Academic literature on the topic 'Postcolonial literary theory'

This thesis investigates identity and postcolonial nationalism as expressed in selected Iraqi and Algerian historical novels published after 1960. The study examines eight novels: Assia Djebar's Children of the New World (1962), Muhsin al-Ramli's Scattered Crumbs (2000), Yasmina Khadra's The Sirens of Baghdad (2008), Ali Bader's The Tobacco Keeper (2011), Abdul-Aziz Gramoule's Za'eem al-Aqaliyah al-Sahiqah [Leader of the Overwhelming Minority] (2005), Khadair al-Zaidi's Valyoom Asharah [Valium 10] (2015), Rashid Boudjedra's The Barbary Figs (2012) and Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013).Through a critical analysis of the selected data, the study investigates how historical fiction can create and legitimatize nationalist discourse on the one hand and counter hegemonic discourses on the other hand. The thesis also explores how, and to what extent, the critical awareness and blindness of postcolonial nationalism contributes to social and cultural formations in a pan-Arabic context, and how nationalist leaders exploit and oppress their citizens. The thesis also explores - through its investigation of literary texts - the perpetuation of Western cultural imperialism in Iraq and Algeria through the imposition of modern cultural apparatus such as nationalism, the religious/secular distinction and military action such as the War on Terror. It concludes that postcolonial nationalism extends colonial imperialism both ideologically and discursively. Postcolonial nationalist regimes in Iraq and Algeria have divided and exploited citizens by perpetuating Western concepts of nationhood and identity. By examining literary responses to postcolonial nationalist states, my critique explores its divisive and exploitative practices and explores authors' imagined alternative visions for more peaceful multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious societies.

The aim of this essay is to provide a perspective on literature inculpating colonialism using postcolonial literary theory and method. The subject material incorporates four novels studied during the literature modules for the English course at Högskolan Gävle (HIG). The four novels combine to highlight various issues that affect the Self-identity through hybridization and colonial discourse as well as the detrimental nature of the colonial project for indigenous value systems during the period of colonialism. There is also application of theories and concepts raised in academic literature from within and outside the curriculum of HIG. The use of the postcolonial literary methodology provides a critical perspective of the aforementioned literature while implementing theories associated with that movement such as hybridity and the redefining of borders as well as focusing on the social, cultural, political and religious impact of the coloniser’s activities in the colonies as raised in the novels.  The most significant findings of this essay include the roles of isolation and disconnection within the colonial project and the subsequential effects on the colonised and their descendants. There are findings and observations of the level of strategic application of universalistic colonial discourse and the intrinsic application of the language used in the objectification of the indigenous and the subjugation of their value systems. The role of perception is also highlighted including findings on the social implications for the colonies inhabitants, both dissident and conformist, raised within the chosen literature and this essay. The essay also examines the application of various strands of literary theory incorporated within postcolonialism including poststructuralism and psychoanalytic criticism as well as anthropology material.  The conclusion of this essay culminates with the conflicting interpretations of progress as a universalism that counters the theories of postcolonialists and poststructuralists and their subsequent refusal to succumb to literature’s prevalence. The subjectivity of the postcolonial literary theorist and the self-imposed parameters restrict the interpretation of the colonial and postcolonial literature. The aforementioned progress defined by improved standards of health, education and social justice is lacking in presence in both the postcolonial literature and the accompanying literary theory counterpart. Subsequently, the disconnected voice of isolation and the split/double identity take precedence over higher standards of living and the appreciation of access to improved human rights and social justice within postcolonial society.

This essay examines the use of literary theory when teaching literature before higher education. The objective isto see how and if the integration of literary theory facilitates students’ engagement with and understanding of literature. The study is conducted with the qualitative method of interviews. Four teachers, certified for upper secondary school, were deemed appropriate to interview about their current use of literary theory, as well as their attitudes towards an increased use of literary theory. Besides the data collected through interviews, this study finds its theoretical foundation in the literary theories feminist, Marxist and postcolonial theory as well as in the Swedish curriculum for English at upper secondary level. Presently, the teachers do not use literary theory distinctly; however, they do consider the use of literary theory together with literature to be beneficial for the students’ understanding of literature and the world around them. Teachers stated that while some students only will grasp the idea of the theories, other students will be able to use and apply them. The curriculum supports the use of literary theory in the core values for students of upper secondary level.

This study examined four different settings in Selma Lagerlof’s novel Jerusalem, part I and II. The aim of the study was to analyse the narrative perspective in the four selected scenes of the novel, and also to investigate whether the narrator’s tone in any of the passages could be said to express orientalism. The material consisted of four text passages describing the novel’s two main geographical locations (the district of Dalarna and the Holy Land). Literary theories used for the study were narratology and postcolonial theory. The applied method to analyse the passages was to use the selection of semantic and syntactic markers compiled by Staffan Hellberg (1985) for stylistic analysis of the narrator’s perspective in Swedish narrative texts. The results of the study show that the overall narrative perspective in the scenes are non-focalized, and that the most frequently featured stylistic markers consist of words and phrases expressing value. A summery of the most frequently used stylistic markers show that it is possible to divide the narrative tone into four categories, as the “presenting”, “sympathizing”, “demonstrating” and “educating” narrator. The results also indicate that orientalism is evident in the two analysed passages from Jerusalem, part II.

The Swedish school has grown multicultural due to the recent years' migration and globalization of society. This place higher demands on the school's responsibility to educate students who are accepting and understanding towards each other, no matter their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. With application of postcolonial theory and its features; alterity, identity and racial prejudice to C.N Adichie's novel Americanah, it is argued that the inclusion of postcolonial literature in the EFL classroom may help students in developing an understanding for democratic values, and in exploring their roles in a diverse environment.

This thesis examines the nature and value of metafictional practices in the careers of postwar novelists. Discussions of metafiction have been central to accounts of postwar literature. Where debates in the 1980s and 1990s about metafiction tended to make claims about its distinctive political and theoretical power, recent work in the study of institutions has folded metafiction into the routine operation of the literary field, and attacked previous claims to distinctive value. In this thesis I both historicize self-reflexive literary practices in the literary field, an element largely absent from the earlier scholarship, and present historically determinate claims about the value of these practices, an element I suggest is missing from the more recent work. To do so, I turn to the study of autobiography, specifically Philippe Lejeune's concept of 'autobiographical space.' In the first chapter, I explore how J. M. Coetzee develops academic literary criticism in his fiction. In the second chapter, I examine how Janet Frame responds to both the demands of a national literature and biographical inquiry into her life. In the third chapter, I address how Philip Roth handles the relationship between the politics of identity and the postwar novel. Self-reflexive practices, I show throughout, are ways of writing that were encouraged by particular formations in the literary field and were handled by writers through more or less explicit treatments of autobiographical space. I argue, though, that while these practices can be remarkably inventive, they carry no guarantees for political, theoretical, or aesthetic value.

Este trabalho se dedica a Os Sertões (1902), de Euclides da Cunha, Native Son (1940), de Richard Wright, e Cidade de Deus (1997), de Paulo Lins. Buscando construir-se uma leitura crítica criativa, esta tese utiliza o método comparativo de forma a possibilitar que novos aspectos das obras surjam, assim como os elementos hegemônicos e contra-hegemônicos que as constituem, e as suas fortunas críticas. Partindo do entendimento de que os textos críticos e literários sempre se situam num campo maior, político, o presente estudo visa compreender as relações estabelecidas entre as obras, a crítica, a nação e o Estado. Com esse objetivo, além dos textos de Euclides, Wright e Lins, e de algum das respectivas críticas, outras disciplinas e seus teóricos serão mobilizados; entre eles (mas não só): Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari e Jacques Derrida.<br>This dissertation looks at the work of Euclides da Cunha\'s Os Sertões (1902), Richard Wright\'s Native Son (1940) and Paulo Lins\'s Cidade de Deus (1997). It seeks to be a creative reading of the books and their critical fortune by way of a comparative approach, ultimately allowing new aspects, such as hegemonic and counter-hegemonic elements, to come to the fore. The basis of this study is that literary and critical texts are all inserted in a greater political field. This research draws upon neighboring disciplines and theorists such as: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jacques Derrida.

In this dissertation I intend to apply postcolonial theory to primary pedagogical and administrative concerns of the writing program administrator. Writing Program Administrators, or WPAs, take their responsibilities seriously, remaining cognizant of both the negative and positive repercussions of the pedagogical decisions that take shape in the scores of composition classrooms they administer. This dissertation intends to infuse the WPA position with the ethos of scholarly praxis by historicizing and contextualizing the field of composition, and by placing the teaching of writing within the historical memory of slavery and colonialism. Sound WPA research is theoretically informed, systematic, principled inquiry that works toward producing strong writing programs. This dissertation provides such inquiry, drawing the field's attention to the reality of postcoloniality and presenting an understanding of the work of composition as informed by and complicit in the history of racialized forms of oppression. From this context, the dissertation analyzes three major issues faced by the WPA: the debate over standardized discourse, the influence of the job market on pedagogical decisions, and the (de)politicizing of the composition classroom. In the following sections, these issues will be related directly to critical theories from postcolonial and composition studies that assist in articulating the issues of identity politics, hegemonic struggle, interpellation and interpolation, subaltern voice, and hybridity that are so crucial to writing program pedagogy and administration in the postcolonial age, for it is my argument that the writing classroom is a crucial site of contention in which the politics of identity are manifested as students appropriate and are appropriated by discourse.

This thesis examines elements of the conceptualization of literature within literary studies and literary production in a UK context, considering the concept of exclusionary practices based on the negligence of intersectional categories of identity such as race, gender, class, sexuality, etc., in the practice of understanding and interpreting literature. The methodologies I employ are close reading of various narratives, such as literary texts, as well as a narrative analysis aimed at a holistic understanding of my material. The second part of this thesis envisions a decolonised approach to literature in which we situate our positionalities when we read and interpret literary works. I demonstrate this through the analysis of several poems, informed by decolonial concepts and sensibilities. The results show that the maintenance of these exclusionary practices advances a grand-narrative of Western civilisation, ignoring the multiple sites people inhabit both from within, and outside, the West and that these practices are effectively harmful. I argue that through the project of decolonising literature there is a possibility of disrupting the perpetual macro-narrative of Western domination and universality.