Boumshead Revisited

Last week, I was highly ambivalent about A Passage to India, in part because of Forster's sweeping generalisations of both the white administration and the natives despite that "there is no such person in existence as the general Indian." (XXX, 232) Reading Fanon this week, it dawns upon me that perhaps if I apply his fundamental tenet, that "the colonial world is a Manichaean world," (6) to Passage, I might be able to alleviate my "echo," as it were. Fanon's colonial world is a "compartmentalised world, this world divided in two," (Fanon, 5) and it is this world that Forster writes of, a world of binaries for which generalisations thus must hold. For the natives, "he too generalised from his disappointments - it is difficult for members of a subject race to do otherwise;" (II, 6) for the colonisers (and this is already a kinder view), "all unfortunate natives are criminals at heart, for the simple reason that they live south of latitude 30." (XVIII, 143) Mrs Moore's "Christian tenderness had gone" (XXI, 172) in the face of "boum, it amounts to the same," (XXIII, 180) but as she leaves India, "'I have not seen the right places,' she thought," the "untouched places," (181) and "longed to stop" at even Bombay, "the huge city which the West has built and abandoned with a gesture of despair" (182) - India's final words to her are "'So you thought an echo was India; you took the Marabar caves as final? They laughed, 'What have we in common with them, or they with Asirgarh? Good-bye!'" (182) Perhaps India is right, there are "a hundred Indias," (I, 8) India is itself irreducible; then perhaps Fanon is too right, it is colonialism that reduces it to "a world compartmentalized, Manichaean and petrified." (15) Then, too, Forster is right: his generalisations are by definition truth in a Manichaean world, and the Westerners of whom I complained defy his stereotypes merely "new-comer[s]" not yet "fatigued" by that "hostile" Indian soil (II, 11) - thus it is that the Western "Oriental" Mrs Moore must go mad, Adela must depart, and even Fielding must eventually cease to be "the renegade" (XXIV, 192) and "thro[w] in his lot with Anglo-India by marrying a countrywoman." (XXXVII, 279) The Manichaean world that colonialism creates is what makes it so that Fielding and Aziz "must inevitably part," and it is only when colonialism and the Manichaean binaries of coloniser and colonised are "driv[en]…into the sea" (282) that "[Fielding] and [Aziz] shall be friends." (282) Problem solved! Except not, for "my echo has come back again badly." (XXIV, 184)

My ambivalence has spread to Fanon. In "On Violence" he too generalises - rather, if it is said Forster generalises, Fanon fairly dictates. His writings are as Manichaean as the colonialised world he speaks of - in his unyielding insistence upon the definitive thoughts and actions of 'the colonised', 'the intellectuals', 'the coloniser', 'the European nations', slowly but surely it becomes impossible to stave off uncomfortable comparisons to the blundering, insula, Western anthropological studies that Gikandi and Levine had raised, and indeed, McBryde's very own "Oriental Pathology, his favourite theme." (XXIII, 189) To compare thus nevertheless appals me - it seems to align Fanon with the very colonisers he raged against, to make of him an early-Aziz who at once seeks to "shake the dust of Anglo-India off his feet" (II, 10) and yet "felt important and competent" to have the English as "his guests." (XIII, 113) Somewhere, Fanon is spinning in his grave; I hastily attempt to rectify my trespass and grant the benefit of the doubt: of course, the world of which he speaks is a colonised one, Manichaean due to the colonialism, like Forster's, and of course his writings would too be thus Manichaean, how could it be otherwise in such a world? Treacherously I cannot help but continue to think perhaps to re-enact this Manichaeanism in his text makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, as compartmentalising as the colonisers, as imperative as to which is the right - the only - way…Fanon still spins - enough. I cannot bear to accuse him of complicity, perhaps it would suffice to conjecture that the tone, the structure of his writing bears testament to his theory - colonialism stains the colonised; we are still brimming with anger, slowly smashing the barriers and statues of this psuedo-petrified world. This is my decision now, but perhaps by the end of this course, it'll be Fanon instead that I'm smashing. But now, yes, now I cannot bear it, and neither can I bear to smash Forster - which brings me to my next thought "On Violence." Forster's colonised India bears much resemblance to Fanon's Manichaean world, and yet the most important aspect of Fanon's colonialised world appears to be largely, as I mentioned in my last blog posting, elided in Passage - that of violence. Next to Fanon's 'manifesto,' the lack of outright violence in Passage seems ever more underscored. Fanon is of the colonised, Forster of the coloniser - even this alone would suggest that after all is said and done, Forster still writes through Western eyes, that he elides the political currents, the Indian violence, because - what? Any number of reasons, he did not think them significant enough, he did not want to give the Indians too much credit, it all boils down to the idea that he has "reduced" India in spite of his words. But as I said, I cannot bear to smash Forster now, and instead I will propound: I have not read much Forster but of what I have, I can barely imagine him writing directly of war. Maybe it's just not his "thing." Instead of colonialism, I see his elision of violence as more of modernism. Instead of reduction, I prefer to think of it as perhaps a kind of metonymy. There is, I think, much to thrash out and dispute if one were to read Forster through Auerbach, but nevertheless, to simplistically lift wholesale: "it is precisely the random moment which is comparatively independent of the controversial and unstable orders over which men fight and despair; it passes unaffected by them, as daily life. The more it is exploited, the more the elementary things which our lives have in common come to light." (552) Rather than the bloodiness of the riots, Forster pins the crux of the novel and its Manichaean colonial tensions on perhaps such a (once again, relatively) random moment: an event that may or may not have happened, a trial that dissolves and an urge to violence that diffuses. "The Marabar caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a district." (XXV, 206) This, perhaps, more than the blood and thunder, is what (hopefully) displays to one that "the strata of societies and their different ways of life have become inextricably mingled," (Auerbach, 552) so, perhaps, one day the coloniser and the colonised "shall be friends." Aziz's conclusion, after all, shows that Forster is not unaware of the need on the native's part for the violence of which Fanon speaks: "if it's fifty five-hundred years we shall get rid of you; yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea." (XXXVII, 282)

These blog posts are getting way too long for my rapidly disintegrating study schedule - the next one will (have to) be shorter, but I just have to finish off with (another) clarification. What I meant by stating in class that the novel takes pains to establish that the characters are "not-gay" was really, being the sort of person who can't bear to smash Forster, simply that, for a novelist who seemed to have taken pains to conceal his own orientation from the public audience all his life, I can't help but feel like we're rebuffing his pains in possibly concluding that Fielding and Aziz were friends largely because they're 'gay for each other' (you gotta admit that was taking over the entire discussion for a bit…). Not that I'm not saying it can't be a factor, especially considering the highly homosocial if not homoerotically charged conclusion with its "myriads of kisses," (279) just that I feel it mightn't have been supposed to be a factor so obviously and easily considered by the audience Forster intended, who weren't supposed to know about his homosexuality. Just a little consideration of the possible intention of the author - which, I know, I know, is an outdated concept…