Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Postcolonial theory'
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Sorensen, Eli Park. "Postcolonial melancholia : theory, interpretation and the novel." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2007. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1446117/.
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In my doctoral dissertation, I discuss and explore notions of the literary and literary form in postcolonial studies. Beginning with a focus on recent expressions of unease about the theoretical paradigms through which the postcolonial perspective responds to literary texts, I discuss the emergence of what I call postcolonial melancholia, an atmosphere induced by the increased institutionalisation in academia in recent years. Using Freud's notion of melancholia, as a form of ghostly identification with an absent object, I explore what leading critics have seen as a loss of contemporary postcolonial criticality, and which I see as intimately related to the problematic ways in which the dimension of the literary has been used. In the second part of my dissertation, I analyse and discuss various literary strategies as formulated in three formally different postcolonial novels---Ousmane Sembene's Xala, J.M. Coetzee's Foe, and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance---in order to map the contradictions, limitations but also possibilities of novelistic representation in postcolonial space. My overall critical perspective will be informed by the works of Georg Lukacs, and in particular his notion of a utopian-interpretive realist ideal, developed in the early work Theory of the Novel. My argument is that this utopian-interpretive realist ideal can also be seen as a particularly useful notion in connection with what I see as the literary dimension in many postcolonial novels, as it is situated in between complex socio-political agendas and aesthetic-representational problematics. Lukacs's formal-literary ideal is repeated in his later writings on realism from the thirties, but notably in a transfigured way---as an extra-literary, authoritative norm. The dynamic of this trajectory, one that moves from idealism to dogmatism, can (with certain modifications) be seen as similar to the development of the field of postcolonial critical discourse---moving from an early, idealistic beginning, to an increasingly dogmatic, prescriptive and authoritarian academic discourse. By using the trajectory of Lukacs's realist ideal as a comparative background, I attempt explore alternative ways of conceiving postcolonial literariness ways that may help the field of postcolonial studies to come to terms with what I see as the symptom of postcolonial melancholia, haunting the contemporary discipline.
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Francis, Toni P. "Identity Politics: Postcolonial Theory and Writing Instruction." Scholar Commons, 2007. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/711.
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In this dissertation I intend to apply postcolonial theory to primary pedagogical and administrative concerns of the writing program administrator. Writing Program Administrators, or WPAs, take their responsibilities seriously, remaining cognizant of both the negative and positive repercussions of the pedagogical decisions that take shape in the scores of composition classrooms they administer. This dissertation intends to infuse the WPA position with the ethos of scholarly praxis by historicizing and contextualizing the field of composition, and by placing the teaching of writing within the historical memory of slavery and colonialism. Sound WPA research is theoretically informed, systematic, principled inquiry that works toward producing strong writing programs. This dissertation provides such inquiry, drawing the field's attention to the reality of postcoloniality and presenting an understanding of the work of composition as informed by and complicit in the history of racialized forms of oppression. From this context, the dissertation analyzes three major issues faced by the WPA: the debate over standardized discourse, the influence of the job market on pedagogical decisions, and the (de)politicizing of the composition classroom. In the following sections, these issues will be related directly to critical theories from postcolonial and composition studies that assist in articulating the issues of identity politics, hegemonic struggle, interpellation and interpolation, subaltern voice, and hybridity that are so crucial to writing program pedagogy and administration in the postcolonial age, for it is my argument that the writing classroom is a crucial site of contention in which the politics of identity are manifested as students appropriate and are appropriated by discourse.
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Huddart, David Paul. "The foreignness of autobiography : inventing postcolonial beginnings." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.343372.
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Bhabha, Homi K. "The location of culture critical theory and the postcolonial perspective." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.314886.
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Greedharry, Mrinalini. "Psychoanalysis and its colonial discontents, rethinking psychoanalytic theory in postcolonial studies." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ37402.pdf.
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Al-Abbood, Muhammed Noor. "The cultural politics of resistance : Frantz Fanon and postcolonial literary theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.310373.
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Greedharry, Mrinalini. "Of two minds : the uneasy relationship between psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.420352.
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Rao, Rahul. "Postcolonial cosmopolitanism : between home and the world." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6eb91e22-9563-49a2-be2b-402a4edd99b5.
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The thesis aims to address criticisms of cosmopolitanism that characterise it as an elite discourse, by exploring the role that it might play in Third World resistance movements. In doing so, it complicates the landscape of international normative theory, which has traditionally been mapped as a debate between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Part I of the thesis argues that cosmopolitanism and communitarianism can function as languages in which First and Third World states respectively justify exercises of power that impede the self-determination of Third World societies. These discourses of power frame the condition of postcoloniality, which might be understood – borrowing the terminology of International Society theorists – as an entrapment of Third World societies between 'coercive solidarism' and 'authoritarian pluralism'. A normative worldview committed to enhancing the scope for self-determination of such societies must be critical of the production of both external and internal environments that are hostile to the enjoyment of self-determination by Third World peoples. Part II of the thesis explores the political challenges of sustaining such a critique by studying four theorists of resistance who perceive themselves as manoeuvring between hostile external and internal environments. It analyses the political thought of Rabindranath Tagore and Edward Said, who were both leading figures of anti-colonial nationalist movements but also fierce critics of nationalism. It also studies the activism of two leaders in the field of 'anti-globalisation' protest – Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas in Mexico and Professor Nanjundaswamy of the Karnataka State Farmers' Association in India – who struggle against both national elites and global capital. Part II concludes that if resistance in the condition of postcoloniality must grapple simultaneously with both a hostile 'outside' and 'inside', it must speak in mixed registers of universalism and particularity. Cumulatively, the thesis demonstrates that the language of common humanity operates in ways that are both oppressive and emancipatory, just as the language of community is a source of both repression and refuge. Normative theory that does not seek to hold both in tension fails the needs of our non-ideal world.
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Moss, Laura F. E. "An infinity of alternate realities, reconfiguring realism in postcolonial theory and fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0004/NQ31944.pdf.
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Noman, Abu Sayeed Mohammad. "Africological Reconceptualization of the Epistemological Crises in Postcolonial Studies." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2018. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/491533.
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African American StudiesPh.D.
“Africological Reconceptualization of the Epistemological Crises in Postcolonial Studies” aims at investigating the epistemological problems and theoretical inconsistencies in contemporary post-colonial studies. Capitalizing the Afrocentric theories of location, agency, and identity developed by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, this research takes Afrocentricity beyond the Africological analysis of African phenomenon and demonstrates its applicability in resolving issues that concern human liberation irrespective of race, class, gender, and nationality. To do so, this project juxtaposes the theories of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak with the Afrocentric theories of Molefi Asante and Ama Mazama, and demonstrates that the application of Afrocentric methods can help answering severe allegations against postcolonialism raised by a number of critics from within the school itself. Issues concerning spatial and temporal location of the term post-colonial, commodity status of post-colonialism, and crises in the post-colonial pedagogy can be addressed from an Afrocentric perspective based on a new historiography. To support the proposed arguments, the paper provides an Afrocentric analysis of some postcolonial works and shows how the very radical stance of postcoloniality has been neutralized by the Western academy. Simultaneously, the research also shows, despite being ridiculously disparaged as essentialist and racist, Afrocentricity is fundamentally radical and quintessentially emancipatory in its relentless fight against misrepresentation, pseudoscience, and injustice in the name of objective scholarship perpetrated by Eurocentric intellectuals—particularly from Asia and Africa.
Temple University--Theses
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Wilmot, Natalie V., and Susanne Tietze. "Englishization and the Politics of Translation." Emerald, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/18182.
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YesPurpose This article investigates the treatment of translation within the international business and management (IBM) literature in order to highlight colonialist assumptions inscribed in this treatment as a result of the hegemonic status of English. Design/methodology/approach This investigation takes the form of a systemic literature review to examine the treatment of translation in the IBM literature through a postcolonial lens Findings The findings demonstrate that despite growing interest in language in international business, matters of translation have received comparatively little attention. However, those articles which do address translation matters tend to do so in five key ways, including epistemological/methodological considerations, exploring translator agency, the investigations of the discursive void/conceptual fuzziness between languages, and approaches which discuss translation as social practice. Research limitations/implications Despite our critique of English language hegemony, our literature review is restricted to English-language journals, which we acknowledge as problematic and discuss within the article. Practical implications In exposing the limited treatment of translation within the literature, we provide a call to action for IBM scholars to be more explicit in their treatment of translation in order to ensure representation of cultural and linguistic Others, rather than providing domesticated accounts of multilingual research. Originality/value Although there have been other articles which have examined translation in the past, this article is the first to do so through a postcolonial lens, demonstrating from a linguistic perspective the colonialist assumptions which are still prevalent in IBM knowledge production as evidenced by the treatment of translation in the field.
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Nylund, Mia-Lie. "A fully feminist foreign policy? : A postcolonial feminist analysis of Sweden's Feminist Foreign Policy." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-339481.
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This thesis is a postcolonial feminist discourse analysis of Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy. Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy is unique to the world, but it is not the only case of incorporating a gender perspective as a central part of national or international politics. Feminism and gender perspectives are increasingly receiving attention and space in global politics. The Swedish case could therefore inform us about where politics are heading. Previous research on the Feminist Foreign Policy has aimed mainly at examining what it means and what challenges it likely will face. The aim of the analysis is to examine whether and to what extent the discourse of the Feminist Foreign Policy interrelates with gendered postcolonial narratives. Feminist scholars have for decades argued for the need to recognize the ways in which gendered and postcolonial structures are interrelated. Excluding either a gender or postcolonial analysis will convey only part of the problem. The method used is discourse analysis, or more specifically, critical discourse analysis. Discourse is an essential part of our social world. It is both constituted by and constitutive of how we understand our surroundings. Critical discourse analysis in particular is a useful method to illuminate power relations in society and how they are reproduced or countered through discourse. Two opposing ideal types are developed based on ideas from postcolonial theory and postcolonial feminist theory: gendered postcolonial discourse and fully feminist discourse. The ideal types are used in order to measure whether, how and to what extent the Feminist Foreign Policy interacts with gendered postcolonial discourse. The analysis looks at official documents, statements and speeches of different forms issued or produced by the foreign office. Using several texts, with varied aims and settings, the material will arguably be representative of the Feminist Foreign Policy. The results show that the Feminist Foreign Policy cannot be placed exclusively in either ideal type. The texts interrelate with gendered postcolonial discourse, reproducing unequal relations of power. Conversely, other parts of the texts are fully feminist, both transforming discourse and contributing to knowledge about what it can look like when discourse manages to avoid gendered postcolonial narratives.
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Unangst, Lisa. "Migrants, Refugees, and “Diversity” at German Universities: A Grounded Theory Analysis." Thesis, Boston College, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108789.
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Thesis advisor: Hans de WitThe current displacement crisis in the German context has focused scholarly attention on refugee student access to higher education. However, much less research has attended to supports at higher education institutions (HEIs) for enrolled migrant and refugee students. In fact, education research in the German setting rarely focuses on students from any migrant background, though these students comprise between 20-25% of all German tertiary enrollment. This study uses Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) and a postcolonial lens to analyze “equal opportunity” plans and programs at 32 German HEIs across all 16 federal states. Data sources include the “equal opportunity plan” unique to each HEI (Gleichstellungsplan) and interviews with “equal opportunity office” (Gleichstellungsbüro) faculty and staff. Key findings include a bureaucratization and numerification of diversity in the German case, as well as an almost exclusive focus on diversity as gender. This dissertation offers a potentially transferable theoretical model, which may be relevant in national settings with increasingly diverse student populations, histories of colonial possession or fantasy, or primarily public higher education systems (Bhabha, 1994; El-Tayeb, 2016; Kilomba, 2008; Said, 1979)
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020
Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education
Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
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Juarez, Sarah. "A Question of Power: Reinstating Political Agency in the Postcolonial Novel." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1100.
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In A Question of Power, Bessie Head presents the production of the subject by using the postcolonial novel as a form of constructivist action against colonialism. Arguing against the compartmentalization of the postcolonial novel as merely literary aesthetic, Head instead presents the novel as a form of political literature, offering intricate details of the manifestation of subjectivity and representations of the liminal subject in decolonizing states through the replication of formal colonial powers in informal social institutions.
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Barberan, Reinares Maria Laura. "Commodified Anatomies: Disposable Women in Postcolonial Narratives of Sexual Trafficking/Abduction." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/84.
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This dissertation explores postcolonial fiction that reflects the structural situation of a genocidal number of third-world women who are being trafficked for sexual purposes from postcolonial countries into the global north—invariably, gender, class and race play a crucial role in their exploitation. Above all, these women share a systemic disposability and invisibility, as the business relies on the victim’s illegality and criminality to generate maximum revenues. My research suggests that the presence of these abject women is not only recognized by ideological and repressive state apparatuses on every side of the trafficking scheme (in the form of governments, military establishments, juridical systems, transnational corporations, etc.) but is also understood as necessary for the current neoliberal model to thrive undisturbed by ethical imperatives. Beginning with the turn of the twentieth century, then, I analyze sexual slavery transnationally by looking at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Therese Park’s A Gift of the Emperor, Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful,” Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, concentrating on the political, economic, and social discourses in which the narratives are immersed through the lens of Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theory. By interrogating these postcolonial narratives, my project reexamines the sex slave-trafficker-consumer triad in order to determine the effect of each party’s presence or absence from the text and the implications in terms of the discourses their representations may tacitly legitimize. At the same time, this work investigates the type of postcolonial stories the West privileges and the reasons, and the subjective role postcolonial theory plays in overcoming subaltern women’s exploitation within the current neocolonial context. Overall, I interrogate the role postcolonial literature plays as a means of achieving (or not) social change, analyze the purpose of artists in representing exploitative situations, identify the type of engagement readers have with these characters, and seek to understand audiences’ response to such literature. I look at authors who have attempted to discover fruitful avenues of expression for third-world women, who, despite increasingly constituting the bulk of the work force worldwide, continue to be exploited and, in the case of sex trafficking, brutally violated.
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Valančiūnas, Deimantas. "Construction of Identity in British and Indian Cinema: a Postcolonial Approach." Doctoral thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2013. http://vddb.library.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2013~D_20131129_114315-79626.
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The object of the dissertation is British and Indian popular (commercial) cinema and the construction of identity there. The problem of identity construction in Indian and British films was researched employing three approaches found in the postcolonial theory: the critique of colonial discourse, anticolonial nationalism and the construction of national identity and the problematics of diasporic identity. The comparative analysis of the films from the two industries of the countries which were bounded by colonial relationships in the past let us see the complex ways of how identity is articulated in the postcolonial period. It also shows that the colonial memory is not merely a historical relict, but one of the ways to construct identity, which is always brought up and rethought in contemporary popular culture.
The comparative analysis of British and Indian films leads us to the following conclusions: Nadion constructs itself through the constant employment of the resources of colonial memory – and does so depending on various goals: fantasy, nostalgia, fear etc. The ever-present use of colonial memory in the context of the present shows that postcoloniality is a process rather than achieved state, thus letting us observe the positions and functions of imperialism not only in the past, but present as well. British as well as Indian cinema includes the cultural “otherness” in the narratives, which is modeled and manipulated according to the historical period when the film was... [to full text]Disertacijos objektas yra komercinis Britanijos ir Indijos kinas bei jame konstruojamos tapatybės. Tapatybės konstravimo problematika Indijos ir Britanijos filmuose yra tiriama remiantis trimis tapatybės analizės pokolonijinėje teorijoje pjūviais: kolonijinio diskurso kritika, antikolonijiniu nacionalizmu ir tautinės tapatybės konstravimu bei diasporinės tapatybės problematika. Lyginamasis dviejų, praeityje kolonijiniais saitais susietų valstybių kino filmų tyrimas leido pažvelgti į kompleksines tapatybės artikuliavimo pokolonijiniame laikotarpyje galimybes ir parodė, kad kolonijinė praeitis nėra vien tik istorinis reliktas, bet viena iš tapatybės konstravimo priemonių, nuolat sugrąžinama ir permąstoma šiuolaikinėje populiariojoje kultūroje ir kinematografijoje. Išanalizavus medžiagą disertacijoje prieita prie šių išvadų: tauta konstruoja save per nuolatinį kolonijinės atminties resursų panaudojimą – ir atlieka tai vedina skirtingų tikslų: fantazijos, nostalgijos, baimės ir kt. Nuolatinis kolonijinės atminties eskalavimas dabarties kontekste rodo pokolonializmo procesualumą, bet ne substanciškumą, atverdamas kelius pažvelgti į imperializmą ir jo poziciją ne tik praeityje, bet ir dabartyje. Tokiame kontekste tiek Britanija, tiek Indija į filmų naratyvus įtraukia kultūrinės kitybės kategoriją, kuri yra modeliuojama priklausomai nuo filmo sukūrimo laikmečio ir išreiškia skirtingas ideologines sanklodas. Kalbėjimas apie „Kitą“ tampa susietas su „Savimi“, taip sukuriant reikšmių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
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Pinderhughes, Charles. "21st Century Chains: The Continuing Relevance of Internal Colonialism Theory." Thesis, Boston College, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3409.
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Thesis advisor: William GamsonThesis advisor: Zine Magubane
This dissertation examines Internal Colonialism Theory's importance to a comprehensive understanding of the oppression of African Americans still living in USA ghettos. It briefly explores the180 year history of Black activist depictions of a "nation within a nation," the impact of the depression-era Marxist notion of a Negro nation, Latin American influences on Robert Blauner, and the pervasive effect of international anti-colonialism and the Black Power Movement upon the development of American academic Internal Colonialism Theory. This appraisal evaluates Blauner's seminal presentation, Internal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt, and the major contributions of Robert L. Allen and Mario Barrera in analyzing African American and Chicano internal colonial experiences respectively. It re-assesses colonialism and moves beyond Eurocentric characterizations to elaborate a Continuum of Colonialism, including direct, indirect, external, internal, and "end of" colonialisms. This analysis addresses the contradiction that the American Revolution supposedly decolonized America without improving colonized conditions for African Americans or Native Americans, and defines internal colonialism as geographically based, disagreeing with the prevailing interpretation which contemplates the existence of diasporic African America as one collective colony. While summarizing the USA's course from settler colony system to today's inner cities of the colonized, this investigation explores African American class formation utilizing a variation of Marable's conception of Racial Domains as historical context through to the present. With the majority of African Americans in ghettos [internal colonies] scattered around the USA, this document outlines the positive and negative means of ending internal colonial situations within the contemporary USA. While elaborating how Internal Colonialism Theory quite practically fits harmoniously within several differing conceptualizations of American and global racial relations, this perspective offers a framework for more rigorous future discussions and debates about Internal Colonialism Theory, and previews three major international populations to which this assessment of Internal Colonialism Theory can be extended
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Sociology
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Narain, Vrinda. "Anxiety and amnesia : Muslim women's equality in postcolonial India." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102240.
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In this thesis, I focus on the relationship between gender and nation in post-colonial India, through the lens of Muslim women, who are located on the margins of both religious community and nation. The contradictory embrace of a composite national identity with an ascriptive religious identity, has had critical consequences for Muslim women, to whom the state has simultaneously granted and denied equal citizenship. The impact is felt primarily in the continuing disadvantage of women through the denial of gender equality within the family. The state's regulation of gender roles and family relationships in the 'private sphere', inevitably has determined women's status as citizens in the public sphere.In this context, the notion of citizenship becomes a focus of any exploration of the legal status of Muslim women. I explore the idea of citizenship as a space of subaltern secularism that opens up the possibility for Indian women of all faiths, to reclaim a selfhood, free from essentialist definitions of gender interests and prescripted identities. I evaluate the realm of constitutional law as a counter-hegemonic discourse that can challenge existing power structures. Finally, I argue for the need to acknowledge the hybridity of culture and the modernity of tradition, to emphasise the integration of the colonial past with the postcolonial present. Such an understanding is critical to the feminist emancipatory project as it reveals the manner in which oppositional categories of public/private, true Muslim woman/feminist, Muslim/Other, Western/Indian, and modern/traditional, have been used to deny women equal rights.
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Baker, Raquel Lisette. "Undoing Whiteness: postcolonial identity and the unfinished project of decolonization." Diss., University of Iowa, 2015. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6542.
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In my dissertation project, I engage in a discursive analysis of whiteness to examine how it influences postcolonial modes of self-styling. Critical whiteness studies often focuses on representations of whiteness in the West as well as on whiteness as physical—as white bodies and white people. I focus on representations and functions of whiteness outside of the West, particularly in relation to issues of belonging and modes of postcolonial identification. I examine Anglophone African literary representations of whiteness from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to query how whiteness both enables and undermines anticolonial consciousness. A central question I examine is, How does whiteness as a symbolic manifestation function to constitute postcolonial African identification? Scholarship on the topic of subjectivity and liberation needs to explicitly examine how whiteness intersects with key notions of modernity, such as race, class, progress, and self-determination. Through an examination of postcolonial African literary representations of whiteness, I aim to examine the aspirations, unpacked stereotypes, and fears that move us as readers and hail us as human subjects. Ultimately, through this work, I grapple with the question of identification, understood as the system of desires, judgments, images, and performances that constitute our experiences of being human. I begin by looking backward at the satirical play, “The Blinkards,” written in 1915 in the context of British colonization of the Gold Coast in West Africa (present-day Ghana), to develop an understanding of postcolonial identification that includes an examination of the artistic expression of a writer conceptualizing liberation through notions of cultural nationalism. I go on to examine a selection postcolonial African literatures to develop an understanding of how racialized socio-cultural realities constitute forms of self-hood in post-independence contexts.
I hope to use my argument about representations of whiteness in African literatures to open up questions fundamental to contemporary theories of identification in postcolonial contexts, as well as to make a philosophical argument about the ethics of whiteness as it undergirds transnational modes of modernity. One main point I make in relation to postcolonial theories of subjectivity is that notions of identification are tied up in local, regional, and global circuits of capital and cultural production. In chapter 2, I look at an early (Grain of Wheat 1967) and recent novel (Wizard of the Crow 2006) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Kenya), who locates African postcolonial subjectivity as deeply embedded in local traditions, myths, and storytelling circuits. By fluidly mixing the contexts of the local, the national, and the global, Ngũgĩ astutely challenges naturalized conventions that position black identities and blackness as always inferior to whiteness. Ngũgĩ represents postcolonial consciousness as a space whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics. Situating African postcolonial identification within global circuits of migration, capitalism, and colonialism, Ngũgĩ engages the pervasive significance of whiteness through representations of sickness and desire, suggesting that postcolonial identification is performed through beliefs and practices that are situated within a global racial hierarchy.
From there I go on to analyze a contemporary short story cycle by post-apartheid generation South African writer Siphiwo Mahala. Through his work, I continue to explore the issue of performative identification constituted through desire and aspirational notions in which whiteness works as a moving signifier of cultural and social capital. The main question I address in this chapter is, What is the meaning of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa? Through this examination, I use my analysis of representations of whiteness to reflect on the politics of entanglement as a way to move beyond racialized and geographic modes of identification, to challenge conceptual boundaries that undergird modernity, and theoretical possibilities of a politics of entanglement in relation to broader issues of identification and belonging in postcolonial contexts.
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Ramadhan, Delgash. "Integration and intercultural improvement in Araby/Dalbo : A pilot study about experiences and possibilities." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för organisation och entreprenörskap (OE), 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-55816.
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In the Swedish political debate there is a general agreement about the problems with the integration process regarding especially third country nationals from Africa and Asia. In various SOU reports,1 there are testimonies about flaws in the interaction between the majority community and minority groups (where newly arrived third-country nationals are an especially prevalent group). Thus, Sweden has for several decades been in transformation from a culturally relatively homogeneous nation into a multicultural society. There have of course been cultures like the Sami, Finnish, Roma and German present alongside the Swedish majority culture. However, today there are neighborhoods where people with a “traditional” Swedish cultural background are a minority. Furthermore in almost all parts of society, like school, health, media etc., there are indications of discrimination (SOU 2006:73). This seems to be in line with a general tendency within the European Union where increased multiculturality has been fueling anti-immigrant movements of which some has even gained enough popular support to gain seats in the EU-parliament.
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Rochester, Rachel. "Postcolonial Cli-Fi: Advocacy and the Novel Form in the Anthropocene." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/23736.
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Through the filters of postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, and digital humanities, this project considers the capabilities and limitations of novels to galvanize action in response to environmental crises. My findings suggest that novels are well equipped to engage in environmental education, although some of the form’s conventions must be disrupted to fully capitalize upon its strengths. The modern novel is conventionally limited in scope, often resorts to apocalyptic narratives that can breed hopelessness, is dedicated to a form of realism that belies the dramatic weather events exacerbated by climate change, defers authority to a single voice, and is logocentric. By supplementing conventional novels with a variety of paratexts, including digital tools, scientific findings, non-fiction accounts of past, present, and future activism, and authorial biography, it is my contention that the novel’s potency as a pedagogical tool increases.
After addressing this project’s stakes and contexts in my Introduction, Chapter II assesses three South Asian novels in English that are concerned with sustainable development: Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Shadow from Ladakh, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I conclude by considering how StoryMaps might further disrupt pro-sustainable development propaganda alongside more traditional novels. Chapter III examines how explicitly activist South Asian novelists construct authorial personae that propose additional solutions to the environmental problems identified in their novels, focusing on Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Chapter IV coins the term “locus-colonial novel,” a novel that decenters the human, situating place at the fulcrum of a work of historical fiction, using Hari Kunzru’s Gods without Men as one exemplar. I examine Kunzru’s novel alongside promotional materials for planned Mars missions to consider how narratives of colonialism on Earth might lead to a more socially and environmentally sustainable colonial model for Mars. Chapter V introduces the concept of a digital locus-colonial novel that allows users to develop informed, environmentally focused scenarios for colonial Mars. Through these chapters, this dissertation identifies specific rhetorical techniques that allow conscientious novels to create imaginative spaces where readers might explore solutions to the social, economic, and increasingly environmental problems facing human populations worldwide.
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Al, Janabi Hazam K. A. "Postcolonial nationalism and contemporary literary theory : Algerian and Iraqi novels from 1962 to the present." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/43044.
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This thesis investigates identity and postcolonial nationalism as expressed in selected Iraqi and Algerian historical novels published after 1960. The study examines eight novels: Assia Djebar's Children of the New World (1962), Muhsin al-Ramli's Scattered Crumbs (2000), Yasmina Khadra's The Sirens of Baghdad (2008), Ali Bader's The Tobacco Keeper (2011), Abdul-Aziz Gramoule's Za'eem al-Aqaliyah al-Sahiqah [Leader of the Overwhelming Minority] (2005), Khadair al-Zaidi's Valyoom Asharah [Valium 10] (2015), Rashid Boudjedra's The Barbary Figs (2012) and Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013).Through a critical analysis of the selected data, the study investigates how historical fiction can create and legitimatize nationalist discourse on the one hand and counter hegemonic discourses on the other hand. The thesis also explores how, and to what extent, the critical awareness and blindness of postcolonial nationalism contributes to social and cultural formations in a pan-Arabic context, and how nationalist leaders exploit and oppress their citizens. The thesis also explores - through its investigation of literary texts - the perpetuation of Western cultural imperialism in Iraq and Algeria through the imposition of modern cultural apparatus such as nationalism, the religious/secular distinction and military action such as the War on Terror. It concludes that postcolonial nationalism extends colonial imperialism both ideologically and discursively. Postcolonial nationalist regimes in Iraq and Algeria have divided and exploited citizens by perpetuating Western concepts of nationhood and identity. By examining literary responses to postcolonial nationalist states, my critique explores its divisive and exploitative practices and explores authors' imagined alternative visions for more peaceful multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious societies.
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Labiste, Ma Diosa. "Spectres of new media technologies : the hope for democracy in the postcolonial public sphere." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3800/.
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This study is an intervention in postcolonial theorising through a critique of technologies of representation. It examines the effects of technologically-mediated representation in a postcolonial condition that the Philippines has exemplified. New media technologies are mechanisms of representations that embody the logic of spectrality presented in Jacques Derrida’s later work. Spectrality, which brings doubts, ephemerality, and instability to dominant discourses and modes of representation, provides a chance for change.Spectres are effects of technologically-mediated representation that articulate the infinite demand for justice under conditions of enduring inequality. As quasi-transcendental elements of deconstruction, spectres are not reducible to either human or technical intervention; they express the relation of humans to technologies, in which representation is central to the mediation of political authority. This technological representation is the condition of what Derrida calls “iteration,” or the transformation of hegemonic authority through the very repetition of its fundamental terms of identification. The examination of emancipatory new media technologies in a postcolonial condition is inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, in his deconstructive reading of Marx’s spectres. However, the writings of Habermas and Adorno have offered an implicit appraisal of the ontology of spectres. Habermas’s theory of the public sphere and Adorno’s negative dialectics are discourses that unwittingly solicit spectres. The account of the postcolonial condition in the Philippines works through the questions of universality, subalternity, and the right to theory that are raised by the project of Western critical theory.
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Jordan, Rachel. "Provinializing [sic] world literature Tristram Shandy and Midnight's children as precursors to current postcolonial critical theory /." Connect to this title online, 2009. http://etd.lib.clemson.edu/documents/1263409888/.
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McLees, Leslie, and Leslie McLees. "Understanding the Urban: The Role of Open Space Agriculture in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12364.
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There is a fundamental shift in the way people are living on the planet. Over half of the world's population now lives in cities, yet many of these cities continue to struggle to provide basic services, infrastructure and food security for the billions of people who live in cities. Despite decades of intervention by international and national development agencies, cities in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly framed in apocalyptic and dystopian terms, serving as a warning of the dangers of overurbanization while being criticized for their lack of urban development. This contradictory framing poses the question of how a city and the people who live there actually survive. Building on emerging work in critical urban studies, this research examines how narrow definitions of what counts as urban hinder the understanding of cities in different regional contexts and limit our imaginations of how people survive and thrive in the face of the challenges that cities provide.
To examine the idea of what is urban in the context of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I use the lens of urban open space farms, large lots of land in the built-up environment of the city used for farming, to explore what makes farming urban, how the practice of farming contributes to and is embedded within urban systems, and how farms and farmers can illuminate the material practices and ephemeral experiences that constitute the reality of people's daily life in cities. I employ a methodology based on interviews, photo voice, mental mapping, and observation over time to explore the dynamics of farms as spaces and farmers as agents in constructing these spaces over time. The purpose is to contribute to a definition of the urban that moves past associations with capitalism and industrialization as the defining processes of the city towards one more inclusive of the way people experience these spaces, how they remake them to fit the city, and what this means for interventions that focus on the marginalization of people and the ways that cities fail, rather than how they actually work.
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Ramnarayan, Akhila. "Kalki’s Avatars: writing nation, history, region, and culture in the Tamil Public Sphere." The Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1150484295.
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McCracken, Heather. "Creating Postcolonial National Heroes: The Revisionist Myths of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1472725837.
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Kirlew, Shauna Morgan. "21st-Century Neo-Anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/93.
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21st-century Neo-anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order explores the twenty-first-century fiction of five writers and investigates the ways in which their works engage the legacy and evolution of empire, and, in particular, the expansion of global capitalism to the detriment of already-subjugated communities. Taking up a recent call by Postcolonial scholars seeking to address the contemporary challenges of the postcolonial condition, this project traces out three distinct forms of engagement that function as a resistance in the texts. The dissertation introduces these concepts via a mode of analysis I have called Neo-anticolonialism, a counter-hegemonic approach which, I argue, is unique to the twenty-first century but rooted in the anticolonial work of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Building on a foundation laid by those activist scholars, this project argues that Neo-anticolonialism necessitates the bridging of discourse and activism; thus, the dissertation delineates the utility of Neo-anticolonialism in both literary scholarship and practical application. Through a close analysis of the fiction of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaican Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, a South Asian writer, African American writer Edward P. Jones, and Black British writer Caryl Phillips, the project offers a Neo-anticolonial reading of several twenty-first-century texts. In doing so, I explain the depiction of these instances of resistance as Neo-anticolonial Refractions, literary devices which function as prisms that cast images thus exposing the perpetuation of inequality in the twenty-first century and its direct link to the past epoch. Moreover, each chapter, through an explication of the refractions, reveals how resistance occurs in the face of the brutal reality of oppression and how this cadre of writers engages with the history of empire as well as with its contemporary permutations.
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Malik, Saadia I. "Exploring aghani al-banat a postcolonial ethnographic approach to Sudanese women's songs, culture, and performance /." Ohio : Ohio University, 2003. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1053018989.
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Gordon, Jody Michael. "Between Alexandria and Rome: A Postcolonial Archaeology of Cultural Identity in Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1337290654.
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Lindgren, Edmonds Ann-Louise. "Mixed Messages within The Buddha of Suburbia." Thesis, Växjö University, School of Humanities, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-1933.
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Abstract
The mixed messages provided in The Buddha of Suburbia together with its prevalent use of humour are the focal point for this essay. The aim is to defend my thesis statement that humour provides a justifiable forum for the critique and presentation of society, enabling the facilitation of serious, effective and powerful perspectives. As critical standpoints a mixture of Postcolonial and Marxist theories are applied together with Bakhtin’s theory of carnevalesque. By comparing historic facts with the portrayed environment depicted in the novel, a message is delivered that a change of a different worldview is required. This message is displayed with various uses of humour, wit and satire, which provide an allegorical veil for its seriousness. This analysis shows that there are no seeming changes in the lives of the characters, but it highlights that a need for a change of views is important.
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Orozco-Mendoza, Elva Fabiola. "Borderlands Theory: Producing Border Epistemologies with Gloria Anzaldua." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/32268.
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This study is dedicated to examine the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, as instruments that are socially produced. It utilizes Gloria Anzalduaâ s theoretical framework of Borderlands theory as a set of processes that seek to attain the de-colonization of the inner self. The historical and spatial dynamics of the geographical border between Mexico and United States, largely shaped by the U.S. expansionist agenda, resulted in the Mexican lost of more than half of its territory and the subsequent stigmatization of Mexican-Americans/Chicanos as â foreign others,â since they did not share with predominant Anglo-Saxons the same values, culture, religion, traditions and skin color. I argue that the later exploitation, exclusion, marginalization, and racism against Mexican-Americans/Chicanos informed Anzalduaâ s development of her Borderlands theory that seeks to attain liberation for any colonized identity. However, it is also my argument that the borderlands theory fails to account for meaningful political freedom since the processes that compose the theory are principally worked at the inner level, restricting the possibilities for a direct confrontation in the public sphere.Master of Arts
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Borglin, John. "Django, historien om en hjälte : En diskursanalys av postkoloniala och genusteoretiska maktförhållanden i Quentin Tarantinos film Django Unchained." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-70963.
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The following study aims to analyze expressions of postcolonial and gender theoretical conditions of power in Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained. The method of analysis is the one of discourse analysis. The analysis is used as a means to distinguish the expressions of value which will aim to depict the gender theoretical- and postcolonial structures of power the film mediates. Furthermore, the results given by the analysis will be discussed in relation to creation of prosthetic memory. Considering the prosthetic memory’s impact on the viewers subjectivity, and outlook on both present and future values, the theory will adequately be discussed in relation to the representation this pop-cultural medium mediate. This study does not aim to analyze the historical authenticity of the film but rather to identify which postcolonial and gender theoretical values that are projected through the historical narrative. However, Django’s hero status will be discussed in relation with the mid-19th century American setting. As for the results of the analysis they were both in line with, and contradictive to, what the previous studies has shown. In correlation with the preceding studies the film did not seem to address the psychological issue of the different positions of power a slave could have. However, the position of Django was in fact a subject of problematization. The configuration of gender was less nuanced, which gave rise to a one-sided function and power stature for the depicted women of the film. In contrast to this, the power hieratical position for men were highly fluid and dependent on several factors.
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Roussos, Timotheos. "Island stories, alternative voices." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7737.
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Men in island cultures who live outside heteronormative social models must negotiate a space where transgressive sexualities may be expressed. My thesis ‘explores’ these negotiated spaces and alternative masculinities as depicted in the literatures of post-independence authors from New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.
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Simonis, Jana. "VOICE AND SILENCE AMONG INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN THE U.S.- AMERICAN CLASSROOM: TOWARDS A DIALOGIC AND INCLUSIVE APPROACH TO VOICE, SILENCE, AND ACTIVE LISTENING." OpenSIUC, 2016. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1164.
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Each year, thousands of international students move to the United States to pursue higher education. Over the past few years in particular, the numbers of international students enrolled at U.S.-American universities has been on a constant incline. Two of the biggest changes that international students may experience are the different expectations of classroom etiquette and participation in the U.S.-American classroom setting. Impacted by many years of exposure to West-centric approaches to pedagogical praxis, the U.S.-American classroom has been created as a privileged space in which, more often than not, West-centric epistemologies, approaches to pedagogy, and ways of knowledge production are privileged over others. For international students, the majority of whom do not come from Western cultures, this can be a very tough space to negotiate. In this dissertation, I look at the conceptualizations of voice and silence, in particular, in order to gain a better understanding of how these two concepts are experienced and negotiated by international students within the U.S.-American classroom setting at a medium-sized U.S.-American university located in a small town in the Midwestern region of the country. While many West-centric cultures conceptualize voice and silence as dichotomous, I argue that they form a continuum that is dialogic, communicative, fluid, contextual, and at times paradoxical. Furthermore, I argue that the meanings of silence and voice within the U.S.-American classroom space can have multiple meanings and be understood as different forms of communication and participation. For the purpose of this project, I selected the three meta discourses of postcolonial theory, critical (communication) pedagogy, and international student-centered research to help deconstruct the notion of international students as the “Other,” as well as the misconceptions of silence within the classroom. Postcolonial theory as the main anchor of this research, in particular, allowed me to engage in an in-depth discussion of how we can decolonize West-centric, U.S.-American classrooms and create more dialogic, inclusive, and intercultural spaces in which different epistemologies and ways of knowing and knowledge production can be included. Furthermore, I bring into dialogue the three selected meta discourses in order to create a more nuanced and inclusive conceptualization of voice and silence that moves away from West-centric binaries. I used critical complete-member ethnography (CCME), as developed by Dr. Satoshi Toyosaki (2011), as the main method for critical inquiry. CCME argues for the value that is derived from combining different ethnographic methods in order to create an accurate account of cultural practices, as well as “focus on communicative practices and processes” (p. 66). I incorporated an autoethnographic account that functions to position myself as a researcher as well as autoethnographic narratives and reflections throughout my data analysis. In addition, I extend the notion of membership as it is currently conceptualized within CCME to make the argument for CCME as a method for critical inquiry within intercultural communication, and not just intracultural communication, research. My research findings demonstrate that the West-centric, binaristic conceptualization of voice and silence within the U.S.-American educational system can create unwelcoming learning environments for international students who may feel positioned as the Other who do not fit in, or may feel excluded from dominant discourse by being silenced. The participants’ narratives indicate the meanings of and reasons for international students’ embodiments of silence within classroom settings are as multiple, contextual, and dialogic as the conceptualization of silence itself. The collected data support the argument of the complexity and contextuality of voice and silence, and further call for a reconceptualization of voice and silence as acceptable forms of classroom participation. Furthermore, the international student participants identified several reasons as to why they may choose to perform silence in the classroom. Finally, through the interviews I tried to create a dialogue among international students and instructors in order to address and deconstruct issues pertaining to the struggles of international students caused by U.S.-centric approaches to pedagogy as well as conceptualizations of voice, silence, and classroom participation. My research showed that it is imperative for us to engage in more inclusive, critical, yet compassionate dialogues across our differences in order to create glocalized, intercultural learning communities within U.S.-/Euro-/West-centric educational systems. We must attempt to create intercultural spaces within our classrooms that allow for and cherish diverse narratives, epistemologies, different ways of knowing, and different conceptualizations of voice, silence, and classroom participation within the U.S.-American classroom setting, in particular at a medium-sized U.S.-American university located in a small town in the Midwestern region of the country. This dissertation research privileges such dialogue by centering the narratives of international students, thus, moving them from the periphery to the center and allowing them the agency to address exclusionary pedagogical practices within the U.S.-American educational system that exclude them from dominant discourse.
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Osseo-Asare, Philomena Abla. "Postcolonial theory and early literacy development for 4-8 year-olds : a life history study of Ghanaian teachers." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/18355/.
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This life history study examines how the changes in language and literacy policy in lower grades impacted on teachers’ classroom practices from independence in 1957 to 2014. As a result of British colonial rule, English is the official language in Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries; English is also used in many schools, yet most young children enter school with no prior knowledge of the English language. Consequently, the language of instruction in lower grades has always been a contested issue. There are some who prefer the use of local language and see the use of English as inculcating Western values and culture in the African, thus depriving children of the knowledge of African traditional values. On the other hand, those in favour of English, argue that the use of local language was a means of providing inferior education to Africans by colonial governments. These differing views have led to changes in the language policy for lower grades since the country’s independence in 1957. Although there have been a number of studies on the language policy in lower grade, there is a gap in the literature on understanding how colonial rule and Western education influences the language/s used in Ghanaian schools to support children’s literacy development. In addition, there is little or no research to understand how policy changes in language and literacy have affected lower grade teachers’ classroom practices. This study therefore adopts a postcolonial theoretical perspective and has used in-depth interviews to collect data from seven lower grades teachers on the use of different language and literacy policies over the past six decades. The findings suggest that teachers’ personal values, beliefs and teacher training play a significant role in their attitudes towards language and literacy policy and their classroom practices. Though teaching in the local language helped in classroom interaction, making children more active, the study found that teachers’ knowledge of local language was hampered by the fact that local language was an optional subject in Senior High School. The English-only policy was seen as being responsible for children’s inability to understand and communicate freely in class, thereby making teaching difficult for teachers. The findings also show that, though the National Literacy Acceleration Programme (NALAP) was seen as a positive move to make children literate in both local language and English, the question of the use of a particular local language and the place of English in lower grades remains unresolved. This study concludes that young children’s literacy development depends to a large extent on an individual teacher’s language expertise in the local languages and English and their ability in using and teaching both efficiently in the classroom.
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Hoff, Lutz Werner Wilhelm. "Global civil society and adult education for social change : a postcolonial perspective." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2012. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/50652/1/Lutz_Hoff_Thesis.pdf.
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Adult education plays an important role in global economic development and features prominently in debates about changing requirements of post-industrial knowledge societies. This dominant technical-instrumental understanding of adult education in public discourse masks the transformative function of certain types of adult education - that is, the possibilities of adult education to improve social justice issues such as workers’ rights, human rights, civic participation in governance and socially just development. Given the increasing social stratification between and within the North and South in the global era, the potential of adult education to effect social change has been rediscovered by organisations within global civil society, namely international non-governmental organisations (INGOs).
The broad objective of this research was to carry out an in-depth qualitative case study of a human rights advocacy program provided by a Northern INGO predominantly operating within the global South. The study analyses how participants see this program in terms of its potential to contribute to progressive social change in their home communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The following questions guided the study:
1. To what extent does this adult education program challenge existing systems of domination and marginalisation?
2. How did completion of the program affect participants’ views of their abilities to facilitate social action within their communities?
Data sources for this research were interviews with 19 participants and staff and questionnaires from 28 participants of the program from a variety of countries in the Asia-pacific region.
The gap in the literature that this study addressed is that existing empirical research sidelines the analysis of the globalisation, adult education, and social change nexus from a perspective that takes the marginalised other seriously, tending instead to mirror the material subjugation of the South in discursive practices. Social change is highly context-specific and strategies to advance it depend on the way in which people understand their reality and are affected by adverse social conditions. The present study employed a postcolonial framework that provided a holistic approach to analysing adult education for social change inclusive of material, political, and social conditions and the interplay between these from the local to the global level.
The program convincingly exemplified an example of adult education for counter-hegemonic resistance against the dominant neoliberal discourse. It achieved this by enabling participants, based on Freirian pedagogical principles, to locate the problem of social change and frame their strategies to address it within mutually constitutive local and global developments and the discourses that describe them. It provided the underpinning knowledge and skills for effective advocacy and created opportunities to build networks between various stakeholders. At minimum, most advocates accord their participation in the program a supporting role in enhancing their ability to examine causes for social injustices and ways to address these. Some advocates even regarded their program participation as fundamental in understanding these issues. Almost all participants reported an increased skill-set that enabled them to become more effective advocates.
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Oguri, Kota. "Sexual Occidentation and Its Consequences in LGBT Rights Politics: Reverse Orientalism, Homonationalism and Postcolonial Homophobia." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1429552752.
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Bates, Julia C. "The Occlusion of Empire in the Reification of Race: A Postcolonial Critique of the American Sociology of Race." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108103.
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Thesis advisor: Zine MagubaneThesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl
In a series of case studies, I problematize the reification of race in the American Sociology of race from a postcolonial perspective. I argue prominent theories within the American sociology of race tend to essentialize race as a cause of racial inequality in the United States. These theories assume the existence of racial categories and then discuss how other entities become racialized into racialized social systems (Bonilla-Silva 1997), or racial projects (Omi & Winant 1994). These theories emphasize national structures, but occlude empire. I argue the occlusion of empire in the American sociology of race, particularly in theorization of racial categorization, is problematic. Empire is the structure that links race to class inequality, and produces race as a social category of exclusion. Therefore, a sociological theory of American racial inequality, which does not analyze imperialism as a structure that produces race, and rather focuses solely on national-structures, or a definition of capitalism severed from imperialism, cannot provide a thoroughly structural explanation for the persistence of racial inequality in the United States
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Sociology
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Pagelio, Joseph. "A study of leadership of the department of education in Papua new guinea: Perspectives from postcolonial and leadership theory." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2002. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/36657/1/36657_Digitised%20Thesis.pdf.
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The study investigated the leadership practices of selected leaders of the Department of Education in Papua New Guinea to (a) uncover subordinates' and leaders' perspectives of both positive and negative leadership practices, (b) analyse what constituted such practices, (c) discuss and interpret the extent to which these practices could be said to be 'neo-colonial' or 'transformational' and, in the light of the findings, ( d) to suggest how leadership could be improved. In doing so the study utilised the postcolonial lens and Bass's (1985) transformational leadership lens to investigate, analyse and interpret the leadership practices of the leaders.
A qualitative case study approach was used in this study. In determining the nature and impact of the leadership practices three different groups of people were interviewed; six leaders, twelve subordinates who were close to the leaders who are referred to in the dissertation as 'close subordinates', and seven subordinates who were not close to the leaders who are referred to in the dissertation as 'distant subordinates'.
The study found that the distant subordinates experienced leadership negatively. They experienced some aspects of leadership as hierarchical, protective, unfair, abusive, exploitative, destructive and suppressive, but the close subordinates experienced leadership from the same leaders as being positive. The close subordinates perceived that their leaders exhibited transformational leadership practices and influenced them to perform their tasks better by acting in ways which gained their respect, trust and confidence, by living their ideals, by inspiring them, by stimulating their intellectual capacity, by coaching and developing them, by setting high expectations, by rewarding them and by correcting them. The leaders felt that they were practising a positive type of leadership, and seemed unaware that there was discontent among the distant subordinates about some aspects of their leadership. The dissertation demonstrated that these negative practices can be interpreted as neo-colonial, and the positive practices as transformational in the sense which Bass (1985) uses the word in his leadership theory. However, the dissertation proposes modifying 'transformational' to show that while the practices may have created positive inter-personal relationships between the leaders and their close subordinates, they were not transformational in the broader sense of positively influencing changes in the structure and outcomes of the Department of Education.
These results suggest that neo-colonial leadership practices restrict the leaders from becoming transformational. In addition, these results suggest that the department's inherited system of leadership still retains many of the negative features of the colonial system. This is consistent with the theory that independent postcolonial states are colonial constructs, and many neo-colonial practices continue in them. In practice, these results indicate serious weaknesses within the inherited system of leadership. These must be exposed, deconstructed and reconstructed in order to improve leadership practices within the department. The results also suggest that within an oppressive inherited system, there are some transformational leaders who are influential enough to motivate staff to attend to the day to day requirements of their jobs. However, they are not strong enough, and are too few in number to transform the leadership of the department and to motivate officers to perform beyond expectations. What can be said is that the identified influential leadership practices of the six leaders and their range of leadership styles indicate there is some potential upon which to build the ideals of transformational leadership.
In order that the leadership practices and leadership culture of the department may be improved, the study recommends that the Top Management Team of the department takes a leading role in facilitating the planning and implementation of leadership training and coaching programmes at multiple levels of the department; individual leaders, groups, teams and department. These training and coaching programmes should be based on Bass's (1985) transformational leadership model but could incorporate other appropriate leadership theories and models. This training should be ongoing, long term, take place within the Department of Education context, be conducted simultaneously across levels, and follow the leadership development cycle from awareness, to application, to adoption and alignment. It is through strategic leadership development and coaching interventions at multiple levels that leadership of the department could be transformed.
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Diana, Habtu. "Affect in A Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid Reverses the Colonial Gaze." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-27812.
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This essay uses Sara Ahmed's theory of affect to analyze Jamaica Kincaid´s A Small Place. I argue that Jamaica Kincaid uses anger to create a position for Western reader and to evoke emotions such as shame. Theorist Sara Ahmed argues that emotions have political dimension. Thus, I will use Sara Ahmed´s theory to examine what function anger and shame have in A Small Place. In her essay, Kincaid provokes her readers by attacking them for past injustice through anger. Because of this many critics have claimed that A Small Place has an angry tone. However, Kincaid´s aim seems to be to reverse the gaze by exposing the Europeans and Americans of exploitation, slavery, imperialism and colonization and this way reverse the traditional travel gaze, which allows us to see Antigua through the perspective of the third world.
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Birzescu, Anca. "Negotiating Roma Identity in Contemporary Urban Romania: an Ethnographic Study." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1383583352.
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Desceul, Lise. "La paire fait les pair·e·s : herméneutiques lesbiennes et représentations féministes de la femme hindoue." Thesis, Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018UBFCH004.
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Cette analyse a pour but de dénoncer les mythes créateurs du féminin et du masculin hérités des politiques culturelles sexuelles érigées au creuset de la rencontre coloniale. L’étude de A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), trois romans présentant le lesbianisme comme une stratégie féministe d’émancipation, permet de mettre au jour diverses dynamiques discursives, d’exploiter le concept de représentation, et d’interroger les catégories préexistantes. Ces trois romans sont en effet écrits par des femmes participant à la culture indo-hindoue, et proposent des héroïnes à la similarité troublante : brahmines, habitant Delhi et insatisfaites de l’immobilisme liberticide de leur genre. Le préjudice hétéropatriarcal gaine les individus plaqués à l’intersection de leurs appartenances identitaires diverses et superposées : le genre, la culture, la sexualité… Le chemin de ces héroïnes suit ainsi une évolution interrogeant les inventions patriarcales de l’identité de la femme indo-hindoue. Au-delà de la dénonciation des dérives de son essentialisation, c’est sa transgression qui est éblouissante, parce qu’elle est sexuelle et lesbienne, engageant ainsi les possibilités d’une altérité, d’une alternative, d’un devenir différent. Ces textes questionnent alors la poésie et l’efficacité d’une esthétique lesbienne, la validité démiurge d’une utopie lesbienne, et le symbolisme d’un motif qui unit femmes de papier et autrices de chair au sein d’un positionnement récusant la subalternité implicite de catégories oppressives et obsolètes. En s’emparant de l’ipséité, ces narrations introduisent une poétique queer défiant déterminismes, cristallisations, normes et hiérarchies. Elles ouvrent à des possibilités radicales et multiples d’existences, de créations, signalant la matérialité de marginalités subversives qui problématisent la notion même d’individu, envisagée dans sa perspective hypermoderneThis analysis aims at denouncing the original myths of the feminine and the masculine, inherited of the sexual cultural politics uprighted in the crucible of the colonial encounter. The study of A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), three novels presenting lesbianism as a feminist strategy of emancipation, allows to excavate various discursive dynamics, to exploit the concept of representation, and to interrogate the preexisting categories. These three novels are indeed written by women belonging to the Indo-Hindu culture, and offer heroines with troubling similarities: Brahmines, Delhiites and dissatisfied with the repressions and inertia of their gender. The heteropatriarcal prejudice suffocates the individuals tackled at the intersection of their several and overlapping identity belongings: gender, culture, sexuality… These heroines’ paths hence follow an evolution interrogating the patriarchal inventions of the Indo-Hindu woman’s identity. Beyond the exposition and accusation of its essentialization’s deviations, it is its transgression which is dazzling, because it is sexual and lesbian, introducing the possibilities of an alterity, an alternative, a different becoming. These texts thus question the poetry and efficiency of a lesbian aesthetic, the demiurge validity of a lesbian utopia, and the symbolism of a pattern unifying the paper women and the women writers in a positioning rejecting the implicit subalternity of oppressive and obsolete categories. By getting a hold of ipseity, these narrations introduce a queer poetic defying determinisms, crystallizations, norms and hierarchies. They open to radical and multiple possibilities of living and creating, indicating the materiality of subversive marginalities which problematize the very notion of individual, envisioned in its hypermodern perspective
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Uhlén, Karin. "A White Orphan’s Educational Path in British India : A Postcolonial Perspective on Rudyard Kipling’s Novel Kim." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-49439.
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In this essay Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim (1901) is dealt with from a postcolonial perspective, and the aim is to show how three father figures - Colonel Creighton, Mahbub Ali and the lama - individually influence Kim’s education. Furthermore, how their point of view on education and parenting can be used to understand the larger concepts of postcolonialism and the pedagogy of Empire. This essay will argue that Kipling provides three different approaches to education that each can be considered the most suitable for a white orphan in British India during the late nineteenth century. Colonel Creighton is the personification of the imperial mindset, an authoritarian leader who strongly believes in institutions such as schools. Whereas Mahbub Ali, the wild horse from beyond the border and a servant of the Great Game, advocates freedom and a non-institutionalised form of education. Last but not least, the Buddhist lama from Tibet wishes to make Kim his chela and teach him the Wheel of Life. Reading Kipling’s novel Kim helps us to create an awareness of how the world order has changed during the decades and also gives us the opportunity to look at our present time in different lights.
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Antoniuk, Darusia Zoriana. "Postcolonial theory and the Soviet-Ukrainian context, reading Iurii Andrukhovych's 1989 collection of army tales as a post-colonial text." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape2/PQDD_0002/MQ59708.pdf.
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Hitchcock, Olivia Joanne. "Parachuting into crises: Applying postcolonial theory to analyze national, regional, and local media coverage of civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1461244945.
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Alexandersson, Mathias, and Marie-Louise Andersson. "Integration och assimilering : En undersökande studie av sfi." Thesis, Örebro University, Department of Social and Political Sciences, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-2535.
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The purpose of this essay is to examine sfi (Swedish for immigrants), which is an ingrational-political tool with objective of teaching immigrants to read and write in Swedish. With the use of critical discourse analysis we examine the discursive practices within sfi. We also examine our methodological and theoretical approaches, and our application of them. Our research questions are as follows:
• How are the discursive usage of “person centered” and “society centered” expressions being used?
• How well does our methodological and theoretical resources work?
In our theoretical viewpoint we use “post colonial theory”, which is a perspective concerned with global power relations seen from a historical perspective. Colonialism, in this view, still continues to determine the course of the world and cultural identity formation even after it has formally ended. According to our second theoretical viewpoint, “Governmentality”, the focus of analysis concerns differing forms of control. The shift from the state to the individual is of special interest.
The results of the analysis show that the integrational-political discourse order within sfi seems to be fragile. We also find that “person centered” expressions are more frequent than “society centered” ones.
The results also show that our theoretical and methodological resources are bound with certain difficulties. Firstly, critical discourse analysis has been found to be inadequate with regard to our empirical material. It was first when we applied Ulrich Becks theory regarding individualization that the discursive practice became comprehensible in a larger context. Secondly, our results showed that governmentality was problematic in the context in which it was used.
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Kellett, Brandi Bingham. "Haunting Witnesses: Diasporic Consciousness in African American and Caribbean Writing." Scholarly Repository, 2010. http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/oa_dissertations/510.
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This project examines the ways in which several texts written in the late twentieth century by African American and Caribbean writers appropriate history and witness trauma. I read the representational practices of Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Paule Marshall, and Fred D'Aguiar as they offer distinct approaches to history and the resulting effects such reconstituted, discovered, or, in some cases, imagined histories can have on the affirmation of the self as a subject. I draw my theoretical framework from the spaces of intersection between diaspora and postcolonial theories, enabling me to explore the values of the African diaspora cross-culturally as manifested in the representational practices of these writers. This study creates an opening into recent discourses of the African diaspora by comparing texts in which the effects of history rooted in diaspora are explored, both in how this history cripples with the impact of trauma and how it empowers dynamic self-actualization and the resistance of the status quo. I argue that in these novels, challenging hegemonic historical narratives and bearing witness to the past are necessary for overcoming the isolating and disempowering effects of trauma, while affirming diasporic consciousness enhances the role of communal belonging and cultural memory in the process of self-actualization.
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Dy, Catherine. "Re-Establishing Agency in the Narrative of International Norm Diffusion Theories: Bringing in the Local in the Exploration of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Philippines." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/240778.
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This research critically unpacks existing international norm diffusion and domestication theories and amends them, focusing on resistance, agency, and the pivotal role of domestic agents. It argues that domestic agency is marginalized by current theories of international norm diffusion and that current models place undue emphasis on the power of ‘critical States’, which are invariably Western. It is implied, though often explicitly stated, that international norms are created in and spread by Western States. This research argues that while this may be the case, the application of the same limited models create such a situation which hinders instead of helps the understanding of norm diffusion. Arguing that domestic agency is marginalized by current theories of international norm diffusion, this study investigated the SRHR norm in the Philippines as a case study to examine the limitations of current models and the benefits of introducing a local agency approach. This research is divided into two sections: the national and the sub-national, to provide a broad-lens perspective on the specific case of Sexual Health and Reproductive Rights (SRHR) in the Philippines using the framework of norm diffusion. Empiric research was conducted on two levels of analysis: first, a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the national-level Congressional deliberations and debates on SRHR from the period of the 8th Congress to the 15th Congress; and second, a micro-comparative analysis of three selected municipalities, namely Manila, Cebu, and Davao, involving a case-study based process-tracing methodology of the local diffusion of the SRHR norm(s).The theoretical critique and empirical case study proved that there are indeed limitations present within current diffusion conventions and furthermore, that local agency is a powerful and understudied tool in norm diffusion.Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Kling, Martin. "Min pappa är negerkung : En kvalitativ studie av etniska stereotyper i filmatiseringarna om Pippi Långstrump." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-40590.
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The purpose of this paper has been to examine various ethnic stereotypes in two Swedish film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren’s character Pippi Longstocking. I have used a semiotic content analysis and postcolonial theory to investigate: 1) how the ethnic groups are represented in the different materials, 2) if there is a hegemonic relationship between the foreign group and one’s own group, 3) whether there has been a "decolonization" during the twenty years that separate the two films. This study has shown that, in the 1949 adaptation, primarily Africans were produced in a negative light and as biologically inferior in relation to the whites. Furthermore, other ethnic groups, such as Indians, Egyptians, Brazilians, and Danes, were portrayed as scared, alien or different. However, the TV series of 1969 permeates with a greater sense of racial tolerance than its predecessor and, despite remnants of racial stereotyping, the overall tone of the later adaptation feels more progressive.