Postcolonialism Essays

  • Postcolonialism

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    Postcolonialism is a critical approach in literary studies that deals with the experience of “exclusion, denigration, and resistance under colonial control” (Waugh 340). It concerns itself with the reaction that is incited due to colonialism, which is the taking over and expansion of colonies by people from another colony. In essence, postcolonialism deals with the ways race, identity, culture, and ethnicity are represented after an area has been colonized. Postcolonialism pays particular attention

  • Difference Between Colonialism And Postcolonialism

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    and its concepts, mainly referring to ideas of Homi K Bhaba one of the leading postcolonial theorists whom has a great influence to the field of studies itself and its application to Architectural studies. To start with understanding the term Postcolonialism it might be helpful to look at the explanations given to the words Post Colonial: “Occurring or existing after the end of colonial rule” and Colonize: “Send settlers to (a place)and establish political control over it” at Oxford dictionary. (Oxford

  • Postcolonialism in Ernest Hemingway's Indian Camp

    1721 Words  | 4 Pages

    Michigan woods similar to the one in his story (244). Because of these obvious biographical parallels, Hemingway has an understanding that enables him to write in a postcolonial fashion. Postcolonialism originated in 1970. It “piggy backed” on the already existent study of African American literature. Postcolonialism quickly progressed and now encompasses literature from any culture that has been oppressed or colonized. Postcolonialist critics attempt to view the limited views and biases of colonialized

  • ‘Who am I when I am transported?’ Postcolonialism and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs

    1424 Words  | 3 Pages

    ‘Who am I when I am transported?’ Postcolonialism and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs In Decolonising Fictions, theorists Diana Brydon and Helen Tiffin claim that postcolonial writers create texts that ‘write back’ against imperial fictions and question the values once taken for granted by the once dominant Anglocentric discourse of the imperial epicentre. In Jack Maggs the process of ‘writing back’ is well illustrated. As in Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea , the colonial ‘other’ character from a canonised

  • Postcolonialism And Colonialism

    1777 Words  | 4 Pages

    Colonialism describes the domination of one nation over another nation of lesser means. Postcolonialism explores what happens to the substandard nation after the parent, dominating nation leaves. In relation to the definition of colonialism/postcolonialism, common aspects of colonialism/postcolonialism include: racial and cultural inequality between ruling and subject people, what’s left behind when the parent state leaves, the occupiers, move out, and exploitation of the subject people. The stories

  • Violence In Dune

    881 Words  | 2 Pages

    sensibility, which comprehends the risks tied to nationalism and religious violance, which are usually violent incidents which bring about what was being fought against in the first place, even if this is not clear from the start. In this regard, postcolonialism surpasses the initial step of national resistance, as it understands the first step is usually along the lines of a conservative, historic, conformist and violent behavior. In Children of Dune, Stilgar reminisces about simpler times when the Messiah

  • Postcolonism And Post Colonialism

    1911 Words  | 4 Pages

    Colonies obtained sovereignty and became officially regarded as independent states. Thus, after each state gained independence they were transferred to the post-colonial era, when the countries were to rule and develop themselves. However, postcolonialism itself is a problematic concept which varies in its definitions and has its limits when described by one or the other author, as most of them do not clearly refer to a specific context or period of colonisation. On top of that, there are problems

  • Analysis Of The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    Gayatri Spivak, (born Feb. 24, 1942, Calcutta, India), Spivak is a literary critic and theorist. She sometimes regarded as the “Third-World Woman”. She is best known for the article, (Can the Subaltern Speak?). It is considered a founding text of postcolonialism. She is also known for her translation of Jacques Derrida‘s Of Grammatology‟. This translation brought her to prominence. After this she carried out a series of historical studies and literary critiques of imperialism and feminism. Her Areas

  • Post-Colonial Criticism: Pixley, Carvalho And Kim

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the excerpts from Pixley, Carvalho and Kim, the basis of both liberation theology/liberation criticism and post-colonial criticism stem from their focus on the marginalized, whether that be natives or “The Other” and the interplay between these two criticism can be observed through their opposition to the dominant culture, the necessity of educating the marginalized and giving them a voice, and their analysis of the text through hermeneutics and its application in each criticism. Both Liberation

  • Midnight's Children Postmodernism

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rushdie, Postmodernism & Postcolonialism Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, published in 1980, was perhaps the seminal text in conceiving opinions as to interplay of post-modern and post-colonial theory. The title of the novel refers to the birth of Saleem Sinai, the novel’s principal narrator, who is born at midnight August 15th 1947, the precise date of Indian independence. From this remarkable coincidence we are immediately drawn to the conclusion that the novel’s concerns are of the new India

  • Hybridity and National Identity in Postcolonial Literature

    2599 Words  | 6 Pages

    understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process. Postcolonialism is the continual shedding of the old skin of Western thought and discourse and the emergence of new self-awareness, critique, and celebration. With this self-awareness comes self-expression. But how should the i... ... middle of paper ...

  • Magic Realism: A Problem

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    Problem "Magic Realism" is a term used by critics to describe a mingling of the mundane with the fantastic. This may seem a straightforward enough approach unless one happens to be a student of postcolonial studies - or at least, a student of postcolonialism should smell a rat. A brief history of the term is required for us to see why the term should be deemed problematical. In 1925 Franz Roh, a German art critic, used the term to describe a new post-expressionistic form that was emerging. Essentially

  • Bhabha's Contribution to Postcolonial Theory

    2600 Words  | 6 Pages

    Colonialism is and has been a reality during previous centuries. As a political and economical reality it entailed significant consequences in the colonized country's politics, geographical maps, and people's lives, fates and temperaments. As the consequences are hard to ignore the writers of the formerly colonized countries never forgot to write about it and their people's lives before, during and after their country's colonization. As Emecheta is one of these writer who is born and brought up

  • Buchi Emecheta and African Traditional Society

    1903 Words  | 4 Pages

    Buchi Emecheta’s literary terrain is the domestic experience of the female characters, and the way in which these characters try to turn the table against the second-class and slavish status to which they are subjected either by their husbands or the male-oriented traditions. Reading Buchi Emecheta informs us of the ways fiction, especially women’s writing, plays a role in constructing a world in which women can live complete lives; a world that may provide women with opportunities for freedom, creativity

  • Little Bee Postcolonialism

    1599 Words  | 4 Pages

    The difference between black and white is far more than just two colors on different ends of the spectrum of life. In Chris Cleave’s novel Little Bee, the theory of Postcolonialism between the two races, black and white, is especially present. Throughout this gripping story of rebellion and acceptance, there is a clear mark between the two worlds that each narrator perceives. Sarah is a young mother and widow who is the editor of a popular British gossip magazine. The other narrator is a teenage

  • Colonialism in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing

    2900 Words  | 6 Pages

    Colonialism in Margaret Atwood's 'Surfacing' Margaret Atwood's novel 'Surfacing' demonstrates the complex question of identity for an English-speaking Canadian female. Identity, for the protagonist has become problematic because of her role as a victim of colonial forces. She has been colonized by men in the patriarchal society in which she grew up, by Americans and their cultural imperialism, or neo-colonialism as it has come to be known as, and the Euro-centric legacy that remains in her country

  • Post-colonialist Perceptions of Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet

    4511 Words  | 10 Pages

    Post-colonialist Perceptions of Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet The Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti viewed the goal of sculpting as the manipulation of a marble block until the figure within is set free. Just as a carving artist seeks to release its piece from rock, a literary artist desires his art form to be carved from an obscure idea into clear apprehension. The most beautiful of these art pieces are placed in a museum of their own right, the literary canon. A great part of literature’s

  • The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes by Rudyard Kipling

    3243 Words  | 7 Pages

    Nineteenth century British literature cannot be properly understood, as Spivak points out “without remembering that imperialism, understood as England’s social mission, was a crucial part of the cultural representation of England to the English”.(Ashcroft et al, 269) The British imagination, however, responded to the Empire in different ways. Even during the heyday of the Empire, there had been conflicting attitudes towards the Empire. In 1883, Sir John Seeley wrote in The Expansion of England: There

  • Transculturation in Our Sister Killyjoy and Nervous Conditions

    2621 Words  | 6 Pages

    Transculturation in Our Sister Killyjoy and Nervous Conditions Postcolonial insights include theories of Diaspora, cultural hybridity and transculturation. The latter, ‘transculturation’ is the term used to define ‘cultural change induced by introduction of elements of a foreign culture.’[1] The term ‘transculturation’ was first coined by Cuban anthropologist and sociologist Fernando Ortiz in 1947 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures. Transculturation covers war

  • Antoinette’s Search for Home in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea

    2026 Words  | 5 Pages

    Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) presents some of the complicated issues of postcolonial Caribbean society. Rhys’ protagonist, Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole in Jamaica, suffers racial antagonism, sexual exploitation and male suppression. She is a victim of a system, which not only dispossessed her from her class but also deprived her as an individual of any means of meaningful, independent survival and significance. Postcolonial Caribbean society is not able to address and enhance the expectations