Postcolonialism Flashcards
Oxford English Dictionary
Defines colonialism as “a settlement in a new country … a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up”
BUT, this needs to be interrogated to reveal the power relations that lie behind it. This definition pays no reference to the view of the colonized; ignoring the encounters between people. This definition also sees the colonized land as free land, free of any previous history or meaning. Put simply, this leaves politics out of colonialism.
Loomba (1998)
Defines colonialism as “the take-over of territory, appropriation of material resources, exploitation of labour and interference with political and cultural structures of another territory or nation”
But even this definition is not sufficient. The conquest of other people’s lands and goods is not new or specific to modern colonialism. We need to look at what is distinctive about modern colonialism.
Mignolo (2009) [definition]
Argues that “all varieties of [modern] colonialism is connected through the rhetoric of modernity [enlightenment, salvation, progress, development, well-being] and the logic of coloniality [racism, exploitation, oppression, marginalisation, appropriation of land, control of authority]”
Modernity and colonialism are essentially two sides of the same coin. Both need to be interrogated to understand colonialism.
Kant (1785)
The Enlightenment is the growing trust in science and progress during the 17/18th century in Western Europe. This was a turn against religion as a guiding principle for everyday life.
Kant’s concept of ‘human reason’ became crucial- the belief in the capacity of human reason to overcome constraints, self-imposed prejudices and immaturity. Essentially this was the capacity of reason to emancipate humanity from a state of nature.
“Now man actually finds in himself a power which distinguishes him from all other things - and even from himself so far as he is affected by objects. This power is reason”.
Foucault (1970)
Michel Foucault (1970) critiques Kant’s ideas about what Enlightenment and modernity is
The answer and question of what/who is ‘human’ comes secondary only to the person that responds to and asks the question. If humanity is defined by a capacity to reason, does this mean the other is not human? Or are they not human enough?
For Foucault, both of these answers are catastrophic- they legitimise power relations that are necessary in the process of colonisation.
Driver (1992)
Argues that geographical knowledge was represented as a tool of empire, enabling both the acquisition of territory and the exploitation of resources. This knowledge served a particular purpose; it served the colonial purpose of the state.
“Geographical science lent ideological credibility to ideologies of imperialism and racism, especially through the discourses of environmental determinism… Geography served primarily to ‘legitimate the expansionary power of the fittest”
The vision of modernity has a space- a space located in the colonial encounter between Europe and the rest of the world. The relationship between geography and imperialism has been neglected by historians; it is as though the writings of our ancestors were “so saturated with colonial and imperial themes that to problematize their role is to challenge the very status of the modern discipline”.
Driver makes clear that we need to think more about the way in which geographical knowledge is produced, the forms it takes
[EXAMINES SAID- problem of representation and speaking on behalf of others]
Said (1978)
The Orient is a European invention- it has helped to define Europe. Orientalism is a way of coming to terms with the other that is based on the Orient’s special place in the Western experience
There are three types of orientalism: field of academic research, a style of thought (imaginative geographies) and a western style of domination and authority
“The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that has given it reality and presence in and for the west”
“The relationship between the occident and orient is one of power, domination and varying degrees of a complex homogeny”
For Said, it is hegemony that gives orientalism its durability and strength.
“Orientalism is never far from a collective notion identifying us Europeans against all those non-Europeans”
This is embedded in the idea that European identity is the superior one. “Too often literature and culture are presumed to be politically, and even historically, innocent”
“The argument, when reduced to its simplest form is clear. There are westerners and there are Orientals. The former dominates; the latter must be dominated”
However, we should not assume that orientalism begins with colonialism. Said argues that colonialism was kick-started by orientalism. It was “justified in advance” by the distinction between the east and the west
Ahmed (2000)
“Postcolonialism is about rethinking how colonialism operated in different times in ways that permeate all aspects of social life, in the colonised and colonising nations. It is hence about the complexity of the relationship between the past and the present”
It is important to emphasize that just because age of colonialism is over does not mean that its legacies do not continue to shape international politics.
Bhabha (1994)
“Postcoloniality is a salutary reminder of the persistent ‘neo-colonial’ relations within the ‘new’ world order and the multi-national division of labour”
Sidaway (2000)
The term postcolonial is contested and has multiple meanings. Can refer to the condition that succeeds colonial rule but is also used to signify a set of theoretical perspectives.
There is an important sense in which mapping any of the postcolonial is a problematic or contradictory project. Postcolonial approaches wish to invert, expose and transcend knowledges and practices of colonialism BUT, objectification, classification and the urge to map feature strongly in this
Postcolonial approaches are committed to critique, expose, deconstruct, counter and (in some claims) to transcend, the cultural and broader ideological legacies and presences of imperialism. It is also about the possibility and methods of hearing or recovering the experiences of the colonized.
McEwan (2009)
The world we live in today has undeniably been shaped by imperialism and colonialism. The postcolonial approach requires us to recognize the connections between the past and the present and different parts of the world. We need to consider these connected in terms of how they shape the contemporary world and how they relate to power.
These power relations are not only economic, but they are deeply cultural- relating to questions about who has the power to write history and represent other people and places. The postcolonial approach is fundamentally challenging the fact that power still largely resides in the Western world.
Postcolonialism attempts to rewrite the hegemonic accounting of time (history) and the spatial distribution of knowledge (power) that constructs the developing world. It also attempts to recover the lost historical and contemporary voices of the marginalized, oppressed and dominated.
Loomba (2005)
Colonialism was the means through which capitalism achieved its global expansion; racism simply facilitated this process. It was the conduit through which the labour of colonized people was appropriated. Consequently, economic explanations alone are not sufficient for understanding the racial features of colonized societies.
In Capital, Marx (1977, 170) suggested that capitalism depends upon the “free laborer selling his labour power” to the owner of the means of production. However, in South Africa (as in a variety of other colonial situations) the labour of colonized people was commissioned through a variety of coercive measures: it was not free labour at all.
Marxism attributes capitalism’s efficiency to having replaced slavery and crude forms of coercion with the ‘free’ labour market in which the force is exerted through economic pressure. BUT, under colonialism, features of supposedly outdates control carry on not as remnants of the past, but as integral features of the capitalist present. The ideology of racial superiority is easily translated into class terms; certain sections of people were radically identified as the natural working classes
Capitalism therefore does not override or liquidate racial hierarchies, but continues to depend upon and intensify them. The race relations put into place during colonialism survive long after many of the economic structures underlying them have changed.
“It is in the interest of capitalism that certain older social structures not be totally transformed”
McClintock (1992)
Insists on the need to be careful not to use the term postcolonial as though it described a single condition- she describes postcolonialism as ‘unevenly developed’ globally.
She also points out complications presented by societies which were subject to imperial power but not formal colonies (true for much of China)
Mignolo (2009)
At one time, scholars assumed that theories were transparent and objective. However we need to locate knowledge as being embedded in the colonial matrix of power. This is a racial system of classification inspired by Orientalism.
We must question the ‘truth’ that European knowledge presents us with. In terms of marginalised knowledge, this should be considered in its own terms- not by being brought into the epistemological framework of Western knowledge (thus into the colonial matrix of power).
