Colonialism and Postcolonialism: Impact and Analysis
Defining Colonialism and Its Historical Approach
Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a dependent area or people.” It occurs when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people. On a simple level, through anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators from the point of view of the colonized people.
Postcolonialism: Examining Social and Political Power
On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism, including the social, political, and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized.
Objectification of the “Other” in Colonialism
Discuss how traditional views in anthropology described the “other” in different cultures. Colonialism has never ceased to maintain that the Negro is a savage; and for the colonist, the Negro was neither an Angolan nor a Nigerian, for he simply spoke of “the Negro”. For colonialism, this vast continent was the haunt of savages, a country riddled with superstitions and fanaticism, destined for contempt, weighed down by the curse of God, a country of cannibals—in short, the Negro’s country.
Strategies Used by Colonial Powers to Define the “Other”
Are there any effective strategies used by colonial powers to define the “other” with the final aim of domination? Provide examples.
These people are beginning to rediscover their own pasts, myths and legends, their roots, their feelings of identity and, of course, the pride that flows from this. They are beginning to realize that they are the masters in their own house and the captains of their fate, and they look with abhorrence on any attempts to reduce them to things, to extras, to the victims and passive objects of domination.
Postcolonialism as a Reading Strategy
What do we mean when we refer to “postcolonialism” as a reading strategy? Explain.
The significance of the study is that it shows how postcolonialism can help bring out meanings of literary texts. The study finds how meta-narratives are used to represent the imprint of the material forces of politics, economics, and culture that act upon post-colonial societies within the imperial framework.
Postcolonialism vs. Neocolonialism: Similarities and Differences
The key difference between postcolonialism and neocolonialism is that postcolonialism refers to the study of the issues with concern to colonialism and the decolonization period, whereas neocolonialism refers to the use of the economic and socio-political influential forces by the West to spread their hegemony to the other parts of the world. A similarity would be that like colonialism, neocolonialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory.
Transversal Approach to the National Model
What do we understand by a transversal approach to the national model for the study of the postcolonial? Provide examples.
Resistance as a transversal concept in postcolonial approaches means the acceptance of counter-hegemonic responses to ideas, policies, values, institutions, and practices of the international system, which for mainstream currents are universal and therefore both unquestionable.
Defining Négritude and Its Significance
Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating “Black consciousness” across Africa and its diaspora. From a political standpoint, Négritude was an important aspect to the rejection of colonialism. Emerging at the cusp of African independence movements, Négritude made an impact on how the colonized viewed themselves. It also sparked and fed off of subsequent literary movements that were responding to global politics.
Comparative Models in Postcolonial Studies
Are comparative models and comparisons well accepted when one studies the postcolonial? Discuss a couple of those models and explain their advantages.
Yes, they are. On one hand, we have cultural diversity, a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics, or ethnology that does not offer the possibility of negotiations of the in-between, nor the passage to beyond established and hierarchical horizons. On the other hand, we have cultural difference, the problem that emerges from the significant limits of culture, since it is in these limits that the losses of the established meanings are expressed, and the subsequent articulation of the response to these meanings, thought of as stable categories of everyday life, classes, genders, races, and nations.
Decolonizing Culture: Alternatives and Possibilities
Are there any alternatives or possibilities to “decolonize” the culture? Provide instances aiming at this “decolonization”.
Another post-colonial approach derived from the works of political theorists like Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi locates its principal characteristic in the notion of the imperial-colonial dialectic itself. In this model, the relationship between colonizer and colonized permeates writing texts of any kind, and therefore are subject to political, imaginative, and social control. This relationship involves important questions; for example, that of the possibility of “decolonizing” the culture.
Defining Syncretism and Its Role in Cultural Analysis
Syncretism is the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought. A great example of cultural syncretism is the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica. African-Hebrew and Christian religious practices blend together with Caribbean freed-slave culture and a 19th-century Pan-African identity to make something influenced by many cultures but that is completely unique.
Linguistic Situations in Post-Colonial Societies
Can you describe the different linguistic situations in which post-colonial societies find themselves? Exemplify with countries, regions, or any other relevant information you can provide.
Language is often a central question in postcolonial studies. During colonization, colonizers usually imposed or encouraged the dominance of their native language onto the peoples they colonized, even forbidding natives to speak their mother tongues. Many writers educated under colonization recount how students were demoted, humiliated, or even beaten for speaking their native language in colonial schools. In response to the systematic imposition of colonial languages, some postcolonial writers and activists advocate a complete return to the use of indigenous languages.
Linguistic or Textual Strategies of Appropriation
What do we mean by linguistic or textual strategies of appropriation? Appropriation has been defined as a process which alters the language of the center to express the ‘differing cultural experiences’. It is also perceived as a revolutionary strategy of self-empowerment to represent one’s own tradition, culture, and identity to the world.
Interlanguage in Postcolonial Societies
Interlanguage is a type of language used by second- and foreign-language learners in the process of learning a target language. Yes, we can speak of interlanguage in a society in which a great variety of dialects did not stop merging and an easy communication with neighboring towns was necessary.
Vernacular in Relation to Language Use
A vernacular, or vernacular language, is a term for a type of speech variety, generally used to refer to a local language or dialect, as distinct from what is seen as a standard language. The vernacular is contrasted with higher-prestige forms of language, such as national, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom, or a lingua franca, used to facilitate communication across a large area. The vernacular is usually native, normally spoken informally rather than written, and seen as of lower status than more codified forms. It may vary from more prestigious speech varieties in different ways, in that the vernacular can be a distinct stylistic register, a regional dialect, a sociolect, or an independent language.
Orientalism According to Edward Said
According to E. Said, how does the West define “the Orient”? Orient is a label that designates the East in contrast to the Occident, which refers to the West, while Orientalism, as a concept, is often used as an analytical term on how the East is seen by the West.
Describing an “Orientalist” Scholar
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term Orientalist identified a scholar who specialized in the languages and literatures of the Eastern world. Additionally, Hebraism and Jewish studies gained popularity among British and German scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Orientalist Discourse and Its Examples
The “Orientalist” discourse, which semantically glorifies the West and serves the purpose of reproducing hegemony, fictionalizes and reproduces its own Eastern discourse by positioning itself in accordance with the West.
The “Other” in Fanonian Terms
Explain the “Other” in Fanonian terms. Who becomes the Other in his essays? Colonialism has never ceased to maintain that the Negro is a savage; and for the colonist, the Negro was neither an Angolan nor a Nigerian, for he simply spoke of “the Negro”. The Other will become the mainstay of his preoccupations and his desires.
Fixation of Identity in Fanon’s View
How (through what process), according to Fanon, does the Black man become fixed in his identity? Post-colonial reading of traditional English literary texts and the effects on the practices of reading by which such texts are canonized are inevitable products of a changed world in which it is no longer possible to see Others through a fixed and immutable system of values.
Internalization of Racism According to Fanon
How can we understand, in Fanon’s elaboration, the internalization of racism? Explain.
It is a phenomenon that is less linked to the racial phenomenon and more to that of slavery; although naturally, racism is expressed, when it is expressed, in a crude way and I think that no poem could avoid that crudeness in order to create that necessary awareness. It is not an end, I consider that all cultures have to be open, Cuban culture is an example, it is a mixture of Hispanic components of African components.