What are the key characteristics of postcolonial literature?
Postcolonial writers are really interested in nationhood and nationalism. A lot of these writers are very patriotic. They write books on behalf of their nations. Their work is often nationalist, because postcolonial writers like to highlight and valorize their nation’s cultural, political and social identity.
Why is postcolonial literature important?
Postcolonial literature also becomes relevant because it is capable of providing a representation of the suppressed as well as the suppresser, and hence offers a representation of conflicting views and ideologies.
What is postcolonial African literature?
The term African postcolonial literature refers to writings produced after the political independence of various African states which were formerly subject to European colonial rule.
What do post colonial writers do in their writings?
Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. …
What are the themes of postcolonial literature?
Postcolonial has many common motifs and themes like ‘cultural dominance,’ ‘racism,’ ‘quest for identity,’ ‘inequality’ along with some peculiar presentation styles. Most of the postcolonial writers reflected and demonstrated many thematic concepts which are quite connected with both ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’.
What are the major concern of postcolonial theorists?
Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century.
What is the main function of postcolonial criticism?
Postcolonial critics reinterpret and examine the values of literary texts, by focussing on the contexts in which they were produced, and reveal the colonial ideologies that are concealed within.
What is postcolonial identity?
Postcolonial theory holds that decolonized people develop a postcolonial identity that is based on cultural interactions between different identities (cultural, national, and ethnic as well as gender and class based) which are assigned varying degrees of social power by the colonial society.
Which thinkers are associated with promoting postcolonial theory?
Major Figures. Some of the best known names in Postcolonial literature and theory are those of Chinua Achebe, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, Buchi Emecheta, Frantz Fanon, Jamaica Kincaid, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
What is the aim of postcolonialism?
Postcolonialism seeks to remove negative stereotypes about people and places from such discourses, requiring that categories such as ‘Third World’ or ‘developing world’ are problematized and rethought and an understanding of how location, economic role, social dimensions of identity, and the global political economy …
What are the limitations of postcolonial theory?
Hegemony and resistance are not as unidirectional in their sources and force as a North/South opposition would lead one to believe. A refusal to reckon with the multiplicity of American allegiances results in some of the most unfortunate limitations of pan-American postcolonial analysis.
What is the aim and belief of postcolonialism?
Goals. The ultimate goal of post-colonialism is accounting for and combating the residual effects of colonialism on cultures. It is not simply concerned with salvaging past worlds, but learning how the world can move beyond this period together, towards a place of mutual respect.
What is post colonialism according to Edward Said?
In this sense, Said defines Orientalism as “a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, … about what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ cannot do” (12) Said argues that what has been written about the …
Why is postcolonial a problematic term?
Not only is the term “postcolonial” exceedingly fuzzy, it can also be argued that it is also often ineffective. “Postcolonial” is also a troublesome term because it draws some very arbitrary lines.
How did postcolonialism start?
While the field of postcolonial studies only began taking shape in the late 1970s and early 1980s, numerous fiction writers began publishing works in the decades immediately following World War II. One of the most significant postcolonial novels to emerge in this period was Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958).
What time period is postcolonial?
A good way to start any definition of postcolonial literature is to think about the origins of the term postcolonialism and how it has been used in literary criticism, from roughly the late 1980s to present times.
What time period was colonialism?
Colonialism is strongly associated with the European colonial period starting with the 15th century when some European states established colonising empires.
Who started postcolonial theory?
The Palestinian American cultural critic Edward Said was a major figure of postcolonial thought, and his book Orientalism is often credited as its founding text. Other important postcolonial critics include Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Frantz Fanon.
How is postcolonial theory used?
Postcolonial theory (or often post-colonial theory) deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and societies and those societies’ responses. The term “postcolonial” per se was first used in literary studies by The Empire Writes Back in 1989 to refer to cultural interactions within colonial societies.
What is a postcolonial lens?
Post-colonialism is simply a lens through which we study literature that is set in colonized countries or deals with post-colonial issues. These issues include, but are not limited to, issues of identity, culture, politics, and economics.