Anticolonialism (original) (raw)
Colonialism vs Postcolonialism: A Review of Basic Preliminaries
2019
The current paper is an attempt to review and present few main undercurrents and arguments of ‘colonialism’ and ‘postcolonialism,’ and try to articulate how these concepts help us to understand wider aspects of both these movements, and the resultant influence on colonizer and colonized peoples, cultures as well as literatures. The paper, however, will mainly rely on understanding the basic concepts of both these movements and locate them in historical perspectives to situate the emergence as well as decadence of colonialism and the gradual growth of postcolonial culture and literature across the countries that were once part of the vicious colonization project of the Europe.
Colonialism (Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd ed.)
Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020
European colonialisms (circa. Late 1400) are complex, particularized, and changing political- economic-social-religious systems of domination. In the pursuit of capital accumulation and appropriation, Western European colonialisms generated and benefited from racialized and racist logics. Following the “formal” decolonization of much, but not all, of the colonized world—from Haiti in 1804, to Cameroon in 1960, to Papua New Guinea in 1975, to Timor-Leste in 2002—colonial structures, relations, and imaginaries often persisted in altered forms. Social scientists draw variously from political economy and historical materialism as well as postcolonial thought and cultural materialism within the broader field of colonial studies to both critique European colonialisms of the past and reveal the persistence(s) of colonial relations/structures in the present. Colonial “durabilities” and the “coloniality of being” continue to inform post-colonial political economies, social relations, and knowledge productions, creations, circulations, and contestations. The protraction of colonial domination(s) into the early 21st Century have given rise to reinvigorations of anti-colonial and postcolonial critique, including decolonial options and polygonal projects of decolonization. Widespread discontent regarding the persistence of “colonialism in the present” are manifested in the vocal and visible debates within early 21st Century universities around decolonizing knowledge, including struggles to decolonize the discipline of geography.
Postcolonialism and the Study of the Middle Ages
History Compass, 2008
This article focuses on the use of postcolonial criticism in the study of the European Middle Ages. It concentrates on two issues critiqued in particular by historians: anachronism and applicability. The article is thus structured around two questions: Why should medievalists explore contemporary postcolonial issues instead of strictly medieval ones? And why should the tools of postcolonial theory be considered applicable to medieval societies and times?
Monthly Review, 1999
Mad props to Christopher Phelpsfor inviting me to write this essay; to Franklin Rosemont for passing along key documents, commenting on and correcting an earlier draft, and for his untiring support; to Cedric Robinson for forcing me to come to terms with Cesaire's critique of Marxism in the first place; to Judith MacFarlane for her wonderful and exact translations; to Elleza and Diedra for cultivating the Marvelous. This essay is dedicated to TedJoans and Laura Corsiglia with love and gratitude for our "Discourse on Theloniolism. " Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism might be best described as a declaration of war. I would almost call it a "third world manifesto," but hesitate because it is primarily a polemic against the old order bereft of the kind of propositions and proposals that generally accompany manifestos. Yet, Discourse speaks in revolutionary cadences, capturing the spirit of its age just as Marx and Engels did 102 years earlier in their little manifesto. First published in 1950 as Discours sur le colonialisme, it appeared just as the old empires were on the verge of collapse, thanks in part to a world war against fascism that left Europe in material, spiritual, and philosophical shambles. It Robin D.G. Kelley teaches history at New York University and is the author of Yo Mama's DysJunktional! (Boston and New York: Beacon Press/Houghton Mifflin, 1998). This essay is the Introduction to Monthly Review Press' new edition of Aime Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism, due out in Winter 2000.
Reframing Anti-Colonial Theory for the Diasporic Context
Postcolonial Directions in Education, 2012
In teaching and dialoguing with students and colleagues we have on a number of occasions had to grapple with questions such as: What is the 'anti-colonial'? How is this different from a 'post-colonial' approach? And how are we to articulate an anti-colonial prism as a way of thinking and making sense of current colonial relations and procedures of colonization? These are tough questions complicated by the apparent mainstream privileging and intellectual affection for the "post-colonial" over "anti-colonial". This paper is purposively written to provoke a debate as a contestation of ideas of the current 'post' context. We are calling for a nuanced reading of what constitutes an intellectual subversive politics in the ongoing project of decolonization for both colonized and dominant bodies. We ask our readers to consider the possibilities of a counter theoretical narrative or conception of the present in ways that make theoretical sense of the everyday world of the colonized, racialized, oppressed and the Indigene. We bring a politicized reading to the present as a moment of practice, to claim and reclaim our understandings of identity in the present with implications for how we theorise a Diasporic identity. We challenge the intellectual seduction to equally flatten notions of identity and relations as simply fluid, in flux or something to be complicated/contested. We believe there is something that must not be lost in reclaiming past powerful notions regarding particularly the marginalized understandings of their identities for the present. Thus we revive anti-colonial discourse, building on early anticolonial thinking and practice. We are bringing a particular reading of the 'colonial' that is relevant to the present in which both nations, states and communities, as well as bodies and identities are engaged as still colonized and resisting the colonial encounter.
Historical research on colonialist enterprises in different parts of the world is en vogue. One reason for this attention is a new search for the origins of today's globalising processes, of which colonialism is seen as one of the starting points. Having long been designed within the analytic framework of the nation state, historical research has recently suggested that solely national approaches are insufficient to analyse these potentially global relations and has consequently drawn its attention to the exchanges and interactions between colonial regimes, colonising and colonised societies and the common context of a colonial global order. This attention to global entanglements and the search for their early manifestations thus resulted in an adaptation of transnational approaches to the history of colonialism, approaches that try to overcome the nation state as the organising principle of historical narratives. 1 The methodological debate on how transnational histories of colonialisms should be written drew attention to comparisons, transfers and intertwinements between colonies and colonising powers. 2
Postcolonialism and its Discontents
What do we mean by "postcolonialism"? Does it represent a distinctive way of being and seeing in the world after the collapse of the Eurocentric world order? Or does it refer more narrowly to a set of critical-theoretical perspectives on modern imperialism and its afterlives? What are the contributions and limitations of postcolonialism as an intellectual enterprise?
The Praxis of Colonialism and Postcolonialism: An Outline
IJRAR - International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, 2019
Postcolonial is a period of freedom and exemption from European colonial clutches and grasping. It is quite necessary to define the word 'colonialism' before understanding 'postcolonialism.' P K Nayar in his seminal book Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction projects light upon the etymology of the word as thus "The term 'colony' once meant something very different. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that the fourteenth-century term, 'colonye,' derived from the Latin 'colon-us,' meaning farmer, cultivator, planter, or settler in a new country, was used to describe the Roman settlements in the fourteenth century" (1-2). Colonialism is a gradual process of settling down Europeans in various corners of the world and considering themselves superior to those where they settled down. They migrated to non-European countries and started forming colonies and began to establish their own rules and regulation and imposed upon the colonized. Sometimes it was quite harsh and, most of the time, inhuman. The process of migration is continued since the existence of the earth and human beings kept on moving in quest of a better life and safe places. But the eighteenth and nineteenth-century scenario is extremely awful and consternation where the colonizers moved to exploit the colonized places and contaminated the previously established social cultures and introduce their own. Let's see what OED reads, "Colonialism is an alleged policy of exploitation of backward, or weak peoples by a large power." Colonialism is a derogatory word and it is a sort of stigma on colonizers. It is the second name of cruelty, oppression, exploitation, hate, servitude, racism and inequality. Colonization is dreadful for native races, cultures and spaces. Their intention at the beginning of these settlers was just to trade and later, seeing the gullible and hospitable nature of the people, their cunningness came out and they invited several people from their country and gradually tried to control and train the native people in their own way. They came to trade with the permission of local Nawabs and rulers, but with the passage of time, these traders conquered those local nawabs and rulers and became the ruler of those areas and started subjugating the people of the area. Colonialism brought destruction for the native knowledge, culture, art and understanding. Colonizers started to command the economy, politics and society as per their crafty intention. They introduced massive changes by demoralizing Indian values, customs and practices. Native people began to see their own customs and rituals with susceptible eyes in which they used to believe firmly. In India, they replace dhoti, kurta, turban, saree with shirts, pants, coats, ties and gowns. The products of colonialism are hybrid; they oscillate between their native culture and colonial culture. The colonization process started forcefully but later on it impacted on the mentality of the native people. They began to subjugate mentally, making the natives considered inferior, uncivilized, illiterate and so on. P K Nayar, quoting the most famous Orientalist scholar Edward Said, says, "Colonialism cannot be seen merely as a political or economic 'condition': it was a powerful cultural and epistemological conquest of the native populations" (Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction 3).