Post Colonialism

Question 1

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 1

The belief that one particular culture is superior to all others

Question 2

Xenophobia?

Answer 2

The fear of cultures or ethnic groups different from one’s own, resulting in racial prejudice

Question 3

Multiculturalism?

Answer 3

Embracing a mixture of diverse cultures or ethnic groups in a particular place e.g country, town, school

Question 4

Marginalisation?

Answer 4

Denying power or a ‘voice’ to a particular group, putting them ‘on the margin’ of society

Question 5

‘Other was’v

Answer 5

The construction of cultural ‘others’; a ‘them and us’ mentality, in which anyone not in our cultural group is considered to be intrinsically different and probably inferior

Question 6

Exoticism?

Answer 6

The ‘charm of the unfamiliar’; attributing exciting or philosophical connotations to aspects of foreign culture, often incorporating them into our own

Question 7

Essentialism?

Answer 7

The idea that there are specific traits associated with a particular group or entity, which can lead to ethnic and gender stereotyping

Question 8

Institutional Racism is…

Answer 8

Entrenched racist attitudes targeting particular ethnic groups by institutions such as the police force or education system

Question 9

Cultural Imperialism?

Answer 9

Imperialism is the rulership of a nation/s, imposing laws and religious values on them. Cultural imperialism is imposing cultural attitudes and values, including ideologies (like capitalism), often through the media in contemporary culture

Question 10

Tokenism?

Answer 10

The inclusion of an ethnic minority figure in a text or situation for the sake of political correctness

Question 11

Orientalism (used by Edward Said to describe what?)

Answer 11

Edward Said used Orientalism to describe the racist and hostile views of cultures incorporated into studies of Eastern cultures by Western scholars

Question 12

What did Edward Said believe?

Answer 12

• coined the term ‘orient’ to refer to North African Arab and Middle Eastern people/cultures who are represented as the binary opposite of Western
• he believes representations of the orient serve to reimpose colonial domination by suggestion oriental culture is inferior/negative in relation to Western culture

Question 13

What were the 3 stages of Franz Fanon’s work?

Answer 13

• can be divided into 3 stages;
  1. The search for black identity
  2. The struggle against colonialism
  3. The process of decolonisation

Question 14

Elaborate on Franz Fanon’s ‘search for black identity’

Answer 14

1. Fanon suggested that colonised people were made to feel inferior and alienated from their own culture, because the language/history/culture/customs/beliefs of the colonisers were promoted as universal, normal and superior. This mean colonise people adopted these values to not make themselves feel inferior

Question 15

Detail Fanon’s ‘struggle against colonialism’

Answer 15

Fanon believes that in order to achieve independence, colonised people’s needed to reclaim and reconstruct their own history from the negative/non-existent versions of it produced by the colonisers

Question 16

Describe Fanon’s ‘process of decolonisation’

Answer 16

For Fanon, the process of decolonisation involved post-colonial nations developing their own forms of social democracy rather than retaining existing colonial institutions and filling them with indigenous people. Also believes that the colonised should be aware their education was based on the ideologies and beliefs of the colonisers

Question 17

What did Homi K Bhabha argue in ‘Nation and Narration’?

Answer 17

That the tendency to treat all post-colonial cultures the same was wrong, an that they didn’t have a shared identity. He said all ideas of the nation are narratives which have been romanticised (these ideas can be linked to ‘Fictions’)

Question 18

What did Homi K. Bhabha say in ‘The Location of Culture’?

Answer 18

He discussed the Western tendency to view the relationship between coloniser and colonised in terms of binary oppositions e.g centre/margin, civilised/savage, enlightened/ignorant. Once the binaries are destabilised, cultures can be understood to interact, transgress and transform each other in a complex manner than stereotypical binary oppositions allow. Leads to the concept of ‘hybridity’, national identity becomes more of a mix between colonised and coloniser than previously admitted