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Chapter 5

ANIA LOOMBA

5.0 INTRODUCTION:

Ania Loomba received her B. A. (Hons), M. A. and M. Phil. degrees


from the University of Delhi, India and her Ph. D. from the University of Sussex,
U.K. She researches and teaches early modern studies- postcolonial studies,
histories of race and colonialism, feminist theory and contemporary Indian
literature and society often exploring the intersections between these fields. She
has previously taught at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University
(India), the University of Tulsa and the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign. She was Mellon Fellow at Stanford University. She has held a visiting
appointment at the University of Natal, Durban and South Africa. She is also a
faculty in Comparative Literature, South Asian Studies, Women‘s Studies and
Asian American Studies with which her courses are regularly cross listed. Ania
Loomba currently holds the Catherine Bryson Chair, Professor of English at the
University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Gender, Race, Renaissance
Drama, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism. She is
also the co-editor of Post-colonial Shakespeare and Postcolonial Studies and
Beyond. She is series editor (with David Johnson of the Open University, UK) of
Postcolonial Literary Studies (Edinburgh University Press). She is currently
working on a critical edition of Antony and Cleopatra, and co-editing a collection
of essays on South Asian Feminism. She is also working on a monograph on early
modern English contact with Asia.

Ania Loomba‘s research focuses on Renaissance literature and


history, which she examines through the lenses of gender studies and colonial and

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postcolonial studies. She holds a Ph. D. in English from the University of Sussex
and has awarded fellowships by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the
Center for Advanced Study, University of Illonois. Her first book, Gender, Race,
Renaissance Drama, has been widely excerpted in subsequent collections. Her
1998 release, Colonialism/postcolonialism, was recently translated into Italian,
Turkish, Korean, and Japanese languages. She has written extensively on early
modern drama and culture, Shakespeare, modern performances and adaptations of
Shakespeare, the women‘s movement and feminist theory and politics. Most
recently she has compiled (with Jonathan Burton) Race in Early Modern England:
A Documentary Companion, which brings together extracts from travel writings,
medical texts, statutes, dictionaries, recipes, atlases, emblem books, the Bible,
religious commentaries, pamphlets, scientific tracts and philosophical treatises.
The collection documents the range and complexity of sixteenth and seventeenth
century thinking about racial difference and argues that these materials challenge
conventional histories and theories of race. She is currently working on a book
which examines real and imagined English exchanges with Turkey, the Moluccas,
North Africa and India in the early modern period. These early global
conversations are crucial for understanding English drama and culture as well as
for rethinking the histories of race and colonialism in the present moment when
empire has again become a fashionable term. She examines the key features of the
ideologies and history of colonialism, the relationship of colonial discourse to
literature, the challenges to colonialism, surveying anti-colonial discourses and
recent developments in post-colonial theories and histories and how sexuality is
figured in the text of colonialism, and also how contemporary feminist ideas and
concepts intersect with those of post-colonialist thought. Her achievement, in
some senses, is the most considerable of all, because she works mainly in the most
prolifically minded and competitive field within English Studies, namely
Shakespeare.

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Loomba was instantaneously offered jobs in the U.S., and after
teaching in various campuses, including Stanford, she now has the Catherine
Bryson Chair at the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania. She
gives lectures on Early Modern English Literature and Culture. She is also familiar
with post-colonial literature and history. She involves herself always in researches.
She gets lot interest in teaching about the histories and literatures of race,
colonialism, gender and nation-formation from the sixteenth centuries to the
present. She expresses her studied views on Shakespeare and other early modern
dramatists and South Asian writing. Loomba's achievement, in some senses, is the
most considerable of all. Her book, entitled Colonialism/Postcolonialism, has been
translated into Italian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. Her books on
Shakespeare, entitled Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (1989) and Shakespeare,
Race and Colonialism (2002), have raised questions that have now become central
within Shakespeare Studies: for example, did skin colour matter to Shakespeare
and his contemporaries? Were religious differences important to them? Loomba
has shown how plays like "Othello" and "The Tempest" speak about religion and
race to audiences outside the West.

The question, did Shakespeare and his contemporaries think at all in


terms of "race"? has generated anxiety in Ania Loomba. It gave her strength to
study Shakespeare from that point of view. Examining the depiction of cultural,
religious, and ethnic difference in Shakespeare's plays, Ania Loomba considers
how seventeenth-century ideas differed from the later ideologies of "race" that
emerged during colonialism, as well as from older ideas about barbarism,
blackness, and religious difference. Accessible yet nuanced analysis of the plays
explores how Shakespeare's ideas of race were shaped by beliefs about colour,
religion, nationality, class, money and gender. Loomba gives a detailed picture of
the concept of race in Shakespeare's day. Loomba's scholarship is rigorous,
carefully grounding interpretation of the plays in the ideologies of Shakespeare's

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time, race and colonialism have certainly become important Shakespearean topics
in recent years and one could not hope for a more authoritative and accessible
discussion of them than that provided by Ania Loomba. In sum up, this book
offers a case study of how to write for a wide readership without betraying the
complexity of the subject matter. Her works include:

1. Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama

2. Colonialism/ Post-colonialism

3. Shakespeare: Race and Colonialism (ed)

4. Post-colonial Shakespeare (co-ed)

5. Post-colonial Studies and Beyond (co-ed)

She has written extensively on early modern drama and culture,


Shakespeare, modern performances and adaptation of Shakespeare, the women‘s
movement and feminist theory and politics. Most recently she has compiled, Race
in Early Modern England: a documentary companion. Examining the depiction of
cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in Shakespeare‘s plays, Ania Loomba
considers how seventeenth century ideas differed from the later ideologies of
―race‖ that emerged during colonialism as well as from older ideas about
barbarism, blackness, and religious difference. Her analysis of Shakespeare‘s
plays explores how his ideas of race were shaped by beliefs about colour, religion,
nationality, class, money and gender.

Postcolonial theory deals with the reading and writing of literature


written in previously or currently colonized countries, or literature written in
colonizing countries which deals with colonized peoples. It focuses particularly
on:

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i) The way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the
experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized
people.
ii) On literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their
identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past‘s inevitable otherness.
iii) It can also deal with the way in which literature in colonizing countries
appropriates the language, images, scenes, traditions and so forth of
colonized countries.

The book, Post-colonial Studies and Beyond is designed to expand


the agenda of postcolonial studies, assess the field‘s past and present, and affect its
future evolution. The editors ask scholars to consider the intellectual, political and
methodological practices that have shaped and which should shape postcolonial
modes of thought. The book contains a range of perspectives on issues like,
modernity, trans-nationalism, globalization, neo-liberalism, Euro-centricism- and
links contributions from history, anthropology, Asian and African studies,
environmental studies, literature, politics, and religion to re-evaluate and stretch
the field. This accessible volume provides a vital introduction to the historical
dimensions and theoretical concepts associated with colonial and postcolonial
discourses. Ania Loomba examines: i) the key features of the ideologies and
history of colonialism, ii) the relationship of colonial discourse to literature, iii)
challenges to colonialism, surveying anti-colonial discourses, and recent
developments in post-colonial theories and histories, iv) how sexuality is figured
in the texts of colonialism, and also how contemporary feminist ideas and
concepts intersect with those of post-colonialist thought. This clear and concise
volume is a must for any student needing to get to grips with this crucial and
complex area.

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In Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Ania Loomba discusses the
different meanings of terms such as colonialism, imperialism and postcolonialism.
Here she also discusses the controversies around these concepts. She further
introduces the readers to aspects of post-structuralist, Marxist, feminist and post-
modern thought which have become important or controversial in relation to
postcolonial studies. Ania Loomba also considers the complexities of colonial and
postcolonial subjects and identities. She asks many questions with a view to
opening up the larger debate on the relationship between material and economic
processes and human subjectivities. She has examined the processes of
decolonization and the problems of recovering the viewpoint of colonized subjects
from a ‗postcolonial‘ perspective. Various theories of resistance are observed for
considering the crucial debates they engender about authenticity and hybridity, the
nation, ethnicity and colonial identities. Theories of nationalism and pan-
nationalism and how they are fractured by gender, class and ideological divides
are considered. Finally she considers the place of postcolonial studies in the
context of globalization. This book, for some years, has been accepted as the
essential introduction to vibrant and politically charged area of literary and
cultural study. With new coverage of emerging debates around globalization, this
book will continue to serve as the ideal guide for advanced students and teachers
in regard with colonial discourse theory, postcolonial studies or postcolonial
theory.
Colonialism/Postcolonialism is a remarkably comprehensive yet
accessible guide to the historical and theoretical dimensions of colonial and
postcolonial discourses. It is the essential introduction to the vibrant, crucially
important areas of literary and cultural study usually known as postcolonial theory,
postcolonial studies and colonial discourse theory. Building on her widely
acclaimed first edition, Ania Loomba examines: the key features of the ideologies
and history of colonialism, the relationship of colonial discourse to literature,
challenges to colonialism, including anti-colonial discourses, recent developments

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in postcolonial theories and histories, issues of sexuality and colonialism, and the
intersection of feminist and postcolonial thought, debates about globalization and
postcolonialism, and fully updated for the second edition, with an entirely new
discussion of globalization. Colonialism/Postcolonialism should be on the shelf of
every student of literature, culture or history.

In her book, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism, Ania Loomba


talks about the different aspects of race, gender, and religion that work together in
the play Othello. Contrasting seventeenth-century views with modern, post-
colonial views, this book discusses crucial issues for our understanding and
appreciation of the plays. Shakespeare's plays contain so many fascinating and
central characters whose 'differences' are crucial to their character and their fate -
from Shylock and his daughter Jessica to Othello and Caliban. Ania Loomba
presents students and teachers with a lucid examination of Shakespeare's handling
of colour, religion, and 'race', and how this differs from his predecessors,
contemporaries, and, importantly, our own ways of thinking.

Unique in its focus, Post-Colonial Shakespeares examines how our


assumptions about key ideas such as 'colonization', 'race', and 'nation' derive from
the early modern English culture and looks at how such terms are themselves
embedded in "colonial" forms of knowledge. Featuring original work by some of
the leading critics within the field, this impressive volume explores the multiple
ways of reading Shakespeare in our postcolonial context. The contributors:
Andreas Bertoldi, Jerry Brotton, Jonathan Burton, Jonathan Dollimore, Terence
Hawkes, Margo Hendricks, David Johnson, Michael Neill, Avraham Oz, Nicholas
Visser, made this volume rich and readable one.

Her book, Post-colonial Studies and Beyond (an interdisciplinary


book) expands the agenda of postcolonial studies, assesses the field's past and
maps its possible futures. It considers the intellectual, political and methodological

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practices that have shaped and which should shape postcolonial modes of thought.
The effort is to reinvent the field. Such reinvention has been happening but,
having already influenced perspectives and methods across disciplines,
postcolonial studies are becoming increasingly institutionalized. To remain useful,
it needs new directions and emphases.

The essays included here, address questions about the field's


definition, relevance and relationship to issues of modernity, translationalism, and
globalization. Can postcolonial studies produce insights that will illuminate what
is marginalized or invisible within the discourses of globalization and neo-
imperialism? Can it draw on its tradition of anti-colonial thought and socio-
cultural analysis to continue suggesting socio-economically informed models of
political mobilization and innovative critical language? Can it minimize Euro-
centricism? The book contains a broad range of perspectives on these issues.

5.1 COLONIALISM/POSTCOLONIALISM:

Ania Loomba argues that colonialism reshapes often violently,


physical territories, social terrains as well as human identities. The terms:
colonialism, Imperialism, are defined in Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as:

a settlement in a new country…. A body of people who settle in a new


locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent
state; the community so formed , consisting of the original settlers and their
descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state
is kept up. (2005:7)

Here she points out that the above definition neglects the people other than the
colonizers that indicate conquest and domination. She adds ahead that it locks the

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original inhabitants and this generates the complex and traumatic relationships in
human history. She further points out that the process of forming a new
community in the new land means un-forming or re-forming the original
communities. She concludes this definition stating that the colonialism means the
conquest and control of other people‘s land and goods. It is not only the expansion
of various European powers in non-European countries/areas but a recurrent and
widespread feature of human history.

Ania Loomba points out the changed picture of modern European


colonialism that enriched the different kinds of colonial practices which altered the
whole globe. The modern colonialism developed in addition with extracting
tribute, goods and wealth from conquered countries, a new and complex
relationship and engendered a flow of human and natural resources between
colonized and colonial countries to grow profit for them. Loomba adds ahead that
European colonialism has applied a variety of techniques and patterns of
domination as well as it produced the economic imbalance, necessarily for the
growth of European capitalism and industry. She differentiates the concept
imperialism from colonialism in following words:

we can distinguish between colonization as the takeover of territory,


appropriation of material resources, exploitation of labour and interference
with political and cultural structures of another territory or nation, and
imperialism as a global system. (2005:11)

Here she states that colonialism seems to limit certain locality that is surpassed in
imperialism. Thereafter, Loomba focuses the term post-colonialism that applies
two senses: temporal, as in coming after, and, ideological, as in supplanting. The
post-colonialism doesn‘t mark the demise of colonialism.

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Ania Loomba states that the term post-colonialism appears to be
riddled with contradictions and qualifications. She adds ahead that it also allows
us to incorporate the history of anti-colonial resistance with contemporary
resistances to imperialism and to dominant Western cultures. According to
Loomba, post-colonialism emphasizes concepts like, hybridity, fragmentation and
diversity. It is a kind of reaction to colonialism which does not allow for
differences between distinct kinds of colonial situations, or the workings of class,
gender, location, race, caste or ideology among people whose lives have been
restructured by colonial rule. She states further that ‗post-colonial‘ refers to
specific groups of (oppressed or dissenting) people or individuals (within them)
rather than to a location or a social order and postcolonial theory has been accused
of, as it shifts the focus from locations and institutions to individuals and their
subjectivities, post-coloniality, like patriarchy, is articulated alongside other
economic, social, cultural and historical factors, and therefore, in practice, it works
quite differently in various parts of the world.

Ania Loomba argues that the tensions about power and subjectivity
have become central to the study of colonialism. The concept of colonial discourse
is introduced to re-order the study of colonialism. Said has introduced Orientalism
as to inaugurate a new kind of study of colonialism. She argues about colonial
discourse which may help the readers to understand social happenings and their
relationship with the discourse. According to her, discourse analysis makes it
possible to trace connections between the visible and the hidden, the dominant and
the marginalized, ideas and institutions. It also allows us to see how power works
through language, literature, culture and the institutions which regulate our daily
lives. Loomba states that colonial discourse studies today are not restricted to
delineating the workings of power- they have tried to locate and theorize
oppositions, resistances and revolts on the part of the colonized. Colonial
discourse studies present a distorted picture of colonial rule in which central

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effects are inflated at the expense of economic and political institutions. She adds
further that colonial discourse studies erase any distinction between the material
and ideological, because they simply concentrate on the latter.

Loomba points out that the concept of ‗discourse‘ is used to mean to


uncover the interrelation between the ideological and material rather than to
collapse them into each other. The representation of colonial discourse is observed
in literary studies, art, history, films, media and cultural studies too. Loomba
strongly argues that there is no consensus or homogeneity within colonial
discourse analysis which is the site of much debate and controversy precisely
because it has drawn from a wide range of intellectual and political histories and
affiliations. According to Loomba, colonialism reshaped existing structures of
human knowledge as no branch of learning was left untouched by the colonial
experience. She further observes that colonialism expanded the contact between
Europeans and non-Europeans, generating the flood of images and ideas on an
unprecedented scale. She further points out that literary texts do not simply reflect
dominant ideologies, but encode the tensions, complexities and nuances within
colonial cultures. The literary discourse is an important means of appropriating,
inverting or challenging dominant means of representation and colonial ideologies.
She adds ahead that the literature (discourse) can be important in devaluating and
controlling colonial subjects. The literary texts or discourses have become more
widely recognized as materials that are essential for historical study of that
particular country or location. Loomba argues that the meanings that are given to
texts are of dominant critical views that were later on included within educational
systems.

Loomba observes that many recent books on ‗post-colonial


literature‘ consider literatures written in English, or widely available in translation,
or those that have made the best-seller lists in Europe and United States. So she

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expects that non-Westerns need to be recovered, celebrated, re-circulated,
reinterpreted not just in order to revise our view of European culture but as part of
the process of decolonization. She further argues that colonialism, according to
these ways of reading, should be analyzed as if it were a text, composed of
representational as well as material practices available to us via range of
discourses such as scientific, economic, literary and historical writings, official
papers, art and music, cultural traditions, popular narratives, and even rumours.

Loomba argues that colonialism was the means through which


capitalism achieved its global expansion. Racism simply facilitated this process,
and was the conduit through which the labour of colonized people was
appropriated. At the same time she states that economic explanations are
insufficient for understanding the racial features of colonized societies. The former
approach privileges class, and the latter race in understanding colonial societies.
Colonialism is the result of certain psychic differences between races (which lead
some people to dependency or the need to be ruled). She expects that anti-colonial
struggles had to create new and powerful identities for colonized peoples and to
challenge colonialism not only at a political or intellectual level, but also on an
emotional plane. She believes that the idea of the nation was the powerful vehicle
for harnessing anti-colonial energies at all these levels. She speaks ahead that to
isolate colonialism from its later evolution is to deflect attention from the narrative
of nationalism, communalism and religious fundamentalism which are the
crucibles within which gender, class, caste or even neo-colonialism function
today.

Ania Loomba views that post-colonial theory and criticism are


inadequate to the task of either understanding or changing our world because they
are the children of post-modernism. Here she refers Arif Dirlik who talks on ‗post-
colonialism‘ as:

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Postcolonialism ‗a child of post-modernism‘ which is born not out of new
perspectives on history and culture but because of ‗the increased visibility
of academic intellectuals of the third world origin as pacesetters in cultural
criticism. (1994:330)

Here Loomba argues that post-modernists and post-colonialists celebrate and


mystify the workings of global capitalism. She adds ahead that the narratives of
women, colonized people, and non-Europeans revise our understanding of
colonialism, capitalism and modernity. These global narratives do not disappear
but can now be read differently. Finally she expects that critics across many
language communities should have a dialogue about the genuine difficulties
generated by the interdisciplinary, cross-cultural nature of
colonialism/postcolonialism, because in the wake of recent developments, it is
clear that the issues raised by the study of colonialism remain urgent and vital
today.

5.2 FEMINISM:

Ania Loomba states that if the nation is an imagined community,


that imagining is profoundly gendered. The nation-state or its guiding principles
are often imagined (a colossal statue of the Motherland at Stalingrad) itself is
imagined as a woman. Sometimes the spirit of dilemma as an entire culture is
sought to be expressed via a female figure (Malintzin story). She argues further
that as national emblems, women are usually cast as mothers or wives, and are
called upon to literally and figuratively reproduce the nation. Loomba points out
that, anti-colonial or nationalist movements have used the image of the nation-as-
mother to create their own lineage, and also to limit and control the activity of
women within the imagined community. They have also literally exhorted women

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to produce sons who may live and die for the nation. She believes that the
identification of women as national mothers stems from a wider association of
nation with the family. The nation is cast as a home, its leaders and icons assume
parental roles (father and mother) and fellow-citizens are brothers and sisters. The
image of nation as mother marshals and undercuts female power.

Loomba argues the logic behind women education in following


words:

As mothers to the nation, real women are granted limited agency. The
arguments for women‘s education in metropolitan as well as colonial
contexts rely on the logic that educated women will make better wives and
mothers. At the same time, educated women have to be taught not to
overstep their bounds and usurp authority from men. (2005:182)

The idea, woman is constructed in opposition to the specter of the Memsahib who
neglects her home and husband. The image fuses together older brahminical
notions of female self-sacrifice and devotion with the Victorian ideal of the
enlightened mother, devoted exclusively to the domestic sphere.

Ania Loomba argues further that many critics have pointed the
reform of women‘s position as a major concern within nationalist discourses. She
adds ahead that even though the female power, energy and sexuality haunt
nationalist discourses, women themselves disappear from these discourses about
them. We learn little about how they felt or responded from colonial or nationalist
records. Recently, there is little attempt to locate them as subjects within the
colonial struggle. She points out that Gayatri Chakravorty‘s essay, ‗Can the
Subaltern Speak?‘ helped to express strongly about widow immolation within
postcolonial theory. Women are not just a symbolic space but real targets of

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colonialist and nationalist discourses. Their subjection and the appropriation of
their work are crucial to the workings of the colony or the nation.

Ania Loomba expresses very frankly her views on the topic of


feminism. She views that Marxist thought has failed to theorize the specificity of
gender oppression. According to her, the question of culture and ideologies was
vital that comes in the study of feminist thought. She points out that the oppression
of the women has been seen as a matter of culture that takes place within the
family. She further comments that the exploitation of their labour power was
obscured by a gender-blind economic analysis that failed to integrate class with
other forms of social division. She expresses ahead that in Marxism also in a wider
intellectual sphere, women‘s oppression was seriously under-theorized. Loomba
illustrates the thinking of a common woman as:

a battered wife may believe that single women are more vulnerable to
danger and violence, and more lonely and unhappy than married women,
and this belief impels her not to rebel against her situation, and even allows
her to expound on the necessity for women to be married. (2005:27)

Here Loomba points out that the life of a woman is connected to men and it gets
value in that link only. Women‘s own voices could find no representation during
the colonial debates.

Loomba opines that feminist movement needed to challenge


dominant ideas of history, culture and representation. The feminist struggle has
emphasized culture as a site of conflict between the oppression and the oppressed.
She points out that from the beginning of the colonial period till its end (and
beyond), female bodies symbolize the conquered land. This metaphoric use of
female body varies in accordance with the exigencies and histories of particular
colonial situations. She states ahead that female volition; desire and agency are

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literary pushed to the margins of the civilized world. But not all margins are
equally removed from the centre: Skin colour and female behaviour come together
in establishing a cultural hierarchy with white Europe at the apex and black Africa
at the bottom. Colonial sexual encounters, both heterosexual and homosexual,
often exploited inequities of class, gender, age, race and power. She goes a step
ahead and states that the fear of cultural and racial pollution prompts the most
hysterical dogmas about racial difference and sexual behaviours because it
suggests the instability of ‗race‘ as a category. So sexuality is a means for the
maintenance or erosion of racial difference. In patriarchal society, women are split
subjects who watch themselves being watched by men. Loomba comments some
women and non-Europeans who are responsible for their own subordination in
following words:

The analogy between the subordination of women and colonial subjects,


sometimes promoted by women and non-Europeans themselves, runs the
risk of erasing the specificity of colonial and patriarchal ideologies, besides
tending to homogenize both women and non-Europeans. (2005:138)

Here Loomba points out that Africans and women are commonly regarded as more
community-minded in their outlook than Europeans and men. She observes the
fact that black and colonized women suffer from both from racial and gendered
forms of oppression simultaneously.

Ania Loomba expects that black post-colonial feminists and women


activists must lead to challenge this complex positioning of women. They could
try to remove the colour prejudices within white feminism and the gender-
blindness of anti-racist or anti-colonial movements. Loomba further views that if
colonial power is repeatedly expressed as a white man‘s possession of black
women and men, colonial fears centre around the rape of white women by black
men. She expects ahead that women of colour have also had to challenge the

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colour-blindness of Euro-American feminist theory and movements. As like many
scholars and activists, Loomba too critiqued the Western feminist project for its
neglect of racial and colonialist politics. She also points out that non-white
feminists have written alternative histories of women‘s oppression, and also
offered alternative blueprint for action. She adds ahead that within colonized
countries, where women‘s activism has been proliferating in this century, some
activists have rejected the term ‗feminist‘ as too tainted by its white antecedents.
So she states that black and colonized women are doubly oppressed- ‗double
colonization‘ as of race and gender categories. Loomba further records that class is
extremely important in analyzing how race and gender have historically shaped
one another.

Ania Loomba strongly attacks the colonialism that eroded many


matrilineal or woman-friendly cultures and practices, or intensified women‘s
subordination in colonized lands. She attacks the advent of the slave trade, the
decline of village agriculture and labour migration to urban centres, Christianity
altering family structures and sexual patterns and colonial law restructuring
considering only elite‘s customs for becoming kinds of hurdles in the wellbeing of
women community in general and colonized women in particular. Loomba points
out further that colonialism became the cause of women‘s oppression as:

Colonialism intensified patriarchal oppression, often because native men,


increasingly disenfranchised and excluded from the public sphere, became
more tyrannical at home. They seized upon the home and the woman as
emblems of their culture and nationality. The outside world could be
Westernized but all was not lost if the domestic space retained its cultural
purity. (2005:142)

Here Loomba views that colonialism restricted the colonized men into public
sphere causing domestic tyranny. Colonial women were asked to bind with

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domestic space for cultural purity. She also points out that the native resistance of
colonized men to defend their ‗self-esteem‘ is deeply oppressive of women. The
colonialism has introduced the new forms of patriarchal domination in colonized
lands giving subordination to women. The feminist criticism has emphasized the
patriarchal structures within which the memsahib (lady) was trapped at home and
abroad and has highlighted the differences between female and male in various
parts of the colonial world. She also observes that the European colonialism often
justified its ‗civilizing mission‘ by claiming that it was rescuing native women
from oppressive patriarchal domination.

Ania Loomba argues the white women‘s hidden intensions in


representing their mute sisters as:

While white women played important roles in the abolition of slavery and
in initiating colonial reform, even those progressive roles were often
premised on the idea of a racial hierarchy. Within colonial spaces, white
women participated with varying degrees of alienation and enthusiasm in
imperial projects; as teachers, missionaries, nurses, and the help-mates of
colonial men, their roles varied both structurally and ideologically.
(2005:144)

Here Loomba comments the selfish attitude of the white women who initiated
colonial reform for colonized women.

Ania Loomba concludes that the race, gender and sexuality do not
just provide metaphors and images for each other, but develop together in the
colonial arena. She records the roles and positions of colonized women in
following words:

Colonial women were not simply objectified in colonial discourses- their


labour fed the colonial machine. If female slaves were the backbone of

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plantation economies, today, the third world women and women of the
colour provide the cheapest labour for sweetshops, the sex-trade, large-
multinationals as well as smaller industries, and are the guinea pigs for
exploitative and dangerous experiments in health and fertility. They remain
the poorest of the poor in the post-colonial world. Such exploitation is both
a colonial legacy and outcome of specific ‗postcolonial‘ developments.
(2005:145)

Here Loomba tries to present the critical and pathetic situation of colonized
women giving many illustrations observed by various scholars and activists in the
field of feminism.

The relationship of women to national culture can obscure other vital


aspects of their social existence. The gendered spiritual or inner core central to the
construction of anti-colonial national identities is seen to be shaped by the shared
national past or a cultural essence which in turn becomes synonymous with a
religious or racial identity. She argues that women were regarded as crucial
markers of cultural difference in the colonies. She highlights women‘s lower
position in society as:

In India, Algeria, South Africa and countless other colonized countries, the
colonizers regarded women‘s position within the family and within
religious practices as indicative of degenerate native cultures. Reform of
women‘s position thus became central to colonial rule. (2005:161)

Loomba states here that nationalists objected the colonial intrusion in women‘s
matter and they have introduced some reforms of their own. She adds ahead that in
India, ‗a new woman‘ and ‗a new family structure‘ different than tradition or
Western version were projected as nationalist ideals.

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Loomba points out that women were politically active, worked and
lived outside of purely domestic spaces, sometimes in positions of leadership, they
opened up new conceptual spaces for women. She adds ahead that even when they
moved into public spaces in the name of motherhood and family, they challenged
certain notions of motherhood and of femininity. Anti-colonial nationalisms
opened up spaces for women largely by legitimizing their public activity.
Women‘s participation in politics is easily accepted in postcolonial countries than
in ‗metropolitan‘, precisely because of nationalist legacy. Many postcolonial
regimes have been outrightly repressive of women‘s rights, using religion as basis
on which to enforce their subordination. She argues ahead that women are objects
as well as subjects of fundamentalist discourses and also targets as well as
speakers of its most virulent rhetoric. She expects that women had to overcome
male opposition to their equal participation in the struggles for self-determination,
democracy and anti-imperialism. She believes that these movements re-shaped
women‘s understanding of themselves. She concludes that the global imbalances
profoundly structure feminist agendas in the postcolonial world. She also feels
happy as women have been increasing participation in the postcolonial politics,
ranging from the more established forms of political action to the new social
movements.

5.3 ON IDEOLOGY:

Ania Loomba states her frank opinions about the term, Ideology.
According to her, Ideology does not refer to political ideas alone, as it also
includes our ‗mental frameworks‘, our beliefs, concepts, and ways of expressing
our relationship to the world. She states ahead that it is the most complex and
elusive term in social thought. She gives the reference of Marx and Engels (The
German Ideology 1846) who had suggested that ideology is basically a distorted or

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a false consciousness of the world which disguises people‘s real relationship to
their world. Here Loomba opines that ideologies that are circulated and gained
currency in any society reflect and reproduce the interests of the dominant social
classes. The ideology has the function of obscuring from the working classes the
‗real‘ state of their own lives and oppression.

Loomba, like Marx and Engels, believes that all our ideas, including
self conceptions, spring from the world in which we live. She also points out that
the world under capitalism, gives rise to a series of illusions as money has the
power to distort or even invert reality. She adds ahead that in capitalism, money
and commodities increasingly displace, stand in for, and are mistaken for human
values. She strongly points out that ideology is not a failure to perceive reality, for
reality (capitalism) itself is ideological, disguising its essential features in a realm
of false appearances. She gives support to her views, referring Marx and Lukacs.
According to Marx, Ideology is in contrast to science and it has the capacity to cut
through illusions. Lukacs states that Ideology is not always false consciousness;
but its validity or falsity depends upon the ‗class situation‘ of the collective subject
whose view it represents. Here Loomba concludes that Ideologies are not always
false but they are still always the product of economic and social life.

Loomba further views that there is no correspondence between


ideologies and classes. As classes are of heterogeneous groups, ideologies are not
similar among all as it lacks uniformity. So ideologies are also the fields of
‗intersecting accents‘ coming several different directions. She gives the reference
of Antonio Gramsci who states that there are various kinds of ideologies. He views
that ideology in general works to maintain social cohesion and express the protest
of those who are exploited (1971). Loomba expresses that social realities,
including social conflicts, are grasped by human beings via their ideologies and so
ideologies are also the site of social struggle. According to Loomba, ideology is

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crucial in creating consent, it is the medium through which certain ideas are
transmitted and held to be true. Gramsci views that ideologies are more than just
reflections of material reality; they are conceptions of life that are manifest in all
aspects of individual and collective existence (1971). Ania Loomba gives
reference of Louis Althusser who views that ideologies may express the interests
of social groups, but they work through and upon individual people, or subjects
(1971). The subjectivity or personhood itself formed in and through ideology.
Althusser argued that ideology has a relevant autonomy from the material base. He
further says that educational systems are important means for the dissemination of
dominant ideologies. Colonialism had not one but several ideologies, and these
ideologies were manifest in hundreds of different institutional and cultural
practices. She points out the vulnerable situation during the forcibly converting to
Christianity in following words:

What was once impossible- washing the Ethiope white- is now rendered
feasible by Christianity. But in the process, skin colour is unyoked from
moral qualities. The black queen must now be recognized as good. Colonial
plunder of goods is justified by the gift of Christianity. But if blackness can
be washed white that means whiteness is also vulnerable to pollution.
(2005:99)

Here Loomba points out that Christianity became the source of getting status or
position in the society. So many non-Christians were attracted towards conversion
to Christianity. Ania Loomba argues that ideologies of racial difference were
intensified by their incorporation into the discourse of science, which intensified
the supposed connection between the biological features of each group and its
psychological and social attributes. The ideologies of race and the social structures
created by them facilitate capitalist production.

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5.4 COLONIAL/ POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITIES:

Ania Loomba expresses her scholarly and experienced views on


colonial/postcolonial identities. She points out that the ‗othering‘ vast numbers of
people by European colonist thought, and their construction as backward and
inferior, in which binary and implacable discursive opposition between races is
produced. She states that these oppositions are crucial not only for creating images
of non-Europeans, but also for constructing a European self. She adds that in
reality, any simple binary opposition between ‗colonizers‘ and ‗colonized‘ or
between races is undercut by the fact that there are enormous cultural and racial
differences within each of these categories as well as cross-overs between them.
She refers Homi K. Bhabha who has emphasized the failure of colonial regimes to
produce stable and fixed identities, and suggested that ‗hybridity‘ of identities and
the ‗ambivalence‘ of colonial discourse more adequately describe the dynamics of
the colonial encounter (1983).

Loomba states that religious difference became an index of and


metaphor for racial, cultural and ethnic differences. She argues ahead that the
racial stereotyping is not the product of modern colonialism alone, as in history of
Greek and Roman created European images of ‗barbarians‘ and ‗outsiders‘. She
objects the Bible that held all human beings were brothers descended from the
same parents at one hand and ‗savages‘ and ‗monsters‘ who had incurred the
God‘s wrath on the other. She argues further that with European colonial
expansion, and nation building, these earlier ideas were intensified, expanded and
reworked. She adds ahead that despite the enormous differences between the
colonial enterprises of various European nations, they seem to generate fairly
similar stereotypes of ‗outsiders‘- both those outsiders who roamed far away on
the edges of the world, and those who (Irish) lurked uncomfortably nearer home.
The laziness, aggression, violence, greed, sexual promiscuity, beastiality,

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primitivism, innocence and irrationality are attributed by the English, French,
Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese colonists to Turks, Africans, Native Americans,
Jews, Indians, the Irish, and others. It is also worth noting that some of these
descriptions were used for working-class populations or women within Europe.

Ania Loomba points out that the differences were noted within each
group as well. Columbus distinguished between ‗cannibals‘ and ‗indios‘- the
former were represented as violent and brutish, the latter as gentle and civil. She
states ahead that in some cases, colour was the most important signifier of cultural
and racial difference (Africans) and in other cases it was less remarked upon
(Irish). Loomba observes that the construction of racial differences had to do with
the nature of the societies which Europeans visited, the class of people who were
being observed, as well as whether trade or settlement was the objective of the
visitors. She argues that colonizer differed in their modes of interacting with the
local population, thus producing variable racial discourses and identities. She adds
ahead that the colour and race consciousness marked even the policy of
cohabitation, and, racial distinctions continued to inform the subsequent ‗mixed‘
social order. Sometimes fine-tunning is evident where the hybrid population
resulted to encode a complex hierarchy of colour, class and gender. This type of
situation occurred in Portugal, Spanish or Latin Americans. The British
colonialism, on the other hand, did not allow for easy social or sexual contact with
local people. In short, heterogeneity, variety and diversity are sometimes
understood as lack of purpose or ideology.

Loomba points out that when people were moved to new locations
their racial attributes did not change. Theories of race, and racial classifications
were often attempts to deal with the real or imagined ‗hybridization‘ that was a
feature of colonial contact everywhere. She states ahead that the race has
functioned as one of the most powerful and yet the most fragile markers of human
identity. Today skin colour has become the privileged marker of races. Loomba

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points out the significance of colour and other attributes in identifying racial
identity as:

While colour is taken to be prime signifier of racial identity, the latter is


actually shaped by perceptions of religious, ethnic, linguistic, national,
sexual and class differences. ‗Race‘ as a concept receives its meanings
contextually, and in relation to other social groupings and hierarchies, such
as gender and class. (2005:105)

Here as like other critics Loomba suggests that racial hierarchies are the ‗magic
formula‘ which allow Capitalism to expand and find all the labour power it needs,
and yet pay even lower wages, and allow even fewer freedoms than are given to
the white working classes.

Loomba argues that for the ‗Negro‘ racial identity overrides every
other aspect of existence. The black person attempts to cope by adopting white
masks that will somehow make the fact of his blackness vanish. Loomba calls this
a precarious process. Thus black skin/white masks reflect the miserable
schizophrenia of the colonized‘s identity. She further points out that every child
reflects the oedipal complex approach of the family. She adds ahead that
colonialism is described as an oedipal scene of forbidden desire. Here she refers
the opinion of Bhabha who says that colonial identities are always oscillating,
never perfectly achieved. Loomba points out that the split between ‗black skin‘
and ‗white masks‘ is differentially experienced in various colonial and
postcolonial societies. Loomba argues that ‗experience‘ and ‗constructedness‘
need not be thought of as polar opposites. The process of ‗acting‘ is not outside the
process by which identities are formed, but equally ‗action‘ and ‗consciousness‘
are not attributes of some static inner force but of our changing selves.

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5.5 HYBRIDITY:

Ania Loomba expresses her views and opinions in regard with the
term ‗hybridity‘ in her scholarly writing. She records that postcolonial studies
have been preoccupied with the issues of hybridity- with the in-betweenness,
diasporas, mobility and cross-overs of ideas and identities generated by
colonialism. She even observes the widely divergent ways of thinking about these
issues. She gives reference of Robert Young‘s idea about the term hybrid:

hybrid is technically a cross between two different species and that


therefore the term ‗hybridization‘ evokes both the botanical notion of inter-
species grafting and the ‗vocabulary of the Victorian extreme right‘ which
regarded different races as different species. (1995:10)

Here Loomba points out the colonial deliberate policy with striking contradictions
as colonialism needs both to ‗civilize‘ its ‗others‘ and to fix them into perpetual
‗otherness‘.

Ania Loomba refers Macaulay‘s idea about to create Europeanized


natives: A class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
opinion, in morals and in intellect (1972). Here she states that colonial hybridity is
a strategy premised on cultural purity, and aimed at stabilizing the status quo. She
adds ahead that the anti-colonial movements and individuals often drew upon
Western ideas and vocabularies to challenge colonial rule and hybridized what
they borrowed by juxtaposing it with indigenous ideas, reading it through their
own interpretative lens; even using it to assert cultural alterity or insist on an
unbridgeable difference between colonizer and colonized seems to conflict or
clash with their aims and objectives. She points out that Caribbean and Latin
American activists started hybridity as an anti-colonial strategy. Ania Loomba
refers Cuban writers R. S. Retamar, Paul Gilroy regarding the term hybridity: The

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intellectual and political cross-fertilization that resulted from the black diasporas
or the movements of black people not only as commodities but engaged in various
struggles towards emancipation, autonomy and citizenship. The hybridity provides
a means to re-examine the problems of nationality, location, identity and historical
memory. Loomba expects new conceptual tools to analyze these newly generated
complex identities. Here the term ‗ethnicity‘ has been used to indicate biologically
and culturally stable identities which is controversial to hybridity. She argues that
Bhabha‘s concept of hybridity is both influential and controversial in post-colonial
studies. Bhabha suggests that liminality and hybridity are necessary attributes of
the colonial condition. Referring to Fanon and Terry Collits, Loomba states that
the image of ‗black skin/white masks‘ suggests not a hybridity but a violated
authenticity. Loomba further points out that hybridity seem to be a characteristic
of Bhabha‘s inner life, but not of his positioning.

Ania Loomba opines that the ‗hybridity‘ of both a colonizer and


colonized can be understood only by tracing the vicissitudes of colonial discourse,
or the mutations in European culture. And so we cannot appreciate the specific
nature of diverse hybridities if we do not attend to the nuances of each of the
cultures that come together or clash during the colonial encounter. Here she gives
a useful reference of Arif Dirlik who suggests that conditions of in-betweenness
and hybridity cannot be understood without reference to the ideological and
institutional structures in which they are housed (1994:342). Ania loomba believes
that the migration of people is perhaps the definitive (experience) characteristic of
the twentieth century. She adds ahead that the experience of diaspora is also
marked by class and gender divides. And so it is important to recall that large
numbers of people in the Third World have not physically moved, and have to
speak from where they are, is also often an equally ideologically or politically and
emotionally fractured space.

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Ania loomba refers Benita Parry who suggests that current theories
of ‗hybridity‘ work to downplay the bitter tension and the clash between the
colonizers and the colonized and therefore misrepresent the dynamics of anti-
colonial struggle (1987:27-58). She argues further that Nationalist Struggles and
Pan-Nationalist Movements were fuelled by the alienation and the anger of the
colonized and so cannot be understood within the parameters of current theories of
hybridity. Loomba agrees that the colonialist categories of knowledge had the
power to make us see and experience ourselves as ‗other‘. She adds ahead that this
kind of knowledge is internal, not external, and it is crucial to the process of
colonial subject formation. She states further that it cannot simply be erased or
shrugged off as a kind of false consciousness. She takes the reference of Hall who
refuses to choose between ‗difference‘ and ‗hybridity‘ and tries to keep alive a
sense of difference which is not pure ‗otherness‘. Finally, Loomba concludes with
her thought:

The task, then, is not simply to pit the themes of migrancy, exile and
hybridity against rootedness, nation and authenticity, but to locate and
evaluate their ideological, political and emotional valences, as well as their
intersections in the multiple histories of colonialism and postcoloniality.
(2005:153)

Here Loomba focuses the need of clear understanding of the different but some
more equal in meaning terms in the colonial and postcolonial background. She
tries to explain the term hybridity referring many critics and scholars. Her
convincing style is noteworthy that asks us to go through different illustrations that
are relevant to the term- ‗hybridity‘.

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5.6 NATIONALISM/PAN-NATIONALISM:

Ania Loomba talks about Nationalism and Pan-nationalism.


According to her, it is difficult to generalize about nationalism because none of the
factors, responsible for forging national consciousness- language, territory, a
shared past, religion, race, customs- are applicable in every instance. She further
expects that though the nationalism in each case is unique, we need to make
linkages between different histories of the nation, and look for general patterns.
She refers Anderson who defines the nation as an ‗imagined community‘, born
with the demise of feudalism and the rise of capitalism (1983). Loomba states that
newspapers, novels and other new forms of communication were the channels for
creating a shared culture, interests and vocabularies within the nation. She believes
Anderson‘s point, that language is much more fundamental in developing national
consciousness.

Loomba argues that Nationalism is a ‗derivative discourse‘, a


calibanistic model of revolt which is dependent upon the colonizer‘s gift of
language/ideas. She adds ahead that the anti-colonial nationalism all over Asia and
Africa was not modeled upon simple imitation but also by defining its difference
from Western notions of liberty, freedom and human dignity. She states that
Nationalism engages in a complex process of contesting as well as appropriating
colonialist versions of the past. Nationalist invites us to disregard anti-colonialism
and radical potential of Nationalism, to include ‗all‘ the people, the ordinary folk,
to celebrate diversity and speak for the ‗entire‘ imagined community. Loomba
asserts that the power of nationalism, its continuing appeal, lies precisely in its
ability to speak successfully on behalf of all the people. According to Loomba, in
‗Metropolitan‘ nations as well as the ‗Third World‘ ones, the difficulty of creating
national cultures that might preserve, indeed nourish, internal differences has
emerged as a major issue in our time.

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Ania Loomba states that European Nationalism was discredited over
the course of the twentieth century by its association with fascism and colonialism
and it‘s the Third World variant was legitimized through its connection with anti-
colonialism. She adds ahead that in contemporary mainstream European or
American discourse, nationalism is usually regarded as an exclusively the ‗Third
World Problem‘. She points out further that pan-nationalism includes the
movements like- Negritude movement and pan-Africanism. In these movements
‗nation‘ takes another meaning, a sense of shared culture and subjectivity and
spiritual essence that stretches across the divisions of nations as political entities.
She argues further the concept pan-Africanism:

Pan-Africanism generally refers to a similar movement in the English-


speaking world, by and large the work of black people living in Britain.
Both these movements articulated pan-national racial solidarity, demanded
an end to white supremacy and imperialist domination and positively
celebrated blackness, and especially African blackness, as a distinct racial-
cultural way of being. (2005:176)

Here Loomba points out the struggle of African black people to challenge the
white supremacy in literary world. She argues ahead that Negritude is a reactive
position, and yet it tries to create a black identity free of colonialism‘s taint. She
refers the thought of Fanon who asserts: It is the white man who creates the Negro.
But it is the Negro who creates Negritude (1967:47). The nationalism is not the
simple opposite of ‗pan-nationalism‘ or hybridity, it is the neat inverse of
‗authenticity‘. Loomba states that anti-colonial nationalism is a struggle to
represent, create or recover a culture and a self-hood that has been systematically
repressed and eroded during colonial rule. Anti-colonial nationalism can only be
taken as representative of the subaltern voice if we homogenize the category
‗subaltern‘ and simplify enormously our notion of speaking.

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5.7 SUMMING UP:

Ania Loomba proved herself as a dominant theorist in the


contemporary Indian criticism. Her style of writing is very simple and illustrative
one. Her writing becomes the worthwhile contribution in Indian literary criticism.
The clarity in her presentation of ideas with quite explanations is observed. She is
a fine reader who could provide a kind of commentary on contrary opinions about
various concepts. Her noteworthy book, Colonialism/postcolonialism is a kind of
general introduction to various post-colonial studies. Ania Loomba‘s research
focuses on Renaissance literature and history, which she examines through the
lenses of gender studies and colonial and postcolonial studies. She has written
extensively on early modern drama and culture, Shakespeare, modern
performances and adaptations of Shakespeare, the women‘s movement and
feminist theory and politics. She examines the key features of the ideologies and
history of colonialism, the relationship of colonial discourse to literature, the
challenges to colonialism, surveying anti-colonial discourses and recent
developments in post-colonial theories and histories and how sexuality is figured
in the text of colonialism, and also how contemporary feminist ideas and concepts
intersect with those of post-colonialist thought. Her achievement, in some senses,
is the most considerable of all, because she works mainly in the most prolifically
minded and competitive field within English Studies, namely Shakespeare.

Ania Loomba gets lot interest in teaching about the histories and
literatures of race, colonialism, gender and nation-formation from the sixteenth
centuries to the present. She expresses her studied views on Shakespeare, other
early modern dramatists and South Asian writing. The question did Shakespeare
and his contemporaries think at all in terms of "race"? has generated anxiety in
Ania Loomba. It gave her strength to study Shakespeare from that point of view.
Examining the depiction of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in

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Shakespeare's plays, Loomba considers how the seventeenth-century ideas
differed from the later ideologies of "race" that emerged during colonialism, as
well as from older ideas about barbarism, blackness, and religious difference. Her
analysis of Shakespeare‘s plays explores how his ideas of race were shaped by
beliefs about colour, religion, nationality, class, money and gender.

Ania Loomba seems to be an original critical writer who does not


reflect special impact of any foreign or native critical writer. Her reading of many
writers is noteworthy through which she has developed some ideas regarding
many concepts such as colonialism, post-colonialism, feminism, ideology, colonial
or post-colonial identities etc. of her own. She presents her special comments on
Shakespeare in regard with ‗race‘, ‗religion‘ and ‗colour‘.

Though she has not developed any theories of her own, her work is
quite useful in understanding different theories of various foreign or native critics.
She has connected herself with globalization by writing in English language. Her
views on Shakespeare could give her an international fame. Loomba's scholarship
is rigorous, carefully grounding interpretation of the plays in the ideologies of
Shakespeare's time, race and colonialism have certainly become important
Shakespearean topics in recent years and one could not hope for a more
authoritative and accessible discussion of them than that provided by Ania
Loomba.

With new coverage of emerging debates around globalization, her


book, Colonialism/postcolonialism will continue to serve as the ideal guide for
advanced students and teachers in regard with colonial discourse theory,
postcolonial studies or postcolonial theory. Various theories of resistance are
observed for considering the crucial debates they engender about authenticity and
hybridity, the nation, ethnicity and colonial identities. Theories of nationalism and
pan-nationalism and how they are fractured by gender, class and ideological

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divides are considered. Finally she considers the place of postcolonial studies in
the context of globalization.

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