Starting Questions

• What are the examples of colonialism? Is

KMT’s(National People’s Party) regime an
example?
• What are the examples of colonial thinking
(e.g. the racial/cultural prejudices and
stereotypes) in “English” Literature?
• Is de-colonization possible?
• How do we or the colonized resist colonialism
in life and through literature?
The White Man’s Burden???
 What it means…
• A 1899 cartoon captioned “The White Man’s
Burden,” the U.S., as Uncle Sam, could be shown
trudging after Britain’s John Bull, his Anglo-Saxon
partner, carrying non-white nations—depicted in
grotesque racist caricatures—uphill from the depths
of barbarism to the heights of civilization.
• Britain’s John Bull leads Uncle Sam uphill as the two
imperialists take up the “White Man’s Burden” in
this detail from an overtly racist 1899 cartoon
referencing Kipling’s poem.
 The White Man's Burden, 1899
By: Rudyard Kipling
• Take up the White Man's • Take up the White Man's
burden-- burden--
Send forth the best ye In patience to abide,
breed-- To veil the threat of terror
Go bind your sons to exile And check the show of
To serve your captives' need; pride;
To wait in heavy harness, By open speech and simple,
On fluttered folk and wild-- An hundred times made
Your new-caught, sullen plain
peoples, To seek another's profit,
Half-devil and half-child. And work another's gain.
• Take up the White Man's
burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
• Take up the White Man's
burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your
living,
And mark them with your
dead.
• Take up the White Man's
burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the
light:--
"Why brought he us from
bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
• Take up the White Man's
burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on
Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and
you.
• Take up the White Man's
burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your
manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought
wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
The West as civilised, The Oriental as
just, moral, savage, lewd, lazy,
industrious, rational, superstitious, feminine
Masculine
The ugly reality of colonialist views…

¤ the historical story whereby

the “West” attempts
systematically to cancel or
negate the cultural difference
and value of the “non-West”
(Leela Gandhi,1998)

This makes it “okay” to colonize!

 Most classical literature
comes from the voices of DWG’s (dead white
guys), and that means it’s usually written
from the perspective of colonialism.
What is Post Colonialism?
 Post… what?

Colonialism:
¤ An extension of a nation’s rule over territory
beyond its borders
¤ a population that is subjected to the political
domination of another population
• Militaristic ( the physical conquest and occupation
of territories)
• Civilizational (the conquest and occupation of
minds, selves, and cultures)
 Post-Colonialism: Major Issues

1. Colonialisms
– Definition
– cultural Imperialism: Theories &
Examples
2. Post-Colonialism: Resistance and Immigration
A. Resisting colonialism/Constructing postcolonial identities through
• Language, History and Identity Construction
• Strategies: Separatism (Nativism), Re-Creation, Cultural
Syncreticism, Mimicry, Active participation, Assimilation.
• examples
B. Diaspora and Globalization - the movement, migration, or scattering
of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland
Colonialism: Definition and Kinds
• Definition: colonialism --military,
economic, cultural oppression &
domination of one country over another.
• Kinds:
1. Invasion-colonization;
2. Settlement-colonization;
3. Internal Colonialism -  internal colonization looks at how
we produce our own forms of racial domination within a society. Different racial and
ethnic groups are subject to forms of oppression forced on them by a dominant
group in society.
• Internal colonialism is the way in which a
country's dominant group exploits minority
groups for its economic advantage. The
dominant group manipulates the social
institutions to suppress minorities and deny
them full access to their society's benefits.
Slavery is an extreme example of internal
colonialism, as was the South African system
of apartheid.
• Internal colonialism is often accompanied by
segregation that is defined as the separation of racial
or ethnic groups. Segregation allows the dominant
group to maintain social distance from the minority
and yet exploit their labor as cooks, cleaners,
chauffeurs, nannies, factory workers, and so on. In
some Indian villages Dalits are forbidden to use the
village pump or enter temples. Dalit women must
walk long distances to streams or pumps outside of
the village to fetch their water.
 Postcolonialism?

¤ Acknowledges an evolution in academia to consider

the untold stories of the oppressed.
¤ Postcolonialism = a literary lens! The focus of this
lens is upon exposing the injustices suffered by
oppressed groups and the contrast between their
worldviews/the oppressors’.
Mimetic - copying or appearing the same as something
“The West is the spectator, the judge and the jury, of every facet of Oriental
behaviour” (Said)
Questions to ask in Post Colonial Literature?
 Questions to prompt postcolonial analysis:

• 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 within cultural borderlands?

• 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, 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 a literary text in the Western canon

reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology through
its representation of colonization and/or its
inappropriate silence about colonized peoples?
(Tyson 378-379)
 Postcolonialist Criticism: The Literary Lens
►Examining colonizers/colonized relationship in
literature
■ Is the work pro/anti colonialist? Why?
■ Does the text reinforce or resist colonialist ideology?
► Types of oppression
■ What tools do the colonizers
use to demean or oppress the
colonized?
■ What psychological aftermath
are the colonized people left
with?
■ Considering the present as well as the past
■ Is the author using the language of a colonizer?
Typical questions:
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)
 Questions to ask when analysing a text:

1. From whose point of view is the story told – an indigenous

character or a colonial character?
2. What connection do the characters have to the land and places
in the text?
3. How is the indigenous culture of the land portrayed in the text?
4. How is the ex-colonial rulers of the land portrayed in the text?
5. What evidence of the past colonial rulers is shown in the text?
6. Are historical events revised or inaccurate?
7. Are historical events shown from a pre- or post-colonial
perspective?
Topics and terms for the postcolonial scholar
-Social Darwinism
-Eurocentrism
-White Man’s Burden
* What was thought to be an obligation to “civilize” no
European people
-Racism
-Hegemony -authority over others/the social,
cultural,ideological, or economic influence exerted by a
dominant group
-Exploitation
-Counter-narrative
How to analyse a text from a Post-colonial
viewpoint

3 areas to focus on:

1. Reclaiming spaces and places

2. Asserting cultural integrity

3. Revising history
 1) RECLAIMING SPACES AND
PLACES

Colonialism was a process of exploiting foreign lands,

resources, and people. Indentured labour, enslavement and
migration forced many indigenous populations to move
from the places that they considered their “home”.

Postcolonial literature attempts to counteract the resulting

alienation from their surroundings by restoring a
connection between indigenous people and places through
description, narration and dramatization.
2) Asserting cultural integrity

During colonization, the indigenous cultures of

countries subjected to foreign rule were often
sidelined, suppressed, and openly degraded in favour
of elevating the social and cultural preferences and
conventions of the colonizers.
In response, much postcolonial literature seeks to
assert the richness and validity of indigenous cultures
in an effort to restore pride in practices and traditions
that were systematically degraded under colonialism.
 3) Revising history

Colonizers often depicted their colonial subjects as unable

to progress or develop without their intervention and
assistance. In this way, they justified their actions, including
violence against those who resisted colonial rule.

Revising history to tell things from the perspective of those

colonized is thus a major focus of postcolonial writing.
 Task: analyse short
story
Read the short story “Interpreter of Maladies” from the
anthology by Jhumpa Lahiri and discuss the questions
below:

1. Describe the perspectives of India we see from the two

main characters.
2. Why do you think the author told the story from the
driver’s point of view?
3. What values from the western world do we see in the
family?
4. What values from a native Indian do we see from the
driver?
5. What is the authors point of view of the cultures of both
India and America?
6. Is the influence of the western world on India seen as a
good or bad thing in this story?