Literary Theory V: Postcolonial Theories (copy)

The British Empire

Beginnings in late 16th c., more consistent colonial policies of the 18th/19th century create huge and powerful British Empire; "decolonisation" after WW II, "Commonwealth" of independent nations remains instead of British Empire - "postcolonial" present; multiculturalism

Imperialism & colonialism

imperialism.: ideology of establishing political power over a foreign nation or territory

colonialism: practice of imperialism - includes settlement, administration, government of a foreigm mation or territory

"Race" & "ethnicity"

race: social and cultural construct based on specific physical markers; legitimises oppression of groups of people

ethnicity:

social and cultural construct that defines a group of people by features such as language, traditions, social practices - also used to legitimise oppression

"Race" as a historical category and discourse

changeable ideas about race, e.g.: belonging to a family/common ancestor <> belonging to a tribe/nation <> having specific biological markers and features

Said: self v. other - Occident vs. Orient

Creation of a group's identity by "othering" - the Orient as a Western construct and fantasy, projection of fears and desires on the Orient → the Orient as the West's "other" autostereotypes vs. heterostereotypes - identity vs. alterity

autostereotypes vs. heterostereotypes - identity vs. alterity

Homi Bhabha - complicating the notion of self/other

Hybridity: cultural identity emerges in a "third space" in-between the cultures of the colonisers and the colonised - inevitable mixing of cultures, cultures do not remain separate

Mimicry: imitation of features of the colonisers by the colonised - subversive effect:

culture of the coloniser can simply be performed by the colonised; mimicry cannot ever achieve true equality.

Literary hybridity

Combination of cultural aspects of the coloniser and the colonised in literature - e.g.Rushdie: English as a language of (Anglo-)Indian literature

Multicultural studies - multicultural societies: diaspora & strategic essentialism

Diaspora: colonisation/globalisation → diasporic communities all over the world

Anzaldúa: "Borderlands" - diasporic üare in-between cultures, e.g. Chicanos

Strategic essentialism

use of essentialist definitions of identity for strategic purposes, e.g.distinct Asian-American groups unite under the simplifying label "Asian-American" to be more powerful, downplaying their differences

Gayatri Spivak: The Subaltern

Spivak criticises postcolonial studies: (post)colonial societies are not uniform and unproblematic, but complex and hierarchical → not every "colonial" person has the same experience of colonialism

→ who can speak for "the subaltern", i.e. the most powerless members of colonial societies, e.g. the poor, uneducated women, slaves etc.?