Unthinking Coloniality Refashioning Paracolonial Identity through History in Neocolonial Contexts

This article focus on the issues in close relationship with the identity refashioning during transition periods in Iran, Malaysia and the West Indies as reflected in the literary and historical documentations registered during the transitional periods in transcolonial and neocolonial settings under the light of the notion of power in the form oflanguage, history and culture. The motifs of cultural diaspora and identity bewilderment are depicted in the works of some colonial and postcolonial authors such as Naipaul, Ondaatje, Achebe and others in their literary and non-literary creations like novels, short stories and travelogues. Power and its tools including language are essential in creation of realities and identities of the readers and through them the commons. The current study intends to analyze both travel and fictional narratives to explore the way the depictions of situations are related to the idea of power and how those in power positions create identities and realities for the rest in the postcolonial and neocolonial societies, especially during the transition periods. History, closely interconnected with language and its creative features is usually inferred or interpreted by the powerholders based on historical facts that are by no means perfect. This in turn contributes to the creation of unreal stories and interpretation of them into false conclusions under the influence of linguistic elements which lead to creation of fiction and the impact of the mood and viewpoint of the writer or narrator. Therefore, histories are also forms offictions, at least partly, that are presented under the guise of factual reality. Power holders manipulate some social phenomena such as language, religion, race, nationality and the like to create images of the events of which the main outcome is a selective presentation of distorted facts in those societies and creation of fictional realities to convince the subjects of the imposed, and preferred, realities. A second result of these creations is the formation of identity directly or indirectly under the guise of the created values and boundaries called nationalism. The same thing happens to colonial nations leading to creation of identities and histories, sometimes based on false realities, which is the subject of investigation of this research. These fabrications are expected in transnational, transcolonial and neocolonial societies more than others to compensate for the lost identity in the wake of long history of colonization and domination by the colonial and neo-colonial powers. This research discusses the notion of power in the form of history in connection to the motifs of diaspora and exile as delineated in transnational, transcolonial and postcolonial terrains reflected in some colonial, postcolonial and neocolonial writers’, like Naipaul, literary and non-literary creations such as novels, short stories and travelogues. Power and its tools are essential in creation of realities and identities through history

کلیدواژه ها:

Postcolonial ، Trancolonoal ، Neocolonial ، Paracolonial ، Foucauldian Notion of Power ، History