Postcolonial Discourse Research Articles

PROBLEMATIZING THE DISCOURSE ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION

The postcolonial discourse on English language education since its inception is described as colonial import. It is reiterated as a colonial imposition that was imposed upon the native by dictatorial colonial rule and stands to pose a threat to the existence of indigenous languages. The pre-colonial set up with a society divided in castes/jatis was far from condemned in the traditionalists’ postcolonial discourse who linked the India’s clinging to the past as upholding nationalism. The colonial rule in India that proliferated literacy to the masses found little mention or rather neglected in the colonial historiography of India. The elite nationalists and the traditionalists valorised India’s past and referred back to the colonial era as an exploitative period. The paper discusses the discourse on English language education and its imperatives vis-à-vis the marginality in India.

Experiencing Religion: Post-Colonial Views for Religious Education

Framed within religious historicism, the present study reviews, through historical and empirical insights, the lessons that Philippine RE can learn from the liberating function of religion and liberated religious undercurrents parallel to institutional religion in the Philippines. The liberating function of religion is often overlooked in post-colonial discourses while religious undercurrent views seem neglected due to pre-occupations with untangling power imbalances submerged in the voices of institutional religion in post-colonial analysis. Hence, in this presentation, I give particular attention to the liberating role of contemporary religion in contrast to the post-colonial thrust to rid institutional religion of power and control and secondly, the liberated religious views of young Filipino audiences from empirical findings I found from my previous studies. For religious undercurrents, I limit myself to current unorthodox religious interpretations of young Filipino audiences departing from conventional assumptions of religion and culture. My analysis of liberating religion and liberated religious views from empirical findings show epistemological shifts from the Christian interpretation in a post-colonial context. These shifts point to de-institutionalized but theocentric religious ideas inspired by moral and communal considerations, which form the basis of RE content.

Decolonising the Mind of the Antipodean Author: Gothic Tropes and Postcolonial Discourse in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake

This article analyses Peter Carey’s novel My Life as a Fake (2003) through the lens of genre fiction, focusing on how the Gothic mode combines with key concepts in postcolonial studies. Intertextual references to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) and analogies with Stephen King’s The Dark Half (1990) and “The Importance of Being Bachman” (1996) are investigated to contextualise Carey’s postcolonial Gothic. Furthermore, taking a cue from Frantz Fanon and Oswaldo de Andrade’s theoretical studies, I argue that the main characters of this novel display attitudes that allegorically reflect the stages through which the national literature of a former settler colony is shaped.

GENIUS NARATIF DAN GENIUS PEMIKIRAN DALAM DUA KARYA SASTERA LISAN MELAYU

In Malaysia, oral literature which is conveyed through a storyteller is the most ancient and instinctive art. Through the recording of the oral literature, which is then printed and marketed, the people today can enjoy the heritage of oral literature that narrates the structure of the society as well as various issues and conflicts of its time. In oral literature, it contains the genius of narrative and the genius thought of the nation’s storyteller, especially Pawang Ana through his masterpieces namely Hikayat Malim Dewa and Hikayat Anggun Che Tunggal. Both stories, recorded around 1886, narrate the voyage of a group of Malay warriors to Portugal to counter-attack the western colonists and gain victory. These two works of oral literature not only contain elements of ethnocentrism but are laden with postcolonial thinking, about seven decades ahead of postcolonial discourse by modern scholars that began to emerge around the 1950s.

Otherness in Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen: A Postcolonial Rendering

In postcolonial discourse, the concept of the “Other” represents someone who carries dark human traits such as stigmatization, subjugation, domination, socio-political or cultural misrepresentation. The “Other” represents one of the main postcolonial concepts in literary studies because there is indisputable evidence that the term is a colonial construct. In essence, colonialism has left a permanent mark in the minds of the colonized people and this imprint has significantly manifested in literature. This analysis, thus, aims to explore how the colonial “Other” is represented in Second-Class Citizen (1974), one of the prominent postcolonial novels written by Buchi Emecheta, an author from the colonized African society. This study adopts textual analysis in which context-oriented technique is used to understand the character traits of the colonial “Other” in the two selected texts. The analysis draws upon Postcolonial theory, particularly Edward Said’s Orientalist approach. We show that Emecheta represents the colonial “Other” as backward, inferior, and of lower social class. Also, this representation is based on economic and socio-cultural differences as well as conflictual relationships between African indigenous people and British citizens.

On infrastructure repair and gender politics: A more global view from Tallinn, Estonia

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of conflict in challenging dominant, heteropatriarchal structures of urban development and infrastructure governance through the case of Reidi Road in Tallinn, Estonia. Applying a critical gender lens informed by post-socialist and post-colonial discourses, the study examines the formation of the Reidi Road project through shifting political economic regimes and modes of spatial restructuring along with its contestation by an activist network led by women who encounter and negotiate gender-based identities and politics in a context where feminism is stigmatized by historical associations with coloniality. The paper analyses the situated and relational experiences, concerns, and contentions of the women activists with respect to car-centric mobility infrastructures and built environments and their efforts to shift public decision-making. Partly undertaken as a reflective practice by the women activist leaders, the paper concludes with takeaways for continued struggles and gains toward more inclusive and equitable urban futures.

International students and Ukrainian universities: dilemmas of agency and change

ABSTRACT This paper examines the agency of international students in the context of university transformations in post-Soviet Ukraine. Conflict-driven political, social and economic changes in the country have laid the groundwork for the redesign of institutional policies related to the internationalization of Ukraine’s higher education. However, it is not clear to what extent local universities have managed to engage the creative power and agency of international students in these transformations. By examining how international students’ agency is constructed at 12 public universities, and triangulating comparative findings with data from the Ukrainian State Centre for International Education at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and from publicly available sources including social media, this study delves into the complexities of student agency development in the postcolonial discourses at Ukrainian universities. On a theoretical level, this paper enriches the knowledge base on tensions between institutional and human agencies in international higher learning.

Translating meaning as cognitive socio-cultural systems.A conceptual approach to the translation of plurilingualism in postcolonial literary discourse in Portuguese

Recent approaches to language, meaning and cognition contend that par-ticipants in linguistic interaction construct a mental representation of their understanding of discourse on the basis of linguistic expressions, world or experiential knowledge, socially-shared beliefs, and the imagination. Fo-cusing on the implications the coexistence of different languages has for the construction of a cognitive culture system, this paper argues that choosing monolingualism for the translation of postcolonial plurilingual texts impos-es semantic limitations, which may result in a dissimilar, domesticated, representation of the recreated reality. Besides taking an ethical stand, this paper also claims that preserving the plurilingualism of these texts responds to the wish to invite readers to open new mental spaces, where the cognitive system of the translated culture can be located. The analysis of examples from the translation into English of postcolonial texts in Portuguese will show strategies to achieve this aim.

Postcolonialism and translation: the dialectic between theory and practice

Postcolonial intercultural writing has been likened to translation both in terms of the writing practice and the nature of the postcolonial text, which often involves multiple linguistic and cultural systems. To highlight the significance of this view of translation as a metaphor for postcolonial writing and its impact on current translation theory, this paper attempts to lay the groundwork for defining the linguistic and cultural status of postcolonial discourse and to establish parallels between the translation process and some strategies for crafting the postcolonial text. The ontological relation between translation theory and practice is discussed in the light of post- colonial translation practices which have broadened the scope of research in translation studies to include issues of ideology, identity, power relations, and other ethnographic and sociologically based modes of investigation.

Lucky Philip Dube: The Artiste in Search of a New Jurisprudence and Subaltern Redemption

Abstract Most musicians, in their songs, portray their philosophical vision of life as could be seen in the case of Lucky Philip Dube, the black South African reggae musician. His songs show that he adheres to the principle of ethical humanism and portrays him as a crusader of social justice. Thus, this essay shows the link between musical art and law by examining the commitment of Dube’s lyrical composition in fighting for a just legal system in his society. This essay therefore, analyses some of his lyrical productions in order to expound on the philosophical ideas underneath the songs and how they tie with the search of an alternative jurisprudence and humanism in postcolonial discourse and the liberation of the subaltern. From the perspective of natural law theory, this essay postulates that Dube’s songs criticise the injustice of the legal philosophy in his society and quest for an impartial jurisprudence – that of equality and justice in his society.

Indelible apartheid: intergenerational post-colonial narratives of colonial-born coloured females about hair, race and identity in South Africa

ABSTRACT What do the narratives of five Cape Coloured women of three generations reveal about issues of race and identity in post-apartheid South Africa? This question is the essence of this study. Identity in apartheid South Africa was strictly and legislatively framed around race, defined by physical characteristics of skin colour and hair texture. Whiteness was the epitome with socio-economic privileges, which invariably created aspirations for this body or proximity to it among some Coloured South Africans in the pursuit of social-economic upliftment. But in a free, post-apartheid, and multi-racial South Africa, do the colonial constructions of identities still linger? Through a critical theoretical lens of postcolonial discourses about race and identity, this study explores intergenerational phenomenological expressions of five Coloured women between the ages of 48 and 104 born during South Africa’s colonial and apartheid eras. The aim was to explore if colonial narratives of hair still influence hair trends, self-presentation, race and identity. It seems racist ideologies of the past are generational, and still shape the perception of hair amongst this cohort of Coloured females.

Catching the Disc: Panopticism, Surveillance and Punishment as a Pedagogical Tool in the Acquisition of Colonial Languages in Post-Colonial Schooling

ABSTRACT This article analyses the use of ‘the disc’ – a curious pedagogical post-colonial artifact, intended to discourage native languages – a tool employed in teaching colonial languages in schools in parts of the post-colonial world. The disc assumes many forms depending on where it is employed, but it is usually an object fashioned to be carried, or worn as an article of clothing, or a cap making it reminiscent of the Dunce Cap. The role of the disc and its variants is the same: to leverage surveillance and shaming and channel them towards the purposes of instilling school discipline, promoting moral education and often as a pedagogical tool. However, the use of shame for these purposes has since fallen out of favour in the West (Stearns & Stearns 2017). Using Michel Foucault’s notion of panopticism to illuminate the workings of this artifact, this article focuses on shedding some light on the indignities suffered by speakers of native languages in such post-colonial school systems. As Foucault (1980, 30) wrote, power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions, attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives. This article’s main gist is on this one aspect of colonial legacy in education: the language policies that put a premium on mastery of colonial over native languages. Among the issues typical in post-colonial discourse, this vestige represents apt exemplification of deleterious aspects of colonialism that continue to present perverse challenges in post-colonial societies. It however concurs, in spite of the blistering critique of the emphasis on colonial language use, and in light of a rapidly globalising world, with Kevin Forster’s (2003) analysis, which concludes that in instances where contemporary values like empowerment and perfection is gained while sacrificing autonomy and freedom from surveillance, subjugation could be seen as worthwhile.

Flipping the Script on Colonial Narratives: Replicating Roman Reliefs from the Antonine Wall

Our understanding of the Roman presence in Scotland during the second century has traditionally been viewed through a Roman lens, influenced by the fragmentary, non-contemporaneous, and heavily biased accounts of Roman historiographers. Perceived wisdom has perpetuated this through embedded colonial language referring to indigenous occupants of the region and in the way that colonial objects are presented in museums. The welcome paradigm shift from Romanization to postcolonial discourses provides fertile ground for challenging Romanocentric narratives when (re)considering the materiality of Empire, particularly from frontier contexts. Replicas are an integral component of this narrative with power to express multiplicities of meanings and engage audiences in new and creative ways. These aspects are explored through newly carved sandstone replicas of Antonine Wall Distance Sculptures, including one inspired by the originals but presenting an alternative, provocative narrative from the perspective of Iron Age occupants of the region who came into conflict with Rome.

I’m Not a Fruit which Fell from a Tree: Migrants’ Discourses of Resistance in the Context of Dehumanization and Economic Exploitation in Southern Africa

This discussion highlights how some African foreign migrants living in South Africa articulate resistance to exploitative and corrupt tendencies in what emerges as life affirming and death denying developmental discourses. This article triangulated data collected from a Module PRT112 – an Introduction to Missiology – with data which emerged from a study designed to interrogate the lived experiences of foreign migrants in Johannesburg South Africa. Framed within the postcolonial paradigm, the contribution is premised on the idea that the discourses of African migrants are a viable hermeneutical optic for a theological and developmental agenda which legitimises marginal voices of the poor. At the heart of this critical discussion is a statement; ‘I am not a fruit which fell from a tree,’ which emerged as a response to ward off and rebuke corrupt public officials who often demand bribes from foreign migrants as a way to keep them intimidated and confined to liminal working conditions in the informal South African economic sector. By interrogating the radical response ‘I am not a fruit’ alongside data which reflect hostility towards migrants, the study highlights religious resistance to economic exploitation and life denying practices. These articulations are located within the postcolonial resistance discourses which counter neoliberal and dehumanizing tendencies and the study concludes by drawing on Bosnian and Rwandan examples to caution against dehumanization of migrants as it sets parameters for catastrophic genocide and other forms of violence perpetrated in the past.

20th Century Western Visayan Millenarian Representations: The Case of “Emperor” Flor Intrencherado in the Local Press, 1925-1929

20th Century Western Visayan Millenarian Representations: The Case of “Emperor” Flor Intrencherado in the Local Press, 1925-1929

A decolonial biblical perspective on Jesus inspired by Fanon and Biko

This paper makes an original contribution against the background of relevant postcolonial discourse by means of the methods of postcolonial and social-scientific biblical exegesis from the perspective of critical correlation. The main aim of the paper is to bring into dialogue the insights of Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko, with the latest insights in biblical scholarship on the parables. This study finds that the New Testament can be read critically through the lens of core ideas of Fanon and Biko in critical correlation with understandings of Jesus as reacting against Roman Imperial domination and exploitation. The paper concludes with the suggestion that postcolonial reading scenarios, like the ones we have suggested in this paper, be used in theological training to relate New Testament Exegesis to contemporary challenges around decoloniality in South Africa.Contribution: The main contribution of this paper is providing key insights into decolonial and postcolonial readings of Jesus as an agent of change reacting against Roman imperial domination and exploitation, addressing the agenda of the special HTS collection of essays focused on the reception of biblical discourse in Africa.

AMITAV GHOSH'S THE GLASS PALACE: A POST-COLONIAL CRITIQUE

This paper studies the postcolonial approach in the novel The Glass Palace, written by Amitav Ghosh, one of the well-known writers in Indian English literature. This research is an attempt to analyse The Glass Palace through the systematic investigation of postcolonial discourse. The present study assesses the novel through close reading, considering the theories and terms given by various postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, and Frantz Fanon. The colonial period lasted until 1947 in India, and the end of the 20th century marked the end on colonisation in most of the colonised countries of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. After India got independence from British rule, writers like Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Vikram Seth commenced new drifts in their writings by intertwining history with fiction. Historical events and imperialism were there in most of their fiction. In The Glass Palace, too, the author has blended two genres, history and fiction. Historical personages and events reflected in the novel like Invasion of British Army over Burma in 1885, Indian Rebellion of 1857, The Quit India Movement in 1942, and The Second World War in 1939-45, Riots in India, Ghadar Movement; and the personages like The royal family of Konbaung dynasty, Mahatma Gandhi, Dadasaheb Ambedkar, Taraknath Das, Lala Har Dayal are some real historical figures in the novel. In this critique of post-colonialism, theories given by postcolonial theorists in the field of postcolonial studies are scrutinised, i.e. hegemony, subaltern, exile and displacement, diaspora, mimicry, hybridity, ambivalence, and otherness.

Misrepresentation of Orientals in Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for The King

This study deals with the colonial perspectives in Dave Eggers’s A Hologram for The King (2012), according to the postcolonial approach. Although colonialism era is over by now, colonial perspectives remain strong in some literary works. Since its advent in the second half of the twentieth century, postcolonial theory confronts colonial attitudes and experiences as colonialism has been justified in many works of Western writers and scholars who have distorted the real image of non-Europeans and non-Westerners via different means and techniques in masquerade of orientalism. Postcolonial discourse opposes the misrepresentation of non-Europeans and argues that such falsification is driven by political, social, religious and economic motives. In the current study, the researcher aims at explaining the notions of colonialism, otherization and other falsified images of non-Westerners in A Hologram for the King. This paper mainly questions Eggers’s portrayal of the protagonist, Alan Clay, who after bankruptcy and failure at home, flies to Saudi Arabia and capitalizes on the physical and moral assets of the Orientals in this country to convert his story of failure to a success. The characterization of the oriental world and its setting show Eggers’s being biased against the Eastern world and ironically mirror clear hints of colonialism and eurocentrism.

Постколоніальний вимір роману Венери Курі-Ґата «Полонянки мису Тенес»

The article aims to analyze a novel by the Franco-Lebanese writer Venus Khoury-Gata Les Fiancées du Cap Ténès (1995) in the light of the postcolonial discourse. The text is viewed through the lens of the writer’s irony, carnival and travesty as essential components of the writing, as well as of rereading History within postmodernism. The paper illustrates how the writer’s ironic representation serves to question imperialistic patterns, whereas the strategies of carnivalization and travesty appear as powerful tools for the novel’s heroines to take revenge against the colonial patriarchal reality and, ultimately, mystify History written by men.

Literary Interventions in Justice: A Symposium

The purpose of this symposium is to explore the ways in which literature, broadly construed to include poetry and narrative in a variety of modes of representation, can change the world by providing interventions in justice. Our approach foregrounds the relationship between the activity demanded by some individual literary works and some categories of literary work on the one hand and the way in which those works can make a tangible difference to social reality on the other. We consider three types of active literary engagement: doing philosophy, ideological critique, and necessary rather than contingent performance. Kate Kirkpatrick opens with Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation (2013), reading the narrator as not only a critic of colonial and postcolonial discourse but also a literary exemplar of the search for justice when it is difficult to know to what level of explanation to attribute its absence. Rafe McGregor demonstrates how the final season of Prime Video’s The Man in the High Castle (2015–19) makes a radical break from the previous three, exposing the misanthropy at the core of right-wing populism and calling for a fundamentally democratic response from the left. Finally, Karen Simecek argues that poetry in performance has a potentially reparative function for the ethically lonely – the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the persecuted – in society.