Postcolonialism

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Postcolonialism
Globalization
Nation Nationalism
Race and Gender
Commonwealth Lit. World Lit. in English
Immigrants Cultural Identity

• 1. Colonialism and de-colonization
• 2. Can the Subaltern Speak? Language
  Cultural Identities
• 3. National Identity Hybridity

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Colonialism and de-colonization

• 1. From Form to Race, Starting Questions
• 2. Colonialism defined physical and economic
  exploitation
• 3. Cultural Imperialism 1) definition 2)
  Colonial Discoursee.g. Orientalism 3) science
• 4. Cultural Imperialism cultural literary
  Examples
• 5. Colonial Mentality ( the relations between
  the colonized and colonizer)
• 6. Effects of cultural imperialism
• 7. De-colonization ( post-colonial resistance)

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From Form to Race

• Formtextual and linguistic
• literary forms (e.g. organic form),
• linguistic forms (e.g. semiotic rectangle,
  différance)
• 2. From Text to Context
• Social forms (e.g. discourse, hierarchy, etc.)
• Postmodern forms (e.g. metafiction, pastiche)
• Colonial Postcolonial forms (e.g. mental/power
  structure, lit parody, historical re-vision)

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Starting Questions

• What are the examples of colonialism? Is KMTs
  regime an example?
• What are the examples of colonial thinking (e.g.
  the racial/cultural prejudices and stereotypes)
  in English Literature?
• Is de-colonization possible?
• How do we or the colonized resist colonialism in
  life and through literature?
• Is it racist to call foreigns ??,??,???

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Colonialism Definition and Kinds

• Definition colonialism --military, economic,
  cultural oppression domination of one country
  over another.
• Kinds
• 1. Invasion-colonization
• 2. Settlement-colonization
• 3. Internal Colonialism
• 4. Neo-Colonialism

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Modern Colonialism Flows of not only Natural
Resources but also People

• Capitalism
• ? Triangular
• Trade
• 2. Middle Passage

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Colonialism flows of migration

• Flows of Migrants

1st World Colonial powers Adventurers, Merchants, army, travelers, missionaries, immigrants Third World Slaves, Contract laborers, Students, businessmen, etc.
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Triangular Trade

• This trade is a source of wealth to tribal
  chiefs, to the shipping business, to plantation
  owners in the South of U.S., and to merchants and
  shipbuilders in the North. ? For the Africans,
  it means displacement and/or death.
• An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached
  the Americas from the 16th through the 19
  century, with a peak of about 6 million arriving
  in the 18th century alone. (another estimate)
• Replaced by Indentured Labour in the 19th
  century

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Middle Passage

• . . . it has been estimated that between 30 and
  60 million Africans were subjected to this
  horrendous triangular trade system and that only
  one third-of those people survived...' (source)
• All of it is now    it is always now    there
  will never be a time when I am not crouching and
  watching others who are crouching too    I am
  always crouching" Beloved by Toni Morrison

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Middle Passage

• left structure of the ship

Right by Tom Feelings
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cultural imperialism (1) Theories

• 1. Culture (e.g. literature, language, popular
  culture) supports imperialism and is one way to
  spread it.
• The definition of the self and others are based
  upon representations rather than reality?
• 2. Also called neo-colonialism Supported by its
  economic power, one culture (e.g. of films,
  foods) dominates over the other cultures.
  (related to globalization and free trade
  agreements)

The West as civilized, just, moral, industrious, rational, democratic Masculine The Oriental as savage, lewd, lazy, superstitious, irrational, despotic feminine
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Colonial DiscourseOrientalism as an example
????Foucault

• (textbook 203- 206) Orientalism presenting the
  East as the Other, or as the exotic e.g.
  Arabian Nights Oriental women
• 1) Saids book about Islamic Middle East
• 2) a discourse, (knowledge disciplinary power
  structure of formation and circulation)
• 3) hegemony ? control by consent
• 4) possible problems homogenizing the East,
  and the West.

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Colonial Discourse (3) power knowledge
Stereotyping supported by scientific studies

• Racial difference biological difference ?
  Africans black skin, small brain savagery
• e.g. Darwin The Descent of Man (1871) C Murray
  and R. J. Herrnstein The Bell Curve (1994)
  differences of whites and blacks IQ test
  performances caused by their genetic differences.
  

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Cultural Imperialism (1) White Center

Mr Mrs Andrews, 1748-9  Thomas Gainsborough
source
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cultural imperialism (2) representation of
blackness
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cultural imperialism (2) representation of
blackness
French harem fantasy with a black eunuch servant.
The link between popularized orientalism
libidinization is obvious. "Les petits voyages de
Paris-Plaisirs."--Paris Plaisir, Feb. 1930.
(Image and text from Jan Nederveen Pieterse's
White on Black Images of Africa and Blacks in
Western Popular Culture. New Haven Yale UP,
1992) Source
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cultural imperialism (2)

• White vs. Black Edouard Manet Olympia, 1863

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cultural imperialism (2) representation of
Otherness
Humanitarian or commercial interest?
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cultural imperialism (3) Literary Examples

• (1). discoveryeducation possession and
  exploitation
• The Tempest Caliban
• Robinson Crusoe Friday
• PROSPERO Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil
  himself
• Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!
• . . .
• CALIBAN You taught me language and my profit
  on't
• Is, I know how to curse.

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cultural imperialism (3) Literary Examples

• (2). Economic support the power of the Empire,
  decorating its polite society
• Mansfield Park dependant on the business from
  the West Indian Estate (in Antigua)
• And many other Victorian novels.
• (3) Other-ed and used as symbol of madness
  darkness
• Jane Eyre the madwoman Bertha
• Heart of Darkness --

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Africa Heart of Darkness

• Africa darkness, stage for self-or-sexual
  discovery and power struggle
• "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means
  the taking it away from those who have a
  different complexion or slightly flatter noses
  than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you
  look at it too much. What redeems it is the idea
  only. An idea at the back of it not a
  sentimental pretence but an idea an unselfish
  belief in the idea something you can set up, and
  bow down before, and offer sacrifice to (Joseph
  Conrad's Heart of Darkness)
• Others Out of Africa, Sheltering Sky, The
  English Patient.

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cultural imperialism (3) Heart of Darkness

• 'Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.' "All the pilgrims
  rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with
  my dinner. I believe that I was considered
  brutally callous. However, I did not eat much.
  There was a lamp in there -- light, don't you
  know -- and outside it was so beastly, beastly
  dark. I went no more near the remarkable man who
  had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of
  his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What
  else had been there?

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cultural imperialism (4) Education

• 2. The East
• English Studies in India
• Taiwan Popularity of translations of American
  novels such as those of Hemingway and Jack
  London.
• Taiwan Un-self-reflective absorption of English
  literary canon/values

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cultural imperialism (4) Ethnic Colors

Furniture from Artikeln
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Colonial mentality

• (textbook 206-)
• Colonial identity defined through difference
  with others and the Other.

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Cultural Imperialism Effects

• self-hatred inferiority complex or
  self-annihilation blackness confirms the white
  self, but whiteness empties the black subject.
• (e.g. F. Fanon . . .the black man is not a
  man. e.g. laziness as a conscious sabotage of
  the colonial machine Loomba 143-44)
• Split Subject Black Skin, White Mask e.g. ?????
  clip 14
• Resistance

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Colonizer vs. colonized

• (Homi Bhabha textbook p. 209-210)
• Two ways to challenge colonial identity
• Différance/Dissemination of colonial culture and
  its mimicry
• Hybridity

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Post-Structuralist Post-Colonial Mimicry

Différance Dissemination
Colonial Mimicry All the same but not quite
e.g. Indian gentleman or Indian celebration of
U.K.s national day.
Taiwanese Imitations bell-bottom, rock and roll
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De-Colonization history

• 1945 -- 750 million people - a third of the
  world's population - lived in Territories
  that were non-self-governing, dependent on
  colonial Powers.
• British decolonization, 194556 (e.g. India)
  Wars in overseas France, 194556 (e.g. Vietnam)
• The Sinai-Suez campaign (OctoberNovember 1956)
• a federal Malaysian government (1957) Hong Kong
  (1997). Algeria and French decolonization, from
  1956
• ? colonization is not over internal fractures
• ? The Empire Strikes back.

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Post-Colonial Resistance

• Positions the subaltern, postcolonial
  intellectuals (exiles or at home), rejecting the
  past etc.
• Means Language, History and (personal, cultural,
  national )Identity
• Strategies Between Nativism Assimilation.

Mimicry
Separati- Sm open rebellion Re-Creation Cultural Syncreticism negotiation Active participa-tion Appropriation
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Post-Colonial Resistance (2)

• Examples
• Separatism vs. Cultural Syncreticism
• Chinua Achebe vs. Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Writing in
  Gikuyu) clip 1
• Re-Creation ??????????(??????
• reinterprete the signs ?
• ?parody
• Mimicry e.g. ????clip 5, Buddha Bless America,
  clips 21, 23
• Appropriation

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Reference

• Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. NY
  Routeledge, 1998.