Orientalism is a foundational text of postcolonial theory, a lens for examining and creating art, culture, and politics in former colonized nations in the aftermath of Western colonialism. As such, postcolonial works exist in many parts of the world and take on the specific cultural contexts of those nations; there are postcolonial movements in Latin America, Africa, Asia (including the Middle East), and Europe (in nations like Ireland and former USSR states), as well as in diaspora populations from formerly colonized nations.

Postcolonial theory emerged in the late 20th century, though many works published prior to this point are now analyzed from a postcolonial lens. One of the first postcolonial theory essays was Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, published in 1950. Césaire, a native of Martinique (a West Indies island that is still a French territory today), cofounded the Negritude movement devoted to restoring Black African cultural identity. Another Martinique writer, Frantz Fanon, was a psychoanalyst and philosopher and applied that lens in his influential book Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon was preoccupied with the psychosocial impact of colonialism on colonized people. He established that violence was an inherent tool of colonialism but also interrogated whether postcolonial governments successfully overcame the cultural violence of colonization.