Postcolonialist studies

(Lecture 12/11/07 – Anna Roosval)

Aimé Césaire – Discourse on Colonialism

Césaire- born in Martinique, educated in Paris. His book was written in the post-War era, very influenced by Marx and Communism. The text was criticised for its communist content but it is anyway important as one of the first texts on colonialism. Césaire questions the need for a people to be civilized by a more “developed” culture. He makes an intersectional analysis before the intersectionality context was brought in.

He draws attention to the process in which the colonizer is decivilized and brutalized. Césaire identifies Nazism as a long-standing practice that has been present in colonialism. Nazi practices had been applied long before to non-European peoples. Those who don’t protest against these practices are part of them.

Boomerang effect of colonization = by treating people as an animal you turn yourself into an animal, in treating others as non-civilized, you decivilize yourself. These practices will, in the end, to the destruction of Europe. Cooperation between native lords and the colonizer was needed in the process of colonization.

Imperialism = building an empire, there is a sense of togetherness

Colonialism = is not an empire, does not aspire to be an empire.

Anne McClitock – can we talk about colonialism and different kinds of colonialism?

Intersectionality was present in post-colonial studies before it became cristalized as a concept. In the analysis of an empire, different categories (race, class, gender, sexuality) must be taken into account. She does not see categories as static, but they have come to being in relation to each other and we need to look at these relations/intersections when studying these categories.

Post-colonialism has not benefited women very much, even in post-colonialist theories, women has been put aside.

Problems with the term postcolonial:

- Implies progress and a one way simple development.

- Implies a binary, a phenomenon which is otherwise contested in postcolonial theories

- Implies that colonialism is over.

Commodity fetishism – four soap fetishes:

1. Soap itself
2. White clothing (especially aprons)
3. Mirrors
4. Monkeys

Pears Soap = used a lot of children, white child bathing a black child. At the end the black child turns all black, but for the face. Blackness is related to dirt. The soap ads erase female work, ignoring both the work done by women in the home and the work done by women in the soap factories, where the work was done essentially by women.

Polygamy was outlawed in South-Africa not in consideration of the women but in consideration of white-man who could not compete with African men and their wives working for them.

Five ways in which women have been implicated in nationalism:

1. Biological reproducers of national collectives
2. Reproducers of the boundaries of national groups (through restrictions on sexual or marital relations
3. As active transmitters and producers of national culture.
4. As symbolic signifiers of national difference
5. As active participants in national struggles.