1. Identify the postcolonial critics who used the ideas of Lacan, Foucault and Derrida while critiquing ‘Euro-centrism’?
[A] Homi Bhabha
[B] Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak
[C] Abdul Jan Mohammad
[D] Edward said
[E] Amie Cesaire
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
[1]A,B C and D only
[2] A, and D only
[3] A,B C only
[4] C and D only
Answer: [1]A,B C and D only
2. The rejection of “Universalism” is a mark of :
(A) Deconstruction
(B) New Historicism
(C) Structuralism
(D) Postcolonial criticism
Answer: D
3. The Muse of History is a classic postcolonial essay by :
(A) Ngugi wa Thiongo
(B) Chinua Achebe
(C) Wilson Harris
(D) Derek Walcott
Answer: D
4. Which of the following works cannot be categorised under postcolonial theory?
(A) Nation and Narration
(B) Orientalism
(C) Discipline and Punish
(D) White Mythologies
Answer: (C)
5. Yasmine Gooneratne’s The Pleasures of Conquest termed as a postcolonial novel of the nineties is ironically enough set in the tropical island nation of
(A) Sri Lanka
(B) Fiji
(C) The Caribbean
(D) Amnesia
Answer: D
6. Who among the following postcolonial critics worked on the fiction of Joseph Conrad in his/her early career?
(1) Edward Said
(2) G.C. Spivak
(3) Homi Bhabha
(4) Dipesh Chakrabarty
Answer: 1
7. In the following list, which two journals relate to the field of postcolonial literature?
1. Kunapipi
2. Interventions
3. Daedalus
4. Clio
Choose the correct option
1. (a) and (c)
2. (b) and (c)
3. (c) and (d)
4. (a) and (b)
Answer: 4
Franz Fanon
1. Preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was written by
(A) Aime Cesaire
(B) AniaLoomba
(C) Jean Paul Sartre
(D) Edward Said
Answer: (C)
2. The author of Black Skin, White Masks is
(A) Ngugi wa Thiong’o
(B) Frantz Fanon
(C) Richard Wright
(D) Martin Luther King (Jr.)
Answer: B
3. To Frantz Fanon, the ‘Negro’ village is
1. the worst face of apartheid
2. a protected area
3. a place of moral and physical degradation
4. a special village with its own amenities.
(A) 1 and 3 are correct
(B) 1 and 2 are correct
(C) only 3 is correct
(D) only 4 is correct
Answer: A
4. Which of the following statements best articulates Frantz Fanon’s political position?
A- Colonialism will die a natural death sans any violent struggle against it
B- Peasants and social outcasts have little revolutionary potential in Africa.,
C- Social oppression in the third world is a matter more of race than of class.,
D- The African bourgeoisie can never succeed in the task of nation building.,
Answer: D
Edward Said
1. Which of the following statements is the most accurate regarding Edward Said’s thesis in Orientalism
(i) The Europeans used the East dialectically to describe their self-image as irrational and primitive. (ii) The Oriental people used the West dialectically to dene their self-image as irrational and primitive.
(iii) The Europeans used the East oppositionally to dene their self-image as rational and modern.
(iv) The Oriental people used the West oppositionally to dene their self-image as rational and modern.
(A) (iii)
(B) (iv)
(C) (i) and (iv)
(D) (ii) and (iii)
Answer: A
2. Which of the following is not true of Edward Said’s Orientalism?
(A) Makes use of Foucault’s concept of discursive formulation
(B) Is one of the founding texts of Postcolonial theory
(C) Makes use of Barthes’s concept of writerly text
(D) Utilises the Gramscian notion of hegemony
Answer: (C)
3. Who among the following postcolonial critics worked on the fiction of Joseph Conrad in his/her early career?
(1) Edward Said
(2) G.C. Spivak
(3) Homi Bhabha
(4) Dipesh Chakrabarty
Answer: 1
4. Edward Said’s well-known book Orientalism was published in
(A) 1978
(B) 1968
(C) 2008
(D) 1988
Answer: A
5. Edward Said points to two forms of orientalism. They are
(A) Real and fake
(B) Voluntary and involuntary
(C) Subjective and objective
(D) Latent and manifest
Answer: (D)
Homi K Bhabha
1. The author of Nation and Narration is
(A) Edward Said
(B) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(C) Frantz Fanon
(D) Homi Bhabha
Answer: D
2. In which of his essays does Homi Bhabha discuss the ‘discovery’ of English in colonial India?
(A) “Signs taken for Wonders”
(B) “Mimicry”
(C) Nation and Narration
(D) “The Commitment to Theory”
Answer: (A)
3. Combine the statements correctly: According to Homi Bhabha________
1. Mimicry is not mere copying or emulating the colonizer’s culture, behaviour and manners.
2. But it is further aimed at perfection and excess.
3. Mimicry is mere copying the colonizer’s culture, behaviour and manners…
4. But is informed by both mockery and a certain menace.
(A) 1 and 4
(B) 1 and 2
(C) 3 and 4
(D) 3 and 2
Answer: (A)
Gayathri Spivak
1. Who among the following developed the term strategic essentialism ?
(A) Edward Said
(B) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(C) Homi Bhabha
(D) Aijaz Ahmed
Answer: B
2. Who was the original English translator for Of Grammatology?
(1) Samuel Weber
(2) G.C. Spivak
(3) Paul de Man
(4) Jean-luc Nancy
Answer: 2
3. . From whom does Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak borrow the term ‘subaltern’?
A. Friedrich Engels
B. Karl Marx
C. Louis Althusser
D. Antonio Gramsci
Answer: D
Edward Soja
1. “From a Second Space perspective city space becomes more of a mental and ideational field, conceptualised in imagery, reflexive thought and symbolic representation, a conceived space of the imagination or what I will henceforth describe as the urban imagery.” (Edward Soja, Post metropolis) Which of the following statements cannot be applied to Soja’s proposition on the Second Space?
(A) Second Space perspective tends to be more subjective.
(B) Second Space perspective is concerned with symbolic representation of reality.
(C) Second Space perspective is concerned with the fundamentally materialist approach.
(D) Second Space perspective deals with ‘thoughts about space’.
Answers: (C)
Benedict Anderson
1. “Imagined Communities” is a concept propounded by
(A) Benedict Anderson
(B) Homi Bhabha
(C) Aijaz Ahmed
(D) Partha Chatterjee
Answer: A
2. In a remarkably proleptic insight, a critic wrote the following, anticipating Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as “an imagined political community”:
“Most novels are in some sense knowable communities. It is part of a traditional method — an underlying stance and approach — that a novelist offers to show people and their relationships in essentially knowable and communicable ways”.
Name the critic and the reference
(1) Van Wyck Brooks, The writer in America
(2) Raymond Williams, The country and the city
(3) Joseph Wood Krutch, The Modern Temper
(4) T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards a Definition of culture
Answer: 2
3. Imagined Communities is a book by
(A) Aijaz Ahmad
(B) Edward Said
(C) Perry Anderson
(D) Benedict Anderson
Answer: D
4. Which statement is not true of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities?
(A) It is a prosaic response to the myth of El Dorado.
(B) It is subtitled Reactions on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
(C) In this book, Anderson advances the view that nations are not natural entities but narrative constructs.
(D) In Anderson’s view, modern nationalism was basically a consequence of the convergence of capitalism, the new print technology and the complexity that resulted from print extending to ‘Vernacular’ languages.
Answer: (A)
5. Who among the following drew attentive to the role of print languages in enabling the rise and spread of nationalism ?
a. Ernest Gellner
b. Charles Jenks
c. Benedict Anderson
d. Frederic Jameson
Answer: C
Antonio Negri
1. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri prefer to use Empire rather than imperialism. According to them
(1) There is only one empire and we had better recognize it. Hence the Empire with E upper case
(2) There may he many empires hut only one is patently visible and operational. That is denoted by Empire with E upper case
(3) The present day empire does not have an identifiable location or centre. Hence we ought to differentiate this view of Empire with E upper case
(4) The culturally dominant global empire is the only one that really matters. We signify that Empire with E upper case
Answer: 3
Salman Rushdie
1. Which of the following books by Salman Rushdie refers to the 15th Century Spain as a starting point ?
(A) Haroun and the Sea of Stories
(B) The Moor’s Last Sigh
(C) Shame
(D) Grimus
Answer: D
2. Salman Rushdie’s Shame is set in :
(A) East Pakistan
(B) India and Pakistan
(C) Pakistan
(D) None of the above
Answer: C
3. A fatwa was issued in Salman Rushdie’s name following the publication of :
(A) Midnight’s Children
(B) Shame
(C) Satanic Verses
(D) Grimus
Answer: C
4. The literary prize, Booker of Bookers, was awarded to
(A) J.M. Coetzee
(B) Nadine Gordimer
(C) Martin Amis
(D) Salman Rushdie
Answer: D
5. Thomas Babington Macaulay, the writer of the infamous Minute of 1835, finds a mention in Salman Rushdie’s
(A) Midnight’s Children
(B) Shame
(C) The Moor’s Last Sigh
(D) Fury
Answer: C
6. Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands” is _______.
(A) a discussion of imperialist assumptions.
(B) an essay that propounds an anti essentialist view of place.
(C) an existential lament on triumphant colonialism.
(D) an orientalist description of his favourite homelands.
Answer: B
7. Literary works by post-modern British writers such as Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie and Jeanette Winterson generally tend to share which of the following characteristics?
(A) The use of fragmented narrative structures with multiple shifts in consciousness, chronology and location.
(B) An emphasis on the rich universality of life in cultures and countries all over the world.
(C) A sense of sentimental nostalgia for nineteenth and early twentieth century life, typically expressed in rueful, melancholic tones.
(D) The use of brief, economic literary forms and a spare, astringent literary style.
Answer: (A)
8. Which of the following novels acted as an influence on Salman Rushdie in forging a new narrative style in English?
(A) Raja Rao’s Kanthapura
(B) G.V. Desani’s All about H Hatterr
(C) Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable
(D) R.K. Narayan’s The Sweet Vendor
Answer: (B)