It is clear by the term that Post colonialist is the study of colonial discourse. It is usually termed as the “Postcolonial Criticism” or “Postcolonialism”. The motive of this criticism is to analyze and examine the cultural dimension of colonialism and imperialism through the study of the cluster of writers and writings of that time.
Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is the key work that defines the power relationship between the western and “third World” culture. According to him, the reason of the repressive ethnocentrism is the western values and literature that depicts the “Third World” culture as an inferior one. The dominated western intellectual culture of that period repressed and marginalized ‘Other’ or non-Western cultures. The post colonialism seeks to expose and undermine the imperialistic thought and values of western literature. This approach denounces the subjectivity and the self-legitimating characteristic of the Western culture. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon analyzed the societal and political effect of colonialism. Fanon prefer the physical resistance against the imperialism as it restore the self-respect to the subjugated class.
Later, Edward Said played his part by exploring and exposing ‘Orientalism’ in his book Orientalism(1978). He linked his theory with social and political struggle. He questioned the stereotypical image of the ‘Orients’ or ‘Others’ that is constructed by the western scholars. The orientalist, according to western scholar, are savages, lazy irrational, emotional, and unethical. Such dehumanization was the main tool through which Western people dominated the colonized people for a long period. The mental imperialism is more powerful and effective that physical imperialism. Mental imperialism has left its mark on the colonized people by portraying them low and imperfect. This stereotypical image of orients was debated and reconstructed so that negative impact of the western thought can be undone. Said asserts that Western historicism has homogenized world history from a supposedly culminating Ethnocentricity. According to Said, the Western depiction of the East helped the colonizers to suppress the colonized by practicing physical, as well as, mental imperialism. Chinua Achebe, African novalist, also declared Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness as a ‘thoroughgoing racist”. Joseph was the perfect example of the Western thought. Conrad’s novella captures the imperialistic attitude at its peak. Gayatri Spivak is also a very important figure of postcolonial criticism.
The need for the true depiction and identity forced all the postcolonists to eradicate the false picture of the ‘Other’. Postcolonialism is the critical abolishment of the theories which support the ways of Western thought and perception of the ‘Other’ world.
