Postcolonial Criticism

-Peter Barry
Postcolonialism, a new field of theory/study in the 1990s, aims to de-universalize the white
European/Western world as the preferred centre around which significant literature
revolves. However, postcolonial writing didn’t just begin occurring in the 1990s—Barry
offers examples of earlier writers who adopted postcolonial attitudes and exemplified the
principals of the field, including W.B. Yeats, who wrote in the late 1800s/early 1900s—
nearly a hundred years before postcolonialism became a theory.
Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
It voices the 'cultural resistance' to France's African empire. It is widely considered as one of
the primary texts regarding postcolonial criticism. Fanon describes two steps for 'colonialised'
people in finding a voice and an identity:
1. Reclaim their own past. The colonial rule of the Europeans would have forced the
nation to view its past as a pre-civilised phase. The natives should learn to accept and
appreciate their past.
2. Erode the colonialist ideology by which that past had been devalued. Separating
oneself from the imposed ideologies shall help in accepting the past.

Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978)

Criticizes Orientalism- the European cultural tradition of representing non-European/ East
(Orient) as inferior to the West (Occident). The East becomes a projection of the ‘negative
qualities’ like cruelty, sensuality, corruption, laziness, etc., which the West do not
acknowledge. Moreover, the East is viewed as a land of the exotic, the mystical and the
seductive. People are not recognized as individuals, but as anonymous crowds whose actions
are considered to be driven by emotions like lust, terror, fury, etc., rather than by conscious
choices or decisions. Emotions and reactions of people are thought to be determined by their
racial considerations instead of their individual status or circumstances.

W B Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927) & “Byzantium” (1932)

1. With an Orientalist perspective (Colonizer)
Yeats has a Eurocentric perspective, considering the East as an exotic ‘Other’. Biased
image of Istanbul, as a mystical, exotic land; a stark contrast to his ‘normative’
pursuits.
2. In postcolonial context- as in Said’s Culture and Imperialism (Colonized)
Desire to regain contact with an earlier, mythical, nationalistic Ireland (need to
reclaim the past). Evoking/ creating a postcolonial version of their own nation,
rejecting the modern and the contemporary.
Four primary characteristics of Postcolonialism:
1. An awareness of literary characterization of non-Western/non-European nations as
“other”—traditional literature often depicts African, Middle Eastern or Asian nations
as mysterious, exotic, “heathen”, barbaric/animalistic, mysterious, primordial, stuck in
the past or “beneath” Western culture.
2. Attention to language, particularly discomfort with the formalized, standardized use
of language, and a desire to break free of it and revert to natural, regional dialects
3. Recognition of “double identities” or unstable identities in which one individual or
group belongs both to the colonizers and the colonized.
4. Emphasis on cross-cultural interaction. Barry identifies three steps or phases by
which cross-cultural interaction occurs in postcolonial literature:
a. Adopt: The writer aims to adopt the European, assumed-universal form or
model as it stands, and endeavours to write works entirely in the European
tradition.
b. Adapt: The writer adapts the European form to “exotic” subject matter
(usually African or Asian)
c. Adept: Writers from African or Asian regions make the form their own, with
no regard for the European traditional form, thus declaring independence from
the tradition.
Barry identifies post-structuralism and deconstructionism as allies for postcolonialism,
particularly in the sense that the former two theories address shifting identity and ideology.
He also indicates that the developmental stages of postcolonialism parallel feminism: -
1. Both developed in rebellion against a single universal stereotype and seeks both to
criticize the limitations set forth by that stereotype and prove the validity of other
options.
e.g.- white representations of colonial countries and criticising them for their
limitations and their bias. (representation of Africa in Joseph Conrad's Heart of
Darkness)
2. Both turned inward and embarked on a phase of self-celebration and self-discovery.
(~'gynotext' phase of feminist criticism)
e.g.- explorations of themselves and their society by postcolonial writers. (‘the empire
writes back’/ celebration and exploration of diversity, hybridity, and difference)
Postcolonial criticism demonstrates the limitations of the classic Western canon of literature,
sheds light on its silence in regard to other regions and cultures and reveals its biases and
inabilities to accept and celebrate cultural/ethnic difference.
It also addresses questions of cultural diversity, celebrates difference, cross-culturalism and
multiculturalism, and uses stereotypical perspectives or perspectives of marginality or
“otherness” as vehicles for change.

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