The fetish of ‘the West’ in postcolonial theory

2002 ◽  
pp. 43-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Lazarus
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The West

scholarly journals Kim and A Passage to India: A Binary of Colonial Attitude

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Muhammed Elham Hossain ◽  
Mustafizur Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Colonial Texts ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Indian Setting

In modern linguistics binary distinctions are fundamental and many social and cultural phenomena are based on binary oppositions. Even many stereotypes of culture get formulated on the basis of binary oppositions: “If you are not with me you are against me” (Hawthorn 29) is a cultural imposition of a binary opposition upon variations of attitude. Looking down upon the natives of the Subcontinent as a people, devoid of civilization, colonial authors produced the stereotypes of attitude which remained unchanged, fortified by prejudices and cultural biases. Reading of colonial texts which are based on Indian setting, reveals these stereotypes. Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India pictured colonial India from European perspective, degrading it to the level of a land of mystery, muddle, inactivity and lethargy. Both the texts depicted India as a binary opposition of Europe, formulated with cultural biases and prejudices emerging out of the boastfulness of the colonizers as the light givers of civilization to the rest of the globe. But it is true that every reading is a re-creation of the identity of the author and this axiom has inspired this paper to explore the basis of binary oppositions of the colonial attitude of Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster. This paper is also inspired by the perception that literary and cultural phenomena are based upon binary oppositions and in the days of postcolonial theory binary oppositions have become fundamental to many recent literary works. Keeping this in mind, this paper seeks to explore Kipling’s Kim and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India in colonial perspective and present binary distinctions of their attitude towards India. Both the authors have chosen India as setting of their above mentioned novels and their observation of the East and the West produced binary distinctions between Europe and the Subcontinent. This paper has made a deconstructionist analysis of these stereotypes. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/sje.v7i0.14469 Stamford Journal of English; Volume 7; Page 129-144

scholarly journals Translating Black Feminism: The Case of the East and West German Versions of Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-143
Author(s):  
Omotayo I. Fakayode
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
The West ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
East And West

Feminism in Translation Studies has received a considerable amount of attention in the West, most especially in Canada from where it emanated. Also, studies in translation and Black Feminism have been carried out by scholars such as Silva-Reis and Araujo (2018) and Amissine (2015). There has, however been few studies focusing on the translation of literary texts by African feminist writers into German. This study therefore examined how Womanism in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood was transferred into German. Against this backdrop, the two translations published during the division of Germany into two states by different political ideologies were analyzed. In doing this, Postcolonial Theory of translation as conceived by Spivak (2004) was employed. The study aimed at determining how translation mechanisms have influenced the manner in which black feminist activism is represented in a distinct socio-cultural environment. This is with the focus to indicate how Womanism is represented differently in the two German translations of the African novel.

scholarly journals Orientalisms and Occidentalisms: Evolution of Concepts and Divergence of Connotations

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
Ingrīda Kleinhofa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
The West ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Science And Politics

During the most part of its long history, the term ‘Orientalism’ has had several interrelated meanings with neutral or positive connotations, some of which are still preserved, for instance, in art, architecture, design, and music, where it refers to Oriental influences and works inspired by Oriental themes and sounds rather attractive and romantic. As an academic term, it was used to denote the European tradition of Asian studies, suggesting a thorough exploration of Eastern cultural heritage, in particular, languages, literature, and artifacts. After the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978, the term gained new negative meanings, related to postcolonial theory where it denotes mainly the biased, haughty attitude of the West towards an essentialized East and manifestations of Western colonial discourse in literature, science, and politics, such as the justification of Western imperialism, colonialism, and racial discrimination. The redefinition of the term by postcolonial theorists raised a debate about the about the so-called Western approach to history, sociology, and Asian studies as well as about the permissibility of division of the world into binary opposites, “the Orient” and “the Occident”. By the end of the 20th century, the term ‘Orientalism’ was adapted for the use by anthropologists, and its counterpart, ‘Occidentalism’ emerged, referring to the essentialized, dehumanized image of the West created by non-Western societies. Currently, most of the mentioned meanings have survived, each to some extent, and interfere in various fields of knowledge, creating complex sets of contradictory connotations.

scholarly journals The Cul-de-Sac of Postcolonial Theory: Negotiation or Negation?

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (Winter) ◽  
pp. 168-181
Author(s):  
Shereen Abuelnaga
Keyword(s):  
Contact Zone ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
The West ◽  
Immigrants And Refugees ◽  
Cultural Negotiation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status

The escalating wave of migration and its discontents that the world is witnessing now challenges some aspects that form the backbone of postcolonial theory through revealing the inefficiency and invalidity of all the previous givens. Policed borders render the concept of hybridity and the horizon invalid. The attempt at eluding the politics of polarity could not survive the discursive and physical practices of several dislocated localities. Consequently, the “contact zone” that has always been the pride of the West, upon the assumption of hybridity, is shrinking now, if not fading. What should have been cultural negotiation came down to be cultural negation. This paper reads the status of the women asylum seekers who are locked in Yarl’s Wood Center in the U.K. as an example of the stark violations practiced against immigrants and refugees in general, and in the case of women, as an example of turning the female body into an arena onto which conflicting power relations are inscribed. However, the main goal of this reading is to prove the failure of postcolonial theory to cope with the fierce return of borders, material and symbolic. To do this, the paper assumes that the life stories of the women stand as a text/narrative that yields itself to analysis.

A Questionnaire on Decolonization

October ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 3-125
Author(s):  
Huey Copeland ◽  
Hal Foster ◽  
David Joselit ◽  
Pamela M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art World ◽  
The West ◽  
Art Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Reference

The term decolonize has gained a new life in recent art activism, as a radical challenge to the Eurocentrism of museums (in light of Native, Indigenous, and other epistemological perspectives) as well as in the museum's structural relation to violence (either in its ties to oligarchic trustees or to corporations engaged in the business of war or environmental depredation). In calling forth the mid-twentieth-century period of decolonization as its historical point of reference, the word's emphatic return is rhetorically powerful, and it corresponds to a parallel interest among scholars in a plural field of postcolonial or global modernisms. The exhortation to decolonize, however, is not uncontroversial-some believe it still carries a Eurocentric bias. Indeed, it has been proposed that, for the West, de-imperialization is perhaps even more urgent than decolonization. What does the term decolonize mean to you in your work in activism, criticism, art, and/or scholarship? Why has it come to play such an urgent role in the neoliberal West? How can we link it historically with the political history of decolonization, and how does it work to translate postcolonial theory into a critique of the neocolonial contemporary art world? Respondents include Nana Adusei-Poku, Brook Andrew, Sampada Aranke, Ian Bethell-Bennett, Kader Attia, Andrea Carlson, Elise Y. Chagas, ISUMA, Iftikhar Dadi, Janet Dees, Nitasha Dhillon, Hannah Feldman, Josh T. Franco, David Garneau, Renee Green, Iman Issa, Arnold J. Kemp, Thomas Lax, Nancy Luxon, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Saloni Mathur, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Alan Michelson, Partha Mitter, Isabela Muci Barradas, Steven Nelson, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Alessandro Petti, Paulina Pineda, Christopher Pinney, Elizabeth Povinelli, Ryan Rice, Andrew Ross, Paul Chaat Smith, Nancy Spector, Francoise Verges, Rocio Zambrana, and Joseph R. Zordan.

In Search of a New Ideology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balázs Trencsényi ◽  
Michal Kopeček ◽  
Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič ◽  
Maria Falina ◽  
Mónika Baár ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
New Left ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
The West ◽  
Regional Pattern ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Longue Durée ◽  
Left Feminism

The chapter shows that despite the adoption of Western norms in the official sphere, the populist criticism of this pro-European trajectory with its concomitant economic and administrative policies became increasingly central to domestic politics. The “culture wars” erupting in the late 1990s and early 2000s were rooted in the radicalization of conservativism, questioning the legitimacy of post-transition regimes. In turn, the left also underwent a profound reconfiguration, with the mainstream post-communists becoming fervent advocates of liberalization and the emerging new left, feminism, and environmentalism becoming increasingly anti-liberal. The book closes with an overview of the symbolic geographical debates on Europeanness, and also registers the growth of Euroskepticism after 2000. Critically engaging with the application of postcolonial theory in discussions on the region’s relationship to the West it also points to the cyclical occurrences of discourses on “catching up” and alienation which seem to indicate a longue durée regional pattern.

scholarly journals An Explaining of the Components of Occidentosis: A Plague by the West and Returning to Self-identity in Jalal Al-e-Ahmad’s Thoughts

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-35
Author(s):  
Jalal Nezafat
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Political Life ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Library Resources

After World War II, new branches were added to sciences, especially the humanities. Due to the extensive interaction between the East and the West, the translation and summarization of the Western written works and the return of graduates to the country from abroad created a dramatic development in all affairs of the Eastern countries. One of the most important changes that took place was modernization, which swept across the various political, social, and personal domains of most Western societies and affected many people in these societies. The clash between tradition and modernity led to the overshadowing of traditional beliefs and the personal and national identities of Eastern societies in interaction with the West; thus, it made some Eastern intellectuals, writers, and thinkers oppose the teachings of modernism so that they strongly emphasized the necessity of returning to self-identity and native traditions. Based on the above approach, the present article seeks to answer what Westernization and return to self-identify in the thoughts of Jalal Al-e-Ahmad mean. It can be said that by turning to fiction, essay writing, travelogue writing and bringing up diverse social themes in different forms, Sayyid Jalal Al-e-Ahmad brought up the concern for returning to self-identity and Westernization, and in his book, “Occidentosis: A Plague by the West”, he criticized modernity. Then, he emphasized identity and historical traditions that are discussed in detail in this study. In addition, in this research, while analyzing the political life of Jalal Al-e-Ahmad through descriptive-analytic method, his thoughts and views on Westernization are analyzed and elaborated on with an emphasis on a postcolonial theory by relying on library resources.

scholarly journals Troubled Gospel: Postcolonial Preaching for the Colonized, Colonizer, and Everyone In Between

Homiletic ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Travis
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
Social Location ◽  
The West ◽  
Significant Challenge

The task of preaching is imbedded in a world that has been shaped by colonialism and imperialism. Preaching in North America will benefit from an engagement with postcolonial theory and a process of decolonization. This process, however, is a significant challenge for white, wealthy western preachers whose own position vis a vis colonialism is somewhat ambiguous. Most preachers in the West are both perpetrators of imperial projects, and simultaneously oppressed by these very systems. Is it possible for such preachers to participate in a process of decolonization? This article argues that it is possible, although preachers must attend to issues such as social location, neocolonizing anticolonialism, and the experiences of those with deeper knowledge of the realities of colonialism. Another key question is the manner in which the proclamation of the gospel is affected by the process of decolonizing preaching. Is a decolonized gospel good news for those who have benefited from colonial and imperial projects? At first, such a gospel may sound like bad news, as it involves a voluntary surrender of power and a willingness to occupy a marginal space. The truly good news is found in the promise of freedom from oppressive systems in which all are caught. Postcolonial preaching problematizes “gospel,” yet ultimately offers both preachers and listeners a way to escape destructive social systems.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Robert J. C. Young
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The West ◽  
Mind Set

The Introduction provides an overview of postcolonialism and postcolonial theory. The term ‘postcolonialism’, which began to be used from the 1990s, represents perspectives critical of or resistant to colonialism or colonial attitudes. Anti-colonial thinkers had always insisted that decolonization had to begin with colonized peoples decolonizing themselves mentally from the ways in which they had begun to see things from the perspective of the colonizers. Postcolonialism too is about changing one’s mind-set and values. In a comparable way, ‘postcolonial theory’ involves a conceptual reorientation towards the perspectives of knowledges, as well as needs, developed outside the West.

The Concept of the Sinophone

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (3) ◽  
pp. 709-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shu-Mei Shih
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The West ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Intellectual Labor ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
New Imperialism ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
The Rise Of China

The spectacular rise of China as a superpower perhaps only now compels us to recalibrate existing discourses of empire and postcoloniality, but China has been an empire in the modern sense since the mid–eighteenth century, when it conquered vast lands north and west of “China proper.” This history has been largely hidden from view because of two unacknowledged obsessions: the fetishization of Western empires over other empires and the prevailing discourse of Chinese victimhood at the hands of Western empires. The rise of China would not have caught so many by surprise if our vision had not been persistently clouded by our privileging of the oceanic (i.e., Western) mode of colonial expansion, which paradoxically centered the West as the most deserving object of critical attention and intellectual labor. It also would not have been a surprise if we had looked back at the Manchu conquests of inner Asia, which present-day China largely inherited and consolidated in a continuous colonial project. Postcolonial theory as we know it, particularly its critiques of orientalism, may prove irrelevant or even complicit when we consider how the positions of Chinese intellectuals critical of Western imperialism and orientalism easily slip into an unreflective nationalism, whose flip side may be a new imperialism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document