Postcolonial Theory
What is a Postcolonial Criticism?
Postcolonial criticism involves reading a text according to postcolonial ideas and concepts, which revolve around the ways in the West has often defined the non-West, and how the non-West defines itself. When conducting a postcolonial criticism, we're thinking about structures and beliefs related to colonialism and colonization, as well as the ways in which power is distributed amongst colonizers and the (previously and currently) colonized, and the means by which these structures are maintained.
At the heart of this mode of interpretation is the consideration of the following core conflict:
THE COLONIZER (past or present) VS.
THE COLONIZED (past or present)
These slides contain a broad overview of what Postcolonial Criticism does. They are good for students who want to remind themselves of some of this theory's key aspects. For a deeper understanding of what a feminist critic does, explore the resources below.
This video provides some basic information about key concepts within postcolonial theory, as well as some important postcolonial thinkers. There are also examples of postcolonial theory applied to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
Key Figures
Edward Said
Homi Bhaba
Gayatri Spivak
Questions to Consider:
1. Is there a representation of non-Europeans as strange, exotic, or “Other”?
2. In what ways is language used to support or subvert the power dynamics between colonized or colonizer?
3. Are there any examples of ambivalence, mimicry, or hybridity, and what are the results?
4. How does the text present relationships between the colonized and the colonizer? Are there any ‘cross-cultural interactions’ and what are the results?
5. Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial populations?
6. 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?
Click the image to the left to access the article that we read as a class that explains the core tenants of Marxism via an interview between a journalist and a professor of literary studies.
Click the image to see some examples of Marxist literary criticism in action. Measure your own work against the models on this page to ensure that you are correctly applying this type of criticism.
Click the image to access further resources to help you understand postcolonial criticism. On this page, you can find examples of postcolonial criticism, explainer videos and further reading.