Socrates Journal Vol. 6 No. 1 (2018) INVESTIGATING POSTCOLONIALITY AND POSTCOLONIALISM AS THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK

In this age of so many ‘posts’, be it postmodernism, post structuralism or any other, postcolonialism is one that has been greatly explored, used and even misused. I say ‘misused’ because it is fodder for thought, whether a plethora of political movements and cultural/literary productions located outside the West, however diverse, can all be assembled under the broad umbrella of postcolonialism? Do they all necessarily stem from their experience of being colonized by the West? Works that are broadly classified under the broad banner of ‘postcolonialism’ are actually, vastly varied in terms of content, style or point of view. The one common thread which therefore, binds them together is the experience of pain, marginalization, insult, exclusion and the resulting rebellion and resistance, all of which is the suffering progeny of the tyrant stepmother, colonialism.