Postcolonial Essays

  • Postcolonial Discourse in Wide Sargasso Sea

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    Postcolonial Discourse in Wide Sargasso Sea In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë's legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean. The story is set just after the emancipation of the slaves, in that uneasy time when racial relations in the Caribbean were at their most strained. Antoinette (Rhys renames her

  • Hybridity and National Identity in Postcolonial Literature

    2599 Words  | 6 Pages

    Hybridity and National Identity in Postcolonial Literature Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which

  • The Colonies of Culture:The Postcolonial Self in Latin America and Africa

    2368 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Colonies of Culture:The Postcolonial Self in Latin America and Africa The colony is not only a possibility in the geographical; it is a mental dominance that can imperialize the entire self. Entire continents have be domineered, resources completely dried, and at colonialism’s usual worst, the mental devastation of the indigenous culture has left a people hollow. Indigenous culture is no longer that. In the globalized world, no culture is autonomous; culture cannot breathe without new ideas

  • Postcolonial Theory and Late Capitalist Criticism Aplied to The Night of the Living Dead Trilogy

    4077 Words  | 9 Pages

    Postcolonial Theory and Late Capitalist Criticism Aplied to The Night of the Living Dead Trilogy "Turn and Turn about; in these shadows from whence a new dawn will break, it is you who are the zombies." * Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to The Wretched of the Earth * It is fitting that Sartre uses the zombie as a metaphor for both the colonized and colonizer. He states in the preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth that European colonizers had relegated natives living in colonial states

  • Colonialism and Beyond

    2811 Words  | 6 Pages

    Colonialism and Beyond in Chinua Achebe's An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, No Longer at Ease, Things Fall Apart, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Emmanuel Nelson's Chinua Achebe, Postcolonial African Writers, Willene Taylor's A Search for Values in Things Fall Apart, Colin Turnbull's he Lonely African This course on colonial and post-colonial literature satisfies my cravings for thought and literature that falls outside of the mainstream of the Eurocentric view

  • Korean Comfort Women

    2592 Words  | 6 Pages

    ethnicity, and race. “Created through legalized prostitution based on patriarchy, colonialism, and imperialism, the system of comfort women clearly demonstrates that capitalism, sexism, and racism are linked and perpetuated both in the colonial and postcolonial eras” (Watanabe). Estimates as to how many comfort women there were range anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000, and it is believed that approximately 80% of them were Korean. Others came from the Philippi... ... middle of paper ... ...on and a decent

  • The Problem of Magwitch's return in Great Expectations

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    as a plot device; a place to deposit Magwitch when he is no longer required and a place for him to return from when needed again to further the plot. With the rise in postcolonial studies, however, Australia and Magwitch's experiences there have become the focal points for new readings of the novel. Thus it is through a postcolonial reading of Great Expectations that the issue of Magwitch's return can be addressed. As I have already pointed out, Dickens uses Australia to get rid of Magwitch in the

  • An Interview With Tsitsi Dangarembga

    7059 Words  | 15 Pages

    "Written when the author was twenty-five, Nervous Conditions put Dangarembga at the forefront of the younger generation of African writers producing literature in English today....Nervous Conditions highlights that which is often effaced in postcolonial African literature in English--the representation of young African girls and women as worthy subjects of literature....While the critical reception of this novel has focused mainly on the author's feminist agenda, in [this] interview...Dangarembga

  • Yamashita's Tropic of Orange

    2452 Words  | 5 Pages

    championed and mastered by Latin American authors (Marquez, Llosa, Fuentes), resonating internationally with the earlier experiments of Gogol, James, Kafka, Flaubert and the Weimar Republic, and now recycled as a counter-hegemonic global commodity in postcolonial contexts (Rushdie, Okri). What defines this writing, then, and how does it function? Why does Yamashita use this form to tell her story? For the purposes of this paper, I would like to adopt the synthesized definition editors Zamora and Faris

  • Binarism In The Postcolonial Theory

    1118 Words  | 3 Pages

    concept that should be neutral, but is not. For instance information, intrinsically is suppose to be neutral, however sides are taken to show how information is used to oppress people and a tool for resistance. Words like binarism in the field of postcolonial theory developed out to describe the writings of European explorers and their impact on influencing the way new generations of travellers and people at home understood the indigenous people living in Africa, India, Asia, and other parts

  • Critical Criticism Of Postcolonial Literature

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Postcolonial Literature In Postcolonial criticism, it draws attention to issues of cultural differences in literary texts. It is one of the critical approaches that are considered to focuses on specific issues. These specific issues include gender, class, and sexual orientation. Postcolonial critics reject the claims to universalism and seek to show its limitations. It examines the representation of other cultures in literature and it shows how such literature is often silent on matters concerned

  • Bhabha's Contribution to Postcolonial Theory

    2600 Words  | 6 Pages

    writer who is born and brought up in Nigeria, a colony of British Empire until 1960, postcolonial approach is one of the most appropriate critical methods to deal with her narratives. Besides, since she is focusing on women in the colonial and postcolonial setting trying to foreground their subjugation, utilizing ideas proposed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty as pioneers of postcolonial feminism are helpful in coming to the desired conclusion in this thesis. In addition

  • Postcolonialism And Post-Colonial Literature

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    tried to discuss the problems and difficulties they had during the period of colonization and effects of the period by producing a literature which is called postcolonial literature. Postcolonial literature is writing which has been “affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day” (Ashcroft et al, 2). Postcolonial literature seeks the richness and legitimacy of original cultures in an effort to restore pride in practices and traditions that were systematically degraded

  • Post-colonial Theory: Indian Literature

    1982 Words  | 4 Pages

    belonging. In Post-colonial writings the themes which are focused on are nationalism, self-identification to anti-imperialistic critique and postcolonial protest. Often protest writing has a political agenda of social change and expresses anger and disillusion at the postcolonial nation state. Nayar points out, “resistance literature in both the colony and the postcolonial nation include testimonial writings, prison narratives, revolutionary tracts and ‘insurgency’ writing. The rise and changes through technology

  • Subverting Power: The Lesson of Post-Colonial Literature

    2697 Words  | 6 Pages

    Body I) Essentialism as a philosophical basis of imperialism a. Essentialism as a philosophical stance b. Essentialism – the logic behind imperialism c. Feminist criticism of essentialism i. Beauvoir - , “one is not born, but becomes a woman”. II) Postcolonial rejection of essentialism a. Ali Alizadeh presenting the effects of essentialism on people who do not fit in b. Existence of people in between two categories undermines essentialism III) Orientalism as a cover for imperialism a. Orientalism - science

  • Magic realism as post-colonialist device in Midnight's Children

    2650 Words  | 6 Pages

    ideological, as in supplanting. It is the second implication which critics of the term have found contestable: if the inequities of colonial rule have not been erased, it is perhaps premature to proclaim the demise of colonialism. A country may be both postcolonial (in the sense of being formally independent) and neo-colonial (in the sense of remaining economically and/or culturally dependant) at the same time. (7) ... ... middle of paper ... ...Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. London:

  • Post-colonial Encounters in the Early 20th Century

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    the readers and the narrator. Noyes, in his poem, addresses two postcolonial themes of Christianity as a vehicle of colonization, and the fallacies of European philosophy. In this essay, I argue that the themes and structure that have been connoted in Alfred Noyes’ The Empire Builders are essential in constructing the notion of the hierarchy of difference. The hierarchy of difference helped create a colonial state and since postcolonial theory primarily analyzes the legacies of the colonial period

  • Comparing the Black Album and Rushdie's The Satanic Verses

    2541 Words  | 6 Pages

    Shahid becomes a central question posed as Shahid undergoes translation from his Pakistani ancestry to his desired identity as a Briton. Shahid's translation parallels the translations of the former Asian colonies of Britain into their new postcolonial identities. Unfortunately for Shahid, the struggle over The Satanic Verses catches him as he is translating himself, presenting him with a series of tough choices. The quest for identity in Indo-English writing has emerged as a recurrent

  • The Postcolonial Expression Of The African Language By Ngugi

    2435 Words  | 5 Pages

    This stands good for Ngugi who seems to believe in the saying that pen is mightier than the sword in the neo-colonial setup. To give expression to colonized experience, postcolonial writers sought to undercut thematically and formally the discourses which supported the myths of power, the race classifications, and the imagery of subordination in the era of colonization. Ngugi takes great pain in showing how ordinary people

  • The Perforated Sheet by Salman Rushdie

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    wipe them away. It was “at that moment/he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man... ... middle of paper ... ...sh this. After reading “The Perforated Sheet” readers should be able to understand that in any instance of pre and postcolonial history there will always be three generations involved. The eldest generation will be the unhappiest due to the subjugation of their traditions and culture by the colonizers themselves. The second generation is the middle one, who will have accepted