My post will be about the "fraudulent recognition" of Flory as a friend. First off, other than the good doctor it's pretty much safe to say that Flory doesn't have any other friends (the "louts" at the Club he's so fond of denigrating won't be hard-pressed to call him one either, him and his "Bolshie" ideas). Strangely enough though the term "friend" is peppered liberally throughout the narrative, there are very few instances of Flory calling Veraswami that very name; he calls him "doctor" instead. This effectively puts distance between an Englishman and a Burmese and lends ballast to the disquieting sentiment that it is "a disagreeable thing when one's close friend is not one's social equal". This close friendship is one-sided; Flory is an exploiter in the same vein as the bigoted Ellis is but worse since he professes to be the doctor's friend and claims that that friendship "was not worth" the ugly rows that would break out were he to support the doctor's election to the club in the next breath. He only throws in his cloth together with Veraswami when he himself is in a position of power later on and therefore, untouchable. Veraswami's fanatic loyalty to the English is translated into his friendship with Flory, one that isn't reciprocated. Flory's suicide damns Veraswami to "pagodas, pariahs, pigs, priests and prostitutes" and yet still Veraswami makes the necessary arrangements in the wake of his messy death, in both his official capacity as doctor and personal as friend, lying to preserve Flory's legacy, a legacy nobody else cares for anyway. He's as much removed from shok de as you can get.
The asymmetric essences embodied by the colonizer and colonized here are that of Flory's renunciation of his only ally and Veraswami's dogged decency.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Flory and the Angel in the House...
I was especially interested in Stoler's depiction of the colonies as "laboratories of modernity," with those within it "subjects" that "reworked" the coloniser's "experiments" and the "possibility that their choices expressed a domestic subversion, a rejection of the terms of the civilising mission." (551) In conjunction with this, I was thinking about the development of modernism in postwar Britain, and the trend of sexual experimentation, with unorthodox relationships such as homosexuality and extramarital affairs being encouraged (or at least, so we seem encouraged to think through biographies of various modernist writers), and such experimentation being a part of the reaction modernism had against the Victorian values of family life.
As far as reaction towards Victorian values goes, Flory could be in ways construed as a modernist (or modern) hero, turning against the traditional English ranks to socialise with the natives, and abandoning the façade of Victorian morality to admit to its lie - "the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them." (33) When Passage's Collector sadly notes "after all, it's our women who make everything more difficult out here," it might well apply to poor old Flory, for it is Elizabeth's arrival that erects in him the Victorian vision of "the angel in the house" and its family trappings - a vision that, as discussed above, was fading even in England, as Elizabeth attests to: "'You should have a piano,' he said despairingly. 'I don't play the piano.'" With a Victorian idealisation of women as his downfall, Flory goes from modernist hero to Victorian loser, a failed subject in that "laboratory of modernity." In contrast, Stoler's "cultura[l] hybrids" would instead be true modernist heroes, their "lifestyles" (551) perhaps closer to the "domestic subversion" that the very modernists in Britain were grasping towards.
As far as reaction towards Victorian values goes, Flory could be in ways construed as a modernist (or modern) hero, turning against the traditional English ranks to socialise with the natives, and abandoning the façade of Victorian morality to admit to its lie - "the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them." (33) When Passage's Collector sadly notes "after all, it's our women who make everything more difficult out here," it might well apply to poor old Flory, for it is Elizabeth's arrival that erects in him the Victorian vision of "the angel in the house" and its family trappings - a vision that, as discussed above, was fading even in England, as Elizabeth attests to: "'You should have a piano,' he said despairingly. 'I don't play the piano.'" With a Victorian idealisation of women as his downfall, Flory goes from modernist hero to Victorian loser, a failed subject in that "laboratory of modernity." In contrast, Stoler's "cultura[l] hybrids" would instead be true modernist heroes, their "lifestyles" (551) perhaps closer to the "domestic subversion" that the very modernists in Britain were grasping towards.
Capitalism in Burmese Days.
"We seem to have no authority over the natives nowadays, with all these dreadful Reforms, and the insolence they learn from the newspapers. In some ways, they are getting almost as bad as the lower class at home."
Here, Mrs Lackersteen complains about the increasing difficulty of controlling her servants. But at the same time, by comparing the 'lower class' in English society to the 'natives,' this quotation also highlights the stark parallels between the social structure in English society and the colonial enterprise in India.
"Everyone is free in England; we sell our souls in public and buy them back in private, among our friends. But even friendship can hardly exist when every white man is a cog in wheels of despotism ... you opinion on every subject of any conceivable importance is dictated for you by the pukka sahibs' code."
Here again, the narrative describes the capitalist regime of English society in Hindu terms (ie: Pukka sahibs' code). This again highlights the parallels between the situation in England and in Burma. Therefore, I think it is perhaps arguable that "Burmese Days" is also a critique of the capitalist discourse and not just imperialism per se. Perhaps it is even arguable that Burma is merely a tool used by Orwell to unveil the evils of capitalism in England. By highlighting the similarities, I think the novel also exposes the nature of these systems, suggesting that institutional power doesn't rely on any individual (whether the pukka sahib in Burma or the bourgeois in England), and ultimately results in the alienation of the individual as exemplified by Flory.
Here, Mrs Lackersteen complains about the increasing difficulty of controlling her servants. But at the same time, by comparing the 'lower class' in English society to the 'natives,' this quotation also highlights the stark parallels between the social structure in English society and the colonial enterprise in India.
"Everyone is free in England; we sell our souls in public and buy them back in private, among our friends. But even friendship can hardly exist when every white man is a cog in wheels of despotism ... you opinion on every subject of any conceivable importance is dictated for you by the pukka sahibs' code."
Here again, the narrative describes the capitalist regime of English society in Hindu terms (ie: Pukka sahibs' code). This again highlights the parallels between the situation in England and in Burma. Therefore, I think it is perhaps arguable that "Burmese Days" is also a critique of the capitalist discourse and not just imperialism per se. Perhaps it is even arguable that Burma is merely a tool used by Orwell to unveil the evils of capitalism in England. By highlighting the similarities, I think the novel also exposes the nature of these systems, suggesting that institutional power doesn't rely on any individual (whether the pukka sahib in Burma or the bourgeois in England), and ultimately results in the alienation of the individual as exemplified by Flory.
Appearances versus Reality
The case study of the Icard/Lucien relationship (Stoler, 522-524) reveals the West's insistence on "empirical" modes of understanding in relation to racism, how one can deduce "invisible protean essences" from their "visual representations" (Stoler, 522)
This quote , that the physical is merely a logical result of the emotional/intellectual/spiritual life of the individual is similar to the empirical approach that Wallace takes in "The Malay Archipelago". Obviously, this is very flawed.
Race then becomes complicated for the mixed-blood subject because it is less easy to judge them base on similarities in appearance or the use of European names. In fact, "physiological attributes only signal the non-visual and the more salient distinctions of exclusion on which racism rests" (521, Stoler). Racism is not merely about physical difference, in fact it is the physical difference that highlights or is a result of more fundamental differences on which racism rests.
In relation to Burmese Days then, it would seem Orwell critiques this. Despite Flory's familiarity with European high culture he is still ugly because of his birthmark, still Othered by the European community. On the other hand, Elizabeth's ignorance of Western culture and her dubious morality does not translate into poor looks. I don't know if there is a discrepancy I am merely looking for due to the Stoler reading, but it does point to fundamental flaws in the way one approaches the whole "appearances are a natural result of the emotional/cultural/intellectual reality of the individual" idea that the West seemed to have adopted at that point in time.
"a boy who had virtuallly none of the exterior qualities (skin tone, language, or cultural literacy) and therefore could have none of the interior attributes of being French". (524, Stoler)
This quote , that the physical is merely a logical result of the emotional/intellectual/spiritual life of the individual is similar to the empirical approach that Wallace takes in "The Malay Archipelago". Obviously, this is very flawed.
Race then becomes complicated for the mixed-blood subject because it is less easy to judge them base on similarities in appearance or the use of European names. In fact, "physiological attributes only signal the non-visual and the more salient distinctions of exclusion on which racism rests" (521, Stoler). Racism is not merely about physical difference, in fact it is the physical difference that highlights or is a result of more fundamental differences on which racism rests.
In relation to Burmese Days then, it would seem Orwell critiques this. Despite Flory's familiarity with European high culture he is still ugly because of his birthmark, still Othered by the European community. On the other hand, Elizabeth's ignorance of Western culture and her dubious morality does not translate into poor looks. I don't know if there is a discrepancy I am merely looking for due to the Stoler reading, but it does point to fundamental flaws in the way one approaches the whole "appearances are a natural result of the emotional/cultural/intellectual reality of the individual" idea that the West seemed to have adopted at that point in time.
got hypermasculine meh?
According to Stoler, the “demasculinization of colonised men and the hypermasculinity of European males are understood as key elements in the assertion of white supremacy”. In Burmese Days, Orwell contrasts this masculine ideal against the realities of Flory and Co. as a means of challenging both the racial and gendered implications of this ideal.
While this hypermasculine ideal is very much embodied by the polo-playing, feral, virile, Verrall, the same cannot be said for Flory and Co., who spend their available time indulging in gin and tonics rather than games of tennis. Furthermore, the white colonisers are shown to be inadequate in comparison with the local males. There is, for instance, the token symbol of physical strength and purity:
“The Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty years old, half naked, leaf brown, with a body as perfect as that of a young man” (160)
Masculinity is expressed most clearly in their sexual exploits (I’m thinking of that skanky scene involving Mr Lankersteen and THREE Burmese girls, and similar) which are numerous and commonplace, and which involve the domination of local women such as Ma Hla May. However, doubly asymmetrical power relationships between colonizer/colonized and male/female makes it difficult for me to read such sexual relations as an embodiment of white masculine power – You don’t need to be particularly power to dominate over an already subjugated and subservient class of people. Furthermore, the presence of Elizabeth, with her love physical sport such as shooting and horse-riding, serves further to undermine the gendered stereotypes.
The issue of virility also arises: Concubinage revolves around sexual, but sterile (infertile?) unions and Flory for instance is described as being in a state of perpetual bachelorhood.
“Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still whereas Ko S’la had married, begotten five children, married again and become one of the obscure matyrs of bigamy” (51)
The idea of fecundity (or lack thereof) is thus another, more subtle way in which the ideal of white masculinity is critiqued and found to be wanting.
While this hypermasculine ideal is very much embodied by the polo-playing, feral, virile, Verrall, the same cannot be said for Flory and Co., who spend their available time indulging in gin and tonics rather than games of tennis. Furthermore, the white colonisers are shown to be inadequate in comparison with the local males. There is, for instance, the token symbol of physical strength and purity:
“The Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty years old, half naked, leaf brown, with a body as perfect as that of a young man” (160)
Masculinity is expressed most clearly in their sexual exploits (I’m thinking of that skanky scene involving Mr Lankersteen and THREE Burmese girls, and similar) which are numerous and commonplace, and which involve the domination of local women such as Ma Hla May. However, doubly asymmetrical power relationships between colonizer/colonized and male/female makes it difficult for me to read such sexual relations as an embodiment of white masculine power – You don’t need to be particularly power to dominate over an already subjugated and subservient class of people. Furthermore, the presence of Elizabeth, with her love physical sport such as shooting and horse-riding, serves further to undermine the gendered stereotypes.
The issue of virility also arises: Concubinage revolves around sexual, but sterile (infertile?) unions and Flory for instance is described as being in a state of perpetual bachelorhood.
“Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still whereas Ko S’la had married, begotten five children, married again and become one of the obscure matyrs of bigamy” (51)
The idea of fecundity (or lack thereof) is thus another, more subtle way in which the ideal of white masculinity is critiqued and found to be wanting.
Milieu, infection and colonial health
Stoler quotes Paul Rainbow’s argument that “the concern about milieu permeating French colonial thinking on education, health, labor, and sex in the late nineteenth century can only be understood in terms of the scientific episteme on which it relied” (535). This stood out for me for two reasons: the notion of milieu that Stoler discusses several times in the reading, and the “episteme”/metaphor of infection that permeates colonial discourse.
On one level, the colony is presented as a source of infection for the metropolitan centre in terms of physical health. Contemporary medical accounts warned of health dangers to Europeans who “stayed in the tropics too long” (Stoler 536); this is reflected in Burmese Days with Flory’s illness that “finished” his youth (68) and the creepy doctor who measured Marlow’s cranium in Heart of Darkness. Infection also carries to another level of heritage and blood, hence the anxiety over metis (literally mixed blood) that Stoler examines.
Besides carrying uncomfortable overtones of feudalism (where the right to rule is carried in the blood/endowed by superior divine force), this literal, quasi-empirical way of looking at the effect of the colony on the colonizer is problematic for me because of how it subsequently becomes a metaphor and epistemological mode that shapes the discourse and perception of colonizer and colonized alike. Imperialism becomes, in every sense of the word, a malaise that plagues colonial relations and thought: notice how for Flory “what poisoned everything…was the ever bitterer hatred of the atmosphere of imperialism in which he lived” (Orwell 68). The framework of infection shapes the milieu in which colonialism functions and the colonizer’s response: preventing infection by purifying the milieu/environment, as Flory does by replacing the source of infection (May) with the totem of the pure white woman. This is partly why the portrayal of both women in Orwell’s text (barring the complications of authorial irony) disturbs me on an instinctive level.
On one level, the colony is presented as a source of infection for the metropolitan centre in terms of physical health. Contemporary medical accounts warned of health dangers to Europeans who “stayed in the tropics too long” (Stoler 536); this is reflected in Burmese Days with Flory’s illness that “finished” his youth (68) and the creepy doctor who measured Marlow’s cranium in Heart of Darkness. Infection also carries to another level of heritage and blood, hence the anxiety over metis (literally mixed blood) that Stoler examines.
Besides carrying uncomfortable overtones of feudalism (where the right to rule is carried in the blood/endowed by superior divine force), this literal, quasi-empirical way of looking at the effect of the colony on the colonizer is problematic for me because of how it subsequently becomes a metaphor and epistemological mode that shapes the discourse and perception of colonizer and colonized alike. Imperialism becomes, in every sense of the word, a malaise that plagues colonial relations and thought: notice how for Flory “what poisoned everything…was the ever bitterer hatred of the atmosphere of imperialism in which he lived” (Orwell 68). The framework of infection shapes the milieu in which colonialism functions and the colonizer’s response: preventing infection by purifying the milieu/environment, as Flory does by replacing the source of infection (May) with the totem of the pure white woman. This is partly why the portrayal of both women in Orwell’s text (barring the complications of authorial irony) disturbs me on an instinctive level.
Stoler and Orwell
Stoler’s article about colonial categories and people who ambiguously straddled, crossed, and threatened imperial divides (514) can be applied to “Burmese Days” particularly through the characters of Francis, Samuel and Flory. Francis and Samuel being “sons of white fathers and native mothers” are what Stoler calls the progeny of “métissage”, people straddling the boundary between white and native man. Their fate as outsiders to the white society despite their “drop of white blood” (126) is sealed, because, as Stoler says, even with a rhetoric affirming that education and upbringing were transformative processes, Europeanness of métis children could never be assured to colonial officials. What more then for Francis and Samuel who are described as being “brought up in the bazaar”, having “had no education”, and having no proper upbringing (126)—in the white man’s eyes, not only their mixed parentage, but also their lack of any transformative processes would have effectively stained whatever white blood they biologically possessed. This is perhaps why the two men “excited a peculiar dislike in” Elizabeth and why she even terms them “awfully degenerate types” (126)—precisely because these Eurasians were seen as “threat to white prestige, an embodiment of European degeneration” (515).
Flory is another example of a transgressor of boundaries because instead of adhering to Manichean categories in his associations, he has a friendship with Veraswami and even a sexual relation with Ma Hla May. Elizabeth’s disgust towards Flory’s sexual relation once again represents the colonial society’s concern that European men living with native women would be “contaminated” by these native associations (533). This is particularly evident when Flory’s “ugliness” only became apparent to Elizabeth after she witnessed Ma Hla May’s denouncement of Flory and realised that he had “been the lover of that grey-faced maniacal creature” (286), almost as if May had infected Flory with her ugliness through her association with him.
Flory is another example of a transgressor of boundaries because instead of adhering to Manichean categories in his associations, he has a friendship with Veraswami and even a sexual relation with Ma Hla May. Elizabeth’s disgust towards Flory’s sexual relation once again represents the colonial society’s concern that European men living with native women would be “contaminated” by these native associations (533). This is particularly evident when Flory’s “ugliness” only became apparent to Elizabeth after she witnessed Ma Hla May’s denouncement of Flory and realised that he had “been the lover of that grey-faced maniacal creature” (286), almost as if May had infected Flory with her ugliness through her association with him.
'Burmese Days' and 'Passage to India'; A Caricature
As people have already pointed out, there are many similarities between Burmese Days and A Passage to India. The former book was published a decade after the latter, so it is not inconceivable that Orwell read PtI and was influenced by it. In both cases, a picture of the Anglo-Indians is being painted, and there is a friendship between the eccentric Englishman and the Indian doctor, which leads the Englishman to stand up on his friend's behalf. These similaries, however, serve to highlight the contrasts. Aziz and Veraswami are almost polar opposites of each other in their attitutes to the British Empire. Adela and Elizabeth arrive with opposite expectations of India/Burma. Flory is much more insecure than Fielding... the list goes on. Where Forster painted a more realist portrait of the Anglo-Indians and their world, Orwell paints a caricature, despite him terming Burmeses Days a 'naturalistic novel' in his article 'Why I Write'. By doing this, Orwell is perhaps stripping his novel down to its basic agenda - as an expose of the folly of imperialism, much as PtI was oft cited as a reason why the British should leave India.
Liminal Eurasians in Burmese Days
Stoler’s essay about the metissage phenomenon of interracial unions and how Indo-Chinese in various Dutch colonies occupied a liminal position in colonial society due to their hybrid identity manifests itself in Burmese Days, specifically in the condition of the two Eurasian men Francis and Samuel. Their liminality is evident in how they are despised by not only the European community, but also alienated from the native Burmese community because their “political, economic and social bids” were in contradistinction to the demands of the native population, not in alliance with them. On the one hand, Europeans such as Elizabeth perpetuate pseudo-scientific racist myths about the allegedly inherently degenerate natures of Eurasians, asserting that “half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races”, and thus exclude them socially by not wanting to associate or “touch them with a stick”, while using such myths to rationalize and justify the political exclusionary, discriminatory practices implemented against them, such as “cutting them off from entering third-grade Government services.” On the other hand, Francis and Samuel’s relationship with the natives, although much friendlier because the natives allow the Eurasians to cadge and work for them, is also a tension-fraught one because the Eurasian men basically capitalize or exploit the colonial notions of racial difference as a means of survival. They perform “European-ness” by complaining of “prickly heat” and wearing “huge topis” that remind the natives that they’ve got European skulls susceptible to sunstroke even though they may not suffer from these conditions that plague white men, because it is precisely the “drop of white blood” that assures their survival, recommending them as superior beings worthy in the eyes of the natives who grudgingly allow them to living amongst them. Their liminality which is caused by the exclusion from a proper European education and abandonment by their English clergymen fathers is also expressed in how their attempts to showcase their mastery of the English language falls short because of the excessively overt use of highly conventionalized/ritualised forms of civilised English expressions such as “Good evening to you” and “most honored to make your acquaintance” which are interspersed with grammatically, structurally or syntactically unsound or awkward phrases such as “Myself I suffer torments each night” that are associated with the perceived stereotype of how a native Burmese who is unable to master the English language speaks.
Crossing boundaries
The “purity of the community… the essence of the community [as] an intangible “moral attitude”, a multiplicity of invisible lines” (Stoler 516) that cannot be crossed is seen in Flory, May and Dr Veraswami. Flory crosses the racial lines of imperialism by befriending and aligning his sympathies with the colonized. However, with Elizabeth’s arrival, the invisible lines that divide colonizers and colonized are unveiled as he realizes that he “longed all these years for somebody to talk to!” His acute loneliness stems from straddling between his colonist lineage and disapproved friendships with the locals. In May and Dr. Veraswami, there is a reversal of racism as they believe the colonists as superior to their own race and actively seeks to cross into the domains of the colonists’ community. May thought that becoming the wife of a white man would give her prestige and earn respect while Dr Veraswami believed his own race as inferior to the colonists.
Both Colonizers and colonized are trapped within the nets of imperialism. Dr. Veraswami and May can never cross into the other community while Flory can never assimilate into the Burmese because of the burden of his colonist status:
Both Colonizers and colonized are trapped within the nets of imperialism. Dr. Veraswami and May can never cross into the other community while Flory can never assimilate into the Burmese because of the burden of his colonist status:
But we can't help it… a demon inside us driving us to talk. We walk about under a load of memories which we long to share and somehow never can. It's the price we pay for coming to this country.The disgrace and fear of contamination of the white race by metissage cost Flory his life. Most of all, all who transgressed from and into the boundaries of ‘pure communities’ suffer humiliation, poverty and death while those who remained within their side of the picket fences (Elizabeth, Macgregor, Ellis etc) continue to perpetuate racial demarcation. In the end, both colonizers and colonized cannot escape their ‘birthmarks’.
It was not what he had done that horrified her…It was, finally, the birthmark that had damned him.
Victimization of Women
Stoler asserts that European women were controlled and 'policied' "by reaffirming the vulnerability of white women and the sexual threat posed by native men" (60). This positioning of women as weak, vulnerable and fragile has been and still is repeated across various instances of war.
In A Passage to India, we have the incredulous belief that "the darker races are physically attracted by the fairer" (222), thus placing the European woman as vulnerable to the sexual appetite of native men.
Part of Hilary Clinton's speech at the First Ladies' Conference on Domestic Violence, 17 Nov 1998: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat".
http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html
In an article titled, "The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building", Rafeeuddin Ahmed, Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim says: "In retrospect, I realize how much of my perception about women in war was influenced by the media. The incessant images of desperation and victimization tell only part of the story. The other part, the strength, courage and resilience, is rarely captured".
http://www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/tx_useraitypdb/women_war_peace.pdf
Women are constantly positioned and depicted as victims. However, I feel that Elizabeth of Burmese Days is somewhat a robust character. She appears to be a rather 'strong' character in the sense that she does not burst into tears (chapter 23 when Verall leaves at the train station, rather than bawling "she would betray nothing"), instead she is rather aggressive and assertive.
Therefore, what I mean to say is that Orwell doesn't really depict the vulnerability of European women (as per the character Elizabeth). But what is interesting is the vulnerability of European men to the sexual threat posed by native women is instead presented to us readers.
P.S. The darn page has an error and so I wasn't able to italize or underline anything properly. Dang it.
In A Passage to India, we have the incredulous belief that "the darker races are physically attracted by the fairer" (222), thus placing the European woman as vulnerable to the sexual appetite of native men.
Part of Hilary Clinton's speech at the First Ladies' Conference on Domestic Violence, 17 Nov 1998: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat".
http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html
In an article titled, "The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building", Rafeeuddin Ahmed, Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim says: "In retrospect, I realize how much of my perception about women in war was influenced by the media. The incessant images of desperation and victimization tell only part of the story. The other part, the strength, courage and resilience, is rarely captured".
http://www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/tx_useraitypdb/women_war_peace.pdf
Women are constantly positioned and depicted as victims. However, I feel that Elizabeth of Burmese Days is somewhat a robust character. She appears to be a rather 'strong' character in the sense that she does not burst into tears (chapter 23 when Verall leaves at the train station, rather than bawling "she would betray nothing"), instead she is rather aggressive and assertive.
Therefore, what I mean to say is that Orwell doesn't really depict the vulnerability of European women (as per the character Elizabeth). But what is interesting is the vulnerability of European men to the sexual threat posed by native women is instead presented to us readers.
P.S. The darn page has an error and so I wasn't able to italize or underline anything properly. Dang it.
exclusion and inclusion
I find this whole issue of inclusion and exclusion very interesting. As Stoler notes, in most scenarios, “class, gender, and cultural markers deny and designate exclusionary practices at the same time”(521) and that none of these categories “is privileged at any moment”(521). Stoler goes on to elaborate the complexities involved with these categories and how they carried slightly different meanings in different situations.
However, what about the idea of self- exclusion or inclusion? Is inclusion and exclusion to a particular group only defined and sanctioned by the ones in authority, or can it be discussed from a more personal, individualistic level? For instance, in Burmese Days, we see Flory othering his own people, constantly referring to his white people as “Them”, with an obvious dislike towards them. On the other hand, we see Dr. Veraswami getting agitated when Flory criticizes his own white club members. Hence, while Flory excludes himself form the white community, in his attitude towards them, the Doctor includes and associates himself with the white community, like mimic man. Perhaps then it is this sense of inclusion and exclusion that is far more strong and important, for it defeats any categories set out by the larger authority. Yet, the question really is, even while an individual can include or exclude himself from HIS group or community in thought, can he ever be freed from his larger community that defines him? Can he ever be free form its expectations and demands of him? Orwell leaves this open- he criticizes neither the Doctor nor Flory, which seems to suggest that both are right in wanting what they want, and both are also perhaps stuck in a sort of liminal, inevitable position, somewhere in between inclusion and exclusion- which perhaps is the colonial experience for both the colonizer and colonized.
(300 words)
However, what about the idea of self- exclusion or inclusion? Is inclusion and exclusion to a particular group only defined and sanctioned by the ones in authority, or can it be discussed from a more personal, individualistic level? For instance, in Burmese Days, we see Flory othering his own people, constantly referring to his white people as “Them”, with an obvious dislike towards them. On the other hand, we see Dr. Veraswami getting agitated when Flory criticizes his own white club members. Hence, while Flory excludes himself form the white community, in his attitude towards them, the Doctor includes and associates himself with the white community, like mimic man. Perhaps then it is this sense of inclusion and exclusion that is far more strong and important, for it defeats any categories set out by the larger authority. Yet, the question really is, even while an individual can include or exclude himself from HIS group or community in thought, can he ever be freed from his larger community that defines him? Can he ever be free form its expectations and demands of him? Orwell leaves this open- he criticizes neither the Doctor nor Flory, which seems to suggest that both are right in wanting what they want, and both are also perhaps stuck in a sort of liminal, inevitable position, somewhere in between inclusion and exclusion- which perhaps is the colonial experience for both the colonizer and colonized.
(300 words)
Look How Far We've Come...
Upon reading Stoler's article about the colonial authorities sanctioning of sexual liasons and by extension, the body, it reminded me of how things hasn't changed that much.
Stoler relates the issue of metissage to this control over sexuality (of both Whites and Natives) when colonial authorities linked "domestic arrangements to the public order, family to the state, sex to subversion, and psychological essence to racial type" (516). Anyone who has taken Singapore Studies modules [Or even National Education classes] or Sociological modules would already know how family is seen as the basic unit of nation.
The emphasis on the private/intimate lives of the individual basically implies that the body [more importantly, the female body] belongs to the State. Anyone remembers the reiteration of the "National Service"/ "civic duty" of women at a recent politician's speech? To paraphrase everything: "Go on, have kids because our population is decreasing and our country needs you." Of course, we have government policies (in the form of "baby bonuses) that encourage this. Within the colonial period of course, the sexual liasons of the European men were also contained and monitored within direct/indirect policies (for instance, policies that intially allowed concubinage, and policies that allowed for the entry of European women into colonies).
The body tied so closely to the nation state reflects the biopolitics/body politics prevalent during the colonial period and carried through till today.
Stoler relates the issue of metissage to this control over sexuality (of both Whites and Natives) when colonial authorities linked "domestic arrangements to the public order, family to the state, sex to subversion, and psychological essence to racial type" (516). Anyone who has taken Singapore Studies modules [Or even National Education classes] or Sociological modules would already know how family is seen as the basic unit of nation.
The emphasis on the private/intimate lives of the individual basically implies that the body [more importantly, the female body] belongs to the State. Anyone remembers the reiteration of the "National Service"/ "civic duty" of women at a recent politician's speech? To paraphrase everything: "Go on, have kids because our population is decreasing and our country needs you." Of course, we have government policies (in the form of "baby bonuses) that encourage this. Within the colonial period of course, the sexual liasons of the European men were also contained and monitored within direct/indirect policies (for instance, policies that intially allowed concubinage, and policies that allowed for the entry of European women into colonies).
The body tied so closely to the nation state reflects the biopolitics/body politics prevalent during the colonial period and carried through till today.
This brings to mind the viability of biopolitics/ body politics then and now. Within the article, we get a sense that these sanctioning of “sexual deviancy” is met with opposition (rightfully so, since it merely recodes race). But the fact that such control over the body still remains till this day suggests a few things to me. Firstly, that this is a good form of governance. Secondly, the seeming impossibility to “own” your own body for even with the progress of time, we have yet to deviate from biopolitics/ body politics. From the moment of birth everyone is tagged, institutionalized and run within the cog of the machine. Instead of running within the colonial machine, of course, we’re stuck is the machine of the nation-state. How depressssing.
The Aesthetics of Colonial Concubinage
Much discussion has focused on the sexual relations between Flory and Ma Hla May (during this post, referred to as May) but less has been said about the modernist aestheticization of May’s concubinage.
When we first meet May, Orwell, through the narrator, casts May in an Orientalist light: she is dressed in traditional Burmese wear of the longyi, her petite frame, “typical” of representations of Asian females, is emphasized (“perhaps five feet tall”), and her “narrow eyes” are accentuated (here, we are reminded of Lily Briscoe’s Chinese eyes in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse). The narrator also takes great pain to describe to us the intricate details of May’s Orientalist clothes and her general appearance: she was “dressed in a longyi of pale blue embroidered Chinese satin, and a starched white muslim ingyi on which several gold lockets hung” (52).
If May is presented in an Orientalist fashion, the sexual subjugation that May is subject to under Flory’s concubinage is turned into a modernist aesthetic. As Flory’s “native” concubine, May is compared to a stylicized doll that is subject to Flory’s whims and moods: “she was like a doll, with her oval, still face the colour of new copper . . . an outlandish doll and yet a grotesquely beautiful one” (52). Rather than dwelling on May’s “abject status [as] slave” (Stoler 49) and the victimization that she undergoes as Flory’s concubine, Orwell, through the narrator, sees May as an aesthetic sculpture. The implication of the simile -- May’s “tiny, straight, slender body was as contourless as a bas-relief carved upon a tree” (52, italics mine) -- is that the “native” woman, May, is reduced to an artistic object in the Western artist’s imagination. In other words, colonial concubinage is hijacked from its colonial history and turned into modernist aesthetic.
When May is banished by Flory, her aesthetic value depreciates, to the extent that she takes on a ghastly appearance, with her “greasy” hair and her “face grey with powder . . . [looking] like a screaming hag of the bazaar” (273). Ultimately, May is condemned to be an aesthetic commodity, circulated and exchanged within the modernist (and colonialist) economy.
When we first meet May, Orwell, through the narrator, casts May in an Orientalist light: she is dressed in traditional Burmese wear of the longyi, her petite frame, “typical” of representations of Asian females, is emphasized (“perhaps five feet tall”), and her “narrow eyes” are accentuated (here, we are reminded of Lily Briscoe’s Chinese eyes in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse). The narrator also takes great pain to describe to us the intricate details of May’s Orientalist clothes and her general appearance: she was “dressed in a longyi of pale blue embroidered Chinese satin, and a starched white muslim ingyi on which several gold lockets hung” (52).
If May is presented in an Orientalist fashion, the sexual subjugation that May is subject to under Flory’s concubinage is turned into a modernist aesthetic. As Flory’s “native” concubine, May is compared to a stylicized doll that is subject to Flory’s whims and moods: “she was like a doll, with her oval, still face the colour of new copper . . . an outlandish doll and yet a grotesquely beautiful one” (52). Rather than dwelling on May’s “abject status [as] slave” (Stoler 49) and the victimization that she undergoes as Flory’s concubine, Orwell, through the narrator, sees May as an aesthetic sculpture. The implication of the simile -- May’s “tiny, straight, slender body was as contourless as a bas-relief carved upon a tree” (52, italics mine) -- is that the “native” woman, May, is reduced to an artistic object in the Western artist’s imagination. In other words, colonial concubinage is hijacked from its colonial history and turned into modernist aesthetic.
When May is banished by Flory, her aesthetic value depreciates, to the extent that she takes on a ghastly appearance, with her “greasy” hair and her “face grey with powder . . . [looking] like a screaming hag of the bazaar” (273). Ultimately, May is condemned to be an aesthetic commodity, circulated and exchanged within the modernist (and colonialist) economy.
White Identity at Peril
A classic illustration of white supremacy in Burmese Days found me rather vexed when I got to the part where Maxwell had just been murdered. As the Club men began plotting their revenge, the native’s life is portrayed as cheaper than a white man’s, like in exchange rates: “two corpses against their one – best we can do” (219), as if life can be valued in the first place. The natives understand the double-standards of the colonial rule they are under: aware that the four boys, wrongly accused for attacking Ellis, were not likely to be given fair trial, they decide to take things into their own hands and stage a revolt at the Club. Stoler highlights a similar double-standard regarding inter-marriages, showing how European men who marry native women are merely seen as indulging in sexual excess, while the native women are always assumed to be either prostitutes or concubines.
These double-standards, instead of solidifying white supremacy, actually cast light on the frail justifications for white supremacy and the fragility of the “essence” (Stoler 516) of European-ness. For example, such métis’ (persons of mixed parentage) “ambiguous positioning and identifications” (516) were regarded as potentially disloyal threats to the colonial state. Further, that they can be classified as Europeans by association with their fathers does well to upset the “purity of the [colonial] community” (516), and race is no longer the stable or adequate marker of colonial difference. Fears then emerged that a European man might lose his “identity and would become degenerate and décivilisé” (534), and this leads me to conclude that the imposition of white supremacy by colonial rulers on colonised subjects was symptomatic of white identity at peril: colonisers were beginning to realise the fluidity of their white “essence”, which undermined the justification for colonialism – race as colonial difference.
(300 words)
These double-standards, instead of solidifying white supremacy, actually cast light on the frail justifications for white supremacy and the fragility of the “essence” (Stoler 516) of European-ness. For example, such métis’ (persons of mixed parentage) “ambiguous positioning and identifications” (516) were regarded as potentially disloyal threats to the colonial state. Further, that they can be classified as Europeans by association with their fathers does well to upset the “purity of the [colonial] community” (516), and race is no longer the stable or adequate marker of colonial difference. Fears then emerged that a European man might lose his “identity and would become degenerate and décivilisé” (534), and this leads me to conclude that the imposition of white supremacy by colonial rulers on colonised subjects was symptomatic of white identity at peril: colonisers were beginning to realise the fluidity of their white “essence”, which undermined the justification for colonialism – race as colonial difference.
(300 words)
historicising texts
i think the stoler article helps to pull us back as subjective readers and interpreters to historicise texts within the economic and social realities that were actually occurring at the time--historical facts which we (or at least i) tend to overlook in lieu of textual evidence such as characterisation, metaphors, etc. for instance, instead of reading ma hla may as a devious temptress who manipulates and blackmails flory for her own capitalistic gains - an agent of her own capitalist agenda - as we did last class, we now can see her contextualised within the prevalence of concubinage, which "was tolerated precisely because "poor whites" were not." (Stoler 54) not only is she divested of her agency in such a context, she's tolerated because concubinage perpetuates "white prestige" as european women are perceived as too expensive to upkeep, and therefore native women become the convenient outlets of sexual release who are, naturally, divested of any legal rights. Stoler is quick to point out that "Colonized women could sometimes parlay their positions into personal profit and small rewards, but these were individual negotiations with no social, legal, or cumulative claims." (57) placed within such a machine, may becomes that cog lacking agency which in so far as she is able to act (eg. putting on the mask and taking it off after her performance as was discussed) deludes herself and flory into perceiving she is dangerous in any way, when it is the other way around and white men like flory are "protected" (or at least perceived to be paternalistically) by the white colonial regime. while this might seem like pointing the finger at exploitative white men again, the article qualifies this and asserts that to some extent they, like women both native and colonised, are all colonial subjects in their own right, subsumed within the mechanics of colonial exploitation.
Abandonment
Stoler talks about the issue of abandonment of mixed blood children in the colonial context as that which is predicated on specific race, cultural and gender coordinates. If the colonial project is based on colonial difference – race – then these mixed blood children who blur racial distinctions also disrupts colonialism and a European national identity.
The other significant thing is how criticism on abandoned mixed blood children falls more so on the immoral influences of native women rather than European men: “the indigenous woman who consents to live with a European is a veritable prostitute…when…the latter disappear or abandon her, she fatally returns to the vice which she came from…” Which seems to be exactly how Ma Hla May is portrayed in the text: a prostitute. Cultural, physical and moral contamination does not arise just out of racial differences but also becomes a gender issue. Elizabeth points out the belief that “these Eurasians are very degenerate…that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races” (126) – referring to these “worst” aspects as inherited from native women.
Stoler also mentions how the issue of abandonment centers on the lack of paternal [European] discipline and the threat of the single-mother family. Which can perhaps be refuted by Flory’s argument: “We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when’s all said and done, we’re responsible for their existence” (126). The use of “we” suggests that there is a need to claim responsibility for these children, beyond an individual level to a national level – in which, perhaps the European colonizing nation will replace the father figure [that seems to have been missing from single-native-mother families]. But can these children, brought up by “immoral” native women, really be incorporated into the paternal colonizing nation?
(300!)
The other significant thing is how criticism on abandoned mixed blood children falls more so on the immoral influences of native women rather than European men: “the indigenous woman who consents to live with a European is a veritable prostitute…when…the latter disappear or abandon her, she fatally returns to the vice which she came from…” Which seems to be exactly how Ma Hla May is portrayed in the text: a prostitute. Cultural, physical and moral contamination does not arise just out of racial differences but also becomes a gender issue. Elizabeth points out the belief that “these Eurasians are very degenerate…that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races” (126) – referring to these “worst” aspects as inherited from native women.
Stoler also mentions how the issue of abandonment centers on the lack of paternal [European] discipline and the threat of the single-mother family. Which can perhaps be refuted by Flory’s argument: “We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when’s all said and done, we’re responsible for their existence” (126). The use of “we” suggests that there is a need to claim responsibility for these children, beyond an individual level to a national level – in which, perhaps the European colonizing nation will replace the father figure [that seems to have been missing from single-native-mother families]. But can these children, brought up by “immoral” native women, really be incorporated into the paternal colonizing nation?
(300!)
Sovereignties in Question: The Instance of Metissage In the Colonial (Un)Consciousness
Stoler's emphasis on the term “internal frontier” (516) shows its curious logic: a frontier, if it is to make coherent sense, exists in the liminal space between incommensurable entities. Even as it tries to demarcate purity and homogeneity, it can never function without its outside. Stoler’s focus on the issue of metissage becomes interesting because it interrogates the logic of colonial identity as needing to anxiously manufacture and redefine its sense of exclusivity. The powerful liminal presence of members of a community who disrupt the boundaries between colonizer and colonized suggest how this separation comes to be produced and maintained by a colonial apparatus militating against ideological collapse.
The threat of this collapse bespeaks a fear of European devolution, assuaged through modernity’s focus on the increasing rationalization of societal and governmental processes that order people into discrete categories of control. Systems of subordination that shore up cultural identities and mores are thereby naturalized, justified, and rendered as epistemologically transparent. Max Weber's gloomy pronouncements on this kind of instrumental rationality that traps people in its iron cage, and Adorno and Horkheimer's indictments on the value of “reason” in this system that ultimately led to the Holocaust can be seen as powerful attempts to challenge this rationale.
Perhaps it is bourgeois society's use of language, and its role as enabling the objectivity and standardization of the administrator and scientist that needs to be questioned. Literature must then inhabit a zone of textual metissage to effect this critique: literary language, as a self-reflexive phenomenon that both points to an author's and readers’ positionality on events, and enables the critique and subversion of that stance in favour of a certain interpretive uncertainty that cannot and must not become absolute, provides such an alternative. This is perhaps the moral impetus of reading and writing.
The threat of this collapse bespeaks a fear of European devolution, assuaged through modernity’s focus on the increasing rationalization of societal and governmental processes that order people into discrete categories of control. Systems of subordination that shore up cultural identities and mores are thereby naturalized, justified, and rendered as epistemologically transparent. Max Weber's gloomy pronouncements on this kind of instrumental rationality that traps people in its iron cage, and Adorno and Horkheimer's indictments on the value of “reason” in this system that ultimately led to the Holocaust can be seen as powerful attempts to challenge this rationale.
Perhaps it is bourgeois society's use of language, and its role as enabling the objectivity and standardization of the administrator and scientist that needs to be questioned. Literature must then inhabit a zone of textual metissage to effect this critique: literary language, as a self-reflexive phenomenon that both points to an author's and readers’ positionality on events, and enables the critique and subversion of that stance in favour of a certain interpretive uncertainty that cannot and must not become absolute, provides such an alternative. This is perhaps the moral impetus of reading and writing.
Eurasians not European Enough, Ma Hla May not Burmese Enough
As Stoler notes, Eurasian children were required to fulfill a myriad of criteria in order to gain the advantageous 'legal access to European equivalent status' (Stoler 538). Some examples of these are 'fluency in spoken and written' language of their home country, 'training in European morals and ideas', and the necessity of the 'distanc[ing] of [oneself] from his native being' (Stoler 538). This judgement comes from an official body, the courts, with directives put into place to determine the Eurasian child's citizenship. What is important here is how these point to an obsession with not only whether one is European, but whether one is European enough.
What is interesting about this, for me, is how this may be applied in reverse to the character of Ma Hla May. A similarly liminal figure, she too is subject to scrutiny in order to determine if she is Burmese enough, although in her case, her verdict is declared by the Burmese community. Her question, 'how can I go back to my village after [having been a bo-kadaw]' (Orwell 158) indicates the impossibility of her reintegration into Burmese society fully as a respectful woman- she is instead 'ruined' and 'shame[d]' (Orwell 159). Perhaps an alternative to Shiva's reading could be that Ma Hla May's native identity has been altered forever (instead of 'relinquished'), due to her failed relationship (as opposed to her mere 'union with Flory') with a white man. Ma Hla May is still native, but not native enough.
(300 words)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
'Their drop of white blood is the sole asset they've got' (Flory 126)
Stoler’s article presents a realistic portrayal of the plight of Eurasians in a colonial society. The problem with Eurasians is that they have both the colonialist’s and the colonized’s blood in them and thus do not belong to any clearly defined categories. The Eurasians are products of transgressed boundaries, of blurred binaries that are problematic for those seeking to reinforce these binaries. The issue of loyalty to a certain culture then becomes the main focus, as Stoler highlights:
How then could the state mark some candidates so they would be excluded from the national community while retraining the possibility that other individuals would be granted the rights of inclusion because French and Dutch “blood prevailed in their veins”? (521).
This issue of loyalty and identity is presented in both the case study Stoler presents and through the portrayal of Francis and Samuel in Burmese Days. Stoler states the main problem with the boy’s case was whether he
could really be considered culturally and politically French and whether he was inculcated with the patriotic feelings and nationalist sentiments which might have prompted such a loyal response (523).
Similarly, both Francis and Samuel are condemned as outcasts of society because they lack the proper upbringing given to the privileged class: ‘Eurasians of that type – men who’ve been brought up in the bazaar and had no education – are done for from the start’ (126).
On a separate note, I find it interesting how attitudes towards Eurasians have changed. In
Sexual relationships
I find this quote in Stoler’s argument particularly useful in approaching Orwell’s Burmese Days:
none of these fears were very far removed from the more general concern that European men living with native women would themselves lose their Dutch or French identity and would become degenerate and décivilisé. Internal to this logic was a notion of cultural, physical, and moral contamination, the fear that those Europeans who did not subscribe to Dutch middle-class conventions of respectability would not only compromise the cultural distinctions of empire, but waver in their allegiances to metropolitan rule (533, 534)
Flory’s debauchery with May is made evident through his meeting with Elizabeth. Contact with Elizabeth brings out the ‘Englishness’ in him. Flory laments how his affair with May has “degenerate and décivilisé” him. Only by marrying Elizabeth can his ‘Englishness’ be restored. Flory’s affair with May ultimately destroys him. U Po Kyin attacks Flory’s “weakest spot” (his affair with May). Flory’s sexual deviance is, in Elizabeth’s opinion, a deviance from the ways of ‘Europeanness’ or ‘Englishness’ that is taboo and intolerable. Flory’s suicide in the end can be viewed as a self-destruction brought about by sexual deviance (métissage), an unpardonable sin in committed by the white man. Flory’s behaviour is subjected to changes depending on whether he is with May or Elizabeth. With May, Flory is more bolshevic, shows interest in the Burmese culture, leading a squalid and meaningless life. Elizabeth brings about a total change in Flory. He quits drinking and indulges in the English display of chivalry and gallantry (hunting and polo). This is closely linked to what Stoler is arguing about, how the sexual relations play an important role in colonial politics.
none of these fears were very far removed from the more general concern that European men living with native women would themselves lose their Dutch or French identity and would become degenerate and décivilisé. Internal to this logic was a notion of cultural, physical, and moral contamination, the fear that those Europeans who did not subscribe to Dutch middle-class conventions of respectability would not only compromise the cultural distinctions of empire, but waver in their allegiances to metropolitan rule (533, 534)
Flory’s debauchery with May is made evident through his meeting with Elizabeth. Contact with Elizabeth brings out the ‘Englishness’ in him. Flory laments how his affair with May has “degenerate and décivilisé” him. Only by marrying Elizabeth can his ‘Englishness’ be restored. Flory’s affair with May ultimately destroys him. U Po Kyin attacks Flory’s “weakest spot” (his affair with May). Flory’s sexual deviance is, in Elizabeth’s opinion, a deviance from the ways of ‘Europeanness’ or ‘Englishness’ that is taboo and intolerable. Flory’s suicide in the end can be viewed as a self-destruction brought about by sexual deviance (métissage), an unpardonable sin in committed by the white man. Flory’s behaviour is subjected to changes depending on whether he is with May or Elizabeth. With May, Flory is more bolshevic, shows interest in the Burmese culture, leading a squalid and meaningless life. Elizabeth brings about a total change in Flory. He quits drinking and indulges in the English display of chivalry and gallantry (hunting and polo). This is closely linked to what Stoler is arguing about, how the sexual relations play an important role in colonial politics.
May's tight spot
Last week’s presentation group mentioned how the tone in which Ma Hla May’s end was narrated seemed to suggest that she deserved her end. I agreed with them then and after reading Stoler, I think this point can be expanded. Stoler mentioned how the courts/societies often concurred that the native woman would inevitably go back to her prostitute ways after separating from the White man and this evoked May for me. Though May was not a prostitute before, having been ousted from the relationship with Flory, she ends up in a brothel.
Rather than ponder whether Orwell conformed to the same ideas as the Indies & Indochina officials, I just want to flesh out the fact that the native women, not just the White man, is put in a tight spot by such mixed unions because everything of hers is put on the line. I really don’t like the character May (and I’m not a feminist) but she deserves sympathy. She can’t go back to her village without being made to remember her “ex” and her concubine life. She can’t demand anything from Flory except money. It is as if May relinquished her native identity by union with Flory and she can’t take it back nor she can’t claim Whiteness by association. Mixed bloods can at least straddle both identities— May can’t even do that. So the brothel where women are not people or selves with identity but are bodies, is where May can reside with her lack of identity.
(250 words)
Sex (and money) in the Colonies
What struck me as I read Stoler was her suggestion that sex in the colonies was closely linked with the economics of colonial control. Stoler posits that it was the practical monetary concerns of keeping the costs of maintenance of expatriate families down that led (amongst other reasons) to the practice of concubinage. However, the practical use of European wives as household managers subsequently promoted marriage with European wives (besides having resulted from heightened fears of resistance and the implications of metissage on white prestige). Relating this to Burmese Days, Elizabeth can be read as the ultimate exemplication of the sexual "laws" that had been set in place to contain capital in the coloniser's hands.
Elizabeth’s gaze upon Flory is coloured by socio-economic terms (significance of her tortoise-shell glasses!) He appeals to her only when he shows mastery over the colonised space, by driving away the bull and by hunting, fitting her notions of a respectable "pukka" or first class sahib. She casts him aside when 'the Honourable' Verrall comes along, as his 700 rupees have become pittance in comparison. Elizabeth moreover is dreaded by Flory's servants, unable to pilfer money for themselves when she becomes mistress. Therefore Elizabeth's conflation with capital control, which exemplifies colonial marriage's conflation with capitalism in colonial discourse.
We the readers therefore clearly see the irony and deluded-ness of Flory in seeking "someone who would love Burma as he loved it and hate it as he hated it...Someone who understood him: a friend"(73) in someone like Elizabeth, a born "Burra memsahib"(300). These attributes Flory seeks in a wife are ultimately unprofitable as it jeopardises White Prestige and subsequently capital dominance. Therefore it is significant that it is women and their links with capital who lead to Flory's downfall. Hla May's screams for money "Pike-san-pay-like!" makes him poor “Porley” and ultimately destroys him socially and Elizabeth rejects him as a result. Flory is punished as he has become an “unprofitable” “cog in the wheels” (69) of colonialism. In light of this, Flory’s earlier opinion that "What shall it profit a man if he save his own soul and lose the whole world?" (80) can be read as a gospel of colonial discourse.
Elizabeth’s gaze upon Flory is coloured by socio-economic terms (significance of her tortoise-shell glasses!) He appeals to her only when he shows mastery over the colonised space, by driving away the bull and by hunting, fitting her notions of a respectable "pukka" or first class sahib. She casts him aside when 'the Honourable' Verrall comes along, as his 700 rupees have become pittance in comparison. Elizabeth moreover is dreaded by Flory's servants, unable to pilfer money for themselves when she becomes mistress. Therefore Elizabeth's conflation with capital control, which exemplifies colonial marriage's conflation with capitalism in colonial discourse.
We the readers therefore clearly see the irony and deluded-ness of Flory in seeking "someone who would love Burma as he loved it and hate it as he hated it...Someone who understood him: a friend"(73) in someone like Elizabeth, a born "Burra memsahib"(300). These attributes Flory seeks in a wife are ultimately unprofitable as it jeopardises White Prestige and subsequently capital dominance. Therefore it is significant that it is women and their links with capital who lead to Flory's downfall. Hla May's screams for money "Pike-san-pay-like!" makes him poor “Porley” and ultimately destroys him socially and Elizabeth rejects him as a result. Flory is punished as he has become an “unprofitable” “cog in the wheels” (69) of colonialism. In light of this, Flory’s earlier opinion that "What shall it profit a man if he save his own soul and lose the whole world?" (80) can be read as a gospel of colonial discourse.
White narrative, black words
Some thoughts on Orwell and Kelly's question.
Stoler suggests that racism is not primarily a visual ideology: rather the visual differences of race serve to signal the non-visual, "more salient" distinctions of exclusion "on which racism rests". The visual can point to skin colour or other physical attributes; it can also refer to a difference that is constructed: the different architectures of the colonial club/local buildings, the colonial grotto, clothing.
Physical Difference always exists (not even the King of Pop gets away from that), it is the abstract differences that become value laden, that maintains and further seperates this distance. Turning back to Hegel, we could say that after the moment of recognition, before the physical struggle that determines master/slave, is the ideological struggle.
Anyway, turning to Orwell's writing and its apparent misogyny and racism: these words, these sentiments, seem parallel to the physical attributes that distance the text from us, in our '(more) enlightened', pomo-poco-politically correct age. If we think of our identities as 'white' bodies of discourse, then Orwell/Conrad's text (not Orwell/Conrad) might seem 'blacky' racist, or better to say 'brown': "white canonical goodness" intertwined with "black racist sentiment". All very chocolatey and no doubt I am crazy from overwork.
But the point being that, if the text displays some kind of "metissage", how do we approach the text? To "whiten" it would probably be to consider the misogyny/racism ironic, a mask of blackness to highlight the whiteness within. If one feels the content cannot be treated ironically, then it is destined to remain blackly offensive.
So anyway, my response to Kelly's question on how to handle racism in Orwell's text is, partially, the horribly waffly sounding "make of it what you will". The caveat is: having the power to make of it what you will, be gentle, for literary texts in some ways are "Other" to us, just as the native is "Other" to the European: going in directions which need not necessarily converge. Attempting to "Colonise" the text, peculiarly, reproduces the imperialist ideology in a literary kind of way.
Stoler suggests that racism is not primarily a visual ideology: rather the visual differences of race serve to signal the non-visual, "more salient" distinctions of exclusion "on which racism rests". The visual can point to skin colour or other physical attributes; it can also refer to a difference that is constructed: the different architectures of the colonial club/local buildings, the colonial grotto, clothing.
Physical Difference always exists (not even the King of Pop gets away from that), it is the abstract differences that become value laden, that maintains and further seperates this distance. Turning back to Hegel, we could say that after the moment of recognition, before the physical struggle that determines master/slave, is the ideological struggle.
Anyway, turning to Orwell's writing and its apparent misogyny and racism: these words, these sentiments, seem parallel to the physical attributes that distance the text from us, in our '(more) enlightened', pomo-poco-politically correct age. If we think of our identities as 'white' bodies of discourse, then Orwell/Conrad's text (not Orwell/Conrad) might seem 'blacky' racist, or better to say 'brown': "white canonical goodness" intertwined with "black racist sentiment". All very chocolatey and no doubt I am crazy from overwork.
But the point being that, if the text displays some kind of "metissage", how do we approach the text? To "whiten" it would probably be to consider the misogyny/racism ironic, a mask of blackness to highlight the whiteness within. If one feels the content cannot be treated ironically, then it is destined to remain blackly offensive.
So anyway, my response to Kelly's question on how to handle racism in Orwell's text is, partially, the horribly waffly sounding "make of it what you will". The caveat is: having the power to make of it what you will, be gentle, for literary texts in some ways are "Other" to us, just as the native is "Other" to the European: going in directions which need not necessarily converge. Attempting to "Colonise" the text, peculiarly, reproduces the imperialist ideology in a literary kind of way.
not for everyone ...
this is crazy stuff:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/01/vanessa_beecroft_slammed_at_su.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012304123.html
and i'm not sure how to justify or vilify this ... it's so ill-conceived in the first place.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/01/vanessa_beecroft_slammed_at_su.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012304123.html
and i'm not sure how to justify or vilify this ... it's so ill-conceived in the first place.
On Law & Community
When the notion of community assumes as its predicate the notion of boundary, “the purity of the community” necessarily intervenes. “Boundary”, “demarcation”, “binary”, “Self & Other” – one can say these terms in rotation. In relation to such a notion of community, the language of law (i.e. legal lingo) becomes the language of exclusion, whose objective is the security of communal integrity, or purity. The practice of which is inherently problematic, as demonstrated by Stoler’s article. On the exclusion of the métis from legal categories in both French Indochina and the Netherlands Indies, Stoler reports that the refusal of the corresponding governments to grant citizenship or subject status to a métis “could not be made on the basis of race alone, because all métis shared some degree of European descent by definition” (520). For the language of law is, generally speaking, a language of denotation, rather than that of allusion; it is constructed for stating that one object is this and not that, and furthermore, that this is never, under any circumstances, that. An example of such legal logic is found on page 75 of Burmese Days, where a suspect is convicted of theft solely on the “evidence” of his scars: marks of past offence – ‘“He is an old offender. Therefore he stole the ring!”’ As demonstrated by this same episode, such logic, or system of rationalization, carries its own danger: the language of law risks division of its people to an idea of community, an ‘imagined community’, to use Benedict Anderson’s term; this episode can be thought of as functioning the role of one of the many moments of tensions, that prepares for what is to take place in the final scenes: Maxwell's murder, Ellis' heated and tragic encounter with the Burmese students, the mob at the clubhouse, to list but three. Perhaps Forster’s dictum – “only connect” – provides a way of thinking about community without lapsing into an idea of boundary that cannot rid itself of the rhetoric of exclusion. Perhaps it is not so much the idea of boundary that carries within itself the seeds of the dangers previously mentioned – the injustices and humiliations inflicted upon another human being on the grounds of racial divide, or “colonial difference” – but the seemingly ineluctable reliance on such an idea to establish the grounds for colonial governance: to rule a people, you create the people. One way to do this is to speak the language of law, the language of exclusion.
Blasphemous Burmese days!
Native spiritualism is something that we readers of colonial texts have come to expect. We see elements of it in Passage, in HD, in Lord Jim. So no surprises to see it in Burmese days--Burmese beaters conduct a sacrificial rite prior to the hunt, Ma Kin is deeply concerned about acquiring merit. What does interest me is what seems to be a not-so-subtle subversion of the usual native worship of native gods to a textual worship of White culture.
For starters, the terms “most holy god” and “the holy one” pop up routinely when the Burmese servants address White men. The European Club is referred to first as “the spiritual citadel”, and later as “that holy of holies”. The murder of a White man (Maxwell) is “a sacrilege”. Really, it is almost impossible to miss the religious (pun intended of course) spiritualization of Whiteness.
In the event that we did, however, the text certainly seems to take further steps to reiterate the point—mainly by eroding the position of prescribed native and European religion. U Po Kyin’s methods of acquiring merit turn Buddhism into something like a commercial enterprise where money is everything—purchasing a pagoda/salvation is akin to purchasing just another commodity. The pre-hunt sacrificial rite I mentioned earlier is attended to by Burmese with “serious, bored faces, like men in church”, implying with that single quote the spiritual apathy in both the ‘natives’ and the White Christians. In fact, the church service that takes place later in the book is described as “the great social event of their lives.” So. The sacred space of religion has become nothing more than a mating or match-making ground. Where is the reverence for the divine? It appears to be lost. Subsumed, I suppose, by the worship of Whiteness, or that “most holy god”.
For starters, the terms “most holy god” and “the holy one” pop up routinely when the Burmese servants address White men. The European Club is referred to first as “the spiritual citadel”, and later as “that holy of holies”. The murder of a White man (Maxwell) is “a sacrilege”. Really, it is almost impossible to miss the religious (pun intended of course) spiritualization of Whiteness.
In the event that we did, however, the text certainly seems to take further steps to reiterate the point—mainly by eroding the position of prescribed native and European religion. U Po Kyin’s methods of acquiring merit turn Buddhism into something like a commercial enterprise where money is everything—purchasing a pagoda/salvation is akin to purchasing just another commodity. The pre-hunt sacrificial rite I mentioned earlier is attended to by Burmese with “serious, bored faces, like men in church”, implying with that single quote the spiritual apathy in both the ‘natives’ and the White Christians. In fact, the church service that takes place later in the book is described as “the great social event of their lives.” So. The sacred space of religion has become nothing more than a mating or match-making ground. Where is the reverence for the divine? It appears to be lost. Subsumed, I suppose, by the worship of Whiteness, or that “most holy god”.
" ... to halve his loneliness ... " (Chap IV)
For Stoler, sex functions not simply as a metaphor for colonial relations (a point of contention in last week's class), but is inherently fundamental to the colonial enterprise, affecting its policies and the practical outworkings of its power relations. Undergirding her entire piece is how intimacy with the colonial other ironically fostered and accentuated racial subjectivities, and this is echoed in Burmese Days. From the start of the novel, in Chap IV, Flory and May are never fully comfortable with in their "relationship". Their physical intimacy belies their disgust not simply for each other, but for themselves as individuals; neither is fully comfortable in his/her own skin. In joint nakedness, both are ashamed of their own physicality - Flory with his birthmark, and May with her breasts. It would then be logical to conjecture that their arrangement is purely economic, given that Flory has bought her from her parents. But I would suggest otherwise, for an alternative answer may be found later in the chapter, where Flory goes for a dip in the pool in the forest. There, surrounded by nature, while watching "a single green pigeon", Flory finds an immanent expression of his inner loneliness. It is in this evocation of the deep malaise of the soul - the desire to know and to fully know another - that Orwell. through the portrayal of sex in the colonies, approaches the modernist apprehension of an individual crisis of subjectivities, of an individual striving against the prevailing discourse.
Violence & the Crowd: Familiar?
In Burmese Days, we see the episode in which Flory and Elizabeth go shooting, and end up hunting down a tiger which they kill. This act of violence/killing, is just as graphic as the one we saw in Shooting an Elephant, but what was entirely different was how they set out to shoot( perform that act of violence in the first place). Elizabeth in particular seems to have quite an unsettling attitude toward violence; namely that she doesn’t quite care. When Flory was telling her about the “imperial pigeon”, how “the Burmese” believe it vomits when it dies and that it is “murder to shoot them”, all she asks is “Are they good to eat?” (All Ch 13)This (apart from being horrifically funny), suggests not just an absent “humanitarianism”(Stoler 514), but also a certain consumption of the colonial land in terms of its exotic material(which we could read as the imperial west needing the raw materials to fuel their industrialized west)Elizabeth loves violence, it is only after this shooting event she seemed to be drawn to Flory( but we all know how THAT turned out). In the end, its violence, violence, violence: Flory shoots Flo( who is part of Flory in well name and companionship), then shoots himself, and of course that whole violence of the riot, which reverberates a clear “rejection of the terms of the civilizing mission”(Stoler 551) with its ideas of civility, order and humanity in the western imperialist lifestyle.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Escaping the Interior Struggle
Stoler’s work Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers discusses how state machinations in policies both at home and out in the colonies are intertwined with the internal turmoil of the European in the colonies. In the face of “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” (514), the case studies in Stoler’s article straddle the middle grounds of imperialist racism and colonial nationalism. Perhaps the best figure in Orwell’s Burmese Days to embody the interior conflict in the colonialist psyche is Flory. His interior frontier that is constantly challenged and negotiated, becomes what is of interest to us.
An European who sees through the hypocrisy of the colonial enterprise in Burma, Flory despises the pukka sahib characters and attitude, and at the same time has already internalized the imperial racism of the Orientals. Almost committing métissage with Ma Hla May, Flory’s character remains too “European” to tarnish his reputation and his lineage with an interracial marriage. His search for a European bride who will not develop the mentality and attitude of a pukka memsahib reflects his “inclusionary” attitudes and appreciation of the Burmese culture, untarnished by the “culture system” of colonialism.
Flory’s criterion for his bride, and his desire to groom Elizabeth into his ideal bride, show a microcosm of the “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” of the colonial government on the colonized populace. On the interior front, the lack of that ideal bride, since Elizabeth rejects him and he exists in a colonized landscape devoid of further opportunities, causes him to become incomplete in his desire to straddle the métis divide. The failure in his negotiation of the interior frontier by having a family that is an extension of his individual, and thereby a retort to the colonial enterprise’s model, leads him to a path of escapism viable only (in his view) by suicide. But is suicide that only option of rebellion and yet having the natural, innate instinct of establishing a family unit?
An European who sees through the hypocrisy of the colonial enterprise in Burma, Flory despises the pukka sahib characters and attitude, and at the same time has already internalized the imperial racism of the Orientals. Almost committing métissage with Ma Hla May, Flory’s character remains too “European” to tarnish his reputation and his lineage with an interracial marriage. His search for a European bride who will not develop the mentality and attitude of a pukka memsahib reflects his “inclusionary” attitudes and appreciation of the Burmese culture, untarnished by the “culture system” of colonialism.
Flory’s criterion for his bride, and his desire to groom Elizabeth into his ideal bride, show a microcosm of the “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” of the colonial government on the colonized populace. On the interior front, the lack of that ideal bride, since Elizabeth rejects him and he exists in a colonized landscape devoid of further opportunities, causes him to become incomplete in his desire to straddle the métis divide. The failure in his negotiation of the interior frontier by having a family that is an extension of his individual, and thereby a retort to the colonial enterprise’s model, leads him to a path of escapism viable only (in his view) by suicide. But is suicide that only option of rebellion and yet having the natural, innate instinct of establishing a family unit?
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