Postcolonial Theory Introduction

Imagine this: people come over to your house, while you're still living there, and decide to settle down. Permanently. They rearrange your furniture, force you to cook for them; they even tell you to say things like "'wicked"' instead of "'hella."' You'd ask them politely to leave, but every time you raise the subject they shush you and remind you they've got guns. Big guns.

Then, finally, things start looking up and you push the intruders out, guns and all. Byee! But wait… they've been over for so long that your house no longer feels like your home. Worse yet—you might not even remember how things were before these folks came in. Or, you might even like how these people rearranged your home—and life!

Complicated, right? You'd think you'd feel footloose and fancy-free, and maybe you kind of do, but there's all this anger, frustration, and confusion, too. Plus, where'd they put the cookie jar?

Okay, so take that tangle of complicated feelings and apply it all to an entire nation. And then multiply that nation by all the nations that have been "'settled"' or colonized by other nations (usually England, but there are some other culprits too)—and voila! That's postcolonialism for you. It's all about the anguish of the colonized who have to deal with the aftermath of colonization.

As far as the theory goes, it's also about a select group of academics who immigrated from some of those nations, settled into a new country (mostly the US and sometimes the UK, but there are a few other hot spots too), and started this whole business of dissecting English (etc.) literature for its colonizing impulses.

Postcolonialism is one of the few theoretical fields that totally applies to various ongoing global struggles. Like the relationship between Israel and the rest of the Middle East (but especially Palestine), or the way a bunch of superpower nations (like Russia and China, not to mention the US) have been grabbing land in places like Africa and Southeast Asia. Big Ideas

Resistance

As in political resistance. Can you engage in political resistance without waving a picket sign at a protest? That's a good question. In fact, that's exactly the question a lot of poco theorists argue about. What exactly counts as "resistance"?

If you're hardcore, then—yes—if you're more into subtlety, like some poco academics, then sometimes just being yourself can be a form of resistance. Basically, poco focuses on ways of thinking, writing, and acting that resist the powers that be. Empire/Imperialist

An empire is an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority.

"Imperialism," then, is when one of those powers-that-be fellas decides to move into people's houses in other countries and claim control over those lands to up the original country's global status, wealth, fear factor, and evil factor. Subaltern

Originally, it means someone who is lower in rank, like a colonel to a captain. But then Gayatri Spivak wrote an essay called "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and basically answered the title question with a resounding NO, because the imperialist oppressors speak for them.

So in poco-speak, a "subaltern" is basically a "poor person” or rather, someone who is "economically oppressed." In poco world, "subaltern" also takes on a racial significance since the term is mostly used to talk about people whose countries were, at some point or another, colonized by imperialist nations. Colonizer/Colonized

To colonize is to move a bunch of your nation's troops (and normal-people settlers too) to another country and totally take control of the land, politics, and people of that original country.

The colonizer is the person who does the colonizing or taking over of another land and its people. The colonized is the person being taken over by the colonizer. Appropriation

Appropriation usually means you're taking something from someone else without permission and using that thing for your own ends. You know—like stealing. So that has to do with what the colonizers did to the colonized, right?

Wrong! Well, right, but the colonized can appropriate too, and that can be the beginning of something pretty revolutionary (or at least rebellious).

In that meaning, it has to do with the colonized appropriating something that "belongs" to the colonizers (usually it refers to language) and starting to use it how they want to, not just because it's imposed on them. So, dwellers in a Caribbean colony start speaking English, but they infuse it with their own meanings and melodies instead of trying to talk exactly like the queen. Hybridity

Hybridity is what happens when a colonized (or post-colonized) person takes on some of a colonizer's manners and habits and develops a "subjectivity" (roughly speaking, an identity) that blends the colonizer with the colonized.

So, say you grew up in India under the British Raj (basically, British = colonizers, Indians = colonized). You resent the Brits for being all bossy in your homeland, but you also got a pretty good education (even if you talk with a British accent) and can't really imagine life without cricket. Yup, you pretty much personify hybridity. Neo-colonial/neo-colonialism

Neo-colonialism isn't just colonialism that's happening now; it's a form of colonialism that uses new methods to dominate new lands, like your typical Walmart edging out the Mom 'n' Pop marketplace in Mexico or in China. Maybe guns and armies are involved; maybe not. Either way, the fight for colonial independence is far from over. Marginalization

On your sheet of binder paper, the margin is the part where you do your doodles instead of taking detailed, helpful notes on the main liney bits.

When it's about people, marginalization happens when a person or a group get smooshed over to the less-important sides instead of getting the full rights and respect all citizens are supposed to enjoy. Poco is hyper-aware of the plight of folks who are relegated to the doodle sections of society—specifically when they're from traditionally doodly corners of the world with long histories of imperialism. Strategic essentialism

You've got "essentialism," which in the world of philosophy basically means thinking in terms of an "essence." An essentialist is someone who believes people and things have an innate, unchangeable nature that is just there and not something that depends on circumstances.

Kind of like when you get in a fight with your brother or sister and you're pretty sure s/he is a total jerk, but then your mom reminds you that your sibling is actually a "good person inside." That's essentialism in action (a big no-no for most theorists, by the way—not just about their siblings but about humans in general).

But wait! When you add "strategic" to "essentialism," you've got something radical and politically powerful: a method or tool of fighting The Man. That's because it's the people who belong to a certain marginalized group using the label that's been given them to come together, rather than letting it add to their marginalized status—in other words, it uses a group identity in a simplified way so those people can achieve certain goals. Imagine this: a group of people with totally different personalities unify themselves under the label "black" or "feminist" or some other politicized identity. Some of the blacks may also be feminists; one may like chess and another prefers rollercoasters. But they share a commitment to social justice. So they unite under this label because they recognize that they're more powerful if they come together as a group, under a single name, in order to fight for what they want (like, say, Civil Rights).

Once they've accomplished their goals, they can go back to being different types of people, with different aims and hobbies and favorite ice creams. That's strategic essentialism: a temporary method of political activism for rebels, revolutionaries and insurgents alike.