Literary criticism and literary theory are an important part of Literature, along with the study of various pieces of writing. The study of them is way more complex than the others therefore students studying the same may require assignment help usa while dealing with the topic.
The term postcolonial refers to the critical analysis of the history, literature, culture and modes of discourse that were specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France, as well as other European countries that grew as imperial powers.
Basically, the focus of these studies has been on third world countries like Asia, Africa, The Caribbean islands and South America. In their research paper writings,
some scholars have extended the scope of such analysis to the cultural productions and discourse of countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand which got their independence much earlier than the third world countries.
Postcolonial studies
Postcolonial studies sometimes also include aspects of British Literature written in the 18th and the 19th centuries and viewed through a perspective that revealed the ways in which the literature contained the representation of the then social and economic life. Therefore, this literature was underwritten by colonial exploitation.
During this era, when colonization was sky high, the countries that were being colonized and their residents, were having a sense of loss of identity into this chaotic world.
People in these colonies were being marginalized on the basis of their race and ethnicity. The concept of others grew at a fast pace and these people were merely treated as subordinates.
‘Orientalism’ was an important text that established the theory and practice in the field of postcolonial studies. This work was written by the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said.
Cultural imperialism
The work applied a revised form of Michele Foucault’s historicist critique of discourse that is used to analyze what he named as ‘ cultural imperialism’. This particular mode of imperialism imposed its power by the effective means of disseminating in subjugated colonies a Eurocentric discourse which assumed the preeminence and normality of everything that was occidental and represented everything oriental as exotic and inferior.
Today, the term is applied to cultural imperialism by means of the control of discourse, anywhere in the world. Let’s start with our study help me procedures.
Since the 1980s, this analysis has been supplemented by various theories that include the prominent theory of deconstruction by Jacques Derrida. As a result of this, the field of postcolonial studies is not a unified one but one with a distinctive methodology.
Must have a knowledge of in order to get effective assignment help
However, one can easily see several central and recurrent issues in these works that the students working upon literary theory must have a knowledge of in order to get effective assignment help on the topic:
1. These studies rejected the master narrative of the Western imperialism wherein the word ‘other’ is used to refer to the subordinate or the marginalized section. Therefore, they absolutely deleted this as a cultural agency and replaced it with a counter-narrative wherein the colonial cultures fight back their way into world history that was written by the Europeans. In the famous postcolonial work, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures, Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin and Gareth Griffiths stress upon the term hybridization of colonial cultures and languages wherein the importations are imposed upon the indigenous traditions.
2. The subaltern was yet another term that denoted the study of postcolonial works. It has become the standard way to designate the colonial subject that has been constructed by European discourse and internalized by colonial people. Subaltern was a British term that denoted the people of inferior military rank. The subject that was being studied over here was that how and to what extent can a subaltern writing in a European language prevent himself from resisting to, rather than, complying with the very discourse that resulted in its subordinate identity.
Elements in the postcolonial agenda
3. One of the major elements in the postcolonial agenda is to disestablish Eurocentric norms of literary work and artistic values and to expand the literary canon to include colonial as well as post-colonial writers. Therefore, there has been a movement to include, in the standard curricula, the works of these postcolonial writers in English language like Chinua Achebe, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and others. All of them took in their hand the task of exposing this postcolonial world and the condition of the countries rendered thereafter.
Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak was one such postcolonial work, that focused on the identification of the subaltern and reflected upon the carrying forward of their voice in order to address a wider audience. Heart of Darkness by Chinua Achebe is yet another prominent example of the same.
Postcolonial scholarship
Several research paper writings have suggested that the postcolonial scholarship further studies forms of imperialism other than the European one, like the domination of the southern hemisphere nations by other southern hemisphere nations and the like.
This rethinking of empire has brought the United States into focus as an object of postcolonial scholarship, in views of both as a contemporary empire as well as a nation that was once itself colonized.
Several scholars have also focused their studies on the global world where several countries have seen the immigration and emigration of a number of people either individually or in groups.
Such people have left their homeland for various reasons and have moved to a different world thus dissolving their own identities. These migrations have led to population diasporas, population flows as well as émigré groups.
Final Thoughts:
Therefore, this was brief information about the postcolonial world, the postcolonial identities and overall, about the postcolonial studies. These studies have since long served as a reference for various other movements and the trends thus witnessed.
Not only this, the postcolonial world also gave way to a a lot of feminist writings since it has always been evident that women have been facing this suppression two-fold- once by the male counterparts and second by the colonial powers.
