Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

efuses to , because to do so is to accept me domination of his oppressors. The issue of
attempting to silence me oppre ssed or victimized and their resistance to oppression,
which runs throughout legends , myths and folk-tilles, also permeate the history of
slavery , co 1oniz3.tion and aparth eid . Since it is noconl y through violent military
conquest that people are subjugated, but also thro ugh languag e, postcolonial theory
demonstrates how language can be used as a means of resisting that oppression. This
chapter explores how postcolonial theory interrogates a certain western way of
lhinking and writing that perpetu.a.tescolonial ideo logies about the ltistory and culture
of the colonized, and how a rewriting of canonized texts subverts such ideo logies.
Beginning with me sixteenth-century British slave trade , I shall present a brief
overview of eurocentric ideologies, which were well ingrained in me European 's mind
long before colonization. and I shall discuss resistance as an emancipa tory project of
postcOlonialism.
The term postco lonial and its variant forms (postcolonialism. posteoloniality)
have recently gained curre ncy in academic institutions and have become the subject of
conferences and seminars. Postco lonial theory and cri ticism have featured as special
topics in such literary journals andperiodicalsas Criricallnquiry. txocrma,
Kunapipi , Mtx1em Drama. PML4. Social Tar. Thearn Jounuzl, and Yale French
Studies. Postcolonial as an adjective has been attached to a number of nouns : 'aura '
(Arli Dirlik), 'condition' (linda Hutcheon), 'cri tic ' (Gayatri Spivak) , 'in rellectual '
(Edward Said), in addition to the frequently used , "discourse,' 'studies ,' and ' theory . '