Histria i Cultures Postcolonials WHAT IS POSTCOLONIALSM?

Colonialism Colonialism was first and foremost part of the commercial venture of the Western nations that developed from the late 17th and early 18th centuries although others date its origin to the European voyages of discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, such as those of Christopher Columbus.

Imperialism vs. colonialism The ideology underlying colonialism The authority assumed by a state over another territory expressed in several ways: pageantry, symbolism, military power (Boehmer) Ideology which upholds the legitimacy of the economic and/or military control of one nation by another. (Childs and Williams) Unlike colonialism, Imperialism does not entail settlement

Colonialism vs. imperialism (Only) One form of practice of the ideology of imperialism. (McLeod) Maybe the most spectacular mode of imperialism. It involves: o o o Settlement of territory Exploitation of resources, and Attempt to govern indigenous inhabitants.

Colonialism and Capitalism British Colonialism, motivated by: o o o Natural human curiosity? A civilising mission? The desire to create and control markets abroad for Western goods (cf. Industrial Revolution) The need to secure natural resources (raw materials)

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials

The British Empire First voyage of discovery: 15th-16th centuries. Formal Empire: ~1875-1914. Culmination of Empire: Queen Victorias reign, 1837-1901. Victorian high imperialism: A duty and a destiny to rule the world.

Some figures o o 1815: the Empire occupied one-quarter of the earths surface Between 1790 and 1820 (a 30-year span, yet before Queen Victoria), approximately 150 million people were declared under British control, in lands as apart as Southern Africa, Australia and India... Scramble for Africa, 1870-1900: population of British Empire increased by 66 million people!

Features of Victorian high Imperialism Geographic magnitude Mass organisation and institutionalization of colonial power (securing of communications and transport networks) Formalisation of racist imperialist ideologies

Settler vs. Settled colonies Settler colonies: o Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.

Settled colonies: o Caribbean and African colonies, India...

Settler colonies Places overseas where large European population had settled (often violently displacing native peoples).

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials They reached self-government sooner than the rest, to become, initially, dominions.

Settled colonies Colonised lands in South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, which did not become sites of mass European migration. They tended to feature larger dispossessed populations governed by small British colonial elites. They achieved independence only after WWII.

Settler vs. Settled colonies Although they shared the colonised condition and a same set of problems specific to this condition, the two groups experienced different problems and followed different paths. Each specific colony experienced a particular set conditions: Postcolonialism as a useful umbrella term. of

Decolonisation When the colonised nations won the right to govern their own affairs. 3 distinct periods: i. USA Independence, 1783 ii. Turn of 20th century: creation of dominions iii. After WWII: independence of settled colonies

Reasons for decolonisation Nationalist movements in the colonies (both settler and settled) Decline of Britain as a world economic power after WWII (replaced by USA and Soviet Union as world leaders). British Empire increasingly expensive to administer. WWI brought about a huge crisis to the Western ideals of progress and civilisation.

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials Between-wars depression. WWII: Nazi holocaust; racist assumptions did not hold any longer.

Settler colonies: independence o o o o Canada: 1867 Australia: 1900 New Zealand: 1907 South Africa: 1909

Statute of Westminster (1931) Gives legal status to the independence of settler colonies. Removes (their) obligation to defer ultimate authority to the British crown...

Settled colonies: independence o o o o o o India and Pakistan: 1947 Ceylon (now Sri Lanka): 1948 Ghana (first African country): 1957 Nigeria: 1960 Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago: 1962 1960s and 70s: busy decolonisation.

THE COMMONWEALTH

53 independent states working together in the common interests of their citizens for development, democracy and peace.

The Commonwealth

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials Formerly the British Commonwealth of Nations, i.e. The political community constituted by the former British Empire and consisting of the United Kingdom, its dependencies and certain former colonies that are now sovereign nations.

1884: Empire, called Commonwealth for the first time. 1887: First Colonial conference. 1926: Imperial Conference. 1931: Statute of Westminster. 1949: Beginning of the Modern Commonwealth (India joins)

Neocolonialism [Sometimes identified with post-colonialism], neo-colonialism signifies the continuing economic control by the West of the once-colonised world, under the guise of political independence. Also called super- or- new-imperialism. Less overt, but more insidious?

Post-colonialism vs. Postcolonialism o Post-colonialism: time-related. Period which starts, after WWII: After colonialism. o Postcolonialism: A varied system of representations, reading practices and values that actually circulate across the colonial and the postcolonial periods.

Initially, after WWII, Post-colonial had a strictly time-referred meaning. But since the 1970s, it has been used by literary critics to the various cultural effects of colonialism.

Postcolonial... countries, cultures, literature, theory (ies), criticism, values...

What is Commonwealth literature?

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials Literature produced in the Commonwealth countries

Commonwealth vs. Postcolonial literature Commonwealth literature becomes visible by mid 20th century. It becomes an independent area of study around the 1960s. Slowly, the term is replaced by postcolonial literature.

What about POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM?

Franz Fanon Born in Martinique in 1925. He fought as a soldier in WWII. Degree in Medicine and psychiatry, University of Lyon (France), 1953. Appointed Head of the psychiatric hospital of Blida (Algeria). In 1956, two years after the beginning of the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), Fanon resigns his position and joins the FLN (Front de Libration Nationale). He held different positions within FLN. Among others, he was ambassador to the provisional Government of the Algerian Republic in Ghana. He escaped several attempts on his life in Morocco and Italy. He died of leukaemia in Washington in 1961, at the age of 36. He was buried in Tunisia.

Franz Fanon: Works Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), 1952. o o Originally entitled An Essay for the Disalienation of Blacks. The book defines the colonial relationship as the psychological non-recognition of the subjectivity of the colonized. "There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men. // There is another fact: Black men want to prove to

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect. // How do we extricate ourselves?" (From the Introduction) o Find relevant quotes in: http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/FanonBW.html

Les damns de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth), 1961. o Described by Stuart Hall as the "bible of the decolonization movement, it is one of the canonical books on the world-wide black liberation struggles of the 1960s. Fanon writes in anger; he addresses the role of violence in decolonization, as well as the challenges of political organisation and the class collisions and questions of cultural hegemony in the creation and maintenance of a new countrys national consciousness. One of his main points is that the first will be last and the last will be the first.

o -

Pour la rvolution africaine, 1964. Sociologie d'une rvolution, 1966.

Edward W. Said (1947-2004) - Born in Jerusalem (the in the British Mandate of Palestine) to a Christian Arab family and raised in both Jerusalem and Cairo. - University studies in the USA. He received his B.A. From Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. From Harvard University. - He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963 and served as professor of English and Comparative Literature for several decades. Said also taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Yale universities. - He was awarded numerous honorary doctorates from universities around the world, and received further outstanding honours and prizes. - He died of leukemia at the age of 67 in New York Edward W. Said: Works - Orientalism o According to Said, the West has created a dichotomy between the reality of the East and the romantic notion of the Orient. The Middle East and Asia are viewed with prejudice and racism. They are backward and unaware of their own history and culture. To fill this void, the West has created a culture, history, and future promise for them. On this framework rests not only

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials the study of the Orient, but also the political imperialism of Europe in the East. Orientalism is not something of the past.

The Other - In general terms, the other is anyone who is separated from ones self. The existence of others is crucial in defining what is normal and in locating ones own place in the world. - The concept of the other, which is built on the thought of, inter alia, Hegel and Sartre, signifies that which is unfamiliar and extraneous to a dominant subjectivity, the opposite or negative against which an authority is defined. (Boehmer) Representation of the Other Images of the native, alien or Other, reflected by contrast Western conceptions of selfhood- of mastery and control, of rationality and cultural superiority, of energy, thrift, technological skillfulness. Colonial discourse o A system of statements that can be made about colonies and colonial peoples, about colonizing powers and about the relationship between the two. o What marks the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized: the belief that the colonizer is superior.

Western Ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism is a major aspect of all cultures, and a particularly powerful tendency in Western culture. The dominant discourse of Western culture presupposes that the world's cultures are a coherent structure centred upon the unquestioned superiority of Western culture (thought, art, religion, etc.) over what we call "Non-Western" culture, as if such a culture could only exist as a negation of Western culture, not as a positive entity in itself, and as if it existed only on the margins of Western culture, as if it were "marginal." The colonial Other - The West ... conceived of its superiority relative to the perceived lack of power, self-consciousness, or ability to think and rule of colonized peoples. (Boehmer) - The colonised subject is characterized as other through discourses of primitivism, cannibalism, Orientalism, etc. - Systems of representation are key to the process of othering. Othering the colonized subject Through colonial indoctrination: the colonized is made to internalise the value system of the colonizer, namely, that s/he is inferior and in need of help by the colonizer: colonization of the mind. Key tools in indoctrinating both the colonizers and the colonized: literature and education. Colonising the mind When one talks of colonial indoctrination, it is usually about oppression or subjugation, or waving little Union Jacks on Empire Day and singing God Save the King. But this gut feeling I had as a child, that the Indian was just a piece of cane trash while the white man

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials was to be honoured and respected -where had it come from? I dont consciously remember being brainwashed to hold this view either at home or at school. (Sam Selvon, qtd. in McLeod, 17) Language - Language does not passively reflect reality; it also goes a long way towards creating a persons understanding of their world, and it houses the values by which we (either willingly or by force) live our lives. (McLeod) - During colonial times, native languages were often forbidden. - The only language of education was English. Students were punished when caught speaking their own languages. - Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture, at their politics and at the social production of wealth, at their entire relationship to nature and to other human beings. Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world.(Ngugi Wa Thiongo, qtd.in McLeod, 19) How is English seen - as a remora Thiongo) - as the only modelled by Rushdie) by postcolonial writers? of colonialism, a new tool of imperialism (Ngugi Wa positive legacy of colonialism, something to be repostcolonial writers at their wish and needs (Salman

From English to englishes History "Mi trabajo hace continuas referencias a la historia representndola de una forma distinta, pero siempre como una manera de hablar del presente. Solo utilizo la historia como metfora... "Mi compromiso con la historia tiene que ver con un segundo control de la representacin. Por ejemplo, la representacin de la gente negra en el pasado. Tengo una serie de fotografas (que no van a estar en esta exposicin), titulada Diario de un dandy. En ellas estoy yo vestido a la manera de la poca victoriana rodeado de una serie de personajes aristocrticos. Est basado libremente en unos cuadros de Hogarth, titulados The rake's progress. Si fusemos histricamente exactos, en esa poca alguien como yo habra sido el sirviente o como mucho el valet de esos hombres. Con esa foto cambio algo en la historia a travs de una escena de apariencia teatral. He reconstruido la historia a mi manera". Hybridity Para aproximarse a su obra hay que tener en cuenta ciertos aspectos de su biografa. Nacido en Londres de padres nigerianos, altern su infancia con estancias en ambos pases. Al empezar sus estudios de arte se le manifest una enfermedad degenerativa, la mielitis transversa, que lo dej paraltico durante un ao y que sigue afectando su movilidad. "Pertenezco a los dos mundos", dice en una entrevista telefnica. "Aunque vivo ahora en Londres desde hace 30 aos, soy un producto de ambas sociedades. Fue un privilegio recibir esa formacin. Mis padres queran asegurarse de que yo

Histria i Cultures Postcolonials entendiera frica, el idioma y las costumbres. Las dos herencias son igualmente importantes para m". Postcolonialism Advantages and dangers What postcolonial critics do? 1. They reject the claims to universalism made on behalf of canonical Western literature and seek to show its limitations of outlook, especially its general inability to empathise across boundaries of cultural and ethnic difference. 2. They examine the representation of other cultures in literature as a way to achieving this end. 3. They show that such literature is often evasively and crucially silent on matters concerned with colonisation and imperialism (see, for instance, Saids discussion of Jane Austens Mansfield Park in Culture and Imperialism). 4. They foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity and examine their treatment in relevant literary works. 5. They celebrate hybridity and cultural polyvalency, that is, the situation whereby individuals and groups belong simultaneously to more than one culture. 6. They develop a perspective, not just applicable to postcolonial literatures, whereby states of marginality, plurality and perceived Otherness are seen as sources of energy and potential change.