Edward Said

3.2. The Second Paradigm: The Dialogic The second interrelated principle of Postcolonial eco-poetics is the dialogic paradigm developed and introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin. The dialogic paradigm seeks to unmask and unsettle dominant discourses in colonial and anthropocentric discourses. Bakhtin’s affiliation and appropriation to both postcolonialism and eco-poetics has been recently acknowledged by scholars and critics. Bakhtin is cited to lend prestige and weight to the theoretical sphere of…

new realities” (Suvin, 15). The story fails to reimagine a narrative about European colonialism of Native Americans as defined in modern society. Instead of focusing on a true native, the story completely flips this notion and focuses on a man named Edward Danton…

Post-colonial literature deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and societies through literature. This term has been started using after the Second world War in terms such as the post-colonial state and has carried a chronological meaning, designating the post-independence period. However, from the late 1970s the term has been used by literary critics to discuss the various cultural effects of colonization. It was Gayatri Spivak who first used the term Post-colonial in the collection…

The Power of Imperialism, Race and Gender “The smallest Woman in the world” is a short story telling a tale of a French explorer looking for the smallest pygmy in the world. Upon finding what he believes is the smallest woman in the world, the story’s concept of exploration transitions from innocent curiosity to exploitation. Through Clarice Lispector’s short story, “The Smallest Woman in the World”, the reader will be able to identify the story’s allegory of superior and inferior and will see…

Globalization, collaboration, is necessary for sustaining the life of all species. Tsing says, “Precarity is a state of acknowledgment of our vulnerability to others” (29). Anti-globalization, indigeneity without contact, is impossible because Homo economicus is always scoping for a new frontier. If we don’t collaborate with each other - which is to say if we don’t contaminate our lives by intermingling with those humans and other species which we see as radically different from us – then we are…

There is currently a growing body of research in postcolonial criticism and analysis of Renaissance literature. Inspired by efforts to decolonize the canon, I am interested in studying the roots of colonialism in the Renaissance and its influence on the modern world. In my second year of undergraduate study, I was introduced to postcolonial literature and theory in an introductory course with Dr. Stanka Radović. Reading polemic texts, as well as ‘subalterns’ writing back or breaking away from…

In the time period of 1840 until 1900 Japan and China were both subjected to western imperialism, but they reacted in different ways. Japan was able to adapt to imperialism much better than China was by changing their economy and government. They abolished feudalism, and in order to become more western, they created a new army and industrialized their economy. China on the other hand, was suffering from many internal conflicts, so it was not difficult for Great Britain and other western…

Yuga is an artist who already exhibited his work here one year ago. He’s always surprising and capable of amazing us by using unexpected ways of expression, mostly because it gives us a very peculiar look about Portugal. He’s Japanese and when he looks into our coffee shop’s culture, he sees the same thing as the pub’s culture in England. Thus, he picks some elements associated with the coffee shop, reinterprets, and projects on them other things he finds in the streets: sentences that people…

Few theoretical fields can compare with the amount of internal conflict that plagues postcolonial theory: a semmingly constant stream of debates centring on internal rather than external elements. One such debate can be located between the ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’ critics of the theory, who are often engaged with one another in a rather antagonistic manner. A simple explanation of the stances of each wave can be stated as such: first wave criticism challenges the colonial status quo,…

Returning the “Gaze” Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John is an attempt at writing back to a hegemonic colonial discourse. The protagonist of this postcolonial bildungsroman, Annie, is struggling to form an identity while adhering to colonial ideologies forced upon her. However, her ability to write and speak back is limited to the colonial culture, specifically English literature and language. She uses the culture that is oppressing her as a means of liberation. Similarly, Homi Bhabha argues that a…