Postcolonial Theory: Commonwealth Literature and Colonial Discourses
The Emergence of ‘Commonwealth Literature’
‘Commonwealth literature’ and ‘theories of colonial discourses’ are interconnected fields of study.
Defining Commonwealth Literature
‘Commonwealth literature’ was a term literary critics began to use from the 1950s to describe literatures in English emerging from a section of countries with a history of colonialism. It incorporated the study of writers from the predominant European settler communities, as well as writers belonging to those countries which were in the process of gaining independence from British rule. The creation of the category of ‘Commonwealth literature’ as a special area of study was an attempt to identify and evaluate this vigorous literary activity. Neither American nor Irish literature were included in early formulations of the field.
Theories of Colonial Discourses: Frantz Fanon and Edward Said
Theories of colonial discourses explore the ways that representations and modes of perception are used as fundamental weapons of colonial power to keep colonized peoples subservient to colonial rule. Colonialism is perpetuated in part by justifying to those in the colonizing nation the idea that it is right and proper to rule over other peoples, and by getting colonized people to accept their lower ranking in the colonial order of things – a process we call ‘colonizing the mind’.
How Colonialism Establishes Ways of Thinking
To put this frankly: colonialism establishes ways of thinking. It operates by persuading people to internalize its logic and speak its language; to perpetuate the values and assumptions of the colonizers as regards the ways they perceive and represent the world. Theories of colonial discourses call attention to the role which representation plays in getting people to succumb to particular ways of thinking. Although the term is often used in the singular, it is more accurate to talk of colonial discourses rather than ‘colonial discourse’ due to its multifarious varieties and operations which differ in time and space.
The Internalization of Colonial Values
Under colonialism, a colonized people are made subservient to ways of regarding the world which reflect and support colonialist values. A particular value system is taught as the best, truest world-view. The cultural values of the colonized peoples are deemed as lacking in value, or even as being ‘uncivilized’, from which they must be rescued.
Fanon on Identity Formation and the Colonized Subject
Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon) explains the consequences of identity formation for the colonized subject who is forced into the internalization of the self as an ‘other’. The ‘Negro’ is deemed to epitomize everything that the colonizing French are not. The colonizers are civilized, rational, intelligent: the ‘Negro’ remains ‘other’ to all these qualities against which colonizing peoples derive their sense of superiority and normality. Fanon highlights the distinction imposed:
“A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man.”
This distinction is between ‘man’ (self) and ‘black man’ (other).
Achieving Freedom from Colonialism
Freedom from colonialism comes not just from the signing of declarations of independence and the lowering and raising of flags. There must also be a change of mind, a disputing with the dominant ways of thinking. This is a challenge to those from both the colonized and the colonizing nations. People on all sides need to refuse the dominant languages of power that have divided them into master and slave, the ruler and the ruled, if progressive and lasting change is to be achieved. In order to challenge the colonial order of things, some of us may need to reexamine our received assumptions of what we have been taught as ‘natural’ or ‘true’.