Thinking activity : Postcolonial literature : Ania Loomba's colonialism/Postcolonialism

 Hello friends,

        Welcome to my blog. This is my academic writing. This blog is about Ania Loomba's book, COLONIALISM/POSTCOLONIALISM.  It was published in his thinking activity as part of my postcolonial paper.

       Let's begin with what is the meaning of postcolonial. Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands.

            The book is divided into three main chapters, and a new Conclusion. 

- Situating colonial and postcolonial studies 

- Colonial and postcolonial identities Challenging colonialism 

- Conclusion: The future of postcolonial studies

Introduction of colonialism and Postcolonialism in this book : 

            The first chapter discusses the different meanings of terms such as colonialism, imperialism and postcolonialism, and the controversies surrounding them. It connects colonial discourse studies to key debates on ideology, subjectivity and language, showing why both a new terminology and a new reaching across disciplinary boundaries became necessary in the study of colonialism. This chapter will introduce readers to aspects of post-structuralist, Marxist, feminist and postmodern thought which have become important or controversial in relation to postcolonial studies. The last section of the chapter discusses the innovations, as well as the problems, that have been generated by the literary inception and inflection of colonial discourse studies. It was an interesting book with it's different kinds of aspects.  SO in the introduction of the book we find that she mentioned various critics and their thoughts. Here we also finds that

Terry Eagleton (1994) made a point that within ‘postcolonial thought’ one should be 

 ‘allowed to talk about cultural differences, but not —or not much —about economic exploitation’. 

              Here Ania Loomba makes a point that Eagleton’s use of the term ‘postcolonial thought’ to designate only a very particular academic trend in the West seemed unsatisfactory to me. She also mentioned that Many writers and academics, especially those working in once-colonized countries, do write extensively about economic exploitation in relation to colonialism and its aftermath, but their work is often not included within what has become institutionalised as ‘post-colonial studies’. " 

SITUATING COLONIAL AND

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES :

             In the beginning of the first chapter we can see the meaning of the word colonialism from the Oxford English Dictionary. Anoa Loomba discussed that with critical argument. She also discussed what is missed out in the definition.

        Ania Loomba also mentioned that britishers ruled in a different and the significantly And they were different from other ruler like Mughal etc: She also talked about European travels ushered in new and different kinds of

colonial practices which altered the whole globe in a way that previous colonialisms did not.

 

 She raised several questions like :

- How can we understand these differences? 

- Was it that Europeans established empires far away from their own shores? 

- Were they more violent or more ruthless?

- Were they better organised? Or a superior race?

These are very interesting questions.

          Here in this chapter we also find what about present Colonialism. Modern colonialism is more than extracting tribute, goods and wealth from the countries that it conquered—it restructured the economies of the latter, drawing them into a complex relationship with their own.

       Now time reading capitalism is becoming more important. In a way now there is no Empire but imperialism is there. Now we can say that in imperialism the ruler was controlled by the market. In a way there is one question like Is imperialism is political control or economical control.  In several ways we remain colonized.

              V. I. Lenin and Karl Kautz gave a new meaning to the word ‘imperialism’ by linking it to a particular stage of the development of capitalism. In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1947), Lenin argued that the growth of ‘finance-capitalism’ and industry in the Western countries had created ‘an enormous superabundance of capital’.

There are references to Shakespeare's Othello. The hero of the play who is black one. But how european look at that. There is also reference to Shakespeare's another play The Tempest.

           In short, I would like to say that while writing this blog I am confused about what to write and what to leave out because each and every paragraph gives something new and unique. 

References :

Eagleton, T. (1991) Ideology: An Introduction, London and New York: Verso.——(1994) ‘Goodbye to the Enlightenment’, The Guardian, 5 May.