Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Theories of International Relations, Prof.Dr. Tayyar Arı,Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elif Toprak, Editör, Üniversite Yayınları, Eskişehir, ss.66-86, 2019
Post-colonial theory is a theory that emerged
as a critique of Western enlightenment. It resisted
imperial and colonial ideologies that legitimize the
superiority of the West in the international arena.
e modernist perspective that emerged in the
West revealed the validity of objective knowledge
and development of the technique of the West are
based on this knowledge. us, Western knowledge
constituted supremacy over the world, thus, the
West looked at some places outside of West was
defined as backward. en, they began to establish
colonies for exploitation which were the economic
dimension of this domination, the exploitation was
not only economic but also cultural and political.
e post-colonial theory focuses on the cultural
dimension of exploitation and it examines the
exploitation of mind, consciousness, language and
religion of indigenous people. Postcolonial studies
are interested mostly in subaltern part of society, in
this sense, they have tried to reconstruct the society
and raise consciousness.
Moreover, Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Alpert
Memmi formed a resistance against the colonists.
ey formed the framework of “what needs to be
done” in meaningful post-colonial studies. Even
writers like Derrida and Foucault do not directly
say anything about post-colonialism. However,
they drew the theoretical framework of postcolonial theory with Foucault’s discourse and
Derrida’s deconstruction it concepts. erefore,
Derrida and Foucault argued “how needs to be
done”. Edward Said indicated “what position
colonized people are in” in his Orientalism book.
After all, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravarty
Spivak determined post-colonialist thought in
terms of their own culture, and the elements used
in post-colonial perspective.
When it comes to critiques of post-colonialism
which focus on the word -post- , it was
problematized whether these analyses discussed
-post- colonialism or -pre- colonialism. Also
there are some di erences between immigrants in
developed countries that constitute hybridity and
people living in third world countries in terms of
status, economic and political independence with
very limited upward mobility etc.