Postcolonial Theory

- What? The consideration of the after-effects of mainly colonialism on the structures of the world

- When? The recognition that although European colonialism - that is the running of other countries from a distance

- Where? In the engagement with issues if cultural diversity, ethnic, racial and cultural difference

- Who? Post colonialism provides a way of thinking about how to counter colonialism in its political and cultural forms

- The structure of colonialism and imperialism is still present

- In Orientalism (1978), Edward Said traces the way that Europe - specifically Britain and France ‘constructed’ the Orient, from the late 18th century, as a space that could be known, studied used as a theme in art and ultimately ruled over.

• Cultural hegemony - Antonio Gramsci
• Discourse: Power/Knowledge - Michel Foucault
• ‘The Orient was almost a European invention.’

The West

Rational, hard-workings kind, democratic, moral, modern, progressive, technological, individualist, and the centre of the world

The East

• Sensual, lazy, exotic, irrational, cruel, promiscuous, seductive, inscrutable, dishonest, mystical, seductive, inscrutable, dishonest, mystical, superstitious, primitive, ruled by emotion. (Parker, 248)

• Subaltern: refers to people with little or no power, without lines of social mobility
• Spivak’s specific examples include women, and Indian women in particular, but the term can be applied much more widely.
• Spivak raised two related points:
  - The subaltern is offend denied ‘a voice’
  - If the subaltern does speak, whose ‘voice’ is s/he using: a distinctive ‘own’ voice or rather the voice/language of the ‘oppressor’ (e.g. the voice of patriarchy/ the language of the colonisers etc)
  - No simply a question of speaking, but also of being heard

• Never truly real - lack of reality based on tales and myths