key terms of Postcolonial Literature

Topic:  Key terms of Postcolonial Literature

Name:  Goswami Gayatri M

Paper no:  11

M. A. Semester:   3

Roll no - 8

Year:   2014-15

PG Enrolment no: PG13101011

Email ID: gayatrigoswami19@gmail.com

Submitted to: Department of English

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Maharaja Krishnakumar sinhji Bhavnagar University

v  Introduction of Postcolonial: 

v  Image of Postcolonial:

·       The field Postcolonial studies gas been gaining romance sine the 1970s. 

·       The growing currency within the academy of the term “Postcolonial” was consulted by the appearance in 1989 of the empire writer back. Theory and practice in postcolonial literature by Bill Aschororoft, Gareth Griffiths, and Holon Stiffen.

·       The debate surrounding the status of settler countries as Postcolonial suggests that issues in Postcolonial studies often transcend the boundaries of strict definition.

·        The formation of the colony through various mechanism of control and the various stages in the development of scholars in the field. 

v  Higher  issues :

·        Despite the reservation and debates, research in postcolonial studies has continued to grow because postcolonial critique into power in various contexts.

 v  These are images of key terms in Postcolonial:

 

v   Orientalism : 

v   What is Orientalism?

·       “Orientalism”  is a term used  by art historians and literary and cultural studies scholars for the imitation or depiction of aspects of middle eastern and Asian cultures (Ester cultures) by writers , designers and  artists from the west , in particular , Orientalism painting , depicting more specifically “the many  Middle East” was one of the many specialism of 19^th  century acadamic are , and the literature of western countries took  a similar interest in oriental  themes. 

·       In short Orientalism refers to the orient or ‘East’ , ‘Orient’ means the  Eastern part of Asia is sometimes  referred to as the orient.

·       “Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines , emphasizes , exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab people and cultures as compared to that of Europe and U.S it  often involves seeing Arab culture  as exotic , backward , uncivilized  , and at times , dangerous. 

·        According to Said , Orientalism dates from the period of European enlighten and colonization of the Arab world.

·       Orientalism provided a rationalization for European colonialism based on a self serving history in which “The West” as extremely different and inferior, and therefore in need of Western intervention or “Resource”. 

·       Edward Said Orientalism arguably the most influential work of literary cultural criticism in the 20^th century.

 ·       Example : 

·       Early Orientalism can be seen in European painting and photographs and also in images from the world fair in the U.S in the  19^th and early 20^th century . 

·        The  painting , created by European artists of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries , depict the Arab world as an exotic and mysterious place of sand, harms and   belly dancer , reflecting a long  history of Orientalist   fantasies which have continued to permeate our contemporary popular culture.

·       Edward Said Orientalism (1973) inaugurated a field Postcolonial studies. 

·       Arguably the most influential work of literary cultural criticism in the 20^th century.

·       ‘Orientalism’ is the process  by which Europe  studied deplaned. 

·       Controlled and governed non- European cultures European scholars  studied and represented the non –European cultures in certain way: through stereotypes of the effeminate weak.

·       Edward Said , through a series of reading of western texts about Asia and Africa , demonstrates how literary texts coded particular images of the non west as a preliminary  to ruling it. 

·       That is, Said work shows how knowledge about the Orient (Asia) leads to power our the Orient.

·       Edward Said work  has vacillated a deeper understanding  of western literature and the relations between Europe and the rest of the world  by locating  culture within the power relation of colonialism. 

·       Orientalism offered Middle Eastern studies, transforming the way practitioners of the discipline describe and examine the Middle East. 

v  Race: 

·        ‘Race’ is term of the human life with connect, that type of the classification of human being into physically, biologically, and genetically distinct groups. 

·       The nation of race assumes, first, that humanity is divided into unchanging natures types, recognizably by physical features that are transmuted through  the blood  and permit destinations to be made between ‘Pure’ and ‘Mixed’ race. 

·       Farther, the term implies that the mental and moral behavior of human beings , as individual personality ideas and capacities , can be related of that pidgin provide a satisfactory account of the behavior . 

·       Race is particularly relevant  the rise of colonialism , because the division of human society in his way is inextricable from the need of colonialist powers to establish a dominance our  subject peoples and lance justify the imperial enterprise. 

·       Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks on Race Consciousness 

·       Readers of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks often disagree about whether or not Fanon is arguing for or against the perpetuation of racial categories.

·       One interpretation suggests that Fanon’s sociogenic analysis demonstrates the inevitability, if not the necessity, of racial Categories. 

·       Race thinking and colonialism are idea, feeling, or quality with the (binary is system of expresses numbers using only the two digits ‘0’ and ‘1’ ) distinction and the some necessity for the hierarchization of human types. 

·       By translating the fact of colonial oppression into a justifying theory , however spurious , European Race thinking initiated  a hierarchy of human variation that has been difficult to remove.

·       Thus a fraught and volatile terms ‘Race’ , continues to hold  center stage while the theories on which concept of Race were .

·       Established have become and more blurred or unclear shapes of outline.

·       The usefulness of the concept of race in both establishing the Jennet superiority of imperial out culture  as it approached  its zenith , and at the sometime lumping together the ‘Inferior’ races under its central, can be seen in the example of English commentary on the ‘Race’ of Britain itself particularly the Irish.

v  Subaltern :

·       Subaltern was postcolonial term. Subaltern, meaning ‘of inferior rank’, is a term adopted by Antonio Grimace refers to those group in society when are the subject to the Hegemony of the ruling classes. 

·       Subaltern classes many include presents workers and other group denied access to Hegemony power since the history o f states and dominant groups , grimace was  interested in the historiography of the subaltern closes . 

v  Studying the history of the subaltern closes which included  : 

1.     Their  objective  formation 
2.    Their active or passive affiliation to the dominant  groups .
3.   The birth of new parties and dominant political  group. 
4.   The formations that the subaltern . 
5.   The new  formation within the old framework that assert the autonomy  of the subaltern classes :  and other point referring to trade unions and political parties. 

·       The motion of the subaltern becomes an issue in post- colonial theory when Gayatri Chakravarti Spivak critiqued the assumption of the subaltern studies group in the easy “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. This question , she claims , is one that the group must ask. 

·       The people or the subaltern is a group defined by its difference from the elite. 

·       If in the context of colonial production , the subaltern female is even more deeply  in shadow. 

·       Spivak examines the position of Indian women through an analysis of a particular case and concludes with the declaration that the subaltern cannot speak. 

·        Spivak target is the concept of an unproblematic ally constituted subaltern identity  , Rather than  the subaltern subject ability to give voice to political   concerns. 

·       For subaltern other speak “Homi K. Bhabha”. 

·       Spivak paint is that no act of dissent or resistance occurs on behalf of an essential subaltern subject entirely separate from the dominant discourse that provides the  language and the conceptual categories with which the subaltern voice speak 
. 
·       Clearly the existence of post- colonial discourse itself is an example of such speaking , an d in most cases the dominate language or mode of representation is appropriated so that the marginal voice can be heard. 

·       To guard against  essentialist destination views of subalternity. Guha suggests that there is a further distinction to be mode between  the subaltern and dominant indigenous group at the regional and local level.  

·       The term has been adopted to post colonial studies from the work of the subaltern studies group of historians, when aimed to   promote a systematic discussion of subaltern themes in south Asian studies. 

v   Hegemony :

Image of Hegemony:

·        Hegemony , initially a term referring to the dominance of one state within a confederation , is now generally understood to mean domination by consent. 

·       This   border meaning was coined and popularized in the 1930s by Italian Marxist Antonio grimace , who investigation why the ruling class was so successful in promoting its own interests in society . 

·       The term is useful for describing the success of imperial power over a   colonized people who  many for outnumber and occupying military force , but whose desire for self determination  has been suppressed by a hegemonic notion terms of social order, stability and advancement , all of which are definite by the colonizing power

 ·       “Hegemony”    is important because the capacity to influence the thought  of the colonized is by for the most sustained in colonized regions. 

·        A classical example of the operation of hegemonic is given by Gouri Vishvanathan , who shows how the humanistic functions traditionally associated with the study  of literature. 

·       The refraction is a precise demonstration of one mode of hegemonic control. 

·        It proved a particularly effective one because the discourse of English literature was disseminated with its attendant spiritual values, cultural assumption , social discrimination , racial preludes and humanistic values or less intact. 

·       Fundamentally hegemony is the power of the ruling class to convince other classes that their interests are the interest of all. 

·       Shortly dictionary meaning is Hegemony is a situation in which one country , organized or , group has more power , control , or importance than other. 

v  Hybridity   :

Image of Hybridity:

Hybridity  is one of the  most widely employed  and most disputed terms in post – colonial theory ,  Hybridity commonly refer to the creation of new trancultural forms within the context zone produced by colonization . 

·       As used in horticulture, the term refers to the cross breeding of two species by grafting or cross- pollination to form linguistic cultural , political , racial , etc. 

·       Linguistic  example include “Pidgin” and “Creole” language and these echo the foundational  use of the term by the linguist and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtim , who used it to suggest the disputation and trance figuring , of multiform narration. 

·       The term ‘Hybridity’ hmost recently associated as been with the work of Homi K. Bhabha , whose analysis of colonized relation stresses their interdependence and the mutual construction of their subjectivity. 

·       Hybridity has presciently been used in post –colonial discourse to mean simply cross- cultural ‘Exchange’. 

·       This use of the term has been widely criticized, since it usually implies negating and neglecting the imbalance and inequality of the power relations it references. 

·       This is however, nothing in 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. 

·       The assertion of a shored post colonial condition such as Hybridity has been seen as part of the tendency of discourse analysis to do historicize and delocate cultures from their temporal, spatial, geographical and linguistic contexts. 

v  Subject/ subjectivity: 

·  Image of subjectivity :

 
·        The question of the subject and subjectivity  directly affects colonized people’s perception of their identities and their capacities to resist the conditions of their domination , their subjection. 

·       The status of the human individual was one of the key features of enlightening philosophy. 

·       Desecrates declaration that I thing therefore I am confirmed the eventuality of the autonomous human  individual , a founding precept of humanism , a precept that effectively separated the subject from the object thought from reality or the self from the other. 

·       Separate from the world and could employ intellect and imagination in understanding and representing the world. 

·       Although debate about subject -  object  relations continued in European philosophy throughout the critique  off subject centered reason culmination in Nietzsche’s philosophy  , the most influential contemporary shift in his enlightenment position began in the  thinking  Freud and Marx. 

·        The concept of subjectivity problematizes the simple relationship between the individual and language, replacing human nature   with the concept of the production of the  human  subject through ideology discourse or language. 

v  Ideology : 

·       The most influential development of Marx’s nation of social being was Louis Althusser’s theory of the subject’s construction by ideology. 

·        Ideology is the system of ideas explains, or makes of , a society , and according to Marx is the mechanism by which unequal social relations are reproduced. 

·       The ruling classes not only rule, they rule as thinkers   and producers of ideas so that they  determine how the society sees  itself. 
v  Discourse: 

The construction of subjectivity within certain historical , social and cultural has been elaborated in a society  Michel Foucault  by , and most operate  within the lows of language , so discourse produces a subject equally dependent upon the rules of the system of knowledge that produces it. 

·        Derides critique of logo – cultism and the  metaphysical of presence  had led to perhaps the most radical view if the subject  the claim that any concept of a subject necessarily refers to concept of substance and this of presence out of with it was born . 

·       The problems inherent in a view of subjectivity as produced by border social focus at precisely this point 

·       Colonial discourse instructs a particular kind of subject with which the subject itself can and often does can our because of it powerlessness.