Month: October 2023

This Blog primarily discusses the continuation of the postcolonial context, exploring some characteristics of postcolonial cultural colonization, such as opacity, permeability, and introducing further discussions on textual analysis of postcolonial cultural colonization through the lens of “Imperial Rewrites: Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Postcolonial Literature.”

• In postcolonial literature, the analysis of anti-conquest narratives examines the identity politics, social and cultural perspectives of the colonized subjects at the grassroots level, as well as their resistance to the culture of the colonizers.
• Postcolonialism, distinct from post-colonialism, signifies a focus on the ongoing impacts of colonization across periods and geographical regions. This can be understood as a resistance of the local to the colonial influences.
• Postcolonial literary theory reexamines colonial and postcolonial literature, with a particular focus on the social discourse shaping and producing literature between colonizers and the colonized.
• Regarding Said’s analysis of colonial discourse. Another colonial discourse theorist, Homi Bhabha, has developed many new terms and key concepts in this field, such as hybridity, the third space, mimicry, difference, and the ambivalence of colonial identities.
• Mohammed Saleh Eldeen Madiou, in his article “The Death of Postcolonialism: A Prolegomenon,” argues that postcolonialism as an academic study and critique of colonialism is a “bleak failure.” This is because, from a temporal perspective, colonialism is in the past, but the impacts generated by colonialism still persist.
• Textual analysis and the interpretation of postcolonialism proposed by Homi Bhabha are similar in concepts. “Imperial Rewrites” uses these theoretical frameworks to understand how postcolonialism acknowledges the continuous existence of the effects of colonization on the colonized, effects that cannot be eradicated from oppressive systems.
• Authors debate the relationships in postcolonial works, studying the powerful force of words acting on the texts of postcolonial literature. They demonstrate how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric language and literary concepts. And them point out that literary theorists and historians now recognize that fusion may have been a goal pursued by one nation’s government to rule over another, whether culturally, politically, or in postcolonial literature. Authors consider cultural hybridity and fusion an essential component of all postcolonial literature.
• Two Strategies in Postcolonial Writing: “Abrogation” and “Appropriation”:
• Appropriation:
• Describing the reconstruction of the center language, reshaping the language to give it new usage. It is a process of conveying one’s spirit using a non-native language (a non-indigenous language). All postcolonial literature is considered cross-cultural because it attempts to bridge gaps through the processes of abrogation and appropriation. Appropriation is seen as the most influential strategy in postcolonial writing.
• Repositioning of Texts (Liberation of Postcolonial Writing):
• The liberation of postcolonial writing involves the repositioning of texts. Authors argue that how culture shapes and determines the reader’s understanding of the text.
• Crossroads of Postcolonial Discourse:
• Local theory and postcolonial interpretations (“appropriation” encounters difficulties):
• Emphasizing the examination of the “appropriation” issue. All postcolonial nations still possess widely disseminated indigenous cultures locally. However, due to the rapidly changing times of language and the tremendous influence of today’s media on ordinary language and cultural practices, the issue of appropriation encounters difficulties.
• The Future of Postcolonial Literature:
• The translation of literary texts from colonial countries into world languages such as English is a topic of frequent debate. The meaning and value of literature are complex issues. Authors not only contemplate what should enter the canon but also consider which texts should be classified as literature. Many texts have changed with the addition of authors. Simultaneously, from a linguistic perspective, traditional forms of expression and English forms inherited through colonization make one reflect on what should be classified as literature.

Conclusion:

It can be seen that postcolonial literature is a continuation of postcolonial characteristics. Combining Homi Bhabha’s features of postcolonialism, including hybridity, enunciation, the third space, mimicry, cultural difference, etc., postcolonial literature can be viewed as a concrete analysis of specific postcolonial methods applied to texts. This article believes that many techniques of postcolonial literature can also be used to describe the representation in postcolonial films, providing arguments to strengthen the analysis of the Aladdin film.

Post-Structuralism or Deconstructionism

• The most evident difference between post-structuralists and their structuralist predecessors is their abandonment of the simplistic methodological approach of structuralism. They challenge structuralism’s claim of being a meta-language capable of interpreting all texts and believe that a neutral, all-knowing perspective outside a text is impossible. Post-structuralists advocate for the infinite play of signifiers and believe that reading methods play a crucial role in the infinite play of signifiers.

Derrida and Deconstructionism

• Derrida proposed a method he called deconstruction to read Western philosophy. In general, deconstructive reading presents that a text should not be interpreted as the communication of a single author conveying an obvious message but should be read as a manifestation of conflicts within different cultures or worldviews.

• A deconstructed text will exhibit many simultaneously coexisting viewpoints, often conflicting with each other.

There is a similarity in the context descriptions of Derrida’s deconstructionism and Homi Bhabha’s postcolonialism. Both criticize structuralism for overly simplifying generalizations, akin to the stereotyping of racial essentialism and fixity in postcolonialism, which involves describing people and things in language and fixing them in an unchanging framework.

In the context of postcolonialism, whether it is people or cultures, they are changing, although it is non-continuous. People and cultures are continually evolving due to the impact of things and people from more cultural backgrounds.

Derrida’s Differance

• Definition of Differance: Differance is a free play or display of differences that continually generates, it is the source of differences, it is an originary differance, but this source is imperfect and complex. (Similar to a book having an original version before multiple translations, a term evolving with new meanings during its development)
• Derrida believes that differance is a cryptic unconscious domain; it is not rationalistic, phenomenological, with clear consciousness, but an unconscious or subconscious free play activity, like Nietzsche’s will to power, Freud’s subconscious, it is an unconscious or subconscious free play activity. (This is similar to how a narrator’s interpretation or a reader’s understanding can spread or be understood in the “originary” or “translated” form in the unconscious domain.)
• Expansion of the Noun ‘Differance’: It has two meanings, 1. Temporal delay, 2. Difference.
• Characteristics of Differance: In the differentiating activity of differance, one of the binary oppositions will become the differance of the other; it is both the differance of the other and the result of difference. It is, on one hand, a free play activity of differences produced in temporal delay and, on the other hand, the result of differences.
• Common Relationship Between Differance and Enunciation: Differance, due to the generation of ever-changing signifying relations or, in other words, the movement that produces signifying relations, is more likely to play a role in the creative process of the text due to the ambiguity and ambiguity of written symbols.

Summary:

Differance is not a word or symbol referring to a meaning and truth present in an existing presence because it belongs to the cryptic realm. Language, in the playful activity of differance, generates and creates itself. It is no longer dominated by logocentrism, that is, it is no longer limited and dominated by normative human restrictions, allowing people to lose the domination of flesh-and-blood emotions and freedom; it is the opposite of essentialism. Homi Bhabha emphasizes the postcolonial features and characteristics, and these discourses are similar to Derrida’s deconstruction of differance. The term ‘differance’ represents the development of a primordial content in the unconscious and subconscious activities, altering its original meaning. The former is a purposeful, politically charged enunciation that, in the incomplete understanding of cultural backgrounds, may overtly or covertly mix one’s understanding in interpreting content. The latter is the enunciation of an “originary” in the unconscious domain, but in the process of enunciation, the content has already changed. Both involve the divergence of the originary, but one might be conscious, and the other is unconscious.

Homibhabha’s Postcolonialism Theory ‘The Location of Culture’、

• Hybridity：Emergence of New Cultural Forms in Multiculturalism
• Contradictory State: Contradictory State in Hybridity

• The contradictory state makes the hybridity of intrinsic cultural identity and colonizer’s cultural identity possible.

• Colonial Signifiers (Colonial Symbols), contradictory because the image is not ‘original’ due to the repetitive actions constructing the symbol; nor can it be congruent because it defines its differences.

• Development of Colonial Symbols

• Colonial differences, traumatic scenes of culture or race, make the eye of power return to ancient images or identities to regain their meaning.

• The presence of colonialism remains contradictory, creating a split between its original and authoritative appearance and the expression of repetition and difference. （Characteristics of the Third Space）

Hybridity, Iteration, and Translation:

• Hybridity shows how culture is manifested through the processes of iteration and translation, where the meaning of culture is handed over to the other through these processes.

Scope of Hybridity:

• Hybridity is a dual, concealing imagination, simultaneously existing in at least two places. Hybridity is no longer only related to immigrant populations and border towns but is also used in the flow and interaction of culture.

Cultural Differences, Interpretation, and Stereotypes

Cultural Differences

• Definition of Cultural Differences (not accurate enough): Viewing culture as the meeting place of two or more cultures, where most issues arise, is an inferential construction, not, and is a process of constructing “knowledgeable” inference.
• Interestingly, cultural differences are discovered and recognized through expression. Cultural differences are an identity process. The possibility of this difference and expression can reflect/liberate cultural symbols from the confinement of racial typology because obstruct the circulation and expression of “racial” signifiers.

• Signifier: A sign with a specific meaning that can evoke associations with specific objects or concepts.
• Stereotype: An essential aspect of colonial and postcolonial discourse is its reliance on the concept of “fixity” in constructing the Other.
• Fixity implies repetition, rigidity, and an unchanging order, stereotypes rely on this fixed concept, creating an “identity.”

Enunciation:

• Definition of Enunciation: A cultural expression that occurs in the third space, an act of expression.
• Characteristics of Enunciation: Since culture is never @pre-given, it must be spoken out. Moreover, this also refers to the transmission of culture mentioned in post-structuralism, which is dynamic and even changes around the viewer’s perspective. Thus, it can be understood that this subtly influences the audience, whether it is the ‘original’ story or the retranslation of the interpreter.
• Role of Enunciation: Culture is not fixed, and even the same symbols can be appropriated, translated, historicized, and reread.
• Examples of Enunciation: The Aladdin myth has been translated into multiple versions, remade, and retold. The narrative, tone of expression, and multiple cross-language translations show the varied results of cultural transmission (whether subtle or significantly changed).
• Two Dimensions of Colonial Discourse Evident in Enunciation: The dimension featuring invention and mastery, and the dimension featuring replacement and fantasy. This “identity” created is an author-driven narrative.

The Third Space

• Definition of the Third Space: The third space is a fuzzy area that develops when two or more people, two or more cultures interact.
• Homogenization, Unifying Forces, and Maintaining Vitality of the Third Space: The third space challenges our historical sense of cultural identity, assuming it is homogenous, a unifying force, authenticated from a primitive past, and maintained in the national traditions of the people.
• Characteristics of the Third Space: This contradictory discourse area, as a place of interpretative discourse conditions, “replaces homogenous, sequentially written Western narratives” by “disrupting temporal interpretations.” (This point is not yet well understood. It means the third space is a non-cohesive, non-temporal space.)
• Association Between the Third Space and Enunciation: “The system of cultural narrative is constructed in the antagonistic and contradictory interpretative space.” Cultural differences that occur in the expression of film narratives also manifest in the third space, where differences between viewers and “interpreters” become apparent.

This blog, analysis terms from Homi Bhabha’s “The Location of Culture,” elucidates that the content of postcolonialism features hybridity, a state of multicultural amalgamation arising from the hybridity of inherent identity and colonizer’s cultural identity. Hybridity encompasses the processes of iteration and translation, elucidating how cultural meaning is substituted and conveyed. Moreover, postcolonial discourse includes cultural differences, interpretation, and stereotypes, influencing the constitution of postcolonialism. Cultural differences occur within the third space, a blurred area emerging when two or more cultures interact, and through enunciation (translation, appropriation, historicization), cultural differences are discovered and recognized through expression. The contextualization of postcolonialism, especially in describing how hybridity is presented, will contribute to the analysis of the 1992 and 2019 versions of Aladdin, interpreted and presented in the third space.