His analysis provides a historical understanding of the inseparability of racialization and capitalist exploitation as constitutive of the capitalist system of power. It can be said, that the coloniality of power introduces a universal social classification of the population of the planet in terms of the idea of race. Hence, the race is used to categorize and separate human beings into two groups: superior and inferior (Quijano, 2000: 347). Edward Said refers to this categorization as a Western discourse about the Other which is supported by “institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles” (Said, 1979: 2). According to Said, this process has worked partly because of the constant interchange between the scholarly and the imaginative construction of ideas about the Orient.
Lugones tries to develop a systemic understanding of gender in consideration of Quijano’s conception of coloniality of power. Quijano conteptualized the coloniality of power as the constituting crux of the global capitalist system of power which classifies the population around the idea of race. Lugones criticizes the absence of race in conceptualizing gender from a white/colonial perspective. According to her, gender is a violent, destroying colonial concept that is constituted and imposed by colonial/modernity in terms of multiple relations of power. Gender fuses with race in the operations of colonial power; colonialism imposed a new gender system and different arragenments for colonized people than for colonizers.
Postcolonial theory is a literary theory or critical approach that deals and concerns with any literature produced in countries that are/were colonized, especially by the European countries. Postcolonial theory concerns and studies the texts that are/were "produced by writers from countries with a history of colonialism" at the same time deals with texts "produced during colonialism" (McLeod, 33). "…the term post-colonial might provide a different way of understanding colonial relations: no longer a simple binary opposition, black colonized vs. white colonizers; Third World vs. the West, but an engagement with all the varied manifestations of colonial power, including those in settler colonies." (Ashcroft et al. 2004, The Empire Writes
As a matter of fact colonized people attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past 's inevitable otherness. It can also deal with the way in which literature in colonizing countries appropriates the language, images, scenes, traditions and so forth of colonized countries. (Slemon, S 1995: 99-116) Typically, the proponents of the theory examine the ways in which writers from colonized countries attempt to articulate and even celebrate their cultural identities and reconstruct them from the colonizers. They also examine ways in which the literature of the colonial powers is used to justify colonialism through the perpetuation of images of the colonized as inferior. However, attempts at coming up with a single definition of postcolonial theory have proved controversial, and some writers have strongly critiqued the whole concept.
An often glossed over and prettily wrapped part of history can be found when examining the colonial era. This was a time of imperial racing to see who could develop the most civilizations and obtain the most land worldwide. What is ignored though is the truth of what colonialism did to the nations and the reality of its impacts on the world as a whole. Colonialism is responsible for the unequal biases toward race, gender, social class, among and within nations. Further, colonialism set into motion exploitation of nations of the global south for the benefit of nations of the global north, and even upon decolonization, with the optimistic idea of independence, imperial powers set up a system to where the decolonized nations were still dependent on them and continued the abuse of the global south nations and their resources for the economic gain, and that system sticks with us to this day.
Accordingly, and as stated in Spurr’s Rhetoric of Empire, the political system and technology are the two criteria of valuation . These two ideas –that of Darwin and that of Gobineau were appropriated by the ideology of colonialism under the guise of what is commonly known as “civilizing mission”. The ethnographic Edgar Thurston showed ‘a heavy reliance on anthropometric measurements for the classification of various tribes into a hierarchical pyramid .’This anthropometric measurement can be easily pinpointed as it is extremely rife in colonial writings. This impulse was above all ‘a search for convincing visual signs of difference in which the ability to visualize a culture or society almost becomes synonymous to understanding
"Dear sir. At your express command I have hastened as a subordinate should." The language, the style, the vocabulary, the selected words are humble, indicating the relationship of ruler and ruled. The fact is identified by Bernard Bergonzi, "A Passage to India is an enduring fictional analysis of the effect of colonialism on rulers and ruled. "(A Passage.
To literary critic James Gibbon, it is a meditation on theatricality, particularly the theatricality of politics. He equally sees it as an epic burlesque of a sick, lumbering state and a praise song to the manifold forms of African resilience. John Updike posits that in Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi offers more indignations than analysis in his portrayal of postcolonial Africa. Andrew Van der Vlies analyzes the novel as a satire on the betrayal of independence by corrupt governments in neo-colonial Africa. Gilbert Ndi Shang observes that the novel is an exposition of “disturbed movement” of historical “progression” in the post colony wherein the new era of hope often carries shades of the past and seeds of future disillusionment.
It goes without saying that postcolonialism seeks to undermine and transform the dominance of Eurocentrist colonial discourses. It searches, as David Spur put it, for “alternatives to the discourses of the colonial era” (1993: 6) and “changes the world, providing interpretations that have practical consequences” (Schwarz 2005: 4). The postcolonial counter-hegemonic project interrogates and disintegrates any form of imperialism (Xie 1997: 17-18). Postcolonialism is, then, “about a changing world, a world that has been changed by struggle and which its practitioners intend to change further” (Young 2003: 7). Yet, as is true of nearly every field of intellectual inquiry, fractures and fissures gradually opened up within postcolonial studies.
As the plays are both centred on the theme of colonisation, it is imperative that one has a clear understanding of what colonisation is. Colonisation is when an area is taken over by another country, the colonies’ resources are drained and the people are exploited (Licata 1-2). The coloniser imposes their own cultural and political views on the colonies (Licata 1-2). The colonial theme will be engaged with through the evaluation of the relationships between the characters of Prosper, Caliban, Ariel and Miranda. This essay will highlight certain elements of similarity and deviation that the characters have in either play with specific emphasis of the relationship of Caliban and Prospero.