What do you think the term ʻpostcolonialismʼ implies? Do you think that postcolonial theory is able to address gaps and omissions in western critical theories? What do you think are some of the major problems with the term ʻpostcolonialʼ and can these be overcome?
I know that for some postcolonial means anything after the initial colonisation, implying that postcolonial times date back to the very first time Europeans landed on foreign lands and decided that it would make a nice place to live, but I always felt that this occurred simultaneously with Columbus' landing in the americas, and therefore was an historical period already represented by the term 'modernity'. Postcolonialism for me covers a much closer time to now, starting with the dissolution of disconnected colonial rule. So for the United States postcolonialism covers its entire history as a country, while other overseas territories are yet to enter their own postcolonial era.
The option of a different outlook, unhindered by long held beliefs and institutions should offer a fresh outlook. Whether it can show any vacant spaces left by western theory is questionable. Certainly it ought to produce a new way of seeing things, but if we are to assume that our own theories leave gaps, then we must predict that eastern theories will also leave its own gaps. So we would have to combine the both to achieve a better understanding.
The major problem with the term 'postcolonialism' is that it implicitly suggests that colonialism is been and gone. Yet it is not something resigned to dusty history books. As I have already suggested, there are many places in the world still under the yoke of colonial rule, and countless others still afflicted by the residual institutions, discarded by hasty expatriates, running from the menace of violent revolution. Remember Philadelphia. I can't formulate a solution for this though, it isjust another matter of changing perceptions.