Ania Loomba
Ania Loomba is an Indian literary scholar. She is the author of Colonialism/Postcolonialism and works as a literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
About book:-
Colonialism/Postcolonialism is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to the historical, theoretical and political dimensions of colonial and postcolonial studies.
This new edition includes a new introduction and conclusion as well as extensive updates throughout. Topics covered include globalization, new grassroots movements (including Occupy Wall Street), the environmental crisis, and the relationship between Marxism and postcolonial studies. Loomba also discusses how ongoing struggles such as those of indigenous peoples, and the enclosure of the commons in different parts of the world shed light on the long histories of colonialism. This edition also has extensive discussions of temporality, and the relationship between premodern, colonial and contemporary forms of racism.
Article 1 summary
Since the event of 11 September 2001, the attack on WTC TOWERS and US invasion of Afghanistan and Irag. At the same time these violent event are also part of the phenomenon. We think of as globalization. Globalization, they argue cannot be analysed using concepts like margins and centers so central to postcolonial studies. Hardt and Negri do not identify the United States ad this new power, although they do argu that 'Empire is born through the global expansion of the internal US constitutional project', a project which to include and incorporate minorities into the mainstream rather than simply expel or exclude them.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire :
"argues that the contemporary global order has produced a new form of sovereignty which should be called 'Empire' but which is best understood in 'contrast' to European empires."
This best defines the new Empire in contrast to European imperialism:
"In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers."
Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman believe that characterizing US political and cultural power as a global dominant detracts From a more thorough examination of sites and modalities of power in the global era. The colonized of today are given little place in the book's sprawling thesis about multitudes, biolpolitical control, and the Creation of alternative values. Globalization neo-liberal advocates who argue that the global mobility of capital, industries, workers, goods and consumers dissolves earlier hierarchies and inequities, democratises nations and the relations between nations and creatures new opportunities which percolate down in some from or another to every section of society.
There is no doubt that globalization has made information and technology more widely available, and has brought economic prosperity to certain new sections of the world. Globalization is just another name for submissions and domination', Nicanord apaza, 46, an unemployed miner.North Korea and India 's nuclear programmes are developed in defiance of the US, anf challenge the right of few powerful nations to dictate to the rest of the world, but nuclear proliferation can hardly be seen as progressive in any way.
The resistance to globalization, moreover, often takes very local shape and involves struggles against national authorities, as in the case of Narmada Bachao Andolan in India, which has been protesting the Narmada Valley Development project to build scores of large dams across central India. New imperialism directly implicates education institutions. Nail Ferguson suggests that the US must learn from Britain and send its best and brightest students ftom its leading universities on the imperial mission. Western civilization is the primary source of the world's ills even though it gave us the ideals of democracy, human rights, individual liberty and mutual tolerance.
The core premise of postcolonial theory is that it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power.
Summary of Article 2 The Future of Postcolonial Studies.
The second edition of this book came out a decade ago, some of the best known practitioners of postcolonial studies, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, claim they 'no longer have a postcolonial perspective. Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier (1997) point out , is evident in American environmentalism and its obsession with the wilderness. Nixon suggests such 'spatial amnesia' is one reason why postcolonial criticism has been suspicious of earth-first 'green criticism ' and therefore has not engaged with questions relating to the environment. Of late postcolonialists must take a new direction towards the environment, the history and present of indigenous peoples and societies. Premodern histories and cultures ongoing colonization of territories , labour and peoples by global capitalism.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak said that postcolonial studies is gone and dead :
" I know longer have a postcolonial perspective. I think postcolonial is the day before yesterday."
Vandna Shiva , environmental activist observed in staying Alive : Women ecology and survival in India there is deep connection between colonialism and the deconstruction of environmental diversity. The growth of capitalism, and now of trans-national corporations, exacerbated the dynamic begun under colonialism which has destroyed sustainable local cultures.
Example : -
Sherni
This movie discusses how one tiger is stuck between that place where industrial development was grown up. The story goes like this tiger became the talk of town and politicians use this for upcoming elections. One forest officer called Vidhya tries to save a tiger and send them to a zoo and one professor helped her and at the climax of the movie we found that at the middle there is a mill. Tiger is not able to across it and that’s why she stuck.
Second example is from movie Chakravyuh by Prakash Jha
Chakravyuh (transl. Wheel formation more idiomatically puzzle) is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language political action thriller film directed by Prakash Jha starring Arjun Rampal in the lead role with Abhay Deol, Esha Gupta, Manoj Bajpayee and Anjali Patil in supporting roles. Chakravyuh aims to be a social commentary on the issue of Naxalites. The first theatrical trailer of Chakravyuh was released at midnight on 16–17 August 2012. The film was released on Durga Puja.Chakravyuh released in 1100 cinemas in India. Despite being well-praised, the movie failed to attract an audience.
