Subverting Power: The Lesson of Post-Colonial Literature
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Outline
A. Introduction
Thesis: Adgar and Alizdeh, as representatives of post-colonial literature, provide evidence that otherness, essentialism and orientalism are notions that explain the issues that arise in the contemporary world as a result of imperial tendencies on the part of Western societies, and their writing suggests a peculiar form of struggle which is rooted in subversion and internal critique of systems of domination.
B. 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 and rationality served as a cover to misrepresent the Orient (Said 2000)
b. Insertion of value judgments into the seemingly neutral discourse
c. Said (2000) – the West has oversimplified and misrepresented Islam and the Orient
IV) Postcolonial critique of rationality as a means of exclusion
a. Seemingly neutral bureaucratic terms function as a means of labeling and exclusion
i. Alizadeh lists connotations that go with the tern “Muslim Immigrant”
V) The practice of historiography as a form of Orientalism
a. Said’s argument that “world history” operates the same way as “orientalism”
b. Historians excluding data that did not fit the dominant narrative
c. Agard shows how many events were simply excluded fr...
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...well as immigrants and other oppressed classes in their own societies. Adgar’s approach of subverting the dominant historical narrative and Alizadeh’s disturbance of essentialism and incitement of empathy might be the only ways of opposing power and domination in post-colonial globalized world.
References
Beauvoir, S. d., Borde, C., & Chevallier, S. (2010). The second sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Fanon, F., & Philcox, R. (2004). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press.
Gunew, S. M. (1994). Framing marginality: multicultural literary studies. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.
Lévinas, E., & Poller, N. (2003). Humanism of the other. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2008). The Communist manifesto. London: Pluto.
Said, E. W. (2000). Reflections on exile and other essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Orientalism is the way that the Middle East is depicted by its’ friendly acquaintances over in the West. In other terms, it is a “racist discourse which constructs the orient for Western aggrandizement.” The way that the Afghans are depicted in the film alongside Rambo makes the audience sympathize with them. The little boy also looks up to Rambo. He looks up to him a masculine father-figure. Using th...
Orientalism, which became famous as a term after Edward Said’s book written in 1978, explains a power relation between the Orient and the Occident inspiring from the Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge and
What do you know about imperialism? Imperialism can be defined as a strategy for outspreading a country 's power and effect through diplomacy. Many people know it as a force to spread ideas or gain power. This is consequently how the West was named as mother nations. When studying this topic many focus on the West, including Europe and North America. When discussing Imperialism it is important to discuss how it is justified, how the West engaged in it, and the advantages and disadvantages.
De Beauvoir Simone. “The second sex” Ch.1. 2009. Science Fiction Stories and Contexts. Ed. Stephen A. Scipione and Marisa Feinstein. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, n.d. 119-34. Print.
Irigaray, Luce. “That Sex Which is Not One.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 1467-1471.
Chinua Achebe was an influential Nigerian author during the 1900’s who was credited with his three essays which have been fused together into the book “Home and Exile”. In his stories he discusses things such as his own Igbo people, the problems with colonialization, the strength that stories can have and many more topics. A big part of his essays are on his thoughts of colonialism, the impact it has had on his home of Nigeria, and how stories written by others either helped justify colonialism or rejected it. Chinua argues that stories have their own power to fight, and while stories themselves do not have the ability to directly fight colonialism; they do, however with their power of words, stories can motivate and encourage people to stand up against colonialism. In proving this thesis to be a true statement, I will be providing evidence of the how, why and the extent to which stories can fight colonialism.
Bibliography w/4 sources Cry , the Beloved Country by Alan Paton is a perfect example of post-colonial literature. South Africa is a colonized country, which is, in many ways, still living under oppression. Though no longer living under apartheid, the indigenous Africans are treated as a minority, as they were when Paton wrote the book. This novel provides the political view of the author in both subtle and evident ways. Looking at the skeleton of the novel, it is extremely evident that relationship of the colonized vs. colonizers, in this case the blacks vs. the whites, rules the plot. Every character’s race is provided and has association with his/her place in life. A black man kills a white man, therefore that black man must die. A black umfundisi lives in a valley of desolation, while a white farmer dwells above on a rich plot of land. White men are even taken to court for the simple gesture of giving a black man a ride. This is not a subtle point, the reader is immediately stricken by the diversities in the lives of the South Africans.
To answer the question posed it necessary to first consider the development of, and what constitutes the West. Once this is achieved, we are than able to discuss occidentalism. However, the concept of orientalism, and what constitutes the orient, will first be considered as, arguably, orientalism provoked occidentalism. Thereafter, the four key features of occidentalism, identified by Buruma and Margalit (2004) will be discussed. Contemporary notions of ociddentalism, more specifically Islamic extremism will also be studied; of must importance here is if, or how, Buruma’s and Margalit’s (2004) theory of occidentalism aids our understanding of the perspective of those in resistance to the west.
Orientalism as termed by Edward Said is meant to create awareness of a constellation of assumptions that are flawed and underlying Western attitudes towards the Muslim societies. Evidence from his 1978 book “Orientalism”, states that the culture has been of influence and marred with controversy in post colonial studies and other fields of study. Moreover, the scholarship is surrounded by somehow persistent and otherwise subtle prejudice of Eurocentric nature, which is against Islam religion and culture (Windschuttle, 1999). In his book, Said illustrates through arguments, that the long tradition in existence containing romanticized images of Islamic stronghold regions i.e. Middle East, and the Western culture have for a long time served as implicit justifications for the European and American Imperial ambitions. In light of this, Said denounced the practice of influential Arabs who contributed to the internalization of Arabic culture ideas by US and British orientalists. Thus, his hypothesis that Western scholarship on Muslim was historically flawed and essentially continues to misrepresent the reality of Muslim people. In lieu to this, Said quotes that, “So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Therefore, very few details such as human density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered the awareness of even the people whose profession revolve around reporting of the Arab world. Due to this, we have instead a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression” (Said, 1980).
Said, Edward. ?Orientalism.? Literary Theory: An Anthology. Edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Inc. 1998.
When in 1978 Edward W. Said published his book Orientalism, it presented a turning point in post-colonial criticism. He introduced the term Orientalism, and talked about 2 of its aspects: the way the West sees the Orient and the way the West controls the Orient. Said gave three definitions of Orientalism, and it is through these definitions that I will try to demonstrate how A Passage to India by E. M. Forster is an Orientalist text. First, Said defined Orientalism as an academic discipline, which flourished in 18th and 19th century.
In addition, Orientalism also explained in the book “Orientalism” written by Edward Said, a Palestinian post-colonialism scholar. In this book Edward Said explain about history and culture of Asia, Africa, and Middle East, also he explained Orientalism in this book more briefly. Said believe that orientalism has an explicit and implicit sides. Said wrote that connotatively, Orientalism is a tool for the west to get a political influences in the east which means, “It connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth-century and early- twentieth-century European colonialism.”(Said, 2). Which is the whole point of the book “Orientalism”. Moreover, Said also wrote “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.’ Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, n...
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.