POSTCOLONIAL SOCIETY AND CULTURES

The course is part of the Core educational activities [B] of the literature and culture and of the international politics curricula of the Bachelor's Degree Programme in Language, Civilisation and the Science of Language.

Students will be provided with a general overview of the main themes, concepts, and debates in contemporary postcolonial studies, with specific reference to literature, and their interconnection with debates on environmental and climate issues and on speculative fiction. They will acquire a basic knowledge and understanding of postcolonial criticism and its specialized language. They will be able to apply selected concepts, terms, and perspectives to literary and other cultural texts. They will be invited to develop independent thinking and judgment and will be encouraged to improve their communication skills in relation to the issues at stake, most notably the cultural construction of hope. The final objective will be to enable students to address literary texts from a postcolonial perspective in a largely self-directed or autonomous manner, and to have a better understanding of the how postcolnial texts (or texts that can be tackled from a postcolonial perspective) engage with the idea of hope through a variety of political and formal strategies.

Advanced reading, speaking and writing knowledge of English.

TITLE: Postcolonial hope and its discontents

"Is it worse to hope or to despair?" asks writer China Miéville in an essay. The answer is by no means obvious, because, far from being an unequivocal good, hope is a deeply political cultural construction, which, Miéville continues, takes on profoundly different meanings and values depending on "who's hoping, for what, for whom - and against whom."

Postcolonial criticism and literatures are an interesting terrain for addressing the political and cultural value of hope: decolonization is intrinsically intertwined with hopes for emancipation and justice, but historically post-colonies have also replicated both colonial and capitalist mechanisms of exploitation - often justified precisely as the construction of (or the hope for) a better future. What form do hope and despair take in postcolonial contexts, and which of these forms of hope or despair are genuinely radical?

This course aims to construct a journey, featuring short stories, essays, and novels, that compares European, American, Indigenous/Canadian, and Indian authors to address different forms of constructing hope, reading all of these authors (regardless of their backgrounds of origin) from a postcolonial perspective. In doing so, we will discuss the political value of utopia, development ideologies, speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and solidarity. Particular emphasis will be placed on the intersections between colonial history (and its consequences in the present) and climate crises, and the narratives of hope generated by this encounter.

Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", any edition, 1973 (available on Moodle).
NK Jemisin, "The Ones Who Stay and Fight", 2018. (https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/ ).
China Miéville, "The Limits of Utopia", 2014 (https://salvage.zone/mieville_all.html ).
Arundhati Roy, “For the Greater Common Good”, 1999 (available on Moodle).
Neel Mukherjee, A State of Freedom, W W Norton & Co Inc , 2017.
Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild, William Morrow & Co, 2020.

Gurminder K Bhambra, “Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues”, in Postcolonial Studies 17, 2014 (available on Moodle).
Bill Ashcroft, “Introduction: Spaces of Utopia”, in Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal 1, 2012 (available on Moodle).
Bill Ashcroft, "Postcolonialism", in The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures, 2022 (available on Moodle)

Optional readings:
Available on Moodle.

The written exam (in English) lasts 2 hours and consists of four questions on the topics of the course, including the analysis of short passages from the texts presented in class. In the exam, students are expected to demonstrate knowledge of the content of the texts discussed in class (including the plot of the short stories/novels), to compare them with each other and discuss them independently, to know the cultural-historical context of the texts, to be able to apply the theoretical tools of postcolonial criticism, and to be able to reflect on the theoretical debates addressed in the course (hope and its cultural constructions, environmental and climate crises, speculative fiction) that intersect with postcolonialism.

The minimum grade is 18, the maximum grade is 30 cum laude. The grades will be assigned as follows:
A. band 18-22: sufficient content knowledge; limited ability to discuss independently, limited knowledge of theoretical tools, limited knowledge of the cultural-historical contexts and debates.
B. band 23-26: decent content knowledge; decent ability for independent discussion, decent knowledge of theoretical tools, decent knowledge of the historical-cultural contexts and debates.
C. band 27-30: good content knowledge; good ability for independent discussion; good knowledge of theoretical tools; good knowledge of the cultural-historical contexts and debates.
D. Cum Laude: awarded in case the content knowledge, independent discussion skills and knowledge of the theoretical tools, historical-cultural context and debates are excellent.

Lectures. Class discussions. The Moodle e-learning platform will be used for communication with the students and to distribute teaching materials (slides; parts of the bibliography).

English

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development