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in or relating to a period after a country stopped being governed by another country: This framework of government was introduced in the immediate post-independence period. She examines legal language in colonial and post-Independence Argentina.
The meaning of POSTINDEPENDENCE is of, relating to, or occurring in the period following the attainment of independence. How to use postindependence in a sentence.
- Overview
- From decolonization to postcolonialism
- What is the subject of postcolonialism?
postcolonialism, the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism. Postcolonialism signals a possible future of overcoming colonialism, yet new forms of domination or subordination can come in the wake of such changes, including new forms of global empire. Postcolonialism should not be confused with the claim that the world we live in now is actually devoid of colonialism.
Postcolonial theorists and historians have been concerned with investigating the various trajectories of modernity as understood and experienced from a range of philosophical, cultural, and historical perspectives. They have been particularly concerned with engaging with the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment—as expressed in social, political, economic, scientific, legal, and cultural thought—beyond Europe itself. The legacy is ambiguous, according to postcolonial theorists, because the age of Enlightenment was also an age of empire, and the connection between those two historical epochs is more than incidental.
Although there were (and are) many different kinds of imperialism and thus of decolonization, two of the most-important periods for those who study postcolonialism include the British disengagement from its second empire (of the 19th and 20th centuries) and the decolonization movements of the 1960s and ’70s in Africa and elsewhere. It was during the latter era in particular that many of the international principles and instruments of decolonization were formally declared (although the history of their emergence and formation goes back much farther) and that the language of national self-determination was applied to liberationist movements within former colonial territories. The processes triggered by those struggles were not only political and economic but also cultural. Previously subjugated individuals sought to assert control over not only territorial boundaries—albeit ones carved out by the imperial powers—but also their language and history.
The term postcolonialism is also sometimes used to refer to the struggles of indigenous peoples in many parts of the world in the early 21st century. However, given the interpretation of the principles of self-determination and self-government within the international system, along with the minority status and vulnerability of those peoples even within decolonized states, the term is perhaps less apt. At that time indigenous peoples were denied even the modest gains extended by the United Nations and the international system of states to the various decolonized territories in the 1970s. Moreover, the history of imperialism is complex. European imperialism between the 16th and 18th centuries in the Americas, the West Indies, Australasia, and Southeast Asia was substantially different from that of the 19th and 20th centuries. Still, one of the central themes of postcolonial scholarship is the persistence of empire—and resistance to it—in human history.
As a general domain of intellectual inquiry, postcolonialism addresses those questions that emerge in relation to the aftermath of imperialism. One of the most-important features of the history of imperialism has been the emergence of states—either from the consolidation of territories and polities or from the dissolution of empires (or some combination thereof)—and, along with that, new conceptions of international order. In that sense, to be concerned with postcolonialism is to be concerned with a set of questions at the heart of modern political thought.
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However, postcolonialism is also closely associated with a more-specific set of questions, and, although it should not be reduced to these questions, they have proved to be enormously influential. One of the most prominent has been the relation between imperialism and identity. Fanon, a psychoanalyst and philosopher born in Martinique, presented one of the most searing and provocative analyses of the relation between colonized and colonizer in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) as well as in his Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon remains perhaps best known for his explosive justification of violence in The Wretched of the Earth (highlighted in Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to that work), where it is cast as the appropriate response to the violence perpetrated by colonialism and as the mediation through which the colonized can begin to reclaim their self-conscious agency. His is a deeply unsettling argument, shaped undoubtedly by the brutal period of French colonial rule in Algeria and the war for independence (1954–62) there, which Fanon experienced firsthand. Violence was inevitable and necessary, Fanon seemed to be arguing in The Wretched of the Earth, but it also has to be overcome. One has to move from reaction to the construction of something new, which for Fanon included overcoming the binary oppositions imposed on the colonized by the geopolitical structures of the Cold War. It is there that the foreshadowing of some important themes that became central to postcolonialism is found. For example, Fanon combined a material and psychological analysis of the consequences of colonialism, which looked to both the micro- and macroeffects and experience of colonial government. Among those consequences and their effects, as identified and investigated by Fanon and other theorists, are: both the colonized and the colonizer are implicated in the horrors of imperialism, and both will have to be decolonized; the colonized have to find a way of overcoming the imposition of alien rule not only over their territory but also over their minds and bodies; seeking recognition from an oppressor in terms that the oppressor has set hardly provides a genuine liberation from the grip of colonialism (an effect that anticipates an important debate in contemporary political theory over the “politics of recognition”); the colonizers have to make sense of how the brutality of colonialism relates to their own apparent humanism.
Postindependence Definition. Occurring after a country has achieved independence.
The postindependence period in India. India and Pakistan were partitioned and given independence in 1947, after which there was remarkable improvement in scientific and technological education and research; illiteracy, however, remained high. The new constitution adopted by India did not change the overall administrative policy of the country.
Dec 31, 2023 · Independence means sovereignty, not absolute power to leaders and political elites, but power to the people. Freedom is subverted in Africa because of the dictatorial tendencies of political leaders.
Overview. Editors: David Mhlanga, Emmanuel Ndhlovu. Gives a detailed and chronological account of post-independence development and economic inclusion in Africa. Provides country-specific case studies. Includes discussion of post-COVID challenges. Part of the book series: Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development (AAESPD)
