Faculty of Letters

Department of English Language & Literature, Sais-Fes

Semester 6
Major: Literature
MODULE: POST -COLONIAL LITERATURE
N. LOUMMOU
2023--2024

*****************

The following offers guidelines to Semester 6 "Postcolonial Literature" students as previously

laid out and explained in class.The content of the outlet is designed upon an inventory of print
and elecronic data consulted and accustomed for the aim of chronological and exegetical
analysis, directed to allow students great flexibility in assimilating a course of study suited to
their own intellectual goals.

Professor Naima LOUMMOU

1
Contents:

I- Post-colonial Literature in Context:

 Defining/problematizing the term (post)colonialism

 Defining / historicizing post-colonial literature
 Concerns and characteristics
 Assumptions
 Postcolonial Theory
 On Post-colonial Literature
 On Orientalism and the Empire
 key Concepts
 Postcolonial African Literature
 Afican Women's Literature

II- Textbooks:

 Mariama Bâ, So Long A Letter (1979)

 Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness"
(1978)
========================================================

INTRODUCTION:

Postcolonialism (or post-colonialism—either spelling is acceptable, but each

represents slightly different theoretical assumptions) consists of a set of theories in philosophy
and various approaches to literary analysis that are concerned with literature written in
English in countries that were or still are colonies of other countries. For the most part,
postcolonial studies excludes literature that represents either British or American viewpoints
and concentrates on writings from colonized or formerly colonized cultures in Australia, New
Zealand, Africa, South America, and other places that were once dominated by, but remained
outside of, the white, male, European cultural, political, and philosophical tradition. Referred
to as “third-world literature” by Marxist critics and “Commonwealth literature” by others—
terms many contemporary critics think pejorative—postcolonial theorists investigate what
happens when two cultures clash and one of them, with its accessory ideology, empowers and
deems itself superior to the other.
 Historical Development:
Rooted in colonial power and prejudice, postcolonialism develops from a four-
thousand-year history of strained cultural relations between colonies in Africa and Asia and
the Western world. Throughout this long history, the West became the colonizers, and many
African and Asian countries and their peoples became the colonized. During the nineteenth
century, Great Britain emerged as the largest colonizer and imperial power, quickly gaining
control of almost one quarter of the earth’s landmass. By the middle of the nineteenth century,
terms such as colonial interests and the British Empire were widely used both in the media
and in government policies and international politics. Many British people believed that Great
Britain was destined to rule the world. Likewise, the assumption that Western Europeans and,

2
in particular, the British people were biologically superior to any other race—a term for a
class of people based on physical and/or cultural distinctions—remained relatively
unquestioned.
Such beliefs directly affected the ways in which the colonizers treated the colonized.
Using its political and economic strength, Great Britain, the chief imperialist power of the
nineteenth century, dominated her colonies, making them produce then give up their
countries’ raw materials in exchange for what material goods the colonized desired or were
made to believe they desired by the colonizers. Forced labor of the colonized became the rule
of the day, and thus the institution of slavery was commercialized. Often the colonizers
justified their cruel treatment of the colonized by invoking European religious beliefs.
From the perspective of many white Westerners, the peoples of Africa, the Americas,
and Asia were “heathens,” possessing pagan ways that must be Christianized. How one treats
peoples who are so defined does not really matter, they maintained, because many Westerners
subscribed to the colonialist ideology that all races other than white were inferior or
subhuman. These subhumans or “savages” quickly became the inferior and equally “evil”
Others, a philosophical concept called alterity whereby “the Others” are excluded from
positions of power and viewed as both different and inferior.
By the early twentieth century, England’s political, social, economic, and ideological
domination of its colonies began to disappear, a process known as decolonization. By mid
century, for example, India had gained her independence from British colonial rule. Many
scholars believe that this event marks the beginning of postcolonialism or third-world studies,
a term coined by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy. When India received her
independence, the former British colony was divided into two nations, the India Union and
Pakistan. This partitioning, what scholars dub the “Great Divide,” led to ethnic conflict of
enormous proportions between India, a new member of the British Commonwealth in 1947,
and the mostly Muslim state of Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the
struggle, igniting the outrage of a vast array of scholars, writers, and critics concerning the
social, moral, political, and economic conditions of the afteraffects of colonialism in what
were once called third-world countries.
 Concerns and Characteristics:
The beginnings of postcolonialism’s theoretical and social concerns can be traced to
the 1950s. Along with India’s independence, this decade witnessed the ending of France’s
long involvement in Indochina; the parting of the ways between the two leading figures in
existential theory, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, over their differing views about
Algeria; Fidel Castro’s now-famous “History Shall Absolve Me” speech; and the publication
of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall
Apart (1958). The following decades witnessed the publication of additional key texts that
articulated the social, political, and economic conditions of various subaltern groups. In 1960
the Caribbean writer George Lamming published The Pleasures of Exile, a text in which
Lamming critiques William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest from a postcolonial perspective.
The next year Fanon published The Wretched of the Earth (1961), a work that highlights the
tensions or binary oppositions of white versus black, good versus evil, and rich versus poor, to
cite a few. Other writers, philosophers, and critics such as Albert Memmi continued
publishing texts such as The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965, English version) that would
soon become the cornerstone of postcolonial theory and writings. In particular,
postcolonialism gained the attention of the West with the publication of Edward Said’s
Orientalism (1978) and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s monumental text
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989). With the
publication of these two texts, the voices and the concerns of many subaltern cultures would
soon be heard in both academic and social arenas.

3
The terms postcolonial and postcolonialism first appear in scholarly journals in the
mid-1980s and as subtitles in texts such as Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin’s previously
mentioned powerful work and in 1990 in Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin’s Past the Last Post:
Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism. By the early and mid-1990s, both terms
had become firmly established in academic and popular discourse.
Similar to deconstruction and other postmodern approaches to textual analysis,
postcolonialism refers to a heterogeneous field of study in which even its spelling provides
several alternatives: post-colonialism, postcolonialism,or post/colonial. When spelled with a
hyphen (post-colonialism), the term implies a chronological order—that is, a change from a
colonial to a postcolonial state. When spelled without the hyphen (postcolonialism), the term
refers “to writing that sets out in one way or another to resist colonialist perspectives,” both
before and after the period of colonization. According to some critics, the nonhyphenated
spelling covers a wider critical field, including literature of former British colonies, than does
the hyphenated spelling.
The third orthographic variant of this term (post/colonial), argue some critics, is more
relevant than the previous two spellings because it stresses the interrelatedness between an
indeterminate number of literatures—be they Anglophone or not—that share a similar
situation: the “entangled condition” that exists between colonial and post/colonial discourse
and between coloniality and post/coloniality. Today the most common spelling of the three
variants is postcolonialism.
Many of postcolonialism’s adherents suggest there are two branches. The first views
postcolonialism as a set of diverse methodologies that possess no unitary quality, as argued by
Homi K. Bhabha and Arun P. Murkherjee. The second branch includes those critics such as
Edward Said, Barbara Harlow, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who view postcolonialism as
a set of cultural strategies “centered in history.” This latter group can also be subdivided into
those who believe postcolonialism refers to that period after the colonized countries have
gained their independence as opposed to those who regard postcolonialism as referring to all
the characteristics of a society or culture from the time of colonization to the present moment.
Postcolonialism’s concerns become evident when we examine the various topics
discussed in one of its most prominent texts, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995), edited
by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin. Its subjects include universality, difference, nationalism,
postmodernism, representation and resistance, ethnicity, feminism, language, education,
history, place, and production.
As diverse as these topics are, they draw attention to postcolonialism’s major concern:
the struggle that occurs when one culture is dominated by another. As postcolonial critics
point out, to be colonized is “to be removed from history.” In its interaction with the
conquering culture, the colonized or indigenous culture is forced to go underground or to be
obliterated.
Only after colonization occurs and the colonized people have had time to think and to
write about their oppression and loss of cultural identity does postcolonial theory come into
existence. Postcolonial theory is born out of the colonized peoples’ frustrations, their direct
and personal cultural clashes with the conquering culture, and their fears, hopes, and dreams
about the future and their own identities. How the colonized respond to changes in language,
curricular matters in education, race differences, economic issues, morals, ethics, and a host
of other concerns, including the act of writing itself, becomes the context for the evolving
theories and practice of postcolonialism.
 Assumptions:
Because different cultures that have been subverted, conquered, and often removed
from history respond to the conquering culture in diverse ways, no single approach to
postcolonial theory and practice is possible or even preferable. As Nicholas Harrison asserts

4
in Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory, and the Work of Fiction (2003), “Postcolonial
theory is not an identifiable ‘type’ of theory in the same sense as deconstruction, Marxism,
psychoanalysis or feminism.” Like many critical theorists, Harrison “sees no point in talking
as if consensus about what postcolonial studies ‘is’ might eventually emerge.” We can,
however, highlight postcolonialism’s major concerns.
All postcolonialist critics believe the following:
• European colonialism did occur.
• The British Empire was at the center of this colonialism.
• The conquerors dominated not only the physical land but also the hegemony or ideology of
the colonized peoples.
• The social, political, and economic effects of such colonization are still being felt today.
At the centre of postcolonial theory exists an inherent tension among three categories
of postcolonialists: (1) those who have been academically trained and are living in the West,
(2) those who were raised in non-Western cultures but now reside in the West, and (3) those
subaltern writers living and writing in non-Western cultures. For example, on the one hand,
critics such as Fredric Jameson and Georg M. Gugelberger come from a European and
American cultural, literary, and scholarly background. Another group that includes Spivak,
Said, and Bhabha were raised in non-Western cultures but have or now reside, study, and
write in the West. And still another group includes writers such as Aijaz Ahmad who live and
work in subaltern cultures.
Differing theoretical and practical criticism developed among these three groups. Out
of this underlying tension among the groups, postcolonial theorists and critics have and will
continue to discover problematic topics for exploration and debate. Historically one of the
earliest postcolonial theorists is Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). Born in the French colony of
Martinique, Fanon fought with the French in World War II, remaining in France after the war
to study medicine and psychiatry.
Throughout his rather short career and life, Fanon provides postcolonialism with two
influential texts: Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). In
these and other works, Fanon uses psychoanalytic theory to examine the condition of blacks
under French colonial rule. As a result of colonialism, Fanon asserts that both the colonized
(e.g., the Other—that is, any person defined as “different from”) and the colonizer suffer
“psychic warping,” oftentimes causing what Fanon describes as “a collapse of the ego.”
Fanon believes that as soon as the colonized (the blacks living in Martinique) were forced to
speak the language of the colonizer (French), the colonized either accepted or were coerced
into accepting the collective consciousness of the French, thereby identifying blackness with
evil and sin and whiteness with purity and righteousness.
In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon argues that an entirely new world must come into
being to overcome the binary system in which black is evil and white is good. Fanon develops
a Marxist-influenced postcolonial theory in which he calls for violent revolution, a type of
revolution in which Fanon himself was involved when he became a participant and a
spokesperson for the Algerian revolutionaries against France. He also develops in The
Wretched of the Earth one of his major concerns: the problem of the “native bourgeoisie” who
assume power after the colonial powers have either departed or been driven out. When such a
situation occurs, the native proletariat, “the wretched of the earth,” are left on their own, often
in a worse situation than before the conquerors arrived. Throughout his writings, Fanon
articulates key postcolonial concerns such as the “Otherness,” subject formation, and an
emphasis on linguistic and psychoanalytic frameworks on which postcolonialism will develop
in the decades to follow.
The key text in the establishment of postcolonial theory is Orientalism (1978),
authored by Edward Wadie Said (1935–2003). A Palestinian-American theorist and critic,

5
Said was born in Jerusalem, where he lived with his family until the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, at
which time his family became refugees in Egypt then Lebanon. Educated at Princeton and
Harvard Universities, Said taught at Johns Hopkins University, where, as a professor, he
authored a variety of texts, including Orientalism, his most influential. In this work Said
chastises the literary world for not investigating and taking seriously the study of colonization
or imperialism. He then develops several concepts that are central to postcolonial theory.
According to Said, nineteenth-century Europeans tried to justify their territorial
conquests by propagating a manufactured belief called Orientalism: the creation of non-
European stereotypes that suggested so-called Orientals were indolent, thoughtless, sexually
immoral, unreliable, and demented. The European conquerors, Said notes, believed that they
were accurately describing the inhabitants of their newly acquired lands in “the East.” What
they failed to realize, argues Said, is that all human knowledge can be viewed only through
one’s political, cultural, and ideological framework. No theory, either political or literary, can
be totally objective.
In effect, what the colonizers were revealing was their unconscious desires for power,
wealth, and domination, not the nature of the colonized subjects. In Culture and Imperialism
(1993), Said captures the basic thought behind colonization and imperialism: “‘They’re not
like us,’ and for that reason deserve to be ruled.” The colonized, Said maintains, becomes the
Other, the not me. Hence, the established binary opposition of “the West”/“the Other” must be
abolished along with its intricate web of racial and religious prejudices. What must be
rejected, Said declares, is the “vision” mentality of writers who want to describe the Orient
from a panoramic view. This erroneous view of humanity creates a simplistic interpretation of
human experience. It must be replaced by one based on “narrative,” a historical view that
emphasizes the variety of human experiences in all cultures. This narrative view does not
deny differences, but presents them in an objective way.
Scholarship, asserts Said, must be derived from firsthand experience of a particular
region, giving voice and presence to the critics who live and write in these regions, not
scholarship from “afar” or secondhand representation. Although such ideas helped shape the
central issues of postcolonial theory, it was Said’s use of French “high theory” along with
Marxist ideology as a methodology to deconstruct and historically examine the roots of
Orientalism that attracted the attention of the academic world and helped inspire a new
direction in postcolonial thought.
Homi K. Bhabha (1949–), one of the leading postcolonial theorists and critics, builds
on Said’s concept of the Other and Orientalism. Born into a Parsi family in Mumbai, India,
Bhabha received his undergraduate degree in India and his master’s and doctoral degrees from
Oxford University. Having taught at several prestigious universities, including Princeton,
Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago, Bhabha is currently a professor at Harvard
University.
In works such as The Location of Culture (1994), Bhabha emphasizes the concerns of
the colonized. What of the individual who has been colonized? On the one hand, the
colonized observes two somewhat distinct views of the world: that of the colonizer (the
conqueror) and that of himself or herself, the colonized (the one who has been conquered). To
what culture does this person belong? Seemingly, neither culture feels like home. This feeling
of homelessness, of being caught between two clashing cultures, Bhabha calls unhomeliness,
a concept referred to as double consciousness by some postcolonial theorists. This feeling or
perception of abandonment by both cultures causes the colonial subject (the colonized) to
become a psychological refugee. Because each psychological refugee uniquely blends his or
her two cultures, no two writers who have been colonial subjects will interpret their culture(s)
exactly alike. Hence, Bhabha argues against the tendency to essentialize third-world countries
into a homogenous identity.

6
One of Bhabha’s major contributions to postcolonial studies is his belief that there is
always ambivalence at the site of colonial dominance. When two cultures commingle, the
nature and the characteristics of the newly created culture changes each of the cultures. This
dynamic, interactive, and tension- packed process Bhabha names hybridity. Bhabha himself
says that “hybridization is a discursive, enunciatory, cultural, subjective process having to do
with the struggle around authority, authorization, deauthorization, and the revision of
authority. It’s a social process. It’s not about persons of diverse cultural tastes and fashions.
As a result, says Bhabha, a feeling of unhomeliness develops in the colonized. For the
colonized writer in such a commingled culture, Bhabha’s answer to this sense of
unhomeliness is that the colonized writer must create a new discourse by rejecting all the
established transcendental signifieds created by the colonizers. Such a writer must also
embrace pluralism, believing that no single truth and no metatheory of history exist. To
accomplish such goals, Bhabha consistently uses the tools of deconstruction theory to expose
cultural metaphors and discourse.
Although Fanon, Said, and Bhabha lay much of the theoretical framework of
postcolonialism, many others have joined them in continuing the dialogue between what
Bhabha calls “the Occident” and “the Orient.” Concentrating on what some critics call the
“flows of culture,” postcolonialism divides into smaller theoretical schools identified by their
choice of theoretical background and methodology. Marxism, poststructuralism, feminism,
African-American, and psychoanalytic criticism (usually of the Lacanian variety) all influence
postcolonial theory. For example, Gayatri Spivak, the publisher of the English translation of
Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1976), is a feminist, postcolonial critic who applies
deconstructive interpretations of imperialism while simultaneously questioning the premises
of the Marxism, feminism, and Derridean deconstruction that she espouses.
Postcolonialism is a varied approach to textual analysis that assumes that literature,
culture, and history all affect each other in significant ways. Postcolonial critics also believe
in the unavoidability of subjective and political interpretations in literary studies, arguing that
criticism and theory must be relevant to society as it really is. As such, these critics assert that
colonialism was and is a cause of suffering and oppression, a cause that is inherently unjust.
Furthermore, colonialism is not a thing of the past, but continues today—howbeit in subtler
and less open ways—as a form of oppression and as such, must be opposed. As the
contemporary critic Sam Durrant writes in Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning
(2003), “Post-colonialism as a praxis is grounded in an appeal to an ethical universal entailing
a simple respect for human suffering and a fundamental revolt against it.” Suffering and
enslavement, maintain postcolonialists, are elements of oppression and are “simply wrong.”
 Postcolonial Theory:
In recent years, post-colonial theory has posed some of the most far-reaching
questions for literary scholars and students alike. By focusing on subjectivity, identity, power,
and knowledge, post-colonial theory enables readers to ask questions about who speaks, for
whom, under what conditions, and to what ends. Since the wide-spread collapse of
colonialism, cultures that were former European colonies have been working to define and
understand themselves outside the bounds of colonialism.
Postcolonial theory has transformed literary studies in the past three decades. By
foregrounding how colonialism has radically altered the globe, this critical lens has provided
flexible methodologies for engaging the literary production of empire, colonial and anti-
colonial discourse, and the literature of current and former colonies in Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean, the Americas, and Pacific Islands. By turning to topics such as decolonization,
migration, language, knowledge production, and representation, postcolonial studies
approaches the study of literature in ways that intersect with other fields such as critical race
theory and diaspora, feminist, indigenous, transnational, and transoceanic studies.

7
Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the
political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around
the world in the 18th through the 20th century. Postcolonial theory takes many different
shapes and interventions, but all share a fundamental claim: that the world we inhabit is
impossible to understand except in relationship to the history of imperialism and colonial rule.
This means that it is impossible to conceive of “European philosophy,” “European literature,”
or “European history” as existing in the absence of Europe’s colonial encounters and
oppression around the world. It also suggests that colonized world stands at the forgotten
center of global modernity. The prefix “post” of “postcolonial theory” has been rigorously
debated, but it has never implied that colonialism has ended; indeed, much of postcolonial
theory is concerned with the lingering forms of colonial authority after the formal end of
Empire.
Other forms of postcolonial theory are openly endeavoring to imagine a
world after colonialism, but one which has yet to come into existence. Postcolonial theory
emerged in the US and UK academies in the 1980s as part of a larger wave of new and
politicized fields of humanistic inquiry, most notably feminism and critical race theory. As it
is generally constituted, postcolonial theory emerges from and is deeply indebted to
anticolonial thought from South Asia and Africa in the first half of the 20th century. In the US
and UK academies, this has historically meant that its focus has been these regions, often at
the expense of theory emerging from Latin and South America.
Over the course of the past thirty years, it has remained simultaneously tethered to the
fact of colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century and committed to politics and justice
in the contemporary moment. This has meant that it has taken multiple forms: it has been
concerned with forms of political and aesthetic representation; it has been committed to
accounting for globalization and global modernity; it has been invested in reimagining politics
and ethics from underneath imperial power, an effort that remains committed to those who
continue to suffer its effects; and it has been interested in perpetually discovering and
theorizing new forms of human injustice, from environmentalism to human rights.
Postcolonial theory has influenced the way we read texts, the way we understand national and
transnational histories, and the way we understand the political implications of our own
knowledge as scholars. Despite frequent critiques from outside the field (as well as from
within it), postcolonial theory remains one of the key forms of critical humanistic
interrogation in both academia and in the world.
Postcolonial Theory is both a growing and a contentious field. Some critics interpret
postcolonial theory as incoherent and theoretically insignificant at best, and politically
harmful at worst. The field of postcolonial theory is perceived as an uncritical condemnation
of Western nations, values and culture. Some of these misinterpretations emerge from a lack
of intellectual engagement with the topics within the field. However, some of these critics are
motivated by a political desire to sustain and legitimize the power (and the domination) of
Western nations, values, and culture. In this course we will respond to both of these types of
distortions.
We will see how philosophical reflections can help us to understand the nature of
interactions among different cultures. After a general introduction to the issues and problems
within the field of postcolonial theory, we will concentrate on early theorists of anti-
colonialism. Postcolonial theory has to be conceptualized as a continuation of these anti-
colonial struggles. We will interrogate how the struggle against Western colonization leads to
a critique of Western culture and --most significantly for our purposes-- Western thinking and
philosophy.
In this context, we will try to understand the relationship between Western philosophy
and colonialism. What conceptual backgrounds inform particular ways of understanding and

8
colonizing a culture? Is European philosophy a "colonizing" discourse? Finally, how can one
understand the current political situation of the world in terms of colonial history? Even
though some scholars do not consider colonialism and imperialism as useful descriptive terms
anymore, they still seem to shape the relationship between the West and the East.
In this course we will learn the historical, political, social, and ethical background of
colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism, in order to assess how much they are still at work
today. At a time when the West seems to control and shape other cultures and their ways of
thinking, a study of how different cultures interacted in the past seems extremely important.
Not only has the West defined the East as its Other, and constituted its identity in opposition
to the East, but also the knowledge the West produced about the East has become a tool for
the East to understand its own identity in the form of "self-colonization." There is, therefore, a
very difficult question of representation to be addressed. How is the East represented in the
West? How do so-called "scientific and scholarly" works contribute to the formation of
concrete policies? How do complex social, political, and philosophical ideas contribute to the
ways in which we perceive those who are other than us? What and Where is Post-colonial
Theory?
In Arts and Humanities schools throughout the world, such issues and concerns like
racism, nationalism, national identity, immigration, the continuing legacies of western
colonial, imperial histories and the nature of society in multi-cultural urban areas have been
theorised, discussed, debated and disseminated under the category of Post-colonial Theory.
Reasearch in this category aims to provide a resource for students and researchers interested
in finding out more about this exciting but difficult area of cultural and critical theory. It aims
to introduce some of the key arguments and issues and will feature some of the most
important figures in the field, whilst at the same time acknowledging that, in attempting to be
accessible some of the ideas may have been somewhat skimmed. Given the wide and
developing scope of this theory some key figures who have made important contributions to
post-colonial theory have unfortunately been omitted. However, what is lost through this
introduction is made up for in the extensive reading lists and links; the site is primarily
designed to function as a research tool to enable a groundwork into the thoughts, ideas,
conceptual under-pinnings and lively debates which make up the field of postcolonial theory.
Before beginning this introductory guide to post-colonial theory, it is important to
place the term into some historical and intellectual contexts. As the term implies, one of the
central features of post-colonial theory is an examination of the impact and continuing legacy
of the European conquest, colonisation and domination of non-European lands, peoples and
cultures. In short, the creation by European powers such as England and France of dominated
foreign empires. Central to this critical examination is an analysis of the inherent ideas of
European superiority over non-European peoples and cultures that such imperial colonisation
implies.
In addition to critically analysing the assumptions that the colonisers have of the
colonised, this work also seeks to uncover the damaging effects of such ideas on both the self-
identity of the colonised and the instability of the conceptual underpinnings of the colonisers.
A key feature of such critical theoretical examinations is the analysis of the role played by
representation in installing and perpetuating such notions of European superiority. To put it
simply, how does representation perpetuate negative stereotypes of non-European people and
cultures and how do such stereotypes negatively affect the identity of those stereotyped?
Furthermore, given the decolonisation of these lands following the Second World War and the
development of independent nation states, what is the role of representation in the
construction of new postcolonial identities?
Given the centrality of concepts of representation, identity and history to the project of
post-colonial theory, it will be of no surprise to find many of the key thinkers in the field have

9
been influenced by the post 1960’s intellectual movements of structuralism and post-
structuralism. Influential thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault,
Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristera have all had their conceptual and theoretical ideas used,
sometimes in slightly modified or developed form, in the work of contemporary post-colonial
theorists.
Three post-structuralist thinkers stand out as being largely influential in the field,
these being Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida - Lacan, Foucault and
Derrida are, in different ways, important to the work of the four key post-colonial theorists.
These are Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, and Homi. K. Bhabha.

READING LIST
 Introductory Guides to Post-colonial Theory and General Introduction to
Scructuralism and Post-structuralism McLeod, John. Beginning Post-colonialism
Manchester University Press, Manchester 2000.
 Ashcroft, Bill. Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. The Empire Writes Back: Theory
and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. Routledge, London. 1989.
 Ashcroft, Bill. Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. Key Concepts in Post-colonial
Studies. Routledge, London. 1998.
 Ashcroft, Bill. Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. (Eds). The Post-colonial Studies
Reader. Routledge, London. 1995.
 Childs, Peter. Williams, Patrick. An Introduction to Post-colonial Theory. Harvester
Wheatsheaf, London. 1997.
 Loomba, Ania. Colonialsim/Post-colonialism. Routledge, London. 1998.
 Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Post-colonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. Verso.
London. 1997.
 Merquid, J.G. Foucault. Fontana, London. 1985.
=======================

 On Postcolonial Literature:

“Postcolonial literature(s)" is essentially a political category, a shorthand term for an

attempt to find similarities among various Third World national literatures. Postcolonial
studies as a distinct area of interest has become more prominent since the late 1970s, in part
triggered by Said's Orientalism (1978), which called attention to the way that Western literary
discourse about "the East" tended to define non-European peoples and cultures as an alien
"other," not part of the universal(ist) culture of the West.
Postcolonial literature has been defined by Ashcroft as any literature affected by the
colonial experience, including that of the colonial period itself. Theoretically, this could
include writers such as Kipling, an Anglo-Indian, as well as literatures such as American or
Irish; usually, however, these are excluded. Colonial countries can be divided into settler
(Australia, Canada) and non-settler countries, although this division is not a "clean" one (and
countries like the U.S. are usually not included, despite a history of European colonization,
because of our current position of power in the world (Japan and other politically significant
non-Western countries are also usually excluded for a variety of reasons)). Most typically,
"postcolonial" refers to countries that exist at the margin of "mainstream" political and
cultural activity, and these are usually the non-settler countries. We will contrast "Imperial" or
"colonialist" literature, which takes as normal or "universal" aspects of political power and
culture associated with the "home country" (European colonial power) and as "alien" or
"other" the politics and culture of the colonized country, with "postcolonial" literature which
specifically focuses on tensions between indigenous culture and the late colonizers, and/or

10
problematizes the issue of perspective.
Issues in postcolonial studies include:
 how Western style education and the imposition of Western culture affects the
indigenous cultures of colonized states;
 the significance of linguistic choices in literary creation;
 the psychological expression of a speaker who has been culturally indoctrinated to see
himself /herself as inferior, or to be alienated from his (socio-cultural) self.
Issues include race, class, and gender relations as influenced by the colonial situation.
Even such apparently sensitive texts as Conrad's Heart of Darkness may perpetuate
(disseminate/continue) "colonialist" attitudes, as Chinua Achebe has pointed out. Marlow's
narration robs the native African of legitimate humanity, even while decrying imperialism of
other whites. The problem for the critic is to avoid duplicating Conrad's "sin" - to take one's
own experiences as the norm and to present oneself as authority on the discourse of the
"other" (296). Achebe has objected to readings that emphasize the "universal truths" as those
that echo with Western culture, when that culture is taken as the norm. But Henricksen points
out that there are also flaws in the opposite temptation, to see non-Western writing as "exotic"
(299-300). In this course, our reading needs to foreground critical assumptions about
relationship between dominant and subaltern literatures, recognize the tentative nature of
these assumptions and the political implications of authors' choice of language and implied
audience (303).
In the colonial world, political power was enforced via economic and cultural
hegemony (domination / supremacy / authority). Even at the height of the British Empire, for
instance, England's power was economic rather than military - the army and navy were
stretched thin in covering so many economic outposts. So other tools were needed to control
native populations: British culture served this purpose. Everywhere, British systems of
government and education were superimposed on existing cultures, along with the English
language (which remains a unifying force in countries like India). British policy from early on
was to export British culture, including governmental forms and literature, music, etc. Similar
efforts to impose European culture on "natives" were undertaken by the French and some of
the other major colonial powers -- note for instance the ubiquity (universality) of Spanish
language and culture on the former Spanish Empire. This was criticized even at the time by
few observers, as for example the British politician Sir Edward Cust in 1839: "To give a
colony the forms of independence is a mockery; she would not be a colony for a single hour if
she could maintain an independent station." (Qtd in Bhabha, 85). But these objections were
not raised by those friendly to the "natives" - rather by those who thought there should be
greater subjugation.
Colonial culture imposed its values on "inferior" former colonies, causing some to attempt
merger with the larger culture by denying origins - e.g., Henry James and T.S. Eliot becoming
"English" rather than "American" writers. This is akin to what Bhabha calls "mimicry" - i.e.,
colonial subjects seek to imitate the cultural behavior of the powerful, so as to escape their
characterization as "other." But "to be Anglicized is emphatically not to be English" (Bhabha,
87); the colonial mimic, by failure to be "authentic," reveals the distortions of cultural
difference. The Anglicized colonial is forever caught between two cultures, not allowed to be
part of the one that he/she has embraced, but having already repudiated the other.
Recognition of this position contributed to one of the early revolutionary critiques of
colonialism, that of Frantz Fanon, a French writer born in Martinique and educated to
conceive himself as French. However, his education in France and confrontation with French
racism made him aware of the disorientation he experienced as a black man taught to behave
"white," and he responded in part by writing his influential tract, Black Skin, White Masks
(1952). He argued that racist/colonial culture creates a psychological construct that prevents

11
the black man from recognizing his subjection to white norms. This alienation of the
postcolonial subject is in particular the result of language: "To speak. . . means above all to
assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization," Fanon says. Thus, to speak French
or another European language that establishes the opposition between black and white in
moral terms is, for the black man, to accept one's association with what the white culture
defines as evil. These cultural values become internalized, producing black alienation from
theself.
Linguistic issues thus become important concerns for postcolonial critics, writers, and
readers. The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o takes the extreme position that postcolonial
writers should only write in indigenous languages, renouncing the language of the colonizer;
on the other hand, the Nigerian Chinua Achebe has argued that the colonial languages (in his
case English, but also perhaps including French) are the only common medium of
communication across Africa (and more broadly, across the Third World), and therefore
remain an appropriate choice for literary language. Attitudes about language may also be
connected to attitudes about who can speak to, for, or about postcolonial texts. For instance,
some African writers have suggested that Westerners are disqualified from criticizing the
African novel, insofar as they are the heirs of colonialism. Others, like Achebe, choose to
write in English and include all people who read English in his audience.
In discussing Rushdie's Satanic Verses, Bhabha observes that migrant (postcolonial)
peoples must confront the problem of crossing cultural frontiers; does such crossing "permit
freedom from the essence of the self. . .[or] only change the surface of the soul, preserving
identity under its protean (variable / versatile) forms" (224) Many postcolonial texts
foreground the problem of cultural migration, as members of the former colonial empires
return to the imperial center (Rushdie, Caribbean writers), negotiate the transition to other
former colonies (Naipaul, Canadians), or to the United States (Mukherjee's Jasmine.) Another
important marker of postcolonial writing is a concern with history and historical perspectives.
(For example, Walter Rodney's statement "To be colonized is to be removed from history," or
Derek Walcott's "I met History once, but he ain't recognize me" from "The Schooner Flight.")
Postcolonial writing seeks to create a new connection to history, one that inverts the
Eurocentric value system and looks at history and society from the perspective of those voices
that have been silenced or ignored by the mainstream. Another term for postcolonial in this
regard is "subaltern," referring to the position of colonial subjects as permanently subordinate
to the rule of colonizers, in culture even after formal political independence. Postcolonial
writing insists on the importance of history, but a history reconceived and refocused on
previously marginal areas. As such it is connected to other politically inflected literary and
cultural movements, including feminism. Thus we will see how Gordimer (like various other
writers like Coetzee, Achebe and Mahfouz make use of historical concerns in their writing.
List of Sources:
 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.
 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and
Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House, 1987.
 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. O.
 Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. New York:
 Frederick A. Praeger, 1964. Tony Smith, Ed. The End of the European Empire:
Decolonization after World War II. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1975.

12
 Bruce Henricksen, "Chinua Achebe: The Bicultural Novel and the Ethics of Reading,"
in Sandra Ward Lott, Maureen S.G. Hawkins, and Norman McMillan, Global
Perspectives on Teaching Literature. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. Pp. 295-310.
=================

 On Orientalism and the Empire:

In the British Empire, an increase in popular awareness of the "Oriental" as something

to be defined, constrained, or civilized led to the development of a field of study known as
Orientalism. Edward Said defines Orientalism as "a style of thought based on an ontological
and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the
Occident'."
As Imperial England gained experience in dealing with various Oriental societies,
academics and government officials began to gather and publish their experiential knowledge,
opinions, and perspectives on so-called "Orientals." The social construction of Imperial and
Oriental knowledge cultivated a sense of supremacy based on the idea of "self vs. other."
The recognition of an "other," the Oriental, implies the existence of an implicitly
opposite identity: the Westerner. By constructing an "other" out of the Orient, the West was
forced to define itself. Knowledge plays an indirect role in imperial domination; imperialism
can only exist if knowledge aids a subjugating reality. In the British case, knowledge came in
the form of supremacist feelings stemming from the creation of "Oriental" knowledge.
The interaction between the West and the Orient represents a common human reaction
to something that is seen as different or unnatural. People tend to create groups within society
in order to find a sense of belonging. Often this can be most easily accomplished by defining
what they perceive to be abnormal, and the simplest way to do this is through the
identification of opposites.
The British considered themselves civilized, and therefore defined their counterparts,
the Orientals, as opposed to "the clarity, directness, and nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race."
Here Said speaks of the creation of opposites based on racial arguments of inferiority. At this
time, whiteness was associated with Western "civilized" nations, and all other skin tones were
considered naturally inferior to the Englishman.
This argument is similar to that made by slave-owners in earlier decades, which is
telling, because what is direct imperial control if at its base level it is not the subjugation of
one group of people by another? In a society where the perception of an "other" had persisted
for centuries in the form of slavery, the seeds of the Orientalist movement found fertile
ground.
Cromer maintains that "somehow or other the Oriental generally acts, speaks, and
thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European." The vagueness of his language suggests
the generality with which the different peoples (not recognized as unique at the time) that
constituted "the Orientals" were grouped together.
A Buddhist Indian, a Zulu of Africa, and an Arab from Egypt were uniformly
considered "singularly deficient in the logical faculty" as compared to the naturally reasonable
Englishman. "This was, of course, because Orientals were almost everywhere nearly the
same." Though these peoples differed in race, culture, language, government, and location,
they were all considered opposite of Europeans, and therefore, inferior and barbaric.
In the days of British Imperialism, knowledge of the Orientals was integral to the
success of the Empire's territorial endeavors. British military men and government officials
produced an unbelievable amount of literature regarding the nature of the land and people
they encountered in their various colonies. This knowledge was used to understand the
strange and exotic from a distinctly British perspective.

13
This "essential knowledge" that is "both academic and practical" allowed the men who
studied and governed these colonies to manipulate the identity of the Oriental as his agenda
saw fit. If he saw the cultural practices of the Egyptian Muslims as barbaric and threatening,
he could relay this to his superiors as a need for more soldiers instead of evidence of a strong
and ancient culture rooted in a religion similar to his own.
The Oriental knowledge that "gave the Oriental's world its intelligibility and identity
was not the result of his own efforts but rather the whole complex series of knowledgeable
manipulations by which the Orient was identified by the West."
The ability of the British to create volumes of information that they considered to be
inherently true about Orientals was directly related to their ability to control the Orient by
force. As Said says, "Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense
creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his world." The British had the practical power to control
the image of the Oriental that was transported back from the colonies to the motherland.
For example, if an uprising occurred in a crown colony such as India, the revolt was
blamed on causes not related to British occupation and control. The subjugated peoples had
no voice in the British mainland, and therefore the only images reaching British subjects were
those presented by the Orientalists. This monopoly on identity was perpetuated by an ever-
increasing cycle of knowledge and power.
Said's main argument in his book is that all knowledge is political. This explains the
relationship between knowledge and power used by the British to control their empire. For
example, knowledge becomes power when Britain thinks it is a better authority on Egypt than
Egypt itself. Balfour said, "We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know the
civilization of any other country," and even implied that they knew it better than the history of
England.
This knowledge was used to control them; by controlling their identity, rights, and
education, the British effectively dominated the peoples of their colonies. "Knowledge of
subject races or Orientals is what makes their management easy and profitable; knowledge
gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly popular
dialectic of information and control."
Once initial knowledge contributes to power, this power requires and creates the opportunity
for acquiring more knowledge, creating a cyclical dynamic of increasingly related knowledge
and power. In this Said is correct: knowledge is power.
It was knowledge that was effective in Cromer's governing of Egypt. He had a century
of Oriental knowledge at his fingertips that included their "race, character, culture, history,
traditions, society, and possibilities." However, contrary to what Said believes, knowledge
alone is not sufficient to cause imperialism. There is one element of the cycle that is largely
ignored: a sense of supremacy derived from knowledge.
In light of the self VS the other attitude taken by the British, the development of a
sense of supremacy naturally follows. However, this feeling of superiority comes not from the
establishment of opposites but from the cycle of knowledge and power. Those who realize
that they have the power to manipulate knowledge about an "inferior" entity in the Orient
naturally would take on an attitude of superiority. They are not only the authority on Oriental
subjects, but they create and control the identity of the Oriental.
Sometimes this control took on a benevolent façade, in that the British wanted to
civilize or convert the Orientals because "subject races did not have it in them to know what
was good for them." This explanation was most often given in the governing of the colonies.
In the mainland, however, domination took on an academic tone. For British scholars, "the
Oriental is depicted as something one judges, something one studies and depicts, something
one disciplines, and something one illustrates...in each of these cases the Oriental is contained
and represented by dominating frameworks."

14
Balfour represents the most obvious case of a subconscious attitude of supremacy
because when proudly describing the revival of Egypt under British cultivation and authority,
he maintains, "I take up no attitude of superiority." The complexities in the relationships
between Britain and her colonies are so subtle that an attitude of superiority is subconscious
and dismissed in conversation.
As Britain's most successful colonial enterprise, Egypt "was to become the triumph of
English knowledge and power." Despite the success Britain enjoyed in Egypt, it remains the
most flagrant example of the subtle but extremely strong influence that an attitude of
supremacy exerts in the cause of imperialism.
In the British Empire, both British and Oriental identity were created in a self vs. other
frame of mind. However, the British, with no Oriental input whatsoever, controlled the
knowledge that created these identities. They summarized, generalized, and marginalized the
peoples that made up the group "Orientals" to the point that Imperial power was used to
subjugate Orientals for their own good.
The manifestation of power from knowledge occurred the moment the British
considered themselves inherently better than the Orientals and used their knowledge to further
control and dominate. Said believes that a straight line exists between knowledge and
subjugating imperialism, but in fact an integrally important threshold is crossed when
judgment of Oriental knowledge begins to perpetuate a feeling of supremacy in the observer.
Without the cultivation of a superiority complex that accompanied the acquisition of
knowledge, the proliferation of Empire by way of knowledge would not have occurred to such
a great extent during the years of British Imperialism.
(Sarah Strange : Orientalism and the British Empire: Examining the Creation of an Oriental
"other" as Justification for Imperialism)

=========================
Key Concepts:

 Identity:
We shall start analysis of "cultural identity" asserting that culture in itself is not static;
it is very fluid. Culture evolves, adapts and adopts. In this sense, traveling identities are part
of an initiation step. The journey is an apparently linear and fixed path, while
wandering/adventure has some unforeseen and sinuous implications. However, the apparent
purpose of an imposing a trip overlaps the apparent lack of purpose that characterizes the
adventures.
In the Postcolonial Paradigm and from the point of view of the individual sense of self,
people need a certain amount of control over the borders between self and others. Following
the analysis above, I would argue that identity could figure into the explanation of action in
two main ways, which parallel the two sides of the word’s present meaning. Recall that either
“identity” can mean a social category or, in the sense of personal identity, distinguishing
features of a person that forms the basis of his or her dignity or self-respect. The use of
different theories and methodologies by different critics has affected the ways in which
researchers conceptualize identity, and it has resulted in the simultaneous use of different
terms that describe identity as a socio-cultural construct. In agreement, I opted for the term
cultural identity, which was defined as “an individual’s realization of his or her place in the
spectrum of cultures and purposeful behavior directed on his or her enrollment and acceptance
into a particular group, as well as certain characteristic features of a particular group that
automatically assign an individual’s group membership” (Sysoyev, 2001, p. 37-38). In this
respect, individuals’ cultural identity as a construct consists of a countless number of facets.
Most commonly referred to and described in literature are the following facets or types of

15
one’s cultural identity: racial, ethnic, social, economic, geopolitical, gender, religious, ability/
disability, language, professional, etc. Each of these facets represents a specific category of
which a person has specific membership(s).
Following the concept of cultural identity, Stuart Hall’s thesis is that rather than
thinking of identity as an “already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then
represent” (Hall, 1996, p. 145), we should instead think of “identity as a ‘production’ which is
never complete but always in process, and always constituted within, not outside,
representation” (Hall, 1996, p. 167). Hall points out that there are two leading ways for
thinking about cultural identity. The traditional model views identity: “[…] in terms of one,
shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self, hiding inside the many other, more
superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’, which people with a shared history and ancestry
hold in common…” (Hall, 1996, p. 393). Stuart Hall disapproves the view of cultural identity
as something that can be defined “in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true
self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’, which
people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common” (Hall, 1996, p. 393). For Hall,
however, it is better to envision a “quite different practice, one based on ‘not the rediscovery
but the production of : identity’”. Not an identity grounded in the archaeology, but in the re-
telling of the past” (Hall, 1996, p. 423). Such a viewpoint would entail acknowledging that
this is an “act of imaginative rediscovery” (Hall, 1996, p. 425), one which involves “imposing
an imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation, which is the history
of all enforced diasporas” and leads to the restoration of an “imaginary fullness or plentitude,
to set against the broken rubric of our past” (Hall, 1996, p. 428). Africa, he stresses, is the
“name of the missing term, (…) which lies at the centre of our cultural identity and gives it a
meaning which, until recently, it lacked” (Hall, 1996, p.432). The second model of (cultural)
identity acknowledges ‘what we really are’ or rather ‘what we have become’. From this point
of view, cultural identity is a: “[…] matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to
the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place,
time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like
everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally
fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture
and power. Far from being grounded in mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be
found, and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are
the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within,
the narratives of the past.” (Hall, 1996, p. 394)
In understanding the concepts of identity and assimilation, terms such as “diaspora”
and “hybridity” become other ways to analyze the nature of identity. Thus, we can see home
and exile as two dynamic ends of what Byfield comments as “the creation of diaspora is in
large measure contingent on a diasporic identity that links the constituent parts of the diaspora
to a homeland” Byfield, 2000, p. 2). However, the discourse about identity looks like a clash
between those who see a relatively fixed, coherent and racialized identity and those who
perceive identities as multiple, provisional and dynamic. This latter group (Gilroy, 1993; Hall,
1990) prefers, instead, the metaphor of hybridity to capture the ever-changing mixture of
cultural characteristics. Early studies of diaspora were largely anthropological and focused on
the ‘survival’ of cultural traits from Africa in the New World.
To a large extent, this issue of displacement and authenticity sets up the background
for what follows. Some sustain that there was an annihilation of cultural characteristics during
the middle passage and did not consider Africa as a reference point, while others consider the
African culture as being a surviving one and took this as an evidence of a desire to return.
These returns connect to a racialized and gendered hierarchy: “we must always keep in mind
that diasporic identities are socially and historically constituted, reconstituted, and

16
reproduced” (Patterson and Kelley, 2000, p. 19). The circumstances in which this takes place
are highly organized within the imperial cultural configurations, but one fixed thing is that
“the arrangements that this hierarchy assumes may vary from place to place but it remains a
gendered racial hierarchy” (Patterson and Kelley, 2000, p. 20).
 Self / Other:
It is Frantz Fanon who develops the idea of the Other in his writing to be a key
concern in postcolonial studies. To him the Other is the "not me" he is the Other. So from this
perspective an effort in this study has been made to foreground such concepts. This point of
concern to class seeks to consider how literature describes the Other. It shows the way to
maintain authority over the Other in a colonial situation, that is, an imperialist must see the
Other as different from the Self; and therefore he/she has to maintain sufficient identity with
the Other to valorize control over it. Politically as well as culturally the Self and the Other are
represented as the colonizer and the colonized.
The Other by definition lacks identity, propriety, purity, literality. In this sense he/she
can be described as the foreign: the one who does not belong to a group, does not speak a
given language, does not have the same customs; he is the unfamiliar, uncanny, unauthorized,
inappropriate, and the improper. To understand the concept of the Self and the Other the
formalistic approach (binary opposition) is used which is an important idea that helps us
understand how meanings are being shaped, created or reinforced in a text. Binary opposition
is the principle of contrast between two mutually exclusive terms which argues that the
perceived binary dichotomy between civilized / savage has perpetuated and legitimized
Western power structures favoring "civilized" white men. The existence of ‘binaries’ within a
text "acts to develop often powerful layers of meaning that work to maintain and reinforce a
society or culture’s dominant ideologies."
The concept of Otherness sees the world "as divided into mutually excluding
opposites: if the Self is ordered, rational, masculine, good, then the Other is chaotic, irrational,
feminine, and evil" (www.faculty.mccfl.edu) . This construction of the Other is a process of
demonization, which in itself expresses the 'ambivalence at the very heart of authority'
(Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin. 2002, P.3). Post-colonialism is continually described as a term
that portrays not a "we" talking about or to "them", but a "them" talking back to an "us". This
implies that post-colonial literature in one way or another is about categorization of center and
margin.
Homi Bhabha (1994) argues that the paradoxical nature and ambivalent nature of the
colonizer/colonized relationship has been a focus for post-colonial theory: …the colonial
presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and
"its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference. It
is this ambivalence that makes the boundaries of colonial positionality- the division of
self\other and the question of colonial power – the differentiation of colonizer\ colonized-
different from both Hegelian master-slave dialectic or the phenomenological projection of
'otherness' " (www.books.google.co.uk). Post-colonial novels are written to present the
"unequal relations of power based on binary opposition: "Us" and "them", "First World" and
"third world", "White" and "black", "Colonizer" and "colonized",(Kehinde, Ayobami.p.108)
"Self" and "other", "Powerful" and "powerless", "Torturer" and "tortured", "Master" and
"slave", "Civilized" and "savage", "Superior" and "inferior", "Human" and "subhuman". This
superiority of the white races, one colonist argued, clearly implied that "the black men must
forever remain cheap labour and slave"(www.vuursteen.b). On this Frantz Fanon (1963)
argues: When one has grasped the mechanism described by Lacan, one can have no further
doubt that the real other of the white man is and will continue to be the black man. And
conversely, only for the white man is the other perceived on the level of the body image,
absolutely as the not-self – that is, the unidentifiable, the inassimilable (p.195).

17
Fanon sees "the dichotomy (colonizer\colonized) as a product of a "Manichaeism
Delirium", the result of which condition is a radical division into paired oppositions such as
good-evil, true-false, and white-black" (Kehinde, Ayobami. p.110 ) where blackness confirms
the white Self, and whiteness empties the black subject (195). The Other, the colonizer
believes, has to be owned, altered and ravished -he is deceptive and fertile. This postcolonial
model is based on the tension between colonizer and colonized, and dominating and
dominated. This points to the importance of binary oppositions in post-colonialism. This
means that postcolonial writers protest against western ways of categorization. Their attempt
at exposing binaries often expresses itself in the rewriting of canonical stories that are at the
basis of inequality. The result of this rewriting is that it sometimes reverses a binary
opposition, so that what used to be the bad half becomes the good one.
It is in the mid of 20th century, "two major European academic thinkers, Claude Levi
Strauss and Roland Barthes, had the important insight that the way we understand certain
words depends not so much on any meaning they themselves directly contain, but much more
by our understanding of the difference between the word and its 'opposite' or, as they called it
'binary opposite'. They realized that words merely act as symbols for society's ideas and that
the meaning of words, therefore, was a relationship rather than a fixed thing: a relationship
between opposing ideas". Other oppositions that can help us understand the idea are the
youth/age binary, the masculinity/femininity, the good/evil binary, and so on. Colonization,
however, "relates to the 'I': the seeing\perceiving 'I' or 'eye' of the colonizer, the one who sets
the standard, who sees the Other and makes the agenda through his or her own point-of-view.
Thus writing itself can be seen as an act of colonization, of imposing ones authority through
culture / meanings / language onto someone else." In other words, the aim of colonization is
to impose one's culture\language\meaning onto the Other.
 Diaspora:
Namely a collective memory and myth about the homeland, it refers to those social
groups which share a common ethnic and national origin, but live outside the territory of
origin. These groups have a strong feeling of attachment to their “homeland”, making no
specific reference to ethnicity, or to a particular place of settlement. All diasporas, either
independent of national and ethnic background or treated as a single group in which ethnical
boundaries are crossed and considered as being hybrid and globally oriented.
In what concerns the dynamics of identity within diaspora, several typologies were
adopted during the nineties, in order to understand and describe the diasporas. In this
perspective, for Alain Medam, the typology of the diasporic structure should be based on the
opposition between the “crystallised diasporas” and the “fluid diasporas.” From the point of
view of homeland, Robin Cohen created a new typology of diaspora based on diversity,
namely: “1. Labour diasporas; 2. Imperial diasporas; 3. Trade diasporas; 4. Cultural
diasporas (the Caribbean case)” (Cohen, 1997, p. 85). The last type of diaspora – the cultural
diaspora with the Caribbean case became one of the most stimulating and productive types.
In its one cultural dimension, the diaspora discourse emphasizes the notion of
hybridity, used by post-modernist authors to mark the evolution of new social dynamics seen
as mixed cultures. One of the most important metaphoric designations of roots for diasporic
hybridity is the rhizome, a term developed by Guattari and Deleuze. The rhizome becomes
thus a useful motif because it describes root systems as being a continuous process that
spreads continuously in all directions, from random nodes, creating complex networks of
unpredictable shapes that are in constant process of growing. In this sense, the French
Caribbean is a good example of the occurrence of the concept of hybridity. Edouard Glissant
presents a clear reference to rhizome identity. In this respect, James Clifford also developed a
reference to “travelling cultures” founding its correspondence in the Black diaspora and in the
work of Paul Gilroy. In this perspective, this current was concisely expressed by Cohen in

18
his quotation: “diasporas are positioned somewhere between ‘nation-states’ and ‘travelling
cultures’ in that they involve dwelling in a nation-state in a physical sense, but travelling in an
astral or spiritual sense that falls outside the nation-state’s space/time zone” (Cohen, 1997, p.
95).
As Paul Gilroy describes, the nation-state is the institutional means to finish diaspora
dissemination (diasporic translocation), on one side, through assimilation and, on the other
side, through return. I am also at a converging point because all these researches lead to
different questions about the connection between trans-nationalism and diasporas. In Gilroy’s
view, the concept of diaspora is foreground as an antidote to what he calls “camp-thinking”
(Gilroy, 2000, p. 84), which involves oppositional and exclusive modes of thought about
people and cultures that rest on basis of purity and cultural identities. In contrast with this
approach, the diasporic identities are conceivable as being “creolized, syncretized, hybridized
and chronically impure cultural forms” (Gilroy, 2000, p. 129). Notably, the diaspora concept
can be “explicitly antinational” and can have “de-stabilizing and subversive effects” (Gilroy,
2000, p. 128). It offers, “an alternative to the metaphysics of race, nation and bounded culture
coded into the body, diaspora is a concept that problematizes the cultural and historical
mechanics of belonging” (Gilroy, 2000, p. 123). Diaspora is also “invariably promiscuous”
and challenges, “to apprehend mutable forms that can redefine the idea of culture through
reconciliation with movement and complex, dynamic variation” (Gilroy, 2000, p. 129-130).

 Hybridity:
As we have already seen, one of the earlier stages of postcolonial analysis involved the
reclamation of pre-colonial forms of history and culture and the construction of new national
identities based on specific and local knowledges and histories. In many respects this process
of identity formation through the construction of myths 14 “of nation and national identity
refers to the humanist Cartesian notion that self identity is a forced and stable category based
on a knowable, “transcendental” and “autonomous” sense of self. 15
Closer analysis, however, reveals that patterns of migration, both the movement of
colonisers into the colonised area and immigration from the “colonies” to the “colonial
power”, result in national identity being much more hybrid than was originally understood.
“That the need to assert such myths of origin was an important feature of early post colonial
theory and writing and that it was a vital part of the collective political resistance which
focused on issues of separate identity and cultural distinctiveness is made clear [… .] But
what is also made clear is how problematic such construction is and how it has come under
question in more recent accounts… [… ] ”
Hybridity occurs in post colonial societies both as a result of conscious movements of
cultural suppression, as when the colonial power invades to consolidate political and conomic
control, or when settler-invaders dispose indigenous peoples and force them to “assimilate” to
new social patterns. It may also occur in later periods when patterns of immigration from
metropolitan societies and from other imperial areas of influence [… .] continue to produce
complex cultural palimpsests with the post colonial world”.16
 Ethnicity:
Closely related to the notion that post colonial national identities are of a hybrid
nature is the body of work which surrounds concepts of Ethnicity. The development of the
term ethnicity in current post colonial theory marks a shift from earlier discussions of “race “
and some brief analysis of the two terms should help throw some light onto current debates in
this area.
Earlier struggles against racism and colonialism centred upon the construction of the
positive identity of being “black” and as such this concept of “blackness” was primarily based
on physical features and characteristics as a marker of identity.

19
Useful as this may have been to the political struggles against racism and colonialism, it
tended to homogenise and universalise the experience of all black people and to deny that
there are a multitude of diverse cultures within the “black” community. Furthermore this
approach tended to “privilege” black people as being the only victims of racism and
colonialism. For these reasons, the term.
Ethnicity rather than race came into use in postcolonial analysis. Ethnicity recognises
the social, cultural and religious practices which help to constitute a cultural identity and is
less reductive than the more physically based concept of race. Furthermore, this shift towards
“Ethnicity” as a focus for critical activity and analysis recognises and to some extent
foregrounds the aforementioned concepts of Hybridity and cultural identity.
 Location
The above mentioned concepts of the hybridity of cultural identity and the analysis
identity in terms of ethnicity rather than race, leads to a more complex understanding of
cultural location. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of current thinking in this area
except to say that location is less concerned with analysis of a particular geographical area
and its relationships to identity but rather with the analysis of the social, cultural, religious and
linguistic processes which constitute a cultural identity regardless of the specific location in
which these occur. This concern with the non-geographic aspects of cultural location results
in a more sophisticated analysis of political struggles against racism and colonialism and takes
into account both the migrations of diaspora communities and their interaction with other
social groups, be they indigenous peoples or other cultural diasporas.
The concepts of Hybridity, Ethnicity and Location are just three areas of postcolonial
theory which emphasize the heterogeneity of postcolonial cultural identity and its constructed
and unstable nature. This has led to a more complex and sophisticated analysis of the politics
of identity as it relates to the condition of life in a postmodern, postcolonial world.
The purpose of this piece is to map the terrain of the debates rather than take a
position within them. It is worth, however, grappling with the theory discussed above, as the
insights that much of it contains can be usefully applied to the analysis of our electronic
based, image centred, consumer culture and much of this work has provided useful critiques
of such concepts as history, identity, the self or subject and representation and consequence
that characterise the shift towards the condition of post-coloniality.
 Home / Liminal Space
In thinking about travel, the following questions are often critically recalled : what
becomes the sense of home? Is home merely a place to depart from, or can we see travel as
leading us to think about how homes must also be cultivated through movement? James
Clifford argues that “Cultural centers, discrete regions and territories, do not exist prior to
contacts, but are sustained through them, appropriating and disciplining the restless
movements of people and things” (Clifford, 1997, p. 3).
Home is not a place that one leaves behind, but a geographical point of reference, a
sense of place that serves as an anchor for the travel. According to James Clifford, the cross-
cultural or ‘border’ experiences of travel are not viewed as acculturation, where there is a
linear progression from culture A to culture B, nor as syncretism, where two systems overlap
each other. Rather, Clifford understands these cross-cultural or ‘border’ experiences as
instances of historical contact, “with entanglement at intersecting regional, national, and
transnational levels” (Clifford, 1997, p. 7). Inspired by Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘contact-zones’, a
contact approach emphasizes the intercultural interaction that takes place within these spaces
of interaction and exchange.
In his study on rites of passage, Arnold van Gennep identifies three stages at work in
transitional events such as births, marriages, and deaths: separation (the preliminal stage),
transition (the liminal stage), and incorporation (the postliminal stage). While the passage

20
itself involves an ambiguous threshold, the completion of a rite of passage establishes the
individual’s identity within a new social category or phase of life.
 Binary Opposition:
The Binary Opposition is defined as a pair of related terms or concepts that
are opposite in meaning. In structuralism, a binary opposition is seen as a
fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture, and language.Claude
Lévi‐Strauss adopted the Binary Opposition Theory. He was influenced by several leading
theorists including Saussure, Jakobson, Boas, Mauss, Trubetzkoy, Rousseau and
Marx(Swan, 2011). According to Francesca Marinaro, Binary Opposition is "a key
concept in structuralism, a theory of sociology, anthropology and linguistics that states
that all elements of human culture can only be understood in
relation to one another and how they function within a larger system or the overall
environment"(Marinaro, n.d.).
Binary oppositions in cultural studies explore the relationships
between different groups of people, for instance: upper‐class
and lower‐class boundaries between groups of people lead to prejudice and discrimination.
One group may regard the opposite group (the other) a threat. The binary opposition in
literature is a system that writers employ to discover
differences between groups of individuals, like cultural, class or gender differences.
 Patriarchy Vs. Feminism:
The concept of patriarchy was used within women's
movement to study women's oppression. The concept is not
new. It has a history within feminist thought. It was used by earlier feminists like Virginia
Woolf, the Fabian Women's
Group and Vera Britain. It was used by Max Weber (1968), an anti‐Marxist sociologist.
Politically speaking, feminists obstructed the concept of patriarchy in order to express the
feelings of oppression and subordination, and to transform feelings of rebellion into a
political practice and theory. Theoretically speaking, the concept of patriarchy is used
to focus on the question of the subordination of women.
The concept of the term patriarchy refers to male domination and to
the power relationships by which men dominate women. It was adopted by Marxist
feminists to transform Marxist theory for the subordination of women as well as for
the forms of class exploitation. (Beechey: 1979).Spivak, in her monograph Can the
Subaltern speak? Explains how hegemonic cultures are controlling other cultures. She gives
the example of the Sati suicide at India to explain the relation of subalternity of woman
into the colonial discourse that attempts to save them (Spivak, CSS, part 4): “white
men saving brown women from brown men” Spivak gives a similar idea when she
criticizes the way Western thinkers investigate postcolonial issues as voices for the
subaltern, while they are producing materials for their own Western academic
circle.The theory of deconstruction was taken up by many literary scholars and
writers particularly the feminists, who have used the deconstructionist approach and the
strategy of différance to give birth to new terms that
avoid dualisms in general, especially the feminine/masculine
dualism founded on pathos/logos and other/self.
 Representation and Resistance:
Two ideas that surface repeatedly in post-colonial literature and theory are
representation and resistance. Inevitably, scholars will judge a novel or poem by how
adequately it represents an indigenous people or by how it reacts to the oppressing colonizers.
Does Philip Jeyaretnam's Abraham's Promise serve as a statement against the remnants of a
colonized Singapore or does it perpetuate the colonizing institutions of modern Singapore?

21
This is one of the numerous questions scholars may ask when applying a theoretical study of
post-colonial literature. Edward Said uses the term "Orientalism" in one aspect of post-
colonial theory. He states that the idea of post-colonialism needs the dynamic between itself
and its colonizers in order to define its existence:
The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture.
Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of
discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even
colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. (87)
The dynamic between the colonizer and the colonized may impose an intellectual
rather than a political domination over the post-colonial nation. While political freedom may
exist, the intellectual independence is far from reality. Said goes on to state "it
[Orientalism] is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases
to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and
novel) world." (90) Thus, choosing to represent an indigenous culture with the language of the
empire serves as another form of colonization.
Resistance theory in post-colonial literature refutes the notion that idea of
representation also connotes further subjugation. Resistance literature uses the language of
empire to rebut its dominant ideologies. In other words, the colonized nation is "writing
back," speaking either of the oppression and racism of the colonizers or the inherent cultural
"better-ness" of the indigenous people. Helen Tiffin expresses this point best in her essay
"Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse": "Post-colonial literatures/cultures are thus
constituted in counter-discursive rather than homologous practices, and they offer Ôfields' or
counter-discursive strategies to the dominant discourse." (96) Thus the counter-discursive
nature constitutes post-colonial literatures rather than a unifying style or theme.
Counter-discourse fails to recognize that by existing simply to react against or to resist
dominant ideology, it is marginalized into an idea that cannot stand on its own. As Tiffin
states, counter-discourse exists only "in its determining relations with its material situation."
(96) The concept of "other" cannot exist without its relationship to its reference point. Could
this then be the fate of post-colonial literature? Is post-colonial literature only a subset,
corollary, or a reaction to the already existing dominant discourse of English Literature?
The paradox of marginalization and empowerment seem to coexist in the ideas of
representation and resistance. How does one then resolve this paradox? Tiffin offers another
idea in the study and assessment of post-colonial literature. This idea involves a compromise
between complete separation from the empire and the complete dependence upon the empire
for its existence. She states "[p]ost-colonial cultures are inevitably hybridised, involving a
dialectical relationship between European ontology and epistemology and the impulse to
create or recreate independent local identity." (95) It seems as though colonial institutions in
literature such as language and narrative style are necessary for a body of work to reach an
academic audience. However, by potentially being able to reach a larger audience, an author
enables himself to voice the emotions, frustrations, and the triumphs of his people to a group
of scholars or students not yet exposed to his nation or race.
In the novels under study, we shall examine how they exemplify different aspects of
representation and resistance theory. They all serve to represent the indigenous lifestyle, resist
colonial acts of authority and oppression through their textual transmission, or they
accomplish both.
 Négritude:
Within the oscillation between negritude and negriceness, the African-descendent
experiences are the symbol of mobility. Involved in such a moveable identity, “[…] the
subject develops different identities in specific moments. These identities are not unified
around a coherent ‘self’” (Hall, 1992, p. 13). This mobility, which features the African-

22
descendent identities, sustains the double consciousness of the existential experience that
instigates the black subject to move within the westernized world. To sustain this, Du Bois
explains that when he lives the double consciousness, the black subject “feels his two-ness –
an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring
ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”
(DuBois, 1994, p. 2), thus creating a so-called ‘hyphenated’ cultural identity. The concept of
négritude refers to those traveling identities and cultures, coming from Africa, going to the
Caribbean, and then advancing to Europe. In such an experience of leaving from one place to
reach another, the ship turns itself into the metaphor of displacement, being able to develop a
‘traveling alterity’: “Because the womb of the slave-ship is the place and the moment, in
which the African languages disappear, as they never put together in a slave-ship, or in the
plantations, people who could speak the same language. Thus, the persons found themselves
dispossessed of all kind of elements of their daily life.” (Glissant, 2005, p. 19)

REFERENCES:

o Said, Edward W. "Orientalism." in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. ed. Bill

Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. New York: Routledge, 1995. pp. 87-91.
o Tiffin, Helen. "Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse." in The Post-Colonial
Studies Reader. pp. 95-98.

=========================================

 On African Postcolonial Literature:

In general, African literature is usually best understood within the context of Ali
Mazrui's categorization of African historical experience as a "triple heritage": Africa as a
space produced by endogenous historical traditions, Arab/Islamic influences, and Western
Judeo-Christian influences. This triple heritage has produced a literature characterized by a
tripodal identity, based on its relationship to each element. Africa's indigenous heritage is of
its rich oral traditions. The Arab/Islamic heritage is associated with the written literatures of
North Africa and parts of East and West Africa. The Arabic and Western aspects of Africa's
triple heritage reflect the continent's experience with the historical trauma of conquest,
evidenced by such events as the Arab invasion of North Africa and West Africa, the trans-
Atlantic slave trade, and colonialism. The Western/Judeo-Christian heritage has shaped the
literature written in English, French, and Portuguese.
In Postcolonial African Writers: A BioBibligraphical Critical Sourcebook, Pushpa
Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne undertake the am bitious project of creating an overview
of a di verse group of African literary authors under the auspices of a single volume. A much-
needed sourcebook, this work brings together resources that would normally be scattered over
several volumes and presents a critical examination of the issues, advantages, and
shortcomings of post‐colonial theory as it relates to African writing.
In the preface to this book, Parekh states that "the central organizing principle of the
volume is postcoloniality as it is reflected in the novels, poetry, prose, and drama of major,
minor, and emerging writers from diverse countries of Africa, including representative North
and South African writers and writers of the Indian diaspora born in Africa, both male and
female" In addition, the editors have set themselves the task of creating a gender balance in
terms of the selec‐ tion of writers and contributors. In a response to the "center-versus-margin
construction of identities and ideologies" (the editors locate known and emerging men and
women writers side by side in order to place full focus on African contexts, possibilities, and

23
problematics and on the shape and meaning of African theoretical preoccupations. The book
consists of sixty biobibliographical and critical entries organized into the following
categories: biography, major works and themes, critical reception and bibliography which
consists of selected works and selected studies. Of these, the major works and themes and
critical reception sections are vital in advancing the book's goals because it is here that works
are discussed in the context of "postcoloniality."
In addition, works are also situated within the historical and cultural context of the
authors' contemporaries. This resists the compartmentalization of individu al African writers
either by stature or gender and allows for a greater sense of African literature as a whole
comprised of many strands. In her foreword to the book, Carole Boyce Davies asserts that "its
primary and most important contribution is that it accounts concretely for a range of writers of
a specific geographic specificity within the larger field of postcolonial studies... a body of
writers emanating from the African cultural experience". The volume advances this project by
the inclusion of new writers such as Mositi Torontle (Botswana) and Tijan Sallah (Gambia)
alongside established luminaries such as Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) and Ngugi wa Thiong'o
(Kenya).
Thus, African literature has come to be documented as a vibrant and continually
unfolding literary practice. The book is successful in foregrounding African feminism as a
critical stance distinct from western feminism and its underlying precepts. As Jagne observes,
western feminist critics and theorists, in applying their own parameters to African writing,
frequently fail to "leave space for the authors' own theoretical preoccupations" (p. 8). By
openly challenging existing theoretical boundaries, some contributors in this volume add to
the ongoing debate surrounding the existence of unique African feminist practices.
For example, the long history of African women's contribution to their own
representation is demonstrated by Lisa McNee's contribution on the seminal works of
Senegalese writer Nafissatou Diallo. The first Senegalese woman to publish a long narrative
work and extended autobiography, Diallo's work subtly interrogates the cultural roles of
women within Senegalese society. McNee raises the issue of certain criticisms leveled at
Diallo's work because of its subtle nature, but correctly redresses them by suggesting that this
is a misreading of Diallo's cultural context and use of language. Christine Loflin's entry on
Flora Nwapa is of particular interest because it discusses how critics such as Obioma
Nnaemeka, Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Marie Umeh, through their analyses of Nwapa's
works, advocate "the potential for an African-based feminist or womanist theory which does
not reject but rather builds from the foundations of traditional culture" (p. 341).
Thus, African feminism is seen to arise, as it always has, from texts focused on
African preoccupations and conditions, which supersede any interventionist western
constructions. If there is a weakness in the volume, it occurs in the introduction, where there
is a marked imbalance between the development of the book's two major goals. Divided into a
section by Parekh entitled "Postcolonial Criticism and African Writing" and another section
by Jagne entitled "Theorizing African Women," the introduction devotes more energy
developing the editors' positions on the inclusion of African women writers than it does on the
often contradictory and problematic area of postcoloniality as an analytical practice. Although
Parekh raises some of the ongoing controversies and debates concerning postcolonialism,[1]
this section seems somewhat underdeveloped, particularly given that this sourcebook will be
of special interest to those who are investigating this area for the first time. This shortcoming
is redressed to a degree by the wide variety of stances on postcoloniality reflected by the
contributors.
In fact, one of the greatest strengths of this segment is its potential for creating debate
over a vast area of issues in postcolonial studies. Parekh makes it clear that "at this juncture, it
would be useful to consider the term 'post-colonial' as indicative of chronological historicity

24
and 'postcolonial' as an ideological conceptualization" (p. 3). She warns against homoge‐
nizing postcolonial criticism into one unified methodology and advocates "theory aligned
more closely to practice" (p. 4). Parekh openly engages the reader in debate when she states
that "the critics' and theorists' insights, whether in this volume or outside, should not go
unchallenged". Thus, one is invited, as it were, to consider how key concepts such as
"counternarratives" or "oppositional versions" contribute to the advancement of the
postcolonial project, particularly in view of the fact that this is a literary practice that has gone
well beyond writing back to the empire.
The existence of such terminology indicates the continuing problematics of
postcolonial theory and the struggles of contributors to locate authors and works adequately
within a framework that foregrounds African experience over western imperatives. For
example, in John C. Hawley's otherwise insightful entry on Ngugi wa Thiong'o, he compares
Ngugi's exploration of motivation in Petals of Blood to Dostoyevsky (p 324). Such an
observation raises the question of why African writers continue to be "legitimized" through
comparison to European writers, almost as if their own artistic practice fails to speak for itself.

Reading List:
 Karin Barber, "African Language Literature and Postcolonial Criticism," Re search in
African Literatures 26.4 (Winter 1995): 3-30
 Colonial Dis course and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and
Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 112-123
 Carole Boyce Davies, Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the
Subject (London: Rout‐ ledge, 1994)
 Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989)
 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lour‐ des Torres, eds, Third World
Women and the Poli tics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991)
 Naima Loummou. Cannonizing the Self: African Women Building a Feminist Literary
Tradition (2012)

==============

II- Textbooks: Reading & Analysis

 Key Categories of Analysis:

Race / Class / Gender & Patriachy / Culture / the colonial context/ language/
Political-Social Relevance.

========================================
Compiled and customised by:
Pr. N. LOUMMOU

25