A) Post-Colonialism & Liberation Theology

1) Post-Colonialism

a) Postcolonialism (postcolonial theory, post-colonial theory) is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theories found among the texts and sub-texts of philosophy, film, political science and literature. These theories are reactions to the cultural legacy of colonialism. [w]

b) "Culture becomes as much an uncomfortable, disturbing practice of survival and supplementarity -- between art and politics, past and present, the public and private -- as its resplendent being is a moment of pleasure, enlightenment or liberation. It is from such narrative positions that the postcolonial prerogative seeks to affirm and extend a new collaborative dimension, both within the margins of nation-space and across boundaries between nations and peoples. My use of post-structuralist theory emerges from this postcolonial contramodernity. I attempt to represent [read re-present - pop] a certain defeat, or even an impossibility, of the 'West' in its authorization of the 'idea' of colonization. . . .I have tried in some small measure to revise the known, to rename the postmodern from the position of the postcolonial." [b p. 252]

c) Dynamics of Culture: Three perspectives that highlight instability in the dynamics of culture. One is the characterization of oppression in cultures, and in fact, my title is a take-off of Bhabha‘s title, The Location of Culture. I hesitate to use the term post-colonialism (an off-shoot of critical theory and post-structuralism) since so many of these philosophical traditions evolve very fast and share so much despite some significant differences. The second is language. All these theorists place great emphasis on language and communications as being inextricably tied to culture. And the third, is an area of particular interest to me, that of systems theory for the insights it gives to understanding and empowering cultural change. [A1]

d) “Postcolonialism deals with cultural identity in colonised societies: the dilemmas of developing a national identity after colonial rule; the ways in which writers articulate and celebrate that identity (often reclaiming it from and maintaining strong connections with the coloniser); the ways in which the knowledge of the colonised (subordinated) people has been generated and used to serve the coloniser's interests; and the ways in which the coloniser's literature has justified colonialism via images of the colonised as a perpetually inferior people, society and culture. These inward struggles of identity, history, and future possibilities often occur in the metropolis and, ironically, with the aid of postcolonial structures of power, such as universities. Not surprisingly, many contemporary postcolonial writers reside in London, Paris, New York and Madrid.
”The creation of binary opposition structures the way we view others. In the case of colonialism, the Oriental and the Westerner were distinguished as different from each other (i.e. the emotional, decadent Orient vs. the principled, progressive Occident). This opposition justified the "white man's burden," the coloniser's self-perceived "destiny to rule" subordinate peoples. In contrast, post-colonialism seeks out areas of hybridity and transculturalization. This aspect is particularly relevant during processes of globalization. [w]

e) “The term ‘postcolonial,’ in a very general sense, it is the study of the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized in the modern period. The European empire is said to have held sway over more than 85% of the rest of the globe by the time of the First World War, having consolidated its control over several centuries. The sheer extent and duration of the European empire and its disintegration after the Second World War have led to widespread interest in postcolonial literature and criticism in our own times.” [gt]

f) “Postcolonial’ sometimes includes countries that have yet to achieve independence, or people in First World countries who are minorities, or even independent colonies that now contend with ‘neocolonial’ forms of subjugation through expanding capitalism and globalization. In all of these senses, the ‘postcolonial,’ rather than indicating only a specific and materially historical event, seems to describe the second half of the twentieth-century in general as a period in the aftermath of the heyday of colonialism. Even more generically, the ‘postcolonial’ is used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism. Western ways of knowledge production and dissemination in the past and present then become objects of study for those seeking alternative means of expression. As the foregoing discussion suggests, the term thus yokes a diverse range of experiences, cultures, and problems; the resultant confusion is perhaps predictable.” [eu]

g) “In Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins write: "the term postcolonialism – according to a too-rigid etymology – is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state, Not a naïve teleological sequence which supersedes colonialism, postcolonialism is, rather, an engagement with and contestation of colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies ... A theory of postcolonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism."[w]

h) “So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.” [s]

2) Father Paulo Freire—“More challenging is Freire's strong aversion to the teacher-student dichotomy. This dichotomy is admitted in Rousseau and constrained in Dewey, but Freire comes close to insisting that it should be completely abolished. This is hard to imagine in absolute terms, since there must be some enactment of the teacher-student relationship in the parent-child relationship, but what Freire suggests is that a deep reciprocity be inserted into our notions of teacher and student. Freire wants us to think in terms of teacher-student and student-teacher - that is, a teacher who learns and a learner who teaches - as the basic roles of classroom participation.

“This is one of the few attempts anywhere to implement something like democracy as an educational method and not merely a goal of democratic education. Even Dewey, for whom democracy was a touchstone, did not integrate democratic practices fully into his methods, though this was in part a function of Dewey's attitudes toward individuality. In its strongest early form this kind of classroom has been criticized on the grounds that it can mask rather than overcome the teacher's authority. [w]

3) John Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: “My title is The birth of Christianity, and that requires two explanations. First, about the word birth. Conceptions are usually more private and hidden than births. Christianity’s conception was the kingdom-of-God movement as Jesus and his first companions lived in radical but nonviolent resistance to Herod Antipas’s urban development and Rome’s rural commercialism in Lower Galilee of the late 20s. Christianity’s birt was in that movement continuation as those same companions wrestled not only to imitate Jesus’ life but also to understand Jesus’ death. . . Now about the word Christianity. If you can hear that term only as a religion separate from or even inimical to Judaism, you are not hearing it as intended in this book. I use Christianity to mean Christian Judaism, just as I use Essenism, Pahaiasism or Suducceism to mean Essene Judaism, Pharisaic Judaism, or Sudduceean Judaism. The are all divergent, competing, and mutually hostile options within the Jewish homeland as it struggled to withstand Greek cultural internationalism and Roman military imperialism. What was Christian Judaism before Paul and without Paul?” [c pp. x-xi]

4) Liberation theology is a school of theology within Christianity, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church. It emphasises the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism. Its theologians consider sin the root source of poverty, recognizing sin as capitalism, and capitalism as class war by the rich against the poor.
”The data suggest that Christian socialism and the Christian left continue to constitute significant phenomena in many countries.” [w]