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Postcolonialism and Orientalism

👥 Sociology By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated
Quick answer: Orientalism is the Western system of knowledge that represented the 'Orient' as an irrational, static Other and helped justify domination; postcolonialism analyses the cultural and epistemic legacies of colonialism.
Contents
  1. 1. Said's Orientalism
  2. 2. Fanon
  3. 3. Spivak and Bhabha
  4. 4. Applications
  5. 5. Criticisms
  6. 6. References

Said's Orientalism

In Orientalism (1978) Edward Said argued that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and French scholarship, literature and travel writing depicted the East as sensual, irrational and unchanging, casting the West as rational and progressive. Drawing on Foucault's discourse and Gramsci's hegemony, he showed knowledge intertwined with imperial power.

Fanon

Frantz Fanon analysed how the colonised internalise the coloniser's gaze in Black Skin, White Masks and examined decolonisation and national elites in The Wretched of the Earth.

Spivak and Bhabha

  • Spivak, in "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988), argued that the most marginalised, especially women, are silenced when Western intellectuals and native elites speak for them.
  • Bhabha, in The Location of Culture (1994), argued that colonial mimicry is "almost the same, but not quite", unsettling authority, and that hybridity and a "third space" open room for resistance.

Applications

Rereading literature such as Jane Eyre and Heart of Darkness, analysing Asian stereotypes in film and advertising, and studying colonial modernity, linked to debates on globalisation and cultural diffusion.

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Criticisms

Critics say Said treated Oriental studies as too monolithic, essentialised "the West" in turn, and that the theory's difficult language is far from the subaltern it discusses.

References

  1. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
  2. Fanon, F. (1961/2004). The Wretched of the Earth (R. Philcox, Trans.). Grove Press.
  3. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271-313). University of Illinois Press.
  4. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.

Reports and materials that use this theory (Korean)

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Find more reports · Search '탈식민주의와 오리엔탈리즘' on CampusDown →
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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.