INTRODUCTION TO

POSTCOLONIALISM
JOHN JAY L. MORIDO, MA ELL, LPT
Comparative Literature (de Zepetnek, 1998)
❖An academic field that deals with the literature of two or
more different linguistic, cultural, or nation groups.
❖Knowledge of more than one national language and
literature
❖Knowledge and application of other disciplines in and for
the study of literature
❖Encompasses an ideology of inclusion of the Other
Comparative Literature
Outside the traditional centers of the Western canon
❖Latin America
❖Southeast Asia, Japan, China, India
❖Africa
Insistence on the knowledge about and inclusion of the
Other
❖Realities, interdisciplinarity, flexibility, global nature,
dialogue between and among cultures
Comparative Literature
Focus on English as a means of communication and access
to information should not be taken as Euro-American-
centricity
❖Lingua franca of communication, scholarship, technology,
etc.
❖Should not represent a form of colonialism
Comparative Literature
❖“Compare" Iiterary texts from different languages and
cultures - the study of the literary text in/as its relationship
with extra-literary areas; (e.g., sociology, history, economics,
the publishing industry, the history of the book, geography,
biology, medicine. etc.), the other arts, etc.

❖But most importantly, Comparative Literature means the

recognition of and the engagement with the Other, may that
be a "non-canonical" text (popular literature, for instance) or
the literary and cultural aspects of another race, gender,
nation.
Dismantling of Colonialism
❖One of the most spectacular events or series of events of
the 20th century in the shape of European overseas
empires
❖Continued globalizing spread of imperialism
▪ More far-reaching in its effects and implications
▪ E.g. emphasis upon protectionist control of tropical markets
and raw materials and US government intervening in Asian
and Latin American countries
Colonialism
❖conquest and direct control of other people’s land
❖Particular phase in the history of imperialism
❖Best understood as the globalization of the capitalist mode
of production
❖Its penetration of previously non-capitalist regions of the
worlds
❖Destruction of pre-or non-capitalist forms of social
organization
Colonial Phase
The rapid acquisition of territories by European nations in the
late 19th century (most famous in the “Scramble for Africa”)
represents the need for access to new (preferably captive)
markets and sources of raw materials, as well as the desire to
deny these to competitor nations.
1947
❖Formal dissolution of colonial empires
❖Granting of independence to previously colonized countries
❖Various campaigns of anti-colonial resistance usually with
an explicitly nationalist basis
Postcolonial Studies
❖No field of specialization in the universities before the late 1970s
❖Began to occupy a position of legitimacy and relative prestige not
only in Euro-American academies but also in universities of formerly
colonized nations
❖Postcolonial centers linked to the Department of Literature but inviting
significant input from scholars based in cultural studies, history,
anthropology, art, and other disciplines
❖Works of Edward W. Said, such as 'Orientalism' and 'Culture and
Imperialism ', Homi K. Bhabha's 'The Location of Culture ', Benedict
Anderson's 'Imagined Communities ', and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's
'Can the Subaltern Speak? ', among others, have significantly
contributed to the field of postcolonial studies.
Postcolonial Studies
❖Burgeoning production of scholarly texts that take the critical field itself as
their object
❖Prior to the late 1970s, previous efforts were made on issues relating to
postcolonial cultures and societies.
❖Eg. Political Studies of state formation in the newly decolonized countries of
Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean; economic and sociological studies of
developments and underdevelopment (typically centered in Latin America);
historical accounts of anticolonial nationalism and of the various and
diverse nationalist leaderships which had fought against or campaigned
against colonial rule in territory after territory – Jamaica, Ghana, Algeria,
India, Indonesia – and which had then themselves come to power when
independence had finally been won; literary studies of the new writing that
was being produced from writers from these territories
Postcolonial Studies
❖For the American variant, postcolonial or post-colonial was
a periodizing term, a historical and not an ideological
concept. It bespoke no political desire or aspiration and
looked forward to no particular social or political order.
❖Politically fraught terms were all around and fiercely
contested – capitalism and socialism, imperialism and anti-
imperialism, first world, and the third world; self-
determination and neo-colonialism; center and periphery;
modernization, development, dependency, under-
development, mal-development, etc., but postcoloniality did
not participate in any of their debates.
Postcolonial Studies
❖ To describe a literary work or a writer as “postcolonial”
was to name a period, a discrete historical moment, not a
project or a politics. It was far more usual to see writers and
works in terms of their communities of origin, identity, or
identification.
Postcolonial Studies

“Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of

cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority
within in the modern world order. Postcolonial perspectives emerge from the
colonial testimony of Third World countries and the discourses of “minorities”
within the geopolitical divisions of East and West, North and South. They
intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a
hegemonic “normality” to the uneven development and the differential, often
disadvantaged, histories of nations, races, communities, peoples. They
formulate their critical revisions around issues of cultural difference, social
authority, and political discrimination in order to reveal the antagonistic and
ambivalent moments within the ”rationalizations” of modernity”…..(Bhabha,
1994, 71, 173).

(“The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency” in “The Location of
Culture” by Homie K. Bhabha)
Postcolonial Studies
❖“Postcolonial” has ceased to be a historical category.
❖The term does not designate what it sounds like. It designates, that is,
the moment, or more generally, the time, after colonization.
❖Bhabha writes that ”postcolonial criticism” concerns itself with social
pathologies that can no longer be referred to as the explanatory
factor of class division.
❖For Bhabha, “postcolonial” is a fighting term, a theoretical weapon,
which “intervenes” in existing debates and ”resists” certain political
and philosophical constructions.
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory

▪ Dismantling of colonialism in the 20th century

▪ Globalising spread of imperialism
▪ Imperialism
▪ Connotation of over-weening ambition and self aggrandisement, the very
antithesis of Britishness.

▪ Colonialism
▪ The conquest and direct control of other people’s land
▪ Globalisation of the capitalist mode of production, its penetration of previously
non-capitalist regions of the world
▪ Destruction of pre- or non-capitalist forms of social organization
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory

▪ Capitalism
▪ Means of trade and conquest, economic forms of power as well as
military
▪ Global economy

▪ Colonial Phase
▪ Rapid acquisition of territories by European nations in the late 19 th
century (Scramble for Africa) represents the need for access to
new (preferably captive) markets and sources of raw materials, as
well as the desire to deny these to competitor nations.
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory
▪ Mutations of Marxism
▪ Earliest age of Marxism – Marx and Engels in the mid-19th century

▪ New Imperialism
▪ A new phase, rather than the new phenomenon that it appeared to contemporary
observers

▪ Second stage
▪ Early 20th century efforts
▪ Workings of monopoly capital as imperialism

▪ Third stage
▪ 1950s to the early 1970s
▪ Arghiri Emmanuel on Dependency Theory
▪ Samir Amin on theories of unequal exchange
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory

▪ Fourth stage
▪ Weeks and Pailloix turn away from the dependency model to examine questions
of multi-national capitalism and capitalist rivalry.

▪ 1947
▪ Formal dissolution of colonial empires
▪ Granting of independence to previously colonised countries followed various
campaigns of anti-colonial resistance, with an explicitly nationalist basis.
▪ Legal and diplomatic manoeuvres
▪ Wars of independence

▪ Ending of colonial rule

▪ Created high hopes for the newly independent countries and for the inauguration
of a properly post-colonial era.
▪ Short-lived as the West had not relinquished control became clear.
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory

▪ How many attitudes, strategies, and even how much room

for maneuver of the colonial period remain in place,
continuing to shape our present and future?
▪ Post-colonial carries with it at least a dual sense of being
chronologically subsequent to the second term in the
relationship of – on the face of it – having superseded that
term.
▪ The era of formal colonial control is over.
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory

▪ Texts of imperialism
▪ Domination and economic exploitation
▪ Understanding of present circumstances as well as the ways in
which these are informed by, perpetuate, and differ from situations
that preceded them, and the complex interrelation of history and
the present moment provides the terrain on which colonial
discourse and post-colonial theory operate.

▪ Post-colonialism is a rich tapestry of diverse maps,

chronologies, narratives, and political agenda.
Thank you for listening.