WOMENS COLLEGE AMU ALIGARH

SUBMITTED TO:

PROF.NAZIA HASAN

SUBMITTED BY:

WARISHA AHMAD
19-ENB-432
GJ3134
 POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE

Post –colonial literature is a literature by people from formerly colonized

countries. The role of this literature was ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘orientalism’
referred by critic “EDWARD SAID”. It begun from late 1980s or early 1990s
to present times. Post- colonialism involves the discussion of experiences such
as slavery, migration, suppression and resistance, difference, race, gender and
place in imperial Europe. It was mainly about conditions under Imperialism,
colonialism, proper as about conditions coming after the historical end of
colonialism. The first step towards a post-colonial perspective is to reclaim
one’s own past, then the second is to begin to erode the colonialist ideology by
which that past had been devalued. Edward said’s Orientalism (1978) is
considered as pivotal in the shaping of post-colonial studies. There were traces
in a variety of directions, such as in the challenging face of global politics with
the emergence of newly independent states; in the wide ranging re-evaluation
begun in the 1980s of the exclusionary forms of western reason and in the
perception of their complicity with imperial expansion and colonialist rule ; in
the debates that raged about empiricism and culturalism in the social sciences
from the 1960s; and in the challenges to dominant feminism, gay, lesbian and
ethnic studies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Edward Said’s orientalism is an expose of the Eurocentric universalism which

takes place for granted for both the superiority and inferiority.
Characteristically, post-colonial writers evoke or create a pre-colonial version of
their own nation, rejecting the modern and contemporary, which is tainted with
the colonial status of their countries. Here then, is the first characteristic of post-
colonial criticism- an awareness of representations of the men, European as
exotic or immoral ‘other’. Some post-colonial writers concluded that the
colonizer’s language is permanently tainted, and that to write in it involves a
crucial approval in colonial structures, language itself is a second area of
concern in post-colonial literature. The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe,
publishing his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958, was criticized by an early
reviewer it was implied, with the values of ‘civilization’, supposedly brought to
Africa by Europeans. All post-colonial literatures, begin with an unquestioning
acceptance of the authority of European models and with the ambition of
writing works that will be masterpieces. This can be call the ‘Adopt’ phase of
colonial literature, since the writer’s ambition is to adopt the form as it stands,
the assumption being that has universal validity. The second stage can be called
the ‘Adapt’ phase, since it aims to adapt the European form to African subject
matter, thus assuming partial rights of intervention in the genre. In the final
phase there is, so to speak , a declaration of cultural independence whereby
African writers remake the form to their own specification, without reference to
European norms, called as ‘adept’ phase.

Edward Said, accepted some of the premises of liberal humanism, some

political engagements and his work is regard reminiscent of the ‘Anglo
American’ variety of feminist criticism. Post colonialism can be seen properly
in the representation of Africa in Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of darkness’ and
India in E.M.Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’ or Algeria in Albert Camus’s The
outsider. This corresponds to the early 1970s phase of feminist criticism when
the subject matter was the representation of women by male novelists like
D.H.Lawrence, or Henry Miller. The second phase of post-colonial criticism
involved a turn towards explorations and society by post-colonial writers. In
post-colonial literature we might see a split between variants very directly
influence by deconstruction and post structuralism- such as work of Homi
Bhabha and work like Edward Said’s which accepts a good deal from liberal
humanism, is written in a more accessible way, and seems perhaps to lend itself
more directly to political engagement.