Post/Colonial Writing - Introduction
We live in a world that is haunted by its colonial past. But which past is this? And is it also a colonial present? Human history is dominated by the colonization of different parts of the world, by the rise, expansion and fall of imperial powers, and by newly emergent independent nations. Postcolonialism, in its full capacity as a mode of analysis and as a critical lens, extends across these huge areas. It is concerned with the colonized and the colonizer, the pro-imperialist and the anti-imperialist, the local and the global, the national and the transnational. It moves between extremes, from the fixed, rigid borders of the colonial or apartheid city, on the one hand, to the fluid, diasporic journeys of migrants on the other. Its Marxist and materialist advocates maintain these antagonistic dualities in their effort to politicize, whilst its poststructuralist and postmodern tangents complicate and blur these binaries. In all cases, postcolonialists seek to puncture holes in previously uncontested intellectual, literary, public, philosophical, political, and economic spaces. Postcolonialism is radical in its politics, it is subversive in its approach, it is essential in its quest to gain a fuller understanding of the history of the world that we live in.
That, you might quite rightly consider, is a huge task. And it is for this reason that postcolonialism, and the post/colonial writers with which this section of Great Writers Inspire is concerned, can be most definitively grouped by their heterogeneity. However, they do share a common theme: the exploration of multicultural situations and the contestation of the social hierarchies embedded within these, providing a plethora of varying perspectives upon the phenomenon of a globalized world, and the colonial and post-colonial histories of which it is an outgrowth.
Postcolonialism is itself a slippery term, evolving and transfiguring as it tackles different literary, social, and historical environments. Like many theoretical discourses, the parameters have been defined only retrospectively. Bill Ashcroft et al.’s The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, which first appeared in 1995, brought together key essays from the preceding two decades that had contributed to the formation of the critical arena. This text opted to retain the hyphen, signifying a temporal use of the term ‘post’: for Ashcroft and his colleagues, ‘Post-Colonial Studies’ was something that took place after the phenomenon colonialism, a problematic assumption that both disregards the postcolonial tendencies of earlier texts, as well as presuming that colonialism is, in fact, over. If we look to Israel’s policies towards Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank, Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, Chinese economic investments in Africa, or the USA’s foreign policy, to name just a few examples, we must surely consider that colonialism is an intensely contemporary issue.
Published in the same year, Elleke Boehmer’s Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995), removed the hyphen and swapped the term ‘studies’ for ‘literature’. This latter move raises questions as to what the target of postcolonialism’s critique actually is. Initially arising as a strand of literary theory in the form of discourse analysis through the essential work of Edward Said in Orientalism (1978), and his later Culture and Imperialism (1993), postcolonialism first found it’s voice as a form of literary analysis. It is a testament to the field’s importance, versatility and theoretical insight, that it has since migrated through a range of subjects, bridging and blurring disciplinary divides. However, Boehmer’s title reminds us of its origins, as well as highlighting the historical breadth with which the field must be concerned if it is to reach the full potentials of its analytical project -- one cannot, after all, have the postcolonial without the colonial.
This point is reiterated by the title of Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism (1998), which first introduces the slash that we have chosen to employ here in our ‘Post/Colonial Writing’ section. By exchanging the ‘and’ for a form of punctuation, Loomba emphasises the interrelated nature of these two historical periods, suggesting that the textual fabric of each of these dichotomies are, in fact, interwoven into a spatial field of numerous sites of contestation. With Robert Young’s Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001) and Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (2003), the hyphen was permanently eradicated, as the field acknowledged that it remains useful only as a temporal demarcator, the boundaries of which postcolonialism has always been concerned to transcend.
I have here skimmed the surface of a topic that is defined by its heterogeneity. Within the theory, cultural analysis, and literary criticism, can be found numerous tangents and subdivisions that take their inspiration from postcolonialism’s essential and ongoing framework. The post/colonial writers found here in this section, and the commentaries and critiques that accompany them, explore and interrogate the key issues that lie at the heart of postcolonialism: cross-cultural understanding, social justice, and the ongoing development of a global community.
That, you might quite rightly consider, is a huge task. And it is for this reason that postcolonialism, and the post/colonial writers with which this section of Great Writers Inspire is concerned, can be most definitively grouped by their heterogeneity. However, they do share a common theme: the exploration of multicultural situations and the contestation of the social hierarchies embedded within these, providing a plethora of varying perspectives upon the phenomenon of a globalized world, and the colonial and post-colonial histories of which it is an outgrowth.
Postcolonialism is itself a slippery term, evolving and transfiguring as it tackles different literary, social, and historical environments. Like many theoretical discourses, the parameters have been defined only retrospectively. Bill Ashcroft et al.’s The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, which first appeared in 1995, brought together key essays from the preceding two decades that had contributed to the formation of the critical arena. This text opted to retain the hyphen, signifying a temporal use of the term ‘post’: for Ashcroft and his colleagues, ‘Post-Colonial Studies’ was something that took place after the phenomenon colonialism, a problematic assumption that both disregards the postcolonial tendencies of earlier texts, as well as presuming that colonialism is, in fact, over. If we look to Israel’s policies towards Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank, Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, Chinese economic investments in Africa, or the USA’s foreign policy, to name just a few examples, we must surely consider that colonialism is an intensely contemporary issue.
Published in the same year, Elleke Boehmer’s Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995), removed the hyphen and swapped the term ‘studies’ for ‘literature’. This latter move raises questions as to what the target of postcolonialism’s critique actually is. Initially arising as a strand of literary theory in the form of discourse analysis through the essential work of Edward Said in Orientalism (1978), and his later Culture and Imperialism (1993), postcolonialism first found it’s voice as a form of literary analysis. It is a testament to the field’s importance, versatility and theoretical insight, that it has since migrated through a range of subjects, bridging and blurring disciplinary divides. However, Boehmer’s title reminds us of its origins, as well as highlighting the historical breadth with which the field must be concerned if it is to reach the full potentials of its analytical project -- one cannot, after all, have the postcolonial without the colonial.
This point is reiterated by the title of Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism (1998), which first introduces the slash that we have chosen to employ here in our ‘Post/Colonial Writing’ section. By exchanging the ‘and’ for a form of punctuation, Loomba emphasises the interrelated nature of these two historical periods, suggesting that the textual fabric of each of these dichotomies are, in fact, interwoven into a spatial field of numerous sites of contestation. With Robert Young’s Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001) and Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (2003), the hyphen was permanently eradicated, as the field acknowledged that it remains useful only as a temporal demarcator, the boundaries of which postcolonialism has always been concerned to transcend.
I have here skimmed the surface of a topic that is defined by its heterogeneity. Within the theory, cultural analysis, and literary criticism, can be found numerous tangents and subdivisions that take their inspiration from postcolonialism’s essential and ongoing framework. The post/colonial writers found here in this section, and the commentaries and critiques that accompany them, explore and interrogate the key issues that lie at the heart of postcolonialism: cross-cultural understanding, social justice, and the ongoing development of a global community.
Author : Dominic Davies
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