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Postcolonial literature is the literature of people from formerly colonized countries. It addresses the problems and consequences decolonization: these include questions about the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. A range of literary theory has evolved to address the role of literature in enabling and justifying as well as exposing and challenging imperial ideology. The novel, as the most important 19th century British cultural form, played a vital role in perpetuating what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism.

Migrant literature and postcolonial literature show some considerable overlap. However, not all migration takes place in a colonial setting, and not all postcolonial literature deals with migration. A question of current debate is the extent to which postcolonial theory also speaks to migration literature in non-colonial settings.

Terminology
The significance of the prefix "post-" in "postcolonial" is a matter of contention. It is difficult to determine when colonialism begins and ends, and therefore to agree that "postcolonial" designates an era "after" colonialism has ended. Colonial history unfolds in overlapping phases: Spanish and Portuguese expansion begins in the 15th century; British, French, Dutch and German colonization unfold from between the 16th and 18th centuries until the independence movements of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean in the mid-twentieth century. It is also difficult to determine the postcolonial status of settler colonies such as Australia and Canada, or that of pre-colonial-era colonies such as Ireland. Neocolonialism and the effects of imperialism (i.e. the western attitudes that justify colonial practices), which persist even after the end of colonialism (i.e. the practice of securing colonies for economic gain), make it difficult to determine whether a colonizer's physical evacuation guarantees post-colonial status.

Evolution of the term
Before the term "postcolonial literature" gained currency, "commonwealth literature" was used to refer to writing in English from countries belonging to the British commonwealth. Even though the term included British literature, it was most commonly used for writing in English produced in British colonies. Scholars of commonwealth literature used the term to designate writing in English that dealt with colonialism's legacy. They advocated for its inclusion in literary curricula, hitherto dominated by the British canon. However, the succeeding generation of postcolonial critics, many of whom belonged to the post-structuralist philosophical tradition, took issue with the Commonwealth label for separating non-British writing from "English" literature produced in England. They also suggested that texts in this category had a short-sighted view of imperialism's impact.

Other terms used for the writing in English from former British colonies include terms that designate a national corpus of writing such as Australian or Canadian Literature; "English Literature Other than British and American," "New Literatures in English," "International Literature in English;" and "World Literatures." These have, however, been dismissed either as too vague or too inaccurate to represent the vast body of dynamic writing emerging from the colonies both during and after colonial rule. The term "colonial" and "postcolonial" continue to be used for writing emerging during and after colonial rule respectively.

Post-colonial? or postcolonial?
The consensus in the field is that "post-colonial" (with a hyphen) signifies a period that comes chronologically "after" colonialism. "Postcolonial," on the other hand, signals the persisting impact of colonization across time periods and geographical regions. While the hyphen implies that history unfolds in neatly distinguishable stages from pre- to post-colonial, omitting the hyphen creates a comparative framework by which to understand the varieties of local resistance to colonial impact. Arguments in favor of the hyphen suggest that the term "postcolonial" dilutes differences between colonial histories in different parts of the world and that it homogenizes colonial societies. The body of critical writing that participates in these debates is called Postcolonial theory.

Critical approaches
Postcolonial literary theory analyzes colonial and anti-colonial discourse. It examines the role cultural forms play to challenge, modify or subvert colonial representation of natives as barbaric, uncivilized and backward. The "postcolonial" therefore refers here to the cultural import and impact of colonialism. English literature, as the dominant cultural form in nineteenth century Britain, played a particularly important part in promoting colonial ideology. It was included in British curricula and promoted in British colonies in the guise of a tool to educate the natives in the methods of liberal education. Early postcolonial writing in English therefore came from the elites educated in English in colonized societies, whose writing was subject to the scrutiny of imperial rulers. It was only with the emergence of independent literature in the colonies that postcolonial writing came to challenge colonial ideology.

In Orientalism (1978) Edward Saïd analyzes the fiction of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, and Lautréamont (Isidore-Lucien Ducasse) for how it was shaped by the societal fantasy of European racial superiority. He pioneered inaugurated the branch of postcolonial criticism called colonial discourse analysis. Another critic of colonial discourse, Harvard University professor Homi K Bhabha, (1949 – ), has developed a number of the field's neologisms and key concepts, such as hybridity, third-space, mimicry, difference, and ambivalence. Western canonical works like Shakespeare's The Tempest, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Rudyard Kipling's Kim, and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness have been targets of colonial discourse analysis. The succeeding generation of postcolonial critics focus on texts that "write back" to the colonial center. In general, postcolonial theory analyzes how anti-colonial ideas, such as anti-conquest, national unity, pan-Africanism and postcolonial feminism were forged in and promulgated through literature. Amongst the other prominent theorists are Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, Bill Ashcroft, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe, Leela Gandhi, Gareth Griffiths, Abiola Irele, John McLeod, Hamid Dabashi, Helen Tiffin, Khal Torabully, and Robert Young.

Anti-conquest
In Imperial Eyes, Mary Louise Pratt analyzes the strategies by which European travel writing forges a secure home space for Europe through the contrasting representation of colonized outsiders. Instead of examining narratives of native resistance or victimization, Pratt analyzes texts in which a European narrates his adventures and struggles to survive in the land of the non-European Other. One of these strategies secures the innocence of the imperialist even as he exercises his dominance, a strategy Pratt terms "anti-conquest." The anti-conquest is a function of how the narrator writes him or her self out of being responsible for or an agent, direct or indirect, of colonization and colonialism. Anti-conquest is used to analyze the ways in which colonialism and colonization are legitimized through stories of survival and adventure that purport to inform or entertain. Pratt created this notion in association with concepts of contact zone and transculturation, which refer to the conditions and effects of encounter between the colonizer and the colonized.

Nationalism
The sense of identification with a nation, or nationalism, fueled anti-colonial movements in the aftermath of colonialism. Language and literature were factors in consolidating this sense of national identity to resist the impact of colonialism on lands, minds and bodies. With the advent of the printing press, newspapers and magazines helped people across geographical barriers identify with a shared national community. This idea of the nation as a homogeneous imagined community connected across geographical barriers through the medium of language became the model for the modern nation. Postcolonial literature not only helped consolidate national identity in anti-colonial struggles but also critiqued the European colonial pedigree of nationalism. As depicted in Salman Rushdie's novels for example, the homogeneous nation is a myth built on European models by the exclusion of marginalized voices. They are made up of religious or ethnic elites who speak on behalf of the entire nation, silencing minority groups.

Negritude, pan-Africanism and pan-nationalism
Négritude is a literary and ideological philosophy, developed by francophone African intellectuals, writers, and politicians in France during the 1930s. Its initiators included Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor (a future President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disapproved of French colonialism and claimed that the best strategy to oppose it was to encourage a common racial identity for native Africans worldwide. This version of nationalism was not bound by national borders but forged a sense of racial solidarity among people across national and political divisions.

Pan-Africanism was a movement among English-speaking black intellectuals who echoed the principles négritude. Frantz Omar Fanon (1925 – 1961), Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer, was one on of the proponents of Pan-Africanism. His works are influential in the fields of postcolonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical and a Marxist humanist, concerned with the psychopathology of colonization, and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. (1887 – 1940),, another advocate of Pan-Africanism, was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) to unite people of African ancestry. He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Prior to the 20th century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. However, Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement and economic empowerment focusing on Africa. The philosophy came to be known as Garveyism. Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement (some sects of which proclaim Garvey as a prophet).

Against advocates of literature that promoted African racial solidarity in accordance with negritude principles, Fanon argued for a national literature aimed at achieving national liberation. Paul Gilroy argues against reading literature both as an expression of a common black racial identity and as a representation of nationalist sentiments. Rather, he argued that black cultural forms--including literature--were diasporic and transnational formations born out of the common historical and geographical effects of transatlantic slavery.

Feminism
Postcolonial feminism emerged as a response to the Eurocentric focus of feminism. It accounts for the way that racism and the long-lasting political, economic, and cultural effects of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world. To do so it confronts the way colonial patriarchy capitalizes on prevailing gender biases in the colonies. These include the tendency to associate women with the inner or private domain of the household, or to advocate for women's education insofar as it serves to refine the household. Feminist literary critics have scrutinized writing by women who participated in nationalist movements for evidence of the erasure of women from national discourse or of the suppression of their voices. These writings document the emotions of women who had to endure the emotional effects of these contradicting challenges: being the target of purportedly progressive education reforms on the one hand, and being vulnerable to suppression when perceived as threats to men on the other.

Language
A common concern in postcolonial literary studies is the appropriateness of English as a medium of expression. As the language of the oppressor, English never fully belongs to postcolonial society. Yet, it is to varying degrees the most available or the most effective language for postcolonial resistance. Literature cannot simply echo colonial English and all its associated values to work as a weapon against imperial ideology. Writers have differed in their opinion about writing back to the colonial center in English. Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe and Raja Rao have advocated appropriating the language to serve the postcolonial agendas. Others like Ngugi wa Thiong'o advocate the use of native and local languages. A range of literature in in multiple "englishes"--texts that appropriate English to reflect the musicality of vernacular language and "non-standard dialects"--have sprouted in postcolonial societies.

Place
Postcolonial literature grapples with the links between history, language and place. As a form of geographical and linguistic violence, colonial history links these concepts, displacing indigenous people from their lands and from the language they use to relate to those lands. Therefore, the concept of "place" in postcolonial societies does not refer merely to physical location but to a complex linguistic and historical formation.

Colonial discourse capitalizes on a difference between space and place peculiar to the English language to enable an justify colonial violence. In common understanding, place is an identifiable location in the larger grid of space. It is a reference point that can be represented and "read" as a text. Colonial discourse "erases" indigenous lands by representing them (in maps, literature, travel documents, etc.) as empty, uninhabited spaces. The claim them through the process of "naming." A name on a colonial map therefore does not describe the land as it exists; rather it does the work of claiming land and inserting it into an imperial reference system. The new name embodies the act of erasure and claiming. Therefore, it dehumanizes native inhabitants by dismissing their existence, and disrupts the link between lands and their indigenous descriptors. Postcolonial literature is therefore left with the task of re-creating these broken links between subjects, language, and lands.

To re-create the historically inflicted disruption between land and language, postcolonial literature bends and distorts colonial English. This is an "abrogation" and "appropriation" of the colonial institution that is the English language. The multiple englishes that emerge are revolutionary: they celebrate the musicality of indigenous cultures; they challenge not only a colonial language but also the cultural assumptions of purity and wholeness that support the language; and, they expose the mechanism by which language claims to be pure, truthful and descriptive--a mechanism of forced associations, naturalized over time.

Identity
(coming up...)

Representation
Colonialism secures its legacy through the permanence and power of images it circulates about the colonized other through writing and other modes of representation. Postcolonial resistance therefore emerges as a counter-text to question, challenge and undo images about colonized societies perpetuated from places of political and economical power. This counter-text resists through innovative use of its own set of tools as a medium of representation. It becomes the task of postcolonail literary theory to elucidate modes of representation that challenge their counterparts in colonial discourse. Examples of texts that re-present and common colonial motifs--such as that of a European voyager traversing and charting newly discovered spaces--include Ngugi wa Thinongo' s The River Between and Tayeb Salih's Seasons of Migration to the North. Postcolonial discourse does not simply resist the power of colonial discourse; it interrogates the methods colonial discourse uses to secure such power, and seeks to undo rather than simply recycle problematic and biased colonial methods. Examples include Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, J. M Coetzee' s Foe, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, and Samuel Selvon's Moses Ascending.

Diaspora
The term diaspora refers to communities formed due to the displacement, dispersion and migration caused by colonial violence. If the transatlantic slave trade shaped Afro-Caribbean diasporic populations, the Partition of India in 1947 shaped the South Asian diaspora. The terms also refers to the cultural productions of these groups, which often invoke nostalgia for the home country, express fraught relationships with host countries or document migrations to places like Canada and the United States. The intercultural transactions among various groups brought into contact by colonial history inspire diasporic cultural productions, which challenge the idea that culture emerges from homogeneous ethnic groups rooted in their places of origin.