critics for comparative trf and small island Flashcards
Orientalist gaze (Edward Said) and colonial gaze
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”
subtle racial prejudice and microaggressions v. overt racial violence
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
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin adopted the phrase
“writing back” from Salman Rushdie
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.
Avtar Brah
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’ “
Louise Bennet
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.’
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
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.
Chakravorty Spivak
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.
stuart hall on culture
this is what culture is - it is not something that stays still, it is always in translation
stuart hall on identity
we should think of identity as a production- something that is never complete
nikesh shukla on immigrants and success
immigrants are told to intergrate well. move upwards in society. be praised- until people worry that immigrants are doing too well, and remember that they are foreign
Jonathan Raban
in the city we can change our identities at will. - raban argues that metropolitan cities like new york and london are inclusive and accepting places - one’s identity can be reinvented without judgement
louis althusser- marxist on dominant political and societal structures
dominant cultural and political structures impose identities on us
white professionalism bias
the preference for white hair styles/ dress in the workplace
nick bentley on the subaltern narrative
the subaltern narrative emphasises that the accommodation of western culture is needed if the immigrant is going to live a fruitful life in the West
Homi K Bhabha - otherness
to exist is to be called into being in relation to an otherness- otherness seen as troubling and threatening
colonial texts catgeroise the colonised as the ‘other’
- defines them as exclusively and pejoratively in terms of western european values and traditions
