POSTCOLONIAL
CRITICISM
de Arriba, Marina - Guzmán, María
Prof: Mussetta, Mariana
English Literature II
Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa
Universidad Tecnológica de Villa María
23/03/2013
POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM (1990S)
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is concerned with literature produced by colonial
powers and works produced by those who are/were
colonized
Critiques Euro-centric hegemony
Questions the role of the Western literary canon and
Western history as dominant forms of knowledge
making
POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITY
Colonialist Ideology colonialist discourse
- colonizers  civilized, the proper “self”
- native peoples  savage, “the other,”evil, primitive, not
fully human
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Edward Said  ORIENTALISM
Colonial Subject  did not resist colonial subjugation
 mimicry
 double counciousness / double vision
unhomeliness
hybridity
POSTCOLONIAL DEBATE
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White settler colonies
- Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Souther Africa
Politics of their own critical agenda
- neocolonialism  political, economic, cultural
subjugation
- cultural imperialism  economic domination
POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND
LITERATURE
THEMES
• The initial encounter with the colonizer and the disrupt of
indigenous culture
• The journey of the European ousider through an unfamiliar
widerness with a native guide ( Conrad’s Heart od Darkness)
• Othering and colonial oppression
• Mimicry
• Exile  being outsider in one’s land
• Post independence exuberance followed by desillusionment
• The struggle for individual and collective cultural identity
• Alienation
• Unhomeliness
• Double conciousness
• Hybridity
Post-colonial Criticism and
Multiculturalism
• How can we see Post-colonial Criticism?
• Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth
• Encountering “the Other”
•Monoculturalism
•Multiculturalism
How can we see Post-colonial Criticism?
• As subternal groups: - discrimination
- alien culture
- language
• As colonizers groups: no oppression
Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth
•Born in 1925 in the French West Indies
•Psychiatrist and leader of Algerian National Front and editor
of The Wretched of the Earth where he analysed the situation
of the colonized
• Objectives
of colonial policy:
- economic exploitation
- systematic negation of the other
- determination and negation of the sense of identity
and dignity in native people.
• Confrontation between colonizers and native people
generates:
Manichaeism: is the extreme polarization in which
people are seen as either good or evil.
Encountering “the Other”
•Views:
- An indigenaous person in a colonized country
encountered European culture.
- The European settler encountering ahat seemed to
him the mistery, the darkness and the thread of a native
culture.
•Reactions when you encounter “the Other”
- Stick whith your own experience and be
uninfluenced.
relatively
- Abandon your own culture and adopt that of the
other.
- develop a responde that mixes elements of yourself
with elements of the other. This is called hybridization, a new
form is produced which contains elements of different cultures
or languages.
Monoculturalism
There is one dominant culture so groups with different
cultural backgrounds need to assmilate themselves to
the predominant culture
Multiculturalism
There is one than one culture which is struggling for
recognition. For example native, Frence and English
culture in Canada.
KAMALA DAS
Was born in1934 in Punnayurkulan, Malabar District,
British India.
 Died in 2009(aged 75) in Pune, Maharashtra, India.
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During the first half of the 20th century, a nationwide
struggle for independence was launched by the Indian
National Congress and later joined by the Muslim
League. The subcontinent gained independence
from the United Kingdom in 1947, after the British
provinces were partitioned into the dominions of India
and Pakistan and the princely states all acceded to one
of the new states.
“Robert and the Dog” (Ken Saro-Wiwa)
•Ken Saro-Wiwa´s Biography
•Elements of fiction
- Plot
- Characters
- Setting
- Point of view
- Symbol
- Theme
•Analysis
Ken Saro-Wiwa´s Biography
•He was born in Bori, Rivers State (Nigeria)
•He was a popular author, playwriter and television producer.
•He graduated from the University of Ibadan.
•He worked at the government college in Umuahia, Stella Maris College
and at the University of Lagos
•During the Nigerian Civil war (1967-1970), he chose the Nigerian side and
was the administrator for the oil depot at Bonny Island.
•Then he served as a regional commissioner for education in the Rivers
State
Cabinet, but he was dismissed due his opinion on autonomy for the Ogoni
people.
•1986 He wrote A Forest of Flowers, a collection of 19 short stories “Robert
and the Dog” is written.
• 1990 he founded the Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People and in
one of his books he criticized corruption and condemmed Shell and British
Petroleum. The Nigerian government decided to break his movement and
he was arrested.
•I1995 he was executed, his body was burned with acid and buried in an
unmarketed, common grave.
Nigerian civil war
It was a political conflict caused by the attemped
secession of the southeastern provinces of Nigeria
as the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra. The
conflict was the result of economic, ethnic,
cultural and religious tensions among several
people of Nigeria.
Ogoni People
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They are one of the many indigenous people in the southeast
Nigeria.
They have been victgims of human right violations.
In 1956 the Royal Dutch/Shell in collaboration with the
British government found a comercially viable oil field and
began oil production. There was oil spills, oil flaring and
waste discharge, as a consequence the soil was not viable for
agricultural use. Many areas was contaminated.
In 1990, Saro-Wiwa and his movement planned to take action
against the government and the oil companies
The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People
(MOSOP)
It is an Ogoni-based non-governmental, non-political apex
organisation of the Ogoni ethnic minority people of SouthEastern Nigeria and was founded in 1990 with the
mandate to campaign non-violently to:
• Promote democratic awareness;
• Protect the environment of the Ogoni People;
• Seek social, economic and physical development for
the region;
• Protect the cultural rights and practices of the
Ogoni people; and
• Seek appropriate rights of self-determination for
the Ogoni people
http://www.mosop.org/about_us.html
Elements of fiction
-Plot
Robert was a man who lives with his wife and six children in Ajengungle called
“The Jungle”. His new employer was a young medical doctor who
lived alone in an apartment. Robert was very happy with his job
until the arrival of the employer´s wife and her dog called Bingo.
The lady was cheerful and she took an interest in Robert´s culture.
The problem was her dog because Robert could see that the dog was treated
like a human being and it had a good life in comparison with his family. When
his employers travelled, he had to take care of it but…on the third day he
gathered all the food and the milk, tethered the dog to the settee and he
walked off the house. He abandoned his job and the dog died.
Characters
- Protagonist: Robert
- Antagonist: Bingo, the dog
Setting
- Time: 1986
- Place: Ajegunle (district of Lagos State, Nigeria)
Point of view
Third person omniscient
Symbol
•The dog (Western culture)
•The dog´s name: Bingo
Themes
-The clash of two different cultures
Saro-Wiwa shows how Robert compares the life of the dog to that of his children
-Portrayal of poverty
According to Craig McLuckie and Aubrey McPhail “Saro-Wiwa refines his general
social critique down to the level of the individual. The story is one authentic pathos,
as the effects of poverty and dehumaniation are revealed in a life of an honest,
hardworking man who has been “accostomed to moving from household to household”
from one harsh and insensitive employer to the next. He finally finds an employer, a
young doctor, who treats him with kidness and respect. The dog is very well treated by
the doctor and his wife, and Robert becomes resentful”. They also add that the end of
the story shows “the bitter social conditions that force an individual to feel
dehumanized and to leave a job where he finally “began to feel like a human being”
(McLuckie, Craig and McPhail 82)
Analysis
•Mimicry (imitation)
-A steward “… determines what is to be spent on grocery, how much
food is to be served at meal times, what is to be done with the remnants
of food. In short, he holds the bacherlor´s life in his hands. And that is
tremendous power.”
-”In his one-bedroom apartment in The Jungle, Robert was king. And
he always repaired there nightly to exercise his authority over his wife and six
children.”
•Encountering “ the other”
The European lady encountering what seemed to her the mistery:
hybridization (an attemp to interact and learn with the other)
“She was European and excited about her first visit to Africa. She
appeared pleased to have Robert´s assistance. She spent the day asking
Robert about African food, watching Robert at work in the kitchen and
lending a helping hand where possible”
•Colonialist Ideology
- Inferiority of native people
“Robert began to feel like a human being, and he felt extremely
grateful to his new employers”
“The dog appeared as important to the lady as her husband and, indeed,
Robert thought, in the order of things, the dog as more important than himself”
•Double consciousness (perception of a world divided in 2 antagonist cultures)
Robert “..could understand a dog being invited to eat up an infant´s faeces. He could
understand a stray, mangy dog with flies around its ears being eaten and chased away
from dwellings of men. He could understand a dog wandering around rubbish heaps in
search of substenance. But a dog who slept on the settee, a dog who was fed tinned
food on a plate, a dog who was brushed and cleaned, a dog who drank good tinned
milk, was entirely beyond his comprehension.”
•Metaphors
“Because every bachelor is as wax in the hands of his steward”
“But each wag of his tail was like so many pinprincks in the heart of Robert, who
secretely vowed to “show” the dog some day.”
•Manichaeism
“Robert´s new employer was a young medical doctor just returned from abroad. He
Was cheerful, exuberant and polite. It was obvious to Robert that he had not been in
the country for a long time. Because he did not once lose his temper, he did not shout
At Robert, he called him about his wife, children and other members of his family”
WOLE SOYINKA
He was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, western
Nigeria
 Lived in Great Britain during six years
 Nobel Prize in literature
 During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an
article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967,
accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was
held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969.
 He writes in English and his literary language is
marked by great scope and richness of words.
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“White Comedy” (Benjamin Zephaniah)
• Benjamin
Zephaniah´s Biograph
•Themes
•Glossary of the poem
•Analysis
Benjamin Zephaniah´s
Biograph
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He is an English writer, dub poet and Rastafarian
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He was born in Birmingham, England
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He is son of a Barbadian postman and a Jamaican nurse
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By the age of 15, his poetry was already known among AfroCaribbean and Asian communities. He decided to expand his
audience and he travelled to London.
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In some books, he wrote against British legal system and
celebrated cultural diversity in Britain.
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In 1996 he wrote “White Comedy” in Propaganda
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Since 2008 he has divided his time between Beijing and a village
in Lincolnshire.
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Dub poetry
It is a form of performance poetry of West Indian
origin, which evolved out of dub music consisting
of spoken word over reggae rhythms in Jamaica
in the 1970.
The dub poet usually appears in stage with a
band performing music specially written to
accompany each poem
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Rastafarian movement
It is a spiritual movement that arose in the 1930
in Jamaica. They reject Western society
Themes
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Duality between colonized and colonizers
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Inferiority of native people
According to
the poem “expresses in different ways the
extent to which racial domination can permeate a society and the
social distance which can separate black people and white people.
Almost always the white person or white group in a situation of
superiority, and the black group in a situation of inferiority, lesser
power or influence, and having to justify themselves.”.
Glossary of the poem
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black comedy an amusing play, story that is funny but it also shows the unpleasant side of
human life
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blackmail the practice of obtaining money or advantage by threatening to make known
unpleasant facts about a person or group
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black magic magic believed to be done with the help of evil spirits and used for evil purposes
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white magic magic used for good purposes
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white lie a harmless lie
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black sheep someone who is thought by other members of their group to be a failure or to have
brought shame on the group
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blacksmith a metalworker who makes and repairs things made of iron
white collar: a worker who has a job in offices, banks, etc. rather than jobs working
in factories
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black spot a place or area where there are more problems than usual
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blackwater fever a very severe form of the disease malaria
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blacklist a list of people, groups, countries, etc., who must to be avoided or punished in some
way
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blackleg someone who continues to work when their fellow workers are on strike
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black art is black magic
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Black Death the illness that killed large numbers of people in Europe and Asia in the 14th
century
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blackjack a card game // a weapon like a stick covered with leather used to hit people
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Black Watch the common name for the Royal Highland Regiment, a regiment (=large division
of men) in the British army
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blackguard a man of completely dishonourable character
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black economy the business activity that is carried on unofficially, especially in order to avoid
taxes
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Blackshirt a member of a fascist organization having a black shirt as part of its uniform (from
the Italian Fascist Party before the Second World War, whose members wore black shirts)
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Black Mass a ceremony in which worshippers of the devil use forms like those of Christian
worship
Black market: the system by which people illegally buy and sell foreign money, goods
that are difficult to obtain.
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wog very offensive word for a black person
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To slave to work very hard with no time to rest
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To brand a) to describe someone or something as a very bad type of person or thing ofter
unfairly; b) to burn a mark onto something, especially a farm animal in orden to show
who it belongs
To hail to describe someone or something as being very good
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Analysis
Zephaniah employs black humor in order to tell a funny story that
deal with the unpleasant parts of human life. He plays with
language using the words black and white:
Black has negative connotation and this word gives the idea
of darkness and evil
White has a positive meaning for example cleanliness,
goodness
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Symbols
Irony
Simile
Connotation
Inferiority
Colonialist ideology
Mimicry
Othering
Neocolanization
Double conciousness
Colonizers with political domination
economic exploitation
“Still I Rise” (Maya Angelou)
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Symbol: dust
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Tone: sureness and pride
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Manichaeism
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Double conciousness
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Resistance to colonialist ideology
Work Consulted
Bonnycastle, Sthephen. (2007) In Search of Authority: An
introductory Guide to Literary Theory. 3rd Edition. Peterborough,
Ontario: Broadview Press.
Tyson, Lois. (2006). Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide.
2nd Edition. New York and London. Routledge.
Saro-Wiwa, Ken. (1986) A Forest of Flowers. California University.
Saros International Publishers.
Zephaniah, Benjamin (1996) “White Comedy” in Propaganda.