Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism (also sometimes known as postcolonial theory, or post-oriental theory) refers to the legacy of 19th century European colonial [Page 1404]rule. The study of postcolonialism acknowledges that colonialism continues to affect former colonies many decades following their political independence. Postcolonial studies articulate the many and complicated histories through which colonialism is still being reproduced.

Contemporary academic inquiry on postcolonialism owes much to the work of Edward Said. His book Orientalism, one of postcolonialism theory's seminal texts, investigates and articulates the means by which colonized peoples are constructed by colonizers. Specifically, Said describes the ways in which the Western world has wrongly depicted the Orient as a strange and exotic place. Said argues that postcolonialism can only be understood by acknowledging the means that reinforce and strengthen colonialism. Specifically, he demonstrates how European arts and literature have negatively represented the Orient as “Other.” The result is that the knowledge produced and consumed by Western societies reinforces the superiority of the West over other peoples and cultures.

Another important contribution to postcolonial scholarship is Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic. This work traces the movement of black people from their native countries to the Western world and how these people, often treated as commodities by the West, have fought to establish their own distinct cultural identities counter to colonizers' dominant constructions of them. Through explorations of music and other art forms, Gilroy argues that this is a process that continues, subtly and not so subtly, to this day. Gilroy's work demonstrates how black culture is not exclusively African, American, Caribbean, or European, but a complex and simultaneous mixture of them all, a Black Atlantic Culture.

After more than two decades of development, postcolonial research is now an interdisciplinary field involving scholars from English literature, history, sociology, human geography, anthropology, cultural studies, and more. Researchers tackle the problems of how the experience of colonization affects those who were colonized; how colonial powers continue to control; what remnants of colonial control remain in education, science, and technology; what forms of resistance were and are being used against colonial control; how colonial education influences the culture and identity of the colonized; how Western science changes knowledge systems in the world; the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers; whether decolonization and a return to the precolonial past is possible or desirable; and how new forms of imperialism might be emerging and replacing colonization.

In recent years, a slight backlash has occurred with certain scholars and journalists beginning to challenge some of the assumptions in postcolonial studies, claiming that previously colonized peoples are not the powerless victims they have been made out to be. These commentators have emphasized the extent to which previously colonized countries have shaped, and continue to shape, their own destinies, sometimes through empire building of their own. Cynics would suggest, however, that the intention of these arguments is to lay a certain amount of blame on previously colonized countries for their current threats to the Western world (such as terrorism). Hence, for many, the backlash is nothing more than another form of dangerous colonial power.

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