Post Colonialism

Post-colonialist literature analyzes and responds to the cultural and political legacies of colonialism and imperialism through fiction and nonfiction.

Lists

The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific by Geoffrey Irwin

Pacific Non-Fiction

170 books — 10 voters

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Decolonising the University by Gurminder K. Bhambra

Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Decolonize Art and Academy

42 books — 7 voters

Featured News & Interviews

Readers’ 60 Most Anticipated Fall Books

Read »

Quotes Tagged “Post Colonialism”

“ You will tell me that there always exists a chasm between the world depicted in novels and films and the world that people actually live in. It is the chasm between the world mediated by art and the world unmediated by art, formless and drab. You are absolutely right. The gap that my mother felt was not necessarily any deeper than the gap felt by a European girl who loved books and films. Yet there is one critical difference. For in my mother's case, the chasm between the world of art and real l You will tell me that there always exists a chasm between the world depicted in novels and films and the world that people actually live in. It is the chasm between the world mediated by art and the world unmediated by art, formless and drab. You are absolutely right. The gap that my mother felt was not necessarily any deeper than the gap felt by a European girl who loved books and films. Yet there is one critical difference. For in my mother's case, the chasm between the world of art and real life also symbolized something more: the asymmetrical relationship I mentioned earlier—the asymmetrical relationship between those who live only in a universal temporality and those who live in both a universal and a particular one. To make this discussion a little more concrete, let me introduce a character named Francoise. Francoise is a young Parisienne living before World War II. Like my mother, she loves reading books and watching films. Also like my mother, she lives in a small apartment with her mother, who is old, shabby looking, and illiterate. One day Francoise, full of artistic aspirations, writes an autobiographical novel. It is the tale of her life torn between the world of art and the world of reality. (Not an original tale, I must say.) The novel is well received in France. Several hundred Japanese living in Japan read this novel in French, and one of them decides to translate it into Japanese. My mother reads the novel. She identifies with the heroine and says to herself, "This girl is just like me!" Moved, my mother, also full of artistic aspirations, writes her own autobiography. That novel is well received in Japan but is not translated into French—or any other European language, for that matter. The number of Europeans who read Japanese is just too small. Therefore, only Japanese readers can share the plight of my mother's life. For other readers in the world, it's as if her novel never existed. It's as if she herself never existed. Even if my mother had written her novel first, Francoise would never have read it and been moved by it. ...more ”
― Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English

2 likes

“ Because the colonial mindset believed that one could only get his job done through brutality, it was necessary that all anti-colonial communities were infiltrated and further dismantled, simply because the colonialist believed that one could only get his job done through brutality. Of course the colonizer is very much aware of his evils but not the taste of his own medicine. However it has never been the intention of colonized to wipe out evil by exacting the same brutalities from which he const ...more ”
― Dumisani Tafadzwa Mayele

0 likes

More quotes...