SOCIOCULTURE:

Postcolonial Criticism
by; Andreas Alfa B. G.
 What is Socioculture ?
• A set of theoretical principles drawn from wide range of fields
• Literary text is best understood from complex social and cultural conditions when
the text produced
• The viewpoint is often looking at the way power is distrbuted according to race,
class and gender
• Qualified Ideological approaches; Marxism (class), feminism (gender),
queer theory (gender), critical race theory (race), post-colonial (race & class), etc
POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM
 What is postcolonialism

• Postcolonialism or postcolonial studies is the academic study of the cultural

legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences
of the control and exploitation of colonised people and their lands.
• Examines the social and political power relationships that sustain
colonialism and neocolonialism, including the social, political and cultural
narratives surrounding the coloniser and the colonised.
 POST-COLONIAL ON LITERARY STUDY

• Deals with the literatures produced by the peoples who were colonizers (e.g
Britain France, Spain) and decolonized countries
• The subject matter includes portraits of the colonized peoples and their lives
as imperial subject
• Example; in Dutch literature, the Indies Literature includes the colonial and
postcolonial genres, which examine and analyze the formation of a
postcolonial identity, and the postcolonial culture produced by the diaspora
of the Indo-European peoples
 The Categories

• First is presents and analizes the internal challenges inherent to determining

an ethnic identity in a decolonized nation
• Second is presents and analizes the degeneration of civic and nationalist
unities consequent to ethnic parochialism, usually manifested as the
demagoguery of "protecting the nation", a variant of the Us-and-Them
binary social relation.
 Typical Question on Postcolonial Criticism

• How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various

aspects of colonial oppression?
• What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity,
including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such
issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
• What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How
are such persons/groups described and treated?
• What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-
colonialist resistance?
• What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways
in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and
customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of
ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
• How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or
assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
• Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial
populations?
• How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist
ideology through its representation of colonialization and/or its inappropriate
silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
POST-COLONIALISM CRITICISM ON LITERARY WORK
Chinua Achebe (1930- 2013) published his first novel Things Fall Apart (TFA) in
1958. Achebe wrote TFA in response to European novels that depicted Africans as
savages who needed to be enlightened by the Europeans. Achebe presents to the
reader his people’s history with both strengths and imperfections by describing for
example, Igbo festivals, the worship of their gods and the practices in their ritual
ceremonies, their rich culture and other social practices, the colonial era that was
both stopping Igbo culture and also brought in some benefits to their culture. TFA
therefore directs the misleading of European novels that depict Africans as
savages into a whole new light with its portrayal of Igbo society, and examines the
effects of European colonialism on Igbo society from an African perspective.
Hence this essay is an attempt to show an insight of pre and post colonialism on
Igbo society. It is argued that the interaction between the whites and the Igbo
people had both negative and positive consequences. It is evident in Achebe’s
novel that the Europeans greatly influenced the lifestyle of Igbo society.
 The Major Figures
1) Frantz Fanon
In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), he analyzed and medically described the
nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its societal effects—the
imposition of a subjugating colonial identity—are harmful to the mental health
of the native peoples who were subjugated into colonies.
2) Edward Saïd
To describe the us-and-them "binary social relation" with which Western
Europe intellectually divided the world—into the "Occident" and the
"Orient"—the cultural critic Edward Said developed the denotations and
connotations of the term Orientalism (an art-history term for Western
depictions and the study of the Orient)
3) Gayatri Spivak
• In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term subaltern, the
philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against
assigning an over-broad connotation. She argues:
[…] subaltern is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for
somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie. […] In postcolonial terms,
everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is
subaltern—a space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the
oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern. […] Many people
want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most
dangerous.
 The Advantages

• Intellectual trends- intersection with sociology/literature/globalization/nationalism.

• Challenges Orientalism and Eurocentrism
• Similar to post-modern/post-structuralism-challenges meta narrative of progress.
• Concerned with the cultural legacy and impact colonialism.
• Enables comparison between post-independence experiences – challenges idea of
backward societies being improved.
 The Disadvantages
• Ania Loomba; post-colonialism too ‘easy’ a responses to issues, further
interrogation needed.
• • Useful but does not account for competing legacies/experiences- country
by country
• • Ashis Nandy; does not acknowledge the way in which Western ideologies
have infiltrated society
 REFERENCES
• Habib, M. A. R., 2005, A History of Literary Criticism; From Plato to the
Present, UK; BLACHWELL Publisher
• • English 311, Rozema, -, Sociocultural Theory, -
• • Kenalemang, Lame Maatla, 2013, Journal; Things Fall Apart: An Analysis of
Pre and Post-Colonial Igbo Society, Swedia; Karlstad University
• • Victors, 2015, Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism,
www.owl.english.purdue,edu, visited on January 11th, 2018 at 11:45 AM
• • Wikipedia.com/Postcolonoalism, visted on January 4th, 2018 at 15:45 PM