Postcolonial theory is a literary theory or critical approach that deals with literature produced in countries that were once, or are now, colonies of other countries. It may also deal with literature written in or by citizens of colonising countries that takes colonies or their peoples as its subject matter. The theory is based around concepts of otherness and resistance.
Postcolonial theory became part of the critical toolbox in the 1970s, and many practitioners credit Edward Said's book Orientalism as being the founding work.
Typically, the proponents of the theory examine the ways in which writers from colonised countries attempt to articulate and even celebrate their cultural identities and reclaim them from the colonisers. They also examine ways in which the literature of the colonial powers is used to justify colonialism through the perpetuation of images of the colonised 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.
Barker, Hulme, and Iversen (1994) consider postcolonial theory to be based on the conceptual vocabulary of poststructuralism as it undertakes to investigate the realm of the colonial and its aftermath.
Postcolonial thinkers help us to focus on the ways in which different cultures have interacted in a third space and on the ways in which boundaries and borders have become porous in the contemporary world.
Postcolonial theorists have also neglected to analyze the influence of the macro-context at the level of communication among individuals.
A postcolonial filmmaker thus not only has the freedom to express himself artistically and place his own subjective meaning, which forms a closed objective meaning, into the film; but also is free of the cultural restraints of the semiotics of Europe.
Just as the people within postcolonial countries begin to desire the isolation of nationalistic politics, because they wish through self- creation to assert themselves as independent and uniquely different from their colonial centers; the filmmakers within these nations strive to create a filmic language that is unique and detached from colonial influences.
Postcolonial filmmakers have empowered themselves, and in doing so have given a small portion of that power to their immediate audience.
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