This document provides an overview of postcolonial studies. It discusses how postcolonialism refers to the historical period after colonialism when Third World countries rebuilt after European empires declined. Postcolonial studies focus on both colonialism and its impact on postcolonial cultures. The document outlines several key thinkers in postcolonial studies like Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and their important contributions to the field. It also notes how postcolonial theory emerged in academia in the 1980s and examines the political, social, and historical impacts of European colonial rule around the world.

1. Postcolonial Studies
Name : Pina Gondaliya
Paper No : 8 Cultural Studies
Enrollment No : 2069108420200012
Topic : Postcolonial Studies
Submitted To : Department of English bhavnagar
University

2. Postcolonial studies
● Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone
by Third World countries after the decline of
colonialism.
● Countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the
Caribbean separated from the European empire and
were left to rebuild themselves.
● Third World writes focus on both colonialism and the
changes created in a postcolonial culture.
● Postcolonial studies would seem to be a matter of
history and political science, rather than literary
criticism.

3. ● It is about human experience that has traditionally been
either silenced or marginalized by dominant groups or
discources.
● It is about how one’s national origin and race define one's
place and value in the eyes of the domint groups.
● It is also about geographic areas that have traditionally been
under the direct or indirect control of dominant World
powers.
● It is also about the resistances offered by these groups and the
challenges posed by them to the dominant group in realm of
representation.
● It focuses on the plight of the oppressed and recovers silenced
subaltern voices.

4. Continued…
● Postcolonial theory emerged in the US and UK academics in
the 1980s as part of a larger wave of new and politicized fields
of humanistic and critical race theory.
● Postcolonial theory is body of thought primarily concern with
accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical,
and social impact of European colonial rule around the world
in the 18th through the 20th century.
● The prefix “post” of “postcolonial theory “ has been rigorously
debated, but it has never implied that colonialism has ended;
indeed much of postcolonial theory is concerned with the
lingering forms of colonial authority after the formal end of
Empire.

5. Thinker of Postcolonial studies
● Edward Said
●Frantz Fanon
●Homi K. Bhabha
●Chinua Achebe
●Salman Rushdie

6. Edward Said
● Said’s concept of orientation was an important
touchstone to postcolonial studies.
● He described the stereotypical discourse about East
as constructed by the West.
● Said sharply critiques the Western image of the
Oriental as “irrational, depraved, child-like,
‘different,’” which has to allowed the West to define
itself as “rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal’ ”.

7. Frantz Fanon
● French Caribbean Marxist, drew upon his own horrific
experience in French Algeria to deconstruct emerging
national regimes that are based on inheritance from the
imperial powers, warning that class, not race, is a greater
factor in worldwide oppression, and that if new nations are
built in the molds of their former oppression, then they
will perpetuate the bourgeois inequalities from the past.
● The Wretched of the Earth has been an important
inspiration for postcolonial cultural critics and literary
critics Who seek to understand the decolonizing project
Third World writers.

8. Homi K. Bhabha
● Homi K. Bhabha is one of the most important figures in
contemporary postcolonial studies.
● Bhabha’s writing and their influence on postcolonial
theory, clearly introducing key concepts developed in his
work, such as :
● The stereotypes
● Mimicry
● Hybriditly
● The uncanny
● The nation
● Cultural rights

9. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
● Postcolonial feminist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
who examines the effects of political
Independence upon “subaltern” or subproletarian
women in the Third World.
● Spivak’s subaltern studies reveal how female
subjects are silenced by the dialogue between the
male-dominated West and the male -dominated
East, offering little hope for the subaltern
woman's voice to rise up amidst the global social
institutions that oppresse her.

10. Work cited
• Narayan, Pramod K. An Introduction of Cultural Studies . Viva Books Private
Limited (April 20, 2011), April 20, 2011.
• Daniel, Elam J. Oxford Bibliographies. 20 April 2011. Oxford University Press. 27
February 2020 <https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-
9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0069.xml>.
• Masood, Raja Ashraf. What is Postcolonial Studies? 2 April 2019. 27 February
2020 <https://postcolonial.net/2019/04/what-is-postcolonial-studies/>.