophy. Therefore, colonialism means a period of political control over colonies subjugated by certain western countries. If post- is added to this, it means the time when colonialism has ended. The literature related to this period, when critiqued from this perspective, is called postcolonial literature, and studies conducted through this perspective are called postcolonial studies.
However, there is a little controversy over the use of hyphens such as post-colonialism and postcolonialism. Some theorists argue that both are the same, some state that post-colonialism is related to general studies, while others argue that dehyphenated term, postcolonialism, means solely a literary theory. Here, the word will be used only with reference to literature.
Literally, postcolonialism means the cultural study of the impacts and effects of imperialism and colonialism after it has ended, focusing on the consequences of the political control on the persons, individuals, subjects, subjectivities, agencies, organizations, identities, and above all culture. This study analyses not only history but also cultural documents and discourse through a postcolonial lens.
Definition of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
Postcolonialism could be defined as a literary theory that critique a piece of literature from the perspective of tracing the impacts, effects, and aftershocks of colonialism on the people, culture, identity, nationalism, and so on.
Origin of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
Although impacts of colonialism have emerged shortly after the end of physical colonialism, disregard of its other shapes, postcolonialism term emerged around or during the decade of the 80s in the western academies. It appeared as a humanistic inquiry specifically in relation to the rise of political feminism and critical race theory with benign intentions of the academics toward the formal colonial subjects after they have studied in the western academies and written stories of the political oppression of the former colonial masters. Although it has impacted almost all the humanities related epistemological fields, it has had wide-ranging impacts on literature emerging in the English language in any part of the world having undergone colonialism. Therefore, postcolonial literary theory has impacted how readers read a literary text, understand its national strands and transnational impacts, feel the political impacts of colonialism, and how it has impacted the reception as well as inquiry in the field of epistemic production.
Principles of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
- Postcolonial texts appropriate colonial languages for literary writings. Most of the postcolonial writers have written in English, French, or the language of their masters.
- Most of the literary texts tell stories of the colonizers or involve them in the stories.
- Stories, poetic recitations, or poems are related to colonialism and its political impacts.
- Literary texts retell, rephrase, or rewrite colonial history and refute or present the colonial discourse.
- Postcolonial texts refute, reject, or rewind the colonial discourse and concentrate on decolonization and the struggles waged to implement it.
- Postcolonial literature mostly stresses upon nation, nationalism, indigeneity, valorization, and cultural identity.
- Postcolonial literary thoeory also stresses upon identity, power, agency, alterity, hybridity, subjectivity, subjection, subjugation, and other such cultural aspects.
Criticism Against “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
- Postcolonialism has emerged quite late in the age of nationalism and hypernationalism. Yet, it addresses the issues related mostly to colonialism and not what is assumed as post-colonialism.
- It has not touched indigenous, racial, and native issues.
- It is addressing the postcolonial issues in the colonial language that is English or any other such language of colonialism.
- It is not postcolonialism but a new form of colonialism that is viewing the former colonies from a new perspective.
Examples of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
Example # 1
From Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
But apart from the church, the white men had also brought a government. They had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. He had court messengers who brought men to him for trial. Many of these messengers came from Umuru on the bank of the Great River, where the white men first came many years before and where they had built the centre of their religion and trade and government. These court messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners and also arrogant and high-handed. They were called kotma, and because of their ash-coloured shorts they earned the additional name of Ashy Buttocks. They guarded the prison, which was full of men who had offended against the white man’s law. Some of these prisoners had thrown away their twins and some had molested the Christians. They were beaten in the prison by the kotma and made to work every morning clearing the government compound and fetching wood for the white Commissioner and the court messengers.
This passage occurs in the popular novel of China Achebe, an icon of postcolonialism. The passage has several references to colonial landmarks such as the church, the white man, the District Commissioner, and the indigenous references such as Umuru, the Great River, and Umuofia. The relationships between both are based on power and power dissemination as the use of government shows. This shows that colonialism has impacted indigeneity severely and has left its landmarks proving hard to remove from the indigenous face.
Example # 2
From A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian, had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism a privilege reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, “I do not consider Mrs. Moore my friend, I only met her accidentally in my mosque,” and was adding “a single meeting is too short to make a friend,” but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness vanished from it, because he felt Fielding’s fundamental good will. His own went out to it and grappled beneath the shifting tides of emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may also carry him across it on to the rocks.
This passage occurs in the novel of E. M. Forster, A Passage to India. It shows the protagonist, Aziz, a native Indian, showing signs of a native undergoing colonialism and his impressions that some other race or tribe, or government is ruling them. When he states that Mr. Moor is not his friend, he is clearly referring to the power relationship that exists between them as the ruler and the ruled. This shows the impacts of colonialism and signs of postcolonialism.
Example # 3
From Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . . .”
This is the most popular passage in the novel, Heart of Darkness. Conrad has obliquely referred to colonialism that goes on in the name of one or the other differences where the locals are othered and thereupon prejudiced. He clearly states that it is “not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” though outwardly the mission is always benign and beneficial at least in the words that it is “white man’s burden” to civilize the rest of the brute races that live anywhere in the world he occupies.
Example # 4
From “Plants” by Oliver Senior
The world is full of shoots bent on conquest,
invasive seedlings seeking wide open spaces,
material gathered for explosive dispersal
in capsules and seed cases.
This poem is by Oliver Senior, a Jamaican female poet. She has beautifully summed up the impacts of colonialism in this stanza taken from her poem “Plants” to show its impacts on the locals like the seeds that the trees spread to germinate. In postcolonialism, it also becomes hard to kill all the seeds left by colonialism in the shape of language, education, and religion.
Example # 5
From “Don’t Talk to Me about Matisse” by Lakdasa Wikkramasinha
Talk to me instead of the culture generally—
how the murders were sustained
by the beauty robbed of savages: to our remote
villages the painters came, and our white-washed
mud-huts were splattered with gunfire.
The references to culture, murder, savages, villages and fun fire show that Lakdasa Wikkramasinha shows his understanding of the conflict they have undergone during colonialism. These are the impacts of the postcolonialism theoretical perspective that he demonstrates in his poetic output. He is clearly saying that they were murdered and killed in the name of culture. Therefore, he does not want to talk about it.
Keywords in “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory
Colonialism, postcolonialism, ambivalence, alterity, essentialism, strategic essentialism, ethnic, ethnicity, hegemony, exotic, exoticism, hybrid, hybridity, identity, indigenousness, identity, ideology, sovereignty, nativity, mimicry, orientalism, subaltern, subalternity
Suggested Readings
Young, Robert JC. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Print.
Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory. Columbia University Press, 2019. Print. Goulimari, Pelagia. Literary Criticism and Theory: From Plato to Postcolonialism. Routledge, 2014. Print.