What is post colonial criticism? Characteristics of Post-colonial Criticism

The name post colonialism is modelled on postmodernism, with which it shares certain concepts and methods, and may be thought of as a reaction to or departure from colonialism in the same way postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. The ambiguous term colonialism may refer either to a system of government or to an ideology or world view underlying that system—in general post colonialism represents an ideological response to colonialist thought, rather than simply describing a system that comes after colonialism. The term postcolonial studies may be preferred for this reason

Usually draws example from the literary works of African Americans, aboriginal Australians and India.
Postcolonial criticism is both a subject matter and a theoretical framework. As a subject matter it analyzes literature produced by cultures that developed in response to colonial domination. Takes into account both the colonisers’ and the colonised’s response. If a strictly and exclusively postcolonial literary work is analyzed by any theoretical framework, it will still be considered postcolonial criticism. Now as a theoretical framework, postcolonial criticism attempts to understand political, social, cultural and psychological operations and the colonialist and the anticolonialist “ideology”.
Decolonization often has been confined largely to the removal of British military forces and government officials. What remained behind is the deeply embedded cultural colonization. This left the ex-colonies with a psychological ‘inheritance’ of a negative self-image.
Colonialist ideology/discourse- colonizers’ assumption of their own superiority which they contrasted with the alleged inferiority of native people. Their belief in their own metropolitan status.
Eurocentricism. Colonizers saw themselves at the center, as the ‘proper self’. Natives associated with the Other/Demonic other/Savage.
Postcolonial criticism rejects universalism; the universal themes as were depicted and standardized by English literature.
First World- Britain, Europe and the United States. Second World- white population of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa. Third World- India, Africa, Central and South America and Southeast Asia. Fourth World- indigenous populations like Native Americans or the aboriginal Australians.
Frantz Fanon maintains that the first step for ‘colonialised’ people in finding a voice and an identity is to reclaim their own past. The second step is simply eroding the ideologies of the colonialist. There’s one extreme standpoint too where authors write in their own local language, like Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. But there’s this problem of gaining entrance in the publishing industry which is very much English-oriented.
From Said’s Orientalism:
To the Western mind the Orient is surrogate/underground self. This reflects-
East is the projection of those negative aspects of themselves that Westerners do not choose to acknowledge. Example: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the Arab merchant is saved by the young De Lacey, a European, and whom the Arab subsequently betrays.
Again East is the exotic, the mystical and the seductive.
Homogenous mindset of the East. No individuality. Actions determined by instinctive emotions.
Yeats treatment of Istanbul in his two Byzantium poems. Torpor, sensuality and exotic mysticism. As if Yeats is trying to regain contact with the earlier, mythical, nationalistic Ireland.
Characteristic of postcolonial criticism-
An awareness of representation of the non-European as exotic or immoral ‘Other’.
Language. Colonisers’ language is permanently tainted, and that to write in it involves a crucial acquiescence (liking) in colonial structure (as language too was a colonising tool).
Double/hybrid/unstable identities. Examples- Yeats’ being a member of Protestant ‘ruling’ class of Ireland (colonising) and a citizen of British-ruled Ireland (colonised). Chinua Achebe writing about African villagers sitting in a city. Also Bhabha’s idea of ‘unhomliness’, a crisis Diasporas go through.
Adopt, Adapt and Adept. Accepting European models. Applying the European form to the African (or any colonised country) subject matter. Remaking of the form and a declaration of cultural independence.
Takes elements from post-structuralism and deconstruction. Binaries, shifting, polyvalent, contradictory currents of signification within text.
What postcolonial critics do-
Reject universalism.
Examine the representation of other cultures in literature. Whether a work of literature is silent or does mention the issues of colonialism.
Foreground questions of cultural differences and diversity.
Celebrate Hybridity and ‘cultural polyvalency’.
Develop a perspective, not just applicable to postcolonial literature, of power relation and potential change.