of postcolonial criticism can be traced to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
, published in French in 1961, and voicing what might be called ―cultural resistance‖ to France’s African empire‖ Barry, 2009: 186.
In addition, Barry cites Fanon’s argument that the outcasts have to take back their historical past in
order to find out the identity and voice. Besides, the colonized people must fight against the ideology of colonialist that humiliate the historical past of the
oppressed Barry, 2009: 186. Here, the ideology of colonialist is emerged in the scope of discourse.
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths Helen Tiffin state that discourse is important because it joins power and knowledge together.
―Those who have power have control of what is known and the way it is known, and those who
have such knowledge have power over those who do not ‖ Ashcroft et al, 2007:
63. Knowledge and power are particularly important in the relationships between colonizers and colonized.
The relation between postcolonialism and discourse is discussed in Said’s
book, Orientalism. Most of people believe that Orientalism is a major book of postcolonial theory. Postcolonialist reads Orientalism in order to understand
deeper the concept of postcolonialism. Orientalism is ―western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the orient‖ Said, 1994: 3. Thus, orientalism is the understandings, knowledge and the domination of
Western ideology over the Eastern world. Besides, postcolonial theory is applied to dismantle Western hegemony.
Western hegemony can be seen on the ability of the colonizers in controlling even creating the Eastern in all aspects such as politics, economies,
cultures, militaries, sciences and imaginative. In this context, creating process of eastern world generates binary opposition that places the western people in the
strong position and the eastern people in weak position: Binary oppositions are structurally related to one another, and in colonial
discourse there may be a variation of the one underlying binary –for
instance, colonizer : colonized, white : black, civilized : primitive, good : evil, beautiful : ugly Ashcroft, Griffiths Tiffin, 2007: 19.
Those practices must be dismantled by postcolonial theory. The emergence of postcolonial theory is supposed to cultivate the comprehensive understanding to
the eastern people in seeing the western ideology. Leela Gandhi in Postcolonial Theory defines postcolonialism as
―theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath
‖ Gandhi, 1998: 4. In other words, postcolonial theory is toolkit for the colonized people
to fight against the colonizers’ suppressions. The colonized people must be aware the implications of the
colonization in a long time ago. The consciousnesses of the aftermath of colonization makes colonized
people searching the strategies to reconstruct their culture, ideology, social, economy, politic and identity. This is what Asian, African, American and
Caribbean do. However, western hegemony produces cultural bias in the Eastern world. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin in The Post-colonial Studies Reader state
that postcolonial connect with cultural bias which caused by the colonial process from the beginning of the colonial contact.
4. Theory of Identity
Identity is closely related to the position within society. Hall in Questions of Cultural Identity Hall, 1996: 4 examines that identities are absolutely rupture
which cannot be collected in single unit. Identities are disintegrated and split vividly in contemporary era. They are always in process of mutation and
revolution. From previously foregrounded idea, it can be concluded that a well
known critic, Hall proposes an essential definition of identity to entire people that becomes a starting point to discover another definition of identity. Fixed identity
is something difficult for one to achieve in contemporary era. Most of the identities are constituted.
In line with Hall, Bhabha in his book The Location of Culture describes that identity is not an a priori or a finished product. According to him, it is only
the problematic process of access to an image of totality Bhabha, 2004: 73. In other words, identity is an unfinished product and it relates to questions of the
totality. However, as Bhabha and Hall contend, identity distinctly concerns with the process of the completeness of image. Definitions of identity from Bhabha and
Hall are quite general. Hogg and Abrams in their book Social Identifications: A social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes review that
―identity is people’s concepts of who they are, of what sort of people they are, and how they relate to others
‖ Hogg and Abrams, 1988: 2. Defining the conception of identity, Hogg and Abrams concern with the questions who they are and how
relationship between human beings occurs.
Subsequently, Francis M. Deng contends the definition of identity specifically. Definition of identity in his book entitled War of Visions: Conflict of
Identities in the Sudan Deng, 1995: 1 is ―the way individuals and groups define
themselves and are defined by other on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language and
culture‖. In other words, the notion of identity depends on how someone or certain group characterizes who they are. The basic identification
based on race, ethnicity, religion, language and culture. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann do not classify the term of
identity in a particular field as Deng noted earlier. Briefly, they associate the idea of identity with certain realm.
Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality clarifies that the meaning of
identity is objectively defined ―as location in a certain world and can be subjectively appropriated only along with that world
‖ Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 132. Thus, certain place is going to be a
fundamental feature in determining one’s identity. Identity is not only about place,
race, religion and culture, but also connects with narrative. The idea of narrative connects to the notion of identity. Gregory Castle in Postcolonial Discourse: An
Anthology states explicitly that ―identity is always a question of producing in the
future an account of the past, that is to say it is always about narrative, the stories which cultures tell themselves about who they are and where they came from‖
Castle, 2001: 283. Castle examines further what narrative is about. Narrative in connection with the definition of identity is the stories which tell human beings
about who they are and also where they originated from. Kum-Kum Bhavnani and
Ann Phoenix in Shifting Identities Shifting Racisms: A Feminism A Psychology Reader remark that:
identity as a word which is much used in both academic and political contexts…The notion of identity is as static, and therefore, unchanging,
is one which is not fruitful in discussing the construction of, the reproduction
through, and
the challenge
to unequal
social relatio
nships…Identity as a static and unitary trait which lies within human beings, rather than as an interactional and contextual feature of all
social relationships, has been laid to rest. Identity as dynamic aspect of social relationships, is forged and reproduced through the agency
structure dyad, and is inscribed within unequal power relationships Bhavnani and Phoenix, 1994: 6-9.
From quotation above, the writer draws conclusion that identity covers various field of human beings. Notably, Bhavnani and Phoenix depict identity as a static
and dynamic and challenging an unequal condition in social relationships between human beings. The characteristics of identity, static and dynamic, are engraved
within disproportion power of human relationships. The static identity has been rested because it is not useful in discussing of human relationships.
Actually, Bhavnani and Phoenix reveal how the static identity cannot be maintained in the contemporary era. They also emphasize dynamic identity which
always be shaped and constituted in social structure. Further, they say that the constituted identity is portrayed in the unequal relationships.
G andhi’s definition of identity is almost the same as Bahvnani and
Phoenix. The difference between them is on the object of study. Gandhi in her book entitled Postcolonial Theory focuses on the unequal relations between the
colonizers and the colonized. She says that ―identity is always underpinned by the
presence of its Other, or that every major knowledge carries within itself the possibility of a countervailing minor-
ness‖ Gandhi, 1998: 54. Alexander Wendt
