Deconstructing Colonial Tropes in Postcolonial Works of Achebe, Ngugi and Mohanty

Postcolonial writings played an important role in the deconstruction of colonial tropes whichsupported colonisation by stirring up the imagination to conquer and control. It fell upon writers toshow how representations and constructions of tropes and images in the colonialist writings weredisguised as truths, and projected colonisers with a moral responsibility to consider themselves asapostles of truth on a civilising mission who have placed their lives at great risk to redeem theindigenous tribes. Therefore even the economic exploitation of looting and plundering of the naturalresources was swept under the carpet of these writings, which provided a falsified façade to thecolonial motives. The desire to know and to interpolate culminated in the desire to control and torule. The colonial discourses that supported colonisation and the veracity of these representationswere never questioned as they were readily accepted by the west and returned with the sanction ofpower. The text became a site of power constructed by the coloniser’s selfish motives, a site whoseempowerment came from outside the realms of literary creativity.