Postcolonialism - the parameters

[Eric]

As a discipline, postcolonialism deserves better than being confined to the English Literature departments of universities. Let me explain.

As far as I can see, most discussion centred around postcolonialism focuses on the British Empire. Secondly, on novels written about that empire. There is little historical perspective.

Africa and Asia have a complex history from before, and after, the colonialists came. Isn't it logical to create a subject or discipline where you link literature with history and geo-politics, rather than merely limiting oneself to a dozen novels.

Comments?

[nnyhav]

Just off the cuff, I suspect the novel's what comes first in determining poco parameters, because it's so all-embracing, just like colonialists. Other cultural forms are assimilated into it as the cultures themselves were expected to be.

(This promises to be an interesting topic. Thanks for bringing it up.)

[Eric]

Why I was suggesting non-fiction was because, when it comes to colonialism and postcolonialism, it would be fascinating to compare and contrast the two John Gunther books Inside Africa and Inside Asia about these two continents as described by this visitor in the 1950s with things now, half a century later.

Regarding Africa, there are many issues including tribal differences, trade, governance, the role of white farmers, and so on, which were as pertinent then as they are now.

Have any of you read either of these two books?

[amanda]

I have a feeling that this is meant to be provocative or a trap, but I'm not quite sure what your angle is.

I can only speak for the U.S.American academy, but I don't think it's true that post-colonial studies are only being done in English departments. There is a definite over-representation/bias towards studying the Global North (the U.S. and Western Europe, especially); however, there are there definitely historians, political scientists, etc. studying these regions and trying to intergrate them into larger narratives (the Atlantic World, the African diaspora, the Cold War, etc.) It is probably more of an issue that there's not much dialogue between departments (or with the world outside academia), so that outside of the oft-maligned area studies departments, studies of culture, history, geopolitics, etc. aren't being connected as much as they could/should be.

And I don't know if it's fair to expect Asian and African writers to grapple wih the entire weight of their nation/people/region's history and lives in each novel, especially for the benefit of outsiders, in a way that we rarely demand from U.S.American, British, or French writers.

As for being largely focused on the British Empire, I think it it's more an issue -- in fiction, at least -- of translation. It's easier to import works that don't also have to translated even from another colonial language, let alone an indigenous (or at least more indigenous?) language.

[ions]

Canadian Literature was built upon colonialism whereupon modernist Canadian Literature were the first works of post-colonialism. Much of Canadian Lit is historically based, at least historically it has been, exploring where Canada sits in not being American or British. "What does it mean to be Canadian?" is still a question that is explored here academically while I would be tremendously surprised if there were classes in the US or UK where the students sat around pontificating on what it means to be of that nation. It's a daily occurrence in Canadian classrooms of all levels. It's a more complicated question to answer too. Canadian literature is colonial, it is Native and it is also the literature of the immigrant. And of the course the myriad shades between.

[Eric]

It's not meant to be a trap, Amanda, but a discussion. Provocative, only if enshrined beliefs are called into question.

But my point about the Gunther books is important. They are works of non-fiction. And the author was pretty even-handed from what I can judge.

I do think that academics do a sleight of hand when they start out a page termed "postcolonial studies" but then within a few lines have shifted their ground to "postcolonial literature", when "literature" means mostly novels and short-stories. For instance:

Home Page

Introduction page

Postcolonialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jouvert: Volume 7. Issue : Colonial Posts

There are some departments at U.S. and British universities that do take on board history and geo-politics as well, like Leeds. That is my point: that the studies aspect should have a large history and economics component, as basing everything on novels, and theories about the right to write them is too one-sided.

The Journal of Postcolonial Studies, published by Routledge does take into account historiography, cultural anthropology, etc., and is opening up the subject:

Postcolonial Studies

This is the direction I would like to see postcolonial studies move.

Amanda brings up translation. The fact that the English-speaking world has so few translations is a hugely limiting factor, when the postcolonialism studied falls outside of the former British Empire. Even when considering India, very much a former mainstay of the British Empire, it has to be remembered that for the vast majority of Indians, English is but a lingua franca. There are reputed to be no more than 200,000 Indians out of a thousand million or so that have English as their mother tongue. We are filtering a great deal out by only considering things in English, and the people capable of writing at an academic level in that language.

A third factor which also relies heavily on translation, is if we want to examine the Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Dutch empires (even the Swedish one in the 17th century!). In the same way as Comparative Literature exists as a subject, so too should Comparative Colonialism (and its postcolonial aftermath). But this requires translation to play a central role.

I think it is high time that some of the former colonies of whichever empire begin to grapple with their own history. At present, there are too many people in the metropolitan, Western world, telling these people how to look at their history. What is needed is mechanisms whereby they examine their own background by the same criteria as we in the West would examine them. But then draw their own conclusions and discuss. The problem appears to be that the universities in many developing countries haven't developed a serious interest in postcolonial culture, leaving it for the Americans and British to do.

Translation is one clue to a broader knowledge of the world. It is not good enough to claim to be objective, while leaving huge areas of the world beyond consideration because we think it so burdensome to translate texts.

[Eric]

Further to what I said in #6, I think that studying Russian postcolonialism would be a fascinating exercise. Not only have several countries become free of Russia and now even EU members (although Bulgaria and Romania seem to be ailing in that respect), but authors in Russia itself have become a good deal more open about the Soviet imperialist past, despite the constant threat of tightening censorship looming large.

Postcolonialist geo-political behaviour, and the novels and poetry that are a spin-off, are very much a European, as well as African and Asian affair.

[Jan Mbali]

Originally Posted by Eric

Further to what I said in #6, I think that studying Russian postcolonialism would be a fascinating exercise. Not only have several countries become free of Russia and now even EU members (although Bulgaria and Romania seem to be ailing in that respect), but authors in Russia itself have become a good deal more open about the Soviet imperialist past, despite the constant threat of tightening censorship looming large.

Postcolonialist geo-political behaviour, and the novels and poetry that are a spin-off, are very much a European, as well as African and Asian affair.

Originally Posted by Eric

Further to what I said in #6, I think that studying Russian postcolonialism would be a fascinating exercise. Not only have several countries become free of Russia and now even EU members (although Bulgaria and Romania seem to be ailing in that respect), but authors in Russia itself have become a good deal more open about the Soviet imperialist past, despite the constant threat of tightening censorship looming large.

Postcolonialist geo-political behaviour, and the novels and poetry that are a spin-off, are very much a European, as well as African and Asian affair.

The topic is interesting, and I should engage with it properly but dont seem to find the time to read enough. I once researched Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique with respect to education and especially the curriculum. This was naked colonialism, without the venner of the French and British varieties, arguably because Portugal itself was a semi-colony and underdeveloped. I came across a letter from the Bishop of Braga that demanded that schools for indeigenas actually promote illiteracy and hard labour - an anti-school ! - because natives that could read would become as political as those in South Africa. I visited missions attached to large and profitable plantations. Forced labout was used extensively. In Europe nothing outside of the Gulag or WW2 labour camps remotely compares. My recent thoughts have been about how Mozambique has not gone down the road of Mbeme's postolonial necropolitics, where some of our new rulers use the apparatus of the colonial state to apply the politics of death to whole segments of ther populations. One thought is that the decolonisation of the liberated zones - an amazingly idealistic lift-up-by-bootstraps experiment - may have left the Frelimo ruling party with some kind of moral and ideological backbone, in spite of the corrupting influence of the urban areas.

[Eric]

Quoting myself from message #7, written in late July, I think that it's perhaps quite topical to examine what there is in the way of postcolonial literature covering Russia:

I think that studying Russian postcolonialism would be a fascinating exercise.

Perspectives can change, from week to week.

[Haribol Acharya]

Originally Posted by Eric

As a discipline, postcolonialism deserves better than being confined to the English Literature departments of universities. Let me explain.

As far as I can see, most discussion centred around postcolonialism focuses on the British Empire. Secondly, on novels written about that empire. There is little historical perspective.

Africa and Asia have a complex history from before, and after, the colonialists came. Isn't it logical to create a subject or discipline where you link literature with history and geo-politics, rather than merely limiting oneself to a dozen novels.

Comments?

You are right in your argument in saying that postcolonialism is simply confined to some English departments of the UK and American universities. They think they are forerunners of the idea of postcolonalism. In fact Asian literature in some domains is much richer. Now they are shadowed by western thoughts.

Why western thoughts shadowed eastern thoughts are colonial and economic things and reasons and as a matter of fact we can see evidently that western countries have economic and political dominions over the rest of the world, and they have colonized many countries and as such they had their influences on all these poor countries.

For instance, India and China have vast reservoirs of literature. Read ancient Indian and Chinese literature you will be amazed at the fact that they are unbeatable and in fact no western literature can match them in incision and depth at all.

Sanskrit is a base language and there are proven examples of many European languages being born of Sanskrit, and we have ample words to endorse the fact that they were originally derived from Sanskrit. When this is true, yet the problem is with our failure to make researches into this fact.

I do not the name of a British judge who during his stay in India made a comparative studied on language and proved that so many European languages have resembling Sanskrit in form and substance.

This then substantiates the fact that many languages have been just tributaries of Sanskrit, the fountainhead of all of them in point of fact.

This is not my attachment to Sanskrit or this is not out of the fanatic motive or predilection I have for all that is eastern, it is out my pure and objective observation that I find eastern literature, if not eastern philosophy is far ahead of and superior to the western one. I can not say the same of philosophy since philosophy is close to scientific observation and it has gone through evolutionary phases over time. Yet speaking of ancient philosophies eastern philosophies were richer substantially and thematically.

Read the Gita, the Vedas, the Purans with no occupations. You will be starteled to come upon vast repositaries of philosophies. They of course outshine all that are western.

I am not siding with eastern thought. I have a fair knowledge of western literature as well and have gone through many classics. But when I make a comparion without preconceived notions I find eastern philsophies far ahead. I know the English langauge and a little bit French as well I can give exaples of words, so many desrived from Sanskrit.