Colonialism,Imperialism,Postcolonialiism, Globalization, Environmental studies:

 #Thinking Activity

   Then & Now

Hello Readers! 

        Welcome to my blog. Here is my blog based on the the study of  Colonialism/ Postcolonialism by Ania Loomba. So I would like mention some key points or brief summary of this book.

  Colonialism/Postcolonialism is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to the historical, theoretical and political dimensions of colonial and postcolonial studies. 

  This book covered various topics include globalization, new grassroots movements, the environmental crisis, and the relationship between Marxism and postcolonial studies. Loomba also discusses how ongoing struggles such as those of indigenous people, and the enclosure of the Commons in different parts of the world shed light on the long histories of colonialism. 

# Ania Loomba#

  Ania Loomba is Catherine Bryson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. 

# Introduction :

      In the very introductory part of the book she refers about how she wrote this book as a teacher in India who felt that the issues that were being raised by the field merited both serious study and a refiguring. 

       To offer an alternative map of postcolonial studies, this book shows anti-colonial intellectual and activists as they drew upon, but also expanded and critiqued, Marxist and other radical Western philosophies and challenged dominant ideas of humanity, history and identity. It shows how their insights intersected with particular developments in philosophy, linguistics, sociology, history, feminism, race studies and cultural studies, and argues that these intersections generated new types of inquiries into the colonial past, a new focus on anti-colonial resistance, and a new analysis of the dynamics of recently decolonized  states. 

  The book is divided into three main chapters, and a new conclusion. The first chapter discusses the different meanings of terms such as colonialism, imperialism and postcolonialism, and the controversies surrounding them. The second chapter considers the complexities of colonial and postcolonial subjects and identities. How does the colonial encounter restructure ideologies of racial, cultural, class and sexual difference? In the third chapter, processes of decolonization, resistance, and the problems of recovering the viewpoint of colonised subjects from a 'postcolonial' perspective are examined. 

# SITUATING COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES :

DEFINING THE TERMS: COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM, NEO-COLONIALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM

   Colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably. The word colonialism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from the Roman 'colonia' which meant 'farm' or 'settlement', and referred to Romans who settled in other lands but still retained their citizenship. 

    Evacuates the word 'colonialism' of any implication of an encounter between peoples, or of conquest and domination. There is no hint that 'new locality' may not be so 'new' and that the process of 'forming a community' might be somewhat unfair. In The Tempest, for example, Shakespeare's single major addition to the story he found in certain pamphlets about a shipwreck in the Bermudas was to make the island inhabited before Prospero's arrival. That single addition tuned the romance into an allegory of the colonial encounter. 

   So colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people's land and goods. But colonialism in this sense did not begin with the expansion of various European powers into Asia, Africa or the Americas from the sixteenth century onwards; it has been a recurrent and widespread feature of human history. The flow of profits and people involvedsettlement and plantation as in the Americas, 'travel as in India, and enormous global shifts of populations. Both the colonised and the colonisers moved: the former not only as slaves but also as indentured labourers, domestic servants, travellers and traders, and the colonial masters as administrators, soldiers, merchants, settlers, travellers, writers, teachers and scientists. 

     Settler colonialism varied even more enormously- it could entail colonisers moving in large numbers, subjugating - the native populations and mixing with them, creating a complex racial hierarchy, as the Spanish and the Portuguese did in Latin America, the Philippines and Goa. In other cases, the settlers did not officially mix with the native populations, but settler colonialism could entail the decimation. 

   In the early twentieth century, V. I. Lenin and Karl Kautsky gave a new meaning to the word 'imperialism' by linking it to a particular stage of the development of capitalism. The colonies lacked capital but were abundant in labour and human resources. Therefore it needed to move out and subordinate non-industrialised countries to sustain its own growth. It is this Leninist definition that allows some people to argue that capitalism is the distinguishing feature between colonialism and imperialism. 

     The different understandings of colonialism and imperialism complicate the meanings of the term 'postcolonial', a term that is the subject of an ongoing debate. These differences are highlighted by a production of Shakespeare's Othello by the South African actress Janet suzman.