Postcolonialism PDF - University of Algiers

University of Algiers 2/ Department of English Module: Literary Critical Trends/ Semester: 3/ Academic year: 2024/ 2025 Level: Master 2/ Option: Literature and Civilization Lecturer: Ms. Zenadji Lesson 6: Postcolonialism Course Outline: I. Background: 1. Colonialism: 19th- 20th Century...

University of Algiers 2/ Department of English Module: Literary Critical Trends/ Semester: 3/ Academic year: 2024/ 2025 Level: Master 2/ Option: Literature and Civilization Lecturer: Ms. Zenadji Lesson 6: Postcolonialism Course Outline: I. Background: 1. Colonialism: 19th- 20th Century 2. Postcolonialism: mid 20th Century II. Major Figures: 1. Homi Bhabha 2. Frantz Fanon 3. Edward Said III. Major Works: 1. The Wretched of the Earth 1962 by F. Fanon 2. Orientalism 1978 by E. Said 3. The Location of Culture 1994 by H. Bhabha IV. Major Concepts: 1. Cultural Hybridity 2. Othering: a. Exotic Other b. Demonic Other 3. Double Consciousness 4. Orientalism V. Postcolonial Literature : 1. Language : a. Abrogation b. Appropriation 2. Resistance Strategies : a. Mimicry b. Nativism/ Re-creation  VI. Postcolonialism and Literary Criticism Background and Definition of Postcolonialism: Colonialism: is the imperialist expansion of Europe into the rest of the world during the last four hundred years in which a dominant emporium 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 culturally exchanges often with a hierarchical European settler class and local, educated elite class forming layers between the European "mother" nation and the various indigenous peoples who were controlled. Postcolonialism: consists of a set of theories in philosophy and various approaches to literary analysis that are concerned with literature written in English in countries that were or still are colonies of other countries. For the most part, postcolonial studies excludes literature that represents either British or American viewpoints and concentrates on writings from colonized or formerly colonized cultures in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, South America, and other places that were once dominated by, but remained outside of, the white, male, European cultural, political, and philosophical tradition. Broadly, Postcolonialism is the study of the effects of colonialism on cultures and societies. It is concerned with both how European nations conquered and controlled "Third World" cultures and how these groups have since responded to and resisted those encroachments. Post-colonialism, as both a body of theory and a study of political and cultural change, has gone and continues to go through three broad stages: ❖ An initial awareness of the social, psychological, and cultural inferiority enforced by being in a colonized state. ❖ The struggle for ethnic, cultural, and political autonomy. ❖ A growing awareness of cultural overlap and hybridity. Postcolonial Concepts: ❖ Cultural Hybridity: is the quality of cultures that have characteristics of both the colonizers and the colonized, i.e. it refers to the integration of cultural signs and practices from the colonizing and colonized cultures. For instance, Algeria being a formerly colonized country is composed of a hybrid society wherein we notice a mixture of the indigenous culture and the colonizer’s (French) in many different aspects like the linguistic one, i.e. the Algerian dialect consists of hybrid words that are a fusion of Arabic and French such as: tabla (tawila (Arabic)+ table (French). ❖ Othering: is the set of 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. In other words, it is the assumption that those who are different from oneself are inferior. Namely, the ruling power that is the colonizer represents the One/ the Center and the ruled or the subordinate that is the colonized represents the inferior Other. The latter can either be considered Demonic, i.e. backward, savage, evil like the Africans described in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; or considered as Exotic, i.e. in possession of an inherent dignity and beauty because of their natural state of being like in Mc Caughrean’s description of Arabs in Arabian Nights. ❖ Double Consciousness: is the sense of being part of both colonized and colonizing cultures. The term originally coined by WEB du Bois, referred to the psychological challenge of "always looking at one's self through the eyes" of a racist white society, as well as reconciling an African heritage with an upbringing in a European-dominated society. Double Consciousness has since been applied to numerous situations of social inequality, notably women living in patriarchal societies. For instance, in Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk 1903, a black American with an African background finds it difficult to locate himself and find his true identity as either an African or an American and hence bearing the double denomination. ❖ Orientalism: is the attempt to produce a positive national self-definition for Western nations by contrast with Eastern nations. In what is widely accepted as the seminal work of postcolonial thought, Orientalism (1978), Edward Said argues that beyond the physical and economic aspects of colonialism, there was another aspect present: the defining of the "Other." The Other, Said contends, is the result of a binary worldview, in which the world was divided into an us and-them structure. Said uses the term Orientalism to describe the process of "Othering" of the Eastern colonies by the Western metropole: the European colonizers' home nation. Orientalism is the European definition of all things related to the colonies as wild, emotional, backward, powerless, and fundamentally different from the (purported) Occidental qualities of civilized behavior, rational thought, modernism, and (justifiably) powerful. Through a conscious production of knowledge, the West defined the East as inferior and, in doing so, also defined itself as superior. Postcolonial Literature: covers a very wide range of writings from countries that were once colonies or dependencies of the European power. Referred to as “third world literature” by Marxist critics and “Commonwealth literature” by others—terms many contemporary critics think pejorative—postcolonial theorists investigate what happens when two cultures clash and one of them, with its accessory ideology, empowers and deems itself superior to the other. Taking shape in the late 1970s and early 1980s, numerous fiction writers began publishing works in the decades immediately following World War II. One of the most significant postcolonial novels to emerge in this period was Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). This novel now graces many Anglophone fiction course syllabi, which isn’t a surprise given its enormous popularity and importance when it first was published. Language: In the context of colonialism and post-colonialism, 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. The latter use language as a mighty means to denounce the mischief of the colonizer through: ❖ Abrogation: a refusal to use the language of the colonizer in a correct or standard way. For instance, authors such as Arundhati Roy deliberately play with English, remolding it to reflect the rhythms and syntax of indigenous languages, and inventing new words and styles to demonstrate mastery of a language that was, in a sense, forced upon.them. Or ❖ Appropriation: "the process by which the language is made to 'bear the burden' of one's own cultural experience, that is using the colonizer’s language in a proper way inducing that it has now become their own weapon to use against them ( colonizers) like Chinua Achebe’s use of English against the British colonizer in his Things Fall Apart. Resistance Strategies: ❖ Mimicry: Mimicry in colonial and postcolonial literature is most commonly seen when members of a colonized society (Indians or Africans) imitate the language, dress, politics, or cultural attitude of their colonizers (the British or the French). Under colonialism and in the context of immigration, mimicry is seen as an opportunistic pattern of behavior: one copies the person in power; because one hopes to have access to that same power oneself. Presumably, while copying the master, one has to intentionally suppress one’s own cultural identity, though in some cases immigrants and colonial subjects are left so confused by their cultural encounter with a dominant foreign culture that there may not be a clear preexisting identity to suppress. "Mimicry is, then, the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of  reform, regulation and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an imminent threat to both 'normalized' knowledges and disciplinary powers. "(Bhabha "Of Mimicry and Man" p. 86) ❖ Nativism: Nativism in postcolonial theory comprises the discourse of the indigenous communities of a given state. It always involves some form of written or verbal expression (or both) through metaphor, signs, symbols and other tropes in communication. Despite creative and original contributions in postcolonial writing most scholars make cursory references to the nature and characteristics of nativism. Authors such as Arundhati Roy rework European art-forms like the novel to reflect indigenous modes of invention and creation. They reshape imported colonial art-forms to incorporate the style, structure, and themes of indigenous modes of creative expression, such as oral poetry and dramatic performances. Postcolonialism and Literary Criticism: Like many schools of criticism, postcolonialism uses a variety of approaches to textual analysis. Deconstruction, feminism, Marxism, reader-oriented criticism, African American criticism, and cultural studies employ postcolonial theories in their critical methodologies. Some critics, however, identify two major approaches or “strains” of postcolonial criticism: postcolonial criticism and postcolonial theory. Those who engage in postcolonial criticism investigate ways in which texts bear the traces of colonialism’s ideology and interpret such texts as challenging or promoting the colonizer’s purposes and hegemony. More frequently than not, those who engage in this type of criticism analyze canonical texts from colonizing countries. Postcolonial theory, on the other hand, moves beyond the bounds of traditional literary studies and investigates social, political, and economic concerns of the colonized and the colonizer. No matter which methodology a postcolonial critic may choose, it matters greatly whether or not the theorist/critic has been a colonial subject. Those who have been the subjects of colonization ask themselves a somewhat different set of questions than those postcolonialists who have not. Post-colonial theory deals with the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries, or literature written in colonizing countries which deals with colonization or colonized peoples. It focuses particularly on: 1. The way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people. 2. How literature by colonized peoples attempts to articulate their identity and  reclaim their past in the face of that past's inevitable otherness Questions to Ask when Analyzing a Text from a Postcolonial Perspective: Is the work pro or anti- colonialist? Does the text reinforce or resist colonialist ideology? What tools do colonizers use to oppress the colonized? Is the author using the language of the colonizer? What characters represent the colonizer and what others represent the colonized? What psychological aftermaths/trauma are the colonized characters left with? Does the author/work suggest a solution to overcome that trauma? Works Cited: Books: Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge Classics, 2004. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Articles: Staszak, Jean Francois. Other/Otherness. Elsevier: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2008. Websites: https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/geo/files/3214/4464/7634/OtherOtherness.pdf https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl210jj/postcolonial.htm https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/a-brief-history-of-postcolonial-literature-part-i https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100339307 http://english.fju.edu.tw/lctd/asp/theory/theories/7/concept_2.htm https://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2009/05/mimicry-and-hybridity-in-plain-english.html https://www.longdom.org/open-access/on-nativism-and-postcolonial-society-2375- 4435-1000184.pdf