For this reason, while many writers may not directly address the issue of colonialism or postcolonialism, their writing and the assumptions behind what they express reveal a concern with such political issues. Thus, postcolonial novels that are written in postcolonial discourse adopt assumptions and attitudes which are associated with a political perspective that opposes or recognizes the effects of colonialism on the context of the novel. The majority of postcolonial theory and criticism, particularly that relating to literature, recognizes colonialism and postcolonialism as also a form of discourse, that is a socially and politically determined form of language and expression. But on the other hand, it asserts the promise, the possibility, and the continuing necessity to change, while also recognising that important challenges and changes have already been achieved.
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On the one hand, it acknowledges that the material realities and modes of representation common to colonialism are still very much with us today, even if the political map of the world has changed through decolonisation. ‘postcolonialism’ recognises both historical continuity and change. In his guide to postcolonialism, John McLeod is keen to emphasize the double faceted nature of this socio-political approach: These disruptive and displacing effects on the cultural life of the colonized nation have been the most difficult aspects of colonialism to change. This often involved the attempt by colonial rulers to define the colonized people and their nation from the colonizers’ perspective and to impose a homogeneous, authoritative historical and cultural identity on the colonized nation. It is generally agreed in postcolonial theory and criticism that the effects of colonialism were not just the imposition of one nation’s rule over another, but it included attempts to change the colonized people’s ways of thinking and belief to accept the cultural attitudes and definitions of the colonial power. Postcolonial writing can be, as in the writing of Robert Kroetsch in 1970s’ Canada, a way of reconsidering the identity of a nation after independence or it can be a means of expressing opposition to the ideas of colonialism, such as in the work of Chinua Achebe in 1950s’ and 1960s’ Nigeria. Essentially it refers to the political and social attitude that opposes colonial power, recognizes the effects of colonialism on other nations, and refers specifically to nations which have gained independence from the rule of another imperial state.
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Postcolonialism, like postmodernism, is a complex term that is still being debated and transformed. In particular the proliferation of magical realist writing in English in the closing decades of the twentieth century has coincided with the rise of the postcolonial novel to such an extent that postcolonial critics such as Elleke Boehmer in her guide to colonial and postcolonial literature see the two as ‘almost inextricable’ (1995: 235). As we can see from our discussions of transgressive, crosscultural and postmodern magical realism, these variants seek to disrupt official and defined authoritative assumptions about reality, truth and history. That is to say much of it is set in a postcolonial context and written from a postcolonial perspective that challenges the assumptions of an authoritative colonialist attitude.
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The majority of magical realist writing can be described as postcolonial.