Beginning of Postcolonialism

1. Part 1

2.  The radical construction of the gender differences
is discussed in colonial & post-colonial
literature/discourse.
 Feminist Theory Concerns
1) to look on the conceptual, political, social and
ideological differences for the gender
representation.

3. 2) Who out to claim to speak for the right of the
women?
3) Meanwhile it is challenging to give an explanatory
count on the concepts of Feminism and Male
patriarchy.
4) Furthermore, the chapter intends to attempt on the
relationship of critique and his/her motive of writing.

4. Colonialism
 The suppression of white on black. Ethnicity and
race.
Patriarchy
 These are mechanism(s) _system(s) –Political
trap(s) or cognitive model(s)… that INVEST
POWER in Men… and MARGENILIZE WOMEN.

5.  Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the
male as the primary authority figure is central to
social organization, and where fathers hold
authority over women, children, and property. It
implies the institutions of male rule and privilege,
and is dependent on female subordination. Most
forms of feminism characterize patriarchy as an
unjust social system that is oppressive to women.

6.  A theoretical approach in various disciplines that is
concerned with the lasting impact of colonization in
former colonies.
 Post-colonialism or postcolonial studies is an
academic discipline that analyzes, explains, and
responds to the cultural legacy of colonialism and
imperialism

7.  Feminism is Anterior to Post-colonial, instead it’s a
constitutive work of Post-colonialism.
 Feminism is a male-centered field.
 The writer further adds that defining “Feminism” as
well as “Colonialism”, is complex and perplexing.

8.  … Postcolonial feminism is a form
of feminism that developed as a response to
feminism seemingly focusing solely on the
experiences of women in Western cultures.
 … Postcolonial feminists also work to incorporate
the ideas of indigenous and other Third
World feminist movements into mainstream
Western feminism.

9.  How women and men are positioned in a male
dominant patriarchal society. They also focus on the
power imbalance between men and women where
men are dominant and women are subordinates
(McLeod, 25, 173).
 McLeod explains that both feminism and
postcolonialism “share the mutual goal of challenging
forms of oppression” (McLeod, 174). .
 Postcolonial and feminism theory is concerned with
how women and men are presented in colonized
territories and in western locations. .

10.  Feminist reader is enlisted to observe and witness
the change, that is occurring in gender relationship.
 The reader of the feministic discourse can also
question the change, relation and its affects.

11.  Talks about the rebel against patriarchal
dominancy, suppression and oppression of women
by men.
 It could be divided in two kinds.
a) Material suppression. Women was not allowed to
vote.
b) Abstract suppression. Women was not allowed to
place her own opinion (being criticized for poor
intellect & cognition)

12.  In this way Colonialism and Male Patriarchy
lie in the same ocean.
 1) Male dominancy suppressed and snatched
the right of the meeker gender (women).
 2)Whereas, Colonialism marginalized the
other ethnical tribes via exclusion.

13.  A term was coined in the mid-1980s, and firstly
used by Holst- Petersen and Rutherford’
 The term refers to the observation that women
are subjected to both the colonial domination and
patriarchy.
 Double colonization is a term referring to the
status of women in the postcolonial world.
.

14.  They argue that colonialism celebrates the achievement
of men in a series of male- oriented myth like explorers,
freedom fighters and women are subjected to represent in
colonial discourses in a ways which collude with patriarchal
values like this women are double colonized.
 Postcolonial and feminist theorists state that women are
oppressed by both, patriarchy and the colonial power and
that this is an ongoing process in many countries
even after they achieved independence
 Thus women are colonized in a twofold way by imperialism
and male dominance.

15.  Rana Khabbani in her book Imperial Fictions and looks
at the production of the eastern female as a figure of
licentiousness and western heterosexual male and
depiction of women in 18th and 19th centuries was
objectified as a exotic creature who epitomized &
promised the assumed excessive sexual delights of the
orient.
 She argues that women were token traveller s only who
were forced by various pressure to articulate the values of
patriarchy

16.  Pratt s work shows western women relation- ship
with the dual working of colonialism and patriarchy
is complicated as they can be placed in
contradictory positions empowered as a member of
the civilized colonizing nation yet dis –empowered
under a western patriarchy rubric.

17.  Hazel Carby argues that British colonialism have
interrupted familial & community structures and
imposed their own models.
 “Colonialism attempt to destroy kinship patterns that
are not modeled on nuclear family structure, disrupting
in the process female organization that were based on
kinship system which allowed more power to women
than those of colonizing nation “
 Carbys argument suggests that indigenous gender
roles are equitable than the sexist & chauvinist gender
stereotypes and social roles brought from the
colonizing culture.

18.  Buchi Emecheta depicts the life of Nnu Ego who was
Igbo woman from a village of Ibuzu in Nigeria.
 Her father Agbadi choose to marry her to Amatokwu
and he pays her bride prize and sends an additional six
kegs of palm wine when he finds that Nnu Ego virginity
is intact.
 She does not become pregnant as a women she
seems to fail in her primary task as a woman to provide
male children and its causes her personal distress and
she was moved to a hut because a younger wife has
been found for Amatokwu by his father to preserve the
male line.

19.  When she complains that she misses their
intimacy and his answer leaves her in no doubt as
to her value.
“what you want me to do? Amatokwu asked.”I am
a busy man . I have no time to waste my precious
male seed on a woman who is infertile . If you really
want to know you don’t appeal to me anymore . you
are so dry and jumpy . when a man comes to a
woman he wants to be cooled not scratched by a
nervy female who is all bones” (p32).

20. These lines demonstrates that
 She is only significant to his husband only as a
token by which the male line of the family can be
preserved its reveals his demand how woman
should act in a Ibogo community.
 Women is a object for the survival of their
hereditary line her identity and social role is
constructed by male , she suffers if she does not
comply.

21.  Amatoka s younger wife bears a child and Nnu
Ego privately feeds the child when he cries when
he discovers he beats her for daring to perform the
task of mother as she failed to fulfill her role.
 She is sent to her home and her father
acknowledges that she brought shame to the
family.
 Eventually another husband is found for her in
logas.

22.  Amatoka s younger wife bears a child and Nnu
Ego privately feeds the child when he cries when
he discovers he beats her for daring to perform the
task of mother as she failed to fulfill her role.
 She is sent to her home and her father
acknowledges that she brought shame to the
family.
 Eventually another husband is found for her in
logas.

23.  Nnu Ego s plight is culturally and historically
significant because women of other countries of
colonialism would recognize her subservience to
indigenous force of compulsion.
 Mac leod says that gender inequalities exist in
both indigenous and colonial culture both oppress
women and women are double colonized.

24.  “The post- colonial is not only involved in making
her self heard and also changing the architecture of
male-centered ideologies and languages or
discovering new forms of language to express her
experience.
 she has also subvert and demy-thologises
indigenous male writing and tradition which seek to
label her”.

25.  They argue that male ethos has persisted in the
colonial and post colonial world (A Double
Colonialism .p.9)
 They point out both colonialism and resistance to
it can be seen as male- centered

26.  Ketu Katrak has argued in “Indian Nationalism,
Gandhian ‘Satyagraha,’ and the Engendering of
National Narratives” that Mahatma Gandhi’s resistance
to British colonial rule in India during the 1920s and
1930s used specifically gendered representations for
the purposes of Indian nationalism, but ultimately did
little to free Indian women from their patriarchal
subordination to men.
 He appropriated images of passive women to promote
his campaign of passive resistance to British rule. Both
men and women were encouraged to adopt a passivity
exclusively associated with femininity.

27.  She states: Gandhi’s specific representations of
women and female sexuality, and his symbolizing
from Hindu mythology of selected female figures
who embodied a nationalist spirit promoted […] a
‘traditional’ ideology wherein female sexuality was
legitimately embodied only in marriage, wifehood,
domesticity- all forms of controlling women’s
bodies. (395-6

28.  Postcolonial feminist theory exerts a pressure on
mainstream postcolonial theory in its constant iteration
of the necessity to consider gender issues.
 Postcolonialism and feminism have come to share a
tense relationship as some feminist critics point out
that postcolonial theory is a male-centered field that
has not only excluded the concerns of women, but also
exploited them.
 Postcolonial feminist theorists have accused
postcolonial theorists not only of obliterating the role of
women from the struggle for independence, but also of
misrepresenting them in the nationalist discourses.

29.  He reminds that post-colonialism will be like
colonialism, a male-centered and ultimately
patriarchal discourse in which women s voice are
marginalized and silenced.

30.  McLeod, John. Beginning Post colonialism.
Manchester: Manchester UP,2000 .
 Peterson, Kristen Holst ,Anna ,Rutherford.
(eds)Double Colonition Colonial and post colonial
women s writing (Dangaroo,1986),A Davies, Carole
Boyce, Black Women ,Writing and Identity.
Migration of the subject(Routledge).
 Khabbani ,Rana, Imperial Fiction: Europe Myths of
Orient(Pandora,rev1994)

31.  Nashta, Sushila (cd), Motherlands:Black Women
Writing from Africa the Caribbean and the south
Asia(Women s press,1991. )