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Write 6 pages with APA style on Writing in the time of post-colonialism. Post-colonialism aims to unveil the economic and cultural effects of the imperialistic forces that sought to subjugate nations
Write 6 pages with APA style on Writing in the time of post-colonialism. Post-colonialism aims to unveil the economic and cultural effects of the imperialistic forces that sought to subjugate nations across the world. The actual effects of colonialism were not limited to the economic aspects of things and post-colonialist theories seek to bring in the dichotomies that came to exist in the minds of the colonised. Theorists like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha have tried to explain the effects of colonialism. Amidst a number of voices that speak of the United States of America as a post-colonial state, Alice Walker is a prominent one. Her novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, talks of the problems that the protagonist of the novel, Tashi faces as a result of the multiple identities that she finds in herself. Torn apart by the tensions that exist between these identities, Tashi is driven to a state of madness.
Texts that talk of a colonial past often speak of confusion regarding the identity of the self. Walker’s novel reveals this confusion in the mind of the protagonist, Tashi, who is unable to decide upon her identity which is both Western and African. Walker seems to suggest that both these identities co-exist in the nation of the United States of America where various cultures and nationalities had come to mix. The melting-pot culture of America is referred to here and the choice that Tashi has to make is one that is relevant for many members of the American nation (Walker). Calls for the resurrection of pre-colonial identities only strengthen this dichotomy that exists in the minds of the erstwhile native. Proponents of the Negritude Movement such as Aime Cesaire talk of such a return to a pre-colonial identity where, in the African context, black would emerge as the new definition for beautiful.