BBL5202 Critical Appreciation

BBL5202 Critical Appreciation
Postcolonial Criticism
Tan Wai Kian @ Eddie

GS52487
Overview
Post-colonial criticism is similar to cultural studies, but it assumes
a unique perspective on literature and politics that warrants a
separate discussion. Specifically, post-colonial critics are
concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works
produced by those who were/are colonized.
Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics,

religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to
colonial hegemony (Western colonizers controlling the colonized).
Postcolonialism concerns itself with
● the study of the colonization (which began as early as the
Renaissance),
● the decolonization (which involves winning back and
reconstituting the native cultures), and
● the neocolonising process (an aftermath of
postmodernism and late capitalism, when multinational
corporations control the world).
Postcolonialism analyses the metaphysical, ethical and political
concerns about cultural identity, gender, nationality, race,
ethnicity, subjectivity, language and power.
Influenced by the poststructuralist and postmodern idea of

decentering, postcolonial literary criticism undermines the
universalist claims of literature, identifies colonial sympathies in the
canon, and replaces the colonial metanarratives with counter-
narratives of resistance, by rewriting history and asserting cultural
identities through strategies such as separatism, nativism, cultural
syncretism, hybridity, mimicry, active participation and
assimilation.
Major Theoretical Works
● The Wretched of the Earth (1961) by Franz Fanon
● Orientalism (1978) by Edward Said
● In Other Worlds (1987) by Gayatri Spivak
● The Empire Writes Back (1989) by Bill Ashcroft et al
● Nation and Narration (1990) by Homi K Bhabha
● Culture and Imperialism (1993) by Edward Said
Key Concepts
Diaspora: the voluntary or enforced migration of peoples from their
native homelands. Diaspora literature is often concerned with
questions of maintaining or altering identity, language, and culture
while in another culture or country.
Hegemony: the power of the ruling class to convince other classes

that their interests are the interests of all, often not only through
means of economic and political control but more subtly through the
control of education and media.
Identity: the way in which an individual and/or group defines
itself. Identity is important to self-concept, social mores, and
national understanding. It often involves both essentialism
and othering.
Mimicry: the means by which the colonized adapt the culture

(language, education, clothing, etc.) of the colonizer but
always in the process changing it in important ways. Such an
approach always contains it in the ambivalence of hybridity.
Other: the social and/or psychological ways in which one group
excludes or marginalizes another group. By declaring someone
"Other," persons tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from
or opposite of another, and this carries over into the way they
represent others, especially through stereotypical images.
subaltern: the lower or colonized classes who have little access to

their own means of expression and are thus dependent upon the
language and methods of the ruling class to express themselves.
Edward Said’s “Orientalism’
"Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes,
exaggerates and distorts differences of colonized peoples and cultures
as compared to that of Europe and the U.S.
It often involves seeing colonised culture as exotic, backward,

uncivilized, and at times dangerous.
A specific expose of the Eurocentric universalism which takes for

granted both the superiority of what is European or Western, and the
inferiority of what is not. Said identifies a European cultural tradition
of ‘Orientalism’, which is a particular and long-standing way of
identifying the East as ‘other’ and inferior to the West.”
Three stages of postcolonial literature to understand the
various dimensions of postcolonial theory.
● Adopt phase where the writer seeks the form of genre and
mentions its universal validity.
● Adapt phase, here the author adapts or borrows the form,

particularly the European form to the native subject matter.
● Adept phase, focusing over the independence of the text. In last

phase, we do not find interference of European cultural forms.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s In Other Worlds:
Essays in Cultural Politics (1987)
She widened the scope of subaltern literature

including the literatures of marginalised women.
She makes harsh comment on the male dominant
society and shows the secondary position, inferior
role given to women in patriarchy.
According to Spivak, women are doubly exploited

and underestimated in post colonial literature.
She argues
The subaltern is oppressed.
The subject is divided. Subjectivity arises as a consequence of dislocation. Any

attempt to make sense of contradiction and dislocation homogenises the subject.
There are two forms of representation.
● Representation (Vertreten) - political representation from within the hegemonic

power.
● Representation (Darstellen) - re-presentation - something that has been
presented will be re-presented (self-re-presentation). Transforming the nature of
representation. (84)
We need try to clarify our use of terms to avoid equivocation and re-present concepts.
Subaltern according to Spivak is those who belong to third world countries.
It is impossible for them to speak up as they are divided by gender, class,
caste, region, religion and other narratives. These divisions do not allow
them to stand up in unity.
"Can the Subaltern Speak?" critically deals with an array of western

writers starting from Marx to Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida. The basic
claim and opening statement of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is that western
academic thinking is produced in order to support western economical
interests. Spivak holds that knowledge;
● is never innocent and that it expresses the interests of its producers.

● is like any other commodity that is exported from the west to the third
world for financial and other types of gain.
Gayatri Spivak is criticizing the intellectual west's "desire for
subjectivity". Spibak claims that "research" or "knowledge" have served
as a prime justification for the conquest of other cultures and their
enslavement, as part of the European colonial project.
Spivak points to the fact that the west is talking to itself, and in its own
language, about the other. Like other commodities, data or raw material
(ethnographical ,for example) is harvested in the third world country
and taken back to the west, to be produced and sold for the benefit of the
western readers and especially the western writer.
Last Paragraph of Spivak’s Can The Subaltern Speak
Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994)
Hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms

within the contact zone produced by colonization.
Hybridization takes many forms:linguistic, cultural,political, racial, etc.
The term ‘hybridity’ has been most recently associated with the work of
Homi K. Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer/colonized relations stresses
their interdependence and the mutual construction of their subjectivities
Bhabha contends that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in
a space that he calls the ‘Third Space of enunciation’
“Bhabha sees hybridity as a problematic of colonial representation
which reverses the effects of the colonialist disavowal (of differance),
so that other ‘denied’ knowledge enter upon the dominant discourses
and estrange the basis of its authority.”
The idea of hybridity also underlies other attempts to stress the

mutuality of cultures in the colonial and post-colonial process in
expressions of syncreticity, cultural synergy and transculturation.
The idea of hybridity as such that suggests that mutuality negates the
hierarchical nature of the imperial process or that it involves the idea of
an equal exchange.
Hybridity has been seen as part of the tendency of discourse analysis
to de-historicize and de-locate cultures from their temporal, spatial,
geographical and linguistic contexts, and to lead to an abstract,
globalized concept of the textual that obscures the specificities of
particular cultural situations.
Typical
Questions/
Issues
References
Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Homi Bhabha's Concept of Hybridity: Literary Theory and Criticism.” Literary
Theory and Criticism , 2 July 2020, literariness.org/2016/04/08/homi-bhabhas-concept-of-hybridity/.
Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Postcolonialism: Literary Theory and Criticism.” Literary Theory and Criticism ,
15 July 2020, literariness.org/2016/04/06/postcolonialism/.
PostcolDefs, www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/postcold.htm.
Purdue Writing Lab. Post-Colonial Criticism // Purdue Writing Lab.

owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/
literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/post_colonial_criticism.html.
Sawant, Dr. Datta. (2011). Perspectives on Post-colonial Theory: Said, Spivak and Bhabha. Literary
Endeavor. 2. 129-135.
References
https://literariness.org/2016/04/06/postcolonialism/
https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/postcold.htm
https://literariness.org/2016/04/08/homi-bhabhas-concept-of-hybridity/

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Tan Wai Kian @ Eddie

Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics,

Influenced by the poststructuralist and postmodern idea of

Hegemony: the power of the ruling class to convince other classes

Mimicry: the means by which the colonized adapt the culture

subaltern: the lower or colonized classes who have little access to

It often involves seeing colonised culture as exotic, backward,

A specific expose of the Eurocentric universalism which takes for

● Adapt phase, here the author adapts or borrows the form,

● Adept phase, focusing over the independence of the text. In last

She widened the scope of subaltern literature

According to Spivak, women are doubly exploited

The subaltern is oppressed.

The subject is divided. Subjectivity arises as a consequence of dislocation. Any

There are two forms of representation.

● Representation (Vertreten) - political representation from within the hegemonic

"Can the Subaltern Speak?" critically deals with an array of western

● is never innocent and that it expresses the interests of its producers.

Hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms

Hybridization takes many forms:linguistic, cultural,political, racial, etc.

The idea of hybridity also underlies other attempts to stress the

Purdue Writing Lab. Post-Colonial Criticism // Purdue Writing Lab.

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