Postcolonial Studies by Deepika Bahri, Fall 1996

Introduction

The field of Postcolonial Studies has been gaining prominence since the 1970s. Some would date its
rise in the Western academy from the publication of Edward Said’s influential critique of Western
constructions of the Orient in his 1978 book, Orientalism*. The growing currency
within the academy of the term “postcolonial” (sometimes hyphenated) was
consolidated by the appearance in 1989 of The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen
Tiffin. Since then, the use of cognate terms “Commonwealth” and “Third World”
that were used to describe the literature of Europe’s former colonies has become
rarer. Although there is considerable debate over the precise parameters of the
field and the definition of the term “postcolonial,” in a very general sense, it is the
study of the interactions between European nations and the societies they
colonized in the modern period. The European empire is said to have held sway
over more than 85% of the rest of the globe by the time of the First World War,
having consolidated its control over several centuries. The sheer extent and duration of the European
empire and its disintegration after the Second World War have led to widespread interest in
postcolonial literature and criticism in our own times.

The list of former colonies of European powers is a long one. They are divided into settler (eg.
Australia, Canada) and non-settler countries (India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka). Countries
such as South Africa and Zimbabwe which were partially settled by colonial populations complicate
even this simple division between settler and non-settler. The widely divergent experiences of these
countries suggest that “postcolonial” is a very loose term. In strictly definitional terms, for instance, the
United States might also be described as a postcolonial country, but it is not perceived as such
because of its position of power in world politics in the present, its displacement of native American
populations, and its annexation of other parts of the world in what may be seen as a form of
colonization. For that matter, other settler countries such as Canada and Australia are sometimes
omitted from the category “postcolonial” because of their relatively shorter struggle for independence,
their loyalist tendencies toward the mother country which colonized them, and the absence of
problems of racism or of the imposition of a foreign language. It could, however, be argued that the
relationship between these countries to the mother country is often one of margin to center, making
their experience relevant to a better understanding of colonialism.

The debate surrounding the status of settler countries as postcolonial suggests that issues in
Postcolonial Studies often transcend the boundaries of strict definition. In a literal sense,
“postcolonial” is that which has been preceded by colonization. The second college edition of The
American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “of, relating to, or being the time following the
establishment of independence in a colony.” In practice, however, the term is used much more
loosely. While the denotative definition suggests otherwise, it is not only the period after the departure
of the imperial powers that concerns those in the field, but that before independence as well.

* Said's book 'Orientalism' (1978) is considered the foundational work on which post-colonial theory developed. Said, then,
could be considered the 'father' of post-colonialism. His work, including 'Orientalism', focused on exploring and questioning
the artificial boundaries, or the stereotypical boundaries, that have been drawn between the East and West, specifically as
they relate to the Middle East. In doing this, Said focused specifically on our stereotypes of Middle-Easterners; however,
these same ideas can be extended to include how we view all 'others.' This is the 'us'-'other' mentality that many colonizers
take with them into a new country. Such simple generalizations lead to misconceptions and miscommunications, which are
often the basis of post-colonial analysis.

The formation of the colony through various mechanisms of control and the various stages in the
development of anti-colonial nationalism interest many scholars in the field. By extension, sometimes
temporal considerations give way to spatial ones (i.e. in an interest in the postcolony as a
geographical space with a history prior or even external to the experience of colonization rather than
in the postcolonial as a particular period) in that the cultural productions and social formations of the
colony long before colonization are used to better understand the experience of colonization.
Moreover, the “postcolonial” sometimes includes countries that have yet to achieve independence, or
people in First World countries who are minorities, or even independent colonies that now contend
with “neocolonial” forms of subjugation through expanding capitalism and globalization. In all of these
senses, the “postcolonial,” rather than indicating only a specific and materially historical event, seems
to describe the second half of the twentieth-century in general as a period in the aftermath of the
heyday of colonialism. Even more generically, the “postcolonial” is used to signify a position against
imperialism and Eurocentrism. Western ways of knowledge production and dissemination in the past
and present then become objects of study for those seeking alternative means of expression. As the
foregoing discussion suggests, the term thus yokes a diverse range of experiences, cultures, and
problems; the resultant confusion is perhaps predictable.

The expansiveness of the “postcolonial” has given rise to lively debates. Even as some deplore its
imprecision and lack of historical and material particularity, others argue that most former colonies are
far from free of colonial influence or domination and so cannot be postcolonial in any genuine sense.
In other words, the overhasty celebration of independence masks the march of neocolonialism in the
guise of modernization and development in an age of increasing globalization and transnationalism;
meanwhile, there are colonized countries that are still under foreign control. The emphasis on
colonizer/colonized relations, moreover, obscures the operation of internal oppression within the
colonies. Still others berate the tendency in the Western academy to be more receptive to
postcolonial literature and theory that is compatible with
postmodern formulations of hybridity, syncretization, and
pastiche while ignoring the critical realism of writers more
interested in the specifics of social and racial oppression. The
lionization of diasporic writers like Salman Rushdie, for instance,
might be seen as a privileging of the transnational, migrant
sensibility at the expense of more local struggles in the
postcolony. Further, the rise of Postcolonial Studies at a time of
growing transnational movements of capital, labor, and culture
is viewed by some with suspicion in that it is thought to deflect attention away from the material
realities of exploitation both in the First and the Third World.

Major Issues

Despite the reservations and debates, research in Postcolonial Studies has continued to grow
because postcolonial critique allows for a wide-ranging investigation into power relations in various
contexts. The formation of empire, the impact of colonization on postcolonial history, economy,
science, and culture, the cultural productions of colonized societies, feminism and postcolonialism,
agency for marginalized people, and the state of the postcolony in contemporary economic and
cultural contexts, capitalism and the market, environmental concerns, and the relationship between
aesthetics and politics in literature are some of the more prominent topics in the field.

The following questions suggest some of the major issues in the field:

- How did the experience of colonization affect those who were colonized while also influencing the
colonizers?
- What traces have been left by colonial education, science and technology in postcolonial societies?
- What were the forms of resistance against colonial control?
- How did colonial education and language influence the culture and identity of the colonized?
- What are the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers?
- To what extent has decolonization (a reconstruction free from colonial influence) been possible?
- Are Western formulations of postcolonialism overemphasizing hybridity at the expense of material
realities?
- Should decolonization proceed through an aggressive return to the pre-colonial past?
- How do gender, race, and class function in colonial and postcolonial discourse?
- Are new forms of imperialism replacing colonization and how?

Along with these questions, there are some more that are particularly pertinent to postcolonial
literature:

- Should the writer use a colonial language to reach a wider audience or return to a native language
more relevant to groups in the postcolony?

- Which writers should be included in the postcolonial canon?

- How can texts in translation from non-colonial languages enrich our understanding of postcolonial
issues?

- In light of the material and political context of postcolonial production, how should postcolonial
literature be approached in a way that honors its aesthetic dimensions?

Major Figures

Some of the best known names in Postcolonial literature and theory are:

LITERATURE:

Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Peter Abrahams, Ayi Kwei Armah, Aimé Cesaire, Michelle Cliff, Anita
Desai, Marguerite Duras, Nadine Gordimer, Merle Hodge, C.L.R. James, Farida Karodia, Jamaica
Kincaid, Hanif Kureishi, George Lamming, Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, Taslima Nasrin, Ngugi wa
Thiong’o, Grace Ogot, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Gabriel Okara, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Salman
Rushdie, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Allan Sealy, Shyam Selvadurai, Leopold Senghor, Vikram Seth,
Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, etc.

THEORY:

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Bill Ashcroft, Homi

Bhabha, Kamau Braithwaite, Amilcar Cabral, Partha
Chatterjee, Frantz Fanon, Gareth Griffiths, Ranajit
Guha, Bob Hodge, Abdul Jan Mohamed, Ania
Loomba, Vijay Mishra, Chandra Mohanty, Arun
Mukherjee, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Benita Parry,
Edward Said, Jenny Sharpe, Stephen Slemon,
Gayatri Spivak, Aruna Srivastava, Sara Suleri, Gauri
Viswanathan, Helen Tiffin, etc.

Read the following extracts by postcolonial writers

A) In Nigeria the government was 'they'. It had nothing to do with you or me. It was an alien institution
and people's business was to get as much from it as they could without getting into trouble". (Chinua
Achebe, ‘No Longer at Ease’, 37)

B) “They [the English] don't seem to know that this empire business was all wrong and they should, at
least, be wearing sackcloth and ashes in token penance of the wrongs committed, the
irrevocableness of their bad deeds, for no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm they did.
Actual death might have been better. And so all this fuss over empire -- what went wrong here, what
went wrong there -- always makes me quite crazy, for I can say to them what went wrong: they should
never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to
leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody
they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look
exactly like them would ever be English, so that you can imagine the destruction of people and land
that came from that.” [23-24] (from ‘A Small Place’ by Jamaica Kincaid)

C) “It was a song about a white cockroach. That’s me. That’s what they call all of us who were here
before their own people in Africa sold them to slave traders. And I’ve heard English women call us
white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I
belong and why was I ever born at all.” (p. 102 - Antoinette in “Wide Sargasso Sea”)

D) "No country is my motherland. I always find myself in exile in whichever

country I travel to, that's why I was tempted to write something about those
living their lives in exile" Jhumpa Lahiri – Press conference, Calcutta, 2001)

Jhumpa Lahiri. Writer

E) I've always been quite envious of people who have talked about "going
home". Even now people don't know quite what to say to me. If I were to arrive in England, people
always say to me "Good to be back home, isn't it?" I'm never sure when I see them looking at me, if
they are thinking, "Well, is this his home?" And when I arrive in the Caribbean, people say to me, "Ah,
good to have you home, man." Personally, I don't feel that on a professional level, on an aesthetic
level, I don't feel any culture shock between the United States, Britain, and the Caribbean. I've been
traveling in that triangle for so long. On a personal level, yes, it would be nice to feel a sense of
belonging somewhere. (Caryl Phillips - Interview).