On Doing Postcolonialism Or, How Shall We Negotiate Post-Colonial Colonialism? - Dr. Maswood Akhter

On Doing Postcolonialism Or, How Shall We Negotiate Post-Colonial Colonialism? Dr. Maswood Akhter Professor, Department of English, University of Rajshahi and Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Regis, Massachusetts, USA Email:maswood2005@gmail.com It is not the official departure of the colonial machine that has engineered, by default, the architecture of a new world-order, rather, while the colonies do not exist anymore (here of course we take colony as implying a country under direct administrative set-up or structure of governance of another, more powerful, country), colonialism – which indicates both an idea and a condition – happens to continue, albeit without its more obvious signs. The present write-up1 showcases musings on issues directly entangled with colonial memory as well as relatively autonomous of that “defining interlude” called colonialism, and explores the various facets – textual, socio-cultural, historical, political and so on – of the colonial encounter and the ways in which this encounter has shaped the colonised, that is, how the people’s concerns are determined and perspectives influenced as inhabitants of former colonies. In its own way the following discussion thus attempts to offer some insights into the colonies’ distinctive history and modern identity.