development and processes of colonization and decolonization prof. stefano pelaggi caterina bassetti

DEVELOPMENT AND PROCESSES OF COLONIZATION

AND DECOLONIZATION

Prof. Stefano Pelaggi [email protected]

Caterina Bassetti [email protected]

Credits:9

http://www.coris.uniroma1.it/corso/9384

mailto:[email protected]





EDUCATIONAL GOALSTHE COURSE IN QUESTION WILL BE AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STUDENT TO LEARN THE HISTORY OF THE PROCESSES OF COLONIZATION, LEARNING THEORIES RELATED TO POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

EDUCATIONAL GOALS

DECISIVE FACTORS FOR THE DEGREE COURSE IN SCIENCE COOPERATION BUT ALSO FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE COUNTRIES WHERE DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION IS CURRENTLY WORKING

CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE

THE COURSE WILL BE DIVIDED IN TWO DIFFERENT PARTS, THE FIRST ONE WILL FOCUS ON THE HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF COLONIALISM, IN WHICH WE WILL EXPLORE A BROADER HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIAL EMPIRES IN THE WORLD


WE WILL ALSO INTRODUCES A THEORETICAL DEBATES CONCERNING

COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL CULTURES AND IDENTITIES


THE FIRST PART WILL FOCUS ON THE DISSEMINATION OF THE VARIOUS

COLONIAL POSSESSIONS, TRYING TO OUTLINE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF

COLONIALISM AND THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE BRITISH, FRENCH,

PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION.


WE WILL STUDY SOME CASES, IN LATIN AMERICA, IN ASIA, WHICH WILL BE ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL STATES


• FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE DIFFERENT PROCESSES OF INDEPENDECE FROM COLONIAL RULE AND THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY


The course will also explore the geography of power that linked Europe to the rest of the world and the various ways used by the different nations in freeing from the colonial rule, addressing the anti-colonial and postcolonial nationalisms. In this regard particular attention will be paid to the discursive, rather than the material dimensions of the colonialism.


In the second part the course will focus on the analysis and study of the so-called "postcolonial studies". Postcolonial studies are a theoretical procedure that has emerged in the early 70s which covers an inter-disciplinary field of perspectives, theories and methods that deal mainly with the cultural practices of colonial rule


The methodological and theoretical apparatus developed by "postcolonial studies" in the past decades will be analyzed and used to describe the hierarchical modes of representation of subaltern cultures. The European colonial empire will be analyzed as a cluster of reciprocal relationships that has shaped not only the colonized regions, but also the European culture itself.


In this regard the study of so-called minor colonialism, (Italian, Belgian, German and Russian) will be crucial to understanding the use and function of colonial expansion in the definition and renegotiation of the national identity of the individual European states.


• Students who will have to take the exam for 4 credits, having yet to take an examination into the previous “study plan”, can prepare just the second part of the course, the one dedicated to “postcolonial studies”.

• For more information please contact Prof. Pelaggi

KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO BE ACQUIRED DURING THE COURSE

THE COURSE WILL EXAMINE THE DEFINITION OF COLONIALISM AND POST-COLONIALISM, AND WILL TRY TO ANSWER

SEVERAL QUESTIONS, INCLUDING


• How the various postcolonial discourses are related to the economic conditions of globalization?

• How the colonial past of nations has influenced in the process of construction of the national identity?

• How different types of colonial rule have outlined the present condition of the states?


• The course will also provide an opportunity for all students to study the history of Asia and Latin America, key regions for the near future that often during the course of history are left out at the expense of European history.


Although we can not deal with a vast program to cover the story of two continents over five centuries, the case studies presented in this course might provide an interpretive key to understanding the historical processes of countries in Asia and Latin America.

REQUESTED PREREQUISITES

No prerequisite are needed and no propaedeutic are available for this course.

ASSESSMENT METHODS OF LEARNING AND EXAMINATION PROCEDURES

Attending students must take a multiple choice test during the last month of the course and will

have to make a presentation in class


The theme of the presentation will be agreed between the student and the professor and will be an opportunity to assess the learning of the

subject of the course


The students who pass in a positive manner the multiple choice test and the presentation may take the exam by presenting the textbook indicated in the box plus than an academic paper assigned by the professor and agreed with the student.


Attending students will be considered only those who have attended at least 75 percent of the total course, although for the attending students who will not reach the set limit can recover the missed lessons attending some conference specifically agreed with the professor.


The examination of the non attending students will focus on 2 textbooks indicated and an article from a list that will be shown in the

coming weeks.

CALENDAR OF THE COURSE

The first lesson of the course will be held Wednesday, February 23, 2016 at 16 pm at Aula BLU 2. It will be a presentation of the course, in the days to follow the course will be interrupted and the classes will restart on Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 16 pm in the AULA BLU 2.


Starting form March 9 classes will follow the schedule indicated in the Bacheca: Three weekly classes, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 16 to 18 in the AULA BLU 2 and Thursday from 15 to 17 in AULA BLU 2.


The lessons for the first month will be held by Caterina Bassetti, Stefano Pelaggi will resume

the teaching activities from March 30, 2016.

PROCEDURES FOR THE THESIS

• A topic must be agreed with the Professor after success on the exam.

TEACHING METHODS

• The attending students will be provided a power point presentations of each lessons and every presentation will be uploaded in a designated website (mailing list)

TEACHING METHODS

• There will be presentations from experts and testimonies of experts in the field, the names of the individual actions will be announced in the weeks immediately preceding the date

• A series of papers, films and books will be recommended to students during the course.

METHOD OF EVALUATION OF THE ATTENDANCE

• Attendance is highly recommended but not required.

• Attendance at lectures will be counted.


• Attending students will take an exam carrying a reduced program compared to non-attending, using the tests in class and presentations to be given at the end of the course as part of the exam test itself.


• For attending students who have not passed one or neither of the two tests an additional articles will be agreed with the professor for the exam.


• Suggested Books:• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad • Burmese Days by George Orwell • The Tempest by William Shakespeare

TEXTBOOK FOR FINAL EXAM

• The common textbook for attending and non-attending students is:

• Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom), Routledge, London, 2015 (third edition).


• The book is available through the usual channels of e-commerce, in case of difficulty in obtaining the same the students are requested to contact the professor in advance to solve the problem.


• In addition to the aforementioned text of Loomba non-attending students will have to study the following textbook for the final exam:

• Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History, Routledge, London, 1994.

• An article chosen by Prof. Pelaggi

“COLONIALISM”(Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, Key concepts in Post colonial studies, Routledge,1998) • Edward Said (Said, E. (1993) Culture and

Imperialism, London: Chatto & Windus) offers the following distinction: ‘imperialism” means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory; “colonialism”, which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory’ (Said 1993: 8).

“COLONIALISM”

The scale and variety of colonial settlements generated by the expansion of European society after the Renaissance shows why the term colonialism has been seen to be a distinctive form of the more general ideology of imperialism.

“DECOLONIZATION”

Decolonization is the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms.

This includes dismantling the hidden aspects of those institutional and cultural forces that had maintained the colonialist power and that remain even after political independence is achieve

“APPROPRIATION”(Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, Key concepts in Post colonial studies, Routledge,1998) A term used to describe the ways in which post-colonial societies take over those aspects of the imperial culture – language, forms of writing, film, theatre, even modes of thought and argument such as rationalism, logic and analysis – that may be of use to them in articulating their own social and culturalidentities.

“APPROPRIATION”

This process is sometimes used to describe the strategy by which the dominant imperial power incorporates as its own the territory or culture that it surveys and invades (Spurr 1993: 28).

“APPROPRIATION”

However, post-colonial theory focuses instead on an exploration of the ways in which the dominated or colonized culture can use the tools of the dominant discourse to resist its political or cultural control.

Post-colonialism Deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and societies. As originally used by historians after the Second World War in terms such as the post-colonial state, ‘post-colonial’ had a clearly chronological meaning, designating the post-independence period. However, from the late 1970s the term has been used by literary critics to discuss the various cultural effects of colonization.

“ANTI-COLONIALISM AND ANTI-COLONIAL NATIONALISM”

anti-colonialism: The political struggle of colonized peoples against the specific ideology and practice of colonialism. Anti-colonialism signifies the point at which the various forms of opposition become articulated as a resistance to the operations of colonialism in political, economic and cultural institutions.


It emphasizes the need to reject colonial power and restore local control. Paradoxically, anti-colonialist movements often expressed themselves in the appropriation and subversion of forms borrowed from the institutions of the colonizer and turned back on them.


Thus the struggle was often articulatedin terms of a discourse of anti-colonial “nationalism’ in which the form of the modern European nation-state was taken over and employed as a sign of resistance.

• Nations and nationalism are profoundly important in the formation of colonial practice.

• As Hobson puts it: Colonialism, where it consists in the migration of part of a nation to vacant or sparsely peopled foreign lands, the emigrants carrying with them full rights of citizenship in the mother country . . . may be considered a genuine expansion of nationality.

• Hobson, J.A. (1902) Imperialism, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

“NATION ”voluntarist vs organicist conceptions

Ernest Renan (1823–1892) « Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?» 1882 lecture: nation is "a daily referendum”Johann Gottfried Herder Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791), ethno-cultural nationalism (language, blood, ethno biological elements)

“NATION ”Renan: nations are not ‘natural’ entities, and the instability of the nation is the inevitable consequence of its nature as a social construction. This myth of nationhood, masked by ideology, perpetuates nationalism, in which specific identifiers are employed to create exclusive and homogeneous conceptions of national traditions.

“NATION ”Such signifiers of homogeneity always fail to represent the diversity of the actual ‘national’ community for which they purport to speak, and, in practice, usually represent and consolidate the interests of the dominant power groups within any national formation

NATIONAL IDENTITIES, NATIONALISMS AND STATES

• States, nations and regionalisms

• Hans Kohn in The Idea of Nationalism (1944) had distinguished between two kinds of nationalism


Nationalism/ nation in ethnic terms exclusionary

Dominant in Eastern Europe, but also at the time when he wrote in Germany, as a linguistic community having a common origin, defined even in racial terms


• Nationalism/ nation in civic terms inclusionary

Typical of Western Europe and the English speaking world. The French revolutionary vision of France as the fatherland of all liberty loving men was an example.

A VARIATION OF THIS MODEL SUGGESTS A DISTINTION BETWEEN

• The “Old” nation (Western world)

•The “New” nation (created on purpose, from Eastern Europe to Asia)

Anthony D. Smith recognizes in this dichotomy as a distinguished element

• The territory for the first model•The ethnicity for the second model

Critics to Kohn’s classification: simplistic/strict (Smith 1991; Kymlicka 1996; Yack 1996; Brown 1999; Kuzio 2002; Björklund 2006)

Taras Kuzio (The myth of the civic state: a critical survey of Hans Kohn’s framework for understanding nationalism, Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 25 No. 1 January 2002 pp. 20–39)

“The myth of the civic state”Pure civic or ethnic states only exist in theory.

All civic states, whether in the West or East, are based on ethno-cultural cores. Each nationalism and nation has elements and dimensions that include both types of nationalism elaborated by Kohn (‘organic, ethnic’ and ‘voluntary, civic’).

Michael Keating: The idea of the homogeneous nation-state it has been more aspiration than reality and never applied in reality applied across the entire continent

State: as a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory (Max Weber, 1922)

• Human Community• legitimate use of physical fprce• Territory

O’Leary (2001) comments that a modern state is:

1) a differentiated and impersonal institution that is(2) politically centralized though not necessarily unitary;(3) that generally exercises an effective monopoly of publicly organized physical force and of


(4) authoritatively binding rule-making (or sovereignty) over persons, groups and property; and that5) is sufficiently recognized by a sufficient number of its subjects,(6) and of other stats, that it can


(7) maintain its organizational and policy-making powers(8) within a potentially variable territory.

O’Leary (2001) ‘Introduction’, in Brendan O’Leary, Ian S. Lustick and Thomas Callaghy, eds., Right-sizing the State: the politics of moving borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press),


Different theories and approach:When is nation?

Is an old phenomenon or a modern concept?


• Primordialism (nations are ancient, natural phenomena) Walter Bagehot nation "are as old as history” (Van den Berghe, Schils).

• Ethno-symbolism (importance of symbols, myths, values and traditions in the formation and persistence of the modern nation state) A. D. Smith


Modernism (nationalism as a recent phenomenon that requires the structural conditions of modern society in order to exist) Gellener, Kedourie

Constructivist (identity as a created sentiment, based on social, political and cultural resource – B. Anderson 1983 nation as “imagined community”)Constructions of the nation are thus potent sites of control and domination within modern society

Smith, Anthony D. "Gastronomy or geology? The role of nationalism in the reconstruction of nations." Nations and Nationalism 1, no. 1 (1994): 3-23.

"Perhaps the central question in our understanding of nationalism is the role of the

past in the creation of the present. This is certainly the area in which there have been the

sharpest divisions between theorists of nationalism.

Nationalists, perennialists, modernists and post-modernists have presented us with very

different interpretations of that role. The manner in which they have viewed the place of

ethnic history has largely determined their understanding of nations and nationalism

today”.

Thank You

development and processes of colonization and decolonization prof. stefano pelaggi caterina bassetti

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