Imperialism, colonization, capitalism neocolonization and post colonial!
In this weeks reading, once again we are encountered with the difficulty of defining term and concepts. Like in other weeks this week there are many terms the main on is colonialism. I found the text by Ania Loomba to be very interesting because she starts by stating how the definition of colonialism is hard to define. The first definition she gives is a dictionary definition: “a settlement in a new country… a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up.” (1100) of course like with any definition of colonialism we faults. Loomba sates that ” This definition, quite remarkably, avoids any reference to people other than the colonizers, people who might already have been living in those places where colonies were established. Hence it evacuates the word ‘colonialism’ of any implication of an encounter between peoples, or of conquest and domination. There is no hint that the ‘new locality’ may not be so ‘new’ and that the process of ‘forming a community’ might be somewhat unfair. Colonialism was not an identical process in different parts of the world but everywhere it locked.” (1100). It is so praising that a dictionary definition the term would be defined in such a passive and non confrontational way. When of course history has shown that colonization has been one of the most bloody processes that human history has encountered. Loomba continues stating that colonization is nothing new and that before the European colonization many other like the Romans, China, the mongols and many others had been colonizing vast amounts of territories, but the question arises what was different with the European colonization and one explanation proposed by Marx is that the Europe colonization has gone hand in hand with capitalism. In other word money and goods is the difference there were a trading of goods and work force that was traded between the colonized and colonizer. Of course this is what made the encounter more violent because greed played a big role in colonizing. there was less goods that is why colonization was so important. Loomba later defines colonization as “So colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods. But colonialism in this sense is not merely the expansion of various European powers into Asia, Africa or the Americas from the sixteenth century onwards; it has been a recurrent and widespread feature of human history.” It was not just a need of territory but of goods. Later the article talks about imperialism which can be related to monarchy and how this was necessary before giving way to colonialism which was hand in hand with capitalism and also gave way to neocolonialism. He later state a that ” Modern colonialism did more than extract tribute, goods and wealth from the countries that it conquered – it restructured the economies of the latter, drawing them into a complex relationship with their own, so that there was a flow of human and natural resources between colonised and colonial countries. This flow worked in both directions” this is interesting because this interrelationship that Loomba talks about has give way to globalism and interdependence not only within colonized and colonizer relationship but between other colonized and colonizing countries.
Imperialism, colonization, capitalism neocolonization and post colonial!
In this weeks reading, once again we are encountered with the difficulty of defining term and concepts. Like in other weeks this week there are many terms the main on is colonialism. I found the text by Ania Loomba to be very interesting because she starts by stating how the definition of colonialism is hard to define. The first definition she gives is a dictionary definition: “a settlement in a new country… a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up.” (1100) of course like with any definition of colonialism we faults. Loomba sates that ” This definition, quite remarkably, avoids any reference to people other than the colonizers, people who might already have been living in those places where colonies were established. Hence it evacuates the word ‘colonialism’ of any implication of an encounter between peoples, or of conquest and domination. There is no hint that the ‘new locality’ may not be so ‘new’ and that the process of ‘forming a community’ might be somewhat unfair. Colonialism was not an identical process in different parts of the world but everywhere it locked.” (1100). It is so praising that a dictionary definition the term would be defined in such a passive and non confrontational way. When of course history has shown that colonization has been one of the most bloody processes that human history has encountered. Loomba continues stating that colonization is nothing new and that before the European colonization many other like the Romans, China, the mongols and many others had been colonizing vast amounts of territories, but the question arises what was different with the European colonization and one explanation proposed by Marx is that the Europe colonization has gone hand in hand with capitalism. In other word money and goods is the difference there were a trading of goods and work force that was traded between the colonized and colonizer. Of course this is what made the encounter more violent because greed played a big role in colonizing. there was less goods that is why colonization was so important. Loomba later defines colonization as “So colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods. But colonialism in this sense is not merely the expansion of various European powers into Asia, Africa or the Americas from the sixteenth century onwards; it has been a recurrent and widespread feature of human history.” It was not just a need of territory but of goods. Later the article talks about imperialism which can be related to monarchy and how this was necessary before giving way to colonialism which was hand in hand with capitalism and also gave way to neocolonialism. He later state a that ” Modern colonialism did more than extract tribute, goods and wealth from the countries that it conquered – it restructured the economies of the latter, drawing them into a complex relationship with their own, so that there was a flow of human and natural resources between colonised and colonial countries. This flow worked in both directions” this is interesting because this interrelationship that Loomba talks about has give way to globalism and interdependence not only within colonized and colonizer relationship but between other colonized and colonizing countries.
“Signs Taken For Wonders” — Hybridity and Resistance
For me it was the ambivalence of the language that caught my attention in this reading. Language can be, both, liberating and oppressive, depending on how it is used, and by whom it is used. The English book is, of course, the Bible, which has been forced upon the colonized people, in order for the English colonizers to gain more power and authority is a perfect example of how language can be misused and abused. The Book is itself a symbol of God and religion, however, the colonizer, who is in control of the Book, is also in control of how it is communicated to the colonized people. Thus, by manipulating not only language, but religion as well, the colonizer is able to gain power.
In Bhabha’s “Signs Taken for Wonders,” the English book is presented as an unintended vehicle of hybridization and ambivalence. In its original context it was a direct product of its culture, but in the colonial context its initial meaning started to change as it underwent “an Entstellung, a process of displacement, distortion, dislocation, repetition” (1169). In this way, the book paradoxically became an ambivalent object,– no longer a fetishized sign of colonial power that glorifies the European predominance but rather an emblem of “colonial ambivalence” that suggests the weakness of colonial discourse and its susceptibility to “mimetic” subversion. Colonial domination has unintended effects because the dominated groups appropriated colonial ideas and concepts and transformed them according to their culture. The book acquires a wholly different form losing something and other things might be added as it has been re-written by the native. This process produces ambivalence which could be faced with mimicry, or the imitation of the white man by the native. Therefore, instead of presenting the fixed nature of Colonial rule, the book becomes an emblem of colonial ambivalence which empowers the colonized subject and allows them resisting the oppression from the colonizer in terms of hybridization, a way of strategies of subversion. Bhabha says: “Hybridity is the name of this displacement of value from symbol to sign that causes the dominant discourse to split along the axis of its power to be representative, authoritative. Hybridity represents that ambivalent ‘turn’ of the discriminated subject into the terrifying, exorbitant object of paranoid classification – a disturbing questioning of the images and presences of authority” (1176).
Anne McClintock -"post-colonialism" an evanescent concept
Reading the article on post colonialism by Anne McClintock an obvious question surfaces, and that is, when is post colonialism situated. An even more commonsense understanding would state that post colonialism follows colonialism. But McClintock constructs her argument around this concept seen rather as a paradox. Why paradox? Because, for her any concept that includes “post” is rather a period of crisis, where progress is questionable. Any “post” word assumes a certain prevalence of a futile movement where everything becomes relative. For McClintock the term becomes almost irrelevant, because it is first hard to define colonialism. It seems that colonialism is an ongoing process and what means post colonial for some countries in respect to their European influence, may be interpreted as simply colonial with respect to the new colonizing neighbors. If the classical binary axis of power seems dated, McClintock doesn’t trust the binary axis of time either, but rather tries to say that the concept of post colonialism “occurs in an entranced suspension of history” (McClintock 1186). The assonance that McClintock perceives in this term is when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period. The concept becomes even more abstract when she refers to the definition given by the book The Empire Writes Back where post colonial literature is defended on a few different aspects. The very last of them states that post-colonialism should be understood as everything that happened from the very beginning of colonialism which means from 1492 on. In that respect every nation would have some grasp of colonialism in its roots. She goes on saying that the term received value on marketing the success of the term post- modernism, but she can not perceive the notion of progress within the concept itself.Anne McClintock -"post-colonialism" an evanescent concept
Reading the article on post colonialism by Anne McClintock an obvious question surfaces, and that is, when is post colonialism situated. An even more commonsense understanding would state that post colonialism follows colonialism. But McClintock constructs her argument around this concept seen rather as a paradox. Why paradox? Because, for her any concept that includes “post” is rather a period of crisis, where progress is questionable. Any “post” word assumes a certain prevalence of a futile movement where everything becomes relative. For McClintock the term becomes almost irrelevant, because it is first hard to define colonialism. It seems that colonialism is an ongoing process and what means post colonial for some countries in respect to their European influence, may be interpreted as simply colonial with respect to the new colonizing neighbors. If the classical binary axis of power seems dated, McClintock doesn’t trust the binary axis of time either, but rather tries to say that the concept of post colonialism “occurs in an entranced suspension of history” (McClintock 1186). The assonance that McClintock perceives in this term is when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period. The concept becomes even more abstract when she refers to the definition given by the book The Empire Writes Back where post colonial literature is defended on a few different aspects. The very last of them states that post-colonialism should be understood as everything that happened from the very beginning of colonialism which means from 1492 on. In that respect every nation would have some grasp of colonialism in its roots. She goes on saying that the term received value on marketing the success of the term post- modernism, but she can not perceive the notion of progress within the concept itself.Redefining colonialism, imperialism and post-colonialism
It is interesting to see in this week’s reading both Ania Loomba and Anne McOintock devoted to rethinking and reconsidering the basic terms of colonial studies, by challenging the conventional definitions and clarifying the complexity within the terms.
Ania Loomba started by a reiteration of the term “colonialism”, emphasizing on the historic spread of colonialism and the distinction between pre-capitalist colonialism and capitalist colonialism. She draws on the theory of Marxism to explain the unprecedented global power and effects of modern European colonialism: the capitalist colonialism, by restructuring the economy of their colonies, developed a more interactive and a more deeply penetrating relationship with the colonized countries in order to gain the profits to sustain the growth of European capitalism and industry.
Imperialism, as Loomba continues, is considered as the advanced stage of the development of colonialism: the superabundance of accumulated capital in European colonizers is been moved to the non-industrialized countries and used to sustain the growth of these countries. This global system ensures economic dependency and control even without direct colonial rule.
The post-colonialism, according to Loomba, can’t be properly defined if we don’t take into account the diverse situations and conditions concerning each individual colony as well as the differences or hierarchy inside the population of a colony: the word post-colonial cannot therefore be used in a single sense.
She also discussed the impact of post-structuralist view of history on the post-colonial studies, which rejected the idea of a single linear progression of history and instead advocate a multiplicity of parallel narratives. This coincides with Anne McOintock’s examination of the term “post-colonialism” which also noticed the variety and complexity of the post-colonial situation in different countries.
Anne McOintock insists also on the “multiplicity” of post-colonialism, and she points out that this term itself seems to fail to discredit the idea of “progress” and fail to denote this multiplicity. The prefix “post” suggests a linear structure that orients around the axis of time, the term corresponds hence to and even depends on the idea of linear historical progress. According to McOintock, the term “post-colonialism” suggests too often a premature celebration and runs the risk of obscuring the continuities and discontinuities of colonial and imperial power. The use of the term “post-colonialism”, suggests McOintock, becomes unstable when the ideology of “progress” collapsed with the failure of US economy and Soviet Union. Therefore finally she calls for “rethinking the global situation as a multiplicity of powers and histories” and for innovative and historically nuanced theories which can help us reinstate the discourse of history.
Col…imp…capitalism….Colimpcapitalism
I was very interested in how Loomba began her analysis. She started off with the definition of colonialism. As she mentioned, it didn’t refer to those inhabitants already there but the new comers, the ones that led to capitalism and changed the lives of many.Col…imp…capitalism….Colimpcapitalism
I was very interested in how Loomba began her analysis. She started off with the definition of colonialism. As she mentioned, it didn’t refer to those inhabitants already there but the new comers, the ones that led to capitalism and changed the lives of many.Orientalism
For this week post, I would like to reflect a bit more on my previous post about European memory in the light of this week readings: http://wp.me/p3Smsn-5D
Eva Thompson indeed made a parallel between the construction of Europe as an object of Western European History and Orientalism: Eastern Europe is shaped by the Western European eyes and values. It might say more of Western Europe’s History of Ideas than of Eastern Europe itself. That construction of the Other as en entity by Historians and Critics is of course dangerous as it has political consequences: it at the same time reflects and enforces a political and economical domination, and a dominant way of looking at the Other in which this Other actually plays a very little role. By the readings of this week, I understood better the emotion and the feeling of emergency in Eva Thomspson’s conference. What Said showed in Orientalism and illustrated by taking the example of Jane Austen’s work, and what most of the readings of this week also explore (cf, Sinead post) is that language is domination : not only Western academic discourse, to take the example of “Orient”, created a concept within a word, and therefore created the image and the thing despite the geographical, social, cultural, individual reality of countries all gathered under this term but this process also deprived the new object of science “Orient” of its own voice: no one talks through the discourse of Orientalism but Western Academia. This positive (construction) and negative (deprivation) use of language is also one of the basic processes of political domination, propaganda and dictatorship.
….But there is always a light at the end of the tunnel… because such a construction is not necessarily unproductive, and find ways to express itself through artistic media or personal experiences (photographs, writing…) , see the beautiful online exhibit about “The trip to Orien’t during the European 19th century
