REWRITING COLONIALISM: A REVIEW OF POWER, REPRESENTATION, AND RESISTANCE IN THE POSTCOLONIAL CONTEMPORARY NOVELS

Abstract

This study examines how colonialism and imperial power are portrayed in contemporary novels. It concerns a claim that the contemporary novel is heavily influenced by the ideological and material circumstances of European imperial expansion and by the artificial reorganization of not only political and economic structures but also literary forms of presentation. The paper draws on postcolonial theory, particularly the works of Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, to discuss how the discourse of colonization is used to construct and negotiate power, identity, and cultural difference. Comparative analysis of the texts allows the researchers to indicate that Conrad and Orwell reveal the contradictions of morality and the psychological tensions that underlie imperial rule. Nevertheless, their stories remain limited by Eurocentric epistemologies that push local voices to the periphery and sustain hierarchical portrayals of the colonized. The image of Africa created by Conrad, though critical of imperial brutality, has been criticized for dehumanizing it. In contrast, Orwell's image of colonial Burma casts the colonizer’s ethical dilemmas in terms of native agency. Achebe's Things Fall Apart, on the contrary, provides an important intervention by reinventing the indigenous subjectivity and confronting the mainstream colonial discourses. Achebe reasserts narrative control by anticipating Igbo cultural complexity, internal views, and challenges, thereby silencing the subaltern. The paper concludes that the contemporary novel is both a contested discursive positioning of imperial ideology and a site of postcolonial resistance. As the European writing indicates the disjuncture in imperial discourse, it is limited in unravelling its structural presumptions. However, Achebe marks a turning point in the decolonization of literary representation and the reinstatement of cultural agency.