The Historical Development of Postcolonial Theory: Criticism on the Colonialist Practice

1. 1-Frantz Fanon and the "Inferiority Complex"

   Frantz Fanon is the first figure who initiated the ground thought for postcolonial theory. He was born in the French colony of Martinique and as a black intellectual, he was known for his analysis of the relationship between colonialism and racism. His medical and psychological practice enabled him to focus on harmful psychological effects of colonial dominance and racist policies conducted under colonial rule. However, Fanon was not only concerned with the psychology of the colonized people but also with their colonial masters. As a psychiatrist, Fanon defines colonialism as a source of violence and focuses on its psychological effects on human conscious and disempowerment on the natives.

   Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” (originally published in 1961), is a foundational text in post-colonial literature. In this book, Fanon considers violence, which, in his thought and many of the post-colonial writers, has ruled over the ordering of the colonial world, as a destruction form of native social forms without reserving the systems of reference of the economy, the customs of dress and external life. To Fanon, this violence affirmed the supremacy of white values and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life.

   In his Black Skin, White Masks (originally published in 1952), another significant work on post-colonial literature which Fanon defines as a psychoanalytical study, he notes that:

“There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men. There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect.”

Fanon holds the Black man has internalized the inferiority (colonization of the mind) set by the colonial masters and has sought to overcome this inferiority by imitating the whites in every aspect. In other words, the native feels that wearing the white mask (culture) is the only way of dealing with this psychological inadequacy.

   Fanon’s most controversial contribution to postcolonial theory was his argument concerning self-assertion as a counter strategy to the self-submission that the hegemonic discourse constructed. In order to assert oneself, he offered “cultural nationalism”, which is respecting native culture and literature as a remedy to the colonized existence.

2. Aimé Césaire and the "Thingification of the Colonized Subjects"

   Aimé Césaire was also an influential figure in shaping the ideas of postcolonial theory. In Discourse on Colonialism (1955), he argues that colonization dicivilizes and degrades the colonizers. Cesaire quotes a number of colonial officers recounting some of their actions against colonized peoples. Colonel de Montagnac, one of the conquerors of Algeria writes: "In order to banish the thoughts that sometimes besiege me, I have some heads cut off, not the heads of artichokes but the heads of men" (p. 40). Yet another colonialist, Saint-Arnaud, gallantly declares: "We lay waste, we burn, we plunder, we destroy the houses and the trees" (ibid).

   Influenced highly by the ideas of Karl Marx, Césaire supposes that the western civilization created two problems:

“the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of reason or before the bar of conscience; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive” (Discourse on Colonialism, 1955, p. 31).

Césaire argues that the westerner’s big excuse for colonization as a civilizing mission is a lie. It is:

 “neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law” (ibid)

   The western colonization is designed for exploration, expansionism, exploitation, domination of the lands and its people. Thus, colonialism under the shadow of civilizing mission is hypocrite in nature and aims at delusion and deception to the natives and to the European people. It also aimed as Césaire notes to “Thingification” of the colonized subjects, that they are not human beings worthy of human rights or human respect, but things merely to be used, driven around, beaten and, when the need arises, killed in the name of a law and order rooted in injustice and barbarism.

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3. Albert Memmi and the notion of "twofold rejection"

The best-known work of Albert Memmi, another influential writer of post-colonial critique, is The Colonizer and the Colonized which was originally published in 1957 when the independence movements in the colonies were active including his own country, Tunusia. In this thought-provoking book, Memmi analyzes the psychological effects of colonialism like Fanon and his analysis includes both the colonized subjects and colonizers themselves. As Sartre points out in the preface of this book, Memmi, a Tunisian, belongs to one of those native but non-Muslim groups that are “more or less privileged in comparison with the colonized masses, but… rejected … by the colonizing group.” Sartre, therefore, tries to explore “who Memmi really is?” and maintains that he would say “neither the colonizer nor the colonized” or “both”iii (2003, pp. 17-18). This spiritual “twofold rejection” and “twofold liability” nourished Memmi’s writings. Memmi notes that although it is impossible for the colonizer to be aware of the illegitimacy of his status, the simple truth is that they are not concerned about the life of the colonized subjects more than they are worried about the weather of the colony where they will reside. By asking for how long the colonizer fail to see “the misery of the colonized and the relation of that misery to his own comfort”, Memmi maintains that the colonizer actually realizes that this was an easy profit and it was so great only because it is wrested from others. He, therefore, discovers the existence of the colonizer and his own privilege at the same time: If his living standars are high, it is because those of the colonized are low; if he can benefit from plentiful and undemanding labor and servants, it is because the colonized can be exploited at will and are not protected by the laws of the colony; if he can easily obtain administrative positions, it is because they are reserved for him and the colonized are excluded from them; the more freely he breathes, the more the colonized are choked… If he preferred to be blind and deaf to the operation of the whole machinery, it would suffice for him to reap its benefits; he is then the beneficiary of the entire enterprise (pp. 51-52).

   Albert Memmi maintains that the colonizers do not worry about their dehumanizing colonization as much as maintaining their dominance and keeping their comfort of the colony where they reside. 

Read this review of his book "The Colonizer and the Colonized"

http://voicesfromtheedge.wikispaces.com/Albert+Memmi+-+book+review