Scholarly Research Journal for Humanity Science & English Language,
Online ISSN 2348-3083, SJ IMPACT FACTOR 2021: 7.278, www.srjis.com
PEER REVIEWED & REFEREED JOURNAL, APRIL-MAY, 2022, VOL-10/51
Copyright © 2022, Scholarly Research Journal for Humanity Science & English Language
ISSUE OF IDENTITY IN THE POSTCOLONIAL WORLD
Ankita Chaudhary
Assistant Professor, School of Humanities, Abhilashi University, Mandi
chaudharyatkish@gmail.com
Paper Received On: 25 MAY 2022
Peer Reviewed On: 31 MAY 2022
Published On: 1 JUNE 2022
This research will explore the issue of identity in postcolonial literature. In the modern world with the
increasein immigrant numbers, hybrid nations, and the constitution of countries with different cultural
diversities the question of identity came to the surface. The research will present and discuss those
theorists' arguments about the issue of identity in the postcolonial world and how they viewed and
presented their ideas about constructing identity in former colonized countries and immigrants from
these countries who suffered from facing the diasporas and the dilemma of the difficulty to construct
their identity. The paper will investigate postcolonial novelists, especially writers in former British
colonies such as V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, and Tayeb Salih. As postcolonial theorists considered the
issue of identity as one of its essential discussions, novelists also exposed and expressed the conditions
of identity crises that emerged in the post-colonial period. The method will undertake to apply
postcolonial theories to the works of the above-mentioned novelists.
Keywords: Postcolonialism, Identity, Hybridity, Mimicry, Orientalism
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Postcolonial is a term used for an era when colonies achieved freedom from European
colonization. Bill Ashcroft et al state in The Empire Writes Back
more than three-quarters of the people living in the world today have had their lives shaped
by the experience of colonialism. Though there was a political change, many nations got
independence and no more they are colonies, but culturally and economically there appeared
many dilemmas and crises, and they were still in confusion about their culture and identity.
This appearance of national and ethnic identity dilemmas and endurance in previous- present
gap "defined and redefined after the collapse of the Empire, the continuous movement between
margin and center (be it spatially, socially or metaphorically circumscribed), the interpretation
and reinterpretation of common history. (Ashcroft et al.)
Colonialism was not only a power control but it was a cultural control by the colonizer,
to which still colonized people were tied. The struggle of the colonized subjects for their
Abstract