Postcolonial Criticism of Poetry

Overview

Postcolonial criticism analyzes and critiques the literature, poetry, drama, and prose fiction of writers who are subjects of countries governed by or colonies of other nations, primarily England and France and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Postcolonial criticism deals mainly with the literature of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean by analyzing the interactions between Indigenous peoples' culture, customs, and history and the colonial power that governs. Postcolonial criticism is part of a larger field called cultural studies or race and ethnicity studies.

To understand the importance of postcolonial literature, a reader should understand the scope of European involvement in people's lives worldwide. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, European countries conquered, governed, and had interests in most nations worldwide. Colonialism had begun principally through mercantilism and the protection of mercantile companies, such as the British East India Company, by the British navy and the navies of other trading countries. By the mid-twentieth century, however, European domination began to end as colonized countries staged successful independence movements. By 1980, Britain had lost all but a few of its colonial holdings; Hong Kong remained British until 1997, and Australia remained British until 1999.

Postcolonial literary criticism is a recent development. Formerly known as commonwealth studies, postcolonial literary studies includes examinations of works by authors from colonized nations. After nationalism, Indigenous novelists and poets could finally freely express their thoughts and feelings about the effects of the long-term conquest of their peoples, traditions, and customs. Although some literature from the East originated in these early days of colonial rule, the great mass of postcolonial literature began as colonies gained independence.

Edward Said

A list of the most influential postcolonial critics must begin with Edward W. Said (1935-2003), whose Orientalism (1978) is considered a foundational work in postcolonial studies. Said has a special place in postcolonial studies partly because of the uniqueness of his birth and education. He was born in Jerusalem while it was still a British protectorate, and he was educated in Egypt, England, and the United States, where he received his doctorate from Harvard University. He taught at Columbia University for many years, won several honors, and was well-regarded in his profession.

In Orientalism, Said argues that Europeans have always been prejudiced against people of the Orient (the East), which led to the formation of images of the East and Easterners that were mistaken and romanticized. Because of their view of the Orient, Europeans and later Americans began to feel justified in their conquest of the East, particularly the nations of the Middle East. Said, however, also denounces the Middle East for accepting the prejudiced values of the West regarding the Orient. In Orientalism, Said focuses on the ideas that become commonplace when the people raised in a governing culture, such as England, are mistakenly educated about the people of the country they dominate, such as India.

Said argues that even though Europeans were interested in the nations they governed and tried to learn about their colonies' people, language, and cultural history, European understandings and attitudes were often mistaken. One of the most common mistakes of the Orientalists, as Said calls the colonizers of the East, is their misguided view of the Orient itself. Said argues that, for example, Orientalists often see a series of opposites between the two cultures. That is, they believe that the culture of the European country is normal and that the culture of its colony is simply a mirror image of, and inferior to, the governing nation. To the Orientalist, therefore, the culture of the governed people is less than normal or subnormal.

Asian males are often portrayed as weak and effeminate; nevertheless, they are considered a threat to European women, and European women are considered by Orientalists to be drawn to the mysterious males of the East. To understand this dichotomy, one might consider an image from popular culture—the 1920s Italian film star Rudolph Valentino, whose most famous role was as an Arabian sheik who abducted European and American women. This image of the Arabian sheik, one of the most popular images of the 1920s, found resonance with many people, who then formed their ideas of what a “sheik of Araby” was like from these film portrayals.

Another example of Orientalist views of the East is the stereotype of the Asian or Arab woman as exotic, highly sexed, and eager for domination by a European conqueror. To an Orientalist, the East is always compared to the West, but this comparison always considers the East inferior. That is, where the West is progressive, the East is backward, the West values unity and friendship, the East is untouchable and alien, and the West is strong and unconquerable. The East is weak, merely awaiting the domination of the West. Thus, Said suggests that to Orientalists, the East and its people are alien.

Orientalism and Said’s 1993 book, Culture and Imperialism, provoked much debate among historians, both pro and con. Still, there is no denying the special place of these works in the canon of postcolonial literary criticism. In these works, Said attempts to show how these ideas of the past are clearly presented in the writings of authors of the colonial period and how the literature of the former colonies has perhaps progressed somewhat beyond the errors of the past. Even if a mistaken worldview is somehow part of human nature, in that people yearn for the fantastic and exotic instead of sameness among the world’s peoples, Said contends that such a view prevents an honest relationship among peoples of varied cultures.

Writers and critics from the developing world

Any postcolonial criticism study should include several well-known and well-respected writers from Africa, India, and other former colonies. Some major names to be considered are Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Jamaica Kincaid, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, and Salman Rushdie, among many others.

Fanon was a leading intellectual of the twentieth century known for his work in subjugation. Born in Martinique, his work describes the role that intellectuals ought to play in the struggle against colonialism. He was active during World War II, fighting against supporters of the French Vichy government, which cooperated with the Nazis in subjugating the French. He was decorated for his efforts, but after the war, found himself regarded not as a French war hero but primarily as a Black man. He had expected respect but found disdain; he was seen as “the other,” a person feared and dismissed. He began to despair, as his education—he had begun studying medicine before the war—his language skills and his elegant demeanor did not keep him from being treated as an exotic and alien specimen.

Fanon’s first book, Peau noire, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks, 1967), examines the effects of racism on the psyches of people of color. He describes the anger and pain he feels after his attempts to remake himself into a “White man” with black skin are rebuffed. He then travels to Africa to find the antidote to his psychological pain. In 1953, he finished medical training and moved to Algeria to work as a psychiatrist. In Algeria, he experienced revolution firsthand as Algerians fought for independence from France. Fanon wrote about his experiences as a part of the Algerian struggle. His works include L’An V de la révolution algérienne (1959; Studies in a Dying Colonialism, 1965), Les Damnés de la terre (1961; The Wretched of the Earth, 1963), and Pour la révolution africaine (1964; Toward the African Revolution, 1976). Fanon died from leukemia at the age of thirty-six.

Africa

Many African countries were fighting for independence in the twentieth century, beginning with South Africa in 1910 and leading up to Eritrea in the 1990s. However, African nations began accelerating their demands for independence following World War II. Writers soon took up the challenge of moving the nations into a new age.

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria and graduated from that country’s University College in 1953. Although a speaker of Igbo, he writes in English, making him one of the most widely read African writers. Because he began to write before Nigerian independence, he had experienced both colonial and postcolonial life. Some consider him to be the founder of modern African literature. Things Fall Apart (1958), his first novel, shows life from an African point of view. No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) show the effect of colonial government on Igbo society, Nigeria, and other newly independent African nations. Nigeria became a republic in 1963, but only three years passed before a military junta seized power. Achebe’s 1966 novel, A Man of the People, correctly foreshadows the unrest that followed independence. A later novel, Anthills of the Savannah (1987), contrasts the actual government corruption with the idealism and dreams of the disenchanted public.

In addition to his novels, Achebe has written short stories, children’s books, and poetry, including Beware, Soul Brother, and Other Poems (1971; published in the United States as Christmas in Biafra, and Other Poems, 1973). His Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975) is a collection of essays reflecting his thoughts and disillusionment with the state of his nation. Achebe considers such critical questions as, Is there such a thing as African literature? What is the role of the writer in African society? He even wonders if an African literature is possible. The essays were originally published between 1962 and 1972, when, in his enthusiasm for African literature, he led the initiative for Heinemann Publishing's African Writers Series (AWS). Early on, Achebe saw great promise for African literature. Still, the ensuing years have brought not a flowering of literature in Africa but modern, struggling societies that are too chaotic to support writers' and poets' efforts.

Another name often mentioned in the litany of African postcolonial critics is Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who was born in Kenya. He writes in Gikuyu, although much of his earlier work is in English. He has written fiction, plays, short stories, and essays in criticism and children’s literature. He is the founding editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mutiiri. Ngugi went to the United States in 1977 after serving time in prison in Kenya. He taught at Yale and New York universities, holding professorships in comparative literature and performance studies. He also taught at the University of California, Irvine. He was suspended from his South Sudanese teaching position at the University of Juba in 2020 after criticizing the country's government. His works in English include the play The Black Hermit (pr. 1962, pb. 1968); novels Weep Not, Child (1964), The River Between (1965), and A Grain of Wheat (1967); and the nonfiction works Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972) and Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Toward a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa (1998), an essay on the critical state of African literature.

Taban lo Liyong is a Ugandan poet. He attended Howard University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he graduated in 1968, the first African to do so. When Taban finished his education, dictator Idi Amin was ruling Uganda, so the young Taban moved to Kenya and began teaching at the University of Nairobi. Later, he taught in Sudan, South Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, and South Africa. He maintains that his experiences in many cultures have made him more diverse in his worldview than many fellow African writers. He has published more than twenty books, including books of poetry: Frantz Fanon’s Uneven Ribs, with Poems More and More (1971), Another Nigger Dead: Poems (1972), Ballads of Underdevelopment: Poems and Thoughts (1976), Words that Melt a Mountain (1996), Carrying Knowledge Up a Palm Tree (1997), Corpse Lovers and Corpse Haters (2005), and After Troy (2021). His nonfiction works include The Last Word: Cultural Synthesism (1969) and Another Last Word (1990). He also wrote the novel Meditations in Limbo (1970).

Henry Owuor-Anyumba was a music historian born in Kenya. He taught at the University of Nairobi along with Ngugi and Taban. In 1968, the three professors wrote a paper, “On the Abolition of the English Department” (1968), which has since become famous as a position paper on the place of English in postcolonial literature. They argued, in part, that if the university needed to teach a single culture, that culture should be African, not a distillation of British literature, language, and linguistics. They asserted that African literature should be at the center of the curriculum.

The professors further suggested that the Department of English be abolished and that a Department of African Languages and Literature should take its place. They called for a mandatory study of French as an example of a European language and Swahili as a universal African language. They called for the study of African oral traditions in literature and for the addition of the literature of other nations, including those of the Caribbean and the Americas. The University of Nairobi began to offer a languages and literatures program with elements of these suggestions as part of their course offerings.

India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean

An important contributor to postcolonial writing is V. S. Naipaul, a native of Trinidad and Tobago. His Hindu family emigrated to Trinidad and Tobago as indentured servants. Naipaul’s father was a journalist and loved literature. Naipaul attended Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad and Tobago and later studied literature at Oxford, graduating in 1953. He later worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation and wrote for The New Statesman.

A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), Naipaul’s first major novel, was based partly on his father’s life and his childhood in Trinidad and Tobago. When Naipaul went to India later, he was struck by how foreign it seemed, although it had always been the family's dream to return to India someday. He discovered that living in the West Indies had made it impossible ever to experience the “real India” he had heard so much about from his immigrant grandfather. His disappointment was the basis for the nonfiction work An Area of Darkness: An Experience of India (1964). His next work, the novel Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion (1963), is set in England.

At this point, Naipaul began to feel the pressure of his dual heritage and began to see his duty as a postcolonial writer. The collection In a Free State (1971) won the Booker Prize and was quite a change for Naipaul. Transcending the boundaries of genre, the work consists of short stories, a novella, and two excerpts from a travel diary. The thread that ties all the parts together is the fear that an individual in a newly decolonized world can never be free. His works portray his alienation, uncertainty, and self-mockery. In 1990, he received a British knighthood.

Another postcolonial Caribbean writer is Jamaica Kincaid (born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson in Antigua). As a teenager, she worked as an au pair in New York. She attended Franconia College, worked as a photographer, and wrote articles for Ingenue magazine. She has written several novels, and one of her books, A Small Place (1988), is a nonfiction work that focuses on the problems that Antigua encountered during its transition to full independence from British rule in 1981. In this book, Kincaid argues that, in many ways, conditions in Antigua worsened after independence. Her criticism of the government and the “elected dynasty” of the Vere Cornwall Bird family, which ruled until 2004, led to her book being banned in Antigua. Kincaid's further novels include novels, story collections, and non-fiction, such as See Now Then (2013) and Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas (2005).

Another name often associated with the new postcolonial writers is Salman Rushdie, an Indian novelist and essayist born in Mumbai (Bombay). Rushdie went to school in England and got his degree from Cambridge. After graduation, he moved to Pakistan. His novel Midnight’s Children (1981) follows the lives of the children born at midnight on Independence Day in India in 1947. It won the Booker Prize. The novel Shame (1983) won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in 1984 and was among the finalists for the Booker Prize in fiction. In 1988, he published The Satanic Verses, leading to accusations of blasphemy and the issuance of a fatwa against Rushdie by the Islamic Iranian government in 1989. He was forced to go into hiding under the protection of the British government. Even while in hiding, Rushdie continued to write. His works include Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), a children’s fable that won a Writers’ Guild Award; Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 (1991); East, West: Stories (1994), a book of short stories; and The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), a novel about a young man descended from the last Moorish ruler in Andalucía, Spain. He continued writing in the twenty-first century, publishing novels, essays, short stories, memoirs, and a children's novel. These works include Languages of Truth: Essays 2003–2020 (2021), Victory City (2023), and Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (2024).

Rushdie is a major part of the postcolonial criticism movement, as he shows in Midnight’s Children, a story of the years following independence. Here, the hero moves from a childhood of hope and enthusiasm to an adulthood filled with disillusion and despair. The hero’s journey mirrors the political realities of the period of emergency rule established by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975.

Rushdie does not spare Pakistan in his dark portrayal of postcolonial times: Shame mirrors political reality as Rushdie uses Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s actual rise to power in Pakistan as the inspiration for the novel’s fantastic country (which, he claims, is not Pakistan). The novel depicts a nation of fools with no sense of values, brutal and cruel while still being ridiculous. The Pakistani government eventually banned the novel.

A recurring image in much postcolonial literature is of a great cataclysm that follows independence in the former colonies. What happens to the colonies when they finally reach their much-longed-for freedom and independence, so they cannot escape an inevitable fall into anarchy and despair? One might question whether ineptitude, inexperience in governing, or greed caused the strife that is the reality of independence for many newly created nations. Others may consider whether there are other reasons for this.

Bibliography

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