Postcolonial Critique Research Articles

Farewell to Tensions for Post-independence Algerian and Nigerian Populations: ‘Hybrid Affirmation’ as a Postcolonial Proposition

ABSTRACT Through the novels of Maissa Bey’s Bleu Blanc Vert and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, this article examines the legacy of colonialism on post-imperial societies. Both novels engage with the relationship between culturally hybrid people and their compatriots, who are against the cultural colonial legacy in post-independence Algeria and Nigeria. This article contends that these texts can be interpreted as an appeal to settle tensions vis-à-vis the colonial legacy in post-independence societies, and to create a bond of solidarity between members of the same society. The article examines the social tensions that the culturally hybrid subjects experience in the novels, and proposes the concept of ‘hybrid affirmation’ as a way of coming to terms with the cultural colonial heritage. Although displacement, alienation, and rejection characterise the nature of the everyday life of Algerian and Nigerian post-independence people, affirmation of the self, trust and stability mark the attitude of the culturally hybrid characters by the end of both novels. Such an attitude is defined as the ‘hybrid affirmation’ of the postcolonial individual. The concept of ‘hybrid affirmation’ is intended to eliminate the gap that has long been widened by conflicts about the cultural colonial legacy. ‘Hybrid affirmation’ seeks to reframe postcolonial criticism so that characteristics such as strength and determination become attributed to the postcolonial individual instead of loss, disillusionment and displacement. Finally, ‘Hybrid affirmation’ implies ceasing conflicts about the cultural colonial heritage that exist between members of the same society in Algeria and Nigeria.

The Queer Lives of Victorian Feminist Criticism

ABSTRACT Histories of Victorian queer studies often start with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Between Men (1985). In these historiographies, sexuality remains the center of scholarly inquiries and eventually comes to stand for forms of “queerness.” Seeking to expand our understanding of “queerness,” this article traces alternative histories of Victorian queer studies through feminist historicist and postcolonial criticism in the 1980s and 1990s. Writing against the first wave of feminist criticism, these studies problematize the figure of the domestic woman and theorize her queerness through different lenses. By exploring the conflicting and often contradictory process of gender-making in the nineteenth century, feminist historicists foreground the “gender trouble” of the domestic woman and her queer potential. Such queer potential, however, is subsequently located in the context of English imperialism by postcolonial feminist scholars, who revisit the ambivalent relationship between domestic femininity and imperial ideology, thereby highlighting the intertwined processes of gender- and empire-making in Victorian England. Simultaneously building on and revising contemporary queer theory, these works not only constitute alternative histories of Victorian queer studies but also point to its possible futures.

Xiqu 2.0

Xiqu 2.0 designates an experimental approach to adapting and updating the classical theaters of the Sinophone region (xiqu) and a form of expanded Chinese opera in digital times. It highlights strategies of versioning and serialization of classical texts and tropes in (post-)modern performance environments and foregrounds media and textual interactivity, networking, and participatory contexts of production, reception, and circulation—including the production, reception, and circulation of cultural memory in the contemporary Sinosphere. The stage practice of Hong Kong–based multi-genre artist Danny Yung of Zuni Icosahedron and his long-term work with Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion (1598) illustrate the multiple dimensions of xiqu 2.0. Representative productions include the digital Kun opera Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind (2002, 2016) and the series The Interrupted Dream, launched in 2018. The latter links Tang's oneiric imaginary to the postcolonial critique of orientalism through references to seventeenth-century chinoiserie at the court of Louis XIV. Updated for livestreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, the series served as a virtual channel of mediated memory across the digital Sinosphere in the aftermath of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests and as a commentary on ancien and modern regimes, past and present revolutions, old and new Chinese dreams.

Vozes do Sul: conversações pós-coloniais e decoloniais

Abstract Over the last ten years, although a certain amount of critical effort has gone into bringing the debates around Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies closer together, these two areas still remain on opposite or different sides of a debate that is often heated and irreconcilable. Particularly at the beginning of the current century, following the publication of Walter Mignolo's (2000) Local Histories/Global Designs, much of the postcolonial criticism found itself on a collision course with decolonial discourse. In the same way, the main authors of the Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality group became critics of Postcolonial Studies by formulating the bases of Decolonial thought under the concept of the “Decolonial Turn”, which demands a disconnection and break with the Western structures of thought, under which Postcolonialism built its responses to the literature of the former colonialist empires. In this sense, this text intends to investigate the theoretical path that culminates in the break between Decolonial and Postcolonial studies, and our aim is to open up questions that can favor dialogue between the two theoretical fields and also open up possibilities for a South-South dialogue based on a new understanding of the new and old epistemologies.

Reflections of Postcolonial Trauma in Lisa Ko’s The Leavers

The term "trauma" is used to describe ambiguous and long-term harms. The study of psychological trauma has led to the creative representation of literary trauma. Even though the cultural trauma theory is increasingly criticized as being unsuitable for the research agenda of postcolonial studies, the diversity and expanding number of responses to it in postcolonial criticism show the theory's continued appeal. The key question in the discussion of trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies is still whether trauma theory can be successfully "postcolonized" in the sense of being usefully combined with postcolonial theory. Maybe this is one of the unique abilities of literary criticism: to develop the capacity to recognize connections that we were previously unaware of. The search shows the significance of finding closure to transcend past ordeals. The search is an analytical study of Lisa Ko’s novel Leavers. It gives a brief background to the novel and the novelist which displays in what way the novel tackles postcolonial trauma. The main two characters who suffer trauma show the possibility of trauma recovery by achieving their closures. The novel succeeds in depicting trauma and achieving recovery through the main character’s pursuit to find his closure. The study also demonstrates that despite the multiplicity of traumatic causatives, victims have significant symptoms, and their lives and destiny are contingent on their abilities to achieve closure.

Exploring the geographies of transnational higher education in China

AbstractThis paper contributes to debates about the globalisation of higher education by providing a pioneering geographical exploration of Chinese–foreign cooperation in running transnational higher education, or TNHE, programs. Departing from widespread neoliberal and postcolonial critiques of TNHE, which tend to emphasise liberal market forces and Anglo‐American hegemony in the circulation of academic knowledge, our study examines how the Chinese state’s developmental targets, strategic policies, and political–ideological considerations have shaped the evolutionary trajectory, geographical distribution, and cross‐border connections of China’s TNHE programs. We demonstrate that the place‐based development of TNHE is mediated by governments’ interventionist policies and embedded in existing higher education regimes, especially in the context of East Asian developmental states. By maintaining a higher education system dominated by public universities and by being the ultimate examination and approval authority, the Chinese government both determines the status of TNHE in the national higher education system, constrains the typologies and sources of knowledge flows, and shapes the national landscape of TNHE development. The territorial geographies of TNHE thus reflect complicated interactions between the state and the market, the global and the local, and economic and political/cultural forces.

Social Fragmentation in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Head’s Maru: A Comparative Study

This qualitative research sought to do a comparative analysis of social fragmentation in Things Fall Apart and Maru. Textual analysis was employed to analyse, interpret and evaluate the two novels in the light of postcolonial criticism, focusing on otherness. The researchers engaged the texts in multiple readings to gain a descriptive understanding of them and take descriptive notes at every stage of reading. Excerpts were purposefully sampled from the novels and analysed thematically. The study revealed that in pre-colonial Africa, social fragmentation resulted from classism, patriarchy and bad tradition; hence, the society operates in a binary relationship. In colonial Africa, social fragmentation resulted from religion and racism. However, post-colonial Africa experienced the deepest form of social fragmentation; spiced by tribalism and other pre-colonial factors. The study concluded that both novels confirm the concept of ‘otherness’. So, future research can focus on emotional and structural fragmentations.

Cultural Intermingling in Ahmad Ali’s “Twilight In Delhi”: A Post-Colonial Criticism

This study centers on post-colonial textual reading and interpretive analysis of the novel “Twilight in Delhi” by Ahmad Ali. The method used in this research is qualitative. Some quotations in the form of words and sentences are quoted from the novel to support the analysis. Having an inclusion of a mission in this book, which is non-fiction and genuine work that talks about Muslims’ life during the colonial era in the Sub-continent. Ahmad has written this book and presented every aspect of Muslims’ life in that era, their culture and daily life, their revolt and favoritism towards colonizers, and the unique and mixed-up traits of Muslim culture with other cultures. Post-Colonial theory is applied to the study and selected passages are textually analyzed in terms of Post-Colonial Criticism of Culture. The study emphasizes the presentation of Muslim culture in Ahmad Ali’s Novel Twilight in Delhi.

Planetary rural geographies

This paper proposes planetary rural geographies to counter the narrative of planetary urbanisation, which has contended that the whole planet has been urbanised and can be understood through urban theory without an outside. Whilst critics have challenged the metrophilia inherent to planetary urbanisation, advanced post-colonial critiques, and posited alternative models of ruralisation, we argue that these responses fall short of fully embracing the radical potential of a planetary perspective. We call for planetary rural geographies that examine rural places as sites of interaction between diverse more-than-human relations that extend above and below the Earth surface and contend that the configuration of human–environment interactions at the ‘rural’ end of urban–rural relations is critical to addressing planetary crises. We elaborate this argument by focusing on three geographies of planetary rurality: as a space of crisis, as a space of conflict, and as a space of hope, evidenced by examples drawn from the global rural literature.

Intellectual humility and religion/spirituality: a scoping review of research

ABSTRACT Intellectual humility (IH) is a promising construct that has often been linked to religion and spirituality (R/S). In this paper, we provide a narrative review of the literature on this intersection, analyzing articles (n = 43) found through database searches. Consistent with previous reviews and critiques, we find that definitional confusion around IH is exacerbated by inconsistencies in how it is related to R/S and that empirical research has been mostly limited to cross-sectional studies. We call for greater interdisciplinary collaboration, more care in relating R/S to definitions of IH, and consideration of the relevance of apophatic theologies (i.e. so-called ‘negative’ theologies that emphasize what cannot be known about the divine) and relational spirituality in making connections between IH and R/S. We also note that the research on IH and R/S has largely focused on Christianity. We conclude by offering feminist and postcolonial critiques of IH in relation to R/S.

Alternative curricular experiences for young prisoners

Despite the rhetoric of the Strategic Framework for European Cooperation in Education and Training (ET2020) to prison education – in particular, the learning needs of people excluded from policy and the recent research that emphasizes the crucial role of education for young prisoners’ personal development, and for their rehabilitation reducing the chances of recidivism (e.g., Jonck et al., 2015) in the Greek context, it seems that educational policies do not meet young prisoners’ educational needs (Petsas, 2017). We report on a project that directly addressed the inappropriate curricula and texts, and teachers’ lack of preparation for this population’s needs. The project ACTinPRISON (https://actinprison.sed.uth.gr)[1] pursued empowerment of young prisoners by creating common spaces between “insiders” --young prisoners-- and “outsiders” –the academic team and students/prospective teachers. Our “common spaces” framework mitigated the dominant, disciplinary, prison discourse with the perspective and techniques of Critical Communicative Methodology (CCM) for developing mathematics and language literacy. This challenged symbolic boundaries separating the two groups by using co-creation of mathematics to foster equal participation and interaction. The initial needs analysis phase of the project introduced young prisoners to the idea and practice of research as a matter of participatory practice, and incorporated important mathematics concepts and skills within jointly constructed community-building activities. Likewise, moments of open-ended discussion were effective as emergent language and mathematical literacy events The second project phase applied that experience to the preparation of university students for entering the prison, followed by the university students and young prisoners working together in the common spaces inside prison. Again, mathematical activities evolved as extensions of the information regarding their funds of knowledge. Work sometimes integrated this knowledge into theatrical play, at other times the group exploited mathematics contexts as here-and-now moments of group development. These experiences afforded the expression of situated mathematical concepts through informal mathematical language as the young prisoners were exposed to the idea of a mathematics register. We report on our persistent pursuit of a transition to scientific language use in this educational context despite the complexity of this challenge. (Resource limitations combined with super-diverse sociolinguistic repertoires and literacy backgrounds of the participants were treated as opportunities rather than obstacles). The ACTinPRISON project extends previous action creating common spaces with young prisoners and prospective teachers (http://cospirom.sed.uth.gr) that identified the need for new participatory practices to challenge typical research protocols. This new work responds through joint mathematically-rich activity to post-colonial critiques of research with marginalized populations. Such critiques often describe research as a “dirty word” (Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021), because it perpetuates forms of hierarchy and injustice. We counteracted this concern by inviting young prisoners to be co-researchers of their experiences. The examples we present here result from bottom-up extra-curricular experiences involving mathematical ideas. We discuss how such an atypical “school framework” challenges together numerous expectations of both traditional mathematics education and commonsense discourse of prison life. Based on this project experience, we propose in our conclusion the potential for co-constructed needs analysis research to set the stage for informed curriculum development when working with disenfranchised learners who research their own needs. We also discuss the challenges of making this kind of work sustainable and institutionalized.

R.A. Kartini’s Letters: The Emergence of the Subaltern?

This study investigates R.A. Kartini’s letters to find out how her published letters represent the emerging of the subaltern voice. Using postcolonial criticism, this study scrutinizes ways in which Kartini’s letters show traces of the Dutch colonialism’s ideology and interprets the letters as challenging the Dutch’s purposes and hegemony. Focusing on Kartini’s concerns regarding colonized women’s position in society and their education, Kartini’s letters show her mimicry and ambivalence of her identity as a colonized subject. The publication of her letters enable her subaltern voice to be heard.

Durkheim, Religion, and the Postcolonial Critique of Sociology’s Eurocentrism

In light of the postcolonial critique of Eurocentrism, the epistemological foundations of sociology and the legacies of classical sociologists have certainly become controversial. Postcolonial critiques of sociology’s Eurocentrism have denounced the “parochial” nature and limitations of the theoretical contributions left by Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, the reductive and stereotyping orientation of the “primitivist” and/or “orientalist” representations of non-Western peoples that can be identified in their work, and the incomplete and misleading accounts of the Western processes of modernization that we have inherited from them, which fail to fully address and satisfactorily account for the realities of modern Western forms of colonialism and imperialism. However, the nature and consequences of Durkheim’s specific sociological Eurocentrism raise opposing views within postcolonialism. This article aims to evaluate the pertinence of the divergent and sometimes contradictory postcolonial appraisals of Durkheim’s Eurocentrism by focusing particularly on the controversies generated by his sociological approach to religion. Placing Durkheim’s sociological project within both the academic field and the socio-political context in which it took shape, this article highlights the shifting relevance and the implications of his evolving sociological approach to this object of study in his science of morals. Although it is not exempt from inconsistencies and Eurocentric assumptions, Durkheim’s sociological approach to religion leaves an invaluable legacy for a non-dualistic sociological understanding of the rituals through which humans (re)create their social identities and their forms of belonging and solidarity. In line with the priorities of some postcolonial agendas, it can fully reveal its explanatory potential in the sociological investigation of modern and contemporary interethnic and racial conflicts and forms of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

The Practices and Positionings of a Postcolonial Counterpublic: An Analysis of Black Lives Matter in Denmark

Drawing on postcolonial critique to analyze the work and political purpose of activist groups on social media, this article asks the question: How do digital media communications simultaneously reinstate binary oppositions and invite rhizomatic relations? While the concept of counterpublics is helpful when it comes to understanding the voices of opposition in public discourse, it is also necessary to introduce postcolonial critique and geopolitical and historical distinctions in order to grasp the particularities of global digital activism (Brouwer and Paulesc 2017; Blaagaard 2018). This article does exactly that: Illustrating the postcolonial, hybrid, and cosmopolitan qualities of digital activism on social media platforms, the article presents a discursive analysis of Black Lives Matter Denmark (BLM-DK) as they operate on the social media platform Facebook. The group’s posts are dedicated to juridical and political struggles over discrimination and racial violence in Denmark and the United States, thus producing a counterpublic. The posts moreover introduce and connect two very different geopolitical and historical contexts, thus showing social media’s potential for creating rhizomatic relations.

After rights, after Man? Sylvia Wynter, sociopoetic struggle and the ‘undared shape’

ABSTRACT Decolonial and post-colonial critiques have shown how rights naturalise a normatively white, Western bourgeois, and appropriative subject, while negating other forms of being and subjectivity. Given the disquiet around rights and their subject, reimagining the subject of rights calls on us to think ‘after rights?’. Thinking ‘after rights?’, and insisting on the question mark, I argue, entails seeking the ‘undared shape’ (Aimé Césaire) of rights untethered from the figure of sovereign Man. Sylvia Wynter’s historical-philosophical critique of Man, and search for the human ‘after Man’, are central for understanding the colonial-modern order and the role of rights within this. Extending Wynter’s orientations, I first analyse how rights are implicated in modernity-coloniality’s material and symbolic violences. Second, I examine Wynter’s amplification of sociopoetic struggles – those wide-ranging modes of sociality and cultural, survival practices – by Man’s enslaved and colonised Others. Such struggles aimed to displace Man as locus of colonial-modern structures, forging new meanings and modes of world-making untethered from this hegemonic figure. Importantly for rights and world politics scholarship, sociopoetic struggles work with abolitionist-reparative intent towards modernity-coloniality and its master subject. Finally, I consider what renarrating the human outside Man's horizon – as abnormative, insovereign and anti-individualist praxis – means for human rights.

Repairing Repair: Postcolonial Paranoia, Affective Temporalities, and Reparative Reading

Abstract: Recent work at the intersection of affect theory and postcolonial studies has generally been skeptical of the reparative turn and concerned about its potential complicity with imperialist agendas. That skepticism is often accompanied by reaffirmations of the value of paranoia as a reliable basis for critique. This essay examines the consequences of paranoia as the default orientation of postcolonial criticism and reflects on how a reparative sensibility might expand the field's understanding of what constitutes meaningful critique. To that end, this essay argues that reparative reading cultivates attentiveness to the ecology of temporalities that are immanent in postcolonial texts—an attentiveness that can facilitate the envisioning of alternative futures. The essay grounds its theoretical reflections by revisiting Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters (1990) and examining the predominantly paranoid critical response that the novel has generated before offering an alternative reparative reading of the work.

UNHEARD VOICES: THE LOCATION OF WOMEN AS OTHERNESS IN JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is a postcolonial story in which Antoinette, the Creole lady, is portrayed as the crazy woman in the attic. Thus, it is possible to see why Antoinette as a protagonist misses her identity and how madness works in a colonial and patriarchal culture by examining the connections between race and gender in Rhys' novel in light of Ania Loomba's ideas about colonialism and postcolonialism and linking it to psychoanalytic feminism with Julia Kristeva's notion of the abject. Race and gender are employed as metaphors for one another and to dehumanize the other among us, driving it insane. Postcolonial critics have debated Antoinette's otherness as a result of colonial rule; whereas, feminist theorists have frequently emphasized the patriarchal aspect of society and the connection between madness and the mother-daughter relationships of the novel. This study focuses on otherness and lunacy, which contains not only colonizer-colonized, male-female, and mother-daughter connections but also self-repression in a patriarchal and colonial culture, leading to Antoinette’s alienation and loss of identity. Overall, black women as being enslaved are picturized as ugly, something without an owner.

Ontological Security: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Normalization With the Gulf Cooperation Council in Exit 7

This study employs a postcolonial critique of Middle East Broadcasting Center's Saudi television show, Exit 7, around the issue of normalization. The authors argue that episode 3 of Exit 7 showcases a new shift in Middle Eastern relations with Israel. The show demonstrates a deep-rooted change in ontological security of the Arab region and the globe at large, disrupting the routines of Arab individuals and calling into question their national identity, which for the most part, was anti-Israel. The authors explore ontological security at both a state level and a structural level in terms of the audience's relation to popular culture and the media. Through state-controlled media, they argue that Saudi Arabia can incrementally introduce new narratives that challenge long-standing animosities toward Israel and cultivate a sense of ontological security, which may, over time, further mask the apartheid occurring in Israel.

Crowds, Race, Colonialism: On Resuscitating Classical Crowd Theory

Abstract: Crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon is often seen as emblematic of fin-de-siècle crowd theory. Widely read in the 1890s, Le Bon's work was later critiqued for its gendered descriptions and political biases. This essay reconsiders fin-de-siècle crowd theory in light of postcolonial critique and asks whether parts of this tradition merit attention in discussion of crowd action today. While Le Bon's work is based on a racial hierarchy and subscribes to a colonial episteme, the situation is more complex when it comes to sociologists such as Gabriel Tarde and Émile Durkheim. While elements of their work can be subjected to postcolonial critique, their theorization on crowds points to distinctly collective dimensions of crowd action that are important to revive.

Southern Lights: Octavio Paz's “Glimpses of India” and the Art of Relation

Abstract This article analyzes the articulation of south-south relation in Octavio Paz's In Light of India (1995) and A Tale of Two Gardens: Poems from India, 1952-1995 (1997), works of prose and poetry that traverse the antipodes of Mexico and India. These works emphasize partial viewing, repeated comparison, and cultivated sense-perception. They model a poetics of the glimpse, an effect of the play of light and shadow and a privileged mode of seeing for Paz. To glimpse is to see without clarity, control, or complete knowledge. It is to find oneself in the other. Paz's writing anticipates twenty-first-century projects that relate artists and intellectuals in the global south such as the School of the South (2022) programs of the Johannesburg Contemporary Art Foundation inspired by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García's formulation from 1935. His comparative method suggests new directions for global art history and postcolonial critique.