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ZOOM LINK MEETING: https://hku.zoom.us/j/98353525159
Spring 2021
CLIT 2045: Colonialism to Post-Colonialism
Dr. Daniel Vukovich
Venue: CPD- 2.45 Thursdays, 1:30-4:20
*No separate tutorial sections. Sometimes we’ll extend class to 4-ish to allow for even more discussion.
Phone: 3917- 7934
Office: 934 RR Shaw Arts Bldg, Centennial Campus
Office Hours: Mondays, 1.30-2.30 and by appointment.
Email: vukovich@hku.hk Please allow for a min. 24 hour response time for email.
Description:
This course introduces the history, culture, and politics of modern colonialism and its aftermaths, including de-colonization. We’ll read literature and film primarily, with some historical/primary documents and a healthy dose of “theory” or creative non-fiction.
This is a reading intensive class; it will be challenging if also fascinating. It will also be a historical—we need to immerse ourselves in history, howsoever partially, in order to understand what happened where, and to whom. And as always, you will write for your assignments. All of these readings and viewings together will represent the massive subjects of imperialism and colonialism as well as de-colonization. Most of these texts and theories stem from South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African contexts. These were the chief areas dominated by full or 'total' colonialism.
But our part of the world was also deeply impacted by imperialism and colonialism: of course Hong Kong itself, but also China and “Asia” more broadly. So we will also bravely engage the different contexts of mainland China (formerly described by Mao Zedong as "semi-colonial") and of tiny but very significant Hong Kong (the U.K’s “pearl of the Orient”). In short, what I want us to see, or re-learn as needed, is that Hong Kong and China and perhaps the entire modern world -- including the West -- were unmade, remade, and transformed by the forces and effects of modern colonialism.
Our texts (including film-texts) are crucial for us. We’ll allow them to teach us and “theorize” colonialism and its legacies. In other words there is no ‘new’ or unique theory of post-colonialism to learn. We will however touch on terms and topics that might be familiar from other classes: “discourse” or knowledge; orientalism and occidentalism; gender and patriarchy; the subaltern; hybridity; nationalism and the nation-state; decolonization; under-development.
We will define modern colonialism as the political and economic control as well as administration of one sovereign territory by a foreign power; a relationship of domination that is part and parcel of capitalist modernity (circa 1492—2008). It has to involve exploitation or resource extraction as well as legalized discrimination against the ‘natives.’ Modern colonialism was simply a massive undertaking on the part of Euro-American powers and societies—at one point occupying 85% of the globe. Postcolonialism is very simple. It refers to the living on, after national liberation or independence, of colonial legacies and influences in culture, society, and economy. But post-colonialism is also complex because it shows us how mixed we all are, for better and for worse, and also how subtly yet powerfully our world is the product of this original, colonial era of domination and injustice.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course students should be better able to:
· understand the world through literary, theoretical, and cultural studies of colonialism and postcolonialism.
· evaluate key terms and issues within postcolonial/colonial studies.
· communicate effectively in oral and written forms in English
Teaching Philosophy:
I don’t do power-point and don’t ask for the one, correct answer. What I try to do, beyond achieving basic understanding, is to emphasize the complexity of the questions, texts, and events we’ll examine. It will be your job to sort this out, and in so doing to learn how to learn on your own. Though also in dialogue with your teacher and classmates.
TEXTS:
1. Readings/pdfs are here: https://sites.google.com/view/classwebprofvukovichhku/introduction
2. Chinua ACHEBE, Things Fall Apart. Anchor Books edition, 1994. Also available on our website as pdf.)
*You will need to request permission to view/download the pdf's on the class google-drive storage. There is a box for you to request this on the bottom of the website.
GRADING:
100% Continuous Assessment:
1. Instructions and a basic prompt for each essay assignment will be given in class 1-2 weeks before they are due. Paper length will vary from 1k to 3k.
25% Attendance, Participation, and any in-class assignments.
25% Paper 1. Due: Week 7. Details t.b.a.
25% Paper 2 [ essay exam style] : The Battle of Algiers [de-colonization; colonialism/violence; nationalism] & Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [imagined political community; horizontal comradeship; death and sacrifice; print capitalism] . DUE date: April 22. Details below in hand-out. 1k word length.
25% Paper 3 [essay exam style] [Hong Kong, China, Globalization] Due: Monday, May 16th (or earlier)
LATE WORK POLICIES:
1. Late work is NOT accepted, except under verifiable medical or other emergencies. If you need an extension for an assignment, you must request one several days in advance and commit to a new due date. I will readily grant this if you request ahead of time.
2. You must complete ALL major assignments to pass the course. Don’t skip any.
PLAGIARISM:
A writer who presents the ideas or words of another as if they were the writer’s own commits plagiarism. Plagiarism is a disciplinary offense in this course and at H.K.U. Consult http://www.hku.hk/plagiarism for further info (or ask me).
SCHEDULE
1. If you miss class, it is your responsibility to find out what you missed. I will often upload lecture notes or send schedule updates if any via email or HKU portal, but not every time.
2. “Recommended” readings listed below are not required but are for your further reading. I do expect you to do the first, required ones before class.
3. Film screenings will take place outside of class-time and count as required homework.
Week 1, Jan 20: Course Intro. & Syllabus Review
Week 2, Jan 27: The Modern and Traditional World Before, and During, Colonialism
Readings:
1. Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Please read up through page 109, the end of chapter 11.
Week 3, Feb 3: Lunar New Year Holiday
Week 4, Feb 10: Things Falling Apart , Yet Coming Together. Not in a Good Way.
Readings:
Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Finish reading the novel until the end.
Here are some discussion questions:
1. What are the factors leading to Okonkwo's downfall (and his rise perhaps in the first place)? These can be personal characteristics-- his characterization. These can be the actions of other characters, incl. colonists but not only them. These can be features of Igbo society, and of white/western society.
2. Related-- What does Achebe's novel -- lets call it a classical or epic tragedy too -- add to the typical tragedy or others you may have read? From say Shakespeare (Romeo/Hamlet, anything else) to modern dramas from the West or China or anywhere? What are some other tragedies you've seen-- can be tv or movies too.
3. How does the novel help us understand some of our big phenomena or keywords-- modernity, and colonialism in particular. Does this enhance or teach you anything about colonialism in general, or about colonialism in Africa etc? What do we learn abt colonialism from this--?
4. Same thing as with "modernity"-- how do we understand it now? Or how does this related to modernity at all?
5. What can NOT be explained by colonialism when it comes to why things fell apart for Okonkwo, the Igbo, Africa, this whole world? What are some of the internal features -- problems, perhaps virtues? of the Igbo world -- that made things change and/or that helped colonialism take off? What does this have to do with modernity if anything?
Week 5, Feb 17: The place of knowledge in colonialism: orientalism and colonial discourse
1. Edward Said, "Introduction" to Orientalism.
2. Edward Said, short extract from Covering Islam on "knowledge and power."
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZST6qnRR1mY&t=1s
Week 6, Feb 24: Summing Up: What Was/Is Colonialism?
1. Extracts from Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism [keywords: knowledge/writing, 'worlds and possibilities lost,' Nazism/fascism, violence]
2. Some short videos/links to peruse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWrk9488094 (from Cesaire himself) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0qIxjeBpig&t=452s (brief talk by Prof Vinay Lal).
Here is the quick outline for Cesaire week-- notes below fill this on in greater detail:
I. Civilization and colonialism
Hypocrisy
Humanism
II. Dehumanization/Brutalization/Nazism: effects on colonizer not just the colonized
III. Effects on colonized: worlds and possibilities erased
Iv. Discourse (understanding, essay-exploration, dialogue)
But also: knowledge or knowledge-power…. (more links to Said and Michel Foucault, whom we aren’t actually reading but you can know the name…..)
Week 7, March 3: Defining, Understanding, Colonialism (Recap + new story)
Readings:
1. “The Chess Players.” Short story by Munshi Premchand, from 1924, British India but set in mid 19th century India/Lucknow.
Week 8, March 10: NO CLASS Reading Week.
>>> ESSAY 1 DUE THIS WEEK, FRIDAY MARCH 11. Via email. See prompts/handout below.
Week 9, March 17: Challenging Colonialism: Guerillas, Collectivism, Violence, Nationalism.
REQUIRED SCREENING:
1. The Battle of Algiers (dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966. 120 min.) *
** As of Jan 20, here in decent quality (turn subs on): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA25SO3dJrQ
Readings:
1. Recommended: Article/blog by M. Dobie, https://www.boundary2.org/2018/12/madeleine-dobie-edward-said-on-the-battle-of-algiers-the-maghreb-palestine-and-anti-colonial-aesthetics
2. Recommended: https://vimeo.com/197028860 [Film/video about Said on this movie]
3. Recommended: Franz Fanon, “Concerning Violence.” (pp. 35-106 in The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004. [1963].) *pdf below
Week 10, March 24: Horizontal Comradeship and Imagined Communities. Enjoy Your Nation as Yourself.
Readings:
1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (pp 1-46).
Week 11, March 31: Nationalism, cont’d.
Readings:
1. 141-154 from Anderson, above. “Patriotism and Racism.”
Week 12, April 7: Hong Kong and Colonialism
Readings:
2. "Hong Kong: China's Other" . The China Story website. eds Prof Geremie Barme et al. Australia National U. See PDF BELOW
Week 13, April 14: China and Colonialism
Readings:
1. Extracts from Hu Sheng [胡绳 ], Imperialism and Chinese Politics [the revolutionary perspective from China]
a. PDF below. Read 243-257, and then 289-304. (Begin with first new paragraph on 243 & 289)
2. links/documents from Fordham University web project on Imperialism in China.
a. Small Data points below to consider:
i. https://imperialismeffectsonchina.weebly.com/opium-wars.html
ii. https://imperialismeffectsonchina.weebly.com/long-term-effects.html
b. Modern History Sourcebook: Emperor Qian Long: Letter to George III, 1793 https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1793qianlong.asp
c. East Asian History Sourcebook: Emperor Kuang Hsu: Abolition of the Examination System, 1898 https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/eastasia/1898kuantsu2.asp
Week 14, April 21: Globalization & Global, not Post-colonial Studies
Readings:
1. James Watson, https://www.britannica.com/science/cultural-globalization/The-persistence-of-local-culture >> online but pdf below as well
>>> PAPER 2 DUE FRIDAY APRIL 22.
Week 15, April 28: What Was Colonialism? What is Globalization?
Readings:
1. Stevenson N. (2000) “Globalization and Cultural Political Economy.” In: Germain R.D. (eds) Globalization and its Critics. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. * PDF below
Final paper (#3) assigned, due: May 16th, via email, by 4 pm.
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