"Peau noire, masques blancs" (Black Skin, White Masks) ―Frantz Fanon
“You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit”―Edward W. Said
“Postcards and postcolonialism are two things I advocate for people who can't afford to go on vacation.”―Bauvard
“And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day.”―Zadie Smith
Our Plights and Stories repeating over and over again
AS STUDENTS of politics, I am certain that we will be at a common ground when the topic of colonization is laid at the table. This is not just because we study these things - we study the plights of the many people around the world who were at the wrong side of the power string inasmuch as we study the powerful ones - but because we have also experienced this, in a collective, for far too long, as peoples of the same country. Why did I not use past tense? Well, that is simple. Because I believe, aside from the formal and informal institutions that had sprung forth from our colonial history, we are still under direct (in an unseen way) domination, colonization in so many ways than one.My HS best friend and teacher is a historical deconstructionist. Our history classes was never the same again when we have him as our teacher. He used to pick into our minds all the time, until it hurts and confuses so much that we are compelled by our curious nature to check reality ourselves.
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| First mass at Limasawa |
When we talked about world history (he's our teacher for RP and World History, lucky us), that was when things become more hateful. We learned of ways by which colonizers extinguished flames of civilizations that they so label as "barbaric". World powers imposed their standards on the innocent living of many peoples around the world. I could attempt to recount the moments in history as well as the winners and losers of each event (I so love history. Very much. So much. Inasmuch as I love Chemistry, Physics, Trigo, Geom etc.) but I know that it will be self-defeating. For one, history is written by victors. Colonizers (mostly American and European) were the first ones who "compiled" history through their publications! Do we expect them to write, "we wiped the African asses clean because they are so damn dark and they are ugly"? Of course not. They will call it "The White Man's Burden", "Benevolent Assimilation" and many more equally lie-packed yet sweet sounding policy and slogan names.
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| Left-right: "Quetzalcoatl as depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis" and "Quetzalcoatl in feathered serpent form as depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis" |
Worst part, when the conquistadores landed on their shores, they were mistaken for Quetzalcoatl (I love this feathered deity, and I delight on the tongue-twister name) having the same physical attributes intertwined with the Mesoamerican civilizations' long-standing prophecy of his return (just like Jesus Christ as the Messiah or Gen. McArthur). And so, they laid down their defenses, gave the "newbies" their everything and at the end, their civilizations died along with the trampled dirt.
Sad story? Indeed so! But what's sadder is the fact that colonizer's evil domination schemes did not end with our history books. They have survived and was revived with a vengeance. They call it colonial mentality but we know it's Post-Colonialism. And there is more to it than just having fair skin.
New brand of colonization? Post-Colonial Theory up-close
The age of hardcore colonization might be over, but the lasting effects as well as the imposed continuation of this dark history is far from over. According to Costa (Post Colonial Theory, 2010), in her elaborate discussion of the Post-Colonial theory, there are actually 2 types of colonization. The Militaristic and the Civilizational sides.The first one pertains to "the physical conquest and occupation of territories" while the other refers to "the conquest and occupation of minds, selves and cultures". It is the second side of colonialism which allows us to look at the phenomenon of post-colonialism because this type of colonialism does not end with the occupation. But rather, everything just starts from there.
But what is the difference between a Colonial Critique and the Post-Colonial Criticism? The first deals with imperialistic views while the second goes deeper (way deeper) by analyzing the "effects of imperialistic views in postcolonial societies". The latter also refers to "a set of theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture, literature, politics, history, of former colonies". So what may be a facet of postcolonial theory? One could be literature. Here, it "deals with the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries, or literature written in colonizing countries which deals with colonization or colonized peoples."
What is important to note in PC (Post-Colonial) is that is does not embrace any single school of thought. So long as the a theory can bring out the reality from a post-colonial scenario, then it is a go.
So what kind of questions does Post-Colonialism raise? According to Costa (2010) there are lots. But here are some:
Questions the effect of empire
Raises issues such as racism and exploitation
Assesses the position of the colonial or post-colonial subject
Offers a counter-narrative to the long tradition of European imperial narratives
Social Darwinism: Eurocentrism, Universalism, given that Colonialism is nature
White Man’s Burden (yay I'm correct!): What was thought to be an obligation to “civilize” non-European people
According to Arif Dirlik, Post Colonial theorizing was born “when third world intellectuals have arrived in the first world academe”. That's the time when we started going against the conventional standards set by the western scholars of how we should view the world, moreover, the colonization period and advent.
The PC Theorists
1. Edward Said: "Orientalism" (1978) which attempted to explain how European/Western colonizers looked upon the ‘’Orient” which is a "mystical plane that was stereotyped due to lack of knowledge and imagination"
2. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: "Essentialism” and “Strategic Essentialism (Can the Subaltern Speak”, 1988); “My position is generally a reactive one. I am viewed by Marxists as too codic, by feminists as too male identified, by indigenous theorists as too committed to Western Theory. I am uneasily pleased about this"
3. Homi K.Bhabha: "Hybridity" - post colonial world should valorize spaces of mixing; spaces where truth and authenticity move aside for ambiguity
4. Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), anti-colonial liberation movement
So what's the aftermath of colonization? Costa (2010) believes that it could be summarized to these: Hybridization, Double Consciousness, Unhomeliness and Exile (the feeling of being away from home even if you're living in it).
From the colonized, to the world
To be at the losing end of the equation is the most painful part. The feeling of hopelessness that I could never possess the power to rewrite history, erasing that painful memories of being passed from colonizer to the other, is unparalleled. If these theorists are precise in pointing out the fact that once a colony, always a colony, then how do we change the course of history for the sake of our own liberation.It is true that there are more countries around the world who received much hateful accomodations from the colonizers (especially the Afrikaans). Indeed, how do we truly liberate ourselves if our colonizers where able to create that cyclical mode of recreating colonization history by making us dependents (via economy or politics etc). Is there still hope for us knowing that even our fellow Filipinos now clamor imported products over locally made ones? Even if most of us worship western standards of beauty to the point of contempt to our own?
I have always believed that the answer lies on our ability to condition our own perspectives. If we could collectively minimize or eradicate that notion that the West is heaven or the West is beautiful, then we have a shot into becoming our own person, free and liberated from the shackles of colonization, then, now and forevermore.✻
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