1. POSTCOLONIALISM PIONEERS
IN CULUTRAL STUDIES
Presented by
Akram Al-Quzahy
akramq2009@yahoo.co

2. The definition of Postcolonialism
• “Post-colonialism (or often postcolonialism) deals with
the effects of colonization on cultures and societies. As
originally used by historians after the Second World War
in terms such as the postcolonial state, ‘post-colonial’
had a clearly chronological meaning, designating the
post-independence period. However, from the late 1970s
the term has been used by literary critics to discuss the
various cultural effects of colonization.”…( Bill
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin Post-Colonial
Studies The Key Concepts Routledge Key Guides 2008) .

3. CULTURAL STUDIES
• Cultural Studies refers to areas of theory focus on forms
of culture that are ordinarily produced and circulated
within the group central to their societies, be they
hegemonic or non-hegemonic, and often on cultural
artifacts implicated in economics and social power. These
theories often originate in Marxist or material culture
analyses, but soon redefine the concept of production.
Popular Culture Studies refers most often specifically to
artifacts of mass culture, their dissemination, and the
material forms which they take.

4. Cultural studies often converges with
studies and critiques of (post)colonial
hegemonies, including some great thinker
who are considered the pioneers of
postcolonialism in both cultural and
literary studies :

5. 1- Edward Said
a professor of English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, a literary theorist, and a
public intellectual who was a founding
figure of the critical-theory field of
Post-colonialism. Born a Palestinian
Arab in the city of Jerusalem in 1935 .
He was an American citizen through
his father. Said was an advocate for
the political and the human rights of
the Palestinian people and has been
described by the journalist Robert Fisk
as their most powerful voice.

6. Contribution:
• Edward Said's signature contribution to
academic life is the book Orientalism. It has
been influential in about half a dozen
established disciplines, especially literary
studies (English, comparative
literature), history, anthropology, sociology,
area studies (especially middle east
studies), and comparative religion. It is a
foundational text for the academic field of
Post-colonial Studies, wherein the
denotations and connotations of the term
“Orientalism” are expanded to describe
what Saïd sees as the false cultural
assumptions of the “Western
World”, facilitating the cultural
misrepresentation of the “The Orient”, in
general, and of the Middle East, in
particular.

7. 2- Seyla Benhabib
Seyla Benhabib (born September
9, 1950) is Eugene Mayer Professor of
Political Science and Philosophy at Yale
University, and director of the program
in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and a
well-known contemporary philosopher.
She is the author of several books, most
notably about the philosophers Hannah
Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Benhabib
is well-known for combining critical
theory with feminist theory. Seyla
Benhabib is a democratic theorist who
does not believe in the purity of
cultures; she thinks of them as formed
through dialogues with other cultures.

8. 3- Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon (Frantz Omar
Fanon, 20 July 1925 – 6 December
1961) was a Martiniqueborn, French Creole
psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutio
nary, and writer whose works are
influential in the fields of postcolonial studies, critical theory, and
Marxism. As an intellectual, Fanon
was a political radical, and an
existentialist humanist concerning
the psychopathology of
colonization, and the
human, social, and cultural
consequences of decolonization.

9. Contribution :
Fanon is best known for the classic on decolonization
The Wretched of the Earth.[11] The Wretched of the
Earth was first published in 1961 by François
Maspero and has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.[12] In
it Fanon analyzes the role of class, race, national
culture and violence in the struggle for national
liberation. Both books established Fanon in the eyes
of much of the Third World as the leading anticolonial thinker of the 20th century.

10. 4- Homi Bhabha
Homi K. Bhabha (born 1949) is the Anne F.
Rothenberg Professor of English and American
Literature and Language, and the Director of the
Humanities Center at Harvard University. He is
one of the most important figures in contemporary
post-colonial studies, and has coined a number of
the field's neologisms and key concepts, such as
hybridity, mimicry, difference, and ambivalence.[1]
Such terms describe ways in which colonised
peoples have resisted the power of the
coloniser, according to Bhabha's theory. In
2012, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan
award in the field of literature and education by
the Indian government. Homi Bhabha claims that
a salient characteristic of colonial culture is its
hybridity, its ―in-betweenness‖. He is the theorist
of cultural hybridity and in-betweenness, so he
himself is ―a mediating figure between activists
and academics.

11. 5- Gayatri Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24
February 1942) is an Indian literary
theorist, philosopher and University
Professor at Columbia University, where she
is a founding member of the school's
Institute for Comparative Literature and
Society.[1] She is best known for the essay
"Can the Subaltern Speak?" considered a
founding text of postcolonialism. Spivak is
best known for her contemporary cultural
and critical theories to challenge the "legacy
of colonialism" and the way readers engage
with literature and culture. She often focuses
on the cultural texts of those who are
marginalized by dominant western culture:
the new immigrant; the working class;
women; and other positions of the subaltern.

12. •There are others who contribute to the development of
postcolonial theory around the world and here are some
other names:
* Benedict Anderson
•Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
•Roberto Fernández Retamar
•Mary Louise Pratt
•Chantal Mouffe
•Ernesto Laclau

13. Conclusion
Postcolonialism is the most powerful theory
which permeates in all other theories and aspects
of life and culture. All the mentioned thinkers
contributed in a way or another to the development
of this field of study. They are in this sense called
pioneers of postcolonialism in cultural studies.
Culture and literature relationship is the
relationship between the context and the text.
These thinkers studied the first and showed how
the second is related to the first.. Thanks for them ..

14. References
1- Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin Post-Colonial Studies The Key
Concepts Routledge Key Guides 2008.
2- "Hybridity and National Identity in Postcolonial Literature." 123HelpMe.com.
02 Nov 2013
<http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=6743>.
3- http://wikis.la.utexas.edu/theory/page/cultural-studies-post-colonial-studies
4- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page