Post-colonialism Literature the Concept of self and the other in Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians: An Analytical Approach

Abstract

In the mid-1980s the term postcolonial first appeared in the scholarly journals as subtexts in Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin's writings. By the mid-1990s, the term established itself in academic and popular discourse. Its subjects include universality, differences, nationalism, postmodernism, representation and resistance, ethnicity, feminism, language, education, history, place, and production (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 2004..Key Concepts in Postcolonial Studies, p.2) . It was born out of people's "frustrations, their direct, personal and cultural clashes with conquering culture, and their fears, hope, and dreams about the future and their own identities"(www.nku.edu). It is the literature that has been created as a voice to the powerless and the poorest members of the global community. "Postcolonial theory deals with the reading and writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries; a literature written in colonizing countries which deals with colonization or colonized peoples. It focuses particularly on: the way in which literature by the colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority, of the colonized people and on literature by colonized peoples which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of inevitable Otherness" (www.shs.westport.k12.ct.us).