When I went for a seminar on multiculturalism and met a well-known (but alas name slips me now) professor in UCB she said that middle class minority or colonised cultures tend toward a process of "whitening" in which they, like Fanon says need to get kid of the "soul [in which] an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality" (Fanon, 18). While I found it intriging, taking on the behavior, attitudes and language of the coloniser to assimiliate the ranks of the colonised, my critical instinct was that this is similar to other systems of power/social relations.
Think of, for example, feminism and Marxism, in which being female and being poor (non-capitalist) puts one in the surbodinate position in relation to those in power. To be respected, the female must prove their capability to be equal that of the man while the proletariat must gather their forces to usurp the capitalists. Almost inevitably, they end up taking on elements of the "enemy" forces in a parodic way - the female becomes hyper-masculine while the proletariat end up perpetuating capitalist notions (Orwell's "Animal Farm", current Chinese Communist Party in China). What Fanon does is to give a postcolonial/racial slant to the notions of power and the disenfranchised, but it is something I think, which is more universal than simply want it means to be colonised; it extends into questions of what it means to be in a position of powerlessness.
p.s. sorry my hall internet was spoilt yesterday. urgh.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Associations
Reading Stephen’s translation from infant consciousness into the consciousness of a budding artist, I am reminded of a Taoist anecdote:
Before enlightenment, the mountain and the river are just mountains and river.
During enlightenment, the mountain and the river are more than just mountains and rivers.
After enlightenment, the mountain and the river are only just mountains and rivers.
And when Stephen exclaims the following epiphany:
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning. (268, 269)
I am reminded of what E. M. Cioran writes of in A Short History of Decay (trans. Richard Howard), in which a relation between thought and prostitution is uttered as follows: “Everything I know I learn in the School of Whores!” should be the exclamation of the thinker who accepts everything and rejects everything, when, following their example, he has specialized in the weary smile, when men are to him merely clients, and the world’s sidewalks the marketplace where he sells his bitterness, as his companions sell their bodies.
Before enlightenment, the mountain and the river are just mountains and river.
During enlightenment, the mountain and the river are more than just mountains and rivers.
After enlightenment, the mountain and the river are only just mountains and rivers.
And when Stephen exclaims the following epiphany:
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning. (268, 269)
I am reminded of what E. M. Cioran writes of in A Short History of Decay (trans. Richard Howard), in which a relation between thought and prostitution is uttered as follows: “Everything I know I learn in the School of Whores!” should be the exclamation of the thinker who accepts everything and rejects everything, when, following their example, he has specialized in the weary smile, when men are to him merely clients, and the world’s sidewalks the marketplace where he sells his bitterness, as his companions sell their bodies.
Remarkable therapy
If "speaking pidgin-nigger closes off the black man; it perpetuates a state of conflict in which the white man injects the black with extremely dangerous foreign bodies", and the newcomer who expresses himself expressly in French does so to emphasize the "rupture" that has occurred, it seems to me that all they're doing is valorizing the fragmentation of multiple subject-positions (the racially marked subject has broken off from the "effigy of him", an "essence", an "appearance"). This is as naturally reactionary as a raced subject's experiences that tell him that to celebrate the fragmented is to celebrate, or at least, remember, his own dismemberment (or perceived ejection, a break: he has "no culture, no civilization", no "long historical past"). The use of the oppressor's language here ("Our enemy is the teacher") can be modulated into the absurdity of privileging precisely those that have denied subject-status and agency to the marginalized and the oppressed. I think this is why the "old mother" cannot, or even refuses to understand this new incarnation ("a new type of man"!) of her son, she sees his new accent and slang as appropriate extremely dangerous foreign bodies. But things are never as simple as black or white (heh). In the end, I see language almost as a proselytizing agency determined to usurp the requisite inscription and repetition of Negro moral authority (because the Negro always has to say "Me work hard, me never lie, me never steal" ).
This willing internalization of oppression (or a reconstruction of self through the white Other) preludes Fanon's "disalienation of the black man". And still we have "a great black poet" instead of merely 'a great poet'. The power of language! That there is always this other, this contingency!
This willing internalization of oppression (or a reconstruction of self through the white Other) preludes Fanon's "disalienation of the black man". And still we have "a great black poet" instead of merely 'a great poet'. The power of language! That there is always this other, this contingency!
Last-minute Tundish...
Fanon makes clear the immense role language plays in constructing the identities of the colonizer and colonized and states, “to speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.” (38) The French that the Antilles Negro speaks seems self-empowerment, but is also complicity with a culture that deems him inferior. In Portrait Stephen refuses to learn Irish: “this race and this country and this life produced me…I shall express myself as I am.” (220) By Fanon’s formulation, Stephen’s attempts to forge an Irish identity through his colonizer’s language is paradoxical, self-defeating – by using English, he is already “tak[ing] on [an English] world.”
However, I find it a problematic conclusion - Stephen’s discussion of the tundish with the Dean reads on one level like Fanon’s examples of European enforcement of black inferiority by talking down in pidgin Creole, with Stephen’s morose reflection that “the language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205) when the Dean takes the word as a lowly Irish construction. As it turns out, it is “English and good old blunt English too,” (204) while “funnel,” conversely, is of French origin, a remnant of the time England itself was ‘colonised’, or conquered, by the Normans. The Dean’s identity as an Englishman and Stephen’s identity as an Irishman, however, define the identity of the respective words in their conversation – the French word appears more English than the English word that appears Irish, and Stephen’s revelation arguably does not make the Dean any less English nor he any the more.
This perhaps demonstrates that the identities of the colonizer and colonized also play an immense role in constructing their languages, and redeems somewhat Stephen’s decision to refashion English for an Irish identity – as well as Fanon’s contradictory usage of French for his theses.
However, I find it a problematic conclusion - Stephen’s discussion of the tundish with the Dean reads on one level like Fanon’s examples of European enforcement of black inferiority by talking down in pidgin Creole, with Stephen’s morose reflection that “the language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205) when the Dean takes the word as a lowly Irish construction. As it turns out, it is “English and good old blunt English too,” (204) while “funnel,” conversely, is of French origin, a remnant of the time England itself was ‘colonised’, or conquered, by the Normans. The Dean’s identity as an Englishman and Stephen’s identity as an Irishman, however, define the identity of the respective words in their conversation – the French word appears more English than the English word that appears Irish, and Stephen’s revelation arguably does not make the Dean any less English nor he any the more.
This perhaps demonstrates that the identities of the colonizer and colonized also play an immense role in constructing their languages, and redeems somewhat Stephen’s decision to refashion English for an Irish identity – as well as Fanon’s contradictory usage of French for his theses.
The line/language of beauty
Reading Fanon and Joyce in tandem this week brought up a particular issue that surfaces in the other texts we have studied: the importance of beauty in language, and the relation of the colonised (as a "tourist" of sorts of the coloniser's language) to beauty.
In a rather unfair exchange (among many others), the coloniser aestheticises the Other as a means of adding beauty to the English language and as a means of creating beauty. I'm thinking of Said and Gikandi here - the selective use of material or pseudo-spiritual aspects of the East/Other to make art. There's a hint of this in Joyce as well, when yellow ivy makes Stephen think of ivory: "one of the first examples that he had learnt in Latin had run: India mittit ebur" (157). India sends ivory: the coloniser's language is the medium that makes aspects of the East - the romanticised image of India, the material of ivory - beautiful. The coloniser is thus placed in the powerful position of the artist.
However, I call this exchange unfair because the colonised is barred from reciprocating. The privilege of the artist does not extend to the colonised, and this is very evident in Fanon's description of the French talking down to the native, even if the native is fluent in French: language to the native must be fragmented and thus made unbeautiful (for the native, language can only serve as a means of communication and the coloniser's assertion of power). The native is thus barred from the realm of the aesthetic and kept from creating beauty in language, because the notion of beauty, as with language, comes with an accompanying world of cultural knowledge and tradition (as Fanon and Joyce describe). The coloniser-artist feels more and more threatened the closer the native comes to this hallowed world. For the colonised, however, the problem lies in how to access beauty without resorting to this cultural world of the coloniser; Stephen, for instance, cannot enunciate an aesthetics of beauty without thinking through the borrowed lens of Aquinas. The colonised can thus try to reclaim this coloniser's cultural notions of beauty for his own, or he can rewrite his own standards of beauty.
I argue that the latter is what Joyce does in Portrait. By placing Irish Stephen in the role of artist, he reclaims agency for the colonised to act as a creator of beauty, as Joyce himself does through his modernist play with language. Rejecting the hermetic line of beauty, as it were, of the omniscient authorial voice, he revels in fragmentation, showing how fragmented language can be beautiful - contrary to the French in Fanon. Joyce, therefore, enacts a reversal of the talking-down and deaestheticization of language that goes on in Fanon; this is, arguably, an excellent example of how the colonised artist can reclaim beauty for himself.
In a rather unfair exchange (among many others), the coloniser aestheticises the Other as a means of adding beauty to the English language and as a means of creating beauty. I'm thinking of Said and Gikandi here - the selective use of material or pseudo-spiritual aspects of the East/Other to make art. There's a hint of this in Joyce as well, when yellow ivy makes Stephen think of ivory: "one of the first examples that he had learnt in Latin had run: India mittit ebur" (157). India sends ivory: the coloniser's language is the medium that makes aspects of the East - the romanticised image of India, the material of ivory - beautiful. The coloniser is thus placed in the powerful position of the artist.
However, I call this exchange unfair because the colonised is barred from reciprocating. The privilege of the artist does not extend to the colonised, and this is very evident in Fanon's description of the French talking down to the native, even if the native is fluent in French: language to the native must be fragmented and thus made unbeautiful (for the native, language can only serve as a means of communication and the coloniser's assertion of power). The native is thus barred from the realm of the aesthetic and kept from creating beauty in language, because the notion of beauty, as with language, comes with an accompanying world of cultural knowledge and tradition (as Fanon and Joyce describe). The coloniser-artist feels more and more threatened the closer the native comes to this hallowed world. For the colonised, however, the problem lies in how to access beauty without resorting to this cultural world of the coloniser; Stephen, for instance, cannot enunciate an aesthetics of beauty without thinking through the borrowed lens of Aquinas. The colonised can thus try to reclaim this coloniser's cultural notions of beauty for his own, or he can rewrite his own standards of beauty.
I argue that the latter is what Joyce does in Portrait. By placing Irish Stephen in the role of artist, he reclaims agency for the colonised to act as a creator of beauty, as Joyce himself does through his modernist play with language. Rejecting the hermetic line of beauty, as it were, of the omniscient authorial voice, he revels in fragmentation, showing how fragmented language can be beautiful - contrary to the French in Fanon. Joyce, therefore, enacts a reversal of the talking-down and deaestheticization of language that goes on in Fanon; this is, arguably, an excellent example of how the colonised artist can reclaim beauty for himself.
Lucky Thirteenth Week Post
So this is the last post! Like Kelly, I have to say I really liked this reading as I identified with it and like many of you I kept thinking about my exchange programme to the UK and how the Brits and Europeans reacted to me as an English-speaking Asian. What struck me while reading Fanon was the point he makes on the White’s perception of the black man:
And it made me question why Whites would be so concerned about the fluent, intellectual Black in this day and age? Could it be a fear of retribution? That the empire could strike back and the Black could become the coloniser? While the age of colonialism is over,I think a colonial mentality is still alive and kicking in the Whites’ mindset. Why else this fear of the once-colonised’s/seen-as-inferior’s acquisition of the coloniser's language? As already mentioned by some of you, “A man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language…mastery of language affords remarkable power” (18). Through the colonised race’s command of the coloniser’s language, the coloniser’s sense of superiority premised on differences is therefore undermined.
As a side note, thinking about this led me to think about Singapore’s anxieties years back when we heard the mainland Chinese were learning English and were speaking it better than us! I remember my Lao Shis telling us that we'd better learn our Mandarin "hao hao", because the Chinese are learning English faster and better than we are and soon it'll be us going to China to find jobs! I didn't listen and therefore find myself in English Literature :-)Before the rise of China around the earlier part of this decade, we tended to think of Singapore as superior to China (correct me if I'm wrong, I for one did), which we saw as a backward country where all our products were imported from (sound familiar?). Then, suddenly around the period 00'-02'we started hearing our politicians, notably LKY making speeches about "the rising dragon" and their shock on finding China more developed and modern than we were. And boy were we scared! Being fluent in English and being more cultured(!)in the ways of the West was, and I think still is, one of the last vestiges of power that we felt we could wield against them and then even in that they started to threaten us. To some extent, I think just maybe we can see where the Whites mentioned above are coming from...
Yet, I also find it significant that we tend to pride ourselves on our ability to converse fluently in English and in being well-versed in Western culture. We define our modernity as being a society that is largely English-educated, and English-speaking. In maintaining the language of our colonisers as our first language, how much of our identity becomes defined by the West? And therefore, how much of ourselves remains stuck in the shadow of Western colonialism, now in the form of dominantly Western capitalism, if the West is the standard against which we measure ourselves? Like the case of the Negro, can the Singaporean be seen as having "no culture, no civilisation, no long historical past?" (34). Oh dear, I think we need a Dedalus!
“To make him talk pidgin is to fasten him to the effigy of him, to snare him, to imprison him, the eternal victim of an essence, of an appearance for which he is not responsible” (35).
And it made me question why Whites would be so concerned about the fluent, intellectual Black in this day and age? Could it be a fear of retribution? That the empire could strike back and the Black could become the coloniser? While the age of colonialism is over,I think a colonial mentality is still alive and kicking in the Whites’ mindset. Why else this fear of the once-colonised’s/seen-as-inferior’s acquisition of the coloniser's language? As already mentioned by some of you, “A man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language…mastery of language affords remarkable power” (18). Through the colonised race’s command of the coloniser’s language, the coloniser’s sense of superiority premised on differences is therefore undermined.
As a side note, thinking about this led me to think about Singapore’s anxieties years back when we heard the mainland Chinese were learning English and were speaking it better than us! I remember my Lao Shis telling us that we'd better learn our Mandarin "hao hao", because the Chinese are learning English faster and better than we are and soon it'll be us going to China to find jobs! I didn't listen and therefore find myself in English Literature :-)Before the rise of China around the earlier part of this decade, we tended to think of Singapore as superior to China (correct me if I'm wrong, I for one did), which we saw as a backward country where all our products were imported from (sound familiar?). Then, suddenly around the period 00'-02'we started hearing our politicians, notably LKY making speeches about "the rising dragon" and their shock on finding China more developed and modern than we were. And boy were we scared! Being fluent in English and being more cultured(!)in the ways of the West was, and I think still is, one of the last vestiges of power that we felt we could wield against them and then even in that they started to threaten us. To some extent, I think just maybe we can see where the Whites mentioned above are coming from...
Yet, I also find it significant that we tend to pride ourselves on our ability to converse fluently in English and in being well-versed in Western culture. We define our modernity as being a society that is largely English-educated, and English-speaking. In maintaining the language of our colonisers as our first language, how much of our identity becomes defined by the West? And therefore, how much of ourselves remains stuck in the shadow of Western colonialism, now in the form of dominantly Western capitalism, if the West is the standard against which we measure ourselves? Like the case of the Negro, can the Singaporean be seen as having "no culture, no civilisation, no long historical past?" (34). Oh dear, I think we need a Dedalus!
Thoughts on Fanon's article
In this week's post, I'll respond to this quotation from Fanon's article.
Whilst writing this blogpost, I suddenly thought of a show that I use to be quite crazy over. "mind your language"-- in which Mr Brown teaches a class of foreigners English and all the cultural stereotypes start showing themselves. It's hilarious, okay, maybe also racist. But at the same time it shows how we can all be speaking the same English, but actually speaking a different language.
"To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is."The main point here is that the mastery of the language of the dominant culture enables one to assume a culture. For some reason, I immediately thought of Obama. He's now the first African-American president of the US, and by extension also the most powerful person in the whole world yada yada ... but at the same time, is Obama "black" or "white" ??? Yes, he has a black body, but in many ways, he's also white. He's not only really well-educated (all the great schools!), speaks well, speaks the language of the educated white Americans etc; or perhaps we can consider him as black in a way that is acceptable to many whites. In many ways, Obama's success at being able to "take on a world" can be attributed to his being able to "gain greater mastery of the cultural tool" of the Americans. In comparison however, if we were to come across a black drunkard in an alley, we would immediately classify him as a black. But of course, this black drunkard speaks the same English as Obama, so I think the question then to ask is if they're speaking the same language?
Whilst writing this blogpost, I suddenly thought of a show that I use to be quite crazy over. "mind your language"-- in which Mr Brown teaches a class of foreigners English and all the cultural stereotypes start showing themselves. It's hilarious, okay, maybe also racist. But at the same time it shows how we can all be speaking the same English, but actually speaking a different language.
I look suitably asian
Since everyone’s having so much fun with language, like Kelly I’d also like to relate a personal anecdote that some of you might have heard before. I was in a certain university in the US last summer, where a friend and I decided to enrol in a course of American film and lit. During the first lesson, the lecture handed out a (disturbingly long) reading list, peered down at our distraught faces and said with great kindness, “I won’t mind if you two can’t read English as well as the rest of the class”.
!!!!!!!!
(Of course my friend and I looked convincingly Asian and therefore, non-white, and therefore subjected to a mild form of the sort of experience that Fanon writes about).
Moving on, I’d like to examine Fanon’s quote on pg 18: “A man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language…mastery of language affords remarkable power”. This reads very much like the kind of argument that the local government put forth when they first embarked on English education back in…errr…very long ago. In the colonial framework, language was one more divide along which the coloniser/ colonised could be dichotomised in order to perpetuate colonial difference, not only through the difference in articulation, but the corresponding intellectual ability it implied. To address a native “exactly like an adult with a child” is not only to dismiss him as inferior, but to forever exclude him from “the world expressed and implied by that language” – the colonial world of reason, rationality, progress, intelligence, technology, etc etc.
Prof Lim in my Asian American Lit class once referred to the language as ‘cultural currency’ – meaning that the English language, specifically has a very real value in a global culture that is increasingly becoming an English one. To speak today of a global culture, and global Englishes, for that matter, seems to me to imply a rupture in the entanglement of language and culture. We can probably all agree intuitively with the idea that English has cannibalised ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ cultures through its sheer pervasiveness (my Chinese sucks) but I would like to question how viable this view is today. If English has been claimed by all culture and ethnicities and whatnot, I don’t believe it can still be seen as the carrier of a single (colonial) culture. The difference, I feel, between Fanon’s experience and ours (Singapore’s) today is the sense of confidence we (or at least) I can bring to my use of English.
(Seeing as it is the last post, I have been rather liberal with wordcount, which is 418. Please excuse :)
!!!!!!!!
(Of course my friend and I looked convincingly Asian and therefore, non-white, and therefore subjected to a mild form of the sort of experience that Fanon writes about).
Moving on, I’d like to examine Fanon’s quote on pg 18: “A man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language…mastery of language affords remarkable power”. This reads very much like the kind of argument that the local government put forth when they first embarked on English education back in…errr…very long ago. In the colonial framework, language was one more divide along which the coloniser/ colonised could be dichotomised in order to perpetuate colonial difference, not only through the difference in articulation, but the corresponding intellectual ability it implied. To address a native “exactly like an adult with a child” is not only to dismiss him as inferior, but to forever exclude him from “the world expressed and implied by that language” – the colonial world of reason, rationality, progress, intelligence, technology, etc etc.
Prof Lim in my Asian American Lit class once referred to the language as ‘cultural currency’ – meaning that the English language, specifically has a very real value in a global culture that is increasingly becoming an English one. To speak today of a global culture, and global Englishes, for that matter, seems to me to imply a rupture in the entanglement of language and culture. We can probably all agree intuitively with the idea that English has cannibalised ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ cultures through its sheer pervasiveness (my Chinese sucks) but I would like to question how viable this view is today. If English has been claimed by all culture and ethnicities and whatnot, I don’t believe it can still be seen as the carrier of a single (colonial) culture. The difference, I feel, between Fanon’s experience and ours (Singapore’s) today is the sense of confidence we (or at least) I can bring to my use of English.
(Seeing as it is the last post, I have been rather liberal with wordcount, which is 418. Please excuse :)
Language: The Colonized and the Colonizer
It is ironic that Fanon uses the language of the colonizer (French in his case) to present the case about language as an instrument of imperial ideological domination. Like Joyce, and like many post-colonial intellectuals and writers from Acebe to Edward Said, he faces the paradox of needing to present the state, the case of his people and culture in a language that does not belong to him. In Joyce's case, he fights that paradox by, among other things, calling into question the Englishman's own command of language. The word 'tundish' comes to mind; in Portrait the professor thinks that it is an Irish word, when in truth it is as English a word as words can be (Heaney in his notes mentions that 'tundish' is in fact a mid-Elizabethian word). The slave knows the master's language better than the master. Ellis from Burmese Days would not have stood for this; "We shall have to sack [the native butler] if he gets to talk English too well," he says.
And yet English can itself be termed a 'colonized' language. It has roots in both Germanic languages and Latin, with a liberal helping from latter-day French and German, not to mention Hindi, Mandarain, Chinese, Malay, and a whole host of other languages. English is probably unique in this among imperial languages. Is it truely 'colonized', or does the very act of borrowing transforms the word into another instrument of ideological domination? 'Anime' in its native Japanese context refers to any animated work, including 3D modelling; in English it has come to mean cell-shaded animation from Japan or done in 'the Japanese style'. Is this an ideological stereotyping, or is this a simple case of borrowing from another culture? Is the act of 'borrowing' in language ever free of power implications? These are questions that I have yet to come up with answers for.
Language and its reception
"To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is. Rather more than a year ago in Lyon, I remember, in a lecture I had drawn a parallel between the Negro and European poetry, and a French acquaintance told me enthusiastically, 'At the bottom you are a white man.' The fact that I had been able to investigate so interesting a problem through the white man's language gave me honorary citizenship" (38).
According to Fanon, speaking a language means you take on that specific world, and this act of taking on is interesting. When speaking a particular language, how much mastery can we have of its cultural or symbolic value when the language is being mediated through a different Self with a different, sometimes opposing cultural value? If a negro were to have complete mastery over the English language, how much power or 'whiteness' does he indeed possess when this language he speaks is juxtaposed by the visual image of what he is or who he is in relation to what he speaks?
So this leads us to yet another question.. In what lies the power or symbolic capital of a language we speak? Is its worth and value in the actual speaking of it by a person, or in its RECEPTION by another person?
I do not have an answer. But i do think that we can draw a distinction between when a language is merely spoken and when it is recieved and understood.
According to Fanon, speaking a language means you take on that specific world, and this act of taking on is interesting. When speaking a particular language, how much mastery can we have of its cultural or symbolic value when the language is being mediated through a different Self with a different, sometimes opposing cultural value? If a negro were to have complete mastery over the English language, how much power or 'whiteness' does he indeed possess when this language he speaks is juxtaposed by the visual image of what he is or who he is in relation to what he speaks?
So this leads us to yet another question.. In what lies the power or symbolic capital of a language we speak? Is its worth and value in the actual speaking of it by a person, or in its RECEPTION by another person?
I do not have an answer. But i do think that we can draw a distinction between when a language is merely spoken and when it is recieved and understood.
That Which Fanon Cannot Speak, Joyce Must Not Remain Silent
Fanon’s writing interrogates the importance of the politics of language in a colonial context. Language is never a naïve, transparent tool or mode of communication that can be translated across cultures without remainder; indeed since the writings of someone like Wittgenstein, we have come to see that our understanding of the world and others is fundamentally mediated through the language we speak. Fanon urges us towards recognizing the power differential inherent in such an utterly intersubjective phenomenon such as language use. It is a well known pithy that a standard language (of the colonizer) is a dialect backed up by an army, and the mechanics of the interpellative gaze of the imperialist fixes the “dialect” of the colonized in a subordinate, hopelessly objectified position that closes off genuine dialogue. This damns all writing from the colonized from the start: all attempts to assert an authentic form of colonized consciousness through their own language further traps them in “the arsenal of complexes” of “the colonial environment” (30) that infantilize or exoticizes them.
In such a system, the only way out is through acculturation to the master culture; to be otherwise is indeed to be pathological. Stephen must mediate between these two positions in his literary endeavours, between the language of high European realism of the nineteenth century, and a nascent modernist form that must capture and create the conscience of his race and country. The voice of the colonized cannot assert and speak in a cultural, historical and social vacuum, and it can be recognized as language only in its basic difference from the colonizer’s. Fanon shows us how native bodies can be regulated and disciplined in the mould of the master; Stephen’s adamant stance of non-servitude is the assertion of his irreducible alterity that denies inferiority and resists subjugation.
In such a system, the only way out is through acculturation to the master culture; to be otherwise is indeed to be pathological. Stephen must mediate between these two positions in his literary endeavours, between the language of high European realism of the nineteenth century, and a nascent modernist form that must capture and create the conscience of his race and country. The voice of the colonized cannot assert and speak in a cultural, historical and social vacuum, and it can be recognized as language only in its basic difference from the colonizer’s. Fanon shows us how native bodies can be regulated and disciplined in the mould of the master; Stephen’s adamant stance of non-servitude is the assertion of his irreducible alterity that denies inferiority and resists subjugation.
Black Skin, White Masks - gods, frauds
According to Fanon, "[t]he colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards. He becomes white as he renounces his blackness, his jungle" (18). But the colonized is only "elevated" amongst his people - "In France one says, "He talks like a book." In Martinique, "He talks like a white man"" (21). This is evident in the conversation between Ellis and the butler in Burmese Days, Chapter 2:
'How much ice have we got left?'
''Bout twenty pounds, master. Will only last today, I think. I find it very difficult to keep ice cool now.'
'Don't talk like that, damn you--"I find it very difficult!" Have you swallowed a dictionary? "Please, master, can't keeping ice cool"--that's how you ought to talk. We shall have to sack this fellow if he gets to talk English too well. I can't stick servants who talk English. D'you hear, butler?'
'Yes, master,' said the butler, and retired.
''Bout twenty pounds, master. Will only last today, I think. I find it very difficult to keep ice cool now.'
'Don't talk like that, damn you--"I find it very difficult!" Have you swallowed a dictionary? "Please, master, can't keeping ice cool"--that's how you ought to talk. We shall have to sack this fellow if he gets to talk English too well. I can't stick servants who talk English. D'you hear, butler?'
'Yes, master,' said the butler, and retired.
There seems to be no win-win situation between the colonized and the colonizer - if he speaks the language of the colonizers he's a fraud, if he doesn't, he's a savage.
One question though..
At the end of Fanon's paper is the excerpt by Michel Leiris.. Is he talking about the French language when he says "resort to a mode of speech that they virtually never use now except as something learned" (40)? or is he referring to French-Creole?
Anyway just some other random thoughts/things:
I found this rather interesting, something I yahoo-ed..
But our histories, for once generous, gave us a second language. At first, it was not shared by everyone. It was for a long time the language of the oppressors - founders. We did conquer it, this French language. If Creole is our legitimate language, we gradually (or at once) were given and captured, legitimated and adopted the French language (the language of the Creole white class). Creoleness left its indelible mark on the French language, as did other cultural entities elsewhere. We made the French language ours. [. . . ] Our literature must bear witness of this conquest. [. . . ] Creole literature written in French, therefore, soon invest and rehabilitate the aesthetics of our language. Such is how it will be able to abandon the unnatural use of French which we had often adopted in writing.
From Eloge de la Créolité -- Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, 1990 (1989)
(The three authors represent a new wave of French Antillean intellectuals; this book is their poetic manifesto, their aesthetic genealogy, their statement of Creole identity. Translated by M. B. Taleb-Khyar, it first appeared in English in the journal Callaloo.)
And another thing: Me and my friend were having a random conversation about Gong Li and her Singaporean citizenship, and when talking about what if a famous Singaporean was to become the citizen of another country, what would happen? Would there be outbursts like those in China? My friend said that it was unlikely cause we're apathetic. Are we?
Mastery of language - whose power
Sorry, just got to share this. Just to add to Kelly’s experience, I was in Sweden (many years ago) at some international camp and someone asked us (we were all female!) if we lived in trees in Singapore and if the women stayed at home to cook!?! (No he was not trying to be funny. He thought Singapore was in China!) Talk about ignorance right?
“Mastery of language affords remarkable power” (Fanon 18). Let us rephrase that “Mastery of the colonial language affords remarkable power”. The colonial language continues to be a powerful medium and this is evident in the sheer number of English books we find in bookstores around the world. Fanon states that the one “who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is” (Fanon 38) but we see in Stephen that the more he acquires the colonial language, the more aware he becomes of his alienation from it:
The language in which we are speaking is his before mine. How different are the words . . . on his lips and on mine . . . His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired language. (Portrait 205)
The question is how does one reconcile the use, or need for the English language with preserving cultural identity? I think Yeats and Joyce have done that. They have appropriated the English language and blended it with their own culture to create an “Irishness” that people will study for a long long time (English Literature students at least). They are examples of how a colonized people can ‘fly by those nets’ (Portrait 220).
And we have arrived at the end....
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues that ‘[t]o speak a language is to take on a world, a culture’ (38). In doing so, we lose a sense of our own national identity and culture, and there is a certain fear in there being a lost in the continuation of this culture. We certainly see this conflict embodied between Stephen and Davin: Stephen represents the higher culture of Irish that has been ‘assimilated’ into English culture (in other words, the privileged one. Think LKY and the like) and is an example of the anxieties surrounding a potential loss in identity that Fanon highlights in his article; Davin represents the peasant, the Irish that is fiercely trying to hold on to his Irish identity –‘Whatsoever of thought or of feeling came to him from England or by way of English culture his mind stood armed against in obedience to a password’ (196).
Perhaps we can understand this conflict better by looking at our own Singaporean context. In absorbing the English language as our first language, we have created a common language that helps to unify everyone together, making it possible for people of different races, cultures and backgrounds to communicate with one another. But at the same time, we have lost, or at the risk of losing, the very cultures that our very forefathers had brought along with them when they came to
Of Dupes and Duping Dupes
As an Irishman, Stephen’s position is much more fluid than the simplistic compartmentalization of “duped” and “duping dupes” as described by Fanon. There is no tension between the renouncement of being black to becoming whiter and the rejection of white influence and sticking to being black. The issue of being a colonized European also seems to exempt him from the Prospero complex as documented in Fanon’s work.
In Joyce’s work as well as Fanon’s, one aspect of colonization is consistent in both cases -- that of language’s effect on culture. As Fanon writes, “to speak means . . . to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization” (17 - 18). Such a empowerment in education that allows the colonized to gain power to either fight his colonizers (which unfortunately is still mired by his use of the coloniser’s language) or renounce his origins of the colonized (yet still problematic because he will never be a fully evolved human in being a pure white).
With this power attained by education to be wielded in either directions of the duping paradigm as laid out by Fanon, we find that Stephen is an anomaly. Such powers that Fanon describes as both constructive and destructive (Fanon 29), are turned inward in Stephen’s case. His self-flagellation to achieve some epiphany to transcend his conflicted self of Irish/English is perhaps due to his being different from the Russian/German and the Negro (Fanon 34). Unlike the rest of the Europeans, he has no other language or stature outside the metropole, precisely because it is his motherland where he, like the Negro, will have to derive value from. Yet unlike the Negro, he has a culture, a civilization and a “long historical past” (34), by virtue of Ireland being a part of Europe before being Unionised. I believe that it is this uber liminality that causes the anomaly of inward, self-violence by the weapon inherited from the coloniser.
In Joyce’s work as well as Fanon’s, one aspect of colonization is consistent in both cases -- that of language’s effect on culture. As Fanon writes, “to speak means . . . to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization” (17 - 18). Such a empowerment in education that allows the colonized to gain power to either fight his colonizers (which unfortunately is still mired by his use of the coloniser’s language) or renounce his origins of the colonized (yet still problematic because he will never be a fully evolved human in being a pure white).
With this power attained by education to be wielded in either directions of the duping paradigm as laid out by Fanon, we find that Stephen is an anomaly. Such powers that Fanon describes as both constructive and destructive (Fanon 29), are turned inward in Stephen’s case. His self-flagellation to achieve some epiphany to transcend his conflicted self of Irish/English is perhaps due to his being different from the Russian/German and the Negro (Fanon 34). Unlike the rest of the Europeans, he has no other language or stature outside the metropole, precisely because it is his motherland where he, like the Negro, will have to derive value from. Yet unlike the Negro, he has a culture, a civilization and a “long historical past” (34), by virtue of Ireland being a part of Europe before being Unionised. I believe that it is this uber liminality that causes the anomaly of inward, self-violence by the weapon inherited from the coloniser.
self-subjugation
In "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", Stephen diagnoses Ireland as being subjugated not only by the Catholic Church and the English colonisers, but also by the Irish people themselves. As Seamus Deane notes in his Introduction to the Penguin edition of the novel, “The double empire of London and Rome weighed so heavily on the Irish because they had grown to love their enslavement and to fear freedom and its responsibilities” (Introduction xxxv). The colonised Irish people are definitely then shown to be culpable in their own subjugation.
This reminded me a lot of "Burmese Days", where the natives too are represented as being inept and complicit in their own subjugation. While the Irish fear responsibilities as Deane says, the natives in "Burmese Days" are shown to be inept and incapable of taking up any responsibilities. This is evident when the camp that Flory presides over becomes a scene of complete disarray during his absence—“The whole camp was at sixes and sevens…Nearly thirty coolies were missing, the sick elephant was worse than ever, and a vast pile of teak logs which should have been sent off ten days earlier were still waiting because the engine would not work” (Chapter XVIII, page 207). Through this example the natives are definitely shown to be so inept that they seem better off under the dominion of a white master.
The natives are also shown to be complicit in their own subjugation through their pandering to the white master, as evident in the character of Dr Veraswami,who constantly deprecates the East and plays up the might of the British colonisers and the empire despite being kept in a servile position by this very colonial enterprise.
By portraying the colonised as being complicit too in their own subjugation, I think these two novels work to show how colonialism is not always a black and white affair where the colonisers are the ones subjugating and the colonised the ones suffering. They definitely paint colonialism to be a more complex affair where both the coloniser AND the colonised have a part to play in the conquering of the native country.
This reminded me a lot of "Burmese Days", where the natives too are represented as being inept and complicit in their own subjugation. While the Irish fear responsibilities as Deane says, the natives in "Burmese Days" are shown to be inept and incapable of taking up any responsibilities. This is evident when the camp that Flory presides over becomes a scene of complete disarray during his absence—“The whole camp was at sixes and sevens…Nearly thirty coolies were missing, the sick elephant was worse than ever, and a vast pile of teak logs which should have been sent off ten days earlier were still waiting because the engine would not work” (Chapter XVIII, page 207). Through this example the natives are definitely shown to be so inept that they seem better off under the dominion of a white master.
The natives are also shown to be complicit in their own subjugation through their pandering to the white master, as evident in the character of Dr Veraswami,who constantly deprecates the East and plays up the might of the British colonisers and the empire despite being kept in a servile position by this very colonial enterprise.
By portraying the colonised as being complicit too in their own subjugation, I think these two novels work to show how colonialism is not always a black and white affair where the colonisers are the ones subjugating and the colonised the ones suffering. They definitely paint colonialism to be a more complex affair where both the coloniser AND the colonised have a part to play in the conquering of the native country.
Speaking a language
Fanon writes about how speaking a language means above all to assume a culture. It is true that language interpellates the speaker into certain modes of thought. But it is not a complete adoption of any one particular culture. Speaking a language also involves a self-reflexive process of negotiation between several cultures, an intersecting of different language-consciousnesses, and a continuous testing of boundaries i.e. what does a word, like “suck”, signify etc. Stephen’s walk across the city highlights the merging of cultures and consciousnesses – “he passed the sloblands of Fairview…think of the cloistral silver-veined prose of Newman…the dark humor of Guido Cavalcanti…went by Baird’s stonecutting works…the spirit of Ibsen…the songs by Ben Jonson…the spectral words of Aristotle or Aquinas…the dainty songs of the Elizabethans”. I guess the point is that when one speaks of language, there always seem to be some kind of essentializing quality of language; as though speaking English equals to English culture and speaking Gaelic equals to Irish culture [as Davin asks Stephen, “Are you Irish at all? … Why don’t you learn Irish?”]. In fact, speaking a language also points to a multitude of worlds, between past and present, between different cultures and ideological belief-systems, intersecting and co-existing in consciousness.
(it's a very Bakhtin approach which i wonder if it makes any sense in relation to Fanon, or the issue of speaking a colonial language)
(it's a very Bakhtin approach which i wonder if it makes any sense in relation to Fanon, or the issue of speaking a colonial language)
A solution perhaps to the linguistic dilemma of former colonized writers
In “The Negro and Language,” Fanon reinforces the significance of language and argues that language “provides us with one of the elements in the coloured man’s comprehension of the dimension of the other” (17). The issue of language is equally important to Fanon as to Joyce. In Joyce’s texts, language is inevitably bound up with both identity and power, amongst other issues. Primarily through Stephen, Joyce grapples with the issue of language: when Stephen says that “the language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205), he duly recognizes the English language as belonging first and foremost to the dean, who is metonym for the British Empire. As such, English will always be for him a colonial language, an “acquired speech . . . so familiar and so foreign” (205). By taking on another language (220), Stephen sees his ancestors as betraying their Irish roots.
Through Stephen, Joyce examines and indeed, reinforces the dilemma of the formerly colonized writer writing from the periphery. While Joyce recognizes that English is a foreign tongue, one that is estranged from Irishness, he is writing in English. This dilemma is in fact not restricted to Joyce but also to Achebe, who has faced criticism from the African writer and critic, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who sees the use of English as "part of the neo-colonial structures that repress progressive ideas." Similar to Achebe who “Africanizes” his use of English by referring to African traditions and cultures, one way that Joyce negotiates this dilemma is to create a new form of English that is imbued with Irish references. He inserts Irish vocabulary like the “tundish” (205) and references specific to the Irish context, such as “Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book” which was “standard in primary and intermediate schools in Ireland” (280). Joyce also goes one step further than Achebe by creating a new English that is syntactically disjoined. Rather than English being fluid and transparent, Joyce’s English is fragmented and opaque as evinced both through his modernist form as well as the postmodernist technique of including other literary forms like the diary and other intertextual references.
Through Stephen, Joyce examines and indeed, reinforces the dilemma of the formerly colonized writer writing from the periphery. While Joyce recognizes that English is a foreign tongue, one that is estranged from Irishness, he is writing in English. This dilemma is in fact not restricted to Joyce but also to Achebe, who has faced criticism from the African writer and critic, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who sees the use of English as "part of the neo-colonial structures that repress progressive ideas." Similar to Achebe who “Africanizes” his use of English by referring to African traditions and cultures, one way that Joyce negotiates this dilemma is to create a new form of English that is imbued with Irish references. He inserts Irish vocabulary like the “tundish” (205) and references specific to the Irish context, such as “Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book” which was “standard in primary and intermediate schools in Ireland” (280). Joyce also goes one step further than Achebe by creating a new English that is syntactically disjoined. Rather than English being fluid and transparent, Joyce’s English is fragmented and opaque as evinced both through his modernist form as well as the postmodernist technique of including other literary forms like the diary and other intertextual references.
proof of existence
one part of fanon's essay that really leapt out at me was when he was relating how he gives european foreigners to france directions and realises that there is a difference in the perception of europeans and Negros because of the Negro's cultural lack:
and has anyone noticed the ridiculous proliferation of the irish presence in postcolonial lit? (or is it just me - maybe i'm biased, having hated seamus heaney in jc...i'm just not a fan of seeing rape of the land and one's identity in rolling hills, earth and digging spades) fanon's assertions really hit home with why there is so much irish literature preoccupied with deconstructing and fixing the irish identity within the context of the confusing, destabilised political climate imposed by the british. the irish are overcompensating for the hegemonising of their identity by the british empire--they have to speak out - and volumes at that - to make themselves heard, to constantly assert and reinforce their identity and place in the world.
i wrote about colonial linguistic violence in one of my very first blog entries for the class. it's really striking how that superficial understanding has come much further--colonialism is not just about usurping someone else's language, someone else's education systems, how children are raised, etc. it's about taking away someone's identity--the very proof of their existence.
When it comes to the case of the Negro, nothing of the kind. He has no culture, no civilization, no 'long historical past.' This may be the reason for the strivings of contemporary Negroes: to prove the existence of a black civilization to the white world at all costs. (34)and u know, that really struck me with a sense of pathos. why should a race of people have to fight so hard, just to prove it exists? shouldn't its physicality, its national identity and land speak for itself? and yet isn't that what everyone does, in social settings and conversations, one speaks to remind others of one's presence--otherwise, one is just not there. and that's why fanon's argument of language as being something more powerful perhaps than physical manifestations of identity, being something that "assumes a culture, to support the weight of a civilization" (17-8) really speaks to me. one speaks, really, to assert one's identity. and correspondingly, the way one speaks or what one speaks shapes one's identity (and social perceptions of that identity) as well.
and has anyone noticed the ridiculous proliferation of the irish presence in postcolonial lit? (or is it just me - maybe i'm biased, having hated seamus heaney in jc...i'm just not a fan of seeing rape of the land and one's identity in rolling hills, earth and digging spades) fanon's assertions really hit home with why there is so much irish literature preoccupied with deconstructing and fixing the irish identity within the context of the confusing, destabilised political climate imposed by the british. the irish are overcompensating for the hegemonising of their identity by the british empire--they have to speak out - and volumes at that - to make themselves heard, to constantly assert and reinforce their identity and place in the world.
i wrote about colonial linguistic violence in one of my very first blog entries for the class. it's really striking how that superficial understanding has come much further--colonialism is not just about usurping someone else's language, someone else's education systems, how children are raised, etc. it's about taking away someone's identity--the very proof of their existence.
selling out
We see a lot of reference to being evicted from houses (“...the landlord will put us out” sans “boro”), leaving houses (189), or selling off houses (“...his father’s property was going to be sold by auction”). If a house can be read as a metaphor for a person’s culture, then the significance of Stephen experiencing the loss his homes may mirror the cultural genocide that Ireland experienced under British rule. Also, since eviction and auctioning both have a kind of monetary relevance, we might argue how the text negotiates the idea of ‘selling out’, particularly in the case of the Irish with respect to their own national culture and language.
This notion of selling out is evoked in Fanon’s reading where he talks about the “new man” who has deliberately suppressed his native culture and embraced the culture of the new mother country. (“...he answers only in French, and often he no longer understands Creole.”) Fanon calls this “the death and burial of its local cultural originality”, and Stephen later says heatedly, “My ancestors threw off their language and took another...they allowed a handful of foreigner to subject them.”
Coming back to the idea of selling out, I think that both texts seek to redress the painful reality of how a unique culture can be lost or eroded because its people lack something like moral courage or nationalistic pride. Stephen attempts to do so in his eventual decision not to abandon Ireland but to take it on himself to “forge...the uncreated conscience of [his] race”, and Fanon, through his criticism of an oppressive White culture which values the humanity of a person only after that person “renounces his blackness, his jungle”. And I think both are successful partly because I found both texts’ justified in their arguments (and do despise the cultural bigotry of colonizers), and partly because of the great deal of influence they still retain to this day..
This notion of selling out is evoked in Fanon’s reading where he talks about the “new man” who has deliberately suppressed his native culture and embraced the culture of the new mother country. (“...he answers only in French, and often he no longer understands Creole.”) Fanon calls this “the death and burial of its local cultural originality”, and Stephen later says heatedly, “My ancestors threw off their language and took another...they allowed a handful of foreigner to subject them.”
Coming back to the idea of selling out, I think that both texts seek to redress the painful reality of how a unique culture can be lost or eroded because its people lack something like moral courage or nationalistic pride. Stephen attempts to do so in his eventual decision not to abandon Ireland but to take it on himself to “forge...the uncreated conscience of [his] race”, and Fanon, through his criticism of an oppressive White culture which values the humanity of a person only after that person “renounces his blackness, his jungle”. And I think both are successful partly because I found both texts’ justified in their arguments (and do despise the cultural bigotry of colonizers), and partly because of the great deal of influence they still retain to this day..
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
I Enjoyed their Dumbstruck Faces when I Invariably Replied, 'English is the first language in Singapore'.
I liked Fanon's essay very much! I'll first relate a personal anecdote, and from there, question the place of the overseas-Singaporean in relation to Fanon's essay.
Fanon refers to statements like 'How long have you been in France? You speak French so well' as 'exasperating' (Fanon), and I agree most emphatically. When I was in the U.S., I got the exact comment (just replace 'France/French' with 'America/English') or variations of it all the time. I could not decide which was more pathetic- their pompous assumption that Asians cannot possibly speak 'English so well' without 'be[ing] in [America]', or just their plain ignorance.
On a related but more serious note, Fanon talks about how 'the Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter- that is, he will come closer to being a real human being- in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language', and that this may be applied to the 'broad[er]' context of 'every colonized man' (Fanon). My question is, however, what happens when the person in question is a Singaporean who grew up speaking English, and then goes to Britain for further studies? The case is slightly different here, as the first language in both Singapore and Britain is English- hence not requiring a fundamental shift in 'the entire body of values by which [he] perceive[s himself] and [his] place in the world' (Ngugi wa Thiong'o), that might be required of the 'Negro of the Antilles' (Fanon). A caveat- I do realize that the 'kinds' of English spoken in Singapore and in Britain are rather disparate- but not as drastically so as that of a different language entirely. Where is this Singaporean placed in the context of Fanon's argument?
Joyce’s Epigraph, title and Modernist interpretive freedom
The epigraph that frames the novel comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and it can be translated as “he turned his mind to unknown arts” It refers to the story of how Daedelus, the fabulous artificer reacted by fashioning wax wings when told by King Minos of Crete that he and his son would not be allowed to leave the island. Since Icarus flew to close to the sun and fell to his death, the epigraph seems to mirror the rising and falling trajectory that through the various chapters in the book. As Lucas pointed out last week, the narrative movement of each chapter ends on a high note, only to be brought down low by the depressing image or scene that introduces the next chapter. However, apart from framing the rising-falling trajectory, the epigraph seems also to be an open invitation to interpretive freedom. The image of imaginative exploration seems to invite all readers to open their minds to new ways of seeing. The provisionality of the novel’s title as evident in how it is “a” portrait and not THE definitive portrait of an artist as a young man also provides a sense of the modernist openness and subjectivity. Since the portrait by its very nature reflects both the perceive as well as the subject, it seems that Joyce is calling upon his readers to actively participate in this process of meaning-making, where those who approach the text seeking definitive meaning or a prescriptive reading will not succeed. This openness and interpretive flexibility of the text which demands active readerly meaning making is evident in Chapter one, when young Stephen cowers under the table and learns about fear and punishment. The phrase “pull out his eyes Apologize” is repeated in a singsong manner, and the reader has to decide if this represents the voice of authority hammering home the lesson, or the consciousness of an already rebellious Stephen throwing back the threat in a mocking tone.
"Your English Very Good!"
Fanon writes, “this self-division [behavioral differences of the Negro] is a direct result of colonialist subjugation”.
The relationship between power and language is evident in this article. The perpetuation of a dominant language and the “desire” to master the dominant language suggests the desire to be on equal footing with a “master”. The idea of a dominant language suggests to us a form of neo-colonialism.
“The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter… in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language”. We don’t have to look so far to understand where Fanon is coming from. Our local education system instills the importance of the English language right from the start- fail English and you fail to communicate, you are left behind (quite literally for some- being “retained” and repeating certain levels of their education). Mastering English becomes not a source of becoming "whiter" over here but rather, becoming a “model” citizen and becoming part of a dominant culture/community that is imagined, preferred and perpetuated by certain political entities.
A rule of difference is hence coded in language. Within our current globalized context, the impression of many is that one needs to speak English in order to assume a better position to the First-World countries. MNCs, trade and business relations are vastly communicated in English [or if need be, an English translator in the negotiations]. One could argue that even the Tiger Economies of Asia fall back to communicating through the “common” medium of English.
The relationship between power and language is evident in this article. The perpetuation of a dominant language and the “desire” to master the dominant language suggests the desire to be on equal footing with a “master”. The idea of a dominant language suggests to us a form of neo-colonialism.
“The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter… in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language”. We don’t have to look so far to understand where Fanon is coming from. Our local education system instills the importance of the English language right from the start- fail English and you fail to communicate, you are left behind (quite literally for some- being “retained” and repeating certain levels of their education). Mastering English becomes not a source of becoming "whiter" over here but rather, becoming a “model” citizen and becoming part of a dominant culture/community that is imagined, preferred and perpetuated by certain political entities.
A rule of difference is hence coded in language. Within our current globalized context, the impression of many is that one needs to speak English in order to assume a better position to the First-World countries. MNCs, trade and business relations are vastly communicated in English [or if need be, an English translator in the negotiations]. One could argue that even the Tiger Economies of Asia fall back to communicating through the “common” medium of English.
However, a recent observation of language and power and its relationship to the economies can be seen in the increased attention given to the Chinese Language and Arabic Language when places like China and Dubai are becoming increasingly important economic entities. But I think we're still far away from Mandarin or Arabic usurping the English language. The point for my ramble here is that language of the dominant economic power/s is that which people strive to assume in order to be on an "equal" position.
To speak English is thought to be understood and to be part of the global culture. The irony is this: the global culture we so fondly talk about in transnational texts, the idea of an increasingly shared culture, a breaking down of barriers and being a citizen of the world isn’t all that “globalized”. Many things are still coded in the English language and by extension, “First World” ideals and values. [Sidenote: Maybe this is why the French and Japanese are so averse to the English language]
I’m not against the use of English as a common language [after all, I am an English Literature student]. But if “to speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization”… just whose culture and civilization are we assuming?
To speak English is thought to be understood and to be part of the global culture. The irony is this: the global culture we so fondly talk about in transnational texts, the idea of an increasingly shared culture, a breaking down of barriers and being a citizen of the world isn’t all that “globalized”. Many things are still coded in the English language and by extension, “First World” ideals and values. [Sidenote: Maybe this is why the French and Japanese are so averse to the English language]
I’m not against the use of English as a common language [after all, I am an English Literature student]. But if “to speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization”… just whose culture and civilization are we assuming?
Last Post!!! :)))
I just have to say this— doesn’t the bit in Fanon’s article about Charles Andre-Julien introducing Aime Cesaire as “a Negro poet with a university degree” and “a great black poet” remind you of Obama?! “The first black president…” and such? His race foregrounded his presidential post/campaign only because he belongs to a group that was once (or still?) discriminated for its race/skin color in
Anyway, going back to Fanon’s article, I liked how Fanon wanted to “help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment”, to not be a “slave of their archetypes”. I think this idea is to some extent, I hope I’m not stretching it here, being developed in Portrait, though the ‘their’ is not limited to the complexes borne out of colonialism or only referring to colonizers’ expectations of the colonized individual. Fanon showed that language means power, that it means adopting a culture and Portrait shows that language also means discourse, a system of beliefs. After all, the novel is about what everyone, belonging to different systems, expects from Stephen right? So can we say that the nationalist discourse (Parnell,etc) in specific, since this is actually directly borne out of colonialism, also sets up expectations (on the nationalist’s behalf) of Stephen and actually a colonizer would anticipate that the colonized Catholic Irish man would naturally support Parnell. Or am I reading Fanon all wrong? Eeps.
Anyhow, I think it is significant that in the end, Stephen chooses to reject all the (conflicting) discourses he is exposed to; he instead fashions an identity for himself that lies outside and beyond the reach of these systems. Stephen hears a sermon and tries to speak/act the religious discourse/way. He fails because it goes against his natural tendency to appreciate beauty. The epiphany is then an understanding about his own self, about the kind of language he is meant to use which involves describing his experience of seeing and living. The language of an artist’s.
Monday, November 10, 2008
"Was that poetry?"
"The image of Emma appeared before him and under her eyes the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his brute-like lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry?"
I don't think we are ever going to get away from the issue of language and Stephen in Portrait. Stephen's unrequited love for Emma Clery is complicated by her involvement with Fr. Moran in the Irish language revival movement. And language gives way to cultural formation and expression; it is the gateway to ideas, feelings and philosophies, to a people's way of life. Language is necessarily political; it interpellates its subjects and speakers into a particular modality of thought, over and against alternative philosophies and ideologies. And for Stephen, the threat of the resurgence of Gaelic is intertwined with his untenable desire for Emma. In a very real sense, he loses Emma to language.
Language and words are, however, Stephen's arsenal. His quiver full of arrows, if you will. The aforementioned penultimate apprehension of her transmutes Emma into poetry by his lustful thoughts. His ironic decorporealization and retextualization of Emma is a "brute-like" violence of the mind enabled by language. Here, Emma is at once an idealized vision of Irish femininity that remains untenable to Stephen. Having experienced the carnal encounter with a woman's flesh, followed by the orgasmic epiphany of his vision of the female muse, Stephen is finally able to repudiate his affinity for this vision of Irish femininity based on Clery's apparent affinity for the wrong language, the wrong religion, the wrong man. Stephen above all must unshackle himself from all those issues before taking flight. Constantly trumping his own indigenous language would result in self-disenfranchisement, and Stephen's intense devotion to his own individual soul underlies this desire to come into his own, above all things else.
Waiterrrl, hor woarh ji buie jiu (Bing me a beeya)
Fanon's very first paragraph left an indelible impression on me:
In the texts that we have studied, I argue that this phenomenon is not just limited to the Black man, but almost everyone in the colonies. I find this split in identity or consciousness intriguing, mostly in part that it is a very modernist aesthetic, something of schizophrenia. This pattern of fragmentation and splitting of identities, or double-standards, can be traced to administrations of colonial rule. How colonialism is ruled on difference, but it is also very ambiguous because the government in the colony is mediated to a degree to suit the cultural context, marking its difference of metropole rule. I think it can be said that colonial rule is schizophrenic in itself.
As compared to his previous essay, I quite sympathize with Fanon this time round. His lamentation that the Black man seeks to emulate European culture and rejects his indigenous culture is poignant. This psychological brainwashing that European culture and language as the benchmark and symbol of progress/modernity is a form of cultural genocide of Black man culture.
I feel for this on a personal level perhaps because I have never mastered Teochew (think LKY bilingual policy), which severely handicaps my communication with my grandmother. We can communicate only through a series of guesswork, gestures, and awkward smiles. It is this irreparable loss of being able to communicate in Teochew, to connect to a lost past, to understand the nuances of my dialect (for want of a better word) group that struck me personally.
"The Black man has two dimensions. one with his fellows, the other with the white man. A negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro. That this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question ..." (17)
In the texts that we have studied, I argue that this phenomenon is not just limited to the Black man, but almost everyone in the colonies. I find this split in identity or consciousness intriguing, mostly in part that it is a very modernist aesthetic, something of schizophrenia. This pattern of fragmentation and splitting of identities, or double-standards, can be traced to administrations of colonial rule. How colonialism is ruled on difference, but it is also very ambiguous because the government in the colony is mediated to a degree to suit the cultural context, marking its difference of metropole rule. I think it can be said that colonial rule is schizophrenic in itself.
As compared to his previous essay, I quite sympathize with Fanon this time round. His lamentation that the Black man seeks to emulate European culture and rejects his indigenous culture is poignant. This psychological brainwashing that European culture and language as the benchmark and symbol of progress/modernity is a form of cultural genocide of Black man culture.
I feel for this on a personal level perhaps because I have never mastered Teochew (think LKY bilingual policy), which severely handicaps my communication with my grandmother. We can communicate only through a series of guesswork, gestures, and awkward smiles. It is this irreparable loss of being able to communicate in Teochew, to connect to a lost past, to understand the nuances of my dialect (for want of a better word) group that struck me personally.
Lingua [Franca] Siapa?
The exploration of language as it affects/ is affected by the colonizer and the colonized is one that is perhaps most interesting when we consider Joyce. While language is obviously a carrier of culture, the adoption of language in terms of colonial dynamics is perhaps most aptly captured in Fanon’s idea that “the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors” (Fanon 38).
The language of the colonizer, indeed that that is foreign to the native language( British English to Irish in Joyce’s novel), is deemed as superior and the underlying need to survive in the colony ( or in the face of the empire) sees the native “ incarcerating a new type of man”(Fanon 36). Here we see the ideas of language as opportunity, language as professed through power and therefore language as a form of power to be partaken of.The link between identity and language is further confounded when we contemplate Fanon’s idea that “every dialect is a way of thinking”( Fanon 25) and that the native adoption of a “language different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation” ( Fanon 25). The complexity lies in the way the native tries to forge a new identity by acquiring the power of the new language, but at the same time renounces his own identity. What Fanon suggests is that the Negro/Native has “no culture, no civilization” (Fanon 34) to fall back on and so his native language is bankrupt of value in the opinion of the Western world( the colonizers)
What remains to be asked then, is who’s language is it really, this language of the colony? It takes on words of the native language/dialects, but is forcibly structured to that of the colonizers. Meaning in some cases remain constant, but take on different forms: Joyce’s novel sees Stephen wonder about how even in the existence of “different names for God in all the different languages in the world … still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God” (CH 1). Lingua Franca becomes Lingua Siapa, in the imposition of foreign on the local(in the eyes of the colonized) and of the local on the alien( in the eyes of the colonizer).
If we take into account Stephen’s role as an artist and his struggle to forge an identity in a changing Ireland through language we are left to contemplate the implication of language on expression and identity.The power behind the imposition, accessibility and usability language then complicates itself in the forging of a new (colonial) identity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
