ABSTRACT
Alongside poststructuralism and postmodernism, postcolonialism also pursues the project of critiquing and resisting Western modernity. However, postcolonialism undertakes to do this while constantly emphasizing the West's relationship to its others-notably the peoples of its former colonies and the indigenous populations within its own geographical enclaves. As the term would indicate, postcolonialism is indeed all about the legacies of the European colonial encounter, but it is also very much about the continued presence of Western imperialism in global institutions and relationships today. The postcolonial tradition came into being as a result of both internal critiques of Western imperialism (e.g., Marx and Raymond Williams) and the numerous decolonization movements that swept across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in the twentieth century. It is therefore a highly complex and syncretic tradition (Young, 2001) that brings diverse intellectual strands and political positions together.
