The Holy Trinity Of Postcolonial Theory: Orientalism, Subalternity, And Mimicry And Hybridity
Prior to initiate colonization, the writing centres were mostly found in the West and the Easterns did not know how to write in English. But during and after colonialism, the people of the colonized countries started to write in English and postcolonial literature became a fast expanding field of literary studies. In Postcolonial period, the effects of colonization on cultures and societies are clearly seen. That is why postcolonial literature describes the interaction between the colonizers and the colonized. By the mid of 20th century, the vast majority of the world was under the control of European countries. There was a time; Great Britain alone ruled almost 50 per cent of the world. During the 20th century, countries such as India, Sri-Lanka, Nigeria, Jamaica, Canada and Australia won independence from their European colonizers. The literature and art produced in these countries after independence has become the object of ‘postcolonial studies’, a term coined in and for academia, initially in British universities. This field gained prominence in the 1970s with Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ and has been developing ever since.
In literary world, the famous postcolonial writers/critics and their works include Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), Gayatri Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? (1983), Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994), Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) etc. But Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha are said to be ‘The Holy Trinity’ of Postcolonial theory. Because Said’s ‘Orientalism’, Spivak’s ‘Subalternity’ and Bhabha’s ‘Mimicry’ and ‘Hybridity’ are considered as the backbone of the postcolonial theory. They developed a perspective, not just applicable to postcolonial literatures, whereby states of marginality, plurality and perceived ‘Otherness’ are seen as sources of energy and potential change.
Meaning of Postcolonialism
The term ‘Colonialism’ comes from the word ‘Colony’ which is derived from the Latin word ‘Colonia’ means ‘community’ or ‘residential place’ and the word ‘Post’ means ‘after’. So, ‘Post-Colonialism’ means ‘after the emergence of Colonialism’. In other words, ‘Postcolonialism’ is the sum total of the entire social, political, cultural and economic changes brought about by the impact of colonialism. It deals with the reading and writing of literature mostly written by the native writers in the colonized countries. In short, postcolonial literature is that which has arisen primarily since the end of the World War II from regions of the world undergoing decolonization. Works from such regions in the 20th and 21st century, such as the Indian subcontinent, Nigeria, South Africa and different parts of the Caribbean, for example might be described as postcolonial. Some scholars and critics criticize the term postcolonial as confusing and even misleading because it has been used to refer both to works written during and after the colonial period in various countries.
The Holy Trinity of Postcolonial Theory
The term ‘Tri’ means ‘Three’ and ‘Unity’ means ‘One’. In Christian doctrine, ‘Holy Trinity’ is a faith which means ‘One God in three Divine Persons’. The three persons are distinct, yet are one ‘substance’ or ‘nature’. Arithmetically, it would be 1×1×1=1. In literary theory, ‘The Holy Trinity’ can be presented as “Said + Spivak + Bhabha = Postcolonial Theory”. So, the three are known as ‘The Holy Trinity’ of Post-colonialism.
Edward Said’s Orientalism
Famous critic and theorist Edward Said brought a broad revolution in the studies of postcolonial literature by his work ‘Orientalism’ in 1978. ‘Orientalism’ is a critique of the study of the orient and its ideology. Said examines the historical, cultural, and political views of the East that are held by the West, and examines how they developed and where they come from. The beginning of the study of ‘Orientalism’ is traced to the early 18th century and focused on language. Said talks about the difference between the eastern countries and the western countries and he said that there is a lot of difference between the two cultures and all but the eastern countries are oriented towards the western countries and they are trying to adopt the culture, the language, the style and everything of the West. ‘Orientalism’ means the scholarly knowledge of Eastern culture, people and language. Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ (1978) led to the creation of ‘Postcolonialism’. Edward Said who founded postcolonial studies primarily focused on the literature that was produced from within the European colonial metropolis. Orientalism as a particular way of thinking: According to Said, instances of Orientalism as a binary way of thinking can be traced as far back as say the Greek tragedies of 5th century B.C.E where the orient was imagined not just as a land of Asia but as the others of the Europeans self. Since that time, if the Occident or Europe stood for masculinity for instance then the Orient by contrast assumed a feminine entity in this imaginative geography. If the occident represents matured adulthood then by contrast orient became representative of childish immaturity. They were basically opposite of the East and considered to be the active while the orient was considered to be the passive. For them, the orient is existed to be ruled and dominated.
Orientalism as an academic discipline: During the Heydays of European colonialism, this discourse enjoyed special relevance and it mutated itself into an academic discipline. Said uses the term as an academic designation for the activities of anyone who teaches, writes about, or conducts research on the Orient or the East in whatever discipline. The West thought that Orient is existed to be studied and that studying was done by Westerners who believed themselves to be superior to the “others”, which is how they described “the East”.
Orientalism as a corporate institution: Said views Orientalism as a corporate institution since the 18th century for dealing with and dominating the orient. Once Michael Fuchou pointed out that the discourse that is generated, circulated and ratified by the institutions of the powerful is the discourse which gains acceptance as the truth. Similarly after the European conquest of the Orient in the 18th century, it was the discourse of Orientalism which was validated and circulated by the institutions of the Occident and therefore the discourse of Orientalism with all its prejudices and problematic research methodology, gained acceptance and validity as the authentic truth about the Orient. Now these various institutions like the colonial legislature and judiciary which includes the schools, colleges and universities setup in the colonized parts of the world to propagate western learning together constitute as the third aspect of Orientalism.
This early study considered of translating works of the Oriental languages into European languages. It was believed that the colonial rulers could not rule properly, without some knowledge of the people they ruled on. They thought that they could acquire this knowledge from translating various works from the native language into their own. The term oriental was used to describe the Middle East and Near East and Far East. All of these different cultures were basically lumped into one for the purposes of study. The reason for study was political also. The focus is on language and literature. Said points out the errors in the ways of these early Orientalist. Said wants the study to focus on the human experience of the cultures and societies. He points out the errors in many of the earlier studies. Briefly speaking, Said questions the claim that the orient was biologically inferior to the Europeans and thus required domination.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Subalternity
Gayatri Spivak is well known for her feminist perspective. She has written on democracy, development and gender, literary and cultural studies. But her contribution to postcolonial thought with special reference to feminism and critical theory is significant. In postcolonial theory, ‘Subaltern’ is the most associated term with Spivak. So, ‘Subaltern’ means ‘of lower rank’, but Spivak has widened its scope and attributed the term to the literature of marginality and suppressed groups of society. “She widened the scope of subaltern literature including the literatures of marginalised women. She makes harsh comment on the male dominant society and shows the secondary position, inferior role given to women in patriarchy”.
The basic claim and opening statement of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”(1988) is that western academic thinking is produced in order to support western economical interests. Spivak holds that knowledge is never innocent and that it expresses the interests of its producers. For Spivak knowledge is like any other commodity that is exported from the west to the third world for financial and other types of gain. She is criticizing the intellectual West’s ‘desire for subjectivity’. She claims that ‘research’ or ‘knowledge’ have served as a prime justification for the conquest of other cultures and their enslavement, as part of the European colonial project. She is opposed to the western attempt to situate itself as investigating subject that is opposed to the investigated non-western object. Spivak’s answer to “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is ‘no’, they cannot, not when the western academic field is unable to relate to the other with anything other than its own paradigm. In short, we can say that her controversial argument is that the Subaltern cannot speak for him or herself because the very structure of colonialism prevents the speaking. For the colonized women, this is even more impossible because the double bind of colonialism and patriarchy represses her completely.
Homi Bhabha’s Mimicry & Hybridity
Homi K. Bhabha was born in 1949 in the Parsi community of Bombay. After graduating from University of Bombay, he moved to the University of Oxford as a Post-Graduate student and there he completed his master’s as well as his doctorate. He started his teaching career in the United Kingdom but then moved on to America and he is now the NF Rodenberg Chair Professor in Humanities in the University of Harvard.
His most influential work of post colonial theory is the collection of essays entitled The Location of Culture (1994). His other works are The Black Servant and the Dark Princess (2006), On Global Memory: Reflections on Barbaric Transmission (2009), and Beyond Photography (2011). He is often regarded as a part of the ‘Holy Trinity’ in the field of Post-Colonial studies with the other two figure being Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak. He is known for his literary terms; ‘Mimicry’ and ‘Hybridity’.
Bhabha’s Mimicry: Bhabha’s Mimicry means “the blind imitation of western ideology, literature and lifestyle”. “He uses the term mimicry to indicate the Westernization of native cultures”. In colonial and postcolonial literature, ‘Mimicry’ is most commonly seen when members of a colonized society imitate the language, dress, politics or cultural attitude of their colonizers. The colonized societies suppress their own cultural identities by copying the cultures of the colonizers. Mimicry is often seen as something shameful, and a black or brown person engaging in mimicry is usually derided by other members of his/her group for doing so. Though mimicry is very important concept in thinking about the relationship between colonizing and colonized people, and many people have historically been derided as mimics or mimic-men, it is interesting that almost no one ever describes themselves as positively engaged in mimicry.
However, mimicry is not all bad. In his essay Of Mimicry and Man, Bhabha describes mimicry as sometimes unintentionally subversive. In Bhabha’s way of thinking, mimicry is a kind of performance that exposes the artificiality of all symbolic expressions of power. Though mimicry is almost always used in postcolonial studies with reference to colonials and immigrant minorities imitating white cultural and linguistic norms.
Bhabha’s Hybridity: The westerns considered their culture a superior one than the cultures of the Eastern countries mostly during the colonial periods. They perceived that the eastern and western cultures are the two distinct and separate entities despite their contacts because of colonialism. This perception is perhaps most clearly stated in the famous opening line of Rudyard Kipling poem, The Ballad of East and West published in 1889. The line is “Oh! East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” The Indian nationalists also considered the mixing of cultures a bad one as they thought that under the colonial influence, India has lost its distinctive cultures and identities. In short, it can be said that the western believed in ‘Cultural Superiority’ and the eastern believed in ‘Cultural Purity’. But Bhabha’s slogan was different from these two and that is ‘Cultural Hybridity’.
So, against the ideas of ‘Cultural Superiority’ and ‘Cultural Purity’, Bhabha proposes ‘Culture Hybridity’. In order to understand his ‘Theory of Cultural Hybridity’, we need to understand that for Bhabha, Culture is not a static entity but something which is fluid and in motion. Bhabha didn’t believe in ‘Pure Indianness’, ‘Pure Africanness’ or ‘Pure Americanness’ etc. that can be grasp, studied and returned to. But he believed ‘in betweenness’. He is of the view that cultures are regularly being added and are regularly transforming our cultural identities. Briefly speaking, all culture is characterized by a mixedness which Bhabha refers to by the word ‘Hybridity’. Bhabha views culture not in its unchangeable essence, but characterized by change, flux and transformation and most importantly by mixedness or interconnectedness, which Bhabha terms ‘Hybridity’.
Till now, we have discussed postcolonial theories to some extent. But an important aspect of Postcolonialism is the postcolonial literature also. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is a postcolonial novel and tells us the story of a Nigerian man ‘Okonkwo’ and it highlights the effects of colonization, clashes of cultures, struggle between change and tradition, social disintegration and language etc. The themes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) also include the effects of colonialism, darkness and self discovery. In V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men (1967), the writer examines and analysis the colonial and postcolonial periods. In this novel, Naipaul presented the true picture of colonialism through the protagonist ‘Ralph Singh’ who was the representative of colonial individuals and colonization is depicted as a process that takes away their identity, culture, history and sense of place. One more novel of the postcolonial period: Raja Rao’s Kanthapura also makes the people aware about colonization and tells them that British Rule can be ended by following the noble ideas of national leaders like Gandhi. Beside these there are so many other postcolonial literary works highlighting the effects of colonization.
Conclusion
Postcolonialism includes the study of theory and literature as it relates to the colonizer-colonized experience. Postcolonial literature describes the interaction between the colonizers and the colonized. This field gained prominence in the 1970s with Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ and has been developing ever since. The term ‘Postcolonial Literature’ now replaces the traditional category of ‘commonwealth literature’ or ‘Third World Literature’. In other words, ‘Postcolonialism’ is the sum total of the entire social, political, cultural and economic changes brought about by the impact of colonialism. It deals with the reading and writing of literature mostly written by the native writers in the colonized countries. Post-Colonial studies deals with the effects of colonialism on cultures and societies. It is concerned with both how European nations conquered and controlled 3rd World cultures and how these groups have since responded to and restricted those encroachments. Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha are said to be ‘The Holy Trinity’ of Postcolonial, theory. Because Said’s ‘Orientalism’, Spivak’s ‘Subalternity’ and Bhabha’s ‘Mimicry’ and ‘Hybridity’ are considered as the backbone of the postcolonial theory. An important aspect of Postcolonialism is the postcolonial literature also. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is a postcolonial novel and tells us the story of a Nigerian man ‘Okonkwo’ and it highlights the effects of colonization, clashes of cultures, struggle between change and tradition, social disintegration and language etc. The themes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) also include the effects of colonialism, darkness and self-discovery. In V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men (1967), the writer examines and analysis the colonial and postcolonial periods. Beside these there are so many other postcolonial literary works highlighting the effects of colonization. In a nutshell, it can be said that Postcolonial literature is the most dominant form of literature and theory and it has a great appeal. “Postcolonialism mostly deals with many concepts like cultural, political, geographical, psychological and post-structural etc”. It is the major field of literature which helps in understanding both colonizers and the colonized.
