Foucault And Post-colonial Cultural Criticism,

Broadly speaking, both Foucault's theory and postcolonial cultural criticism are the parts of the postmodernism. Confronting the reflection of modernity and the deconstruction thought, they meet each other, holding the same attitude on resisting the discourse centers and stressing the difference. Foucault's study provided the postcolonial theorists a method, including the overall ideals and specific concepts, which then became the tool of the latter's political and cultural criticism. There is a theoretical influence Foucault imposed to the postcolonialism, and the most direct performance of that is the inheritance and transformation of Foucault's power/discourse theory by Edward Said. It is evident that both Said and many other postcolonial critics (especially after the publishing of "Orientalism" ) have a relationship with the knowledge framework founded by Foucault. On the basis of overall understanding, this thesis endeavor to compare Foucault's theory with postcolonialism, then generalize some common features of them. This thesis includes three parts: Firstly , it will point out their common spirit in the postmodern context by sorting out postmodernism, the postmodernity of Foucault's thought and the post-colonial theory. Secondly, it illustrates the relationship between them by analyzing the specific theory of Foucault and postcolonial theorists. In the third part, the concept "subject" will be the point to study the differences between the theory of Foucault and postcolonialism. And it summarizes that concept as one important reason for their different theory way.In the first chapter, Foucault and postcolonialism are placed on the background of postmodern trend, which has been a context and generated different plural discourse. The postcolonial cultural criticism raised in the early period of the 20th century. With the cultural resistance movement of the third world, it developed and merged with the trend of postmodern. Foucault is one of the founders of postmodernity. In his writings about history, philosophy and sociology, Foucault paid his attention to the marginal culture continuously and rewrote a different history for the "other" who is oppressed by the rationality in the contemporary society. In fact, it is approximate with the postcolonialism which emphasized resisting "central discourse" of the western society and promoted the independence of the marginal groups (the third world). We can see that they had the same resisting attitude.For fulfilling their theoretical intent, postcolonialism needed a theoretical support to confront the western central discourse in their literature, criticism works and the third world cultural. So some postcolonial theorists chose the valuable theories from western postmodern theory, then they merged the theoretical categories and analysis method into their own expression movement. In the second chapter, it analyzes the comprehension, application and transformation of Foucault's "power/discourse" theory in the postcolonialism. Foucault is an important source of the postcolonialism. His "power/discourse" theory inspired Said, Homi Bhabha and Spivak (especially Said), and introduced a powerful analysis/criticism pattern.For Foucault, the intent of writing history in various areas is to inspect the subject behind the analysis of power. The concern on subject passed through all his publications. He inspected and analyzed how the subject developed to knowledge subject, power subject and ethical subject. The postcolonialism emphasized that it is the colonialism lead to the diaspora and the crisis of self-identity. In the postcolonialism, subject developed with an outlook of "cultural identity". Both Foucault and the postcolonialism are aware that the subject is not an eternal concept about the man but the product of a social history and varied with the history. However, their scopes of subject are not the same. Foucault started his inspection of subject from opposition a philosophical concept and finally reduced it to the individual. The "subject" in the postcolonial cultural criticism is used as an entire concept on the level of class, nation and sexual distinction; it is a collective cultural subject. The postcolonialism can't agree with Foucault absolutely. They often thought Foucault was so private that deviated from their theoretical target. In the third chapter, it completes the analysis and discussion with the comparison of "subject" in Foucault and postcolonial cultural critism.