Chapter 4: Post Colonialism

Introduction

IR scholars accept that International Relations (IR) discipline is shaped by two dimensions: the first one is positivist/rational dimension that covers main stream theories of (neo)/realism and (neo)/ liberalism which take their sources from the nature through observation and by testing this information. The second dimension includes critical, reflectivist, post-positivist and post-structural theories that critically stand against positivist/rational theories on the basis of their arguments excluding subjective and interpretivist knowledge.

Post-colonial theory criticizes the Western world due to their colonies in Asia and Africa. Post-colonialism is a critical point of view against colonial authority in terms of economic, social and political aspects based on modernist arguments. Modernism allows the individual to exist as the only unit within all social fields. It does not permit the ontology of identities public representation and the original formation of the subject at all.

Conceptional Framework

Modernism: The modern concept has always been used to express the transition from old to new since the 5th century. From the moment modernism moved from the idea of God-centered to human-centered thinking, its sole purpose has been to defeat nature and to achieve a better and more beautiful life.

Colonialism/Imperialism

Whatever impression of societies is meaningful to other cultures, its development, progress and social mobility are shaped according to those values. States’ hegemonic, oppressive or destructive attitudes over other states have changed military, economic and cultural structures in time. Colonialism, as Europeans originally used the term signified not ruling over indigenous people or the extraction of their wealth, but primarily the transfer of communities who sought to maintain their own original culture, while seeking a better life in economic, religious or political terms. Marxist thinking draws a crucial distinction between modern colonialism and earlier colonialism, while earlier colonialism adopts a noncapitalist figuration, modern colonialism was in existence alongside capitalism in Europe. In the modern world, then, we can distinguish colonization as the takeover of territory, appropriation of material resources, exploitation of labor and interference with political and cultural structures of another territory or nation, from imperialism as a global system In the twentieth century, Lenin defined the word “imperialism’ differently by linking it with the development of capitalism, which is called as ‘the Highest stage of Capitalism’ (1947).

Edward Said and Orientalism

Orientalism is the term used by Edward Said based on the assessments of the attitudes and perspectives of the Western scholars or Orientalists to legitimize colonial aggression by intellectually marginalized and dominated Eastern peoples According to Said, the orientalist creates the Orient through his writing, in the process, and he helps in the creation of a series of stereotypical images, according to which Europe(theWest,the‘self’)is seen as being essentially rational, developed, humane, superior, virtuous, normal and masculine, while the Orient (the East, the ‘other’) is seen as being irrational, backward, despotic, inferior, depraved, aberrant and feminine sexually. It is useful for Said’s aim to mark Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony which is a form of Western cultural leadership, and interested in Orientalism’s strength and durability. Michael Foucault’s arguments on knowledge and power are significant for Edward Said’s “Orientalism” concept. Said reveals a contradiction in discourse between the Occident and the Orient.

Post-Colonial Theory

Post-colonial theory is a post-modernist/post-positivist/ Reflectivist/critical theory in international relations theory. is theory posits a critical thinking toward modern and colonial/ imperial world. It urges to offer an alternative to the Eurocentric stance and notions of Western domination by challenging “western ideas” in all areas namely literature, history, linguistic, identity, gender. Postcolonial theory was influenced by the issues in “Orientalism” by Edward Said. Orientalism carried out more scientific studies of post-colonial theory.

Post-colonial theory, like all other critical approaches have gained significance by the end of the bipolar system particularly following the independence movements of the colonial people. Foucault’s Madness and Civilization (1961) functioned as a founding study of the way in which society has produced its forms of exclusion. He argued that “the other” is marginalized from the society, that is, “mad is separated from rational person” in the context of social dynamics, because mad could not produce his/her knowledge and could not use any judiciously. Foucault and Derrida theoretically revealed the main sources of post-colonialism. In this sense, post-colonialist writers have created their subaltern work by using these scholars’ concepts. In fact, they have defended “the other” that is marginalized by Western enlightenment and argued that it should be taken into consideration.

Post-Colonial Scholars

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon is the pioneer of post-colonial theory in terms of both problematisation and terminology. The postcolonialist theory was based on Fanon’s works that first analyzed and revealed colonialism as a fundamental problem of knowledge. Frantz Fanon concluded his indictment of colonialism by pronouncing that Europe ‘is literally the creation of the Third World’ in the sense, its material wealth and labour come from the colonies, ‘the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races’ that have fueled the ‘opulence’ of Europe. According to Fanon, it is necessary to play with the order of the new world created by the colonial man and to render his rules unworkable.

Albert Memmi

The psychological effects of colonialism were analyzed by Memmi in his book “Portrait of the Colonial” (1957). According to Memmi, it is not possible for the colonists to be unaware of the illegitimacy of their position, but on the contrary, the colonists demonstrate through their actions that they are aware that their welfare has actually been promoted through the misery of what they colonize.

Memmi, a member of one of the non- Muslim families of Tunisia, put forward originally the “dual refusal” and “dual responsibility” of his life because, as Sartre points out, Memmi has a slightly more privileged position than most of the colonized because of his non-Muslim status, but he has not yet been fully accepted by the colonists. us, the problem of Memmi really is as Sartre answered; Memmi is neither the colonialist nor the colonized, or both. Memmi points at a simple fact: If colonialist’s life standards are high, this is due to the low level of the colonized people .

Aimé Césaire

Césaire, is one of the most important figures of Martinique like Fanon and he deeply influenced contemporary postcolonial writers with his opinions. “Discourse on Colonialism” (1955) is his book which later became one of the most fundamental works of post-colonial writing. He advocates that the pseudo-humanism that is actually the colonialist has got a fake understanding of humanity. Pseudo-humanism makes the colonialist uncivilized and brutal.

Homi K. Bhabha

Bhabha has become one of the leading voices in postcolonialism since the early 1980s. His work is very difficult to understand at first reading because of his complex writing style. It can be argued that Bhabha is “something of a master of political mystification and theoretical obfuscation” . Bhabha suggests that colonial authority is necessarily rendered ‘hybrid’ and ‘ambivalent’ when it is imitated or reproduced, thus opening up spaces for the colonized to subvert the master- discourse.

The most important part where Bhabha is different from Said and Spivak is that he considers the colonial phenomenon as an opportunity for cultural exchange, and, unlike Spivak, subaltern can actually speak for themselves and this speech emerges as a mimicry and is hybrid (Ashcroft, Griffiths, 1989). Mimicry is a process and experience and in fact there is reproduction and development of oneself over its center. Hybridity is the most natural consequence of worldly practice. It should be considered among cultures and especially between colonial cultures and indigenous identities.

Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak

Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak studies on theoretical and terminological framework on post-colonialism. Spivak was first known for her work “De La Grammatology”, which was a translation of Jacques Derrida’s work published in 1967, a theoretician of the contemporary French philosopher and post-structuralism, and was a turning point for the philosophy of continental Europe, after successfully translating it from French to English.

She developed and produced all of her analyzes thanks to her reading about post colonialism and with method and technique largely influenced by Derrida’s deconstruction method Spivak comments on feminist theory specifically with post-colonialist perspective in addition to Derrida’s philosophy, reading and method. She is known to contribute to the problematizing of “Can Subaltern Speak” in post-colonial theory.

According to Spivak, the concept of subaltern is concentrated on all exploited people, particularly Hindu women, and there are two options of a widowed Indian woman, who lost her husband, one is the self killing tradition (Sati tradition) and being inferior in the process of emancipation of the contemporary world. Spivak is interested in feminist side of post-colonialism, because subaltern women are much more inferior than the others.

Critiques of Post-Colonialism

The first part of the criticism is related to the title of postcolonialism. -Post- is used to form words that indicate that something takes place after a particular date, period, or event (Collins dictionary). The critique mentioned the word “post” and what it denotes after colonialism and what happened in the World. The question is, whether colonialism was really over. Another part of the criticism is that there are some differences between people living in underdeveloped countries and immigrants from third world in metropolitan countries. e modes of living, status and consumption of them are different. Immigrants are exposed to alienation, working at cheapest works, discrimination etc. However, a substantial part of immigrants has the chance to obtain status with upward mobility in sociological statement. On the other hand, in the Third World or underdeveloped countries, there are often violent forms of political oppression and heavy economic exploitation, which can be termed almost as a class “apartheid” and upward mobility is more severely limited or determined by Western countries.

Conclusion

Post-colonial theory is a theory that emerged as a critique of Western enlightenment. It resisted imperial and colonial ideologies that legitimize the superiority of the West in the international arena. e modernist perspective that emerged in the West revealed the validity of objective knowledge and development of the technique of the West are based on this knowledge. us, Western knowledge constituted supremacy over the world, thus, the West looked at some places outside of West was defined as backward. Then, they began to establish colonies for exploitation which were the economic dimension of this domination, the exploitation was not only economic but also cultural and political. e post-colonial theory focuses on the cultural dimension of exploitation and it examines the exploitation of mind, consciousness, language and religion of indigenous people. Postcolonial studies are interested mostly in subaltern part of society, in this sense, they have tried to reconstruct the society and raise consciousness.

Moreover, Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Alpert Memmi formed a resistance against the colonists. They formed the framework of “what needs to be done” in meaningful post-colonial studies. Even writers like Derrida and Foucault do not directly say anything about postcolonialism. However, they drew the theoretical framework of post-colonial theory with Foucault’s discourse and Derrida’s deconstruction it concepts. therefore, Derrida and Foucault argued “how needs to be done”. Edward Said indicated “what position colonized people are in” in his Orientalism book. After all, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak determined postcolonialist thought in terms of their own culture, and the elements used in post-colonial perspective.