They had, and still has, in the West a notion that there is a development ladder, all countries must go through. A country evolves from tradition to modernity. It must go through a process of modernization, where Western-looking market economy and democracy as a shining torch at the end. It is progressively going through the development, it is said, and therefore it should be the model for all (Said 1979).
At the bottom is therefore the traditional societies that had been in the colonies before the Westerners came. At the top is the fully unfolded western welfare state with wealth, prosperity, freedom and democracy for all. This western world is in fact ethnocentric. It can be called an ethnocentric discourse. You see the world from the western ethnicity optics. The postcolonial critical oriented experience of the world is based on a different worldview. Therefore accept one does not simply take the western critics to themselves. A Marxist worldview will also be regarded as a Western view of the world. So will the western feminism. The western feminism is criticized for being too sexual fixed. To understand the situation of women in the post-colonial areas it is necessary to supplement the gender perspective with a class analysis and an analysis of ethnicity and culture (Said 1979).
In the postcolonial areas look to the Western moderniseringsbegrebs development ladder which – not natural – but perhaps influenced by who it was colonized whom. During the colonization held industrial and economic development back in the colonies through unequal trade agreements and conditions. Therefore, the former colonial areas today are poor. In the reverse discourse is there a notion that relations can be changed. Do not know that the postcolonial areas will be similar to the West, but by finding his own identity and development model. The literature may deal with how the different discourse built up and how identities are formed.
Post Colonialism vs. feminism
“(…)on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming(…)“ wrote Jamaica Kincaid in the text “Girl” about all the impossible, mutually conflicting roles and norms, women are forced into and forced to comply. Who is it that speaks of “Girl” and sends all these role expectations?
Feminism and post colonialism are subject to a number of studies and surveys, where the sight of the woman in the colonial and postcolonial areas they care about. The women have been subjected to a double colonization, it is said. First, directly subject to the colonization and partly gender discrimination. The women have been described by male authors in a manner in which it has become unconscious projections of their dreams of the passive and sexually available, often mysterious woman (Said 1979). One of the classics is Rider Haggard’s She, sold over 80 million copies, which depicts Cambridge professor Horace Holly and his adopted son Leo Vinceys travel to a kingdom in the interior of Africa, where they meet the mysterious woman who rule over the natives. It is full of depictions of the mysterious stranger, the native woman who is half demon, half human:
“How am I to describe it? I cannot—simply I cannot! The man does not live whose pen could convey a sense of what I saw. I might talk of the great changing eyes of deepest, softest black, of the tinted face, of the broad and noble brow, on which the hair grew low, and delicate, straight features (…) Not even the lovely smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide this shadow of sin and sorrow.“ (“She”)
It’s the white man’s fevered projection of his inner image of the mysterious African/Arab woman. It has not been more essential, than that these women are often expected to be sexually available to the white colonialists, whether it was as maids and nannies, or house bell (Said 1979).
Criticism
The difficulty with post colonialism as literature theoretical method is that the concepts are defined very open and vague, and that there is no consistency in definitions from one theorist to another. The area is potentially enormous, and it leaves some doubts about the relevance criteria. It is also unclear whether it is a particular method of analysis, or whether it is the actual area definition that are defining: that is just a work written by a person from a postcolonial space or environment, then it is postcolonial literature?
It is also difficult to define in more detail what it really is, to do about the literary work that is different from what else do literary analysis.
You will often find out that you find yourself in the traditionally known forms of analysis. We examine the author’s point of view, the use of language, etc. What particularly comes in addition compared to the traditionally known forms of analysis, is ideology critique. Ideology is understood here as a prevailing awareness of the relationships between people and social contexts. You criticize can the ideology expressed in “supremacist” literature. It can be a nationalchauvinistisk, even racist, ideology expressed like in Kipiling poem.
It may also be ideology, based on hegemonic globalization view, that is a perception that the international economy in its decor is to some people benefit more than others, and this sought veiled v.h.a. globalization ideology. That its hegemony, will say that it is the dominant countries and social classes believe that materialize. You see globalization from above, where the aim is to spread free markets and flexible capitalism, then development would most likely via market forces come to all. When it does not, but that on the contrary, can sit in poor countries and see how liberalization and free markets have led to squeezing out local businesses, sit back in the impoverished country with a bad taste in your mouth, and you try to articulate a different view that goes against the hegemonic globalization discourse. In addition, the deconstruction of the attempts to make the Subaltern voice that Spivak has raised.
- http://gf.dk/socana2.htm
- Edward W. Said (1979): Orientalism. Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition
- Jamaica Kincaid (2003): “Girl”. An Introduction to Short Fiction. 6th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s
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