Postcolonial Literature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Postcolonial Literature - Essay Example /inferior postcolonial literature dominates most literary study and it is clear that the establishment of Afrocentric criteria poses an important challenge to the traditional patterns. Not all of the hierarchies are so clearly drawn, nor are they so firmly entrenched as one might believe. Postcolonial critics such as Said, Loomba, Bhabha and Fanon address and describe the principal features of postcolonialisms intellectual inheritance. Edward Said Orientalism (1991) unveils an uneasy relationship with Marxism, a specifically poststructuralist and anti-humanist understanding of two opposite worlds: Western and colonial ones. In his works, Said states that while all texts are worldly, great texts reflect the greatest pressures and preoccupations of the postcolonial world. In contrast to Said, Fanon depicts resistance and anti-colonial ideas typical for the society of this period of time. In his works, Fanon pays a special attention to French colonialism and collective violence. Fanon claims that the most important thing for citizens is total liberation and freedom, liberal ideas and self-understanding. He writes: â€Å"Colonialism wants everything to come from it. But the dominant psychological feature of the colonized is to withdraw before any invitation of the conqu erors† (Fanon 63). In contrast to said, Fanon pays a special attention to grievances and problems of black population, slave and master relationships. B. Achebe Things Fall Apart focuses on the debilitating consequences of colonialism in the traditional African society with the sacrosanct male protagonists at the center of that society. Since the womans voice is, as it were, muted and the mans accented, many a feminist reader, nettled by such gross marginalization of the female gender, has relent- lessly flayed Achebes masculinist bigotry. Indeed, things fall apart because women have not been recognized as a potential dynamic force. Achebe makes no bones about delineating a woman as a slave rather than