Definition

Colonialism occurs when a nation occupies a foreign country in order to disposes its indigenous
people of their land and materials. This can be viewed as the material dimension of colonialism.
However, there is also another dimension which is more subtle, Due to the fact that each nation has
its own culture, the confrontation between the between the colonizer and the colonized results in a
cultural clash where every culture seeks to impose itself. The colonizer then, having more power
tends to use the tools at his disposal to impose his own culture and eclipse that of the colonized. As
such, all kinds of writing which tells about the trauma resulted in the encounter between the
colonizer and the colonized is referred to as post-colonial.

founders

One of the precursors of post-colonial studies was Edward Said who argued in his book “Orientalism”
that colonization was not only a system of political rule but also a world view that believed the west
to be superior to the colonized east. This view of superiority is underlined by the colonialist discourse
which is a set of ideas promoted through different means such as literature to justify the act of
colonization

Example: Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” for instance portrays Africa as a “Dark place”.
Therefore, his book puts forward the idea that Europeans are allowed to bring light to the continent
even if it is through colonization.

Post colonialism also argues that the colonizer undervalues the culture of the colonized by the
process of otherization. This is mainly done by portraying the European descendent cultures as being
the norm and positioning cultures from other regions as strange and other. In the work of albert
Camus for instance, French characters are given a name which underline their existence as normal
beings whereas indigenous characters remain undefined and are simply referred to as “Arabs”

Response

Despite the efforts to completely eclipse the culture of the colonized, it remained present to some
degree and resulted in a hybrid multicultural society where both the western and oriental cultures
merged. Moreover, the colonized started to resist the colonizer’s attempts to repress their culture by
producing what is called, the colonial counter discourse thereby challenging the notion of superiority
and otherness promoted by the colonizer’s discourse

methods

to achieve this, the colonized wrote in the language of the colonizer and adopted linguistic strategies
to put forward the existence of their own culture.