Postcolonialism

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the perspective in international relations, see Postcolonialism (international
relations).
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and
economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human
control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to
emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began
publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory
analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of (usually European)
imperial power.

Purpose and basic concepts

As an epistemology (i.e., a study of knowledge, its nature, and verifiability),
ethics (moral philosophy), and as a political science (i.e., in its concern with
affairs of the citizenry), the field of postcolonialism addresses the matters that
constitute the postcolonial identity of a decolonized people, which derives from:
[1]

the colonizer's generation of cultural knowledge about the colonized people; and
how that Western cultural knowledge was applied to subjugate a non-European people
into a colony of the European mother country, which, after initial invasion, was
effected by means of the cultural identities of 'colonizer' and 'colonized'.
Postcolonialism is aimed at disempowering such theories (intellectual and
linguistic, social and economic) by means of which colonialists "perceive,"
"understand," and "know" the world. Postcolonial theory thus establishes
intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own
voices, and thus produce cultural discourses of philosophy, language, society, and
economy, balancing the imbalanced us-and-them binary power-relationship between the
colonist and the colonial subjects.[citation needed][2]

Approaches
Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not
always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through
anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life
—based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators—from the
point of view of the colonized people. On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines
the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and
neocolonialism, including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding
the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may overlap with studies of
contemporary history, and may also draw examples from anthropology, historiography,
political science, philosophy, sociology, and human geography. Sub-disciplines of
postcolonial studies examine the effects of colonial rule on the practice of
feminism, anarchism, literature, and Christian thought.[3]

At times, the term postcolonial studies may be preferred to postcolonialism, as the

ambiguous term colonialism could refer either to a system of government, or to an
ideology or world view underlying that system. However, postcolonialism (i.e.,
postcolonial studies) generally represents an ideological response to colonialist
thought, rather than simply describing a system that comes after colonialism, as
the prefix post- may suggest. As such, postcolonialism may be thought of as a
reaction to or departure from colonialism in the same way postmodernism is a
reaction to modernism; the term postcolonialism itself is modeled on postmodernism,
with which it shares certain concepts and methods.[4]

Colonialist discourse

In La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), the orientalist Ernest Renan,

advocated imperial stewardship for civilizing the non–Western peoples of the world.
Colonialism was presented as "the extension of civilization," which ideologically
justified the self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world
over the non-Western world. This concept was espoused by Ernest Renan in La Réforme
intellectuelle et morale (1871), whereby imperial stewardship was thought to affect
the intellectual and moral reformation of the coloured peoples of the lesser
cultures of the world. That such a divinely established, natural harmony among the
human races of the world would be possible, because everyone has an assigned
cultural identity, a social place, and an economic role within an imperial colony.
Thus:[5]

The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races, by the superior races is part
of the providential order of things for humanity.... Regere imperio populos is our
vocation. Pour forth this all-consuming activity onto countries, which, like China,
are crying aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb European
society into a ver sacrum, a horde like those of the Franks, the Lombards, or the
Normans, and every man will be in his right role. Nature has made a race of
workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity, and almost no sense
of honour; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing
of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be
satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and
humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the
European race.... Let each do what he is made for, and all will be well.

— La Réforme intellectuelle et morale (1871), by Ernest Renan

From the mid- to the late-nineteenth century, such racialist group-identity
language was the cultural common-currency justifying geopolitical competition
amongst the European and American empires and meant to protect their over-extended
economies. Especially in the colonization of the Far East and in the late-
nineteenth century Scramble for Africa, the representation of a homogeneous
European identity justified colonization. Hence, Belgium and Britain, and France
and Germany proffered theories of national superiority that justified colonialism
as delivering the light of civilization to unenlightened peoples. Notably, la
mission civilisatrice, the self-ascribed 'civilizing mission' of the French Empire,
proposed that some races and cultures have a higher purpose in life, whereby the
more powerful, more developed, and more civilized races have the right to colonize
other peoples, in service to the noble idea of "civilization" and its economic
benefits.[6][7]

Postcolonial identity

Spanish colonial architecture in Antigua Guatemala.

Postcolonial theory holds that decolonized people develop a postcolonial identity
that is based on cultural interactions between different identities (cultural,
national, and ethnic as well as gender and class based) which are assigned varying
degrees of social power by the colonial society.[citation needed] In postcolonial
literature, the anti-conquest narrative analyzes the identity politics that are the
social and cultural perspectives of the subaltern colonial subjects—their creative
resistance to the culture of the colonizer; how such cultural resistance
complicated the establishment of a colonial society; how the colonizers developed
their postcolonial identity; and how neocolonialism actively employs the 'us-and-
them' binary social relation to view the non-Western world as inhabited by 'the
other'.

As an example, consider how neocolonial discourse of geopolitical homogeneity often

includes the relegating of decolonized peoples, their cultures, and their
countries, to an imaginary place, such as "the Third World." Oftentimes the term
"the third World" is over-inclusive: it refers vaguely to large geographic areas
comprising several continents and seas, i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America, and
Oceania. Rather than providing a clear or complete description of the area it
supposedly refers to, it instead erases distinctions and identities of the groups
it claims to represent. A postcolonial critique of this term would analyze the
self-justifying usage of such a term, the discourse it occurs within, as well as
the philosophical and political functions the language may have. Postcolonial
critiques of homogeneous concepts such as the "Arabs," the "First World,"
"Christendom," and the "Ummah", often aim to show how such language actually does
not represent the groups supposedly identified. Such terminology often fails to
adequately describe the heterogeneous peoples, cultures, and geography that make
them up. Accurate descriptions of the world's peoples, places, and things require
nuanced and accurate terms.[8] By including everyone under the Third World concept,
it ignores the why those regions or countries are considered Third World and who is
responsible.

Difficulty of definition
As a term in contemporary history, postcolonialism occasionally is applied,
temporally, to denote the immediate time after the period during which imperial
powers retreated from their colonial territories. Such is believed to be a
problematic application of the term, as the immediate, historical, political time
is not included in the categories of critical identity-discourse, which deals with
over-inclusive terms of cultural representation, which are abrogated and replaced
by postcolonial criticism. As such, the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism
denote aspects of the subject matter that indicate that the decolonized world is an
intellectual space "of contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions,
of hybridity, and of liminalities."[9] As in most critical theory-based research,
the lack of clarity in the definition of the subject matter coupled with an open
claim to normativity makes criticism of postcolonial discourse problematic,
reasserting its dogmatic or ideological status.[10]

Campeche Cathedral, located in Campeche City, Mexico.

In Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (1996), Helen Gilbert and Joanne
Tompkins clarify the denotational functions, among which:[11]

The term post-colonialism—according to a too-rigid etymology—is frequently

misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased,
or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a
country breaks away from its governance by another state. Not a naïve teleological
sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post-colonialism is, rather, an engagement
with, and contestation of, colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social
hierarchies... A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more than the
merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the
discursive experience of imperialism.

The term post-colonialism is also applied to denote the Mother Country's

neocolonial control of the decolonized country, affected by the legalistic
continuation of the economic, cultural, and linguistic power relationships that
controlled the colonial politics of knowledge (i.e., the generation, production,
and distribution of knowledge) about the colonized peoples of the non-Western
world. [9][12] The cultural and religious assumptions of colonialist logic remain
active practices in contemporary society and are the basis of the Mother Country's
neocolonial attitude towards her former colonial subjects—an economical source of
labour and raw materials.[13] It acts as a non interchangeable term that links the
independent country to its colonizer, depriving countries of their Independence,
decades after building their own identities.

Notable theoreticians and theories

Frantz Fanon and subjugation
In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon
analyzes and medically describes the nature of colonialism as essentially
destructive. Its societal effects—the imposition of a subjugating colonial identity
—is harmful to the mental health of the native peoples who were subjugated into
colonies. Fanon writes that the ideological essence of colonialism is the
systematic denial of "all attributes of humanity" of the colonized people. Such
dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, by which the colonist
means to inculcate a servile mentality upon the natives.

For Fanon, the natives must violently resist colonial subjugation.[14] Hence, Fanon
describes violent resistance to colonialism as a mentally cathartic practise, which
purges colonial servility from the native psyche, and restores self-respect to the
subjugated.[citation needed] Thus, Fanon actively supported and participated in the
Algerian Revolution (1954–62) for independence from France as a member and
representative of the Front de Libération Nationale.[15]

As postcolonial praxis, Fanon's mental-health analyses of colonialism and

imperialism, and the supporting economic theories, were partly derived from the
essay "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), wherein Vladimir Lenin
described colonial imperialism as an advanced form of capitalism, desperate for
growth at all costs, and so requires more and more human exploitation to ensure
continually consistent profit-for-investment.[16]

Another key book that predates postcolonial theories is Fanon's Black Skins, White
Masks. In this book, Fanon discusses the logic of colonial rule from the
perspective of the existential experience of racialized subjectivity. Fanon treats
colonialism as a total project which rules every aspect of colonized peoples and
their reality. Fanon reflects on colonialism, language, and racism and asserts that
to speak a language is to adopt a civilization and to participate in the world of
that language. His ideas show the influence of French and German philosophy, since
existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics claim that language, subjectivity,
and reality are interrelated. However, the colonial situation presents a paradox:
when colonial beings are forced to adopt and speak an imposed language which is not
their own, they adopt and participate in the world and civilization of the
colonized. This language results from centuries of colonial domination which is
aimed at eliminating other expressive forms in order to reflect the world of the
colonizer. As a consequence, when colonial beings speak as the colonized, they
participate in their own oppression and the very structures of alienation are
reflected in all aspects of their adopted language.[17]

Edward Said and orientalism

Cultural critic Edward Said is considered by E. San Juan, Jr. as "the originator
and inspiring patron-saint of postcolonial theory and discourse" due to his
interpretation of the theory of orientalism explained in his 1978 book,
Orientalism.[18] To describe the us-and-them "binary social relation" with which
Western Europe intellectually divided the world—into the "Occident" and the
"Orient"—Said developed the denotations and connotations of the term orientalism
(an art-history term for Western depictions and the study of the Orient). Said's
concept (which he also termed "orientalism") is that the cultural representations
generated with the us-and-them binary relation are social constructs, which are
mutually constitutive and cannot exist independent of each other, because each
exists on account of and for the other.[19]
Notably, "the West" created the cultural concept of "the East," which according to
Said allowed the Europeans to suppress the peoples of the Middle East, the Indian
Subcontinent, and of Asia in general, from expressing and representing themselves
as discrete peoples and cultures. Orientalism thus conflated and reduced the non-
Western world into the homogeneous cultural entity known as "the East." Therefore,
in service to the colonial type of imperialism, the us-and-them orientalist
paradigm allowed European scholars to represent the Oriental World as inferior and
backward, irrational and wild, as opposed to a Western Europe that was superior and
progressive, rational and civil—the opposite of the Oriental Other.

Reviewing Said's Orientalism (1978), A. Madhavan (1993) says that "Said's

passionate thesis in that book, now an 'almost canonical study', represented
Orientalism as a 'style of thought' based on the antinomy of East and West in their
world-views, and also as a 'corporate institution' for dealing with the
Orient."[20]

In concordance with philosopher Michel Foucault, Said established that power and
knowledge are the inseparable components of the intellectual binary relationship
with which Occidentals claim "knowledge of the Orient." That the applied power of
such cultural knowledge allowed Europeans to rename, re-define, and thereby control
Oriental peoples, places, and things, into imperial colonies.[12] The power-
knowledge binary relation is conceptually essential to identify and understand
colonialism in general, and European colonialism in particular. Hence,

To the extent that Western scholars were aware of contemporary Orientals or

Oriental movements of thought and culture, these were perceived either as silent
shadows to be animated by the orientalist, brought into reality by them or as a
kind of cultural and international proletariat useful for the orientalist's grander
interpretive activity.

— Orientalism (1978), p. 208.[21]

Nonetheless, critics of the homogeneous "Occident–Orient" binary social relation,
say that Orientalism is of limited descriptive capability and practical
application, and propose instead that there are variants of Orientalism that apply
to Africa and to Latin America. Said response was that the European West applied
Orientalism as a homogeneous form of The Other, in order to facilitate the
formation of the cohesive, collective European cultural identity denoted by the
term "The West."[22]

With this described binary logic, the West generally constructs the Orient
subconsciously as its alter ego. Therefore, descriptions of the Orient by the
Occident lack material attributes, grounded within the land. This inventive or
imaginative interpretation subscribes female characteristics to the Orient and
plays into fantasies that are inherent within the West's alter ego. It should be
understood that this process draws creativity, amounting an entire domain and
discourse.

In Orientalism (p. 6), Said mentions the production of "philology [the study of the
history of languages], lexicography [dictionary making], history, biology,
political and economic theory, novel-writing and lyric poetry." Therefore, there is
an entire industry that exploits the Orient for its own subjective purposes that
lack a native and intimate understanding. Such industries become institutionalized
and eventually become a resource for manifest Orientalism or a compilation of
misinformation about the Orient.[23]

The ideology of Empire was hardly ever a brute jingoism; rather, it made subtle use
of reason and recruited science and history to serve its ends.

— Rana Kabbani, Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient (1994), p. 6

These subjective fields of academia now synthesize the political resources and
think-tanks that are so common in the West today. Orientalism is self-perpetuating
to the extent that it becomes normalized within common discourse, making people say
things that are latent, impulsive, or not fully conscious of its own self.[24]: 49–
52

Gayatri Spivak and the subaltern

In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term subaltern, the philosopher
and theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against assigning an over-
broad connotation. She argues:[25]

... subaltern is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for
somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie... In postcolonial terms, everything
that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a space of
difference. Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is
oppressed. It's not subaltern.... Many people want to claim subalternity. They are
the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a
discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word
'subaltern'... They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are.
They're within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being
allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call
themselves subaltern.

Engaging the voice of the Subaltern: the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, at Goldsmith College.
Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to
describe the social functions of postcolonialism.

Essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to reviving subaltern voices

in ways that might (over) simplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous social
groups and, thereby, create stereotyped representations of the different identities
of the people who compose a given social group. Strategic essentialism, on the
other hand, denotes a temporary, essential group-identity used in the praxis of
discourse among peoples. Furthermore, essentialism can occasionally be applied—by
the so-described people—to facilitate the subaltern's communication in being
heeded, heard, and understood, because strategic essentialism (a fixed and
established subaltern identity) is more readily grasped, and accepted, by the
popular majority, in the course of inter-group discourse. The important
distinction, between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore the
diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group, but that, in its
practical function, strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes inter-group
diversity to pragmatically support the essential group-identity.[8]

Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe the
destruction of non-Western ways of perceiving the world and the resultant dominance
of the Western ways of perceiving the world. Conceptually, epistemic violence
specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must always be caught
in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself," because the
colonial power's destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her non–
Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing the world.[8]

In June of the year 1600, the Afro–Iberian woman Francisca de Figueroa requested
from the King of Spain his permission for her to emigrate from Europe to New
Granada, and reunite with her daughter, Juana de Figueroa. As a subaltern woman,
Francisca repressed her native African language, and spoke her request in
Peninsular Spanish, the official language of Colonial Latin America. As a subaltern
woman, she applied to her voice the Spanish cultural filters of sexism, Christian
monotheism, and servile language, in addressing her colonial master:[26]
I, Francisca de Figueroa, mulatta in colour, declare that I have, in the city of
Cartagena, a daughter named Juana de Figueroa; and she has written, to call for me,
in order to help me. I will take with me, in my company, a daughter of mine, her
sister, named María, of the said colour; and for this, I must write to Our Lord the
King to petition that he favour me with a licence, so that I, and my said daughter,
can go and reside in the said city of Cartagena. For this, I will give an account
of what is put down in this report; and of how I, Francisca de Figueroa, am a woman
of sound body, and mulatta in colour.… And my daughter María is twenty-years-old,
and of the said colour, and of medium size. Once given, I attest to this. I beg
your Lordship to approve and order it done. I ask for justice in this. [On the
twenty-first day of the month of June 1600, Your Majesty's Lords Presidents and
Official Judges of this House of Contract Employment order that the account she
offers be received, and that testimony for the purpose she requests given.]

— Afro–Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero–Atlantic World: 1550–
1812 (2009)
Moreover, Spivak further cautioned against ignoring subaltern peoples as "cultural
Others", and said that the West could progress—beyond the colonial perspective—by
means of introspective self-criticism of the basic ideas and investigative methods
that establish a culturally superior West studying the culturally inferior non–
Western peoples.[8][27] Hence, the integration of the subaltern voice to the
intellectual spaces of social studies is problematic, because of the unrealistic
opposition to the idea of studying "Others"; Spivak rejected such an anti-
intellectual stance by social scientists, and about them said that "to refuse to
represent a cultural Other is salving your conscience…allowing you not to do any
homework."[27] Moreover, postcolonial studies also reject the colonial cultural
depiction of subaltern peoples as hollow mimics of the European colonists and their
Western ways; and rejects the depiction of subaltern peoples as the passive
recipient-vessels of the imperial and colonial power of the Mother Country.
Consequent to Foucault's philosophic model of the binary relationship of power and
knowledge, scholars from the Subaltern Studies Collective, proposed that anti-
colonial resistance always counters every exercise of colonial power.

Homi K. Bhabha and hybridity

In The Location of Culture (1994), theoretician Homi K. Bhabha argues that viewing
the human world as composed of separate and unequal cultures, rather than as an
integral human world, perpetuates the belief in the existence of imaginary peoples
and places—"Christendom" and the "Islamic World", "First World," "Second World,"
and the "Third World." To counter such linguistic and sociological reductionism,
postcolonial praxis establishes the philosophic value of hybrid intellectual
spaces, wherein ambiguity abrogates truth and authenticity; thereby, hybridity is
the philosophic condition that most substantively challenges the ideological
validity of colonialism.[28]

R. Siva Kumar and alternative modernity

In 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's Independence,
"Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism" was an important exhibition
curated by R. Siva Kumar at the National Gallery of Modern Art.[29] In his
catalogue essay, Kumar introduced the term Contextual Modernism, which later
emerged as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of Indian art,
specifically the works of Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramkinkar Baij, and
Benode Behari Mukherjee.[30]

Santiniketan artists did not believe that to be indigenous one has to be

historicist either in theme or in style, and similarly to be modern one has to
adopt a particular trans-national formal language or technique. Modernism was to
them neither a style nor a form of internationalism. It was critical re-engagement
with the foundational aspects of art necessitated by changes in one's unique
historical position.[31]

In the post-colonial history of art, this marked the departure from Eurocentric
unilateral idea of modernism to alternative context sensitive modernisms.

The brief survey of the individual works of the core Santiniketan artists and the
thought perspectives they open up makes clear that though there were various
contact points in the work they were not bound by a continuity of style but by a
community of ideas. Which they not only shared but also interpreted and carried
forward. Thus they do not represent a school but a movement.

— Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism, 1997

Several terms including Paul Gilroy's counterculture of modernity and Tani E.
Barlow's Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative
modernity that emerged in non-European contexts. Professor Gall argues that
'Contextual Modernism' is a more suited term because "the colonial in colonial
modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to
internalize inferiority. Santiniketan's artist teachers' refusal of subordination
incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which sought to correct the racial and
cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and
modernism. Those European modernities, projected through a triumphant British
colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they
incorporated similar essentialisms."[32]

Dipesh Chakrabarty
In Provincializing Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty charts the subaltern history
of the Indian struggle for independence, and counters Eurocentric, Western
scholarship about non-Western peoples and cultures, by proposing that Western
Europe simply be considered as culturally equal to the other cultures of the world;
that is, as "one region among many" in human geography.[33][34]

Derek Gregory and the colonial present

Derek Gregory argues the long trajectory through history of British and American
colonization is an ongoing process still happening today. In The Colonial Present,
Gregory traces connections between the geopolitics of events happening in modern-
day Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq and links it back to the us-and-them binary
relation between the Western and Eastern world. Building upon the ideas of the
other and Said's work on orientalism, Gregory critiques the economic policy,
military apparatus, and transnational corporations as vehicles driving present-day
colonialism. Emphasizing ideas of discussing ideas around colonialism in the
present tense, Gregory utilizes modern events such as the September 11 attacks to
tell spatial stories around the colonial behavior happening due to the War on
Terror.[35]

Amar Acheraiou and Classical influences

Acheraiou argues that colonialism was a capitalist venture moved by appropriation
and plundering of foreign lands and was supported by military force and a discourse
that legitimized violence in the name of progress and a universal civilizing
mission. This discourse is complex and multi-faceted. It was elaborated in the 19th
century by colonial ideologues such as Ernest Renan and Arthur de Gobineau, but its
roots reach far back in history.

In Rethinking Postcolonialism: Colonialist Discourse in Modern Literature and the

Legacy of Classical Writers, Acheraiou discusses the history of colonialist
discourse and traces its spirit to ancient Greece, including Europe's claim to
racial supremacy and right to rule over non-Europeans harboured by Renan and other
19th-century colonial ideologues. He argues that modern colonial representations of
the colonized as "inferior," "stagnant," and "degenerate" were borrowed from Greek
and Latin authors like Lysias (440–380 BC), Isocrates (436–338 BC), Plato (427–327
BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC), Cicero (106–43 BC), and Sallust (86–34 BC), who all
considered their racial others—the Persians, Scythians, Egyptians as "backward,"
"inferior," and "effeminate."[36]

Among these ancient writers Aristotle is the one who articulated more thoroughly
these ancient racial assumptions, which served as a source of inspiration for
modern colonists. In The Politics, he established a racial classification and
ranked the Greeks superior to the rest. He considered them as an ideal race to rule
over Asian and other 'barbarian' peoples, for they knew how to blend the spirit of
the European "war-like races" with Asiatic "intelligence" and "competence."[37]

Ancient Rome was a source of admiration in Europe since the enlightenment. In

France, Voltaire (1694-1778) was one of the most fervent admirers of Rome. He
regarded highly the Roman republican values of rationality, democracy, order and
justice. In early-18th century Britain, it was poets and politicians like Joseph
Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Glover (1712 –1785) who were vocal advocates of
these ancient republican values.

It was in the mid-18th century that ancient Greece became a source of admiration
among the French and British. This enthusiasm gained prominence in the late-
eighteenth century. It was spurred by German Hellenist scholars and English
romantic poets, who regarded ancient Greece as the matrix of Western civilization
and a model of beauty and democracy. These included: Johann Joachim Winckelmann
(1717–1768), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Goethe (1749–1832), Lord Byron
(1788–1824), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822),
and John Keats (1795–1821).[36][38]

In the 19th century, when Europe began to expand across the globe and establish
colonies, ancient Greece and Rome were used as a source of empowerment and
justification to Western civilizing mission. At this period, many French and
British imperial ideologues identified strongly with the ancient empires and
invoked ancient Greece and Rome to justify the colonial civilizing project. They
urged European colonizers to emulate these "ideal" classical conquerors, whom they
regarded as "universal instructors."

For Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), an ardent and influential advocate of la

"Grande France," the classical empires were model conquerors to imitate. He advised
the French colonists in Algeria to follow the ancient imperial example. In 1841, he
stated:[39]

[W]hat matters most when we want to set up and develop a colony is to make sure
that those who arrive in it are as less estranged as possible, that these newcomers
meet a perfect image of their homeland....the thousand colonies that the Greeks
founded on the Mediterranean coasts were all exact copies of the Greek cities on
which they had been modelled. The Romans established in almost all parts of the
globe known to them municipalities which were no more than miniature Romes. Among
modern colonizers, the English did the same. Who can prevent us from emulating
these European peoples?.

The Greeks and Romans were deemed exemplary conquerors and "heuristic
teachers,"[36] whose lessons were invaluable for modern colonists ideologues. John-
Robert Seeley (1834-1895), a history professor at Cambridge and proponent of
imperialism stated in a rhetoric which echoed that of Renan that the role of the
British Empire was 'similar to that of Rome, in which we hold the position of not
merely of ruling but of an educating and civilizing race."[40]

The incorporation of ancient concepts and racial and cultural assumptions into
modern imperial ideology bolstered colonial claims to supremacy and right to
colonize non-Europeans. Because of these numerous ramifications between ancient
representations and modern colonial rhetoric, 19th century's colonialist discourse
acquires a "multi-layered" or "palimpsestic" structure.[36] It forms a "historical,
ideological and narcissistic continuum," in which modern theories of domination
feed upon and blend with "ancient myths of supremacy and grandeur."[36]

Postcolonial literary study

As a literary theory, postcolonialism deals with the literatures produced by the
peoples who once were colonized by the European imperial powers (e.g. Britain,
France, and Spain) and the literatures of the decolonized countries engaged in
contemporary, postcolonial arrangements (e.g. Organisation internationale de la
Francophonie and the Commonwealth of Nations) with their former mother countries.
[41][42]

Postcolonial literary criticism comprehends the literatures written by the

colonizer and the colonized, wherein the subject matter includes portraits of the
colonized peoples and their lives as imperial subjects. In Dutch literature, the
Indies Literature includes the colonial and postcolonial genres, which examine and
analyze the formation of a postcolonial identity, and the postcolonial culture
produced by the diaspora of the Indo-European peoples, the Eurasian folk who
originated from Indonesia; the peoples who were the colony of the Dutch East
Indies; in the literature, the notable author is Tjalie Robinson.[43] Waiting for
the Barbarians (1980) by J. M. Coetzee depicts the unfair and inhuman situation of
people dominated by settlers.

To perpetuate and facilitate control of the colonial enterprise, some colonized

people, especially from among the subaltern peoples of the British Empire, were
sent to attend university in the Imperial Motherland; they were to become the
native-born, but Europeanised, ruling class of colonial satraps. Yet, after
decolonization, their bicultural educations originated postcolonial criticism of
empire and colonialism, and of the representations of the colonist and the
colonized. In the late 20th century, after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the
constituent Soviet Socialist Republics became the literary subjects of postcolonial
criticism, wherein the writers dealt with the legacies (cultural, social, economic)
of the Russification of their peoples, countries, and cultures in service to
Greater Russia.[44]

Postcolonial literary study is in two categories:

the study of postcolonial nations; and

the study of the nations who continue forging a postcolonial national identity.
The first category of literature presents and analyzes the internal challenges
inherent to determining an ethnic identity in a decolonized nation.

The second category of literature presents and analyzes the degeneration of civic
and nationalist unities consequent to ethnic parochialism, usually manifested as
the demagoguery of "protecting the nation," a variant of the us-and-them binary
social relation. Civic and national unity degenerate when a patriarchal régime
unilaterally defines what is and what is not "the national culture" of the
decolonized country: the nation-state collapses, either into communal movements,
espousing grand political goals for the postcolonial nation; or into ethnically
mixed communal movements, espousing political separatism, as occurred in
decolonized Rwanda, the Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; thus the
postcolonial extremes against which Frantz Fanon warned in 1961.

Application
Middle East
In the essays "Overstating the Arab State" (2001) by Nazih Ayubi, and "Is Jordan
Palestine?" (2003) by Raphael Israeli, the authors deal with the psychologically-
fragmented postcolonial identity, as determined by the effects (political and
social, cultural and economic) of Western colonialism in the Middle East. As such,
the fragmented national identity remains a characteristic of such societies,
consequence of the imperially convenient, but arbitrary, colonial boundaries
(geographic and cultural) demarcated by the Europeans, with which they ignored the
tribal and clan relations that determined the geographic borders of the Middle East
countries, before the arrival of European imperialists.[45][46] Hence, the
postcolonial literature about the Middle East examines and analyzes the Western
discourses about identity formation, the existence and inconsistent nature of a
postcolonial national-identity among the peoples of the contemporary Middle East.
[47]

"The Middle East" is the Western name for the countries of South-western Asia.
In his essay "Who Am I?: The Identity Crisis in the Middle East" (2006), P.R.
Kumaraswamy says:

Most countries of the Middle East, suffered from the fundamental problems over
their national identities. More than three-quarters of a century after the
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, from which most of them emerged, these states
have been unable to define, project, and maintain a national identity that is both
inclusive and representative.[48]

Independence and the end of colonialism did not end social fragmentation and war
(civil and international) in the Middle East.[47] In The Search for Arab Democracy:
Discourses and Counter-Discourses (2004), Larbi Sadiki says that the problems of
national identity in the Middle East are a consequence of the orientalist
indifference of the European empires when they demarcated the political borders of
their colonies, which ignored the local history and the geographic and tribal
boundaries observed by the natives, in the course of establishing the Western
version of the Middle East. In the event:[48]

[I]n places like Iraq and Jordan, leaders of the new sovereign states were brought
in from the outside, [and] tailored to suit colonial interests and commitments.
Likewise, most states in the Persian Gulf were handed over to those [Europeanised
colonial subjects] who could protect and safeguard imperial interests in the post-
withdrawal phase.

Moreover, "with notable exceptions like Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, most
[countries]...[have] had to [re]invent, their historical roots" after
decolonization, and, "like its colonial predecessor, postcolonial identity owes its
existence to force."[49]

Africa

Colonialism in 1913: the African colonies of the European empires; and the
postcolonial, 21st-century political boundaries of the decolonized countries.
(Click image for key)
In the late 19th century, the Scramble for Africa (1874–1914) proved to be the tail
end of mercantilist colonialism of the European imperial powers, yet, for the
Africans, the consequences were greater than elsewhere in the colonized non–Western
world. To facilitate the colonization the European empires laid railroads where the
rivers and the land proved impassable. The Imperial British railroad effort proved
overambitious in the effort of traversing continental Africa, yet succeeded only in
connecting colonial North Africa (Cairo) with the colonial south of Africa (Cape
Town).

Upon arriving to Africa, Europeans encountered various African civilizations namely

the Ashanti Empire, the Benin Empire, the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Buganda Kingdom
(Uganda), and the Kingdom of Kongo, all of which were annexed by imperial powers
under the belief that they required European stewardship.

About East Africa, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o wrote Weep Not, Child (1964),
the first postcolonial novel about the East African experience of colonial
imperialism; as well as Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
Literature (1986). In The River Between (1965), with the Mau Mau Uprising (1952–60)
as political background, he addresses the postcolonial matters of African religious
cultures, and the consequences of the imposition of Christianity, a religion
culturally foreign to Kenya and to most of Africa.

In postcolonial countries of Africa, Africans and non–Africans live in a world of

genders, ethnicities, classes and languages, of ages, families, professions,
religions and nations. There is a suggestion that individualism and postcolonialism
are essentially discontinuous and divergent cultural phenomena.[50]

Asia

Map of French Indochina from the colonial period showing its five subdivisions:
Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos. (Click image for key)
French Indochina was divided into five subdivisions: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina,
Cambodia, and Laos. Cochinchina (southern Vietnam) was the first territory under
French control; Saigon was conquered in 1859; and in 1887, the Indochinese Union
(Union indochinoise) was established.

In 1924, Nguyen Ai Quoc (aka Ho Chi Minh) wrote the first critical text against the
French colonization: Le Procès de la Colonisation française ('French Colonization
on Trial')

Trinh T. Minh-ha has been developing her innovative theories about postcolonialism
in various means of expression, literature, films, and teaching. She is best known
for her documentary film Reassemblage (1982), in which she attempts to deconstruct
anthropology as a "western male hegemonic ideology." In 1989, she wrote Woman,
Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, in which she focuses on the
acknowledgement of oral tradition.

Eastern Europe
The partitions of Poland (1772–1918) and occupation of Eastern European countries
by the Soviet Union after the Second World War were forms of "white" colonialism,
for long overlooked by postcolonial theorists. The domination of European empires
(Prussian, Austrian, Russian, and later Soviet) over neighboring territories
(Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania,
and Ukraine), consisting in military invasion, exploitation of human and natural
resources, devastation of culture, and efforts to re-educate local people in the
empires' language, in many ways resembled the violent conquest of overseas
territories by Western European powers, despite such factors as geographical
proximity and the missing racial difference.[51]

Postcolonial studies in East-Central and Eastern Europe were inaugurated by Ewa M.

Thompson's seminal book Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism
(2000),[52] followed by works of Aleksander Fiut, Hanna Gosk, Violeta Kelertas,[53]
Dorota Kołodziejczyk,[54] Janusz Korek,[55] Dariusz Skórczewski,[56] Bogdan
Ştefănescu,[57] and Tomasz Zarycki.[58]

Ireland
If by colonization we mean the conquest of one society by another more powerful
society on its way to acquiring a vast empire, the settlement of the conquered
territory by way of population transfers from the conquering one, the systematic
denigration of the culture of the earlier inhabitants, the dismantling of their
social institutions and the imposition of new institutions designed to consolidate
the recently arrived settler community’s power over the ‘natives’ while keeping
that settler community in its turn dependent on the ‘motherland’, then Ireland may
be considered one of the earliest and most thoroughly colonized regions of the
British Empire.

Joe Cleary, Postcolonial writing in Ireland (2012)

Ireland experienced centuries of English/British colonialism between the 12th and
18th centuries - notably the Statute of Drogheda, 1494, which subordinated the
Irish Parliament to the English (later, British) government - before the Kingdom of
Ireland merged with the Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 January 1801 as the United
Kingdom. Most of Ireland became independent of the U.K. in 1922 as the Irish Free
State, a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. Pursuant to the Statute of
Westminster, 1931 and enactment of a new Irish Constitution, Éire became fully
independent of the United Kingdom in 1937; and then became a republic in 1949.
Northern Ireland, in northeastern Ireland (northwestern Ireland is part of the
Republic of Ireland), remains a province of the United Kingdom.[59][60] Many
scholars have drawn parallels between:

the economic, cultural and social subjugation of Ireland, and the experiences of
the colonized regions of the world[61]
the depiction of the native Gaelic Irish as wild, tribal savages and the depiction
of other indigenous peoples as primitive and violent[62]
the partition of Ireland by the U.K. government, analogous to the partitioning and
boundary-drawing of the other future nation states by colonial powers[63]
the post-independence struggle of the Irish Free State (which became the Republic
of Ireland in 1949) to establish economic independence and its own identity in the
world, and the similar struggles of other post-colonial nations; though, uniquely,
Ireland had been independent, then become part of the U.K., then mostly independent
again[64] Ireland's membership of and support for the European Union has often been
framed as an attempt to break away from the United Kingdom's economic orbit.[65]
In 2003, Clare Carroll wrote in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory that "the
"colonizing activities" of Raleigh, Gilbert, and Drake in Ireland can be read as a
"rehearsal" for their later exploits in the Americas, and argues that the English
Elizabethans represent the Irish as being more alien than the contemporary European
representations of Native Americans."[66]

Rachel Seoighe wrote in 2017, "Ashis Nandy describes how colonisation impacts on
the native’s interior life: the meaning of the Irish language was bound up with
loss of self in socio-cultural and political life. The purportedly wild and
uncivilised Irish language itself was held responsible for the ‘backwardness’ of
the people. Holding tight to your own language was thought to bring death, exile
and poverty. These ideas and sentiments are recognised by Seamus Deane in his
analysis of recorded memories and testimony of the Great Famine in the 1840s. The
recorded narratives of people who starved, emigrated and died during this period
reflect an understanding of the Irish language as complicit in the devastation of
the economy and society. It was perceived as a weakness of a people expelled from
modernity: their native language prevented them from casting off ‘tradition’ and
‘backwardness’ and entering the ‘civilised’ world, where English was the language
of modernity, progress and survival."[63]

The Troubles (1969–1998), a period of conflict in Northern Ireland between mostly

Cathlolic and Gaelic Irish nationalists (who wish to join the Irish Republic) and
mostly Protestant Scots-Irish and Anglo-Irish unionists (who are a majority of the
population and wish to remain part of the United Kingdom) has been described as a
post-colonial conflict.[67][68][better source needed][69] In Jacobin, Daniel Finn
criticised journalism which portrayed the conflict as one of "ancient hatred",
ignoring the imperial context.[70]

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs)

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) implemented by the World Bank and IMF are
viewed by some postcolonialists as the modern procedure of colonization. Structural
adjustment programmes (SAPs) calls for trade liberalization, privatization of
banks, health care, and educational institutions.[71] These implementations
minimized government's role, paved pathways for companies to enter Africa for its
resources. Limited to production and exportation of cash crops, many African
nations acquired more debt, and were left stranded in a position where acquiring
more loan and continuing to pay high interest became an endless cycle.[71]

The Dictionary of Human Geography uses the definition of colonialism as "enduring

relationship of domination and mode of dispossession, usually (or at least
initially) between an indigenous (or enslaved) majority and a minority of
interlopers (colonizers), who are convinced of their own superiority, pursue their
own interests, and exercise power through a mixture of coercion, persuasion,
conflict and collaboration."[72] This definition suggests that the SAPs implemented
by the Washington Consensus is indeed an act of colonization.[citation needed]

Criticism
Undermining of universal values
Indian-American Marxist scholar Vivek Chibber has critiqued some foundational
logics of postcolonial theory in his book Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of
Capital. Drawing on Aijaz Ahmad's earlier critique of Said's Orientalism[73] and
Sumit Sarkar's critique of the Subaltern Studies scholars,[74] Chibber focuses on
and refutes the principal historical claims made by the Subaltern Studies scholars;
claims that are representative of the whole of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial
theory, he argues, essentializes cultures, painting them as fixed and static
categories. Moreover, it presents the difference between East and West as
unbridgeable, hence denying people's "universal aspirations" and "universal
interests." He also criticized the postcolonial tendency to characterize all of
Enlightenment values as Eurocentric. According to him, the theory will be
remembered "for its revival of cultural essentialism and its acting as an
endorsement of orientalism, rather than being an antidote to it."[75]

Fixation on national identity

The concentration of postcolonial studies upon the subject of national identity has
determined it is essential to the creation and establishment of a stable nation and
country in the aftermath of decolonization; yet indicates that either an
indeterminate or an ambiguous national identity has tended to limit the social,
cultural, and economic progress of a decolonized people. In Overstating the Arab
State (2001) by Nazih Ayubi, Moroccan scholar Bin 'Abd al-'Ali proposed that the
existence of "a pathological obsession with...identity" is a cultural theme common
to the contemporary academic field Middle Eastern Studies.[76]: 148

Nevertheless, Kumaraswamy and Sadiki say that such a common sociological problem—
that of an indeterminate national identity—among the countries of the Middle East
is an important aspect that must be accounted in order to have an understanding of
the politics of the contemporary Middle East.[48] In the event, Ayubi asks if what
'Bin Abd al–'Ali sociologically described as an obsession with national identity
might be explained by "the absence of a championing social class?"[76]: 148

In his essay The Death of Postcolonialism: The Founder's Foreword, Mohamed Salah
Eddine Madiou argues that postcolonialism as an academic study and critique of
colonialism is a "dismal failure." While explaining that Edward Said never
affiliated himself with the postcolonial discipline and is, therefore, not "the
father" of it as most would have us believe, Madiou, borrowing from Barthes' and
Spivak's death-titles (The Death of the Author and Death of a Discipline,
respectively), argues that postcolonialism is today not fit to study colonialism
and is, therefore, dead "but continue[s] to be used which is the problem." Madiou
gives one clear reason for considering postcolonialism a dead discipline: the
avoidance of serious colonial cases, such as Palestine.[77]

Postcolonial literature
Main article: Postcolonial literature
Foundational works
Some works written prior to the formal establishment of postcolonial studies as a
discipline have been considered retroactively as works of postcolonialist theory.

1924. Le Procès de la Colonisation française ('French Colonization on Trial'), by

Nguyen Ai Quoc (aka Ho Chi Minh)[78]
1950. Discourse on Colonialism, by Aimé Césaire
1952. Black Skin, White Masks, by Frantz Fanon
1961. The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon
1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized, by Albert Memmi
1970. Consciencism, by Kwame Nkrumah
1978. Orientalism, by Edward Said
1988. Can the Subaltern Speak?, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Contemporary authors of postcolonial fiction
John Nkemngong Nkengasong (1959–)
Chinua Achebe (1930–2013)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie[79] (1977–)
Ama Ata Aidoo (1940–2023)
Mariama Ba (1929–1981)
Giannina Braschi(1953–)
Edwidge Danticat(1969–)
Buchi Emecheta (1944–2018)
Amitav Ghosh (1956–)
Abdulrazak Gurnah (1948–)
Mohsin Hamid (1971–)
Jamaica Kincaid (1949–)
Jhumpa Lahiri (1967–)
Ben Okri (1959–)
Michael Ondaatje (1943–)
Arundhati Roy (1961–)
Jean Rhys (1890–1979)
Salman Rushdie (1947–)
Sam Selvon (1923–1994)
Ousmane Sembene (1923–2007)
Bapsi Sidhwa (1938–)
Zadie Smith (1975–)
Wole Soyinka (1934–)
Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014)
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938–)
Cadwell Turnbull (1987–)
Derek Walcott (1930–2017)
Postcolonial non-fiction
Pre-2000
Alatas, Syed Hussein. 1977. The Myth of the Lazy Native.
Anderson, Benedict. [1983] 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-329-5.
Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin. 1990. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literature.
——, eds. 1995. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-
09621-9.
——, eds. 1998. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge.
Amin, Samir. 1988. L'eurocentrisme ('Eurocentrism').
Balagangadhara, S. N. [1994] 2005. "The Heathen in his Blindness..." Asia, the
West, and the Dynamic of Religion. Manohar books. ISBN 90-04-09943-3.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture.
Chambers, I., and L. Curti, eds. 1996. The Post-Colonial Question. Routledge.
Chatterjee, P. Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories.
Princeton University Press.
Gandhi, Leela. 1998. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. Columbia
University Press: ISBN 0-231-11273-4.
Guevara, Che. 11 December 1964. "Colonialism is Doomed" (speech). 19th General
Assembly of the United Nations. Havana.[80]
Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism.
Indiana University Press.
German edition: trans. Kathrina Menke. Vienna & Berlin: Verlag Turia & Kant. 2010.
Japanese edition: trans. Kazuko Takemura. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 1995.
—— 1989. Infinite Layers/Third World?
Hashmi, Alamgir. 1998. The Commonwealth, Comparative Literature and the World: Two
Lectures. Islamabad: Gulmohar.
Hountondji, Paulin J. 1983. African Philosophy: Myth & Reality.
Jayawardena, Kumari. 1986. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World.
JanMohamed, A. 1988. Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial
Africa.
Kiberd, Declan. 1995. Inventing Ireland.
Lenin, Vladimir. 1916. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Mannoni, Octave, and P. Powesland. Prospero and Caliban, the Psychology of
Colonization.
Nandy, Ashis. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under
Colonialism.
—— 1987. Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness.
McClintock, Anne. 1994. "The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term
'Postcolonialism'." In Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial Theory, edited by M. Baker,
P. Hulme, and M. Iverson.
Mignolo, Walter. 1999. Local Histories/Global designs: Coloniality.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1986. Under Western Eyes.
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa.
Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures.
—— 1997. Contesting Cultures.
Parry, B. 1983. Delusions and Discoveries.
Raja, Masood Ashraf. "Postcolonial Student: Learning the Ethics of Global
Solidarity in an English Classroom."
Quijano, Aníbal. [1991] 1999. "Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality." In
Globalizations and Modernities.
Retamar, Roberto Fernández. [1971] 1989 . "Calibán: Apuntes sobre la cultura de
Nuestra América" ['Caliban: Notes About the Culture of Our America']. In Calibán
and Other Essays.
Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism.[81]
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak?
—— 1988. Selected Subaltern Studies.
—— 1990. The Postcolonial Critic.
—— 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing
Present.
wa Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ. 1986. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in
African Literature.
Young, Robert J. C. 1990. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West.[82]
—— 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race.
After 2000
Ankerl, G. 2000. Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations. Geneva: Indiana University
Press. ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
Bachetta, Paola. 2012. Cahiers du CEDREF on Decolonial Feminist and Queer Theories.
Dabashi, Hamid. 2007. Iran: A People Interrupted.
Dean, B., and J. Levi, eds. 2003. At the Risk of Being Heard: Indigenous Rights,
Identity, and Postcolonial States. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06736-
2.
Dhawan, N. 2005. "Postkolonial Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung" ['Postcolonial
Theory: A Critical Enquiry'].
El-Enany, Nadine. 2020. Bordering Britain
Gopal, Priyamvada. 2019. Insurgent Empire
Mbembe, Achille. 2000. On the Postcolony. Regents of the University of California.
McLeod, John. 2000. Beginning Postcolonialism.
2010. Beginning Postcolonialism (2nd ed.). Manchester University Press.
Mignolo, Walter. 2005. The Idea of Latin América.
Paperson, L. 2005. "The Postcolonial Ghetto." doi:10.5070/B81110026.
Poddar, Prem, and David Johnson, ed. 2008. A Historical Companion to Postcolonial
Literatures in English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-
3602-0. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
Prine, Richard. 2014. The Disappointed Bridge: Ireland and the Post-Colonial World.
Risam, Roopika. 2018. New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in
Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy.
Salzman, Philip C., and D. Robinson Divine, eds. 2008. Postcolonial Theory and the
Arab–Israeli Conflict. Routledge.
Young, Robert J. C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction.
Scholarly projects
In an effort to understand postcolonialism through scholarship and technology, in
addition to important literature, many stakeholders have published projects about
the subject. Here is an incomplete list of projects.

The Institute of Postcolonial Studies, based in Naarm/Melbourne, is an independent

public education project dedicated to research and addressing contemporary matters
informed by postcolonial and critical inquiry. IPCS edits the well-known journal
Postcolonial Studies (published with Taylor and Francis).
Bodies and Structure (2019), on the spatial history of Japan and its empire
Chicana Diasporic (2018), a research hub that highlights the Chicana Caucus of the
National Women's Caucus from 1973 to 1979
Harlem Shadows (2018), an open source collection of Claude McKay's 1922 collection
of poems
Passamaquoddy People: At Home on the Oceans and Lakes (2014), a digital archive of
photos and recordings of the Passamaquoddy people
Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds (2017), critical reading of Black and Asian
British literature
Torn Apart/Separados (2018), visualizations and scholarly journal tracking global
crisis situations
W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (2019), charts from
W.E.B. Du Bois in color about the lives of Black Americans
See also
Ali Shariati
Amina Wadud
Anticolonialism
Audre Lorde
Burn! (1969), directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Cultural cringe
Cross-culturalism
Decolonization
The Dogs of War (1980), directed by John Irvin
Ethnology
Fatima Mernissi
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1975), by Chinua Achebe
Inversion in postcolonial theory
Leila Ahmed
Linguistic imperialism
Lila Abu-Lughod
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Kecia Ali
Nation-building
Paulo Freire
Postcolonial anarchism
Postcolonial feminism
Postcolonial theology
Post-communism
Ranajit Guha
Ranjit Hoskote
Robert J.C. Young
Saba Mahmood
Street name controversy
Talal Asad
Teju Cole, "The White-Savior Industrial Complex," The Atlantic[83]
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Gregory, Derek (2009). Dictionary of Human Geography. Hoboken,NJ.: Wiley-Blackwell
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