Baylis,, Smith and

d Owens: T
The Globa
alization of World Pol itics 6e
Re
evision guiide
olonialism
m
Chapter 1 2: Post-co

Po
ost-coloniallism is a ne
ew approa ch in IR that provides
s a bottom
m-up ratherr than
sta
ate-down approach
a
to
o the studyy of interna
ational relations.

Am
mong otherr more trad
ditional sou
urces, it uses fiction and
a personnal testimo
onials as
sou
urces of information about colo
onial and post-colonia
al people aand situatio
ons
rele
evant to in
nternational relations..

It iss broad en
nough to include speccific colonial and pos
st-colonial rrelations as
a well as
the
e notion tha
at our era in internatiional relatio
ons is pos
stcolonial.

ome intere
est in colon
nial and post-colonial relations, but only frrom the
IR showed so
perspective of
o great power interessts.

The cold warr period saw

w great po
owers competing ove
er influencee in newly
ind
dependent countries.

Un
nwilling to choose
c
bettween Wesstern and Soviet
S
bloc
c patronagee, some po
ostcollonial state
e regimes met
m at conferences and
a formed
d the non-aaligned mo
ovement to
cre
eate a Third World bloc.

The Third Wo
orld was able to show
w some po
ower over the
t great ppowers thro
ough
OP
PEC and byy demandiing an NIE
EO.

But the agendas of and

d for the Th
hird World did not tak
ke into acccount the liv
ves of
ave
erage peop
ple in post-colonial s ettings.

ost-coloniall studies sttarted with an interes

st in the live
es and knoowledges of
o people
Po
of ssubaltern statuses
s
in
n India.

With little info

ormation on subaltern
n life, early
y post-colo
onial writerss turned to
o postcollonial fictio
on for insight.

Ficction as a data
d
source
e that high
hlights life within
w
partiicular cultuures is som
mething

Oxford Universityy Press, 2014.

Baylis,, Smith and

d Owens: T
The Globa
alization of World Pol itics 6e
Re
evision guiide
the
e field of In
nternational Relationss has conv
ventionally eschewedd.

oups in Intternational Relations , however,, have brou

ught post-ccolonial ficttion and
Gro
cullture to the
eir work. It is very pro
ominent in feminist Internationaal Relations
s.

nt to bear in
n mind Gayyatri Spiva
aks questio
on of whethher the sub
baltern
It iss importan
can
n speak orr whether the Westerrn research
her ends up putting thhat speech
h into
dominant We
estern fram
meworks.

orld-travelling method
ds encoura
age researrchers and subalternss to find co
ommon
Wo
me
eeting poin
nts that brin
ng the Wesstern resea
archer clos
ser to the ssubaltern world,
w
ratther than vice versa.

So
ome post-colonial work builds th
heory that follows up and expannds ideas on
collonization and
a resista
ance develloped by anti-colonia
a
al intellectuuals like Fra
antz
Fanon.

ortant influ ence on th

heory-build
ding througgh his analy
ysis of
Edward Said is an impo
Orientalism.

Ho
omi Bhabha
a, another important figure in th
he field, arg
gues that ccolonials
con
nstructed the
t Orient from their own fantas
sies and de
esires but could not capture or
con
ntrol hybrid
d colonial identities a
and dissem
miNations.

ontemporarry theorists
s remove the hyphen
n from the term
t
post-ccolonial to indicate
Co
tha
at the curre
ent era is postcolonia
p
al and has continuities and disccontinuities
s with
collonialism.

Oxford Universityy Press, 2014.