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This is a 5 page paper that provides an overview of postcolonial theory. Several key works such as those of Said and Spivak are examined. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KW60_KFlit078.doc
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the examples of the British colonizing India and other parts of the Middle East in order to facilitate their mercantile empire, or the United States colonizing countries such as Iraq
in order to establish a foothold to exert hegemony over regional politics and economics. The central argument of postcolonial theory is that when an instance of colonization does occur, it
causes unique effects to occur in both the colonizer as well as the colonized. These effects appear as the colonized culture is subsumed into the colonizing culture through the act
of assimilation, through the creation of the "Other" through stereotyping and fetishizing, and through the efforts of the colonizers to speak for the colonized subaltern.
To begin, one should understand what becomes of the colonized people. Albert Memmi, in his seminal work, "The Colonizer and the Colonized", writes that the goal of all
colonizing actions is "assimilation", or the desire to make the colonized culture more closely resemble the colonizing culture (Memmi, 1991). Clearly, it would be in the best interests of the
British if Indias culture also had Britains economic and cultural interests in mind, or so it was assumed. Because of the material hegemony of the colonizer, the colonized is forced
into a position where in order to survive in the new culture forced upon him, he must adopt the ambition to "become equal to [the colonizer] and to resemble him
to the point of disappearing in him" (Memmi, 1991). In this way, however, the colonized culture loses its own identity in its struggle to assimilate to the expectations of the
colonizing culture. Over time, this eradication of identity becomes inevitable and entrenched. Memmi says that as the colonized attempts to assimilate, he naturally loses "any free role in... cultural and
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