space and empire

It really tickles me that a few weeks ago we were all going on about Levine’s satirical tone, when the whole time the real deal was just sitting there, in Fanon’s work. Talk about writing to slam. I’ve read segments of this article before but the absolutist and highly convinced tone still catches me every time. Many things stand out in this article, some of them written in a fairly amusing way—for instance the examples of colonial vocabulary which the article raises: “quintessence of evil”, “absolute evil”, “innate depravity”—reminding us of how the colonized are (unreasonably) cast in the role of barbarians to justify colonial rule. Indeed, Fanon’s “If we leave, all will be lost, and this land will return to the Dark Ages” mirrors Ronny’s “We’re out here to do justice and keep the peace”, and both narratives suggest that both speakers are misguided, either through Fanon’s over-the-top tone which cues us to roll our eyes at the statement, or Mrs Moore’s gentle chiding that Ronny is wrong.

Anyhow, I’ve gotten distracted. My intended posting was really about the concept of space. I like the fact that, simply put, an Empire is really all about space. The more space you take up, the less space there is left for your competitors, the more powerful you are because the pie can only be split so many ways. Also, having a large empire also means having a large mass of troops at your disposal if one ever felt like waging a war. In economic terms, that also means you have more natural resources. If the wealth of a person is measured by the size of the house he/she lives in, then the strength and authority of an empire is measured by the amount of space it spills, spreads, sprawls across. Look at the British club and enclave in Passage, and see how they vary from the native’s parties and living conditions. Fielding’s house is neat as a pin, but Aziz’s is cluttered and little more than a squalor. Fanon sums this binary up by saying that “the colonist’s sector is clean and smooth, without a pothole, without a stone” while the colonized sector is “a world with no space”. No space! Without space, one does not have power, and having a cluttered space only implies that one lacks the ability to consolidate or organize that power.

The negotiation of space is also what first set the colonizer and the colonized apart—not just because they hail from separate spaces, not just because one came to invade the other’s space, but because after the former invaded and settled in the latter’s country he segregated his side from the Other side. Just as the Islamic tradition segregates the men from the women via purdah, the colonizer separated himself from the colonized with cultural inventions. We can read this as alluding in some way to the colonizer as being the masculine presence (free to roam the public sphere) and the colonized as the feminine one (held behind purdah)—perpetuating the ideology that the East is effeminate and the West has to masculinise it through a colonial mentoring of sorts.. Or we could choose to see it from a more ironical perspective—mainly that while purdah’s segregation is meant to protect women from men, colonial segregation is meant to protect the colonizer from the colonized. Note how this reading also suggests a highly insecure empire, where the colonizer is always in mortal fear of being overthrown, of decolonization. And the way Fanon goes about describing (excessively so) the process and potential of decolonization, the colonizer does seem to have reason to fear.

'Ruling and Empire' and Brian Friel's "Translations"

Hi all,

This post focuses on Philippa Levine's chapter, 'Ruling and Empire'. About halfway into the chapter, having discussed how violence was a 'key feature of ruling a colony' (Levine 113), Levine goes on to say:

'Yet there was far more to the success of the Empire than the gun and the sword, or even the navy frigate. The age of empire was also an age of collecting and classifying, an age in which the very boundaries of knowledge seemed almost limitless, and the Empire played a substantial role in the intellectual confidence that bolstered these typically Western views ... For many colonists the lands and the peoples of the Empire were also specimens to be listed, categorized and labeled' (Levine 113-4).

When I read this passage, a play I had read and watched over the Summer jumped out at me- Brian Friel's "Translations" (I just got back from Ireland where I read two courses, Irish Lit and Theatre, over Summer School). First performed in 1980, the play is set in 1833, in a Gaelic-speaking town of Ireland. It examines the effect of the 19th century British Ordnance Survey of Ireland, which meant the mapping and re-naming of the whole of Ireland- towns, roads, and landmarks- from Gaelic to English.

The passage above reminded me of the play because:

1. The forced shift from Gaelic to English is portrayed in Friel's play as being equally (or arguably, even more) successful in ruling/expanding an empire than 'the gun and the sword, or even the navy frigate' (Levine 113), and
2. Friel's play enacts the reality of 19th century British imperialism, where 'for many colonists the lands and the peoples of the Empire were also specimens to be listed, categorized and labeled' (Levine 113-4).

*edit*

The play is interesting to consider in light of Levine's chapter as it discusses a form of non-physical violence imposed upon Ireland. In his book, Decolonizing the Mind, Ngugi Wa Thiong'O states:

'Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world [...] Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world.'

If we take this to be true, the forced imposition of the English language over Irish is indeed a violence done to Ireland. This means the eventual 'carr[ying over of English] culture', and therefore English 'values', into Ireland- a quiet and insidious technique that enables the empire to expand and survive.

*end of edit*

 

The play is reminiscent of a lot more of the reading material in various other ways, and if anyone's interested (or thinks they can tackle even more reading), Friel's play, along with other major Irish plays written during the formation of Ireland's National Theatre Movement, can be found in Harrington's Modern Irish Drama.

Thanks, and let me know if you have any thoughts!

- Kelly Tay