Colonialism and postcolonialism .

 

Thanking Activity:  Then & Now : 

Colonialism, Imperialism , Postcolonialism, Globalization, Environmental Studies.

 Hello Readers,

     Here I'm going to write Something about the Postcolonialism  and Colonialism,  Imperialism, Globalization, Environmental.

Introduction :

        Postcolonialism is a disciplinary field and an interdisciplinary methodology grounded in post-structuralist and postmodern critique. As a discipline, it studies the effects of imperialism, colonialism (until the independence of colonies), and neocolonialism (in the 20th and 21st centuries) on societies and individuals. It addresses questions about identity, hybridity, gender, sex, race, species, language, knowledge, modernity, transnationality, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism, among many others. As a methodology, postcolonialism provides several theories as a guide for transdisciplinary research to give voice to agents, relations, practices, representations, knowledges, narratives, and subaltern cultures silenced by traditional disciplines. It tries to avoid binary concepts (East-West, colonizer-colonized, subject-object, male-female, human-animal), which are conceived as imperialist, and to study how subaltern and colonized peoples transformed in relation to colonizers, opening processes of hybridity and creating creative resistances, sometimes digested by dominant/imperial/hegemonic discourses. Postcolonialism might become colonialist or neocolonialist because it was shaped within academic elites in an inaccessible language belonging to a Western imperial tradition of knowledge, and it is disseminated through neocolonial discourses and practices, while it is supposed to destabilize Western assumptions. Recent critics call for a Marxist approach against imperialist trends of capitalist globalization, while avoiding universalizing and essentializing theories and methods, and for an emphasis on Iberian, Latin American, and indigenous modernities (“decoloniality”). Postcolonial publications are increasingly contesting copyright licenses and are published under “copyleft” licenses (such as “creative commons”) to allow a wider public to participate in academic knowledge and research. In history, postcolonialism created an enormous impact, affecting especially cultural history, history of gender, empires, slavery, and science/ecology, in promoting the study of identities, migrations, hybridizations, and subaltern cultures previously dismissed by national, progressive, and imperial histories. Not only Atlantic history is increasingly pervaded by postcolonial theories due to its transdisciplinary and transnational subject of study, but also many postcolonial theorizations come from the study of Atlantic historical realities. Whether understood chronologically (the study of early modern Atlantic empires, their collapse, and aftermath) or epistemologically (the study of realities inhibited by “Western” traditional historiography or through “decoloniality”), postcolonialism has become one of the main foci of Atlantic studies. 

 Colonialism :

the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

"the state apparatus that was dominant under colonialism".

  Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from imperialism. ... The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer.

Postcolonialism   :

Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (Western colonizers controlling the colonized). ... Post-colonial criticism also takes the form of literature composed by authors that critique Euro-centric hegemony.

  Postcolonialism (or often post-colonialism) deals with the effects of colonization on cul- tures and societies. Unlike “colonialism,” this term is of much more recent provenance, emerging in the late 1970s to describe a range of literary and cultural analysis of colonized and formerly colonized societies.

Imperialism : 

     The root of imperialistic is the Latin word for "emperor," imperialis. 

        a policy of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means.

"the struggle against imperialism"

HISTORICAL :

rule by an emperor.

"in Russia, imperialism had developed alongside a semi-feudal agrarian structure"

Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other territories and peoples. The three types of imperialism are colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence.

 One of the most notable examples of American imperialism in this age was the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, which allowed the United States to gain possession and control of all ports, buildings, harbors, military equipment, and public property that had formally belonged to the Government of the Hawaiian Islands.

      

Ania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism is an invaluable introductory text to the many theories, debates and critical agendas that inform and animate postcolonial studies. Two things in particular make this book especially noteworthy: the first is its clarity and accessibility, especially in its explanations of the complex philosophical ideas that form the basis of postcolonial criticism. The second is its contemporary relevance, as this edition has been updated to engage with political and social events over the last decade. The first chapter presents a comprehensive introduction to the field as well as an overview of its theoretical background through definitions of critical terms such as ‘colonialism’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘discourse’. Loomba examines the ways in which structures of knowledge...

The title of Ania Loomba's Colonialism/ Postcolonia-lism indicates the lien she will take in introducing us to postcolonial studies: she will not see them as binaries, locked in permanent opposition, but as categories whose boundaries must be broken down so that we can see how the one inheres within the other. In other words, Loomba approaches colonial cultural studies in the wake of deconstruction, and other contemporaneous movements such as feminism and Foucaldian discourse analysis. Her intention, then, is not to give us a superficial picture of a settled site, but a detailed analysis of a fast-evolving subject located at an intriguing intersection of theory.

Loomba, in fact, sees postcolonial studies as a "beleaguered" field and it is her aim in Colonialism/ Postcolo-nialism to present readers with a book which will allow them to focus on key issues which have generated debates about the structures and residues of colonialism and their cultural manifestations. She is aware of the many criticisms levelled against the field: for example, the Marxist critiques which stress the way discussions of post-colonialism elide over questions of economic exploitation. She is conscious too of the reductive and formulaic nature of much of the work done under the rubric of postcolonialism and the tendency to simplify complex ideological formations in discussing colonialism and its aftereffects. Nevertheless, she writes from the conviction that "diagnosing" colonialism's "occlusions and mystifications" is important, as is the notion of approaching the colonial past with "our own developing histories and possibilities."

Colonialism and postcolonialism today :

So do studies of colonialism and postcolonialism have a future in a world now widely said to require the multidimensional framings provided by today’s high-profile theorists of globalization and cosmopolitanism? One sign of the rich potential still offered by the colonialism/postcolonialism field’s tools and perspectives is its elasticity, as in the ways its insights have been merged and synthesised with those of other history-conscious areas of research and debate. This includes the work of scholars of socialism and postsocialism who have addressed the transformations and problematic vernacularizations of modernity in their own complex research contexts by reflecting productively on the ways in which key themes from the study of colonialism and postcolonialism can be engaged and expanded on (Bayly 2007; Kandiyoti 2002; Ssorin-Chaikov 2003).

Furthermore, as Ania Loomba has shown, many variants of contemporary globalization studies have absorbed rather than overridden the key elements of colonial and postcolonial studies (2005). Their use has provided a powerful means of avoiding the end-of-history triumphalism and ahistorical thinness with which many commentators have defined, celebrated or demonised the conditions of globalised cultural and economic life in today’s world of flexible citizenship and fractured sovereignties. 

Consciousness of empire and a continuing engagement with the rich and varied literature on its impacts and afterlife thus has the potential to nuance and ground the many ways in which scholars now seek to grasp all that is local, translocal and global in the world today.

 Conclusion : 

 This concluding chapter offers an inevitably partial examination of challenges, indicating some new directions postcolonial studies has either taken, or must take. It highlights four areas: the environment; the history and present of indigenous peoples and societies; premodern histories and cultures; and the ongoing colonisation of territories, labour and peoples by global capitalism. All of these demand fresh thinking about colonial history, the shape of freedom, racial hierarchies, gender dynamics, and community. It suggests that such thinking is taking place, in the academy and beyond. Many commentators have suggested that postcolonial studies should not be thought of as a discrete field so much as an approach that has been honed by work on colonial dynamics and legacies in several disciplines; nevertheless.