critics for comparative trf and small island

Question 1

Orientalist gaze (Edward Said) and colonial gaze

Answer 1

The objectifying, dehumanising lens / perspective through which ‘the West’ views and constructs
‘The Other’. ‘

Colonial gaze’ referring specifically to the colonial European view of ‘African(s)’ as
‘savage’ and ‘in want of civilising’; ‘Oriental gaze referring specifically to ‘the West’s’ view of ‘the East’ as ‘exotic’, undeveloped, and threatening.

Orientalist gaze - believes the west views the eastern countries as “barbaric” and “savage” in need of “making civil”.

“The west looking at the east as if the west knows more”

East- “barbaric”
“savage”

Question 2

subtle racial prejudice and microaggressions v. overt racial violence

Answer 2

racial prejudice = assumptions held about a person on account of their ethnicity / ‘race’;
microaggressions = the small, subtle and self-masking ways in which racism can play out, often without leaving much room for resistance

Question 3

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin adopted the phrase
“writing back” from Salman Rushdie

Answer 3

defined it as postcolonial writers
engaging in the power of imperial discourse, not by writing ‘for’ the center
but ‘against’ the assumptions of the center to a prior claim to legitimacy
and power.

In The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial
Literatures (1989), the three authors prescribe the re-appropriation of
discourse and history through the rewriting of canonical texts of English
literature to the concept of ‘writing back.’ They regard it as a field that is
ironic, satirical, subversive and crucially concerned with undercutting,
revising, or envisioning alternatives to reductive representations in the
colonial mode.

Question 4

Avtar Brah

Answer 4

Diaspora
Concept of rootedness: making somewhere home

Multi-locationality

“Diasporic journeys are essentially about settling down, about putting roots elsewhere”

“Home is also the lived experience of a locality, Its sounds and smells, heat and dust, balmy summer evenings”

“Home is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In the sense that it is a place of no return even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as the place of ‘origin’ “

Question 5

Louise Bennet

Answer 5

People should be proud of their heritage, even though others may want to change their customs and culture

“Sometimes all it takes is just one sentence. Just one sentence, and there you are, part of something that has been part of you since the beginning, whenever that might rightly be.’

Question 6

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Answer 6

believes that the real aim of colonialism was a desire to control people’s wealth. argues that the colonial powers sought to exploit the resources and labour of the colonised people for their own benefit.

states that the cultural bomb destroys a people’s belief in their own languages, their culture, their native names, their heritage, their struggle with their oppressors, and their history.

Question 7

Chakravorty Spivak

Answer 7

Once oppressed people find their voice, they assert their humanity.
“Can the subaltern speak?”(1985)

subaltern- an officer in the British army below the rank of captain, especially a second lieutenant.