ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the emergence of postcolonialism in the 1960s. Postcolonialism was indebted to the postmodern critique of the ‘master narratives’ of Western thought, which postmodern thinkers challenged in a range of ways. However, the chapter also highlights the key distinction between postmodernism and postcolonialism: whereas postmodernism was a challenge to the authority of Western thought from within, postcolonialism contested the dominance of the West from without, and sought to establish an alternative to it. Historical facts were very important in postcolonial thought; the key issue was to challenge the emphasis on certain facts at the expense of others. This is illustrated by exploring the commemoration of the bicentenary of the British Abolition Act of 1807, which banned the Atlantic slave trade. The official British narrative in 2007 emphasized the moral leadership of the British, and the heroism of white abolitionists such as William Wilberforce. In the Caribbean, in contrast, and also for black British and other critics in the UK, the vast human costs of slavery, and the huge profits that accrued to British slave-owners, seemed more salient. The case study thus shows how the insights of postcolonialism continue to challenge and to expand the ways in which we remember and represent the past.
