Post-Colonial Theory

RECAP

Activity Time

Pick one of the two Disney movies and answer the following questions:

• Post-colonial theory is concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who were/are colonized.
• Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture.
• This literary theory can be used to bring awareness to past languages, traditions, and values that have been altered or completely abandoned because of colonization.
• Always keep this literary theory in mine when reading short stories or novels.

• How does the movie portray the culture?
• How historically accurate are the films?
• Do you see a struggle between the colonizer and the colonized?

The Importance of Post-Colonial Theory

Integrating views from colonial times and applying them to common goals today

We should use the Post-Colonial Theory as a pair of lens when reading certain literary works. By using this theory, we can see how the foundation to current societies were built through analyzing the ways of old societies. Certain values and traditions have all started from a specific place and are even still around now. Our job, as readers, is to be open to learning and exploring the past so that we can understand why our culture is the way it is now. Without these lens, readers would miss the key components and factors that hold our society up today.

Hobi K. Bhabha

• Coined the term "Hybridity"
• Main concept of post-colonialism
• Hybridity: the way in which cultural identities are transformed in the common contract zone that is produced in the interaction between the colonizer and the colonized
• Examples: racial mixture and dialects

Examples in Disney Movies

• Dilemma faced by Chinese women.
• The socially constructed female role was to serve their country by bearing sons.
• Females had no right of speech.
• Females are generally powerless.
• The Disney movie also portrayed many of aspects of Chinese tradition.
• Spirituality and the importance of our ancestors
• Family honor and loyalty
• Guardians

Desiree's Baby (1892)

• Concept of "us" and "them"
• "Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name. "
• "I thank the good God...Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery"
• Chopin demonstrates how racism played a major role in people's lives in the 1800s
• Slavery was firmly established in the United States around the 19th century.

Continued

What is Post-Colonialism?

Examples in Literature

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

• It vividly portrayed a traditional village culture in Africa
• Informed the outside world about Ibo cultural traditions
• Reminded his own people that their past has a lot of value
• European judgment that Africa had no history or culture worth considering
• Reminded his own people that their past is of much value and importance

• A type of cultural criticism that involves analyzing colonialism and imperialism.
• Focuses on human relations among the colonial nations and the people exploited by their rule.
• Looks at the effects that colonization has left on both the society and the individual characters.
• Looks at the way in which race, ethnicity, culture, and human identity are represented in modern era after colonization.

Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta

• It is concerned with how European nations conquered and controlled "third world" cultures, and how these groups have since then recuperated and resisted those changes.
• Colonizer vs. Colonized
• Often deals with racism or genocide.
• A body a literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization.

• The story closely reflects the effects of colonization.
• Deals with the issues of race and gender
• The main character struggles against the prejudices that identified her because she was a black woman.
• The protagonist went from a high class position in her native Nigeria to a very poor class in a predominantly white European society

Post-Colonial Theory

By: Celine Ow