POST COLONIAL L I T E RA T U RE

THANAEL CONSTANTINE

DEFINITIONS
Post colonialism a period of time after colonialism. the term used both as a literal description of formerly colonial societies and as a description of global conditions after a period of colonialism. a literal description of conditions in former colonial societies,, as in postcolonial societies. The tangible and psychological tendencies that are products of those (colonial) conditions. The term has also been widely used to signify the political, linguistic and cultural experience of societies from the former British Empire.

E M E RG E N C E O F T H E T E R M
Created and employed by historians and political scientists after the Second World War It had a clearly chronological meaning, designating the post-independence period However, from the late 1970s the term has been used by literary critics to discuss the various cultural effects of colonization.

DEFINITIONS
Post colonial literature the term seems to label any literature written by people living in countries formerly colonized by other nations. the term is applied most often to writings from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, and other regions whose histories during the 20th century are marked by colonialism, anticolonial movements, and subsequent transitions to postIndependence society. a category devised to replace and expand upon what was once called Commonwealth Literature. As a label, it thus covers a very wide range of writings from countries that were once colonies or dependencies of the European powers

PROBLEMS WITH COLONIAL LITERATURE AND ITS DEFINITIONS

1) Literal colonization is not the exclusive object of postcolonial study. 2) Some of the works commonly studied under this label (Claude McKay's Banjo ) were written while the nation in question (Jamaica) was still a colony. 3) Some critics argue that the term misleadingly implies that colonialism is over when most of the nations involved are still culturally and economically subordinated to the rich industrial states through various forms of neo-colonialism.

PROBLEMS CONTINUED. 4) The way of defining a whole era is Eurocentric- it singles out the colonial experience as the most important fact about the countries involved. 5) Post colonialism" as a term lends itself to very broad use. Australians and Canadians sometimes claim to live in postcolonial societies, but are refused the label because their literature is dominated by European immigrants, and is a literature of privilege rather than of protest.

OTHER IMPORTANT INFO.

Literature may be written in the style of speech of the inhabitants of a particular colonized people or area, which language use does not read like Standard English and in which literature, the standard literary allusions and common metaphors and symbols may be inappropriate and/or may be replaced by allusions and tropes which are alien to British culture and usage. The concept of producing a national or cultural literature is in most cases a concept foreign to the traditions of the colonized peoples, who had no literature as it is conceived in the western traditions or in fact no literature or writing at all,

 It is said that not only is the term "postcolonial" exceedingly fuzzy, it can also be argued that it is also often ineffective. A good deal of postcolonial debate has to do with rival claims to victimhood, with each side claiming the sympathies of rightthinking people because of their past sufferings