In a 19 September 1944 article for the French resistance newspaper, Combat, Albert Camus wrote, “Revolution is not revolt. What carried the Resistance for four years was revolt––the complete, obstinate, and at first nearly blind refusal to accept an order that would bring men to their knees. Revolt begins first in the human heart. But there comes a time when revolt spreads from heart to spirit, when a feeling becomes an idea, when impulse leads to concerted action. This is the moment of revolution.” This anthology examines the rhetoric of conquest and empire, freedom and rebellion in the Star Wars canon by situating the films in a theoretical context provided by Edward Said (Orientalism), Homi K. Bhabha (Locations of Culture), Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), Hannah Arendt (Between Past and Future), and Albert Camus (The Rebel). Within this postcolonial context, writers have designed and conducted their own research-based, multimodal writing projects that consider representations of the intersections between Imperialism, revolution, and identity politics on the one hand, and form, rhetoric, and the cultural implications of various Star Wars media objects on the other.
The theatrical release of Star Wars in 1977 was itself a revolutionary cultural moment––one that invites a closer examination of why and how these films have enjoyed such wide-ranging cultural impact and longevity. Yet surprisingly little scholarly work has been done to situate Star Wars within the field of Postcolonial Studies. Surprising not only because Empire and rebellion are central to the plot and themes of this space opera, but also because its release coincided with the publication of Edward Said’s influential intellectual history of the Western imperial project, Orientalism (1978), and the subsequent explosion of the Western literary canon.
As multimodal literary critics, our collective aim is to bring postcolonial studies into dialogue with media studies through a sustained, critical analysis of the Star Wars narrative. These essays move beyond depoliticized appreciations of the films to examine their historical, political, and cultural significance across the millennial divide. This means using theory to better appreciate and understand the ways in which Star Wars reinforces, complicates, and undermines postcolonial discourse, while simultaneously positioning the films as a lens that can help us interrogate postcolonial and media theories. In other words, Star Wars offers us an opportunity to examine and write toward what Michel Foucault refers to as “subjugated knowledge”[1]––that is, those discourses that are routinely disqualified by dominant ones.
While each writer has explored topics ranging widely from a Feminist reproach of the portrayal of women to a consideration of Droid Rights, and from Just War Theory to Wookie linguistics (“Can the subaltern speak?”[2]), the subject of our anthology is the relationship between representation––understood especially in terms of genre and medium––and the historical phenomenon of imperialism and of resistance to colonialism. As a paragon of political resistance and the rhetoric of retributive violence, Star Wars invites us to consider the possibilities of organized rebellion as a crucible for self-knowledge and deliberate action.
Our joint exploration of the Star Wars cinematic canon aims to introduce students to postcolonial theory and criticism. As such, they will learn, analyze, and apply central concepts of postcolonial theory, including Orientalism, The Subaltern, Hybridity, and Manichaean violence. Additionally, because our primary text is film, they will develop the ability to analyze and construct complex arguments about digital storytelling. For example, Star Wars does not simply transport preexisting ideas about empire and resistance but is itself a cultural actor influencing the ways in which we identify and criticize imperial practices as well as paramilitary revolt in the 21st Century.
[1] Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980): pp. 81-82.
[2] Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg. (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Education, 1988): pp. 271-313.