The term ‘postcolonialism’ has emerged from these controversies as a way of marking the existence of a field of discourse rather than a particular theoretical concept – the absence of the hyphen indicating perhaps the lack of substantive content within the term. However, this is not to imply the field is therefore theoretically empty. On the contrary, it is distinguished, if not fraught, by theoretical complexity and richness; indeed, for some it is overly theoretical and this in itself is reason to suspect that far from increasing our understanding, postcolonialism tends to obfuscate the urgent political, economic and social crises that have been brought about and intensified during and after colonialism. Many critics charge it with concentrating too much on culture at the expense of a genuinely radical critique of the materialities of power and inequality in a post-colonial age. The absence of the hyphen is perhaps indicative of the indeterminacy of what exactly is meant by ‘post-colonial’ (i.e. with a hyphen). The ‘post’ clearly refers to and implies a period ‘after’ colonialism and in this strict literal sense the object of postcolonial studies is the historical period of the late twentieth century as the European empires of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries broke up and former colonies achieved their political independence. However, this is unsatisfactory because to suggest that colonialism has ended is to overlook the fact that the configurations of power in the colonial world have remained largely intact in the post-colonial period. That is, far from achieving independence, the former colonies have now succumbed to more subtle forms of domination.
Analysis of neo-colonialism and the structures of domination and subordination in the postcolonial period is one of the key features of postcolonialism and so the hyphen seems misplaced from that perspective. It has been suggested that the ‘post’ refers to everything that happens after the colonial intervention so that historically postcolonialism encompasses the colonial period as well as its aftermath. This is one reason why ‘colonial discourse analysis’ is also one of the key sub-fields of postcolonialism. In examining the production and reproduction of discourses produced by and for colonialism, in deconstructing their rationales and habits of mind, in analysing colonial representations of the subjugated peoples, colonial discourse analysis seeks to lay bare the processes through which colonialism was practised culturally as well as materially, and how ideologies justifying colonialism were disseminated and embedded into consciousness.
Colonial discourse analysis adopts Foucauldian concepts of discourse that conceive of culture as a material practice, and rejects criticism of discourse analysis as thereby privileging cultural critique over material analysis. Others, however, have criticized postcolonialism for privileging the colonial encounter as the central fact in the histories of colonized peoples. This takes for granted the centrality of European experience and posits the experience of the colonized as an adjunct to that. It thereby replicates at the level of analysis precisely that kind of dependency that remains a feature of contemporary neo-colonialism, leading some critics to suggest that postcolonialism is the ‘cultural logic’ of neo-colonialism writ small in the language of the metropolitan academy. Certainly, the theoretical sophistication of post-colonial theory, and its sometimes difficult and opaque language, extends itself to criticism that postcolonialism is an over-elaborate, abstracted and self-indulgent form of cultural analysis that does little to address the politically urgent problems of the formerly colonized world.
The writings of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, who, along with Said have been characterized as the ‘holy trinity’ of postcolonial theory, raise objections because of their dense style. Yet, particularly in the case of Spivak, this may be seen as a postcolonial strategy of ‘deforming’ the discourse of European knowledge, a discourse that Said has shown to be deeply implicated in colonialism itself.
Analysis of neo-colonialism and the structures of domination and subordination in the postcolonial period is one of the key features of postcolonialism and so the hyphen seems misplaced from that perspective. It has been suggested that the ‘post’ refers to everything that happens after the colonial intervention so that historically postcolonialism encompasses the colonial period as well as its aftermath. This is one reason why ‘colonial discourse analysis’ is also one of the key sub-fields of postcolonialism. In examining the production and reproduction of discourses produced by and for colonialism, in deconstructing their rationales and habits of mind, in analysing colonial representations of the subjugated peoples, colonial discourse analysis seeks to lay bare the processes through which colonialism was practised culturally as well as materially, and how ideologies justifying colonialism were disseminated and embedded into consciousness.
Colonial discourse analysis adopts Foucauldian concepts of discourse that conceive of culture as a material practice, and rejects criticism of discourse analysis as thereby privileging cultural critique over material analysis. Others, however, have criticized postcolonialism for privileging the colonial encounter as the central fact in the histories of colonized peoples. This takes for granted the centrality of European experience and posits the experience of the colonized as an adjunct to that. It thereby replicates at the level of analysis precisely that kind of dependency that remains a feature of contemporary neo-colonialism, leading some critics to suggest that postcolonialism is the ‘cultural logic’ of neo-colonialism writ small in the language of the metropolitan academy. Certainly, the theoretical sophistication of post-colonial theory, and its sometimes difficult and opaque language, extends itself to criticism that postcolonialism is an over-elaborate, abstracted and self-indulgent form of cultural analysis that does little to address the politically urgent problems of the formerly colonized world.
The writings of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, who, along with Said have been characterized as the ‘holy trinity’ of postcolonial theory, raise objections because of their dense style. Yet, particularly in the case of Spivak, this may be seen as a postcolonial strategy of ‘deforming’ the discourse of European knowledge, a discourse that Said has shown to be deeply implicated in colonialism itself.
Ambiguity concerning the temporal scope of postcolonialism is offset by a fair degree of consensus concerning its geographical provenance. Postcolonialism sees modern colonialism as having been global in scope and so it concerns itself with a global agenda, concentrating as much on the former European (or Western) ‘centre’ as the colonial ‘peripheries’. It has extended its concern into debates concerning multiculturalism, diaspora, racism and ethnicity as the mass migrations in the postwar period by formerly colonized peoples have radically transformed the cultures and societies of their erstwhile masters. In addition, a generation of feminist scholars have examined the intersections of gender and sexuality with colonial and post-colonial discourses on race, ethnicity and nation.
