Post-Colonial Litterature

Post colonialism literature

Post-colonial literature (also New English Literature and New English literatures) is a body of literary writing that responds to the intellectual discourse of European colonization in the Asia, Africa, Middle East, the Pacific, and other post-colonial areas throughout the globe. To understand this, one must understand what Colonialism was. Colonialism was, above all, a means of claiming and exploiting foreign lands, resources, and people. Enslavement, indentured, labour, and migration forced many indigenous populations to move from the places that they considered “home”Post-colonial literature addresses the problems and consequences of the de-colonization of a country and of a nation, especially the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated colonial peoples; and it also is a literary critique of and about post-colonial literatures, the undertones of which carry, communicate, and justify racialism and colonialism. Its main concerns were reclaiming spaces and places through which Postcolonial literature attempts to counteract the resulting alienation of indigenous populations from their surroundings by restoring a connection between indigenous people and places through description, narration, and dramatization. Its other main concern was also asserting cultural integrity. Indeed, during colonization, the indigenous cultures of those countries subjected to foreign rule were often side-lined, suppressed, and openly denigrated in favour of elevating the social and cultural preferences and conventions of the colonizers. In response, much postcolonial literature seeks to assert the richness and validity of indigenous cultures in an effort to restore pride in practices and traditions that were systematically degraded under colonialism. Another aim of post colonialism was revising history as colonizers often depicted their colonial subjects as existing “outside of history” in unchanging, timeless societies unable to progress or develop without their intervention and assistance. In this way, they justified their actions, including violence against those who resisted colonial rule. Revising history to tell things from the perspective of those colonized is thus a major preoccupation of postcolonial writing. In addition, its characteristics were resistant descriptions, appropriation of the colonizers’ language and reworking colonial art forms. In a broad sense, postcolonial literature is writing which has been “affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day”.

...