dhruvikagohel's blog: Unit 4: Articles on Postcolonial Studies

Articles on Postcolonial Studies

Hello learners. I'm a student I'm writing this blog as a part of thinking activity. This task is assign by Dilip sir Barad. So, this blog is based on five articles on postcolonial studies. So, in which I have tried to some answer in interesting questions.

Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Identities

In “Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies”, Dilip Barad examines how globalization especially in the era of the so-called New American Empire and the Global War on Terror following 9/11 reshapes postcolonial identities and power relations . Influenced by scholars like Friedman, Hardt & Negri, Stiglitz and Chomsky, the article explores the tensions between neoliberal capitalism and resistance, and situates globalization 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution as both opportunity and further colonizing force .

🔷 How Globalization Reshapes Postcolonial Identities

Barad argues that globalization undermines the clear-cut binary of colonizer/colonized by making power diffuse yet deeply entrenched through transnational corporations, media flows, and global regimes of security and finance. For formerly colonized societies, this means cultural hybridity but also economic dependency. As Chomsky points out, global capitalism perpetuates inequality, while the “Global War on Terror” normalizes violence and Orientalist stereotyping against non-Western peoples .

A compelling cinematic counterpart is Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist adapted from Mohsin Hamid framed in Barad’s module. The film illustrates the identity crisis faced by the Pakistani protagonist Kane as global markets and geopolitical conflict produce a divided self caught between ambition in New York and alienation post-9/11.

🔷 Postcolonial Critique and Fiction in a Globalized World

In “Globalization and Fiction: Exploring Postcolonial Critique and Literary Representations”, Barad analyzes how contemporary novels from Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness to Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, and others register globalization’s uneven impacts while asserting subaltern perspectives . These works depict resistance, hybridity, economic oppression, and the moral ambiguities of upward mobility in a transnational world.

Fiction as Postcolonial Resistance

Adiga’s The White Tiger, for instance, narrates the rise of a driver turned entrepreneur who critiques both Indian caste hierarchy and global capitalist ambition. Roy’s novel traverses zones of communal violence, gendered displacement and diaspora, weaving an image of global injustice and subaltern survival.

Turning to film, Slumdog Millionaire (though directed by a British filmmaker) dramatizes Mumbai’s underclass negotiating global media attention and neoliberal aspiration. Jamal’s trajectory reflects hybridity: steeped in local poverty yet propelled by a global media logic (the game show). The film raises questions about upward mobility under capitalism and the commodification of subaltern bodies.

🔷 Toward Ecological Justice: Postcolonial Studies in the Anthropocene

postcolonial ecocriticism argues that colonized and marginalized communities bear disproportionate ecological burdens due to extractive economies, climate vulnerability and uneven development. Postcolonial Studies in the Anthropocene would stress how former colonies face sea-level rise, resource depletion, and environmental injustice tied to global capitalist mechanisms.

Filmic Reflection

A film that resonates is Beasts of the Southern Wild (USA, 2012), though set in Louisiana yet imagine shifting that logic to Pacific islanders or Sundarbans communities: living on the front lines of climate change, yet ignored by global policy. Another powerful example: Kadvi Hawa (2017, India) depicts rural farmers in Uttar Pradesh confronting drought and extreme heat, emphasizing how neoliberal development has undermined ecological resilience in postcolonial landscapes.

In these stories, the postcolonial subject is not only culturally disrupted, but ecologically dispossessed emphasizing the intersection between colonial derivative development and climate vulnerability.

🔷 Hollywood, Hegemony, and Postcolonial Critique

The article explores Rambo and James Bond as emblematic of Hollywood’s projection of U.S. imperial power spreading geopolitical narratives of dominance, heroism, and moral authority. Such films erase local contexts and valorize Western intervention echoing Orientalist tropes and reinforcing the "New American Empire" narratives Barad discusses.

Postcolonial Film Counterpoints

Films like District 9 (South Africa-Canada) and Avatar (global blockbuster) depict allegories of imperial extraction and indigenous resistance. District 9 uses sci-fi to critique apartheid-style segregation and xenophobia; Avatar stages colonial invasion of Pandora and indigenous Naʼvi resistance paralleling postcolonial struggles. Equally, The Last King of Scotland depicts Western complicity in African dictatorships.

These narratives open space for postcolonial critique: they challenge hegemonic storytelling and invite us to recognize whose perspectives are erased or marginalized in mainstream cinema.

🔷 Reimagining Resistance: Agency and Appropriation

The article discusses RRR, S. S. Rajamouli’s film, where tribal resistance heroes are reimagined appropriated into pan-Indian nationalist discourse. The movie transforms indigenous subaltern figures into grand mythic icons, aligning them with national power structures.

Critical Reflections

While RRR empowers marginalized histories, it can also gloss over the lived struggles of actual tribal communities by mythologizing them into cinematic spectacle. Authentic subaltern voices risk being flattened in favor of national myth-making.

Compare this to films like Land of the Gods (God’s Own Country) or Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), where indigenous characters claim narrative space, agency, and cultural specifitcit without being subsumed into heroic nationalist spectacle.

🔷 Broader Implications

These analyses show that in today’s globalized world, postcolonial identities become sites of contestation not only culturally, but economically and ecologically. Global capitalism, security regimes, and media flows re-inscribe colonial power in new forms, yet texts and films continue to resist, critique, and reshape narratives.

By engaging Barad’s articles alongside chosen films from The Reluctant Fundamentalist to RRR, Slumdog Millionaire, Kadvi Hawa, Avatar we see how postcolonial critique remains vital. Authors and filmmakers from formerly colonized societies navigate hybridity, identity crisis, resistance, appropriation, and environmental precarity to map the complexities of living in a globalized era.

🔷 Conclusion

Globalization does not merely blur borders it reconfigures cultural, economic, and ecological terrains. Postcolonial critique, as outlined by Barad, offers tools to analyze how power operates through capital, culture, media, and environment. Fiction and film from postcolonial contexts illuminate how individuals and communities negotiate identity, resistance, and resilience.

In a world shaped by climate crisis, digital media flows, and shifting imperial dynamics, postcolonial studies help us understand how formerly colonized peoples are both subjected by and resilient within global systems. Films like The Reluctant Fundamentalist, RRR, or Kadvi Hawa resonate deeply with these themes, bridging theory and lived experience, and encouraging us to see postcolonial identities not as relics of the past but as active, evolving participants in global discourse.