Notable theorists
Frantz Fanon
In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon medically analyzed and described the nature of colonialism as essentially destructive. Its social effects—the imposition of a subjugating colonial identity—are detrimental to the mental health of the natives who were subjected to the colonies. Fanon wrote that the ideological essence of colonialism is the systematic denial of "all the attributes of humanity" of the colonized people. Such dehumanization is achieved with physical and mental violence, through which the settler wants to instill a servile mentality in the natives. For Fanon, natives must violently resist colonial subjugation. Therefore, Fanon describes violent resistance to colonialism as a cathartic mental practice, purging colonial servility from the native psyche, and restoring self-respect to the subjugated. Thus I supported the Front de Libération Nationale "National Liberation Front (Algeria)") (FLN) in the Algerian war (1954-62) for independence from France.[4].
As a postcolonial praxis, Fanon's analyzes of the mental health of colonialism and imperialism and supporting economic theories derived in part from the essay Imperialism, the Higher Phase of Capitalism (1916), where Vladimir Lenin described colonial imperialism as a degenerate form of capitalism. which requires a higher degree of human exploitation to guarantee a constant profit for the investment.
Aníbal Quijano
Aníbal Quijano is a Peruvian sociologist recognized for his outstanding contribution to postcolonial theory, strongly influenced by Marxist thought. His focus is on understanding power dynamics, modernity and collinearity in Latin America, using the socialist values of structuralism as a theoretical basis.
In his work he highlights the central concept of "coloniality of power", arguing that the independence of Latin American countries is a new form of social domination within global capitalism. This concept is related to the equation of race with the term nature in Western society, which leads to the exploitation of different social groups, evidenced in gender inferiority in Europe and the racial hierarchy in America.
It explores three fundamental axes: the definition of race, the exploitation of labor and the structure of production, all linked to the impact of mercantilism on racial inferiority. Behind these fundamental pillars, Quijano explores the transition from Eurocentricity to the bourgeois industrial revolution as a new historical phase that not only changes the historical horizon, but also the way of life of humanity.
His main contributions are the definition of crucial terms such as "Social Classification" related to racial and ethnic hierarchy, "Coloniality of Knowledge" which highlights the Eurocentric influence on Latin American epistemologies and modes of knowledge, and "Modernity and Coloniality" which explores the connection between Western modernity and coloniality in Latin American societies.
Following these hopeless perspectives, Quijano advocates for "Decoloniality", defining it as an optimistic process of opposition and transformation that seeks to overcome colonial structures, reformulating forms of knowledge and identity to transcend an oppressive past.
Starting from Raúl Prebisch's proposal on capitalism with a differentiated system between "periphery" and "center", he reworks it under theory under Marxist and socialist precepts. It challenges the Eurocentric notion of power relations as ahistorical, proposing a critical vision that dismantles the historical and metaphysical myths associated with human actions. Its objective is to contribute to the transformation of colonial structures in Latin America, promoting a decolonial perspective and redefining the bases of knowledge and identity in the region.[5].
Albert Memmi
Albert Memmi was an author and theorist of Franco-Tunisian origin. In Portrait of the colonized, preceded by the portrait of the colonizer (1957), Memmi writes about the psychological effects of colonialism on the colonized and the colonizer. The argument is in the intellectual tradition of post-Saussurian structuralism of meaning, claiming that the meaning of “colonized” and respectively “colonizer” depends on the relationship to its opposite.[6] Memmi argues that the characteristics ascribed to the colonized by the colonizer are contradictory; and on unusual occasions when positive characteristics are ascribed (Memmi's example is Arab hospitality), these are explained as derived from other negative characteristics, such as stupidity.[7] In this work, Memmi adopts similar language and method from psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his seminar VII.[8][9].
Edward Said
To describe the us-them "binary social relationship" with which Western Europe intellectually divided the world—into the "West" and the "East"—cultural critic Edward Said developed the denotations and connotations of the term Orientalism (an art historical term for representations and study of the Orient). This is the concept that cultural representations generated with the binary us-them relationship are social constructions, which are mutually constitutive and cannot exist independently of each other, because each exists because of and for the other.[10].
Notably, "the West" created the cultural concept of "the East," which Said said prevented the peoples of the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Asia from expressing and representing themselves as discrete peoples and cultures. Orientalism thus merged and reduced the non-Western world into a homogeneous cultural entity known as "the East." Therefore, in the service of colonial imperialism, the orientalist us-them paradigm allowed European scholars to represent the Eastern world as inferior and retrograde, irrational and savage, as opposed to a Western Europe that was superior and progressive, rational and civil, the opposite of the Eastern Other. Said's thesis in Orientalism (1978), represents Orientalism as a style of thought "based on the antinomy of East and West in its worldviews, and also as a 'corporate institution' for dealing with the East."[11].
Gayatri Spivak
In establishing the postcolonial definition of the term subaltern, philosopher and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak warned against assigning too broad a connotation.
Spivak further introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism. The term essentialism denotes the dangers inherent in reviving subaltern voices in ways that oversimplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous social groups and, therefore, create stereotypical representations of the identities of the people who make up a given social group. The term strategic essentialism denotes a temporary and essential subaltern identity used in the praxis of discourse between peoples. Occasionally essentialism can be applied—by the people described themselves—to make it easier for their subaltern communication to be heard and understood. A strategic essentialism is more easily grasped and accepted by the popular majority, in the course of intergroup discourse. The important distinction, between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore the diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group, but rather, in its practical function, strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes intergroup diversity to pragmatically support group identity.[12].
Homi K. Bhabha
This author proposes a revisionism of colonial discourse adapted to postmodernity. His culminating work Location of Culture (1994), where from the beginning he tells us that we must detach ourselves from the traditional classification of European styles for a correct approach to different “spaces in between,” developed several terms that determined the development of postcolonial discourse. In this book, Bhabha reflects on the change of roles, or at least the intention thereof, between the colonized and the colonizer, producing a process of identification in an "intermediate space", thus emerging its central terms that characterize stereotype, mimesis and hybridity:.
Among them is the term “cultural ambivalence”, a term that will influence later studies, whose definition is based on historical subjectivity.
In another of his writings, “Narrating the Nation,” he introduces that previously defined ambivalence to explain the problems of defining the term “nation” as an apparatus of symbolic power. At first it was just a historical identity, but over time it has become a cultural identification, being a non-ambivalent term since it fights for itself, but also for the integration of the heterogeneity of its population.
In summary, for Bhabha the subjectivity of history resides in the discourse emitted regarding the object, the subject who recites it and the language used, an essential factor in the transmission of the message. In this way, he defends the non-establishment of watertight categories with respect to nations by previous historians, that is, as something that is continually changing.[13][14].
Jose Rabasa
The term "postcolonialism" generated a great debate for approximately 25 years in Latin America. The historical gap in which it is immersed made the great Latin American critics wonder about the applicability of this term, given that in terms of research, the object of study and the reality of the phenomenon, were more rooted in Asian, Oceanic and African cultures, which had little or nothing to do with the reality of Latin America.
In order to re-signify Postcolonialism understood in the first instance as a historical moment (19th-20th centuries), one must first establish the difference between its implications in historical construction and the decolonized articulations of postcolonial criticism.
In the case of Latin America, the organized post-independence elites constituted certain internal colonialisms, subjugating and marginalizing black and indigenous communities. So talking about Postcolonialism suggests approaching the ghosts of the colonial past and understanding it as a theoretical dualism in which Asian, African and Oceanic critics also learn something about what the practices of resistance and debates about imperialism implied in Latin America.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Kenyan writer and theorist develops a reflection on the colonial consequences of Africa and the need to transform the linguistic structures of teaching after colonialism, as well as the cultural and political structures, thus finally achieving African independence. His bases of thought are the decolonization of language (the use of colonial languages perpetuates colonial domination, choosing to write his writings in his native Gikuyu language, offering resistance to the English imposition and recovering African identity); establishes a critique of colonial literature that, from his point of view, arises under the influence of colonialism, proposing a review of literary narratives from African perspectives, thus avoiding the Eurocentric vision; advocates historical and cultural awareness, highlighting this part as the basis of African liberation, insisting on learning, understanding and internalization of African culture. However, to do this he offers some tools to achieve his objective, such as theater, which is useful for resistance and political awareness, exemplified by his work Yo Acuso. With this he expresses his commitment to African nationalism rooted in the ethnic and cultural diversity of his homeland under precepts of class consciousness (in which he integrates class struggles both culturally and socioeconomically based on economic exploitation) and decolonized education. This is the most important point of his theory, in which he argues how education with Eurocentric thinking perpetuates cultural ascription, defending an educational approach respectful of the African reality), this thesis being collected in his book Decolonizing the Mind of 1986.
Mary Louise Pratt
This author develops a postcolonial vision in contrast to that of Edward Said, proposing a theorization completely different from the "anti-conquest." Instead of following Said's line and referring to the natives as victims of colonization or as objects of resistance to it, Pratt approaches the topic from the analysis of European literature in which a European man recounts his travels, his adventures and his struggle to survive in the lands of the "Non-European." Anti-conquest literature, characteristic of authors along the lines of Said, seeks to represent the narrator as an agent or person responsible, directly or indirectly, for colonization. Pratt's vision, on the other hand, aims to study the way in which these narratives and adventure stories, embraced by the public as a form of entertainment, legitimize colonialism and the act of colonization as something natural. The author's most influential work is Imperial eyes: literature of travel and transculturation, in which she brings together a very diverse series of stories that allow us to learn about history through colonizing perspectives.[15].
Titsi Dangarembga
The Zimbabwean author wrote one of the most important works for postcolonial feminist literature, Nervous Conditions. The theory of postcolonial feminism emerged as a denunciation and response to the feminism that existed at the time, which seemed to focus exclusively on the experiences of women from Western culture. This postcolonial feminism aims to show the way in which racism and the lasting economic, political and cultural consequences of colonialism influenced non-white and non-Western women in the postcolonial landscape.[16]In contrast to the works of traditional Western feminists, Dangarembga's work delves into the study of what it entails to become a woman, both within the general conception and within the violent context of postcolonialism.[17]Among the contents that the author addresses in this novel we find gender issues, colonialism and women's emancipation. While studying the impact of these issues on the characters of the novel, it also encourages the reader to be aware of the constant struggle of postcolonial women.[18]Dangarembga manages to create a feminist consciousness in the reader through the narrator's own self-awareness, which increases throughout the novel. It also trains the ability to recognize sexism and hypocrisy.[17].