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POST COLONIAL LITERARY CRITICISM - Coggle Diagram
POST COLONIAL LITERARY CRITICISM
DEFINITION
Focussing on the omnipresent power struggles between cultures and the intersection of cultures
Analyses through
cultural identity
gender
nationality
race
ethnicity
language
power
a term used to reinterpret western canonical literature from a variety of fresh and diverse perspectives.
WAYS TO ANLYSE A TEXT FROM A POSTCOLONIAL VIEWPOINT
Reclaiming Spaces and Places
Process of exploiting foreign lands, resources and people
To counteract the resulting alienation from surrounding by restoring a connection between indigenous people and places
Asserting Cultural Integrity
Foreign rules often sidelined, suppressed and openly degraded
Seeks to assert the richness and validity of indigenous cultures in an effort to restore pride in practices and traditions
Revising History
Violence against those who resisted against their rules
From the perspective of those colonized is thus a major focus of postcolonial writing
EXAMPLES OF POSTCOLONIAL TEXTS
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
The Stranger
Albert Camus
QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN ANALYSING A TEXT
What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?
How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
How is the indigenous culture of the land portrayed in the text?
How is the ex-colonial rulers of the land portrayed in the text?
What evidence of the past colonial rulers is shown in the text?
Are historical events revised or inaccurate?
Are historical events shown from a pre- or post-colonial
perspective?
POSTCOLONIAL CONCERNS
Dominating-Dominated
Linguistic and cultural composition
Colonized-clonizer
related terms
Displacement (dislocation-migration, enslavement)
Hybridity (unconscious oppression of indigenous)
Hegemony (political class that persuade other class to follow their moral, political value)
Cultural denigration (assimilation of Eng, acceptance of culture, philosophies, values)
Representation
Eg: representation of imperial power (White,European's colonized culture - the Black)
can be in stereotypes potrayed and perceived
Author want to represent their culture without enforcing negative stereotypes
effect on literature work
Conclusion
PC issues=genocide (degrading/relegrating of other culture by standard of the colonists)
Each race is unique with its own culture,practices and beliefs
Literary text should allow predetermined assumptions to be eradicated by readers based on their own knowledges
Essentialism
colonizers describe the colonized from their superior perspective
simplify the culture of the dominated
reduction of indigenous people to an 'essential' idea of what it means to them
Native writer analyze the perspectives of their culture in relation to the values in the Western world
Edward Wadie Said
Orientalism
A patronizing western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian & North African Societies; assumptions that the West is developed, rational & superior.
Other / Otherness
Promotes difference and perceived inferiority between an indivudual from the West and the East.
Can be done with any racial, ethnic, religious or geographical-defined category people.
Occidentalism
Stereotypical & dehumanizing views of the Wester World including Europe & the English-speaking World.
Ideologies or visions of the West developed in either the West or non-West
Mimicry
The action of the colonized people to imitate language, dress or attitude of the colonizer.
LIST OF SCHOLARS THAT USED THE THEORY
criticism
Homi Bhabha - The Location of Culture, 1994
Gayatri Spivak - In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, 1987
Edward Said - Orientalism, 1978; Culture and Imperialism, 1994
Kamau Brathwaite - The History of the Voice, 1979
Dominick LaCapra - The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance, 1991
Literature and non-fiction
Patrick Chamoiseau - Texaco, 1997
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things, 1997
Gita Mehta - A River Sutra, 1993