Definition of "postcolonialism"

postcolonialism

noun
countable and uncountable, plural postcolonialisms
1. An era or attitude relating to the period after the settlement of one country by another, or very broadly, after the 1960s, when many colonised countries gained their independence.
2. An academic discipline that attempts to analyse, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism.
  Quotations
  As a literary theory, postcolonialism examines literature produced both by authors in colonial countries and by colonized peoples responding to colonial legacies by ‘writing back’, or challenging colonial cultural attitudes through literature.
  2009, Cheryl McEwan, Postcolonialism and Development, Routledge, page 23
  There can be no doubt that Derrida's contribution to postcolonialism is not as clearly politicized as that of Fanon, Sartre or Gandhi, but it is nevertheless crucial in its careful consideration of the contrasting ethics and politics that might inform postcolonial thought.
  2014, Jane Hiddleston, Understanding Postcolonialism, Routledge, page 112