Postcolonial Context Research Articles

Social media and the form and content of Nigerian comic skits

The popularity of comic skits on Nigeria’s social media warrants the need to study the form and content of these pieces. This qualitative study examined the comic skits of Nigerian comedians: Taaooma, Mark Angel, Sabinus, and Bello Galadanchi. It employed Achille Mbembe’s ‘Theory of Postcolony’, as its theoretical framework and Netnography as its methodology, and revealed that the skits tackle the themes of gender roles, lingering effects of colonialism, social inequalities, religion, and corruption. Laughter becomes a tool for navigating power structures, critiquing social norms, and expressing discontent within a postcolonial context. The skits leverage short format (51s–4min) ideal for social media, employ slapstick, simple dialogue, visuals (clothing, facial expressions), cross-dressing (Taaooma) and single-actor portrayals of multiple roles (Taaooma, Galadanchi). Languages used include English, Nigerian Pidgin, and indigenous languages, accompanied by subtitles for wider accessibility. While sound effects punctuate jokes, heighten reactions, and establish mood, most of the skits follow the structure of Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, and Resolution. Social media comments indicated that the skits resonated with viewers, highlighting the popularity of certain skit makers across demographics and transnationally, implying a cross-cultural comic appeal, and the internet serving as a pan-African tool for sharing local culture.

Gender and postcolonial studies: history of the concept and debate.

The debate on the concept of gender in postcolonial studies is extremely complex and involves a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives. Postcolonial studies has shown the connection between gender identity, colonial power, and decolonisation processes. This paper will explore the social construction of gender in colonial contexts, the way in which colonial practises have influenced gender dynamics, and the struggles for resistance and freedom in which women and gender-nonconforming people have engaged in postcolonial countries. The issue will be raised of how gender is interpreted and experienced in different cultures and social contexts. Furthermore, the analysis of colonisation and decolonisation processes will provide a starting point to understand how gender hierarchies have been built and criticised in postcolonial contexts, leading to the development of the most recent ecofeminist and decolonial perspectives.

Remapping the connections between feminism and secularism: A study of the women’s movements in India and their engagements with religion

ABSTRACT Postcolonial elite inherit not only colonial institutions but also ideologies that animate future directions of institutional apparatus in their societies. This paper argues that the leadership of Women’s Movements in India (WMI) are influenced by their positions within the elite sections of Indian society and the ideologies that are in circulation therein. This also applies to their engagement with religion in contemporary India. It suggests that notwithstanding the efforts made by WMI to engage with difference in relation to the “religious other,” their praxis continues to remain captive to the social locations of its leadership, which in the context of India today remains predominantly urban, English speaking, professionally qualified, Hindu, and upper-caste. Drawing on empirical data and analyzing documented histories of WMI which record the movements’ engagement with religion in the colonized past and in contemporary postcolonial times, this paper attempts a remapping of the connections between feminism and secularism, both of which share a legacy with post Enlightenment liberal humanism, within the postcolonial context of India.

Food translation under occupation: Apples, identity, and resistance in Indian-occupied Kashmir

ABSTRACT In 2019, Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir was changed from an autonomous region to a union territory by the Indian government. On August 5, 2019 India cut off all internet and phone communication into and out of Kashmir and restricted movement into and out of the country. The shutdown occurred during the height of the apple harvest, and as apples rotted on trees and the harvest was lost, signs of resistance to the shutdown were written on the apples themselves. In this article we explore how apples translate as identity and resistance in the postcolonial context of Indian Occupied Kashmir. Using the communication blackout and ongoing occupation of Kashmir as a focal point, we examine how narratives about apples can be translated as a cultural discourse of agency, even as structured spaces for and means of resistance are increasingly eliminated by the Indian state. Central to our analysis are theoretical frames of translation, postcoloniality, and food system sovereignty and communication. We utilize dialogical narrative analysis as methodology to understand how the meanings of apples, a mundane but central part of everyday life for many, have communicated resistance, identity and agency during the last several years since the shutdown.

Trauma and Alienation in Post-Colonial Contexts: Analyzing Saadat Hasan Manto's Depiction of Psychological Deterioration

Trauma and Alienation in Post-Colonial Contexts: Analyzing Saadat Hasan Manto's Depiction of Psychological Deterioration

MUHAMMAD ASAD'S DESIGN OF AN ISLAMIC STATE IN POST-COLONIAL PAKISTAN

The paper aims to highlight Muhammad Asad’s epistemological postulate on Islamic politics as reflected in his works on Islamic state. It seeks to address these fundamental problems: what is the legal basis that support and establish Asad’s position of founding an Islamic state? and how could this idea fairly accommodates with the prevailing notion of nation state in post-colonial context. Thus, the study set forth to find the answers based on such range of objectives: to analyse the underlying ideas of Islamic state as advocated in the classical sources, to define the basic constitutional framework as developed by Asad in the context of historical Pakistan, to estimate the implication of implementing Islamic law and its impact on the global politics and its compatibility with international law. In this regards, Asad had formulated the constitutional ideas of Islamic state whose constitution contains the provision of Islamic law that practiced and implemented the norms stated in the Divine Writ. This ideas was partly enshrined in the Pakistan constitutional law whose political establishment was formed in 1947. The paper essentially discussed Muhammad Asad’s political ideas and its underlying philosophy as espoused in his works. The study conducted based on qualitative approaches of the type of library research. The data were analysed by way of descriptive, analytical and comparative technique. The finding shows that Muhammad Asad had formulated comprehensive theoretical framework of legal aspect of Islamic governance drawn up from the fundamental principle and doctrine of the shariah, and its moral norms deriving from the explicit Qur’anic and sunnah text, while also advocating democratic ideals and principles based on conventional practice and requirement of modern context of nation state. Based on this main finding, it is concluded that Islamic teaching and its spiritual norms were compatible with democratic ideal and values of human right, participatory and constitutional government as implemented in the democratic space of Pakistan.

ALIENATION, DIASPORA, AND GLOBALIZATION: REFLECTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION OF ANURAG MATHUR, ARUNDHATI ROY, AND MANJU KAPUR

In an era marked by unprecedented connectivity, the themes of alienation, diaspora, and globalization have become central to contemporary literature, especially in the works of Indian authors like Anurag Mathur, Arundhati Roy, and Manju Kapur. Their novels resonate with readers worldwide, portraying the impact of globalization on individual identities, familial ties, and societal norms. This paper explores how these authors portray the psychological, social, and cultural repercussions of globalization, displacement, and alienation, particularly through the lens of their protagonists. Focusing on Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans, Roy’s The God of Small Things, and Kapur’s Difficult Daughters and Home, this paper critically examines how these narratives offer nuanced perspectives on the Indian diaspora, the sense of alienation in a postcolonial context, and the impact of modernity on traditional values. Through an exploration of their unique approaches, this study sheds light on how these works reflect the challenges and transformations of contemporary India within a globalized world.

Postcolonial Ecofeminism in Arundhati Roy’s <i>The God of Small Things</i>

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things illustrates ecofeminism by creating hierarchical dualisms and identifying the victims within these structures. Ecofeminism in a postcolonial context analyses the intertwined systems of oppression that arise from the intersection of colonialism, patriarchy, and environmental exploitation. It explores how patriarchal domination and capitalist patriarchy together impact the postcolonial environment and its people. Thus, both ecological and feminist issues highlight the locus of the ‘Other’ or the ‘Subaltern,’ who are exploited by the ‘Superior Self’ in terms of class, caste, race, and gender in postcolonial society. Arundhati Roy exposes how the patriarchal structure of Syrian Christian society exacts a heavy toll on the protagonist Ammu, her children Estha and Rahel, and the untouchable Velutha. She also illustrates how capitalist patriarchy impacts the nature and environment of Ayemenem. Based on Roy’s novel, this essay will discuss concerns and consciousness against various injustices in postcolonial Indian society.

Holocaust Refugees in Bolivia: Immigration Through a Postcolonial and Microhistorical Lens

Abstract Jewish refugees who escaped the Holocaust by emigrating to Bolivia formed a vibrant Jewish community of around 20,000 for two decades and maintained a presence there until the 1970s. This article examines Bolivia as a place of migration and refuge during and after the Holocaust, and asks whether Eurocentric perspectives in postcolonial contexts have perpetuated the notion that Bolivia could not truly become a home for these refugees. In supporting European immigration for colonization, the Bolivian government sought to overcome an economic crisis caused by the Chaco War in the 1930s. During the peak emigration years of 1938 and 1939, Jewish families arrived from Germany and its annexed territories intending to rebuild a normal life. By focusing on one extended family and using a microhistorical lens, the article explores complex and layered experiences of prejudice. It analyses how migrants’ willingness or reluctance to engage with others through sport and music offers insights into forms of conviviality among individuals belonging to various social groups in a postcolonial context. Using archival documents, memoirs, and the video testimonies of Jewish survivors, this article presents Bolivia as an important refugee destination, thereby redressing its omission due to persistent epistemological shortcomings that have perpetuated its invisibility in this respect.

Edible Bodies? Conspicuous Consumption, Women’s Bodies and Postcolonial Masculinities in Fast-Food Advertisements in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT While existing scholarship has primarily focused on examining how women are often objectified and sexualised in fast-food marketing advertisements, this article shifts the focus to demonstrate how such advertisements reveal the construction, performance and negotiation of precarious masculinities. By concentrating on advertisements from a Zimbabwean fast-food chain, Mambo’s Chicken, this article argues that advertisements framing women as edible items offer insights into how precarious masculinities are constructed, performed and negotiated within the postcolonial context of Zimbabwe. Specifically, it examines the use of sexual humour, banter and innuendo in advertisements from Mambo’s Chicken, considering the complex issues inherent in conspicuous consumption and how they illuminate multifaceted insecurities that men navigate as they attempt to assert their dominance. This negotiation of masculinity occurs within a paradoxical context characterised by excessive consumerism and precarious economic conditions.

A heterotopic reading of heritage: The Village of Our Lady in Ka Ho, Macau

Postcolonial Macau is keen to celebrate its colonial legacy to preserve its cultural distinctiveness. This study explores the reordering of a Portuguese colonial site, the Village of Our Lady in Ka Ho, into an architectural heritage in the broader postcolonial context. Employing the Foucauldian concept of ‘other spaces’, specifically ‘utopia’ and ‘heterotopia’, the study argues for the heterotopic nature of heritage. It identifies the discourses and material representations of heritage, their construction and their mirroring of mainstream social ideals. Heritage as heterotopia is a conceptual entity that informs and is realised with material objects. The discourse takes heritage spaces as mediums for performances through symbolic loading on material objects to demonstrate the space's otherness. In addition, colonial nostalgia emerges as a dominant narrative in shaping urban identity. The primary proposition of this research is that heritage is made through othering, and the otherness of heritage is presented through performing. Heritage‐making transforms the site from a ‘heterotopia of deviation’ to a ‘heterotopia of performance’, which reveals the societal transition from early modernity that advocates for scientific knowledge to postmodernity that embraces neoliberalism, and then to the arriving era of post‐postmodernity based on performatism.

Reconceptualizing Journalists as a Fractured Interpretive Community: Updating the Journalistic Interpretive Community Framework for the 21st Century

Taking a discursive approach, this study applies the concept of metajournalistic discourse to the study of press freedom debates in a postcolonial context stretching from 1993 to 2023 between the Zimbabwean public and private press. Based on a textual analysis of press freedom debates, combined with interviews with various news media stakeholders held between December 2022 and January 2023 in Harare, the study finds support for the previous argument that the idea of journalistic interpretive communities does not really hold under contested contexts beyond liberal Western democracies. The study extends this idea by reconceptualizing journalistic communities beyond liberal Western democracies as fractured interpretive communities. The study further argues that rising polarization and epistemic contests under liberal Western democracies now threaten journalistic interpretive communities as previously understood. This is especially so for those journalists who operate under a contested and polarized news media and political environment, without a single dominant national ideology.

Reading W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney in a Postcolonial Context: Exploring Landscape and Identity

This article critically examines Ireland's postcolonial position, with a specific focus on the poetic works of influential Irish writers William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney. The exploration begins by delving into Ireland's historical and cultural context as a colonized nation, shedding light on the profound impact of English domination and the complexities of Irish history. Furthermore, the article draws parallels between the Irish experience and anticolonial movements in Third World countries, emphasising on the similar struggles in resisting colonization. The central argument posits that, having endured colonialism, both Yeats and Heaney actively contribute to the postcolonial discourse by employing themes of landscape and identity as distinct forms of resistance. Yeats, driven by a personal interest in mythology, mythologizes resistance against the colonizer through the revival of heroic deeds in his poetry. Conversely, Heaney engages in a subversion of the “us vs them” dichotomy, responding to the Empire through his works. The imagery of earth, depicted in his poetry, symbolises the connection between physical landscape to Irish identity. By situating Yeats’ and Heaney’s poetry within a postcolonial framework, this article seeks to acknowledge their collective contribution as a form of "writing back to the Empire," thereby enriching the discourse surrounding Irish postcolonialism.

Indigenous eco-consciousness in recent Nigerian poetry: The example of Joe Ushie

Although the environment features prominently in the poetry of Joe Ushie, studies of his works have focused more on sociopolitical themes than on his eco-conscious engagement. Using Bette-Bendi indigenous epistemology as its conceptual framework, this article analyses how Ushie’s poetry addresses environmental issues by portraying the mutually dependent relation between humans and non-human agents. Since the environment is one of the central components of Ushie’s poetic vision, this article draws on the poet’s Bette-Bendi indigenous ecological imagination to explore the ways in which humans and their environments are interconnected. The article traces Ushie’s depiction of the way Bette-Bendi people see human and environmental values as inseparable. His poetry thus explores systems that can guide people’s relationship with the natural world in a postcolonial context; this article provides an alternative perspective to ecocritical reading of literary texts.

Invisibility and Hypervisibility: Rabindranath Tagore and His Self-Translated English Works in the Western World

Abstract Translation inherently involves grappling with cultural, power, and knowledge dynamics. It encompasses the shaping of ideas by those in control and the influence of translation on the perception of cultures, peoples, and texts. While translation can empower marginalized voices, it may also reinforce power imbalances by favoring dominant languages and cultures in colonial contexts. Translation is a crucial instrument in shaping, reflecting, and challenging global power dynamics. Lawrence Venuti classifies translation strategies into domestication and foreignization, associating the former with Anglo-American hegemony and the latter as a challenge to Western cultural dominance. He suggests that these strategies result in different outcomes for translators’ visibility: domesticating translators go unnoticed, while foreignizing translators emerge from obscurity. However, the translation practices in colonial and postcolonial contexts demonstrate that Venuti’s binary categories may oversimplify the complexities of translation activities. Rabindranath Tagore’s self-translation from Bengali into English complicates Venuti’s theory, as both domesticating and foreignizing translations coexist. Tagore, as a translator, and his English audiences engage in both strategies. His foreignization goal, introducing Indian culture to the West, is achieved through domesticating his poetry for acceptance. Simultaneously, his English readers adopt both approaches, connecting Tagore’s writing to the English literary tradition while exoticizing differences. This results in Tagore transitioning from invisibility to hypervisibility, but within two decades, he fades into obscurity in the Western world. Tagore’s experience underscores that pursuing visibility exclusively or relying solely on foreignizing translation strategy cannot effectively challenge Western hegemony. Instead, efforts should be made to safeguard against the pervasive influence of imperial power in the cultural exchange between the non-Western (English-speaking) world and the West (English-speaking world).

A new model of distilling religion: culturalization as marginality

ABSTRACT The culturalization of religion has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years as a compelling restatement of religion in the secular public sphere. Existing research has focused primarily on Western contexts where Christianity, as the dominant religion, is relabelled as culture in order to sanction its continued presence in the secular and multi-religious public sphere. Building on the treatment of non-majority religions in postcolonial contexts, particularly in contemporary Ghana, the article proposes a second model of culturalization in which non-dominant religions undergo culturalization as a sign of marginalisation, restriction, and exclusion. The model of culturalization adopted, the article argues, is determined by the presumed compatibility of the given religious tradition with a specific understanding of ‘modernity’. Looking at culturalization as a form of marginality adds much-needed regional and thematic breadth to the ongoing discussion, as it allows for moving beyond the mostly Western Christian framework to include post-colonial and post-imperial contexts.

Flirtations with Eros from a Black-Eyed Squint: Romantic Love in the Oeuvre of Ama Ata Aidoo

ABSTRACT: What's love got to do with it? Everything—suggests Ama Ata Aidoo, whose oeuvre, virtually without exception, foregrounds romantic love as part of a woman's well-being, obstacles to which constitute a decidedly feminist concern. Throughout Aidoo's career, her fiction highlights romantic love as the human relationship that has the greatest potential to achieve social justice, since it often transgresses boundaries of ethnicity, race, class, and various social taboos. At a personal level, union through love represents a reconciliation of broader political differences. In this sense, as in a range of others to be considered, the personal is shown to be political. Romantic love in Aidoo's project, furthermore, has the catalytic potential to transform and bring into congruence disjunct social relations, which, in a postcolonial context, disproportionately impact the lives of African women. The earliest recognition of the significance of eros in Aidoo's meditation was an unconscious one, where she echoed the dominant assumption of the African literary scene at the time, which saw love as a trivial personal concern. In a provocative self-critique, Aidoo reverses her earlier position when she acknowledges her own preoccupation with love across her career. A careful study of Aidoo's work suggests, however, that despite its power, romantic love finally is beset by obstacles to its realization, which leave social barriers in place and patriarchal structures untransformed. This black-eyed squint clearly does not see the world through rose-tinted glasses.

"Go Back to Learn": Race, Identity, and Interpretation in Chibundu Onuzo's Sankofa

ABSTRACT: In Sankofa , Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo's third novel, a mixed-race, middle-aged woman, Anna, begins to uncover her family's past and reconnects with her West African father after the death of her Welsh mother. I highlight the centrality of the West African concept of Sankofa (which refers to the need to know your history in order to be able to understand the present and move forward into the future) to both Afro-diasporic and postcolonial contexts in which people's access to their own history was taken away from them by an oppressive system. I demonstrate how Sankofa is particularly adept at rendering the protagonist's journey into the past. I also argue that the novel should be read on two levels: first, as a critique of Eurocentric racism (building on the insights of theorist of decolonization Frantz Fanon) and second, as a reflexive encouragement to readers to become careful interpreters, researchers, and critics.

Editor’s Introduction to the Special Issue: Reevaluating the Norms of Law and Governance in Islamic Legal History

This special issue explores the interplay of the norms of governance and Islamic law in Muslim societies, historically, from the eighteenth to late twentieth centuries, right at the moment when Western colonial powers arose to assert hegemony over the Muslim world. These four essays engage scholarly debates about continuities as well as discontinuities between historical and modern Islamic political–legal paradigms for state laws in imperial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts. Within this debate lies the opportunity to reexamine the modern legacies of early Islamic norms for law and governance as they intersected and diverged in novel ways.

English as a subtle technology of distraction in postcolonial contexts: undoing linguistic colonialism by linguistic coloniality

ABSTRACT This paper discusses how the political interplay between English-in-society and English-in-education policy in the Global South(s) facilitates what I term ‘English as a subtle technology of policy distraction’ in postcolonial spheres that were colonised by languages other than English. ‘English as a subtle technology of policy distraction’ is conceptualised and operationalised as a theoretical and analytical framework through which current issues in language planning and policy within postcolonial contexts where colonial languages such as French, Spanish, Russian and German, etc function as the first or second language are framed, justified, enacted, contested and critically examined. I unpack how the state, politicians, officials and stakeholders make use of the political instrumentalization of English to assign credibility to their discourses that overshadow the core issues and root causes of the crises in the Moroccan education sector such as contract teachers, lack of infrastructure, classroom crowdedness and successive unsuccessful reforms. Political instrumentalization enables scholars to deconstruct the process of gaining access to the political implications of a technical subject (language in education) and its intersection with wider social problems (coloniality, dependency, insufficient quality of education …) which previously had not been treated politically.