Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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Chapter III
Post-Modern and Post-Colonial
I am ever more convinced that there is a close relationship between postcolonialism
and postmodernity, though by definition the two are dissimilar. Because postmodernity is
a philosophical and cultural movement rooted in frustration with modernity, it is therefore
also deeply frustrated with the Western agenda to dominate the world via colonialism.
The overall failures of colonialism add to both the postmodern and postcolonial
frustration with the Western modernist agenda, rooted as it always was in a sense of
cultural superiority. Akin to Foucault’s interest in power relationships, postcolonialists
focus on inferiority and difference, especially the inequalities between rulers and ruled.
Prof. Terry DeHay, from Southern Oregon University, said of this:
Postcolonialism, like other post-isms, does
not signal a closing off of that which it
contains (colonialism), or even a rejection
(which would not be possible in any case),
but rather an opening of a field of inquiry
and understanding following a period of
relative closure. Colonialism is an event
which can be identified, given an historical
definition, through its effects and
characteristics as they reveal themselves in
a given nation, among different cultural
and social groupings (DeHay).
Postcolonialism, as such, developed following the collapse of European Colonialism.
Many historians say the period ended c.1947 with India’s independence, but others say
the end did not come until as late as 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For this
reason, I believe there have been two major contractions of colonialism in the modern
historical era.
Postcolonial thinking has been present in Western scholarship since the 1980’s, which
accords with the first significant wave of the postmodern cultural impact, and just prior to
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa