Postcolonial Literature: Theory, History, and Key Thinkers
UNIT 1 — Historical and Theoretical Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures Written in English
A) UNIT 1 CONTENT ONLY
1. Beginning
Postcolonial studies begin with rupture: colonialism creates breaks in history, identity, and culture. “Beginning” is difficult because the colonial experience is marked by: loss, displacement, and silencing.
Postcolonialism starts by asking:
- Who narrates history?
- How does Empire shape representation?
2. Postcolonialism?
Postcolonialism is not simply “after colonialism.” It is the study of:
- Colonial domination and its legacies
- Representation and discourse
- Resistance and rewriting
- Continuing neo-colonial power
Danger: treating colonialism as finished or universalising all experiences.
From ‘Commonwealth’ to ‘Postcolonial’
1. Introduction
Early approach: Commonwealth Literature included colonial writers into the English canon, avoiding politics and violence.
Shift to postcolonialism meant a move from:
- Inclusion → Critique
- Universalism → Difference
- Admiration → Resistance
2. Colonialism and Decolonisation
Colonialism: conquest + exploitation, control of land, labour, knowledge.
Decolonisation: not only political independence, also cultural and psychological reconstruction.
Colonial effects: trauma, cultural erasure, identity fragmentation.
3. Commonwealth Literature
Literature in English from former colonies, still centred Britain as the norm.
Limitations: ignored colonial violence, judged texts by British standards, hid power relations. Postcolonial criticism replaces it.
4. Fanon + Said (Colonial Discourse Theory)
Colonialism works through: violence, representation, discourse.
Key binaries: coloniser/colonised, West/East, civilised/primitive.
5. The Turn to Theory (1980s)
Postcolonialism becomes interdisciplinary. Key ideas emerging:
- Ambivalence: The simultaneous coexistence of attraction and repulsion in colonial relationships; colonial power both asserts authority and depends on the colonised, making domination unstable.
- Mimicry: The colonised subject’s partial imitation of the coloniser’s culture, language, or values—“almost the same, but not quite”—which both reinforces and undermines colonial authority.
- Hybridity: The creation of new, mixed identities and cultures through colonial contact, disrupting ideas of pure or fixed cultural identities.
- Subalternity: The condition of groups excluded from power and dominant discourse, whose voices are silenced or unrepresented within colonial and postcolonial structures.
6. The Empire Writes Back
Postcolonial writers: rewrite imperial narratives, appropriate English, resist cultural authority. Humour and irony become strategies of critique.
7. Into the 21st Century
Postcolonialism expands to:
- Immigration: The movement of people into a country to live permanently or long-term, often shaped by economic, political, or postcolonial power relations.
- Diaspora: A population dispersed from an original homeland, maintaining cultural, emotional, or political ties across multiple locations.
- Globalisation: The increasing interconnection of economies, cultures, and societies worldwide, often reproducing unequal power relations rooted in colonial histories.
- Neo-colonialism: The continuation of colonial control after formal independence, exercised through economic, political, cultural, or ideological influence rather than direct rule.
Themes: displacement, hybrid identity, unstable nationhood.
8. Definitions and Dangers
Risks: too broad as a label, losing political edge, ignoring economics.
Postcolonialism must remain: historically grounded, attentive to power, focused on representation.
B) WORKS / EXTRACTS
1. Frantz Fanon — Extract from The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Background
Born in Martinique, a French Caribbean colony. Trained as a psychiatrist in France. Became deeply involved in the Algerian War of Independence against French colonial rule.
Why Fanon Matters in Postcolonial Studies
Fanon is one of the foundational thinkers of anti-colonial theory because he connects:
- Colonialism → psychological trauma
- Racism → internalised oppression
- Decolonisation → revolutionary violence
He argues colonialism is not only political but: bodily, mental, cultural.
Key Contributions
- Colonisation of the mind: the colonised subject internalises inferiority.
- Violence as structural: colonialism begins in violence, so liberation is disruptive.
- Decolonisation as reconstruction: produces “new humanity.”
Fanon’s Style and Voice
Urgent, militant, revolutionary. Combines theory with lived political struggle. Speaks from inside decolonisation, not after it.
Exam Keywords Linked to Fanon
- Colonial violence: The physical, structural, and symbolic force used to establish and maintain colonial domination, including war, exploitation, repression, and cultural erasure.
- Psychological trauma: The lasting mental and emotional damage caused by colonial oppression, violence, displacement, and dehumanisation, often transmitted across generations.
- Settler/native binary: A rigid opposition that positions colonisers as superior and legitimate and indigenous peoples as inferior or dispossessable, used to justify domination and exclusion.
- Liberation: The process of overthrowing colonial or neo-colonial domination, involving political independence, cultural recovery, and psychological decolonisation.
- Reconstruction: The rebuilding of society after colonial rule or conflict, including institutions, identities, memory, and social relations, often marked by tension and inequality.
Extract focus (what the passage shows)
- Colonialism as violence: Fanon presents colonialism as founded on brutality, not civilisation. The colonial world begins with force. Decolonisation is therefore necessarily disruptive.
- Binary division of space: The extract describes the colonial world as compartmentalised: settler zone vs native zone, humanity vs dehumanisation. Landscape becomes symbolic of apartheid-like separation.
- Characterization (subject positions): Settler = authority, police, dominance. Native = objectified, excluded. Revolutionary subject = reconstruction of agency.
- Theme of reconstruction: Decolonisation creates a “new man” — identity is rebuilt through struggle.
2. Edward Said — Extract from Orientalism (1978)
Background
Palestinian-American intellectual. Born in Jerusalem, educated in Cairo and the United States. Professor of literature at Columbia University.
Why Said Matters
Said transformed postcolonial studies by showing that Empire operates through: culture, scholarship, representation. His work shifted focus from direct colonial rule to: discourse, ideology, cultural power.
Key Contribution: Orientalism (1978)
Said argues that “the Orient” is not a geographical truth but a Western invention. Orientalism is a system that produces the East as: exotic, inferior, irrational, Other.
Said’s Major Themes
- Representation is political.
- Knowledge is tied to domination.
- Empire survives through narratives.
Said’s Voice and Method
Scholarly, critical, interdisciplinary. Uses literary criticism + history + philosophy. Reads canonical Western texts as imperial documents.
Exam Keywords Linked to Said
- Orientalism
- Discourse
- Othering, binaries (West/East)
- Representation as power
Extract focus (what the passage shows)
- Orientalism as discourse: Said defines Orientalism as a Western system of knowledge that produces the Orient. Representation is power. The Orient is constructed, not discovered.
- Binary oppositions: West = rational, modern. East = irrational, static. This reinforces “us vs them.”
- Empire and culture: The extract shows that imperial domination works through: scholarship, literature, images, stereotypes. Not only armies.
- Ambivalence: Orientalism depends on fascination + superiority: attraction to the exotic, need to dominate it.
Key Critical Concepts and Theorists
Postcolonial criticism is grounded in named theoretical frameworks:
- Othering (Edward Said): the process by which colonial discourse constructs the colonised as inferior, irrational, and fundamentally different in order to justify domination.
- Colonial Discourse (Said): a system of representation that produces knowledge about colonised peoples in ways that sustain imperial power.
- Psychological Colonisation (Frantz Fanon): colonialism operates by internalising inferiority within the colonised subject, producing alienation and self-division.
- Internalised Colonialism (Fanon): the adoption of colonial values and hierarchies by colonised individuals, leading to self-rejection.