Colonial Subjects Research Articles

Negotiating caste, gendered and colonial subjectivities in the neoliberal academy

This paper highlights how researchers are subjugated through hegemonic academic norms and how they simultaneously recognize the privileges attached to their subject positions. I illustrate difficulties in negotiating my privileges, particularly of caste, and my experiences of marginalisation as a ‘third world woman’ in the European academy. Such competitive insecurity is illustrative of both neoliberal logics of enterprise and responsibility as well as caste-based logics of merit and deservingness. Academia as a field of knowledge production historically consolidates power in the hands of a shrinking set of elites. Attitudes of competition and uncertainty produce subjects that turn to selfinterested modes of acquiring and analysing data, thereby producing hegemonic knowledges, which ignores the situatedness and politics of the research context. Caste is addressed together with gender, coloniality, ability, sexuality and ethnicity (among other subjectivities) as an intersectional co-producer of exclusion. Invoking caste-based imperialist logics is essential for unpacking the privileged subjectivities that produce elitism and exclusion in academia and in knowledge production.

Postcolonial Self-Creation in the Hong Kong Adaptation of Pygmalion

ABSTRACT Following the handover of sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997, Hong Kong embarked on a renewed exploration of its cultural identity. This quest for identity found a powerful resonance in the late-1997 musical adaptation of Pygmalion, titled Yao Tiao Shu Nv (Lovely is This Noble Lady). This article argues that the musical’s success stemmed from the underlying themes of colonialism and postcolonialism present in George Bernard Shaw’s original work. By recreating the setting, the characterization, and the soundscape of a Hong Kong in its early colonial years, the adaptation negotiates cultural identity within the specific context of postcolonial Hong Kong.

Militarizing and Colonizing Outer Space as a Video Game. Ender’s Game and Astroculture

The author of the article analyzes Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, focusing her attention on the relationship between the key motif of the novel – gaming – and the tendency to militarize and colonize outer space highlighted by astrocultural scholars. Card’s novel follows the astrocultural pattern of setting future wars in space, but introduces an important novelty: games of various kinds, including video games, become a mediating element between the characters and the real experience of space war. The theoretical framework for the analysis is provided by the insights of astrocultural scholars such as Alexander Geppert, Tilmann Siebeneichner and Alice Gorman. In analyzing Ender’s Game and, to some extent, its 2013 film adaptation, the author examines the protagonists’ relationship to space, which is shaped by the game’s setting. It is here that military and colonial themes are most prevalent. The first part of the paper presents the main contexts of the motif of the militarization of outer space and its close relationship with video games. These contexts provide an important background for the analysis of the motifs of games and outer space in Ender’s Game. Selected reflections from the field of ludology are helpful in interpreting Card’s use of video games not only as a theme, but also as a structural principle of his novel’s settings. In the last part of the paper, the author considers the transformation of the militant motif taking place in the novel’s finale into a narrative focused on the colonization of outer space, as well as the transformation of this narrative that occurred in Gavin Hood’s film adaptation. The goal of such an interpretation is to show the story created by Orson Scott Card as entangled in a dynamic relationship with the video game medium that was developing at the time of its creation and with the changing trends of astroculture.

Contemporary Narratives on Yoruba History, Modern Society in Nigeria, and the Meaning of Decolonized Humanity in the African Context

Instead of being merely a historical occurrence, colonization is a structural feature of civilizations that have been touched by colonialism, which affects the prospects for the colonial subjects. This process is still ongoing in various forms among the so-called postcolonial societies today. Therefore, decolonization is a response to both the negative stereotypes and falsehoods about Indigenous peoples and cultures as well as the structural injustices of colonially impacted society that disproportionately afflict Indigenous peoples. Even though decolonization is a hot issue in academia right now, Indigenous peoples have been fighting against colonialism for millennia and claiming their own spaces, sovereignty, and right to self-determination ever since they first came into contact with colonizers.

From colonial subjects to Black nations: racializing the Caribbean within global Blackness

ABSTRACT This article traces how Caribbean nations become Black by virtue of their relationship to colonialism, capitalism and their linkages with race. First, it outlines how colonization linked race, labour and Blackness, and draws connections to the racialization of Caribbean nations under neoliberalism. Second, it argues for how those processes in turn generate racial tropes that mark certain nations as Black. Using Haiti and Jamaica in comparison, this article suggests that Caribbean nations and their migrants become racialized as Black in ways that both insert them within the U.S. racial hierarchy and situates them within a larger context of global Blackness.

A Tempest and The Tempest: Aimé Césaire and Shakespeare

Through an analysis of the play, the article seeks to demonstrate that Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest is a “reinscription” of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as “a drama of rebellion.” It is told from the point of view of “the loser”, Caliban, the “colonized”, who confronts and defies Prospero who has usurped the island and deprived him of his patrimony. He demands his freedom and refuses to accept the “hegemonic europocentric vision of the universe.” Césaire “demythifie[s]” Prospero who is not the benign Magus figure of traditional criticism but the “prototypical colonizer,” a despot, “the complete totalitarian.” The paper argues that, although he never mentions him, Césaire is influenced by George Lamming’s radical reading of Shakespeare’s play through “colonial” and “national” lenses, a reading that anticipates that of Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicists and pre-empts the question of “linguistic colonialism” which is so crucial to them. While the colonial paradigm has featured in recent discussions of the plays and Césaire and Lamming have been grouped together, the article analyzes and applies Lamming’s reading to both Shakespeare and Césaire and provides a fresh reading of both. The article also goes beyond the argument of Greenblatt and the New Historicists. A Tempest ends equivocally, on a questioning note, and Lamming observes that the Epilogue in The Tempest leaves the latter work, too, somewhat open-ended, a point that is taken up and discussed. The article in conclusion gives a significant, new interpretation, of the titles of the two plays which ties up with and highlights the theme of colonialism which is the focus of both plays.

Accounting for informalization in Africa's extractive industry: Evidence from Ghana's small‐scale gold mining sector during the colonial period

AbstractIn this paper, we draw on the accountability and institutional theories to explicate the informalized state of Ghana's small‐scale gold mining sector as an exemplar of informalization of the extractive industry in Africa during the colonial period. We present a critical and historical perspective on the role of colonial subjugation that took the form of discriminatory policies and lack of accountability, in laying the foundations for the current challenges of continuous informalization of the indigenous gold mining sector and its implications on livelihoods, the economy and the environment in Ghana. We analyzed archival data on the mining industry in Ghana, consisting of official correspondences between colonial bureaucrats in Britain and Ghana, as well as colonial policies on mining, interpreted through the lenses of institutional theory. Specifically, we used records comprising letters, mineral policies, mineral output, and labor relations in the Gold Coast during the colonial period as well as minutes of meetings held by those governing mining enterprises that operated in Ghana before 1957. We also drew on periodic reports of the Ghana Chamber of Mines and their member enterprises, Government of Ghana white papers, parliamentary records among others. We found that the colonial authority, as the new institutional power with vested interest in the extractive industry, adopted discriminatory policies that banned small‐scale gold mining by indigenous population in Ghana, marginalizing the sector's operation to the advantage of foreign large‐scale gold miners. We demonstrate that the control of mineral resources by the colonial authority under new ownership structures disenfranchised the indigenous population and their right to the mineral resources of the Gold Coast. We argue that this institutionalized discriminatory policy, and the resulting lack of accountability is largely responsible for the ongoing informalization of Ghana's small‐scale gold mining sector. This paper contributes to the corpus of critical and historical scholarship that investigates the role of racialization and accountability during colonial period, but with notable distinction that departs from specific professional or disciplinary perspectives. Instead, it focuses on the colonial subjugation and exploitation of the small‐scale gold mining sector and its ongoing informalization that traces its roots to the era of British colonial rule in Ghana. It reiterates the need for accountability for these historical inequalities affecting the small‐scale mining operators, to facilitate the sector's formalization and to effectively control and manage the myriads of negative impacts associated with it.

A Bruised Legend: Hong Kong’s Cold War Coloniality Embodied

ABSTRACT In contrast to the much hailed Bruce Lee persona as a heroic and individualised legend, this article reconsiders Bruce Lee’s body of work including his working body as a ‘third world allegory’ in an era of multinational capitalism. I centralise the place of ‘experience’ in the characterisation of Bruce Lee as an auteur in ‘writing’ his body and films as literary texts, and frame Hong Kong coloniality as central to that experience. Re-connecting the well-known narratives of Bruce Lee’s not-so-successful Hollywood experience and his later pan-Asian bombastic comeback to his troubled ethnicity and to his coming-of-age participation in the socially-conscious post-war Cantonese cinema, this paper rehistoricises the tale of Lee as a struggling case of colonial subject formation, towards a decolonial understanding of 1950s–1970s Hong Kong fuelled by class, gender, inter-ethnic, Cold War contradictions and violence. It remaps the ways in which Bruce Lee painstakingly works his internalised Hong Kong British desires into an American Dream through translating his over-extended body into a diaspora-informed, hyper-masculine Kungfu language, speaking not only to a globalised empowerment of marginal youths but also to a specifically colonised third world angst.

Colonial Traces in Contemporary Italian Literature: The Cases of Giulia Caminito’s La Grande A (2016) and Mario Tobino’s Il deserto della Libia (1952)

ABSTRACT This article examines Giulia Caminito’s novel La grande A (2016) to show how descriptions of colonial subjects and spaces rely on stereotypes and exoticisations derived from colonial discourse. By analysing formal aspects and the intertextual relationship with Mario Tobino’s Il deserto della Libia (1952), the article underscores a continuity in terms of modes of representation between La grande A and its main sourcetext, suggesting a lack of interactions or connections with the transnational African/Italian authors who have confronted the legacy of Italy’s colonial past. In a mainly white European figurative framework, the novel marginalises and forecloses Black/African subjects while, at the same time, providing readers with orientalist descriptions of the former colonies. Although the novel addresses a frequently overlooked topic in Italian literature, namely colonialism and women’s experiences in the overseas territories, it also problematically reproduces stereotypes about Africa/Africans rather than effectively exposing and debunking them.

“When I Spoke, I Spoke From the Heart”: Empirical Insights and Therapeutic Lessons From an Indigenous Counseling Center

Indigenous Peoples in Canada experience inequities in behavioral health outcomes stemming from colonial subjugation, including tacit cultural assimilation through health care. Indigenous communities assert that culturally commensurate health interventions improve wellbeing. This study, conducted with clients and staff at a First Nations behavioral health treatment program, sought to identify how respondents conceived of the therapeutic endeavor with respect to possibilities for remedying colonial injuries such as the abuses of the Indian Residential Schools (IRSs). Thematic analysis of 32 interviews revealed that targeted therapeutic goals as well as specific counselor qualities were important for a positive therapeutic experience for those in the program. Ultimately, assimilative practices, such as the IRSs of the past and mainstream behavioral health treatment programs in the present may collectively contribute to the continuation of inequities in health outcomes for Indigenous Canadians. Decolonizing the therapeutic endeavor offers a potential avenue for positive change.

Empire and the Rhetoric of Total War in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth

In reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) this essay proposes a definition of total war that illuminates the close connection between the rhetoric of war and the rhetoric of imperialism. Building on the recent scholarly accounts of how “totality” is never truly possible, this essay sees total war not as a descriptor of reality but rather as a rhetorical strategy that categorizes entire populations as ally or enemy—a binary that both emerges from and remains in tension with the binaries structuring imperialism (white/nonwhite, civilized/savage). Total war, that is, defines colonial subjects as allies with their colonizers against white, European enemies. White Teeth explores these contradictions, this essay argues, by revisiting the binary rhetoric of the Second World War. And in challenging the relationship between imperial and wartime categories, Smith’s novel resists the tendencies of both imperial and anti-imperial forms of history to represent the past in terms of just such totalizing categories. As historical fiction, White Teeth counters this totalizing tendency and, dwelling instead in ambiguity and uncertainty, suggests that a truly decolonial history depends not on reversing imperial categories but on rejecting them altogether.

A Critical Voice on the Hajj by a Sumatran Pilgrim from the Early Twentieth Century

This paper examines a late 19th-century brochure entitled ‘Perdjalanan ke-‘Tanah-Tjoetji’ (A Pilgrimage to the ‘Holy Land’) written by Dja Edar Moeda, a Dutch-educated native teacher and a pioneer journalist and vernacular press entrepreneur in Sumatra. The text offers a critical perspective on the Hajj, differing from the majority of this corpus, which tends to show religious enthusiasm and saintly connotations. This paper demonstrates that the ‘deviant’ voice on the Hajj in the Brochure reflects the author’s concerns. As a native intellectual and religious modernist with a Western-secular education, he worries about the fate of his fellow native pilgrims, who are often victimised by rampant fraudulent practices in the organisation of the Hajj due to their illiteracy, map illiteracy, innocence, naivety and tendency to be submissive in their religious practice. In this respect, the Brochure indirectly criticises the Dutch East Indies colonial authority’s deficiencies in organising the pilgrimage and protecting the pilgrims as its colonial subjects.

Literacy, hegemonic mediation, and “spiritual” liberation in colonial Jamaica

ABSTRACT This essay discusses the presence and performance of Arabic literacy, its use, and emancipatory dimension among Muslim slaves on colonial plantations in Jamaica as well as the complex and ambivalent position of the Irish abolitionist R.R. Madden in the translation, interpretation, and dissemination of some of their writings. Overall, Madden’s texts suggest a sense of agency granted to his literate Muslim interlocutors from West Africa due to his commitment to abolition. However, a careful analysis of his responses suggests that colonial subjects remain “untranslatable” to the Western mind without the active intervention of Madden, a process that echoes his collaborative translation of Manzano’s poetry in Cuba. As a translator, a proponent of the value of literacy for emancipation, Madden not only occupies a contentious mediatory site but also embraces a conflicted sense and advocacy of emancipation which he later connects to Christian spiritual liberation when faced with “critical literacy.”

M. Ravel’s vocal cycle “Chansons madécasses” and its role in the development of French chamber-vocal music of the first half of the twentieth century

Statement of the problem. Chamber vocal genres attracted Ravel throughout his career, from his first opuses (his first song belongs to Op.4) to his last, which was the vocal cycle “Three Songs of Don Quixote to Dulcinea”. The vocal works fully embody the main features of the composer’s style and creative interests. This sphere of Ravel’s work corresponds to the leading trends in the development of chamber vocal genres in the French culture of the twentieth century. At that time, composers had gravitated toward symbolism, elegance and refinement of music expression, the impressionistic reflection of fleeting moments, elusive images of nature or shades of human feelings. The cycle “Chansons madécasses” (“Madagascar Songs”) attracts primarily by a mixture of colonial themes and exoticism, which is realized in a combination of speech expressiveness and musicality, recitative melody and plastic rhythm. The cycle poses a number of difficult tasks for performers, the solution of which lies in the plane of historical accuracy and technical precision. These aspects are examined in the article. Discussion of the historical, social and textual specifics of music and poetry will help to renew the traditions of the cycle’s performance that were formed in the last century. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the article is to examine Ravel’s vocal cycle “Chansons madécasses” in the context of the development of French chamber music of the first half of the twentieth century, with an emphasis on content and stylistics. Theoretical analysis and systematization of scientific sources on the topic helped to outline certain traditions of musicological presenting the cycle “Chansons madécasses; historical and comparative research methods have made it possible to consider the historical and cultural context of the poetic component of the cycle –“poems in prose” by E. Parny. Holistic and comparative musicological analysis contributed to the coverage of ways of realizing the poetic and musical spaces of the cycle. M. Ravel’s vocal cycle “Chansons madécasses” remains poorly researched in domestic musicology, which determines the scientific novelty of this study. Research results and conclusion. Based on the analysis of M. Ravel’s chamber-vocal cycle, it can be concluded that the composer continues the best traditions of French art with its refined and impressionistic features, while demonstrating an innovative approach to vocal genres. Particularly interesting are his creative searches in recent years, when Ravel reached a new understanding of musical and poetic synthesis. The main features of his chamber music, including vocal cycles, were the daintiness and elegance of the figurative sphere, the refinement of the musical style, the inclination to the recitative manner of vocalization, and elements of sound painting In the cycle “Chansons madécasses” M. Ravel not just embodies the text in music; he tries to make the music itself convey the text. Emotions and conflicts present in the words receive an active dramatic musical embodiment; the erotic play of dynamics and tempos in “Nahandove”, the clash of tonalities in “Aoua!” and the quiet mysterious sounds in “Il est doux” serve as an example of an attempt to achieve a “direct” reproduction of the text in music. Thus, the songs of the cycle “Chansons madécasses” represent the composer’s complex relationship with the very idea of a “voice”. M. Ravel “appropriates” the voice of an exotic “other” in order to address provocative themes that he avoided in the rest of his vocal works; but instead of remaining in this “safe space”, he constantly undermines its stability: avoiding the conventionality of musical exoticism, looking for a strong dramatic support of the text capable of making an impression on the listeners, M. Ravel puts us into a confrontation with the various emotions presented in these songs.

Gujranwala, 14 April 1919: Terror from air and airmindedness in late colonial India

This article revisits one of the earliest instances of British colonial aerial aggression in an urban milieu in South Asia to better understand the normative conceptions of airmindedness, the popular appreciation of aviation. A day after the massacre of unarmed civilians in Jalianwala Bagh, Amritsar, in 1919, three Royal Air Force airplanes armed with bombs and machine guns flew out from Lahore toward Gujranwala in Punjab. The event unleashed a whirlwind of rumours that spread from Lahore to Rangoon, which spoke of the collective fears of aerial violence. If the scant evidence presented by the pilots to the official inquiry into the unrest in Punjab served only to whitewash the record, a peoples’ report that marshalled witness testimonies indicted the colonial state's proclivity for violence. By assembling photographic evidence and crafting a cartographic triangulation of the sites of bombing from their testimonies, the colonial subjects challenged the statist narrative. The asymmetry of vertical violence in Gujranwala was also excavated as political commentary in a novel published in New York by an Indian author. By piecing together these disparate discursive fragments, my article attempts to make a composite sketch of the popular responses to trace a non-Western perspective on airmindedness.

Leadership Failure as a Drawback to Africa’s Socio-Economic Development: Analysis of the Challenges and the way forward

Leadership crises in Africa has precipitated series of military coups, insecurity and other myriad of challenges various states in the continent have been plagued with since their independence from colonial subjugation. And these, as many scholars contended, account for the unenviable position of the continent in developmental indexes—like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development index (HDI) which ranked world countries based on key developmental dimensions and indicators. With focus on leadership landscape, this paper examined the continent’s developmental challenges, the efforts made to curb them at national and continental levels, and the way forward. Secondary data sourced from journal articles and published reports formed the bedrock of the analysis which, first, traced the root of the challenges to the balkanisation of the African continent during colonial rule, and second, showed the failure of the persistent experimentation of unrefined western models of democracy in post-independence Africa. The paper therefore posited that without derogating from 21st century universal leadership values, home-grown democracy that will inculcate African values and ensure inclusion of all ethnoreligious groups holds the key to ending the continent’s leadership crises, which would in turn set it on track for sustainable development.

Colonial Subjugation and Cultural Erosion in Things Fall Apart

Colonial Subjugation and Cultural Erosion in Things Fall Apart

Voicing The Reality of Colonialized Women in The Novel ‘Belenggu’ By Armijn Pane

This study explores the representation of women's subjugation during the colonial period in Indonesia through Armijn Pane's novel "Belenggu." Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that integrates literary sociology, feminist literary criticism, and postcolonial studies, this research provides a comprehensive understanding of how the novel reflects the author's critique of patriarchal societal structures and colonial impacts on indigenous women. The analysis focuses on the main character, Sukartini, highlighting her struggle for equality and autonomy. Despite being educated and progressive, Sukartini is depicted as trapped within socio-cultural and political constraints, influenced by entrenched patriarchal norms and colonial domination. This study reveals the dual layers of oppression faced by women, emphasizing the compounded struggles due to both gender and colonial subjugation. By examining Sukartini's character, the research illustrates how deeply ingrained patriarchal norms and colonial dominance restrict women's roles and voices. The findings contribute to Indonesian literary sociology by expanding the scope of analysis to include gender and postcolonial issues, underscoring the importance of examining literary works through multiple theoretical lenses. Moreover, the study highlights the role of literature in spreading awareness, providing social critique, and inspiring advocacy for gender equality and justice. "Belenggu" serves as a poignant critique of historical and ongoing gender inequality, reinforcing the relevance of literary analysis in understanding and addressing complex social issues. This research offers a nuanced perspective on the socio-political contexts shaping narratives, advocating for continued scholarly attention to literature as a means of promoting social change and a more equitable society.

A Postcolonial Feminist Perspective on Traditional Birth Attendants and Management of Pregnancy Complications Among Indigenous Women in Rural Nigeria

The work of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in the Global South continues to be pivotal to the operations of rural healthcare services, especially as formal healthcare services often malfunction in rural communities, as in rural Nigeria, where TBAs preponderantly conduct deliveries among Indigenous women. This study examines TBAs’ management of delivery complications in rural Nigeria among Indigenous women using a sample of TBAs and TBAs’ service users. The study adopts a qualitative methodology involving focus groups of TBAs’ service users and interviews of TBAs to determine TBAs’ effectiveness in managing obstetric complications, considering their differentiation in terms of service competence. The study apprehends the phenomenon through a postcolonial feminist theoretical lens. The results show that TBAs have differential capabilities in the management of cases and their perception and interpretation of problems determined whether physical or metaphysical strategies were employed in their work. While some TBAs competently managed the presented cases, others invited either TBA colleagues or traditional resource persons to assist in such dire moments. Even though the TBAs—victims of patriarchy and colonial subjugation—continue to be marginalized and subjugated by male-dominated colonial and neocolonial power structures, they have significantly transformed their values to create a model for rural social work that provides social and emotional support to Indigenous women in rural spaces. The study therefore identifies a social policy and social work imperative for ideas sharing between different forms of Westernized healthcare practitioners and TBAs to engender the best health outcomes for rural Indigenous women.

The Libyan askaris on the eve of national independence: two life stories across different strategies of intermediation

ABSTRACT Italian colonial authorities heavily relied on the askaris (i.e. native soldiers) throughout the history of colonialism to alleviate the economic and political burdens of colonial warfare. For that, the askaris became privileged intermediaries for the Italians and emerged as a de facto elite within colonial society, seeking social mobility for themselves and their families. After the end of the Second World War, the askaris lost their role as soldiers, but gained new relevance as political intermediaries for Italian or British plans regarding the final resolution of the Italian colonies affaire. The article delves into the life stories of two askaris, which were documented by the author on 3rd November 2009, in Tripoli. Their memories highlight the relationships of friendship or intimacy that existed with the colonisers and showcase the askaris’ ability to downplay colonial elements of domination and oppression through their intermediation. Being an askar entailed, on one hand, questioning the political and racial boundaries of society, and on the other hand, challenging the agendas of nationalist groups. The transition to independence indeed involved a struggle between colonisers and the colonised, as well as among various groups of colonial subjects, all vying for power within the post-colonial State and society.