post colonial

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  • Post-colonial
    • Considers how European and North American literature ignored and oppressed non-European people and cultures as lesser and insignificant
      • Writers focus on the effects of colonialism
      • To readers, texts like these either implicitly or explicitly racist
    • Post colonial critics highlight themes of dominance, power and freedom and empowerment
    • They care for how different people are represented, what attitudes are portrayed and whose voices are heard
    • Focus is placed on the complex relationships between the colonisers and the colonised, and how language is used to represent these
    • Post-colonial literature comes from Britain's colonisation history in India, Africa and the Caribbean
      • Commonly written in English and themes of emigration, national identity and struggles for independence
    • What is post- colonial theory?
      • It deals with literature produced in countries that were once (or currently are) part of other countries.
      • Additionally, it can be written by citizens of colonising countries
        • They examine how literature written by colonial powers is used to justify colonialism as acceptable- they portray the colonised people as inferior
          • However, it has been critiqued as there isn't really a set definition of post-colonial theory
    • What do post- colonial critics do?
      • They reject claims that colonisers can empathise with different cultures and ethnicities
      • assess the representation of other cultures
      • Celebrate the hybridisation of cultures
      • Believe in change from the ideas of marginalisation
    • Language is the forefront of colonialism- the colonisers rejected native languages
      • European names for countries place power over them, because then the dominant language becomes the way in which it is known.
    • Histories of both the colonised and the coloniser are from the perspectives of men, women are rarely included at all.
      • Colonisation was differentiated by gender- the colonisers were male.
      • Both gender and race determined the hierarchies
      • The hierarchies are as follows: European men, European women, African men and African women

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