Postcolonialism   Postcolonialism is the term that designates a range of practices in social and literary criticism that address the third world, and its relationship to the West and the results and consequences of modern colonialism. These practices, although having existed in many forms for decades, have come together and gained currency as a theory only in the last ten to twenty years. The issues addressed by postcolonialism include:   Third world nationalism The atrocities of colonialism The process of decolonization Racism’s relationship to colonialism Current racist practices Continuing Western domination of the Third World The place of women in the Third World Caste and class difference in Third World nations Ethnocentrism in global culture The relationship between identity and place The various identities that have resulted from the colonial encounter.   Colonialism and its effects can not be considered uniform; It was not practiced in the same way with identical results around the world. Nor did every region or nation follow the same process of decolonization at the same time and at the same rate. Nor did the various ethnic, political, gender, class and religious groups experience colonization in the same way and to the same extent. Rather, colonialism and the process of its end (we cannot simply say its end because the effects of colonialism and its indirect forms exist today) are collections of various and differing processes that affected colonized areas in different ways.   Continuing Western domination, the lack of self-reliance in some parts of the Third World, and the various stages of political, social, economic, and cultural development in formerly colonized nations, have let some critics to question the use of the prefix ‘post’ in postcolonialism. In suggesting the world is somehow ‘after’ colonialism, they claim we ignore the very real way it continues today.   Even defining the time period postcolonialism addresses has become controversial. Does postcolonialism begin at the moment of colonial encounter and, thus, after colonialism has begun? Or does it begin at the start of decolonization or the end of formal political colonization and, thus, at the beginning of the end of colonialism? At this time, no answer to this question can be decisively stated, yet the question remains an important issue in the field of postcolonialism.   Nevertheless, the questioning of the term ‘postcolonialism’ does not negate its usefulness as a theoretical lens with which to look at literature and the world.   What practices are included in postcolonialism? To examine, question, and critique, Western representation of race and cultural difference. To show how canonical literature as it is traditionally understood, is silent on matters of colonization and imperialism and how that literature addresses issues of race and cultural difference. To foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity. To examine hybridity and 'otherness' and to celebrate them as potential centers of cultural energy and plurality, and change. To recover marginalised voices and literatures both national and transnational that have been silenced and or suppressed by colonial and neo-colonial domination. To study the ways in which nations reconstruct their political and cultural identity after independence from colonial domination. To study and eliminate the ways in which the Western industrialized powers continue to dominate the Third World even after the end of the formal political colonialism.   Colonialism Colonialism is the process of settling and forming a community in a new locality while simultaneously subjugating or eliminating through negotiation, warfare, or genocide the populations that had previously existed in that locality. Furthermore, modern colonialism, that which was practiced by Western Europe in the last two and a half centuries, differed from previous expressions of colonialism, in that it sought to restructure the economies of colonized territories and impose on those territories Western cultures, systems of belief and forms of government, drawing the colonized territories into a complex interdependent relationship with the colonizing countries.   Imperialism Initially, imperialism meant simply the condition of ruling an empire. (An empire is a political entity formed by a central, geographically unified body of people, ruling scattered colonies composed of peoples, different cultures, different races, or different nations that differ from the ruling body’s. However, imperialism has come to designate not only political domination but also economic domination and the links between the two. With its economic dimension, imperialism stands for the process through which capitalism finds necessary labour and markets in political colonies. Thus, for example, the struggle for political independence in India contained and coincided with an effort to regain native control of the Indian economy.   Imperialism and its economic processes can continue after formal political domination has come to an end.   Neo-colonialism, neo-imperialism, Cultural Imperialism and Westernization   While the prefix ‘post’ is postcolonialism suggests that colonialism and its domination are over – are located in the past – many critics, rightly, have claimed that this domination by the West over formerly colonized areas continues today. Neo-colonialism, neo-imperialism, cultural imperialism and Westernisation are terms which designate those political economic and cultural processes through which the West maintains its domination.   Neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism are often used interchangeably. These terms refer to the continuing economic, cultural and political domination of the Third World, by the First World as a result of both the lingering legacy of colonialism and the current policies of military and economic assistance for, and economic exploitation of, developing countries.   Cultural imperialism and Westernization refer to the ways in which Western cultural forms dominate the Third World at the expense of native cultural expression. Cultural imperialism and Westernization suggest the potential for the creation of a global mass culture formed from a Western, particularly American, cultural model. Part of the project of postcolonialism is to resist the creation of this culture through the celebration of diversity and the affirmation and recovery of multiple cultural forms.   Decolonization Decolonization is the separation of the colonized nation from the colonizers. This act of separation includes formal political independence, as well as economic and cultural redefinition of the formerly colonized  nation, so as to render it distinct form the domination of the colonized power. Decolonization is a continuing process, even long after formal political independence is achieved.  Also, decolonization occurs at rates and in methods that are far from uniform.