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Name: Gausvami Surbhi A.
Paper no. : 8
Topic: Postcolonialism and Culture
Submitted to: Dr. Dilip Barad, Department of English
MKBU University
Roll NO.: 24
Batch year: 2016-18
What is Postcolonialism :-
* The political or cultural condition of a former colony.
“A theoretical approach in various disciplines that is concerned with the lasting impact of colonization in former colonies. “
Postcolonialism is an academic discipline that analyzes, explains, and responds to the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism. It speaks about the human consequences of external control and economic exploitation of native people and their lands. Drawing from postmodern schools of thought, postcolonial studies analyze the politics of knowledge by examining the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism.
As a genre of contemporary history, postcolonialism questions the manner in which a culture is being viewed. Challenging the narratives expounded during the colonial era. Anthropologically, it records human nations between the colonist and the people under colonial rule. Western cultural knowledge was applied to subjugate a non Europen people into a colony of the European mother country.
* Postcolonialism and culture :-
Colonialism was presented as “the extension of civilization” it means people believed that they are more civilized people than others and they have great culture heritage so we find cultural superiority of the western world over the non western world.
An imperial power live England, Belgium, Portugal etc. They were hungry for gold, trade, or perhaps even more power. The native people must struggle with this newly arrived culture and all of its beliefs, values, habits and traditions, which now become the part of their own lives native people must evaluate that which part of that change brings benefits and and which part harm the nation or society.
Certainly it brings the harm in the field of traditional culture, belief and values, but the issue of colonization touches upon more than just the struggle of native people to adjust to a new culture. This new invader did not have the similar culture. They considered their culture as superior this colonizer came with the idea that the land he has come to conquer truly can be owned by him. They had strong belief that his culture is superior to the one he has come to suppress.
Obviously, the colonized people conscious about the closed identity. Here is where the term “post colonialism” comes into play. The word is a tool, a methodology, what happens when two culture clash based upon one of the culture’s assumption of his superiority. We have the definition of colonized people as “victims of imperialism” image of tortured natives at the hands of white oppressors. The ideas, thoughts, values, culture, tradition was imposed to colonized people. Teaching christain religious beliefs as one example. Intentionally they spread the ideas to the indigenous population.
Post colonial, as a term refers to more than just a people adjusting to changes. It creates two distinct parties.
* Colonizer and colonized
* Oppressor and oppressed
* Changer and changed
* Superior and inferior
Even after the colonizer has left, and the formerly colonized nation has been liberated the presence of the colonizer still remains as something of a shadow and post colonialism touches upon many issues : language, land, men’s and women’s roles, nationalism and hybridism.
There was a great impact of colonial society on culture. The impact was positive as well as negative. For eg. colonial powers introduced western schools and health care resources that often had a positive effect on the lives of the colonized people. Government focused on training for low level civil service occupations half of the children in most colony went to school and many leaders of post colonial governments had been educated in colonial government and missionary school. Also colonizers established medical centers.
Thus, the traditional schools and medical readjusted according to new culture.
During the colonial era, many European colonizers, such as great Britain, took a paternalistic view of the native culture. They brought Christianity and civilization. This attitude destroyed traditional beliefs and social values however and had a negative effect on colonized populations.
Language a means of identity as much as a tool of empowerment is at the heart of a culture and of a people one can separate from others through their language and colonizer had great impact on language. For eg. Today English is the international language because they were in power and their language is English and everyone is affected by the English language. The indigenous people must struggle with a new force that threatens their old standard and come to some sort of compromise. They had to accept the English language and also they ue language as a tool against oppressor but English of colonized people were not considered as the equal to rulers. They considered it as inferior and also did not consider the literature equal to them. On the other hand native people saw native person (who speak English) as a antinationalist. So there was a clash between two culture.
“Post colonialism” loosely designates a set of theoretical approaches which focus on the direct effects and after colonization. It appeared in the context of decolonization that marked the second half of 20th century and has been appropriated by contemporary critical discourse in a wide range of domains mapped by at least half a dozen disciplines.
Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase under gone by third world countries after the decline of colonialism. For example, when countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves. Many third world writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempts both to resurrect their cult.
At first glance post colonial studies would seem to be a matter of history and political science, rather than literary criticism. English is the global British language. Postcolonial literary theorists study the English language within this politicized context especially those writings that developed at the colonial Front such as works by Rudyard Kipling E.M.Forster, Jean Rhys, or Jamaica Kincaid. Edward said’s concept of orientalism was an important touch stone to postcolonial studies, as he described the stereotypical discourse about the east as constructed by the west. This discourse, rather than realistically portraying eastern “others” constructs them based upon western anxieties and preoccupations said sharply critiques the western image of the oriental As ”irrational depraved child live, different” which has allowed the west to define itself as “rational, virtuous mature, normal”. The critical application of post structuralism in the scholarship of orientalism influenced the development of literary theory. Cultural criticism and the filed of middle eastern studies. The scope of said's scholarship established orientalism as a foundation text in the field of post colonial culture studies. Which examines the history of a post colonial period.
Frantz fanon, a French Caribbean Marxist, drew upon his own horrific experiences in French Algeria to deconstruct emerging national regimes that are based on inheritances from the impereial powers, warning that class, not race is a greater factor in worldwide oppression and that if new nations are perpetuate the bourgeois inequolities from the past.
Homme K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theory involves analysis of nationality ethnicity and politics with poststructuralist ideas of identity and indeterminacy, defining postcolonial identities as shifting hybrid constructions. Bhaba critiques the presumed dichotomies between center and periphery. Colonized and colonizer. Self and other borrowing from deconstruction the argument that these are false binaries. the concept of hybridity that is they are something new, emerging from a third space to interrogate the givens of the past. The old distinction between “industrialize” and “developing” nations does not hold true today, when so money industrial jobs have been moved overseas from countries like the united to countries like India and the Philippines. Postcolonial literatures from emerging nations by such writers as Chinua acheba and Salman Rushdie are read alongside European responses to colonialism by writers such as george orwell and albert camus.
Among the most important figures in postcolonial feminism is Gayatri Chakravorty spivak, who examines the effects of political independence upon Subaltern women in the Third world. Spivak’s subaltern studies reveal how female subjects are silenced by the dialogue between the male dominated west and the male dominated East, offering little hope for the subaltern woman's voice to rise up amidst the global social institutions that oppress her.
We can compare postcolonialism, cultural studies and globalization. Globalization has a sustained engagement with and influence on local cultures. Some critics have argued that we need to address the role of globalization through the postcolonial lens. For instance, we need to ask how Hollywood films circulate globally. Does the fact that crudeness in Asia or Africa will be viewing these films influence the film makes ? Cultural studies in globalizing age would make us ask several questions such as :
* Are local cultural products in any way determined by the possibility of a global market ? For eg. export of mango, navratri clothes kites etc.
* Age such cultural products financed by non local moneys ? For eg. Hindi films being financed by non resident Indians.
Some multinational company also rule over Indian culture. Such as pepsi, coca cola, pitza etc. and they mixed with Indian culture in such a way that it creates hybrid culture.
* Conclusion :-
Colonialism was such a period in which we were directly ruled by British government. But today we find postcolonialism in which we indirectly ruled by other nations and power including business, market, literature, politics etc.
*Citation:
peoplef.oureverydaylife.com
www.postcolonialweb.org
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