Post-colonialism

Post-colonialism

1. History of Colonialism

   • At the beginning often a private enterprise
   • Types of colonies
     • Domination colony
     • Base colony
     • Settlement colony
   • Effects on Europe
     • Testing ground for political transformation process
     • Economic modernisation
   • Effects on Colonies
     • Political effects
     • Economic effects
     • Processes of ethnicisation

2. Anti-Colonial Uprisings

   • Source of post-colonial theorising
   • Examples
     • One of the first really successful uprisings Haiti 1971
     • India Mutiny 1857-1858
     • Algeria since the 1870s
     • Herero - Nama - Uprising 1904-1907
   • Knowledge - and theory - production

3. Edward Saïd

   • The west and the rest
   • Rest signifies the other Europe
   • Everything what is considered bad in Europe: uncivilised, underdeveloped, backward, and promiscuous
   • Orient originally source of European culture, knowledge, and languages
   • Orient became the other for the construction of European identity in which Europe is the dominating factor
   • Happens through oriental discourses: source of power and production
   • Result of this oriental discourse: several dogmas
     • Distinction between highly-developed Europe guided by reason and humanity vs. a-normal, underdeveloped, inferior Orent
     • Abstractions of the Orient derived from study of classical texts rather than observations
     • Orient is one-dimensional and incapable of self-reflection
     • Orient is dangerous and needs to be controlled

4. Dipesh Chakrabarthy

   • Attempt to decentrise Western thought
   • Europe in many non-Western academia perceived as the unspoken standard
   • Postcolonial dilemma: not easy to dismiss this thinking because colonialism is unavoidable
   • Inward travel

5. Multiple Modernities vs. Connected Histories

   • Indian sub-altern studies group: Gurminder Bhambra, Shalini Raneria, Homi Bhaba
   • Argue against models of cultural spaces as homogenous and determined units
   • Modernity considered to be one autonomous European development
   • Eurocentrism
   • Against multiple modernities
     • Believe complex societies developed outside of Europe
       • But: disconnected developments
     • Societies developed without being in contact
     • Their modernity concept is still focusing on European understandings
   • Instead: connected histories and shared present of diverse societies
     • Advantages
       • Normative: Hinders the reproduction of common Eurocentric problems
       • Empirical: Third world countries are not Europe's past but its future

6. Problems of Postcolonialism

   • Promotion of border thinking
     • The West against the Rest
     • Rest: manifold and diverse with many different culture and intellectual styles; West: monolithic structure
   • Epistemological cul-de-sac
     • Only perceives exchanges as knowledge imposition
     • No knowledge amalgamation
   • Postcolonialism has problems to move beyond critcising; cannot provide a praxeological account