Postcolonial Work Research Articles

A Bourdieusian Exploration of Ethnic Inequalities at Work: The Case of the Nigerian Banking Sector

This article draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s critical sociology to explore the socio-political processes through which social resources or capital are sought and ethnic inequalities negotiated, legitimated and enforced in a postcolonial work context. Applying Bourdieusian analysis to data from interviews and vignettes in the Nigerian banking sector, the constructs ‘ethnicised identity’ and ‘symbolic identity’ are developed to show how employees across ethnic divides and work hierarchies use symbolic ethnic markers to negotiate benefits and enforce control as a status-independent capital. Realising diversity management goals in multiethnic workplaces may, therefore, require refocusing initiatives from racial to ethnic inequalities and, consequently, from inter-group inequalities (ethnic membership) to intra-group discriminations (ethnic affiliation). This research suggests that a more nuanced, contextually sensitive perspective is necessary to address workplace inequalities linked to ethnic diversity in organisations with indigenous multiethnicities.

Colonization of Subaltern Women in the Short Story “Qisshatu Fathiyyah Al-Misriyyah”

Discourse on literary criticism is currently widely read and studied in the academic world, especially about postcolonial. postcolonial studies provide a new perspective on modern era colonialism and its effects. Postcolonial offers disclosure of the conflicts of human life that occurred in the colonial era. However, in the real of literary studies, his postcolonial works are not only the period after colonialism ended, but works that have been written since they lasted until the present. This research is included in the type of qualitative research based on the library research methodology.The purpose of this study is to describe the forms of colonization that occurred to female characters as part of the subaltern group in the short story ''Qisshatu Fathiyyah Al-Misriyyah'' using a subaltern theory approach of Gayatri Spivak. The primary data sources were taken in the form of a short story entitled Qisshatu Fathiyyah Al-Misriyyah by Nawāl As-Sa’dāwī as well as some literature from articles and books that have a correlation with the research topic as a secondary source. The theory used is Gayatri Spivak's subaltern with a postcolonial study approach. The results of this study are in the form of colonization of subaltern women in the form of: (a) Early Marriage, (b) Physical Violence, (c) Marginalization, (d) Discrimination.

Merging critical disability theory with Post-Colonial hybridity theory: a widened lens and implications

This article will briefly introduce the traditional disability studies project through the social model of disability and how its inherent theoretical limitations became the impetus to perpetuate a need to adopt critical disability theory (CDT) to expand the intellectual arsenal of the discipline. Being a reflexive inquiry that resists domination that oppresses people with disabilities, CDT’s reach produced work in conversation with other areas of critical social thought and inspired this paper to explore how post-colonial work – particularly Homi Bhabha’s hybridity theory – can be incorporated into CDT’s paradigmatic views of power. This paper concludes by addressing some of the debates and cultural implications that stem from conceptually merging CDT and post-colonial hybridity theory to frame how it can reimagine the possibilities and trajectories of a global disability movement.

Companion Texts and Spaces of Encounter: Reading Experiences in Shazia Majid, Ivo de Figueiredo and Yohan Shanmugaratnam’s Life Writing

ABSTRACT Analyzing reading experiences represented in transnational literature clarifies how the author’s story connects to a larger world literature. Building on the feminist and postcolonial work of Sarah Ahmed, and Elleke Boehmer, Rita Felski's study of the uses of literature, I investigate the signification of the representations of reading experiences in three contemporary Norwegian works. These center thematically on gendered and racialized identity processes, as well as politics and history, in the aftermaths of colonialism and migration: Shazia Majid, Ut av skyggene. Den lange veien mot likestilling for innvandrerkvinnene [Out of the shadows. The long road to equality for immigrant women]; Ivo de Figueiredo’s A Stranger At My Table [En fremmed ved mitt bord. En familiehistorie] and Yohan Shanmugaratnam’s work Vi puster fortsatt [We are still breathing]. My analysis of the reading experiences and the intersectional aspects in these works, explores how their stories refer to and enter into various networks of book communities: Feminist, imperialist, antiracist, Norwegian, English, American, Asian, African, 19th-century, colonial, black, white and more. The authors use their family history to tell a larger transnational story, leading to further explorations of how gender, ethnicity, nationality, class and religion form identities in transnational Norway.

Reimagining Colonialism: Dune Within Postcolonial Science-Fiction

This research paper will examine the science-fiction novel Dune as a postcolonial work. Colonial history and literature that have been the central focus of postcolonial studies influenced the structure of many science-fiction novels. One of these was Herbert’s Dune (1965), which carries a colonial formula into a new fictionalized setting. However, very few postcolonial studies cross into the science-fiction novel, and fewer still consider the science-fictional element that sets it apart as a genre. Thus, this article attempts to provide a new perspective on Dune as a postcolonial novel that sets a new premise for our understanding of postcolonialism. In employing the early anticolonial thoughts of Amilcar Cabral and his notion of resistance, this study will trace these anticolonial notions throughout the novel. In addition, it will consider the novel’s science-fictional element of spice and how it proves detrimental in perceiving the novel as a new form of postcolonial narrative.

The Othering of Women by the Otherised: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as the Voice of the Voiceless

Some works of art are a kind of term analysing products. By reading or examining them we can have an idea about the era they were created in. In this context, Jean Rhys, in her masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea, gives very detailed information about Creole women’s life and mishaps they lived. Indeed, we can read this novel as a premise of Charlotte Brontee’s Jane Eyre. There is a Creole character named as Bertha Mason, namely the woman in the attic. Jean Rhys, as a Creole herself, looks for the reasons of imprisonment of Bertha Mason to the attic. Although she is a white woman she is condemned to the attic in her husband Mr. Rochester’s house. Of course the time Bertha Mason lived in, the puritanic life style was dominant, yet there is not any link between her imprisonment and it. Bertha, as a Creole, could not gain admission in English society due to not being full-blooded white. Because of this, she is neither English nor slave. Because of being a post-colonial work, reader can see the clash between ‘black and white negros’. Here, ‘the white niggers’ are Creoles who had slaves and lands lang syne. We can analyse Wide Sargasso Sea from many perspectives, yet to me the most important one is the othering of others by otherised people. The othering layer is Creoles and specifically women, the otherised are blacks, and the others in this study are also blacks but then men. I will not discriminate between black or white men. In this study I will examine the othering of women in English society eventhough the Kingdom is governed by a Queen in that time. I will touch the reasons that compel women to stay at home and, if they are not full-blooded white, to the attics like a mad person. And also, I will try to scrutinize the causes of maddening of woman in that era.

Sources from Below: A Rebel Archive Rewrites Maritime History of Peru’s Cuarta Región

This paper examines how local archives offer an alternative narrative to the industrial expansion of Peru’s cuarta región: the sea. The rise of Peru’s global fishing economy in the postwar era and the parallel establishment of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone in 1952 added the sea as a new commercial region beyond the rainforest, mountains, and coast. Over the course of the next two decades Peru’s economy would increasingly depend on a small pelagic fish: the anchoveta (Engraulis ringens). Following the anchoveta collapse of 1973, the national economy struggled to rebound and social unrest clotted the coastline. In response to increasing state violence, scientific opacity, and censorship, one notable archive in addition to several smaller collections, emerged to support a rising tide of labor and environmental activism. Drawing from 12-months of archival and ethnographic research and interviews with key stakeholders this article joins the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on archives to develop the concept of “sources from below”: locally-sourced archives that bolster resistance movements and upend hegemonic ontologies of industrial resource exploitation. I pull from postcolonial work on “sciences from below” and political ecology to offer novel insights into human-ocean interactions in the world’s largest fishery. I conclude with lessons for future scholarship on social movements, environmental knowledge, and resource-dependent economies.

Imagining an Otherwise Global Public Administration

Global public administration remains an incomplete project with contested notions of its aims and objectives. Given its disputed nature we focus on developing a negative definition of global public administration. We argue that a global public administration cannot be based on a singular ontology, western epistemology and Eurocentric research agenda. Moreover, a truly global public administration must not be committed to myopic limitations concerning its scope, historicity, objectives and research methods. To help foster discussion toward reimagining a different public administration, based on the postcolonial work of Khatibi, we argue for an otherwise thinking about global public administration. This would require looking with alterity for inspiration and insight, looking back to learn from history, looking differently to formulate new questions through new lenses, looking inwards at disciplinary exclusions, and looking dialectically to navigate the macro-micro research divide.

Refracting Eurocentrism, operationalizing complicity: The Swiss Sonderfall as a vantage point

Critiques of the parochialism of urban theory have resulted in appeals for more global urban studies. Yet, the fruitful responses to postcolonial work frequently remain sequestered, reflecting the persistence of Eurocentrism as a burden shouldered largely by the so-called “South”. This paper aims to shift the work implied by critiques of Eurocentrism – from the labor of translation to the chore of representation – to those whom Eurocentrism serves. We argue that recognizing the ways academics are always already complicit in Eurocentrism by working within the academy is an important starting point. Can the functions of complicity also serve to redistribute the burdens of redress and allow cultivating new possibilities to respond? To understand the functions of complicity, we take inspiration from the historical position of Switzerland on “the margins” of colonialism. Scrutinizing the history of a formally non-colonizing country reveals multiple forms of taking part in, benefitting from and assisting in colonial efforts. Applying these learnings to institutional and epistemological possibilities of working with complicity in the academy, we interrogate the potentials and limits of these functions to address the reproduction of Eurocentrism.

Introduction to Muslim Postcolonialism: A Distinct Discipline on the Significant Level of General Postcolonialism

Universally, Postcolonial literature initiates certain disciplines and numerous subject matters which were dared to speak before. In recent times observe the change in behaviors and approaches towards multiplicity, spiritual beliefs, and literature. Postcolonial literature also experiences the same fate in the form of its Postcolonial waves. In Postcolonial works, Muslim literati show their presence in every form of literature that the world has ever been observed. The reason behind such intelligentsia’s existence is that Muslims exist all around the world as Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world. In this way, Muslim Postcolonialism under the umbrella of General Postcolonialism is projected to highlight the Muslim issues and concerns. Muslim Post-colonialists are the founders of twentieth-century Modern Post-colonialism, that extends to twenty-first century; the immense literature shows distinctive existence within the body of World Literature generally and General Postcolonial, particularly. Muslim Postcolonialism attempt to show the positive face of Islam to prove that Muslims are not terrorists, rather the victims of terrorism.

Decoding of a Gendered Marginalized Discourse in V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas

Focusing on Sara Mill’s Feminist stylistics in A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) by V.S. Naipaul (1961), the article provides an alternative understanding of the novel through the lens of the undertaken framework to reveal marginalization on gender basis. The disparity of the socio- cultural roles of men and women in the novel through a particular use of language divulges gender inequality in a society. The preference of masculinity engrossed in of preferable patriarchal titles, names, generic pronouns and professions leads to a gender labeling. The disparaging portrayal of women in the fictional representation of a postcolonial work manifests that women are discriminated against. It is substantial, therefore, to problematize gender representation through the application of “toolkit” (Mills, 1995, p.2). It is also one of the significant theoretical frameworks that critiques a literary piece to unearth concealed objectives wrought in an implicit and explicit language-use. Naipaul in the selected work represents through a language use - word, phrase/sentence, discourse to demonstrate how rampant socio-cultural gender norms play a pivotal role in upholding gender inequality. Therefore, the study concludes that submissive role of women through the specific use of discourse makes the application of feminist stylistics more pertinent to highlight the stereotypical gender norms that are used to strengthen patriarchal hegemony. Hence, socio-cultural gender norms with the collusion of a specific discourse used in the novel are coded for dominance of patriarchy and segregation of women subsequently.

Archiving as embodied research and security practice

This article explores the importance of embodiment in (research on) archival practices on state counter-terrorism policy in Nigeria. In doing so, the article seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion around methodology and methods in critical security studies and other related fields in international relations by focusing on (researchers’) bodies as sites of knowledge production and intervention. Building on three empirical themes of fragmentation, labelling and gatekeeping that emerged from fieldwork in Abuja, Nigeria, I demonstrate how embodiment operates in active research contexts in the production – and problematization – of in/security. To do this, I draw inspiration from ideas around state archival practice; embodiment in critical security studies, especially as discussed in feminist and postcolonial work; and in/security theory to scaffold my broader methodological approach. A focus on embodiment, the article argues, marks the researcher’s body – and research – as integral to the development of theories and findings about security. At the same time, exploring the ways in which the (researcher’s) body is (re)produced in relation to identity and subjectivity encourages greater reflexivity in our research practice and fieldwork, as we are continually reminded that our work and our words are grounded in the standpoints that we occupy. The article concludes by identifying some useful strategies from my fieldwork for grappling with the challenges and tensions that emerge from bodily encounters in (security) research process.

The London BFI Flare LGBTQ+ film festival: “A celebration of difference and diversity” or normative hegemony?

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to contribute to the scholarship on queer spaces and queer film festivals by offering an approach that critically analyses white normativity within the queer film festival, scrutinising both who shapes these spaces and for whom they are shaped. Situating queer film festivals as political sites of counterpublics that enable potential resistance and solidarity against dominant heteronormativity and cisnormativity, this article examines whiteness and white privilege within those spaces, using London’s 2018 BFI Flare: LGBTQ+ Film Festival as a case study. In-depth discourse analysis of Flare’s 2018 festival documents and ephemera informs the article’s argument. Building upon intersectional and postcolonial feminist work on spaces and diversity politics, this piece contends that current Western queer film festivals, such as Flare, are spaces embedded in homonationalist discourse that replicate historical in/exclusion and construct racialised arenas. In this way, they perform “feel good” diversity while lacking an interrogation of normative whiteness, able-bodiedness, and cis male gayness.

Anticolonial Visions and Fictional Versions: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Postcolonial Novels

The research juxtaposes two of the prominent postcolonial literary discourses produced by the nations that resisted the colonial encroachments militarily and, ultimately, gained their independence from the British imperial clutch, America and India. The selected literary works are replete with retrospective representations of the historical landmarks and laden with future ideological aspirations regarding national glory. Remaining awake to the perplexing verisimilitude of postcolonial works of literature, the study aims to explain the pivotal nexus that links the divergent discourses, that is, the anti colonial élan.For the accomplishment of the comparative analysis, two of the novels have been chosen, one for each country, to represent the respective version of resistance: Jeff Shaara's The Glorious Cause (2002) from an array of the American fictional narratives and Basavaraj Naikar's The Sun behind the Cloud (2001)from the Indian anglophone fiction. After outlining the belligerent disposition of these novels, their thematic schemas have been compared and contrasted to make the post coloniality of these polemical fictions manifest. It has been made explicit that the novels are essentially similar in their counter-discursive character and dissemination of the anti colonial sentiment despite some peripheral differences. Thus, these novels contribute to the broader postcolonial continuum that comprehensively accommodates varying versions of the textual resistance.

Desecularising the postcolonial resistance: the role of Islamic spirituality in the framing of Moroccan anticolonial thought

ABSTRACT It is worth noting that Marxist and secular forms of resistance have been given much priority in postcolonial discourse. We find that almost all prominent postcolonial works produced in the 1980s and 1990s celebrated the secular and Marxist nature of anticolonial liberation struggles. This emanates from the fact that the concept of resistance within postcolonialism has been defined in secular terms. Postcolonial historians and critics marginalised the role of religious anticolonial movements in favour of secular, nationalist and Marxist liberation movements. It is ‘odd’ that postcolonialism did not devote some space for Islam and anticolonial Islamic liberation movements. However, the post-9/11 global resurgence of religion has prompted postcolonial studies to re-open the question of the sacred. Because 9/11 has provoked an upsurge of spirituality and religion worldwide, postcolonialism has entered the ‘God debate’ and postcolonial writers have started to investigate the multiple roles religion played in the imperial project. In this sense, this article sheds light on the role Islam played in shaping Moroccan anticolonial consciousness. It presents Islam – Salafism and Sufism - as a mobilising ideology for the anticolonial liberation movement in Morocco. In other words, being aware of the fact that the future of postcolonialism is the return to the past as well as of the growing interest in religion within postcolonialism, in this essay I am going to desecularise the postcolonial resistance by highlighting the theological origins of Moroccan nationalist movement and attempting to incorporate North African anticolonial spirituality into the realm of postcolonial studies.

Uncivil Performances: National Politics of the Sri Lankan Theater Space

The 2016 performance of Dutu Thena Allanu (Wanted) by Kaushalya Fernando in the Ediriweera Sarachchandra Open-Air Theater, at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, was brought to a halt, mid-performance, by a violent crowd in the audience that determined the play to be inappropriate for such a “sacred” performance space. Better known as “Wala,” the Ediriweera Sarachchandra Open-Air Theater is considered unique and unlike any other performance space in Sri Lanka primarily due to its origins being tied to the playwright and dramatist Ediriweera Sarachchandra whose plays, such as Maname (1956) and Sinhabahu (1961), hold an unparalleled significance within the new patriotic discursive and theatrical re-performance of quintessential Sri Lankan postcolonial theater. In this study, I examine how this re-signification of “Sarachchandralatory” (what G. A Haththotuwegama terms the unique adulation and aggrandization of Sarachchandra and his work) allows for the self-proclaimed custodians of the performance space to solidify patriarchal politics of the contemporary Sinhala Buddhist nation state. With the 2016 performance of Dutu Thena Allanu by Kaushalya Fernando in Wala as a case study, the paper investigates how Wala is a site of struggle where the spatialization of the gendered, anticolonial nationalist, historical past of Sri Lanka manifests in gatekeeping mechanisms that continue to delegitimize women’s postcolonial work, narratives of sexuality, and their critiques of the male-authored nation as “uncivil.” It further examines how Dutu Thena, in spite and on account of being violently intervened, can be read as Fernando’s exegesis of ethnotionalist politics that govern not only the politics of the performance space but also the hegemonic history of Sri Lankan postcolonial theater that peripheralizes the Gendered and the ethnic Other.

Modernism after Postcolonialism: Toward a Nonterritorial Comparative Literature

Modernism after Postcolonialism: Toward a Nonterritorial Comparative Literature

Imagining an Otherwise Global Public Administration: Conceptual Reflections

Global public administration remains an incomplete project with contested notions of its aims and objectives. Given its disputed nature we focus on developing a negative definition of global public administration. We argue that a global public administration cannot be based on a singular ontology, western epistemology and Eurocentric research agenda. Moreover, a truly global public administration must not be committed to myopic limitations concerning its scope, historicity, objectives and research methods. To help foster discussion towards reimagining a different public administration, based on the postcolonial work of Khatibi, we argue for an otherwise thinking about global public administration. This would require looking with alterity for inspiration and insight, looking back to learn from history, looking differently to formulate new questions through new lenses, looking inwards at disciplinary exclusions, and looking dialectically to navigate the macro-micro research divide.

The Tempest and A Tempest: Evolving Representations of Colonialism

Shakespeare’s 17th century The Tempest, written during early British colonial times, tells the story of Prospero, the Duke of Milan, who arrives at an island with his infant daughter and enslaves its Indigenous natives, Caliban and Ariel. The play is an allegory of European colonization and imperialism that both promotes colonization and begins to question it. Cesaire’s A Tempest, written in 1969 and approaching a post-colonial era, takes the political and ethical questions surrounding colonialism even further. These questions in both plays are rooted within the relationship between Caliban, one of the island’s Indigenous natives, and the European settler, Prospero. Though Cesaire’s A Tempest is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play, it differs significantly from The Tempest in that Cesaire’s narrative is a post-colonial work and thus presented from the perspective of the native population, represented by the character Caliban, rather than Prospero’s settler perspective which was the focus of Shakespeare’s narrative. This post-colonial perspective alters our understanding of Prospero and Caliban from civilizing settler and savage to abusive colonizer and abused colonized, or master and slave. This power relationship is demonstrated through the two characters’ portrayals in the two plays, their power dynamics, and their use of language as a tool both of colonization and rebellion.

Care in/through the archives: Postcolonial intersectional moves in feminist geographic research

What does a postcolonial ethics of care mean for feminist geographers doing archival work? Feminist geographers have long called for ethical research engagement. This asserts the importance of caring relationships with research mentees, collaborators, participants, and spaces. But care comes both with promise and pitfalls. As postcolonial and antiracist geographers argue, we must emplace care. That is, we must recognize that care, including caring feminist geographic practice, is grounded in colonial past-presents. We must work towards responsible ontologies and epistemologies that attend to and redress these histories. In this article, we draw on feminist postcolonial work on care (namely Raghuram et al. (2009) and Noxolo et al. (2012)) along with intersectional interventions in archival studies (Hartman, 2008; Cifor and Wood, 2017; Sutherland, 2017) to examine the politics of care in and through the archives. We draw on postcolonial interventions to reflect on our own archival geographic practice in the USA, the Dominican Republic, and Uganda. We use these accounts to make visible how caring archival practice, and critical archives of care, can shed light on, reinforce, or salve deep geohistories of heteropatriarchal colonialism and its aftermath. We assert that a postcolonial approach to care denaturalizes and spatializes racial power in feminist geographic practice, here via the archives.