Things She Said

Orientalism has became one of the founding principles of racial theories. It is how the way the West imagines about the East. Many stereotypes were first created during the Marco Polo’s travels to the East. The fantasy of Orientalism has been framed and reinforced through the differences of the Eastern cultures and traditions. Due to the strange clothings, foods, religions, and beliefs, Asia seemed very abnormal to the Europeans. Which lead them to think that everyone is the East are considered…

Europeans colonization. The main protagonist named Marlow, a European sailor, goes on an adventure with his crew through his perspective going up the Congo River with the goal of meeting an idealistic man, Kurtz. Throughout this journey, Marlow says many things that can seem racist towards the natives which can spark arguments about whether this novel should be considered canon Throughout its long history as a seminal text in the English canon, there has been a strenuous debate over whether…

Although Wharton’s trip lasted only for one month, she gives detailed descriptions of the landscape, cities of Rabat, Fes, Marrakesh, Moulay Idriss and Meknes and provides a description of the Moroccan people, their history, folkways, and architecture. She criticizes the ceremonies and harems she has attended from her own perspective as a western lady that expresses her dislike of the Moroccan traditions and habits and she describes them as male tyranny and female enslavement. Her views…

More than Genies and Spirits: The presence of Feminist Characters in old Arab Stories In her book titled The Hidden Face of Eve, Naawal El Saadawi an Egyptian writer writes that “Woman is at her best and most powerful when she takes on the form of a genie or spirit in A Thousand and One Nights. Men fall victims to her beauty and her spells and go through suffering and even torture to gain her favour.” (, P. 162) In this passage, El Saadawi expresses an opinion that is very popular within the…

Bending the Culture: Hybridization of Punjabi Ethos in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend it Like Beckham “Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.” - Salman Rushdie ‘Diaspora is the term used to describe any population which is considered deterritorialized, dislocated and disintegrated fostering feels of ‘unbelongingness’ and ‘dispossession’. The…

circulation of stereotypes. The comic quality of mimicry is important because colonial discourse is serious and solemn, with pretensions to educate and improve. Bhabha says that mimicry represents an ironic compromise between two ideas- that things are eternally the same and that there is continual change (1994:86). Homi Bhabha finds mimicry as central to colonial discourse. He defines colonial mimicry in following…

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…

Colonialism in The Native Problem In Robert Sheckley’s The Native Problem, Darko Suvin’s definition of cognition and estrangement can be used to explore contemporary ideologies about colonialism. Sheckley examines the effects of colonialism projected into a futuristic setting and aspects of colonialism are both changed and unchanged in different ways. In the story, colonialism is both successfully and unsuccessfully reimagined in ways that allow readers to reflect on contemporary ideas about…

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…

perception of the Orient. The artistic minds of many dancers, composers, and choreographers began making false generalizations of various aspects of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Eastern Cultures. According to public intellectual and theorist; Edward Said, Orientalism is the “general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African cultures based on underdeveloped theories and fabrications that are not accurately studied”. CITE. The argument that Ruth St. Deni’s…