This document provides an overview of key concepts in postcolonialism, including colonialism and decolonization. It discusses how colonialism involved the physical and economic exploitation of colonies. Cultural imperialism spread colonial ideologies and asserted the cultural superiority of the colonizers. Examples discussed include Orientalism and how works like Heart of Darkness portrayed Africa and indigenous people. Decolonization involved independence movements starting in the mid-20th century. Postcolonial resistance includes strategies like separatism, cultural syncretism, recreating histories/identities, and appropriating colonial languages and forms.

1. Postcolonialism
1. Colonialism and de-colonization
2. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”: Language &
Cultural Identities
3. National Identity & Hybridity
Nation &Nation &
NationalismNationalism
GlobalizationGlobalization
Race and GenderRace and Gender
Commonwealth Lit. & WorldCommonwealth Lit. & World
Lit. in EnglishLit. in English
Immigrants &Immigrants &
Cultural IdentityCultural Identity

2. Colonialism and de-colonization
1. From Form to Race, Starting Questions
2. Colonialism defined; physical and economic
exploitation
3. Cultural Imperialism: 1) definition; 2) Colonial
Discourse—e.g. Orientalism; 3) science
4. Cultural Imperialism: cultural & literary Examples
5. Colonial Mentality (& the relations between the
colonized and colonizer)
6. Effects of cultural imperialism;
7. De-colonization (& post-colonial resistance)

3. From Form to Race
1. Form—textual and linguistic:
literary forms (e.g. organic form),
linguistic forms (e.g. semiotic rectangle, différance)
2. From Text to Context:
Social forms (e.g. discourse, hierarchy, etc.)
Postmodern forms (e.g. metafiction, pastiche)
Colonial & Postcolonial forms (e.g. mental/power
structure, lit: parody, historical re-vision)

4. Starting Questions
What are the examples of colonialism? Is KMT’s
regime an example?
What are the examples of colonial thinking (e.g. the
racial/cultural prejudices and stereotypes) in
“English” Literature?
Is de-colonization possible?
How do we or the colonized resist colonialism in life
and through literature?
Is it racist to call foreigns 鬼佬，番仔，老外？

5. Colonialism: Definition and
Kinds
Definition: colonialism --military,
economic, cultural oppression &
domination of one country over another.
Kinds:
1. Invasion-colonization;
2. Settlement-colonization;
3. Internal Colonialism;
4. Neo-Colonialism

6. Modern Colonialism: Flows of not
only Natural Resources but also People
Capitalism
 Triangular
Trade
2. Middle Passage

7. Colonialism: flows of migration
Flows of Migrants
1st
World Colonial
powers:
Adventurers,
Merchants, army,
travelers,
missionaries,
immigrants
“Third World”:
Slaves,
Contract laborers,
Students,
businessmen, etc.

8. Triangular Trade
This trade is a source of wealth to tribal chiefs, to
the shipping business, to plantation owners in the
South of U.S., and to merchants and shipbuilders
in the North.  For the Africans, it means
displacement and/or death.
An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the
Americas from the 16th through the 19 century,
with a peak of about 6 million arriving in the 18th
century alone. (another estimate)
Replaced by Indentured Labour in the 19th
century

9. Middle Passage
“. . . it has been estimated that between
30 and 60 million Africans were
subjected to this horrendous triangular
trade system and that only one third-of
those people survived...' (source)
” All of it is now it is always now there
will never be a time when I am not
crouching and watching others who are
crouching too I am always crouching"
Beloved by Toni Morrison

10. Middle Passage
left: structure of the ship
Right: by TomRight: by Tom
FeelingsFeelings

11. cultural imperialism (1): Theories
 1. Culture (e.g. literature, language, popular culture)
supports imperialism and is one way to spread it.
The definition of the self and others are based
upon representations rather than reality 。
 2. Also called neo-colonialism; Supported by its
economic power, one culture (e.g. of films, foods)
dominates over the other cultures. (related to
globalization and free trade agreements)
The West as civilized,
just, moral, industrious,
rational, democratic
Masculine
The Oriental as savage,
lewd, lazy, superstitious,
irrational, despotic
feminine

12. Colonial Discourse—
Orientalism as an example
(textbook 203- 206) Orientalism –presenting the
East as “the Other”, or as “the exotic” e.g. Arabian
Nights & Oriental women
1) Said’s book: about Islamic Middle East;
2) a discourse, (knowledge = disciplinary
power; structure of formation and
circulation)
3) hegemony  control by consent
4) possible problems: homogenizing the
East, and the West.
後結構︰
Foucault

13. Colonial Discourse (3):
power & knowledge
Racial difference =
biological difference 
Africans = black skin,
small brain + savagery
e.g. Darwin The Descent
of Man (1871); C Murray
and R. J. Herrnstein The
Bell Curve (1994)
differences of whites’ and
black’s IQ test
performances caused by
their genetic differences.
Stereotyping supported
by scientific studies

14. Cultural Imperialism (1): White Center
Mr & Mrs Andrews, 1748-9 Thomas Gainsborough source

15. cultural imperialism (2):
representation of “blackness”

16. cultural imperialism (2):
representation of “blackness”
French harem fantasy
with a black eunuch
servant. The link
between popularized
orientalism &
libidinization is
obvious. "Les petits voyages de
Paris-Plaisirs."--Paris Plaisir, Feb.
1930. (Image and text from Jan
Nederveen Pieterse's White on
Black: Images of Africa and Blacks
in Western Popular Culture. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1992) Source

17. cultural imperialism (2):


18. cultural imperialism (2):
representation of “Otherness”
Humanitarian or commercial
interest?

19. cultural imperialism (3):
Literary Examples
(1). “discovery+education” = possession
and exploitation
 The Tempest– Caliban
 Robinson Crusoe– Friday
“PROSPERO: Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil
himself
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!
. . .
CALIBAN You taught me language; and my
profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. ”

20. cultural imperialism (3):
Literary Examples
(2). Economic support the power of the
Empire, decorating its polite society
 Mansfield Park– dependant on the business
from the West Indian Estate (in Antigua)
 And many other Victorian novels.
(3) “Other-ed” and used as symbol of
madness & darkness:
 Jane Eyre –the madwoman Bertha;
 Heart of Darkness --

21. Africa: Heart of Darkness
Africa = darkness, stage for self-or-sexual discovery
and power struggle
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the
taking it away from those who have a different
complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is
not a pretty thing when you look at it too much. What
redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it:
not a sentimental pretence but an idea; an unselfish
belief in the idea something you can set up, and bow
down before, and offer sacrifice to…“ (Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness)
Others: Out of Africa, Sheltering Sky, The English
Patient.

22. cultural imperialism (3): Heart
of Darkness
 “'Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.' "All the
pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and
went on with my dinner. I believe that I was
considered brutally callous. However, I did
not eat much. There was a lamp in there --
light, don't you know -- and outside it was
so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near
the remarkable man who had pronounced a
judgment upon the adventures of his soul on
this earth. The voice was gone. What else had
been there? ”

23. cultural imperialism (4):
Education
2. The East:
 English Studies in India
 Taiwan: Popularity of translations of
American novels such as those of
Hemingway and Jack London.
 Taiwan: Un-self-reflective absorption of
English literary canon/values

24. cultural imperialism (4): Ethnic Colors
Furniture
from
Artikeln

25. Colonial mentality
(textbook: 206-)
Colonial identity – defined through
difference with ‘others’ and “the Other.’

26. Cultural Imperialism: Effects
self-hatred [inferiority complex] or self-
annihilation: blackness confirms the white self,
but whiteness empties the black subject.”
(e.g.: F. Fanon “. . .the black man is not a man.”
e.g. laziness as “a conscious sabotage of the
colonial machine” Loomba 143-44)
Split Subject: Black Skin, White Mask; e.g. 阿
爸的情人 clip 14
Resistance

27. Colonizer vs. colonized
(Homi Bhabha textbook p. 209-210)
Two ways to challenge colonial identity:
Différance/Dissemination of colonial
culture and its mimicry
Hybridity

28. Post-Structuralist + Post-Colonial:
Mimicry
C
center
Colonial Mimicry:
All the same but not
quite– e.g. Indian
gentleman or Indian
celebration of U.K.’s
national day.
Taiwanese Imitations:
bell-bottom, rock and roll
Différance= Dissemination

29. De-Colonization: history
1945 -- 750 million people - a third of the world's
population - lived in Territories that were non-self-
governing, dependent on colonial Powers.
British decolonization, 1945–56 (e.g. India); Wars
in overseas France, 1945–56 (e.g. Vietnam)
The Sinai-Suez campaign (October–November
1956)
a federal Malaysian government (1957); Hong
Kong (1997). Algeria and French decolonization,
from 1956
 colonization is not over; internal fractures;
 “The Empire Strikes back.”

30. Post-Colonial Resistance
Positions: the subaltern, postcolonial intellectuals
(exiles or at home), rejecting the past etc.
Means: Language, History and (personal,
cultural, national )Identity
Strategies: Between Nativism & Assimilation.
Mimicry
Separati-
Sm;
open
rebellion
Re-
Creation;
Cultural
Syncreticism
; negotiation
Active
participa-
tion
Appropriation

31. Post-Colonial Resistance (2)
Examples:
Separatism vs. Cultural Syncreticism:
Chinua Achebe vs. Ngugi wa Thiong'o
(Writing in Gikuyu) clip 1
Re-Creation ; 鄉土文學、台灣新電影（冬冬
的假期﹚
reinterprete the signs 
parody
Mimicry: e.g. 戲夢人生 clip 5 ， Buddha
Bless America, clips 21, 23
Appropriation;

32. Reference
Loomba, Ania.
Colonialism/Postcolonialism. NY:
Routeledge, 1998.