A
Black man is begging in front of the young White boy
What
Is Post-Colonialism As A Literary Theory?
Postcolonialism
is the literature produced by the settlement of one country by the other. It is
the literature produced by formerly colonized countries from the late 1960s
till today. It deals with the literature produced in countries that once were
colonies in Britain, France, Spain, America, etc. Post-Colonial literature
studies from the perspective of those who were colonized by Western Countries.
Postcolonialism
is a time after colonial rule. Principally, this theory constructs on examining
the key characteristics of Western countries that why they think of themselves
as superior.
Following are some of its vital terms:
Colonizers
In
Post-Colonial theory, colonizers are “west” the ones who treat colonized as
“subaltern” They forcefully persuaded their powers on colonized to accept the
foreign culture and practices as something significant. They assert their powers
on them to create their forms of knowledge and their discourse.
Colonized
Colonized
is “east” They are treated as “others” by the colonizers. Colonized are treated
as their colonial subject. Colonized are the ones who want to break the
boundaries between “east” and “west”. They produced the Post-Colonial
literature and see what happens when they assert their rights and work in their
way. From the colonized, colonizers make use of them, manipulate them, and take
advantage of them.
Oriental
(Occident) or Orient
Orient/Oriental
is black or east while occident is taken as whites or west. Stereotypes
associated with orient/oriental as a place of mystery, exotic, foreign,
non-native, while occident treated otherwise i.e. we, selves, familiar, native,
and significant.
According
to Edward Said:
Orientalism depends on the binary opposition of orient/occident. Orient used for the disgusting purpose of Occident.
Hybridity
Hybridity
can define as multiple identities at once. As a human being, you can be a
teacher, mother/father, son/daughter, grandfather/grandmother, student, or worker
at the same time. In Post-Colonial literature, hybridity refers to the blend of
Asia or Africa that has found a balance between eastern and western cultural
attributes. It refers to a cross between two separate cultures or mixed eastern
and western cultures.
In
the perspective of Post-Colonial literature, it may occur in many forms i.e.
cultural, political, and linguistics. Hybridity is a term popularized by Homi
K. Bhabha. According to him:
It is the creating of new cultural forms and identities in consequence of the colonial encounter.
White
Man’s Burden
White
man’s burden is a term used in Post-Colonialism to assert superiority over
non-white people. It is a saying of colonized that “I will speak for you”
colonized expected that “since the colonizers know it all, he can speak for
us better”, but the real intention of colonizers is that “Let's silence
the other so that they cannot express their right".
Fundamentally,
the White man’s burden works to colonize the blacks. The work of White Man’s
Burden is to:
1. Harass
them
2. Rule
over them
3. Make
them their slaves
4. Assert
their power over them
5. Or
make them the subject of their own indigenous culture, politics, and literature
Racism
The
Western power on Eastern heads derived the concept of racism. The theory of
race construct on binary opposites. When some physiological factors come in
contact with different ideological opinions, it generates the idea of racism.
It is a concept of colonizers to think of colonized as from another race,
solely to assert their superiority over the Eastern community.
Capitalism
Many
of the theorists argue that colonization is because of Capitalism. From its
definition, Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s
trade controls by its private owner. In the same perspective, all of the
economic power was for the colonizers. Colonization offered raw material, cheap
labor for the western goods, and made their own by using all the talent of
colonized.
This
article is written by Avisra Ijaz, one of the contributors at the School of
Literature.
