-
Colonialism by definition is the practice of one country taking full or partial political control of another country and occupying it with settlers for purposes of profiting from its resources and economy. Colonialism has been around since 1550 BCE when Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, and Phoenicia began extending their control into nearby regions. (Longley, 2021). -
Orientalism by Edward Said critiques the Western representation of the Middle-East through the lens of domination and power. The term Orientals was used to refer to the stereotypical views of the Orient developed by many generations of western writers and scholars, with their prejudiced views of Oriental's as inherently criminal and deceitful. (Carter,117) -
The term Subaltern originally was used to describe lower ranking members in the military. In the 1980's Post-Colonialism theorist defined it as "the populations that are socially, politically and geographically outside the hegemonic power structure of the colony and colonial homeland. Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other groups denied access to hegemonic power". (Sarkar, 2021)
-
Gayatri Spivak is a feminist post-colonial theorist. She criticizes western feminism for focusing on concerns of white, middle-class heterosexuals. She is mostly concerned with the disenfranchised of society or ‘subaltern’ people. In 1988 she published "Can the Subaltern Speak" where she argues that in the traditional Indian practice of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands, neither of the Indians or British colonizers allowed women to express their own views. (Carter, 118). -
Homi Bhabha explores the subtle interrelations between cultures, the dominant and the subjugated. (Carter, 117)
Of special interest to him is the way in which subjugated
races mimic their subjugators. (Carter, 117) -
Bhabha develops a theory in 1994 called the Third Space Theory, in this theory Bhabha contends that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in a space that he calls the ‘Third Space of enunciation’. (Mambrol,2020). Cultural identity always emerges in this contradictory and ambivalent space, which for Bhabha makes the claim to a hierarchical ‘purity ’of cultures untenable. (Mambrol, 2020). -
In 1994 Bhabha publishes The Location of Culture where he argues that the interaction between colonizers
and colonized leads to the fusion of cultural norms, which
confirms the colonial power but also, in its mimicry,
threatens to destabilize it. (Carter, 117). This is possible because the identity of the colonizer is inherently unstable, existing in an isolated expatriate situation. (Carter, 117) -
Since the publication of Orientalism, post-colonialism has expanded further than literature, post-colonialism now has a wide variety of subjects, including history and geography.
Today, the definition of post-Colonialism is ever evolving as critics dive deeper into history. (Azim, 2001)