Future of Postcolonial studies.

Hello, I am Himanshi Parmar, student of MK Bhavnagar University. This blog i have written as a response to Thinking Activity, Which is a Part of my academic Work. Which we get after each unit. In this blog, i am going to discuss about two articles 1)In Globalisation working with whom and what it is important, and 2)We had to live with that here for 500 years, and now we want to be our own masters.' Also in this blog i have mentioned sevaral examples.

What is postcolonial studies?

One prominent definition for postcolonialism is that it involves a studied engagement with the experience of colonialism and its past and present effects, both at the local level of ex-colonial societies and at the level of more general global developments thought to be the after-effects of empire.

According to Oxford Dictionary,

"Post colonial studies are the political or cultural condition of a former colony."

Another definition given is,

"Postcolonialism is a theoretical approach in various disciplines that is concerned with the lasting impact of colonization in former colonies."

Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century.

What is Globalization?

Globalization is a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place. Globalization also captures in its scope the economic and social changes that have come about as a result.

Globalization is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.

Globalization means the speedup of movements and exchanges (of human beings, goods, and services, capital, technologies or cultural practices) all over the planet. One of the effects of globalization is that it promotes and increases interactions between different regions and populations around the globe. It's a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence compare imperialism, internationalism.

1) Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies – Ania Loomba – Colonialism/Postcolonialism – 2nd Edition

The Future of Postcolonial Studies celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of The Empire Writes Back by the now famous troika - Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. When The Empire Writes Back first appeared in 1989, it put postcolonial cultures and their post-invasion narratives on the map. This vibrant collection of fifteen chapters by both established and emerging scholars taps into this early mapping while merging these concerns with present trends which have been grouped as: comparing, converting, greening, post-queering and utopia.

The postcolonial is a centrifugal force that continues to energize globalization, transnational, diaspora, area and queer studies. Spanning the colonial period from the 1860s to the present, The Future of Postcolonial Studies ventures into other postcolonies outside of the Anglophone purview. In reassessing the nation-state, language, race, religion, sexuality, the environment, and the very idea of 'the future,' this volume reasserts the notion that postcolonial is an "anticipatory discourse" and bears testimony to the driving energy and thus the future of postcolonial studies.

Topics covered include globalization, new grassroots movements (including Occupy Wall Street), the environmental crisis, and the relationship between Marxism and postcolonial studies. Loomba also discusses how ongoing struggles such as those of indigenous peoples, and the enclosure of the commons in different parts of the world shed light on the long histories of colonialism. This edition also has extensive discussions of temporality, and the relationship between premodern, colonial and contemporary forms of racism. This books includes:key features of the ideologies and history of colonialism.The relationship of colonial discourse to literature

anticolonial thought and movements.Challenges to colonialism, including anticolonial discourses

recent developments in postcolonial theories and histories.Issues of sexuality and colonialism, and the intersection of feminist and postcolonial thoughtthe relationship of activist struggles and scholarship.Colonialism/Postcolonialism is the essential introduction to a vibrant and politically charged area of literary and cultural study. It is the ideal guide for students new to colonial discourse theory, postcolonial studies or postcolonial theory as well as a reference for advanced students and teachers.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire says that the con-temporary global order has produced a new form of sovereignty that should be called ‘Empire’ but which is best understood in contrast toEuropean empires. Here is original line from it,

In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decen-tered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incor-porates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers.Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colors of the imperial map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow.(Hardt and Negri 2000: xiii–xiii)

Another is  P. Sainath who observe fostering ideological openness, has resulted in its own fundamentalism, which then catalyzes others in reaction, he said that,

Market fundamentalism destroys more human lives than any other simply because it cuts across all national, cultural, geographic, reli-gious and other boundaries. It’s as much at home in Moscow as inMumbai or Minnesota. A South Africa – whose advances in the early1990s thrilled the world – moved swiftly from apartheid to neo-liberal-ism. It sits as easily in Hindu, Islamic or Christian societies. And it contributes angry, despairing recruits to the armies of all religious fundamentalisms. Based on the premise that the market is the solu-tion to all the problems of the human race, it is, too, a very religious fundamentalism. It has its own Gospel: The Gospel of St. Growth, of St. Choice.

(2001: n.p.)

The article ends with the discussion about globalization and Ecocriticism. It discussing about how multinational companies making us colonized. It is also discussed about the rebellion against this colonization by suppressed / colonized people. Here are some examples of it.

Examples

1) Lagaan

In this movie Britishers charged lots of money to village people even if there is Famishment.Villagers rebel against it and play cricket with them with the conditions that if they win the Britishers let go their tax but if they loose they have to pay double tax. The story is about Colonizers and colonized conflicts.

2) Reluctant Fundamentalism

This movie is about conflict between religious fundamentalist and market fundamentalism. The film includes higher - fire policies of multinational companies, And it's dangers. Another thing they included was 9/11 attack and Muslim's situation in America after the attack.

2) Future of Postcolonial Studies – Ania Loomba Colonialism/Postcolonialism - 3rd Edition

Many famous post colonial scholars gave their views in this article. Such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak claims that,

‘No longer have a postcolonial perspective. I think postcolonial is the day before yesterday’ (Spivak 2013: 2). Along with it some postcolonial critics wrote about environmental studies, for example Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘readings in theories of globalization, Marxist analysis of capital, subaltern studies, and postcolonial criticism over the last twenty-five years’ have not prepared him for the task of analyzing the ‘planetary crisis of climate change’ (2009: 199).

Ramachandra Guha and JuanMartínez-Alier (1997) point out, is evident in American environmentalism and its obsession with the wilderness.further Rob Nixon  notes that this wilderness obsession is celebrated in American literature as well as in natural history, where ‘There is a durable tradition … of erasing the history of colonized peoples through the myth of the empty lands. … a prodigious amount of American environmental writing and criticism. Then later Vilashini Cooppan points out

that from its inception [there is] a prevailing version of postcolonial studies in the United States that so embraces its aura of ‘new work’ and its dual allegiances to high theory and a rather reified, distanced, and monolithic ‘Third World literature’ that it largely estranges itself from the individual and collection histories of several important allied traditions such as American studies, Native-American studies, African-American studies, Asian-American studies, Latino studies, and Gay and Lesbian studies (Cooppan 1999: 7)

Rosa Luxemburg further said about revised Marx. "Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system, a policy of spheres of interest—and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment,and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of the economic process." (1951: 452).

David Harvey suggests that we redefine ‘primitive accumulation’ as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (2005: 144). Harvey points out that All the features of primitive accumulation that Marx mentions have remained powerfully present with capitalism’s historical geography until now. Displacement of peasant populations and the formation of a landless proletariat has accelerated in countries such as Mexico and India in the last three decades, many formerly common property resources, such as water, have been privatised (often at World Bank insistence) … alternative (indigenous and even, in the case of the United States, petty commodity) forms of production and consumption have been suppressed. Nationalised industries have been privatised.Family farming has been taken over by agribusiness. And slavery has not disappeared (particularly in the sex trade).(Harvey 2005: 145–46)

German Carl Schmitt's views are, ‘open’ spaces in which the activity of European nations proceeded unrestrained: first, an immeasurable space of free land—the New World, America, the land of freedom i.e., land free for appropriation by Europeans—where the ‘old’ law was not in force; and second, the free sea—the newly discovered oceans conceived by the French,Dutch and English to be a realm of freedom.(Schmitt 2003: 94).

Chittaroopa Palit, NBA leader said that,

Though international political factors, such as the character of the governments involved, the existence of able support groups in the North that play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens, the German multinational, for building the dam in Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project; but in neither instance were there strong mass struggles on the ground. 

(Palit) 

Examples

1) “Tatvamasi” by Dhruv Bhatt

The book was written when NBD took place. It is required for writers to speak out about injustice, And that's the moral duety of them.but in this book Dhruv Bhatt keep silence about Narmada Bachao Andolan. It's a a escape of them. Just like the romantic era writers Dhruv Bhatt also just glorify beauty of nature. Not what is needed and required.

I hope my blog will be helpful to you. Thank you.