Postcolonialism: A brief outline

Postcolonialism is a theoretical attempt to engage with the historical condition called

‘postcoloniality’. It seeks to conceptualize the complex consequences of colonial occupation of non-
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Western world in 18 and 19 centuries and also the neocolonial hegemony in late 20 century by
European colonizers. While a section of theorists prefers the hyphenated term ‘post-colonialism’,
underscoring the temporal divide between the end of colonial subjugation and its aftermath, the
others favor using the non-hyphenated term ‘postcolonialism’, signifying a continuity, as they argue
that the postcolonial condition began with the onset of colonialism itself rather than after its formal
termination. Postcolonialism is regarded as a critique of cultural domination of West. While
postmodernism is a critique of modernism in West, postcolonialism is considered as a critique of
Western modernity in non-Western colonies. (Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, 1998,
Leela Gandhi)

Definition: “The term post-colonialism … is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning

the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence
Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state. Not a naïve teleological
sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post-colonialism is, rather, an engagement with, and
contestation of, colonialism’s discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies.... A theory of post-
colonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-
independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism.” (Post-Colonial Drama:
Theory, Practice, Politics, 1996, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins)

Postcolonialism is aimed at disempowering such theories (intellectual and linguistic, social and
economic) by means of which colonialists ‘perceive’, ‘understand’, and ‘know’ the world. Postcolonial
theory thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their
own voices, and thus produce cultural discourses of philosophy, language, society, and economy,
balancing the imbalanced us-and-them binary power-relationship between the colonist and the
colonial subjects.

Although postcolonial ideas can be traced back to the onset of colonialism itself, yet as a formal
theory postcolonialism first appeared in English literature studies in late 1970s and early 1980s.
Gradually, the postcolonial theoretical approach was adopted by social and political thinkers
belonging to diverse, sometimes opposing, ideological positions. Postcolonial studies have emerged
to be both as a battleground and a meeting point of various disciplines and theories since the late


Prepared by SS for Topic No. 4, Module I, CC XI.

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1990s. Eventually, it facilitated a complex interdisciplinary dialogue in humanities, often influenced
by mutually antagonistic theories like Marxism and postmodernism. Thus, the nature, content and
contours of postcolonialism as a theory, remain highly contentious.

Some of the noted thinkers who played key roles in the development of postcolonial studies are
Franz Fanon [Black Skins, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961)], Edward W.
Said [Orientalism (1978)], Ashis Nandy [The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under
Colonialism (1983)], Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak [Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988)], Partha Chatterjee
[Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993)], Homi K. Bhava [The Location
of Culture (1994)] and Dipesh Chakrabarty [Provincializing Europe (2000)] among others. Some
scholars consider M.K. Gandhi as a pioneering figure in evolving the postcolonial worldview. Apart
from them some prominent non-Western English authors made significant contributions to the
development of postcolonial studies through their writings. Some of these fictional works include
Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Salman Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children, V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Tayeb Salih’s
Season of Migration to the North, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,
Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, NoViolet
Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Amitav Ghosh’s The Sea of Poppies
and Ingolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, among many others. This suggests that postcolonial
literature is a broad term that encompasses literatures by people from the erstwhile colonial world,
as well as from the various minority diasporas that live in the West.

Postcolonial political theory is an emerging subfield of political theory, although its parameters and
particular meanings are less than clearly defined and subject to contestation. The scope of inquiry
in postcolonial political theory is broadly responsive to postcolonialism, a body of thought concerned
with tracing, engaging, and responding to the cultural, political, social, and economic legacies of
Western colonialism, particularly the period of European colonial rule between the 18 th and mid-20th
centuries. With a particular emphasis on the relationship between power and knowledge, postcolonial
theories and approaches take the development of modernity as coterminous with European colonial
and imperial projects, and therefore examine the ways in which modern systems of knowledge are
implicated in colonial relations of power. Postcolonial political theory similarly treats political
modernity as imprinted by Western colonialism and imperialism, making for distinct political
dynamics, problems, and forms of injustice, on the one hand, and shaping the history of European
political thought, on the other. In this regard, postcolonial political theory does not just call for a
widening of the remit of political theory beyond the traditional European canon to include non-
Western texts, voices, and perspectives. It also raises profound questions about the ways in which

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the categories, ideas, and assumptions of political theory have been complicit in and served to
legitimize the domination of colonized peoples and indigenous, non-Western, and subaltern
minorities. Postcolonial political theory seeks to articulate alternative modes of theorizing that can
better speak to the concerns of justice for the formerly colonized, indigenous peoples, and those
affected by the neo-imperial features of the current global order. An important element of this is
concerned with methodology, in particular the use of multidisciplinary insights from history, cultural
studies, and anthropology, among others, as well as thinkers and texts that would not conventionally
be considered “political” according to dominant Western conceptions of politics. (‘Postcolonial
Political Theory’, Rachel Busbridge, Oxford Bibliographies online edition)

Postcolonialism has been criticized for being over-obsessed with the cultural domination of the
European colonizers and its resistance thereof, largely ignoring the significance of the political and
economic aspects of colonialism and the struggle for independence organized against it by the
colonized people. Postcolonialism is also criticized by the Marxists for overlooking the class
antagonisms embedded in the colonial domination and its resistance by the colonized societies.
Postcolonial theorists are accused of using texts that are too difficult to decipher by ordinary readers
because of their complex and highly technical concepts and language.

A brief overview of some of the key terms in postcolonial political theory:

Colonialism: The imperialist expansion of West Europe into the rest of the world during the last
four hundred years in which a dominant empire or center carried on a relationship of control and
influence over its margins or colonies. This relationship tended to extend to social, pedagogical,
economic, political, and broadly cultural exchanges often with a hierarchical European settler class
and local, educated elite class (comprador) forming layers between the European ‘mother’ nation
and the various indigenous peoples who were controlled. Such a system carried within itself inherent
notions of racial inferiority and exotic otherness.

Postcolonialism: Broadly a study of the effects of colonialism on cultures and societies. It is concerned
with both how Western nations conquered and controlled the ‘Third World’ cultures and how these
groups have since responded to and resisted those encroachments. Postcolonialism, as both a body
of theory and a study of political and cultural change, has gone and continues to go through three
broad stages:

1. an initial awareness of the social, psychological, and cultural inferiority enforced by being
in a colonized state
2. the struggle for ethnic, cultural, and political autonomy

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 3. a growing awareness of cultural overlap and hybridity

Ambivalence: The ambiguous way in which the colonizer and the colonized regard one another. The
colonizer often regards the colonized as both inferior yet exotically other, while the colonized
regards the colonizer as both enviable yet corrupt. In a context of hybridity, this often produces a
mixed sense of blessing and curse.

Alterity: It is the state of being other or different, the political, cultural, linguistic, or religious other.
The study of the ways in which one group makes themselves different from others.

Colonial education: The process by which a colonizing power assimilates either a subaltern native
elite or a larger population to its way of thinking and seeing the world.

Diaspora: The voluntary or enforced migration of peoples from their native homelands. Diaspora
literature is often concerned with questions of maintaining or altering identity, language, and culture
while in another culture or country.

Essentialism: The essence or ‘whatness’ of something. In the context of race, ethnicity, or culture,
essentialism suggests the practice of various groups deciding what is and isn’t a particular identity. As
a practice, essentialism tends to overlook differences within groups often to maintain the status quo
or obtain power. Essentialist claims can be used by a colonizing power but also by the colonized as
a way of resisting what is claimed about them.

Ethnicity: A fusion of traits that belong to a group, such as shared values, beliefs, norms, tastes,
behaviors, experiences, memories, and loyalties. Often deeply related to a person’s identity.

Exoticism: The process by which a cultural practice is made stimulating and exciting in its difference
from the colonizer’s normal perspective. Ironically, as the European groups started educating the
local, indigenous cultures, schoolchildren often began to see their native lifeways, plants, and animals
as exotic and the European counterparts as ‘normal’ or ‘typical’.

Hegemony: The power of the ruling class to convince other classes that their interests are the
interests of all, often not only through means of economic and political control but more subtly
through the control of education, media and culture.

Hybridity: New transcultural forms that arise from cross-cultural exchanges. Hybridity can be social,
political, linguistic, religious, etc. It is not necessarily a peaceful mixture, for it can be contentious
and disruptive in its experience. Note the two related definitions:

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Catalysis: the (specifically New World) experience of several ethnic groups interacting and mixing
with each other often in a contentious environment that gives way to new forms of identity and
experience.
Creolization: societies that arise from a mixture of ethnic and racial mixing to form a new material,
psychological, and spiritual self-definition.

Identity: The way in which an individual and/or group defines itself. Identity is important to self-
conceptualization, social customs, and national understanding. It often involves both essentialism
and othering.

Ideology: It is a system of values, beliefs, or ideas shared by some social group and often taken for
granted as natural or inherently true.

Language: In the context of colonialism and postcolonialism, language has often become a site for
both colonization and resistance. In particular, a return to the original indigenous language is often
advocated since the language was suppressed by colonizing forces. The use of European languages
is a much-debated issue among postcolonial authors. They may be of two types:

Abrogation: a refusal to use the language of the colonizer in a correct or standard way.
Appropriation: the process by which the language is made to ‘bear the burden’ of one’s own cultural
experience.

Magical realism: The adaptation of Western realist methods of literature in describing the imaginary
life of indigenous cultures who experience the mythical, magical, and supernatural in a decidedly
different fashion from Western ones. A weaving together elements we tend to associate with
European realism and elements we associate with the fabulous, where these two worlds undergo a
‘closeness or near merging’.

Mapping: The mapping of global space in the context of colonialism was as much prescriptive as it
was descriptive. Maps were used to assist in the process of aggression, and they were also used to
establish claims. Maps claim the boundaries of a nation, for example.

Metanarrative: It literally means grand narratives or master narratives. It is a large cultural story
that seeks to explain within its borders all the little, local narratives. A metanarrative claims to be
a big truth concerning the world and the way it works. Some charge that all metanarratives are
inherently oppressive because they decide whether other narratives are allowed or not.

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Mimicry: The means by which the colonized adapt the culture (language, education, clothing, etc.)
of the colonizer but always in the process of changing it in important ways. Such an approach
always contains it in the ambivalence of hybridity.

Nation/nation-state: An aggregation of people organized under a single government. National

interest is associated both with a struggle for independent ethnic and cultural identity, and ironically
an opposite belief in universal rights, often multicultural, with a basis in geo-economic interests.
Thus, the move for national independence is just as often associated with region as it is with
ethnicity or culture, and the two are often at odds when new nations are formed.

Orientalism: It is the process (from the late Eighteenth century to the present) by which ‘the Orient’
was constructed as an exotic other by European studies and culture. Orientalism is not so much a
true study of other cultures as it is broad Western generalization about Oriental, Islamic, and/or
Asian cultures that tends to erode and ignore their substantial differences.

Other: The social and/or psychological ways in which one group excludes or marginalizes another
group. By declaring someone ‘Other’, persons tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from or
opposite of another, and this carries over into the way they represent others, especially through
stereotypical images.

Race: The division and classification of human beings by physical and biological characteristics. Race
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often is used by various groups to either maintain power or to stress solidarity. In the 18 and 19
centuries, it was often used as a pretext by European colonial powers for slavery and/or the ‘white
man’s burden’.

Semiotics: A system of signs through which one knows what something is. Cultural semiotics often
provide the means by which a group defines itself or by which a colonializing power attempts to
control and assimilate another group.

Space/place: Space represents a geographic locale; one is empty in not being designated. Place, on
the other hand, is what happens when a space is made or owned. Place involves landscape, language,
environment, culture, etc.

Subaltern: The lower or colonized classes who have little access to their own means of expression
and are thus dependent upon the language and methods of the ruling class to express themselves.

Worlding: The process by which a person, family, culture, or people is brought into the dominant
Eurocentric/Western global society.

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