As we have been nearing the end of the
semester I have realized how many literary perspectives are similar,
how they can be used side by side to better understand extremely
specific topics, how using more than one can help deepen one's
understanding about anything within a text. After having some time to
think about Colonial and Post-Colonial studies I have come to realize
many relationships between these perspectives and other literary
perspectives, as well as relationships between specific topics such
as how language has changed within a world that has been colonized.
While reading “Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies” by
Ania Loomba my understanding of these areas of studies has become
more clear and helped me form these ideas I will shortly discuss. I
stumbled upon a quote that got me started in which Ania explains the
term postcolonial versus neo-colonial stating:
“To being with, the prefix 'post' complicates matters because it implies an 'aftermath' in two senses – temporal, as in coming after, and ideological as in supplanting. It is the second implication which critics of the term have found contestable: if the inequities of colonial rule have not been erased, it is perhaps premature to proclaim the demise of colonialism. A country may be both post colonial (in the sense of being formally independent) and neo-colonial (in the sense of remaining economically and/or culturally independent) at the same time (1103).
In my opinion I feel as if one should
analyze a post-colonialist piece of work then one should look at in
what way certain aspects of the culture, environment and other
aspects of a society were changed due to being colonized. Such as the
language of the colonized society, how it was changed or even wiped
out. As well as the relationships involving language within this
society such as the colonizers language versus the colonized peoples
language, how it changed on both sides or the now societal
expectations of the colonized to stay true to the colonizers
language. Taking a cultural studies approach on a post colonialist
text would lead me deeper into some of these relationships not just
with language but societal norms and how they have changed, how the
relationships between people within the society have changed due to
being colonized, and so on. Even taking a environmental perspective
on a post-colonial text would be interesting as so much could have
changed due to what the colonizers have done to the environment, what
animals they may have introduced into the new environment, how the
affect on the culture has changed the environment in regards to new
foods or agricultural techniques that have been introduced. There are
so many routes to go that this is what makes thinking about all of
the perspectives one could take on a piece of literature so great,
realizing how one can analyze every inch of the content of the text
through many different perspectives to understand it as a whole. One
could even go into a post colonial or neo-colonial text with a
Marxist perspective and point out how much has changed or what is
going on in regards to the economy, the class system, and so on.
Showing how the culture is still economically dependent and how that
affects the hierarchy of the class system, or one could speak of how
the economy weakened or strengthened due to a society being
colonized. One could even look at a neo-colonial text through a
marxist gender studies perspective and analyze how certain genders or
certain people of a certain sexuality has changed within their
society due to how the class system has changed due to being
dependant on their colonizer. Sure, this technique of mixing
perspectives, and realizing the topics brought forth from analyzing
through many different lenses for one piece of text will not work for
everyone or everything. Though it is something to consider when one
has the desire to look at a text specifically in a certain regard to
certain content. Just a little something for everyone to think about.
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