TEXT AND SIGN

CAMELIA ELIAS Dept of Culture and Identity, English Program

postcolonialist/diaspora theories

session 4

post(-)colonialism

 With or without a hyphen  post-colonialism (chronological separation)  postcolonialism (no chronological separation)  –ity or –ism  postcoloniality (the object of study)  postcolonialism (the theory)

colonialism

 “The historical process whereby the ‘West’ attempts systematically to cancel or negate the cultural difference and value of the ‘non-West’” (Leela Gandhi, 1998)  colonial critique  deals with imperialistic views  post-colonial criticism  examines the effects of imperialistic views in postcolonial societies  Postcolonial criticism  a set of theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture, literature, politics, history, of former colonies  it embraces no single method or school

postcolonialism

  questions the effects of empire  raises issues such as racism and exploitation  assesses the position of the colonial or post-colonial subject offers a counter-narrative to the long tradition of European imperial narratives

         

postcolonialism



poststructuralist questioning

How did the experience of colonization affect those who were colonized while also influencing the colonizers? How were colonial powers able to gain control over so large a portion of the non-Western world? What traces have been left by colonial education, science and technology in postcolonial societies? What were the forms of resistance against colonial control? How did colonial education and language influence the culture and identity of the colonized? What are the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers? To what extent has decolonization (a reconstruction free from colonial influence) been possible? Should decolonization proceed through an aggressive return to the pre-colonial past How do gender, race, and class function in colonial and postcolonial discourse? Are new forms of imperialism replacing colonization and how?

two sides of colonialism

 the militaristic side (the physical conquest and occupation of territories)  the civilizational side (the conquest and occupation of minds, selves, and cultures) → Colonialism does not end with the end of colonial occupation → Resistance begins before the end of colonial occupation

when, where, and why

“When exactly does the postcolonial begin? ‘When third world intellectuals have arrived in the first world academe’” (Arif Dirlik) Edward Said  moved colonial discourse into the first world academy and into literary and cultural theory  was also very influential in third world universities (esp. in India) Gayatri Spivak  “Can the Subaltern Speak” (1988)  “My position is generally a reactive one. I am viewed by Marxists as too codic, by feminists as too male identified, by indigenous theorists as too committed to Western Theory. I am uneasily pleased about this.

Said:

Orientalism

(1978)

 “Orientals or Arabs are thereafter shown to be gullible, “devoid of energy and initiative, “much given to “fulsome flattery, “intrigue, cunning and unkindness to animals; Orientals cannot walk on either a road or pavement (their disordered minds fail to understand what the clever European grasps immediately, that roads and pavements are made for walking); Orientals are inveterate liars, they are “lethargic and suspicious,” and in everything oppose the clarity, directness, and nobility of the Anglo Saxon race.” (38-39)

Said:

Orientalism

 “These contemporary Orientalist attitudes flood the press and the popular mind. Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or expend (or both) the majority of the world’s resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.” (108)

emergence

 An aftermath of the end of colonial occupation after WW2 and the emergence of independent states  A result of the focus on marginality in academic discourse (poststructuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism)

theoretical background

 Marxism  critique of society  base/superstructure and ideology  literature and the humanities as related to economic structures  Poststructuralism  anti-humanism  Foucault (‘discourse’ as a structure of power, power is everywhere, knowledge is power)

methods

  Challenging the canon  re-reading Western literature  emergent literatures  focus on difference Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariably and fixed properties which define the ‘whatness’ of a given entity… Importantly, essentialism is typically defined in opposition to difference (Diana Fuss,

Essentially Speaking

, xi, xii)

methods

  read Western literature from the colonial period study how texts construct authority → authority is artificial  articulate a political aim

Stuart Hall

   born in Jamaica, Kingston, 1932 studied at Oxford professor of sociology at the Open University, UK  Race: the Floating Signifier  on race (cut)

identity (S. Hall)

 “Identity is the narrative, the stories which cultures tell themselves about who they are and where they came from” (S. Hall, “

Negotiating Caribbean Identity

”).

identity (S. Hall)

 “…identity is not only a story, a narrative which we tell ourselves about ourselves, it is stories which change with historical circumstances. And identity shifts with the way in which we think and hear them and experience them. Far from only coming from the still small point of truth inside us, identities actually come from outside, they are the way in which we are recognized and then come to step into the place of the recognitions which others give us. Without the others there is no self, there is no self recognition” (

Negotiating Caribbean Identity

, 8).

The European Encounter with the Americas       Western  Clothed Fashion Labour Ethics Masculine Reason Culture       Americas  Naked Adornment Leisure Pleasure Feminine Emotion Nature

Key points from Hall’s: “The West and the Rest” in

Formations of Modernity

, 1992     ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ are concepts with histories ; they are not natural kinds The idea of the ‘West’ emerged because of contact with ‘non-West’; therefore these ideas also have geographies related to real places ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ are ideas that are part of discourses These geohistorical discourses inform our everyday thinking today

Homi Bhabha (1949)

    argues against the tendency to essentialize Third World countries into a homogenous identity. Instead, he claims that all sense of nationhood is narrativized . (

Nation and Narration

(1990)) there is always ambivalence at the site of colonial dominance. ambivalence constructed through: mimicry, interstice, hybridity, liminality cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. (

The Location of Culture

(1994)

Bhabha’s ambivalence of colonial discourse      draws on Foucault's concept of power (decentred, multiple, all permeating) points out the problematic position of the people exerting colonial rule.

places the colonizers

within

discourse the domain of colonial breaks down the simple binary colonizer/colonized and opens a space for a theorization of ambivalences, contradictions and hidden feelings. the complex construction of difference and sameness in the colonial relationship centrally involves

identification

as well as the crisis of identification, a complex, ambivalent and often contradictory mode of representation.

“mimicry”

 metaphor for a process of acculturation and adaptation of imposed cultural concepts and patterns by the colonized;  a strategic adaptation by the colonized as a subtle act of resistance.  In its contradictions it unfolds the whole ambivalence of the colonial discourse.

Of Mimicry and Man (Bhabha)

  “The discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference. Mimicry is, thus, the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power. Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference or recalcitrance which coheres the dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance and poses an immanent threat to both 'normalized' knowledges and disciplinary powers.“ (122-123).

“Listen Mr Oxford don”

Me not no Oxford don me a simple immigrant from Clapham Common I didn't graduate I immigrate But listen Mr Oxford don I'm a man on de run and a man on de run is a dangerous one I ent have no gun I ent have no knife but mugging de Queen's English is the story of my life I dont need no axe to split/ up yu syntax I dont need no hammer to mash up yu grammar I warning you Mr Oxford don I'm a wanted man and a wanted man is a dangerous one Dem accuse me of assault on de Oxford dictionary/ imagin a concise peaceful man like me/ dem want me serve time for inciting rhyme to riot but I tekking it quiet down here in Clapham Common I'm not a violent man Mr Oxford don I only armed wit mih human breath but human breath is a dangerous weapon So mek dem send one big word after me I ent serving no jail sentence I slashing suffix in self-defence I bashing future wit present tense and if necessary I making de Queen's English accessory/to my offence John Agard

cultural identity

 collective  shared history among individuals affiliated by race or ethnicity is stable or fixed  unstable, metamorphic, contradictory  marked by multiple points of similarity and difference  strongest in its hybrid mode

diaspora criticism

 Greek: diaspora, a scattering < dia-, across + speirein, to sow  1. a) the scattering of the Jews after the Babylonian exile.  b) the Jews scattered throughout the world. 2. any scattering of people with a common origin, background, beliefs, etc.

reasons for emergence

 The history of exile, (labour) migration, slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism HISTORY OF EXILE "Then the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known -- wood and stone. And among those nations you shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place; but there the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul..." (Deuteronomy 28:64-65)

migration

      Labour migration, narratives of slavery; colonialism and postcolonialism emphasize the interruption of identity coercion Slavery was abolished around 1860 in the US Slavery was replaced by indentured labour Massive migration after WW2

the rise of nationalism

   nationalism has its roots in the intellectual heritage of European enlightenment and modernity – the notion of a supposedly authentic, natural and stable (national)

identity

MODERNITY: characterized by a belief in:    reason authenticity individualized identities PRESENT: determined by context

culture & globalization

       the culture and experience of the diaspora – “

in the West but not of it

” (Paul Gilroy) focuses on the doubleness or double consciousness of black subjectivity doubleness hybridity (Hall) ‘cultural intermixture’ (Gilroy) “We’re all ethnics – to be American is to possess a hyphenated identity” (Henry Louis Gates) nations have no stable identity

imagined identity

 “the

nation

is not a natural or even a real entity. It is an ‘

imagined community ’

– and imagined as inherently limited and sovereign.”

Imagined communities

(Benedict Anderson)

theoretical background

Poetry of ‘Negritude’ (Aimé Cesaire, Martinique)     Leopld Seghnor (Senegal, 1906-2001): “L'èmotion est nègre, la raision est héllène. [Emotion is black, reason is Greek] Negritude is the totality of the cultural values of the Black world.” Pan-Africanism    Frantz Fanon (Martinique, 1925-1961): “To speak . . . means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization”. Fanonism

carnival theory

   Carnival theory and dialogic criticism (Mikhail Bakhtin) magical realism the carnivalesque

theory

  Text: ‘Nomadic writing’ (Richard Stamelman) unstable, always on the move, always in conversation with other texts       narrative (of) displacement and unfinishedness narrative (of) imaginary home

and

narrative (of) otherness narrative (of) hybridity dialogic, carnivalistic, symbolic re-turn non-essentialist and non-logocentric narrative Text-context:   the historical embeddedness of texts ‘(re)positioning’ of text in relation to context (Stuart Hall)

methods

   study of the literatures of displaced groups and emerging diasporic communities, focussing on the notions of ‘home’ and ‘foreignness’ study of the relationship between ‘silenced’ and ‘hegemonic’ discourses in diasporic literary texts study of the forms of ‘resistance’ and ‘complicity’ within diasporic literature – e.g.,

Signifyin(g)

(Henry Louis Gates),

strategic essentialism

(Gayatri Spivak),

the new mestiza

Anzaldúa),

double consciousness

(Gloria (W.E.B. du Bois/Paul Gilroy)

concerns

  politics of position (Hall) politics of fulfilment (Gilroy): a future society will realize what’s left unfulfilled by a present society  politics of transfiguration: the emergence of new desires, social relations, and modes of association

      

"A Family Supper" (1982)

How are ‘the East’ and ‘the West’ thematized in the story? How are the notions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ thematized in the novel?

Can each of the three main characters be read as a representative figure for the colonized/diasporic subject, and if so, how? Comment on the silences, gaps and pauses in the text. Can you interpret the ‘ghost story’ within a postcolonial/diaspora framework? How is the past/future thematized in the story? Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954. Ishiguro’s family moved to England in 1960. Try to imagine that the story was written by an ‘English-English’ writer. Does it affect your interpretation?