Colonialism in Literature
Colonialism in literature refers to the portrayal and critique of colonialism and its impacts on cultures, societies, and identities through literary works. Rooted in the historical context of Western expansion and domination from the fifteenth century onwards, colonial literature often reflects the experiences and narratives of both colonizers and colonized peoples. Notable examples from the age of empire include works by authors like H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, whose stories romanticized exploration and exoticism, as well as domestic literature that incorporated colonial themes, such as Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park."
As the effects of colonialism continued to resonate after the age of empire, postcolonial literature emerged as a counter-narrative. This body of work seeks to reclaim and express the voices of those impacted by colonial rule, often focusing on the creation of autonomous identities that challenge colonial perspectives. Authors like Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie illustrate the complexities of cultural identity and the enduring legacy of colonialism. Furthermore, some postcolonial writers have chosen to write in their native languages, emphasizing the importance of linguistic empowerment in the face of colonial legacy. Overall, the discourse surrounding colonialism in literature is a vital aspect of understanding cultural identity, power dynamics, and resistance in both historical and contemporary contexts.
Colonialism in Literature
History
World history is filled with tales of conquest and foreign domination. Mercantile expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as a Western commitment to exploration, laid the groundwork for modern colonialism, which reached its height at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, vast Western empires (such as the British and the French) reached around the earth, forcefully tying disparate cultures and societies to Western civilization. The age of empire officially ended after World War II, but the effects of colonialism have remained. Developed countries, such as Great Britain, France, and the United States, continue to dominate developing countries, most of which are former colonies.
Colonial Literature
Colonial expansion inspired interest and generated writing during the age of empire. Novels of exploration and exotic locales, such as those by H. Rider Haggard or Rudyard Kipling, enjoyed great popularity in the nineteenth century. Even domestic tales were tinged by colonialism. For example, Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) describes a family that owns plantations in Antigua. The madwoman in the attic in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) is a woman from Jamaica. Colonialism figured heavily in the popular Western imagination and thus found its way into literature.
During the age of empire, linguists, philosophers, and historians were also studying, labeling, and categorizing different non-Western cultures. As Edward Said has noted in Orientalism (1978), this Western scholarship on Asia and the Middle East was deeply influenced by Western colonialism, and while the scholarship was usually well-meaning, it was usually appropriative and on some level distorted. Colonial subjects came to be known and classified within a Western paradigm instead of on their own terms.
Postcolonial Literature
Colonialism in literature and scholarship was not without its opposition. Many people within and outside the colonial center began to critique the practice, engendering postcolonial literatures. Although the term “postcolonial” can correctly be applied to any writing that resists or questions colonialism, it is usually reserved for writings done by colonized or formerly colonized peoples. For example, the fiction of Salman Rushdie, a British Indian, is more readily accepted as postcolonial than E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924), which was initially seen in part as a critique of colonialism, but was later itself subject to postcolonial criticism as a product of Forster's British perspective on India. It is also important to note that not all postcolonial writers are from decolonized areas. Seamus Heaney (Northern Ireland), for example, can be considered postcolonial.
The primary way in which postcolonial literatures resist colonization is through the creation of an autonomous identity. Instead of looking toward the colonial center—Europe—for models, these works show the perspective of the colonized. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) shows the havoc and destruction Western missionaries bring when they civilize Africa. Margaret Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) attempts to recognize a Canadian tradition that is neither co-opted by the Commonwealth nor overshadowed by US culture. Hanif Kureishi, a British writer of Pakistani descent who wrote the screenplay for the movie My Beautiful Laundrette (1984), demonstrates how Pakistani people cope with life in England.
Differing perspective alone is not always enough for some writers of postcolonial literature: Some think that the language of the literature itself must be rethought. Irish poets such as Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill publish their work in Irish. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a writer from Kenya, began his career writing in English but then chose to write in his native Gikuyu. Believing, as Audre Lorde does, that the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house, these writers manipulate their own language to combat colonization and create a separate postcolonial identity.
Postcolonial writers who continue to write in the colonizer’s language have been subject to criticism, but they have helped to create important postcolonial literature. Many African, Caribbean, and Indian writers have chosen to write in their colonial languages, and their work raises important issues about national identity and colonial power. Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo may write in English, but Our Sister Killjoy (1977) is a vigorous rejection of Western ideals and colonization. Antiguan American writer Jamaica Kincaid uses her prose to decry what she sees as the commodification of the Caribbean in A Small Place (1988). Manipulating abrogation (a refusal of correct or standard usage) and appropriation, these authors make the colonial language represent the experience of the colonized.
Colonialism has been and remains an important issue in literature. Since national or cultural identity is partially created through such artifacts as literature and art, it seems plausible that colonization, a practice that appropriates cultures, would figure prominently within those artifacts. Whether writers have justified colonization (and upheld the supremacy of empire), or have worked toward decolonization and the assertion of an autonomous postcolonial identity, they have had to deal with the issue of colonialism in literature.
Bibliography
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2002.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2005.
Bhabha, Homi, ed. Nation and Narration. Routledge, 1990.
Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 2005.
Gunning, Dave. Postcolonial Literature. Edinburgh UP, 2013.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann, 1986.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. Routledge, 1978.
Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government. Princeton UP, 1994.