Postcolonial Theory

Postcolonial theorists write in different disciplinary areas such as political theory, cultural [Page 662]studies, literature, history, and women's studies. Postcolonial theory engages issues of race, class, gender, culture, language, and nation in terms of empire and imperialism, popular culture and diaspora, identity, representation, and multicultur-alism. Scholars writing in the field of curriculum studies who engage postcolonial theory have noted that education itself is deeply implicated in the project of colonialism and plays a role in transmitting colonialist structures and practices. For instance, a number of scholars (such as Philip Altbach, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Greg Dimitriadis, Cameron McCarthy, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Sofia Villenas, Gauri Viswanathan, among others) have critiqued Eurocentrism in education and spoken to the issues of disregard for and marginalization and loss of indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, the internalization and reproduction of colonialist structures and practices, and the resultant contradictions and contestations in curriculum frameworks and teaching practices. Witness, for instance, the dominance of Eurocentric writings and perspectives in such subject areas as literature and history. As U.S. curricularists well know, peoples of color, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations have had to fight battlesand continue to do soto have their struggles, stories, and perspectives represented in both the larger social context of the United States as well as in curriculum and teaching. In this process, various populations on the margins may form coalitions, and they may also find themselves in conflict with each other as they seek to create spaces of self-representation. Thus, the dynamics of rethinking and emerging from oppression and colonization also lead to new struggles and hierarchies in school and society.

Such scholars as Edward Said, Gauri Viswanathan, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, among others, reveal that colonialism has shaped discourse, disciplinary knowledge, education, and the use of language. Although the era of colonial rule has ended, its effectssuch as poverty, illiteracy, “underdevelopment,” and transnational migration continue to remain present. In the digitized, globalized 21st-century context, colonization may also be understood in terms of control and dissemination of mass media, technology, popular culture, and so onfor instance, the prevalence of U.S. popular culture in many parts of the world.

Specifically, then, postcolonial theory focuses on interrogating and unpacking such effects of colonialism as the exploitation of human and natural resources and the shaping of discourses, education, language, and identity. Postcolonial theory also addresses contradictions arising from colonization such as the internalization of the colonizer by the colonized, and the fact that the aftermath of colonialism is evident in the colonizing countries and peoples as well as in the former colonies. For instance, the colonized may acquire the language and behaviors of the colonizer and learn to hold them as “superior” to their own language and ways of being, and, even today, racial and cultural tensions are evident in such Western countries as the United Kingdom. Given that the colonized internalize the colonizer, it follows that, even as they resist colonization, the colonized submit to and participate in the realization of the colonial relationship. Furthermore, postcolonialists such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Homi Bhabha have talked about how, individuals, finding themselves in the “borderland” and at the “interstices” (in-between spaces) in (post)colonial contexts, negotiate hybrid identities and cultures. Finally, the logic of colonization is incomplete and self-contradictory, and the colonized express their resistance in direct and subtle ways. For instance, even as the colonized might be forced to adopt the language and ways of the colonizer, they adapt and modify them in subtle and even direct ways, thus subverting colonial authority and ensuring that it is never complete.

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