Q29: The colonial legacy in contemporary European culture. Analyse works which either reflect on the colonial domination of the West or undertake its critical reassessment.

Question 1

What is a colony?

Answer 1

colony - a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country and occupied by settlers from that country; a group of people of one nationaluty or race living in a foreign place;

Question 2

What is colonialism?

Answer 2

colonialism - the policy or practice of obtaining, or maintaining a hold over colonies, esp. with the purpose of exploiting them

Question 3

What is decolonization?

Answer 3

decolonization - a process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country;
generally understoof as a period between WW1 and WW2, and later the period after WW2 till the 70s, since most of the colonization and occupations ended back then (Korea 1945, India 1947, Vietnam 1954 etc.)

Question 4

What is postcolonialism?

Answer 4

postcolonialism - a period concerned with what occurs or exists after the end of colonial rule

Question 5

What is neocolonialism?

Answer 5

Neocolonialism - a continuation or a reimposition of imperialist rule; ususally with a question of the break implied by the “post-“ in “postcolonial”

Question 6

What is postcolonial studies?

Answer 6

A critical perspective of how we approach cultural studies in this new, postcolonial law.

Question 7

What are the postcolonial studies the effect of?

Answer 7

Postcolonial studies are one of the effects of decolonization.

Question 8

How can the language of the postcolonial discourse be problematic in cultural studies?

Answer 8

• the voices of the opressed are deformed by the language of the opressor
• they cannot speak freely about their experience, history, or culture because the European/Eurocentric language is not enough

Question 9

What is “mutual impact” in terms of colonization?

Answer 9

That both countries (the colonizer and the colonised) got “infected” with elements of each other.

Question 10

How does imperial culture work?

Answer 10

• the empire imposes their own norms and values and by that they destroy the original cultures
• they modernize the colonial areas (roads, technology)
• gradual globalization
• introducing the image of “The Other” who needs to be colonized and educated in a specific, “proper” way

Question 11

What is the culture of resistance?

Answer 11

Culture of resistance means not only an active resistance (like rebellion) but also conscious and selective assimilation of the imposed culture and merging it with regional language, traditions, or values.

Question 12

What is cultural memory?

Answer 12

Cultural memory is the question of how the current culture of the decolonized country is a construct imposed from the outside and how much memory of the colonized’s culture and values is still alive.

Question 13

What is cultural self-representation?

Answer 13

How people of decolonized countries represent themselves and how they deal with the colonial past (rejecting the label of “The Other” and orientalism.

Question 14

Describe rewriting the canon in terms of postcolonial studies.

Answer 14

Updating the historical or cultural canon to include cultures that were excluded or mariginalised before through more inclusive language and changing the perspective to non-Eurocentric.