Using concepts from postcolonial theory to understand literature

If you’ve read the preceding five chapters, you’ve seen some of the ways in which concepts from psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, LGBTQ, and African American theories focus our attention on different aspects of human experience. Specifically, you’ve seen some of the ways in which our relationship to ourselves and our world is formed by our psychological wounds; by the socioeconomic class into which we were born and to which we now belong; by the capitalist system within which we were raised; by traditional gender roles; by our sexual orientation; by our gender identity; 1 and by our race. Postcolonial theory gives us tools to explore how all of these factors—as well as ethnicity, religion, customs, education, disability, age, and other cultural factors that influence human experience—operate together or in conflict to create the ways in which we view ourselves and our world. Thus, concepts from postcolonial theory can help us understand human experience as the interaction of complex cultural forces working in each of us.