Postcolonial Studies

Postcolonial Studies

- This blog is part of task given by Dr. Dilip Baradsir.

Globalization and Postcolonial Identities:

The article shows that globalization disrupts older binaries of center vs. margin central to postcolonial studies. Instead, we live in a world of transnational networks and fluid identities

Postcolonial identities are no longer only about resisting colonial legacies but also about navigating new forms of dominance, such as the “New American Empire” and the “Global War on Terror,” which replicate imperial logics through military, political, and cultural influence.

This reshaping often creates hybrid identities, where cultures are redefined by global flows of media, migration, and technology, blurring traditional national and cultural boundaries.

• Global Capitalism and Postcolonial Societies:

Economic Dimension:

Joseph Stiglitz and P. Sainath critique “market fundamentalism” and neoliberal globalization for deepening inequality and undermining emerging democracies

Developing nations often become dependent on global markets and multinational corporations, limiting their sovereignty.

Cultural Dimension:

Global capitalism commodifies culture, turning local traditions into consumable products for global markets. Klaus Schwab’s idea of Globalization 4.0 (Fourth Industrial Revolution) highlights how digital technologies further integrate economies but also intensify inequality

In short, global capitalism creates opportunities (jobs, access to technology, global networks) but also erodes cultural autonomy and reproduces hierarchies of power in postcolonial societies.

• Examples from Literature and Film:

Several works of literature and cinema engage directly with these challenges:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah: Explores migration, race, and identity in the globalized world. It shows how Nigerians negotiate between Western modernity and their local roots, reflecting cultural hybridization under globalization.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: Depicts how neoliberal capitalism in India fuels both aspiration and corruption. The protagonist’s rise from poverty through morally questionable means critiques the global capitalist order.

Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (film, based on Mohsin Hamid’s novel): Examines how a Pakistani man’s identity is fractured by his immersion in American corporate capitalism and his subsequent alienation after 9/11 mirroring the article’s theme of the “New American Empire.”

Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire: Highlights the paradox of India as a global economic power where extreme poverty persists alongside globalized consumer culture.

Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses: Explores migrant identities, hybridity, and the pressures of globalization on cultural belonging.

Globalization reshapes postcolonial identities by dissolving old boundaries and creating hybrid, networked identities. Global capitalism both enables mobility and deepens dependency, often reinscribing inequalities. Literature and film become powerful spaces to dramatize these tensions showing how individuals and communities wrestle with identity, resistance, and survival in a globalized, postcolonial world.

Fiction as Critique of Globalization:

Literature becomes a space where the economic dominance of global capitalism and the resistance of marginalized communities are dramatized.

Authors from postcolonial contexts highlight how globalization creates new inequalities while promising mobility and freedom. Fiction critiques this duality by focusing on characters caught between aspiration and exploitation.

• Themes in Postcolonial Fiction:

Resistance:

Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis depicts anti-globalization protests, showing how people resist corporate power and financial dominance in a global city

Robert Newman’s The Fountain at the Center of the World reconstructs the Seattle WTO protests, blending personal narratives with critiques of neoliberal exploitation across borders.

• Hybridity & Identity Crisis:

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness reflects hybrid postcolonial identities in India, mixing the voices of the marginalized (Hijras, Kashmiri separatists, displaced villagers). It shows how globalization destabilizes traditional identities but also opens spaces of hybrid solidarity.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger satirizes neoliberal India through Balram, whose rise out of poverty depends on embracing corruption and violence. His fractured identity reflects the contradictions of a “globalized India.”

• Global Conflict in the Personal Sphere:

Ian McEwan’s Saturday connects personal life in London with the Iraq War protests, showing how global geopolitics permeates ordinary existence.

Together, these texts show that postcolonial fiction often critiques globalization by dramatizing the intersection of global forces with local struggles.

Film Example: The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012, dir. Mira Nair)

Based on Mohsin Hamid’s novel, this film explores the identity crisis of Changez, a Pakistani man climbing the corporate ladder in the U.S. but alienated after 9/11.

• It embodies the article’s concerns:

Resistance: Changez rejects the American dream when he sees it tied to imperial violence.

Hybridity: His hybrid identity (Pakistani roots, American education, corporate success) becomes untenable under suspicion and Islamophobia.

Identity Crisis: He is forced to choose between assimilation into global capitalism and loyalty to his cultural and political roots.

This mirrors how globalization both opens and forecloses possibilities for postcolonial subjects  producing fractured identities and fueling resistance.

Contemporary postcolonial fiction and films critique globalization by exposing how it reshapes identities through hybridity, alienation, and inequality, while also fueling movements of resistance. Authors like Adiga and Roy, and films like The Reluctant Fundamentalist, dramatize the lived contradictions of a globalized yet unequal world.

Intersection of Postcolonial Studies and Environmental Concerns:

Scholars like Dipesh Chakrabarty stress that climate change presents a “planetary crisis” that traditional postcolonial theory was not equipped to handle

Vandana Shiva shows how colonialism disrupted ecological diversity, replacing sustainable indigenous practices with exploitative monocultures that laid the groundwork for today’s ecological collapse

Postcolonial studies now engages with issues like internal colonialism (e.g., indigenous displacement by dam and mining projects in India) and accumulation by dispossession (David Harvey’s term for how neoliberalism reproduces colonial patterns of land and resource theft)

• How Colonized Peoples Are Disproportionately Affected:

Spatial amnesia (Rob Nixon’s term): Environmental narratives often erase the histories of colonized peoples, portraying their lands as “wilderness” ripe for exploitation

Multinational exploitation: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s struggle against Shell in Nigeria shows how resource extraction devastates formerly colonized lands, with pollution and violence falling disproportionately on marginalized communities

Internal colonialism: Movements like India’s Narmada Bachao Andolan highlight how “development” projects displace tribal peoples and destroy ecosystems, echoing colonial-era dispossession

Climate change (droughts, floods, rising seas) particularly devastates the Global South  regions already destabilized by colonial extraction.

Film Reflection: Avatar (2009, dir. James Cameron)

While not set in a literal postcolonial nation, Avatar allegorically reflects the dynamics described in the article:

The Na’vi represent indigenous communities dispossessed by extractive capitalism (mirroring tribal peoples in India or the Ogoni in Nigeria).

Pandora’s plunder reflects primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession under global capitalism.

The film critiques both ecological destruction and colonial/imperial logics, echoing postcolonial concerns about how land, culture, and identity are erased under corporate greed.

For a real-world, postcolonial setting: The Burning Season (1994) and The Constant Gardener (2005) also dramatize how multinational corporations exploit resources in the Global South, linking environmental destruction to neo-colonial power structures.

Postcolonial studies and environmental studies intersect by showing that climate change and ecological degradation are not neutral “global” issues. They disproportionately burden formerly colonized peoples, whose lands and lives are still treated as expendable by global capitalism. Films like Avatar or The Constant Gardener visualize these dynamics, making visible the ecological struggles of the Anthropocene through a postcolonial lens.

How Hollywood Projects U.S. Hegemony:

• Rewriting History (Redemption Narratives):

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) reframes the Vietnam War, turning U.S. soldiers into betrayed heroes while depicting the Vietnamese as villains. This absolves American guilt and reasserts moral superiority

RamboandBondinAmericasGeopoliti…

Rambo III (1988) positions Rambo alongside Afghan Mujahideen, aligning with U.S. foreign policy and framing America as a liberator against Soviet “evil.”

• Soft Power and Cultural Hegemony:

James Bond films, though British in origin, reinforce Western dominance. For example, The Living Daylights (1987) echoes Rambo’s Afghan narrative, while Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) dramatizes control over global information networks mirroring U.S. anxieties about media power

RamboandBondinAmericasGeopoliti…

By circulating globally, these films normalize American values freedom, democracy, military might as universal ideals.

• Economic and Political Legitimacy:

These franchises function as “soft power” exports, boosting U.S. image while justifying interventions abroad. Hollywood turns geopolitics into spectacle, concealing imperial logics under narratives of rescue, justice, and adventure.

• Postcolonial Critiques:

Edward Said’s Orientalism: Villains often embody caricatures of the “Other” Soviets, Asians, Arabs, or Latin Americans constructed as barbaric threats requiring Western intervention.

Neo-Imperialism: These films mask contemporary imperialism as humanitarianism. By casting the U.S. as savior, they reproduce colonial hierarchies of power, where non-Western peoples are either helpless victims or dangerous enemies.

Cultural Hegemony (Gramsci): Through entertainment, Hollywood enforces consensus around U.S. global dominance, persuading audiences to accept American foreign policy aims as natural or just.

• Other Films/TV Series Reinforcing Hegemonic Ideals:

Top Gun (1986; 2022 sequel): Celebrates U.S. military supremacy and frames American fighter pilots as protectors of global order.

24 (2001–2010): Justifies torture and surveillance under the “War on Terror,” presenting the U.S. as morally compelled to bend laws for global safety.

Homeland (2011–2020): Reinforces American intelligence as the central force managing global security, often stereotyping Middle Eastern characters.

Captain America & MCU films: Though fantastical, they embed U.S. military and moral leadership into global struggles, universalizing American heroism.

Hollywood films like Rambo and James Bond project U.S. hegemony by rewriting history, glamorizing intervention, and normalizing Western superiority. Postcolonial critique exposes how these narratives disguise neo-imperial logics under spectacle and entertainment. Other films and series from Top Gun to 24 extend this celluloid empire, shaping global perceptions of America as the world’s indispensable power.

Appropriation and Reimagining of Tribal Resistance in RRR:

• Historical Roots:

Raju resisted the British after the 1882 Madras Forest Act stripped Adivasis of forest rights.

Bheem fought the Nizam of Hyderabad under the slogan Jal, Jangal, Zameen (Water, Forest, Land).

In RRR: Their struggles are reframed into a pan-Indian nationalist battle against British colonialism. While visually spectacular, this glosses over the specific environmental and land struggles that defined their legacies.

• Implications for Postcolonial Struggles

Contribution:

By transforming local heroes into symbols of anti-colonial nationalism, RRR generates pride in indigenous resistance, reasserting that the fight against empire was not just led by elite leaders but also by subaltern figures.

It broadens the visibility of tribal resistance, otherwise neglected in mainstream Indian cinema.

Undermining:

The film erases the ecological and land-rights dimensions of their struggles, which remain urgent today in the context of corporate land grabs, deforestation, and displacement of tribal peoples.

This nationalist framing risks flattening tribal histories into state-centered narratives, obscuring how postcolonial states themselves often perpetuate internal colonialism through dams, mining, and development projects

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• Related Films and Narratives:

Avatar (2009, dir. James Cameron):

Allegorizes indigenous struggles against extractive colonialism (the Na’vi vs. corporate militarism).

Unlike RRR, it foregrounds ecological and cultural survival, though critics argue it still centers a white savior narrative.

Lagaan (2001, dir. Ashutosh Gowariker):

Depicts peasants uniting against colonial taxation through cricket. Like RRR, it turns subaltern resistance into a nationalist allegory, risking simplification of caste and rural complexities.

The Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo):

A postcolonial counterpoint depicts Algerian resistance in raw, collective terms, avoiding nationalist romanticization. It highlights urban guerrilla warfare without erasing the subaltern perspective.

Apocalypto (2006, dir. Mel Gibson):

Reimagines Mayan resistance, but critics note it exoticizes and distorts indigenous history, echoing similar concerns about RRR’s appropriation of tribal heroes.

Reflection:

Cinema like RRR demonstrates how postcolonial cultural production can both empower and undermine struggles. On one hand, it recuperates marginalized heroes into mainstream narratives; on the other, it appropriates their histories into nationalist myth-making, erasing ecological justice and subaltern specificity. For postcolonial studies, the challenge is to ask: Do these films amplify indigenous struggles or overwrite them with state-sanctioned narratives of the nation?

References: 

Barad, Dilip. Heroes or Hegemons? The Celluloid Empire of Rambo and Bond in America’s Geopolitical Narrative. Aug. 2024, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383415195_Heroes_or_Hegemons_The_Celluloid_Empire_of_Rambo_and_Bond_in_America%27s_Geopolitical_Narrative.

Barad, Dilip. Globalization and Fiction: Exploring Postcolonial Critique and Literary Representations. Oct. 2022, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376371617_GLOBALIZATION_AND_FICTION_EXPLORING_POSTCOLONIAL_CRITIQUE_AND_LITERARY_REPRESENTATIONS.

Barad, Dilip. Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies. Oct. 2022, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376374570_GLOBALIZATION_AND_THE_FUTURE_OF_POSTCOLONIAL_STUDIES.

Barad, Dilip. Postcolonial Studies in the Anthropocene: Bridging Perspectives for a Sustainable Future. Oct. 2022, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376374708_POSTCOLONIAL_STUDIES_IN_THE_ANTHROPOCENE_BRIDGING_PERSPECTIVES_FOR_A_SUSTAINABLE_FUTURE.

Barad, Dilip. Reimagining Resistance: The Appropriation of Tribal Heroes in Rajamouli’s RRR. Aug. 2024, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383603395_Reimagining_Resistance_The_Appropriation_of_Tribal_Heroes_in_Rajamouli%27s_RRR.

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