Postcolonial Theory

The conceptual framework of postcolonial theory, as a vanguard of resistance, challenges mainstream, largely Western, theory and practice that reflect colonialist ideas of domination in a globalized world. This framework has its genesis in literary and cultural studies, emerging in the seminal works of theorists of the likes of Edward Said, who exposed the imperialist ways of representing the non-West in colonial times in his much-cited Orientalism, and Gayatri Spivak, who systematically critiqued the legacy of colonialism in mainstream literature and culture. Postcolonial ways of understanding challenge power differentials through critical exploration of the ideas of the encounters between the colonizer and the colonized.

Increasingly now, postcolonial theory is being used to critically examine dominant, taken-for-granted assumptions in studies of management as well as communication. It ...