DEFINING POST-COLONIALISM[1]

Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) gave birth to and helped develop a whole range of writings called ‘post-colonial studies’, ‘post-colonial theory’, or ‘post-colonial discourse’. The term ‘post-colonialism’ does NOTsimply mean‘after colonialism’.

Post-colonialism analyses how the historical fact of European colonialism continues to shape the relationship between the West and the non-West even after former colonies have won their independence.

Post-colonialism describes the continuing process of resistance and reconstruction by the non-West.

Post-colonialism explores the experience of suppression, resistance, race, gender, representation, difference, displacement, and migration in relation to ‘the West’.

The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995)

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (eds) (NY & London: Routledge)

Post-colonial, as we define it does not mean ‘post-independence’, or ‘after colonialism’, for this would be to falsely ascribe an end to the colonial process. Post-colonialism, rather, begins from the very first moment of colonial contact. It is the discourse of oppositionality which colonialism brings into being. In this sense, post-colonial writing has a very long history. But it would be true to say that the intensification of theoretical interest in the post-colonial has coincided with the rise of postmodernism in Western society and this has led to both confusion and overlap between the two.

This confusion is caused partly by the fact that the major project of post-modernism – the deconstruction of the centralized, logocentric master narratives of European culture – is very similar to the post-colonial project of dismantling the Centre/Margin binarism of imperial discourse….[But] Post-colonialism is not simply a kind of ‘postmodernism’ with politics’– it is sustained attention to the imperial process in colonial and neo-colonial societies, and an examination of the strategies to subvert the actual material and discursive effects of that process (p.1)

For a good overview of post-colonialism (ポストコロニアリズム) in Japanese, see the file “post-colonialism II (week3)” on the class HP (on campus access only)

The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989)

Bill Ashcroft,Gareth Griffiths,and Helen Tiffin (London NY: Routledge)

What are post-colonial literatures?

We use the term 'post-colonial'... to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression. We also suggest that it is most appropriate as the term for the new cross-cultural criticism which has emerged in recent years and for the discourse through which this is constituted. In this sense this book is concerned with the world as it exists during and after the period of European imperial domination and the effects of this on contemporary literatures.

So the literatures of African countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Pacific Island countries, and Sri Lanka are all post-colonial literatures. The literature of the USA should also be placed in this category. Perhaps because of its current position of power, and the neo-colonizing role it has played, its post-colonial nature has not been generally recognized. But its relationship with the metropolitan centre as it evolved over the last two centuries has been paradigmatic for Post-colonial literatures everywhere. What each of these literatures has in common beyond their special and distinctive regional characteristics is that they emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this which makes them distinctively post-colonial. (p.1)

CRITICISM OF THE TERM ‘POST-COLONIAL’[2]

How can we call any so-called postcolonial countries truly free of colonialism or the colonial heritage? Are not all former colonies still really colonies?

Well, actually, no, they're not. They have their own governments, which in most cases appear vastly different from the colonial regime. These new governments may represent improvements, new hope, or terrible disappointments, but they are not the same. The newly liberated nations may be ravaged by corruption, violence, and disease, and those horrors may be the direct or indirect result of having been colonized -- and that is a subject for investigation by postcolonial studies, not a denial of their value.

Most such objections to the term "postcolonial" based on the fallacious notion that "nothing has changed," it seems to me, embody two major fallacies, the first being that major historical events or moments take the form of absolute ruptures or breaks with the past. In fact, such is never the case. Of course, after liberation from the imperial country the former colony bears major traces of colonization, some bad, some good, some neutral.

The second fallacious assumption is that because things "are just as bad as they were under colonialism, nothing at all has changed." Although such a position has high polemical value, it comes at the cost of an implicitly eurocentric or even racist condescension towards the formerly colonized. The implied argument here is that nothing the former colonies people do, good or bad, can have much effect, and everything that happens is the result of the colonial power. Obviously, when one can demonstrate that people or commercial entities from the former colonizer have substantial influence or still own huge tracts of land, then that is a major fact of a postcolonial economy. But it's still not the same as paying taxes to King George III or Queen Victoria, or being drafted into their armies.

Was European colonialism essentially unique?

It is important to understand that countries such as India, experienced wave after wave of conquerors and colonizers before the British arrived. China's conquest of Tibet, Indonesia's successful conquest of East Timor, and its failed invasions of Malaysia, and America’s invasion of Iraq reveals that imperial conquest and colonization remain a fact in the world.

[1]Sometimes ‘Postcolonial’ or ‘Post Colonial’

[2]Taken from