Postcolonial Theories

Semester 3
Module III: 


Postcolonial Criticism

The analysis of racism and ethnocentrism in texts from the past may have relevance to the ways we live our lives today.  Textual analysis of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality can serve as a starting point for positive forms of social change in the future. 

 
Prescribed Essay
Edward W. Said. “Introduction”. Orientalism. UK: Penguin. 1900. Pp.1-28.

Postcolonial Theory

Postcolonialism attempts to understand the political, social, cultural and psychological operations of the colonialist and anticolonialist ideologies. Postcolonial theory analyses the ways in which a text reinforces or resists colonialism’s oppressive ideology.

 
I. Schools of Postcolonial Thought

·         Phase I – Britain, America, Canada, Australia

·         Phase II – India, Africa, Latin America

·         Post Orientalist Historiography

·         Subaltern Studies

·         Postcolonial Feminist Thought

II. MajorConcepts

• Aboriginal/Indigenous People
• Abrogation
• Appropriation
• Authentic/Authenticity
• Binarism
• Centre/Margin
• Periphery
• Civilized/ Barbaric
• Decolonization
• Diaspora
• Discourse
• Dislocation
• Essentialism
• Euro-centrism
• Exotic/Exoticism
• Hegemony
• Hybridity
• Imperialism
• Liminality
• Marginality
• Mimicry
• Miscegenation
• Modernity
• Nation/Nationalism
• Native/ Nativism
• Orality
• Orientalism
• Orient/ Occident
• Other/ Otherness
• Neo-Orientalism
• Savage/Civilized
• Subject
• Surveillance
• Third World
• Fourth World

III. Major Figures

·         Albert Memmi

·         Leopold Sedar Senghor

·         Mohandas K. Gandhi

·         Aime Cesaire

·         Edward Said

·         Homi Bhabha

·         Gayathri Spivak

·         Benita Parry

·         Benedict Anderson

·         Robert Young

·         Leela Gandhi

·         Simon During

·         Gayathri Vishwanathan

·         Ashish Nandy

·         Talal Azad

·         Aamir Amin

·         Arif Dirlik

·         Ngugi wa Thiong’o

·         Gyan Prakash

·         Ranajit Guha

·         Partha Chatterjee

·         David Arnold

·         Gyanendra Pandey

·         Dipesh Chakrabarthy

·         bell hooks

·         Sara Suleri

·         Sandra Harding

·         Trinh- T. Minh Ha

·         Ella Shohat

·         Kumkum Sangari

IV. Major Works

·         Aime Cesaire – Discourse on Colonialism

·         Frantz Fanon- Black Skin White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth

·          Albert Memmi- The Colonizer and the Colonized

·         Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind
Edward Siad- Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism

·         Homi Bhabha- Location of Culture, Nation and Narration

·         Leela Gandhi- Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, Affective Communities

·         Robert Young- Postcolonialism: A Historical Introduction

·         Gayatri Spivak- Can the Subaltern Speak

·         Elleke Boehmer- Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures
Ania Loomba - Colonialism/ Postcolonialism 

V. Websites

 VI. Sample Reading

suite101.com/…/caliban-and-post-colonialism-in-shakespeares-the-tempest-a261516