Postcolonial research agenda

These approaches rely on the idea of an inequality between :

• The coloniser who defines itself as well as the colonized and thus characterizes how they relate.
• The colonized who is silenced and internalizes the discourse.

In « Edward Said and Contrapuntal reading », Geetah Chowdhry constrasts Edward Said’s work with Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1996).

Huntington characterized the world into 9 civilisations.Civilizations have essential characteristics (traits of Mexican as lack of ambition acceptance of poverty as a religious virtue).

For Edward Said :

• Racial identities are historically and socially produced through discourses.?
• Racial identities are interactive (remember how the Europeans have produced both the Orient and the Occident).?
• Racial identities are tied to power.

? For Samuel Huntington :

• Racial identities are essential ?
• The interactions between civilisations (which seem to be only conflictual) are superficial (in so that they do not change the nature of these civilisations).?

Postcolonial approaches can start from the coloniser’s point of view or by the the colonized’s.

Said adopts the coloniser’s point of view with the orientalist discourse

2 things about this discourse :

• Its genealogy (its historical and political context)
• Its internal consistency which explains its historical resilience.

=> The structure of essentialisation.

We can also start from the colonized’s point of view : by a pre-colonial history for example or bay looking at their experience of colonianism. ?

Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism describes the attempt to consider the colonised’s point of view through a metaphor : the counterpoint. (relationship between several musical lines that are harmonically interdependent). Must take account of both sides and processes, imperialism and resistance to it.