Future of Postcolonial Studies

Future of Postcolonialism: Thinking Activity

This blog is a response to the thinking activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog,, I will discuss my point of view on two articles from Aania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism (2nd and 3rd edition).

What is Postcolonialism:

Postcolonialism is a field of study that emerged in the wake of decolonization or the process by which colonies gain independence from their colonizers. It is an interdisciplinary field that examines the effects of colonization on both the colonized and the colonizer. Postcolonialism also looks at the ways in which the colonized people resist and subvert the colonial system.

There is no one definition of postcolonialism, but the field is generally concerned with the power dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized, and the impact of colonization on both groups. Postcolonialism is often critical of the Eurocentric perspective that dominated much of academia prior to the field's emergence.

Postcolonialism is a relatively new field, and as such, it is still evolving and changing. It is an important field of study that has the potential to change the way we think about the world and our place in it.

"Postcolonialism... involves a studied engagement with the experience of colonialism and its past and present effects"

According to the glossary of literary terms by M.H. Abrams,

The critical analysis of the history, culture, literature, and modes of discourse that are specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France, and other European imperial powers. These studies have focused especially on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean islands, and South America. Some scholars, however, extend the scope of such analyses also to the discourse and cultural productions of countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which achieved independence much earlier than the Third World countries. Postcolonial studies sometimes also encompass aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the ways in which the social and economic life represented in that literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial exploitation.

Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism. Not all migration takes place in a colonial setting, and not all postcolonial literature deals with migration. (Postcolonial Literature)

Postcolonial Criticism:

According to Peter Barry, there are three phases Adopt, Adapt, and Adept gives a lens through which to view postcolonial literature.

In its earliest phase, which is to say before it was known as such, postcolonial criticism took as its main subject matter white representations of colonial countries and criticised these for their limitations and their bias: thus, critics would discuss the representation of Africa in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or of India in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, or of Algeria in Albert Camus's The Outsider.

The second phase of postcolonial criticism involved a turn toward explorations of themselves and their society by postcolonial writers. At this stage the celebration and exploration of diversity, hybridity, and difference become central. This corresponds to the 'gynotext' phase of feminist criticism (Gynocriticism) when there is a turn towards the exploration of female experience and identities in books by women.

Third PhaseThe analogy between these two types of criticism might be pushed a little further so that a parallel might also be perceived with the split in feminist criticism between 'theoretical' and 'empirical' versions, as suggested above.

Thus, in postcolonial criticism we might see a split between variants very directly influenced by deconstruction and post-structuralism - such as the work of Homi Bhabha - and work like Said's which accepts a good deal from liberal humanism, is written in a more accessible way, and seems perhaps to lend itself more directly to political engagement.

Postcolonial criticism emphasises cultural differences in literary works and is one of the numerous critical methods we have explored that focus on specific problems such as gender (feminist criticism), class (Marxist critique), and sexual orientation (lesbian/gay criticism). This opens the idea of a'super-reader,' who can respond to a text in all of these ways equally and appropriately. In practice, one of these factors tends to trump the others for most readers. For example, the feminist critique example from Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic does not remark on features in Wuthering Heights that would attract postcolonial critics, such as Heathcliff being identified by Emily Bronte as a racial 'Other.' (Barry)

Future of Postcolonialism:

The future of postcolonialism is shrouded in uncertainty. On the one hand, it could be argued that the rise of globalisation and the increased flow of people, ideas and culture across borders will lead to the further erosion of traditional boundaries and the further hybridisation of cultures. This could lead to a situation where the concept of postcolonialism becomes increasingly irrelevant. On the other hand, it could be argued that the increased awareness of and interest in the histories and experiences of colonised peoples will lead to a resurgence of postcolonialism as a critical framework for understanding the world. Only time will tell which of these two trajectories will come to dominate.

Future of Postcolonial studies (3rd Edition):

Some of the most well-known postcolonial scholars, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, claim to 'no longer have a postcolonial worldview.' Some postcolonialists, both inside and outside of literary studies, have rethought their positions in response to new problems, such as those provided by environmental studies. Dipesh Chakrabarty believes that his "readings in globalisation theories, Marxist capital analysis, subaltern studies, and postcolonial critique" have not qualified him to analyse the "planetary problem of climate change". According to Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martnez-Alier (1997), this gap is visible in American environmentalism and its fascination with the wilderness. Postcolonial criticism has been sceptical of earth-first 'green critique,' and hence has avoided dealing with issues concerning the environment.

According to Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, this is prior to postcolonial studies' over-reliance on colonial models from South Asia and Africa that do not speak to settler colonies from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Rothberg and Byrd: Postcolonial Studies in the United States is a reified, distanced, and monolithic 'Third World literature' that largely ignores the individual and collective histories of several important allied traditions, including American studies, Native American studies, African American studies, Latino studies, and Gay and Lesbian studies. While there are significant political commonalities amongst disenfranchised peoples and organisations throughout the world (some of which I will discuss momentarily), there are also significant differences between them. Native Americans and African-Americans, however, marginalised, are citizens of the United States. Native Americans and African-Americans, however disenfranchised, are citizens of the world's most powerful nation-state; on the other hand, many third-world immigrants are quite well-off portions of society. Indigenous community relocation and land theft are also distinguishing elements of many areas that have been privileged in postcolonial studies of South Asia and Africa. Finally, as evidenced by environmental battles in South Asia and Africa, displacement of indigenous groups and land theft are distinguishing elements of many regions emphasised in postcolonial studies, such as South Asia and Africa. Chittaroopa Palit, one of the leaders of the NBA, says that she and her comrades ‘learnt a lot about the structures and processes of globalization through these struggles’. Especially valuable was the lesson that 

though international political factors, such as the character of the governments involved, the existence of able support groups in the North that play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens, the German multinational, for building the dam in Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project; but in neither instance were there strong mass struggles on the ground. 

(Palit) 

Palit examines how the NBA created new means of resistance by drawing on the vast experience and wisdom of the local people. Arundhati Roy, a writer, reminds us that tribal people in Central India have a long history of resistance dating back centuries. However, its self-conception and tactics were inspired by Gandhian anti-colonialist approaches, and it drew significant support from women's groups, labour unions, and left parties in the country, as well as links with other people's movements globally.

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