Date of Publication :22nd October 2020

Abstract: Culture is the knowledge about humanity which is learnt or acquired and not inborn. It draws ideas from Marxism, feminism, popular culture, racial and ethnic studies and more. Recently three types of cultural studies that are getting particular notice are new historicism, postcolonialism and American multiculturalism. All are concerned with social and cultural forces that create a community or that threaten it. Group engaged in cultural Studies share the assumption that within any society there is a dominant group that determines what is acceptable and what is unacceptable for the larger body. Cultural critics challenge the powerful and promote the voices of those unheard. Many literary texts highlight how with the coming of colonial power different cultures collided and the culture of the subjects are usurped by the colonizers whose culture is considered as superior. Colonialism involves political, economic and cultural domination. It is concerned with what happens to a culture from the beginning of colonization to the present. Postcolonial literature which is written by culturally displaced people, investigates the clash of cultures in which one deems itself to be superior and imposes its own practices on the less powerful one. I will try to analyze cultural clashes in postcolonial countries and demonstrate a gradual influence and impact of the British Empire in Chinua Achebe’s novels.

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