Philosophy of Humanities Block II Lecture
The Postcolonial Turn
Theory of PostColonial
Definition: Europe and the world, basically the West and the Rest (Beauty and the East, The
West and the Rest). The name of this discipline is called the Geopolitics of European Studies.
Canonization
● Official selection of texts authorised by the church (religious authorities).
● Prescribe the members of the community what they cannot read and what they can read.
● Become a discussion of what we can teach in today's universities.
Decolonise Our minds
● Desacralise European thinkers, stopping them from being treated as unquestionable.
● Malik “in an age of globalisation and of shifting power balance from west to east”
Apartheid, Balibar spoke on this subject ( founder of cultural studies in the uk). How to understand
Hyphenated identities?(Assman) - Shared European Memory.
Balkanising the national view - To think communities as transnational that function differently.
Stuart Hall referred this to Diasporic identities.
Foucault - Episteme, this definition to him means a scientific theory but a separation where true and false
can be presented.
Frantz Fanon - About knowledge (this means only understanding the value of knowledge in what
context). Two phases in the struggle to understand colonial and postcolonial identity. He wrote two
famous books. What do you do when you are colonised? - 1) Told they are an inferior race, Hall states a
second stage to understand the true nature of colonial subjugation : in the second stage - Things are much
more complicated for there is no pre-existing, original identity. Hall: Cultural identities are the unstable
points of identification or suture, which are made within the discourses of history and culture”.
The very heart of Poststructuralism
● Paradox: How can one practice a politics of identity when these identities are unstable at
the core?
● Representatiotn is based on relations of difference.
● Postmodernism: Introduced radical 20th century theory, Lingusitc theory can be
considered this - need to understand the nation of the linguistic sign and the concept it
represents - hence it is a relation of difference.
The Postcolonial Turn
Theory of PostColonial
Definition: Europe and the world, basically the West and the Rest (Beauty and the East, The
West and the Rest). The name of this discipline is called the Geopolitics of European Studies.
Canonization
● Official selection of texts authorised by the church (religious authorities).
● Prescribe the members of the community what they cannot read and what they can read.
● Become a discussion of what we can teach in today's universities.
Decolonise Our minds
● Desacralise European thinkers, stopping them from being treated as unquestionable.
● Malik “in an age of globalisation and of shifting power balance from west to east”
Apartheid, Balibar spoke on this subject ( founder of cultural studies in the uk). How to understand
Hyphenated identities?(Assman) - Shared European Memory.
Balkanising the national view - To think communities as transnational that function differently.
Stuart Hall referred this to Diasporic identities.
Foucault - Episteme, this definition to him means a scientific theory but a separation where true and false
can be presented.
Frantz Fanon - About knowledge (this means only understanding the value of knowledge in what
context). Two phases in the struggle to understand colonial and postcolonial identity. He wrote two
famous books. What do you do when you are colonised? - 1) Told they are an inferior race, Hall states a
second stage to understand the true nature of colonial subjugation : in the second stage - Things are much
more complicated for there is no pre-existing, original identity. Hall: Cultural identities are the unstable
points of identification or suture, which are made within the discourses of history and culture”.
The very heart of Poststructuralism
● Paradox: How can one practice a politics of identity when these identities are unstable at
the core?
● Representatiotn is based on relations of difference.
● Postmodernism: Introduced radical 20th century theory, Lingusitc theory can be
considered this - need to understand the nation of the linguistic sign and the concept it
represents - hence it is a relation of difference.
