Definitions of Postcolonial Studies

[*See note on ’ubject - infra.]

Post-colonial studies are based in the “historical fact” of European colonialism, and the diverse material effects to which this phenomenon gave rise. It addresses all aspects of the colonial process from the beginning to the end of colonial contact ( p.2).

The idea of “post-colonial literary theory” emerges from the inability of European theory to deal with the complexities and varied cultural provenance of post-colonial writing. European theories themselves emerge from particular cultural traditions which are hidden by false notions of “the universal”. Theories of style and genre, assumptions about the universal features of language, epistemologies and value systems are all radically questioned by the practices of postcolonial writing. Post-colonial theory has proceeded from the need to address this different practice. Indigenous theories have developed to accommodate the differences within the various cultural traditions as well as the desire to describe in a comparative way the features shared across those traditions. (p.3.)

The definition of postcolonialism that I am most comfortable with is as follows: the social, political, economic, and cultural practices which arise in response and resistance to colonialism. This corresponds to Mishra and Hodges’ definition of postcolonial literature as, “an always present tendency in any literature of subjugation marked by a systematic process of cultural domination through the imposition of imperial structures of power”, which as they point out implies that postcolonialism is “already implicit in the discourses of colonialism”. As I think will become clear, these categories will reverse, with colonialism being subsumed into postcolonialism. Always important, as well, is the incorporation of an understanding of material condition in any analysis of postcolonial cultural production. Postcolonial texts will incorporate culturally specific details, often not offering translations or explanations of non-European practices, decentering the European-based reading. In addition, the texts very often decenter the white characters, who become faceless, nameless representatives of a dominating power, shifting the power relationships within the text. Finally, it is perhaps most important to stress the ever changing nature of postcolonialism as a defining term, as it responds to the material conditions under which people live in colonial and neo-colonial situations. Although postcolonialism comes out of colonialism, in opposition to colonialism, in its development, it has literally become a critical perspective through which to view colonialism. By problematizing the Western humanistic metanarratives on the basis of which colonialism was justified, colonization itself becomes a motivated political, historical effect. In effect, “colonialism” no longer exists outside some critical framework; hence it always exists from within the postcolonial context. [ Online at www.sou.edu ]

Terms like “Postcolonial” or “Victorian” are always open-ended: They are never answers, and they never end a discussion; they begin it. In other words, labeling a text or event or attitude “postcolonial” places it within a category of things under discussion. It permits one to ask a whole series of questions: Do former colonies that speak French, Spanish, German, English, and Portuguese have anything significant in common, or do those with that speak basically the same language one could put three of the last four words within quotes - have more in common? What is the relation of former colonies that only learned alphabetic writing at colonization to those that had long written traditions? Do Africans living in Africa share fundamental experiences, issues, or problems with people of African descent living inthe Americas? And if so, what does that have to say about postcolonialism? ... [ Online at www.scholars.nus.edu ]

It is quite conspicuous that that the widely-used term ‘subject’ contains in itself an ambiguity since the grammatical subject of an act of oppression, cast in the passive mode, is also the object of oppression considered as a political modality with a target embodied by that person. It is sometimes said that a person subjected to oppressive discourse or restrictions is ‘reified’ or rendered into a thing, considered as an object in the gaze of his/her oppressor. This ambiguity arises from the subject-object distinction in its grammatical and material senses where a grammatical ‘subject’ is the first nominal in a sentence while a material object is considered to be lifeless and inert and therefore devoid of feeling. The same ambiguity lurks in phrases such as ‘the object of the exercise’ (aim) and ‘the subject of the operation’ (patient) and various other contexts where such terms with dual meanings can be found.

Here are some of the terms that commonly circulate in postcolonial discourse. A few of them are so fundamental to any understanding of the way the world works today that it is difficult to see how we can look out on it without invoking them. Thus race, nationalism, globalisation, neo-imperialism are all part of the way we view events that come to us refreshed by the colours of new crisis or new violence with every evening’s news bulletin. Likewise, terms such as liberal, neo-con, terrorist, and fundamentalist are part of contemporary mapping of the political world, though only invoked here in passing. Other terms listed here are more specific to postcolonial studies - e.g., ethnicity, hegemony, alterity, exoticism and hybridity.

Although a very brief attempt is made to define each of these here, it is only in the printed contexts that their use and significance can be fully appreciated. This argues that the best method of familiarising yourself with them (and with the world as they describe it) is to engage in wide postcolonial reading. Short of that, a useful handbook is Bill Ashcroft, et. al., Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge 2000). The order in which they are listed here is alphabetical on the basis that no other form of prioritisation is appropriate until the theoretical standpoint incorporated in this module has been fully consolidate - though perhaps this should never happen!

Ethnicity is the currently acceptable substitute for “race” in postcolonial and other politically-correct forms of intellectual discourse. The term speaks of social groups both in their physiological (i.e., genetic) and cultural ipseity and bears within it a strong implication that the identity of the group is their own property rather than the imposed stereotype of a colonial master of any kind. It is, in short, a benign and friendly term for all that was meant by race in an earlier period. (See race, infra.)
 When a view of the world and its populations/cultures is taken purely from the standpoint of a single population/culture in it, the result is said to be ethnocentric. Naturally, this term is more commonly applied to European views of other cultures and is taken to be an intellectual limitation of the colonial mentality on regard to them.
 In principle, however, so-called primitive cultures are much more likely to be ethnocentric and to overlook the facts of cultural relativity; yet, ironically, it is this likelihood that exempts them from the application of the term in the pejorative sense intended. Ethnocentricity is also associated with ‘narrow-gauge nationalism’.

This contentious term refers to the ethnic identity of a given people, based on geographical origin (Africa, Asia, &c.) and physical characteristics such as pigmentation, facial features but also incorporating ideas of moral and temperamental traits). Such forms of identification are not in themselves objectionable but are almost invariably associated with a binarism which assigns inferior value to the racial characteristics of the subject group in a colonial system. (In etymology, the term derives from the Latin radix, a root, and is associated with such terms as “native”, implying an unbroken connection with a certain land, territory, or even “soil”.)
  The “race” term has been widely censured in modern intellectual discourse as a result of Nazi excesses in its name but has begun to be rehabilitated in recent years on the grounds that, problematic as it is, it mark out real differences in the (pre-)historical heritage of human “families” (or phylogenes) and coincides with definite elements of identity in the cultural worlds of the populations involved.
 Seen in this light, the idea that ‘race is a social construct’ seems itself something of an intellectual fiction devised in order to facilitate multi-cultural life in the metropolitan centres of former imperial nations: a liberal idea which skirts around real difference in order to defend its own ‘borderless’ conception of modern civility and the associated idea of universal ethical norms.

Realism is the dominant aesthetic practice of Western literature since the rise of the novel in the 16th century. It presupposes a world which is subject to empirical laws, inhabited by individuals, each with his/her biography and each inserted in a wider social history which coincides with some cogent part of the history of a nation-state (such as England, France, Germany, &c.)
  Realism is implicitly supported by the claims of science to understand the world in its material structure and often involves the use of a narrator (named or anonymous) whose outlook implies the possibility of a direct and unambiguous revelation of what-is-going on in the world - though sometimes, in Western fiction, this unambiguous narrator is substituted by an ‘unreliable’ narrator whose version of events is supposed to be regarded critically, and whose judgements may best be viewed ironically.
 As the empirical premises of Western fiction (e.g., the English novel) are not particularly suited to the mentality of a non-European population, the transplantation of the novel to postcolonial countries often involves a misfit at the level of formal knowledge. In other words, there is an epistemological contradiction between the realist practice of the novelist and the cultural modality of the postcolonial nation.
 One way of dealing with this is to employ a specific technique (or strategy) known as ‘magic realism’ to modify the operations of the fiction narrative in such a way that it reflects the non-empirical mentality of the postcolonial population.
 Since, however, magic realism first sprung upon the literary world in the writings of the Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), it is possibly misleading to characterise it as an intrinsically postcolonial technique. At the same time, its exploitation by Indian writers (Salmon Rushdie), African writers (Ben Okri) and others has served to establish it as a primary resource in the remodelling of the novel as an appropriate expressive form for postcolonial experience.

This term, meaning to “call forth”, is used in the discussion of the way in which a subject (or person) is effectively constructed by the hegemonic ideology of the time and place into which they are born. In effect, therefore, they are born into an ideology by virtue of being born at such a time and place. This way of thinking abolishes the distance between the individual and the ideology of the society around him which is no longer seen as something chosen or rejected at a certain stage but as the actual force which makes him the person that s/he is. A given ideology is thus said to interpellated the subject into its own structures in such a way that the person bears up those structures and perpetuates them in his/her discourse.
  In Louis Althusser’ famous formulation, the subject comes to tell themselves about ‘their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there'. In other words, the subject is only free to tell himself what the ideology has told him - unless a revolutionary breach is made in the system of communication to produce a new kind of subject and, by implication, a new ideology. Naturally enough, this is a classic example of sophisticated Marxist thinking - engaged with psychology and semiology at the same time - and Althusser was the doyen of modern French Marxism.