The Big Names in Postcolonial Theory
The Old Guard
You can basically split the "'big players"' into two camps. There's the old guard— Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, and Edward Said—who came into the academic vanguard at a time when social and political upheaval were the norm.
Like how? Fanon was active in the Algerian Revolutionary War. Achebe grew up in Nigeria under a colonial regime and later supported the Biafra's independence from Nigeria. Said, a Palestinian-American, wrote and published his first major work during the 1970s, when various nations in the Middle East were in political turmoil, including Palestine.
Plus, in general, the 1960s and 1970s were all about countercultures and revolutions, not just in the US but in places like France as well. Civil Rights, feminism, gay and lesbian recognition, student demands, flower children, you name it.
So, the guys from that era are like the daddies and granddaddies of postcolonialism and they definitely didn't go easy on the colonizers. Their books all share an "us" vs. "them" mentality and the idea that colonialism was definitely a racist thing against dark-skinned people.
The New Guard
And in truth, more recent postcolonial theorists like the writers of The Empire Writes Back (Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin) also recognize the racist underpinnings of imperial enterprises. What's the difference then?
The new guard is a lot more diverse, both in terms of race and nationality (Ashcroft and his group are Australian, for example). What comes with those differences is a greater openness about who postcolonials are and what postcolonials can do.
That leads us to Homi Bhabha, also of the new guard and super-famous for his convoluted theory-speak. Oh—and he actually has his very own theory too: hybridity. What's that, you say? Bhabha basically argues that even when the colonized "mimic" their colonizers through speech and whatnot, the effect is so weird and alienating for the colonizers that the whole "hybrid" persona of the colonized becomes a form of political resistance. Take that!
In other words, the colonized can literally become a walking political statement by acting like the colonizer, especially if the colonized do their mimicking in a mocking or ironic way (more like mi-mock-ry). Think of it like the kid at the back of the classroom who mocks a teacher by acting like the teacher (by the way, we're not suggesting you do this in class).
Is there animosity between the two camps? Eh. Sure, but not so much from the people themselves. They're kind of above all that (because they can be). Most of the mud-slinging comes from critics of these people, and most of the criticism is directed at the young folk for all their newfangled ideas about what counts as "political" and what or who counts as "postcolonial."
The Queen Bee
No, not the queen of England, though she's got her thoughts about colonialism too.
The poco queen is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—a category unto herself. The lone female of the early days of poco, she's kind of beyond everyone. Heck, she's even kind of beyond the deconstruction demon himself, Derrida, whom she translated into English (take a look at Of Grammatology). If you've read Derrida or know anything about deconstruction, then you know just how much of a crazy genius you have to be to understand and then translate him to the English-speaking masses (okay, the masses of graduate students and theory nerds).
What is Spivak known for, besides making Derrida comprehensible (well, readable) in English? She's known for fusing poststructuralist ideas with postcolonial ideas while critiquing both at the same time. On top of originating a lot of the ideas at the very foundation of postcolonial theory, she stays politically active and has founded a non-profit organization that provides primary education to poor kids around the world. Not bad for an academic!
The Queen Bee's Buzz
And like the other heavy-hitters, Spivak's got plenty of her own theories out there—like strategic essentialism, which takes a big theoretical no-no ("essentialism," or the tendency to view things in terms of some stereotypical "essence") and turns it into a politically viable and necessary thing for colonized people ("strategic"). And that's just scratching the surface.
Her landmark essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" talked about how imperialist ways of thinking traditionally don't let colonized folks have their own say. So how can they say stuff? Through postcolonialism, of course.
Another key thing about Spivak's work, especially the stuff on subalternity, is how she keeps the subaltern woman front and center in all these conversations about the "colonized." The fact that women around the globe are often the most victimized, but also the most politically active in the fight against imperial and neo-colonial values (which are often patriarchal), is an idea that can sometimes get lost with all the testosterone flying around in the field.