Postcolonial Nation Research Articles

Fissured legacies in Roysten Abel's In Othello

In Othello (2003) offers both a critique and inadvertent affirmation of racial and colonial hierarchies and a reflection on the postcolonial nation. The film fosters Orientalist sensibilities via a fetishisation of ‘otherness’, in order to subvert it. It is a hybrid and ambivalent production in which the characters possess intersectional identities that are always multiple, in line with Hindu philosophy. This hybridity can also be observed in the mixture of traditions on which the film is based, and as such, it serves as a ‘rhizomatic interrelation’. The film shows how Shakespeare's play may provide a meditation on the Indian nation, where issue ssuch as transgressive romance, ostracisation, and gender roles remain unsettled.

The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction

The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction

Developing a Trauma-Informed Culturally-Based Intervention (TICBI) Approach for Refugee Resettlement Practices

Trauma-informed interventions have recently received more attention in the field of refugee resettlement and mental health. Although these interventions can be helpful to all trauma survivors, our model offers enhanced and cultural-based practice benefiting war-related trauma survivors, especially those from Post-Colonial nations. This model is based on needs identified by participants and collaboratively developed with the research team and the community. Our community-based participatory research (CBPR) began with three objectives. The first was to explore the current use of culturally-based, trauma-informed interventions and to assess service users’ (SUs) and service providers (SPs) experiences. This was accopmlished by collaborating with a local community agency. The second objective was to identify service needs and gaps. The third objective involved working with the project’s steering community members to develop a more effective model of interventions that can be used by resettlement and mental health agencies supporting refugees. During analysis, we examined the unique challenges identified by SUs and SPs to create a trauma-informed culturally-based intervention model (TICBI).We used a mixed-method study involving focus groups, individual interviews, and surveys with 23 service users (SUs) and 20 service providers (SPs). The barriers identified by the SUs included lack of access to needs-based assistance, cultural and linguistic misunderstandings, and marginalization. The barriers identified by the SPs included lack of structural/organizational support, lack of funding, large caseloads, and burnout risk.

Coloniality and the Mbuya Nehanda Statue: A Decolonial Analysis of Twitter Users’ Comments

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates debates that took place after the erection of the statue of Mbuya Nehanda, a Zimbabwean liberation war heroine. The paper employs thematic analysis and [Thompson, J. B. 1990. Ideology and Modern Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press] ideological schema to explore the underlying discourses and ideological assumptions evoked by the tweets that circulated on the Mbuya Nehanda Twitter hashtag (#MbuyaNehanda). Considering Twitter as an agonistic space of contestation and resistance, the paper examines the political and cultural significance of the Mbuya Nehanda statue at this moment in Zimbabwe’s history, bringing into focus the contestations over history, culture, and memory in the postcolonial nation. Findings reveal that the state’s politicisation of the memory of Mbuya Nehanda foils its attempt to create a collective remembering of her due to the fragmentations that exist in the postcolonial nation. This paper goes beyond critiquing the manifest discourses and tensions between the citizens and the state to consider the possibilities offered by the Mbuya Nehanda statue as a harbinger of new knowledges, not only relating to the continuities and discontinuities of colonial history and the present but to African spirituality as well. Using decolonial perspectives informed by epistemologies of the South, the article argues for epistemic pluriversality that recognises diverse forms of knowledge and diverse ways of being.

New Ideas in the Historical Analysis of the Nation Phenomenon in the Post-Colonial Countries of Asia and Africa (D.M. Bondarenko. Post-Colonial Nations in the Historical and Cultural Context. Mosсow, 2022)

New Ideas in the Historical Analysis of the Nation Phenomenon in the Post-Colonial Countries of Asia and Africa (D.M. Bondarenko. Post-Colonial Nations in the Historical and Cultural Context. Mosсow, 2022)

What’s in a Label? Articulating Identity through Certification Schemes in Greenlandic Post-Colonial Nation Building

In this article, we explore the connection between industrial certification schemes and the articulation of identity within a broader context of Greenlandic independence. As a heuristic tool to explore ethno-political visions and interferences that emerge from the process of national independence, we draw on three sustainability labels used within the Greenlandic fisheries, hunting and tourism sectors. Drawing on their framings of sustainability, we examine whether and in what ways voluntary marked-based certification schemes under the auspices of the Greenland Self-rule Government add to how research has previously defined Greenlandic identities. We further discuss how these certification schemes contain, speak to, support, or contest ethno-national categories with relevance to Greenlandic nation building. In conclusion, we argue that certification regimes in Greenland draw on old as well as emerging categories of collective identity, contributing to the continuous repositioning of Greenland’s key economic sectors in post-colonial nation building.

Language-in-Education Policy and Academic Performance of Students: the Case of Tanzania

This article explores language-in-education (LIE) policies within post-colonial contexts, with a specific focus on Tanzania. It provides a systematic exploration of the multifaceted factors that shape these policies and their profound impact on academic performance and educational outcomes in the country. Specifically, the article examines the relationship between policies prioritizing students’ mother tongue or familiar language and academic performance. Additionally, it assesses the influence of policies favouring the language of the past colonizer on academic outcomes in primary and secondary education. The theoretical foundation of this study is Critical Theory, a framework which illuminates the power dynamics and social inequalities inherent in policy development and implementation. It provides insights into how dominant linguistic groups exert influence in decision-making processes and how language policies perpetuate existing social hierarchies. The study holds significant research value, as it addresses the pivotal role of LIE policies in shaping educational outcomes and socio- economic opportunities within multilingual societies. It acknowledges the contentious nature of language and education debates within the African context, especially in primary education. A key contribution of this research is its holistic approach. Unlike studies that solely focus on academic performance metrics or isolated variables, it considers a wide range of societal, historical, and political factors that intersect with language policies. This comprehensive view allows for a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by English as a third language in Tanzania’s educational system. Furthermore, the study underscores the importance of engaging multiple stakeholders, ensuring teacher readiness, and incorporating the perspectives of students to effectively implement LIE policies. It emphasizes the need for increased government commitment and public awareness to develop inclusive and equitable policies that promote quality education and social justice. In conclusion, this article offers valuable insights into the complex landscape of LIE policies in Tanzania. It calls for a nuanced approach that considers the unique context of each post-colonial nation to develop pragmatic and equitable language policies conducive to desired educational outcomes.

State Regulation and Class Struggle in the Beedi Industry of Post-Colonial Malabar, 1947–1970

In post-independence India, as in many developing post-colonial nations, the capitalist class was dependent on the state to discipline the laborforce, and the rapid uptake of capitalist production methods prompted the new government to intervene aggressively in industrial labor relations. The main goal of postcolonial labor policy was to maintain peaceful labor relations at any cost in order to foster economic development. The newly elected government failed to help capitalists increase their profits through productivity growth, so the way forward was to impose restrictions on labor. Pro-capital labor legislation initially enabled capitalists to curb the mobility and resistance of workers. In due course, however, irrespective of how consistently or effectively labor regulations and repressive measures were enforced, the reaction of the working class heightened its political consciousness, and thus aggravated frictions between capital and labor. When the state resorted to labor welfare laws as a new strategy to reduce these conflicts, employers often fragmented production among smaller units (such as workshops and households) in order to dodge labor regulations. As a reaction to this production decentralization, the working-class movement created impediments to the process of continual capital accumulation.

“A Vast Bed of Combustible Fuel”

AbstractDoes climate change pose a crisis for the concept of nation-state sovereignty? This article explores how contemporary debates about climate and sovereignty are connected to deeper histories of empire and capitalism in the global South. Arguing against recent critical appraisals of sovereignty that emphasize the elision of nature from formal political and legal theory, the article reconstructs a genealogy of sovereign power in the major fossil fuel-producing territories of India spanning the nineteenth century to the present day. It brings to light three historical articulations of sovereignty that undergird contemporary modes of extractive dispossession enforced by the Indian state: the discovery of fossil fuels as subjects of sovereign power during an early colonial project to build prison complexes in Indian coal mines; the juridical remaking of “land” under Benthamite-inspired laws of “real property;” and the politicization of fossil fuels as an underground commons belonging to the abstract entity of the postcolonial nation.

Decolonizing Irishness: Assertions of Afro-Irish Self-Determination in Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley’s Seaview and Melatu Uche Okorie’s This Hostel Life

Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley's 2008 documentary film Seaview and Melatu Uche Okorie's 2018 short-story collection This Hostel Life raise questions about Ireland's postcolonial position on the economic and geographic periphery of Europe amid the added complexity of emerging racial formations. These texts critically depict the racial and cultural barriers that produce a voyeuristic bifurcation between an implied white Irish citizen and a racialized non-citizen. Seaview invokes this voyeuristic bifurcation to critique the segregation and isolation of asylum seekers detained in Direct Provision (DP) centres from the rest of Irish society. Yet moments of ambiguity in filmic strategies of who is looking and who is seen emphasize ongoing colonial and neocolonial histories that continue to impact identity formations in Ireland. The possibilities and limitations of representing Afro-Irish self-determination arises as a site of contestation in Okorie's 2018 collection of three stories This Hostel Life. The second short story, “Under the Awning,” is a frame narrative that reclaims the liminal elements of second-person narration to assert emerging forms of Afro-Irish self-determination. This story exposes layers of racialization as it also indicates multiple possible voices materializing across multiple possible Irelands. In the seemingly disparate genres and media of documentary film and the short story, Seaview and This Hostel Life structurally challenge Irish racial formations that conform to a default colonial white norm. Reading these texts together exposes connections between postcolonial national identity and colonial racial formations that postcolonial nations willingly or unwillingly inherit through globalized economies and internationally integrated immigration reforms. By critically challenging racializing contexts and narratives during and after the Celtic Tiger, Seaview and This Hostel Life expand the representational possibilities for Afro-Irish self-determination in twenty-first century Irish literature and film.

The Diamond from Banjarmasin: A Story in Facets

This article tells the socio-political life story of the Banjarmasin diamond that is on display in the Rijksmuseum’s nineteenth-century colonial room. How the diamond came into the possession of the Dutch in 1859 was not entirely clear, although both in the Netherlands and in Indonesia it is cited as a typical example of ‘war booty’ and ‘looted art’. It is therefore used in debates about contemporary identity formation, like the Dutch approach to their violent colonial past and Indonesian post-colonial nation building. But the stone has more to tell: stories about war and violent subjugation, about resistance and the co-optation of the local rulers, about trade and monopolization and about colonial pretension. On the basis of a provenance report written as part of the Pilot Project Provenance Research on Objects of the Colonial Era, this article aims to shed more light on various moments in the diamond’s life story, from mining to exhibition. This also makes it clear that the present-day debate about its painful history and its possible restitution to Indonesia will be not the conclusion but a brand-new chapter in the diamond’s long socio-political history.

‘To Name the Unnameable is a Curse’: Silence as an Enunciation of Trauma in Yvonne Owuor’s Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019)

Various studies have interrogated the language of silence as a powerful tool of communication. This paper adds to such studies by interrogating silence as an enunciation of trauma in Yvonne Owuor’s texts Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019). Focusing on the characters of Akai and Ajany in Dust and Munira and Ayaana in The Dragonfly Sea, this paper is a critical interrogation of how these characters use silence to narrate their traumas. The characters under interrogation embody silence as the language of trauma in this postcolonial nation. They seem plagued by the memories of the traumatic experiences they undergo and this hinders their ability to use speech to articulate their pain. The paper starts with an introduction that covers an overview of related literature and then goes on to explore the binaries between lack of verbal speech, oppression, resistance, and trauma as espoused by the female characters. This paper also analyses the depiction of violence and silencing of the female characters by the men in their lives and on a larger scale, the silence enforced by state machineries and its metaphoric function in this post-independent country. Therefore, interpreting silence offers a multiplicity of meanings and different layers and convergences of meanings upon which it may be interpreted. It also discusses breaking that silence, a signifier of healing. The study is based on Literary Trauma Theory and trauma theory tenets as advanced by the following trauma theorists: Cathy Caruth, Dominic LaCapra, Judith Herman, Maria Root, Alan Gibbs, and Laura Brown

Postcolonialism: Literary Applications of a Decolonizing Tool

Postcolonialism revolves around studying the effects of colonialism on cultures and discloses how European nations controlled "Third World" cultures and how the latter resisted cunning encroachments. It endeavors to decolonize postcolonial states from the political conditions to the cultural ones, as it contests the contemporary legacies of historical colonialism so as to break the present imbalances of power. Postcolonialism also seeks to criticize contemporary colonial ways by seeking powerful substantial change in postcolonial nations while celebrating the lost history of resistance as well. The purpose of this research study is to define postcolonialism and show how postcolonial literary theory is applied to examine texts produced by both the colonized and the colonizing forces. Also, it endeavors to contribute to the body of postcolonial literature and celebrate the lost cultural heritage of the colonized. To meet this end, this research investigation adopts an exploratory research design and uses searching and screening tools to examine, analyze and synthesize relevant first and secondary sources. The findings indicated that postcolonial literary theories, in their multidimensional and multidisciplinary nature, have proven practically useful in scrutinizing western literature, celebrating literary works by the colonized subaltern through giving voice to the tamed, stifled, and disdained intellectuals whose works disclose the truth behind the civilizing mission of colonialism which was nothing but a series of ideas and practices used to legitimize the establishment of overseas colonies to subject people. The results of this research study are significant in the way that they would not only enrich and further advance the existing canon of postcolonial literature but would also raise awareness of everyone investigating the power dynamics of the colonizer and the colonized. In this respect, it is therefore hoped that our dissertation deepens greater understanding and inspires respect, honor, and rehabilitation for the colonized.

Notes towards a historical, critical theory of memory constellations: Postcolonial nationalist memory in Michael Anthony’s King of the Masquerade

The historical and critical theory of memory constellations addresses two challenges in cultural memory studies: the detachment of memories from socio-historical contexts and the risk of critical concepts becoming dogmatic. Instead of imposing a memory concept top-down, memory constellations analyse cultural memories from the bottom-up by triangulating these with their historical precedents and the social conditions that enable the memories to emerge. The tensions, conflicts and contradictions between memory, genealogy and social conditions enable a fundamentally historical critique. The description of the steelpan in Michael Anthony’s novella King of the Masquerade and wider societal as well as transnational dynamics reveals a memory war that can be described as a memory constellation of postcolonial nationalist remembrance.

The African Nationalist Idea of Africa

This paper probes the impact of colonial designs in the fabrication of native subjectivities, which eventuated in toxic political identities that would later undermine the post-colonial nationalist project. African history was shaped by three discursive periods: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. The colonisation period deformed, distorted and adulterated Africa’s pre-colonial cultural landscape—its sense of selfhood. African nationalism was a response to this ontologically debilitated condition of African personhood resulting from the violence of self-serving European colonial modernity, which created a structured subjugation of the African ‘other.’ African colonial elites at once defined and epitomised various forms of African nationalism against European incursion. However, these African modernisers failed to grasp the historicity of such enduringly baneful identity politics, and were thereby often themselves cast into the vortex of social contradictions reflective of this history. Mamdani made this observation when he stated that in kick-starting the nation-building project after independence, post-colonial elites turned their backs on the history of colonialism and thus on their own history.Instead, they modelled their political imagination on the modern European state, the result being the nationalist dream was imposed on the reality of colonially imposed fragmentation, leading to new rounds of nation-building by ethnic cleansing. Consequently, African nationalism has invariably spread across large swathes of postcolonial Africa as it degenerated into odious ethnonationalism and chauvinism. Only through a deeper historical understanding of these colonial processes of African political identification can an we begin to understand how this once glorious African nationalism regressed into a dystopian one. This article draws on history to dissect this legacy of subjective forms of African self-understanding.

Decolonising education: critical reflections from India

Educational development within the postcolonial Indian Nation-state is integrally connected with the colonial history. Much like other postcolonial nations, modernisation of Indian society through education is a product of the “local history” and the “global design” of colonialism and contemporary processes of globalisation. The modern colonial imaginary has been predominant in shaping the “subject lessons” learnt by modern Indian elites. Though there were missionaries, some benevolent Europeans, and native intellectuals committed to the cause of education for the uplift of the Indian masses, the British Raj mostly promoted the education for the elites. This modern colonial imaginary also shaped Indian nationalism and the nationalist freedom movement led by the elites of the Indian society. Within a diverse class, caste, multi-ethnic and religious context, often this nationalist imaginary led to the suppression of subaltern voices. The establishment of the Modern Indian nation-state with a democratic constitution drafted by a constituent assembly with representation from all sections of the diverse Indian society (including 15 women from diverse backgrounds) and chaired by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a dalit[i] scholar and intellectual, promised the establishment of democracy and social justice. However, this paper argues that the constitutional promise cannot be fulfilled without decolonising the aims and objectives of education that serves the interest of specific elite groups. In order to decolonise education, it would be of utmost importance to align the aims and objectives of education with that of democratic education.

Mohamed Berrada’s game of remembering and forgetting: expanding the horizons of contemporary Arabic literature

ABSTRACTThis article analyses Mohamed Berrada’s novel Luʿbat al-nisyān (1987, The Game of Forgetting, 1996), focusing on the book’s unorthodox narrative design, where multiplicity, metafiction, and fragmentation are strategic tools that bring to light the author’s vision of (post)modernist literature in a postcolonial nation. The article examines how the novel’s compelling experimental quality and efficacious engagement of cultural and socio-political issues are at work, highlighting thereby the text’s commitment overtones. The novel embeds narrative multiplicity and fragmentation within a key dialectic that informs and runs through the entire text: remembering and forgetting. These two acts (remembering and forgetting) provide discursive spheres that enhance the imagination of both the author and the reader, who enter into an unspoken partnership to take the literary text into vast interpretive realms, thus expanding and elevating the horizons of contemporary Moroccan and Arabic literature. Overall, Berrada resorts to quintessentially (post)modernist techniques – such as multiplicity, fragmentation, and metanarrative – anchored in the overarching game/dialectic of remembering and forgetting in order to deliver implicit social and political critique.

Exploring Citizens Perception of the Police Role and Function in a Post-Colonial Nation

Before attempting to develop productive and harmonious working relationships between citizens and the police in a post-colonial society such as Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), it is imperative to initially gain a more precise understanding of the role and function of the police. This qualitative study suggested that the current role and function of officers is parallel to the colonial model of policing, where officers operated in a paramilitary manner. This model of policing was concerned with law enforcement and public order duties, which was highlighted as counterproductive for police and public relations. The model was also popular for police treatment based on citizens socioeconomic status. The results of this study suggest that police officers should implement a Service Oriented Policing approach (SOP), which could allow police officers to become proactively involved with communities and citizens, build stronger and increasingly productive relationships and be more effective and efficient as an institution.

Is colonial heritage negative or not so much? Debating heritage discourses and selective interpretation of Kulangsu, China

Heritage is in essence dissonant, especially colonial heritage in postcolonial nations. Via questionnaire surveys and interviews, this study investigates Kulangsu in Xiamen, China, a colonial heritage site mainly developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, to unveil the local government’s authorised heritage discourse (AHD) of the site and how tourists perceive the colonial past of Kulangsu and construct their own heritage discourse(s). Results show that, when considering the colonial history of the site, neither the AHD promoted by the authorities nor the tourists’ lay discourses are necessarily negative. However, tension implicitly arises between the tourists’ demand for comprehensive heritage information and the authorities’ selective interpretation of the site. Although the AHD affects lay discourses to some extent, most tourists expect the authorities to present more complete and neutral information about heritage so they can reflect and forge their own conception of colonial legacies. From a critical heritage studies perspective, this tension reflects the power imbalance between the authorities and the tourists and reminds the authorities and heritage experts to rethink heritage tourism and conservation in terms of heritage interpretation. This paper, therefore, calls for additional reflection on the legitimacy of selective interpretation, which implicates a complex process of intricate reasoning that is underpinned by the power imbalance between the authorities and the tourists, ultimately resulting in an AHD.

Decolonising Museum Practice in a Postcolonial Nation: Museum’s Visual Order as the Work of Representation in Constructing Colonial Memory

AbstractThe study of colonialism and its legacies have mostly left the category of memory studies. However, for the colonised subject, what they experienced in the past inevitably forms their present and future discourse. This study focuses on how the museum’s visual order articulates colonial memory. By looking at the work of representation, in this context museum’s visual order, this study investigates how memory lives on through the circulation of colonial memory that the museum simulates. Museum’s visual order translates how colonial memory should be remembered and celebrated as public knowledge. Although research on how museums affect society knowledge have been part of both memory and museum studies, those two studies barely touch upon museums’ role in translating colonial memory in the postcolonial nation. Memory lives on through its circulation in media forms. However, premeditation and mediation are made possible through articulating social and cultural sites, in this case, museums practice. In order to achieve its purposes, this research investigates public museums in different parts of Java, Indonesia which have colonial memory objects. The combination of field observation, document review, and visual method followed by focus group discussion between stakeholders and researchers are conducted to propose the research conclusion. This research argues that the museum’s visual order translates interrelated colonial memories to be accepted as a part of the history that forms the “existence” of the nation and to be appreciated as public knowledge that is shared and forms the national identity. In doing so, museum practice roams into the area of political visibility which decides the legibility of the narrative related to colonial memory. In addition, as museum practice is basically a colonial legacy, this research concludes that it is essential to deconstruct the practice from the perspective of the colonised.