English 2323 - Perry Samaniego, Lenora: Essay

Essay I Assignment:

Write a 4-6-page (independent of works cited) MLA formatted paper on the following topic:

Consider the concepts of postcolonial ideology as we have discussed them in class so far. Using the sources provided for you in class and on Canvas, discuss how these concepts relate to one of the items (poetry, narrative, or essay) in the Anthology. You must effectively quote at least two journal articles, and are strongly discouraged from using Sparknotes, Cliffsnotes, Wikipedia or any other similar source as sole sources.

The field of postcolonial theory is vast, as is literary terminology. One suggestion is to choose one or two concepts from the definitions on Canvas and Quizlet and apply them to something significant about one of the works of literature. For example, how is orientalism made visible through the element of symbol in “Ozymandias?”

In this example, you would have to show your knowledge of symbol, orientalism, postcolonialism, and the text itself. You will also have to tie your thesis in with the ideas of other scholars on the same or similar topics [hence the journal articles]. Keep in mind you may not find peer-reviewed sources that are exactly on point with your topic, but you will find articles that discuss Olaudah Equiano, Coleridge, Shelley, etc. and articles that address orientalism, mimicry, othering, or hybridity, etc.

Imagine it as an argument (thesis) that you are building that merges the text, the theory, and your ideas with the ideas of others.

Due 02/26/25.

1. cultural colonization - .internalizing the idea that the colonizer's system of government and education, culture, and values are far superior to that of the colonized people.

2. mimicry - The means by which the colonized adapt the culture (language, education, clothing, etc.) of the colonizer, but always in the process changing it in important ways. Such an approach is always ambivalent. Importantly, the colonizer 
   usually resents the subaltern subject for not measuring up.

3. double-consciousness (double vision) - a consciousness or a way of perceiving the world that is divided between two antagonistic cultures: that of the colonizer and that of the subaltern subject. It produces a state of unhomeliness.

4. diaspora - A voluntary or forced movement of people, usually as a result of colonial pressure, where the subaltern are separated from their original homeland, or colonizers populate foreign lands.

5. unhomeliness - The feeling of having no stable cultural identity - no real home in any culture - that occurs to people who do not belong to the dominant culture and have rejected their own culture as inferior.

6. hybridity (syncretism) not a stalemate between two warring cultures but is rather a productive, exciting, positive force in a shrinking world that is itself becoming more and more culturally hybrid.

7. neocolonialism - Corporate exploitation of the cheap labor available in developing countries, often at the expense of those countries' own struggling businesses, cultural traditions, and ecological well-being.

8. subaltern - Those who have less power in the power dynamic between the colonizer and colonized, whether their inferior status is based on race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or any other cultural factor.

9. hegemony - the cultural dominance of western colonizers which represses the colonized culture (subaltern).

10. Eurocentrism - The use of European culture as the standard to which all other cultures are negatively contrasted. An Assumption of European superiority, which they contrast with the alleged inferiority of indigenous peoples.

11. Imperialism - According to Edward Said, "The practice, theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory". 

12. Othering - Judging all who are different from the western ideal as inferior, i.e. "us/civilized" vs. "them /other/primitive/ savage;" not fully human. 

13. Contrapuntal Reading - A way of reading English literature so as to reveal its deep implication in imperialism and the colonial process.

14. Binary - Extreme ideas of difference, resulting in a violent hierarchy, in which one term in the opposition is dominant over the other, i.e., good/ evil; black/ white; colonizer/ colonized; civilized/ savage.

15. Postcolonialism - An intellectual, political, and cultural movement that calls for the independence of colonialized states and also liberation from colonialist ways of thinking. 

16. Agency - The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power.

17. ambivalence - The ambiguous way in which colonizer and colonized regard one another. The colonizer often regards the colonized as both inferior yet exotically other, while the colonized regards the colonizer as both enviable yet corrupt. In a context of hybridity, this often produces a mixed sense of blessing and curse.

18. deracinate - This literally means to pull out a plant's roots. In postcolonial studies, it implies the literal removal of African peoples from their original cultures and then their enslavement and transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean. This forceful removal of the people robbed them of any contacts to their original cultures and their own specific meaning-making processes. 

19. Race - The division and classification of human beings by physical and biological characteristics. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was often used as a pretext by European colonial powers for slavery and/or the "white man's burden." 

20. Orientalism - A way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab and Asian peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing eastern culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times, dangerous.