Reading List

Jane Eyre- 1847 (Bronte)

Bleak House- 1863 (Dickens)

She: A History of Adventure- 1887 (H. Rider Haggard)

Heart of Darkness- 1899 (Conrad)

The White Man’s Burden- 1899 (Kipling)

Three Sailor Boys- published in 1902, author died in 1890s

Kim- 1901 (Kipling)

Context and theory:

Joseph Chamberlain, The True Conception of Empire (speech)

Orientalism by Edward Said (theory)

Coming up with a research question and initial ideas

The process of selecting an area to research has been a difficult process for me. I want to study English Literature at degree level, so I knew I should research an area within this field.

July 2016: I knew from quite early on that I wanted to expand my knowledge of one my favourite aspects of the course so far: literary theory. Initially, my chosen theory was feminism- I intended to research the evolution of the presentation of feminism as a political movement in English literature since the Victorian era. 

22nd September 2016: I overheard my supervisor telling another student that the idea of the EPQ was to research a subject you had little knowledge about to start with, as opposed to an area already studied as part of the curriculum. These comments made me re-evaluate my initial research question. I eventually decided that I already had a significant amount of knowledge of the area I wanted to research. This lead me to scrap my initial idea entirely, a couple of weeks into the school year.

22nd September - 29th September 2016: I used a combination of my Critical Anthology from yr 12, and the website EMagazine to look into other types of literary criticism. In an interview, the literary critic Terry Eagleton mentioned that the theories of post-modernism and post-colonialism are two of the most popular theories in post-graduate theses. I already had some knowledge of the concept of post-modernism from my study of A Level sociology, so opted for an EPQ informed by post-colonialist theory- a completely unknown area to me.

After doing some research on post-colonial theory, my next challenges were to find texts that would be suitable to analyse from this perspective, and decide on how I was going to link these texts and my research to the history of colonialism and imperialism: simply analysing texts from a post-colonialist perspective would have probably gotten boring. I read and made notes about the history of British colonialism, and made a longlist of novels, plays, and poems concerned with colonialism.

I decided that I would use texts written during the era of British colonisation, as opposed to texts written after the era. I made sure to select at least two texts from each century between the 18th century and the 20th century. It proved harder to find relevant plays and poems than novels, interestingly. At the same, I used websites such as EMagazine and Schmoop, as well as my critical anthology from year 12 for guidance in terms of relevant critics.

3rd October 16: As of now, my research question stands as 'From a post-colonialist perspective, how did the presentation of race relations in the British Empire evolve between the 17th Century and the 20th Century?' 
I am aware of the broadness of this question- I expect it will become more focussed as my research into this area continues.
Although I now have a working research question, a record of initial ideas, and a substantial reading, I have feel I have been very behind with the workload so far. This is partly due to my discarding of my initial idea, however I also realise that I up until a couple of weeks I have not been dedicating enough hours to the EPQ. The main reason for this is my prioritising of writing my personal statement, and staying on top of my other subjects- mainly in order to be predicted the grades I need to apply to my chosen universities.

Post-colonial Theory: Key Concepts

Postcolonial Concepts Glossary

This will be added as I complete more of my research, to aid in writing my essay. I have sourced the definitions from http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/postcold.htm  and http://staff.uny.ac.id/sites/default/files/pendidikan/else-liliani-ssmhum/postcolonialstudiesthekeyconceptsroutledgekeyguides.pdf  and put them into my own words to ensure my understanding. I have cross-referenced these definitions with other sources to ensure their accuracy.

Colonialism: The expansion of the control of imperialist nations (predominantly European) across the world over the last 400 years. This often resulted in a hierarchy of the European ‘mother’ nation, European settlers, the local, educated elites in the colony, and the indigenous residents. Inherent to this political system are notions of racial inferiority and otherness.

Post-colonialism: Broadly, a study of how colonialism has affected the societies it affected: the European nations that colonised, and the affected groups- how the latter responded and resisted. Some theorists argue that the post-colonialism, both as a theory and study of political change, is evolving through three stages:

-          Initial awareness of the enforced inferiority (culturally and psychologically) of being in a colonized state.

-          Discussion of the struggle for autonomy: culturally and politically.

-          Awareness of hybridity and cultural polyvalence.

 Resistance: the theory focuses on the ways that thinking, writing, and acting resist the colonizers.

Imperialism: In ‘poco’ theory, these terms are used more loosely than they are in the dictionary.  Generally, imperialism refers to the formation of an empire, in which one nation has extended its domination over one or several neighbouring nations, to increase economic and political power.

Subaltern: someone who is economically oppressed. Has a racial significance- the term is mostly used to talk about people who countries were colonized by imperialist.

Appropriation: The taking over of aspects of imperial culture by post-colonial societies. These aspects may include language, forms of writing, film and theatre. The appropriation of these tools is  form of resistance of the political and cultural control of the imperialist cultures.

Hybridity: When experiences of more than culture give rise to new transcultural forms, which can be social, political, linguistic (the rise of Creole language in the Caribbean, as an example).

Marginalization: The implication that certain forms of experience are peripheral, unimportant. Also refers to the limitation of a subject (ie the colonized) to power.

Subaltern: Meaning ‘of inferior rank’. The colonized (lower) classes, who are dependent on the language and means (the hegemony) of the colonized (ruling) class to express themselves.

Essentialism: the belief that people and things have an innate, unchangeable nature that is not something that is not dependant on any kind of circumstance, and several defining features exclusive to members of the group concerned. The practice of essentialism tends to overlook individual differences within groups, to maintain the status quo or gain power. Claims of essentialism can be used both by the colonizers (to maintain the oppression of the colonized?) and by the colonized as a way of resisting the claims surrounding them.