Literary Theory
Key Terms
Colonisation - the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area..
The Orient - The Orient is a term for the East, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Eastern world, in relation to Europe. It is the antonym of Occident, the Western World.
Settler colonialism - a form of colonialism that seeks to replace the original population of the colonised territory .
Key People
Benedict Anderson
Bill Ashcroft
Penelope Edmunds
Taban Lo Liyong
Edward Said
Gayatri Spivak
Key Works
Orientalism by
"If you've never read it, read it now." --Arianna Huffington, O, The Oprah Magazine Landmark, groundbreaking, classic--these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of "the problem that has no name": the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women's confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th-anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.
ISBN: 9780710000408Publication Date: 1979-01-01
In Other Worlds by
In this classic work, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the leading and most influential cultural theorists working today, analyzes the relationship between language, women and culture in both Western and non-Western contexts. Developing an original integration of powerful contemporary methodologies ¿ deconstruction, Marxism and feminism ¿ Spivak turns this new model on major debates in the study of literature and culture, thus ensuring that In Other Worlds has become a valuable tool for studying our own and other worlds of culture.
ISBN: 0415389569Publication Date: 2006-05-25
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason by
Are the "culture wars" over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world's foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave. "We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban," Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the "native informant" through various cultural practices--philosophy, history, literature--to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant's analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on. A major critical work, Spivak's book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.
ISBN: 9780674177642Publication Date: 1999-06-28
The Empire Writes Back by
The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture. The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture, and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post-colonial studies, open up debates about the interrelationships of post-colonial literatures, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial text, and show how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of literature and language. This book is brilliant not only for its incisive analysis, but for its accessibility for readers new to the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.
ISBN: 9780415280204Publication Date: 2002-10-25
Postcolonialism
Overview
Postcolonial theory explores the impact of settler and franchise colonialism on colonised people; the omission and silence of colonised voices; and representation of colonisation in Western literature. Postcolonial critics not only highlight, and privileges, texts created by indigenous peoples, before, during and after colonisation, but also critiques the ideology of colonial domination. Critics may seek to explore how, through literature and education policies, colonial powers have created structures through their imperialism that have allowed them to ‘rule by consent’. Postcolonial studies bring new colonial voices to the fore, and challenge notions of Western supremacy, including many of the assumptions that are implied by terms such as ‘First World’, ‘Third World’, and ‘The Orient’.
What Postcolonial Critiques do
They reject the claims to universalism made on behalf of canonical Western literature and seek to show its limitations of outlook, especially its general inability to empathise across boundaries of cultural and ethnic difference..
They examine the representation of other cultures in literature as a way of achieving this end.
They show how such literature is often evasively and crucially silent on matters concerned with colonisation and imperialism. .
They foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity and examine their treatment in relevant literary works..
They celebrate hybridity and 'cultural polyvalency', that is, the situation whereby individuals and groups belong simultaneously to more than one culture. ;
They develop a perspective, not just applicable to postcolonial literatures, whereby states of marginality, plurality and perceived `Otherness' are seen as sources of energy and potential change.. ;
What Questions do Postcolonial Critiques ask
How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression?
What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and treated?
What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?
What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
WAre there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial populations?
How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology through its representation of colonialisation and/or its inappropriate silence about colonized peoples?
General Web Links
- The Age The collection of short stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reveals the complex and often sad reality for modern-day Nigerians both at home and in postcolonial settings. The reviewer comments on narrative viewpoint, gender-based themes, and the gulf between a sense of home and a culturally alien landscape.
- Britiannica Postcolonialism, the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.
- Australian Children's Literature and Postcolonialism: A Review Essay The theme of land and country is resonant in Australian children's literature with Aboriginal subject matter. The textual and visual narratives present counter-discourse strategies to challenge the colonial ideology and dominant valuation of the Australian landscape. This review essay begins by examining the colonial history of seeing Australia as an "empty space", naming, and appropriating the land by erasing Aboriginal presence from the land. Then it explores the conceptual re-investment of Aboriginal connections to country in the representation of Australian landscape, as reflected and re-imagined in fiction and non-fiction for child readers. Thereby, as the essay suggests, a shared and reconciliatory space can at least discursively be negotiated and envisioned.