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international relations part
Scope and concerns of postcolonial literature
international relations part
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On Saturday morning, when I was assembling my thoughts to write another paper for my International relations (IR) class, I felt ambivalent, wary and hesitant. Surprisingly, for a brief moment, I was overwhelmed with the sensation of emancipation. As I consciously began to excavate the surface of my uneasiness, I came across fear. Fear of rejection, of failing, of not confining to (Western) imperial standards of academic writing and scholarship. Standards and practices that have been taught, or should I say imposed over me, for so many years. This fear permanently resides in the collective memory of the ‘Other,’ the backward, the illiterate, the savage, the barbarian, the non-Western, and the non-modern. This is the fear what Kumarakulasingam felt at school every day, a fear of “imminent assault” if we dare go against the ‘norms’ (Inayatullah, 2011; 34). What is worse, this fear is not merely confined to the realm of knowledge; it encompasses and actively shapes our individual and collective lives, our imaginations, our bodies, our histories, our borders, our modern day state and its infrastructure, our culture, and even our civilizations. As I read the paper prompt again, I felt a cool refreshing breeze across my face and adrenaline rush in my veins. A breeze, only a prisoner can feel when he/she steps out of the dense, high walls of prison for the very first time. A rush of blood that heralds beginning of a new life. A new life for self and ‘other’. The conception of writing an “Alternative IR” has unleashed me –for a brief moment- from the constraints of ‘standard’ norms and practices. I wish to employ this brief moment of freedom in ‘writing’ a response that would exhibit a methodological, ontological, and epistemological in... ... middle of paper ... ...nd justice,” anti-colonial IR,” and, “politics of postcolonial engagement” entails perpetual struggle against Western imperial project at every front. Struggle against knowledge production, against identity creation, against globalization, and against global injustice. It is, therefore, time to halt ‘free fall,’ open our eyes and realize that we are far from our project. We are still confined in western ways of knowledge production and practices. Despite my best effort to free myself from imperial standards, and norms, I end up writing a Western-styled piece. Maybe, because I do not have any concrete alternative to look to and take guidance from. What we need is our own alternatives. Our own modes of knowledge production, identities, standards and practices that are more humane, sensitive and relevant to us. Works Cited Inyatullah, N. Post colonial IR.
In “What Do We Deserve?”, Arora takes a look at political philosophies and asks an important question, “How much of my good life do I really deserve?.” He brings up that argument that the contest of life is “rigged from the start” (Arora). How do one fix the contest so it's fair for everyone? Society can start by leveling the playing field to give everyone an equal chance, eliminating the idea of winner vs. loser, and encouraging and rewarding hard work and natural talents. Once the system is repaired, then we will see that those who make the effort and take advantage of their own gifts will succeed and be truly deserving of their earnings.
Oppression is experienced by various social classes (York University, 2016, p. 1). Social workers examine the element of power and distribution amongst policy makers of the Indian Act, who were motivated by acts of racism. These were powerful white males, known as the dominant group. According to Marx’s Conflict theory, society is made up of class divisions, in which there is a hegemonic system, in which power is given to the dominant class (Tepperman and Albanese, 2015, p. 66). An exert from the lives of Aboriginal children today, explain that they were vulnerable, as they were “poor in a rich country and part of it was knowing that white was more than just a colour” (Sibblis, 2016). Cultural hegemony plays a role in examining the widened gap between these two cultures, as the White dominant race acts as the superior, making the Aboriginals inferior. This helps to understand the “values and ideologies that construct social problems [in which they also] construct responses” (York University, 2016, p. 1) In Thomas King’s lecture, he states that the truth “is all we are, it’s turtles all the way down” (King, 2014). We are carrying the world on stories, developing social construction of realities. One will have their own interpretation of values and ideologies in these stories, however many pieces will be left out. One must break those stories down, and engage in self-reflection, nonjudgmental inquiry and
...taken the form of universalization of those same structures across the world through reforming measures or through discourses in the Muslim world, thus creating conflicts as noted by Majid. The main weapon of this power relationship is observing and differentiating between good and bad, thus ingraining binary oppositions with the western values at the superior end. Thus, the western hegemony is like a beauty myth which is an unattainable western standard which is not only undesirable but harmful for the non-west. Still, they are coerced to adopt this standard due to a constant gaze and pressure from the West. Therefore, there is a need to revert this gaze and dismantle the western hegemony and power structures through the proliferation of ideas; ideas that take root not merely from the power elite or existing structures but stem from individual and provincial needs.
Post-colonialism expresses the opposite idea of colonialism. Hence, post-colonialism literature is a consequence of colonialism. Post-colonialism continues to be a process of hostility and reform. One scholar suggested that although most countries have gained independence from their colonizers, they are still indirectly subjected in one way or another to the forms of neo-colonial domination. (Ashcroft et al.
In different ways, the novel’s narrated the construction of diasporic sensibility subjects effects a evaluation of the postcolonial nation-state without subscribing to a unified, one-world vision of global belonging.
Beginning with ethnohistory, which includes anthropology, the beginnings of the different studies of mankind are introduced, when the book then jumps to a postcolonial perspective the views of the future are pointed to the mistakes of the past. Each theory has a purpose to explaining the views and studies of different historians around the world. This essay will compare my views on ethnohistory combined with anthropology versus the views of postcolonial history.
“The Third Space of enunciation” disrupts the consistency between the meaning and the reference, “makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process,” which consequently leads to the challenge of “our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past.” As a result, although the third space is “unrepresentable in itself,” it, in Bhabha’s words, “constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew.” This ability of enunciation, crossing the limit of time, lays a foundation for the postcolonial writing and reading to overthrow the authority of the colonial discourse and articulate for self. In many postcolonial writings, “it is the problem of how, in signifying the present, something comes to be repeated, relocated and translated in the name of tradition, in the guise of a pastness that is not necessarily a faithful sign of historical memory but a strategy of representing authority in terms of the artifice of archaic” (Bhabha 1994, 35). Through deconstructing, rereading, and modifying traditions from their own
Post-colonialism is a discourse draped in history. In one point in time or another, European colonialism dominated most non-European lands since the end of the Renaissance. Naturally, colonialists depicted the cultures of non-Europeans incorrectly and inferior. Traditionally, the canon has misappropriated and misrepresented these cultures, but also the Western academia has yet to teach us the valuable and basic lessons that allow true representations to develop. Partly in response, Post-colonialism arose. Though this term is a broad one, Post-colonialists generally agree on certain key principles. They understand that colonialism exploits the dominated people or country in one way or another, evoking inequalities. Examples of past inequalities include “genocide, economic exploitation, cultural decimation and political exclusion…” (Loomba 9-10). They abhor traditional colonialism but also believe that every people, through the context of their own cultures, have something to contribute to our understanding of human nature (Loomba 1-20). This is the theme that Lewis prescribes in his, self described, “satirical fantasy”, Out of the Silent Planet (Of Other 77).
Postcolonial criticism, as suggested in the textbook, “has developed because of the dramatic shrinking of the world and the increasing multicultural cast of our own country” (1603). As described by Andrea Smith in his book “From Heteropatriarchy and the Three pillars of White Supremacy”, “The
The cornerstone that anti-colonialism was built upon in the years after World War II is the general consensus among the world that each man and woman is entitled to a basic level of freedom to live their lives that is not unique to any one nation. This ideal is solidified in the preamble of
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 66-111.
“The subaltern studies is certainly related to south Asia history, as Gramsci was related to Italy, its theoretical position, of studying how the continuity of supposedly pre-political insurgency brings culture to crisis and confronts power would make post-colonial studies more conventionally political. One major difference is that the disciplinary connection of post-colonial studies is to literary criticism rather than history and the social science. Subaltern studies has not pursed oral history as unmediated narrative, and its investigation and testimony have generally confined themselves to legal
Aschcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. 'The Post-Colonial Studies Reader'. London; Routledge, 1995.
Mohanty is drawing upon theoretical perspectives of postmodernism to understand difference and by that uncover essentialist and Universalist interpretations (Uduyagiri 1995:159). In particular she is drawing upon approaches familiar to Edward Said’s Orientalism and Focault’s approach to discourse, power and knowledge. Foucault’s theories are especially useful in a postmodernist argument since he acknowledge that there are several structures of power, and that the there is a diversity of localized resistances ( Udayagiri 1995: 161). Mohanty uses Foucault’s conception of power to uncover Universalist categories and how feminist writers define power as a binary structure – to be in possession of power versus being powerless (Mohanty 1991:71). This limited way of theorizing power fails to recognize counteroffensives and the varied forms of power. Mohanty uses Said’s Orientalism to show how the way Western cultural perceptions of the Orient “became a means of controlling the regio...
The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present paper is an attempt to study how Salman Rushdie, being himself a writer of diasporic consciousness, sometimes perceives India and its people as orientalist stereotypes and presents them in a derogatory manner.