page_title: Postcolonialism
section_title: Asia
hierarchical_section_title: Postcolonialism / Application / Asia
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of French Indochina from the colonial period showing its six subdivisions: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchine, Cambodge, Laos and Kwangchow Wan.
context_page_description: Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a critical-theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of imperial power.
  Postcolonialism encompasses a wide variety of approaches, and theoreticians may not always agree on a common set of definitions. On a simple level, through anthropological study, it may seek to build a better understanding of colonial life—based on the assumption that the colonial rulers are unreliable narrators—from the point of view of the colonized people. On a deeper level, postcolonialism examines the social and political power relationships that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism, including the social, political and cultural narratives surrounding the colonizer and the colonized. This approach may overlap with studies of contemporary history, and may also draw examples from anthropology, historiography, political science, philosophy, sociology, and human geography.
context_section_description: French Indochina was divided into five subdivisions: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia, and Laos. Cochinchina (southern Vietnam) was the first territory under French control; Saigon was conquered in 1859; and in 1887, the Indochinese Union (Union indochinoise) was established.
  In 1924, Nguyen Ai Quoc (aka Ho Chi Minh) wrote the first critical text against the French colonization: Le Procès de la colonization française ('French Colonization on Trial')
  Trinh T. Minh-ha has been developing her innovative theories about postcolonialism in various means of expression, literature, films, and teaching. She is best known for her documentary film Reassemblage (1982), in which she attempts to deconstruct anthropology as a "western male hegemonic ideology." In 1989, she wrote Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, in which she focuses on the acknowledgement of oral tradition.
caption: Map of French Indochina from the colonial period showing its five subdivisions: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos. (Click image for key)
exif: {}