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:

“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!

The Künstlerroman and the Irish Condition

Just for fun. This is Norman Rockwell's Triple Self Portrait. My dad showed it to me way back in sec. school and it's lingered in my memory.

In discussing the artist figure of Stephen Dedalus, I will be intruding somewhat into Part 4 and 5. Like my more post-modern, cheeky Norman Rockwell painting, there are various layers in the representation of Dedalus. On a macro level, Joyce creates a tableu of an older artist representing himself as a young man. On a micro level, an older more mature artist Stephen “paints a portrait” of himself as a “young man” growing up as a Irish colonised subject. On an even more micro level, in the narrative itself, the representation of Stephen’s mental world shows us young Stephen’s process of negotiating and working out his selfhood/identity by attempting to paint a “self-portrait” of himself as seen in on page 98. “I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus…The memory of his childhood…he recalled only names: Dante, Parnell etc etc.” Or by drawing a parallel between his position, embarking on his artistic career, with that of his mythical namesake, Daedalus, who in the Grecian myth, frees himself from prison with wings he fashioned.

Through Stephen’s negotiation of his identity as a self and therefore as an artist, Joyce evokes the problem of the Irish Condition, one that is similarly attempting to assert an Irish identity to free itself from the English coloniser. However, the dilemma of what the pure, un-colonised Irish identity is when English-ness has permeated and influenced the Irish identity arises. Where can the colonised subject go to liberate itself from the coloniser when its identity has very much been shaped by its colonial past, the coloniser’s language and culture. To support this, I point to Part 4’s trivial “tundish/funnel” incident with the English professor where Stephen realises his colonised position has been imbedded in him through language. “The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205).

For Stephen, the true Irish self has not been awakened or liberated, but he hopes it will be liberated with his art. “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” (276). However, the question of whether he will succeed is left open by Joyce. Will he be an idealistic youth like Icarus who flies too near the sun and dies, or Daedalus? Is he like the artist in Rockwell’s painting, over-idealising himself? Is it even ever possible to totally liberate the colonised subject from his coloniser? By saying he will “fly by those nets” (220, emphasis mine) of “nationality, language and religion, will he really transcend those nets? Or will he perpetually be flying “by” in the sense of using/being caught in those nets?

Growing Up Woolf

It looks like I'm the first to post this week. I found the chapter, "Jaffna" a bit of a drag to read towards the end. Am I the only one? It starts out interesting enough, but as the memoir progresses Woolf starts transitioning abruptly from one incident to another, leaving me a bit disorientated(and bored, all those acronyms do NOT help),and I was wishing I was reading Roald Dahl's Going Solo instead, indicative of the state of nostalgia I'm currently wallowing in. (aka: I miss my childhood!) But to be fair, this Woolf's not that bad. Okay now on to my post proper:

In "Jaffna", Woolf writes retrospectively about working experience as a civil servant in Ceylon, working hard and efficiently for indolent G.As, doing their jobs for them, improving office effiency etc etc. He recounts his life in the imperialist White society, talking about the White civil servants he met. Interpersed between his accounts are extracts from his correspondence with his Bloomsbury friend, Lytton Strachey.I found most interesting his resemblance to Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, in his "growing" awareness of himself as a "ruler of subject peoples" (111) and the doubts that came along with it, where at the beginning he had been a "very innocent, unconscious imperialist" (25). Like Orwell, he becomes conscious of the dilemma that faces the white imperialist as a "cog" in the imperial machinery through day-to-day incidents with natives. Woolf, in the horse-whip incident, doubts the White imperialist's right to rule in thinking that his "sitting on a horse arrogantly in the main street of their town was as good as a slap in the face" (114). It is ironic that Woolf had disregarded traffic laws in stopping his horse to be this nit-picky, exacting civil servant, pointing out how the natives had encroached on the highway with their property. Woolf becomes aware of this irony which highlights inequities in treatment that White imperialists assume, in order to perpetuate their rule. Similar to Orwell's Shooting, Woolf becomes aware of the White imperialist as "acting" on the "stage, scenery, backcloth" that was imperialism. What Woolf seems to be projecting is the implication of being an individual within a larger organisation or machinery. In Woolf's bid to be a good civil servant, an "effective cog" so to speak, he assumes a stance that compromises fair, un-rascist treatment of the natives, thus perpetuating their dominance.
(295)

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.

The Machiavellian Oriental in Burmese Days

*Spoiler Alert*

In some ways I see a striking resemblance between U Po Kyin and Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. They are Machiavellian villains and (I find) rather delightfully so. Both exude fierce cunning and insight in reading human nature and manipulating it for their own ends. Devious yes, but laudable in their cleverness. UPK can then be seen as a figure through which Orwell critiques the social laws and strictures of colonial society, which attempts to demarcate White superiority vis-à-vis the colonized Burmese. U Po Kyin manipulates colonial society’s regulations on sexual behaviour, like the White female’s fear of being raped by the colonised subject, “raped by a procession of jet-black coolies” (142) in order to defame Dr Veraswami and attain the elusive Club membership for himself. Through the figure of UPK, Orwell indirectly critiques these paranoid assumptions of natives, as firstly we the readers know Dr Veraswami wouldn’t hurt a fly. Ironically he adores them and would have been an ideal Club member. Orwell can thereby be seen as critiquing the social laws set in place by the colonial subjects with regard to sexuality. While “kid-glove laws” are set in place by the English colonial government to include the natives as “equals” in theory, ultimately cultural strictures in the novel, particularly regarding that of sexual relations ingrained and perpetuated by colonials, uphold “white prestige” (Stoler’s essay), and darkly prevents justice from being perpetuated.

However certainly, a negative Oriental stereotyping, on Orwell’s part, is starkly evident in his depiction of UPK, like other natives in the text, as a grotesque figure “so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair without help” and UPK is detestable and cruel in raping young helpless virgins in front of their mothers. Moreover, I think his crime is foiled at first by Flory (not finished yet. And we are led to think he’s another Fu Manchu (Sax Rohmer character) defeated by the heroic Anglo-Saxon male.

But ultimately his plotting and scheming, sees him through. Unlike Iago (I read the ending…dislike being left hanging so I always ruin endings for myself by skipping ahead.) UPK does get away with his crime (well somewhat) as the English justice fails to be served. And it might be just me but I find he's also adorably comic in his childish delight and the text does make us biased against Englishmen like Ellis, who deserve to be hoodwinked.

Why Elephants are Shot

I fell asleep yesterday night while reading Chatterjee before I could post. Had this killer medical gem test yesterday. For that my sincere apologies.

I shall attempt to link the Chatterjee to Shooting an Elephant. The main thing I took away from the reading was that of the deviation of the colonial government in India from the idealised Western modern notion of a democratic government. Under the essay's heading "It Never Happened" Chatterjee discusses the idea of British colonialism as one of a "centralising tendency of 'military-fiscalism' inherited from previous regimes" (27), one that essentially bases itself on differences (in this reading, it is racial differences) in order to perpetuate fiscal power that is in favour of the ruling British power. In relating this to Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant", Orwell can be seen as discussing how power structures are created and sustained. Through the narrative's biographical re-accounting of a trivial incident, he draws parallels to empire and its basis of rule. In the nameless narrator's account of how the Burmese, the "yellow faces" egged him "a thousand wills pressed me on" into shooting the elephant, the idea of how power as based on a performative, collective set of rules that the parties agree upon and perpetuate. As the narrator states earlier on, the British individual becomes " a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalised figure of a sahib." In relating this to Chatterjee's article, can we then say that colonialism is merely a replacement of one "native" power regime with another power regime. That all regimes are ones based on differentiation and performative rules.

On Heroism and Lord Jim

“I need a hero!”—Bonnie Tyler

Not wanting to touch too much on what I will be presenting on tomorrow, I’ve chosen to talk about the nature of heroism and how Lord Jim problematises the notion of heroism in the novel. Jim, at the outset of the novel, covets an opportunity to be a hero. “He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts….He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas… always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.” (47) (emphasis mine). However, Jim’s idealism and imagination is let down by his inability to control himself in the face of death, and in one fell swoop, he ‘jumps’, indelibly blotting out his chance to have been a “hero” that stuck to his duty. My impression is that Conrad problematizes the ability of the individual to adhere to the ideals of a romantic tradition of valour and heroism in a modernist age that is sceptical of neat categorisations and prototypes.

We also see a problematisation of heroism, as defined by society, in this case the colonial European ideal, as seen in character of the French lieutenant and the French crew that saved the ship. His adherence to duty in the saving of the Patna did not make him a hero, in his own devotion to his duty on board the Patna. The French complained of the discomfort of doing his duty rather than the supposed heroism that accompanied such a step of rescuing the Patna’s Orientals. Moreover, precautions were taken in the midst of performing their duty, so that the tug boat would not be sucked in with the ship. Therefore, the suggestion that there is little heroic about colonialism, the “duty” of the White Man to his colonised subject of saving them from themselves?

Achebe and His Image of Conrad

While talking to a fellow year 4 , Sonia about the Achebe article and how I felt about it, the similar topic of whether Kipling was a racist in his representation of the colonised in his novels came up as well. Sonia pointed out the Edward Said essay on Kim in her Penquin edition (which i don't have)and how he posited that Kipling should not be overtly ridiculed by today's post-colonial academia as a racist as he was writing (to paraphrase)"within the colonial sphere of his time". I had previously expressed my opinion to Sonia that Achebe was rather over-reacting towards Conrad's representation of the Other,

I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today.

pg 11 for example,

and had failed to recognise the context in which Conrad was writing, as a product of his time "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz [Conrad]" (71). Rather, I would posit the use of "reading against the grain" or deconstructive reading to "reclaim" the text in recognising the erroneous representation of the Other and “righting wrong”, but stopping short of criticising the author per say.

Another bone I have to pick was concerning Achebe's argument about Conrad's anxiety in the "lurking hint of kinship" in the novel. I would have to disagree. For brevity's sake, I will focus on the Congo/Thames representation. Rather than an antithesis, I felt that it was rather to draw a parallel of the Thames to the Congo, a reminder of Britain's past as the colonised rather than coloniser. A return to the "darkness" of its past, appealing to colonial anxiety rather than Conrad's.

(300 words excluding asides and citations)

On Fanon and Forster

I don’t know if I’m the only one not at all impressed by the overtly “brimstone and fire” tone Fanon employs in his essay, propounding “On Violence” so violently and definitively. I found his essay quite a pain to read in fact, in part due to the awkward direct French translations in the essay, but largely because of his ironically dictatorial, absolutist tone that I feel would not have been out of place in the dialogue of Foster’s colonial officials as they discussed Indians and why they act they way they do. I think what this essay really lacks is substantiation and examples, particularly in the first part to back up his claims, so it makes it hard to trust and agree with. But in fairness and not to quibble too much, I did feel that he did raise some thought-provoking issues that served as a springboard in my process of thinking about the novel.

Some ideas I had while reading the essay: I was struck by the point made by Fanon on page 7 concerning the “use of zoological terms” (7) by the coloniser in order to “dehumanise the colonised subject” (7). I was instantly reminded of Forster’s descriptions of the English in the lead-up to the trial of Adela, where Forster subtly animalises them, hence turning the tables on the colonisers, particularly in the court trial scene, where Major Callendar “growls” (221) and where there is a cool contrast between the behaviour of the English who are less than dignified in their behaviour in court and that of the Indian barrister, Amritrao, to some extent Das the Magistrate and notably the Untouchable (proletariat figure) manning the punkah, who is likened to a “god” in that chapter. Rather than a clear-cut binary, Forster breaks down the Manichaean dualism that colonialism has built up through his portrayal of the “colonised subject”, “colonised intellectual” and the coloniser. Therefore, I would like to suggest that Forster’s text be seen as part of or in and of itself a decolonising force, in this rejection of the dualisms that colonialism thrived upon.

Another thing that struck me about Fanon’s essay was definitely his take on the issue of violence and retaliation of the colonised upon the coloniser. I found the perspective on the concerns of “bread and land” (Fanon 14) worthy of some attention as it reminded me what I’d learnt at A level history about the starving Russian proletariat in the aftermath of the Russian Rev, as “bread and land” became scarce and exorbitantly priced. From what I barely remember of A level history (4 yrs ago, so bear with me), the aftermaths of both the French and Russian Revolution were marked with economic disasters that disproportionately disadvantaged the proletariat rather than the bourgeoisie as they continued to serve their own individual economic needs. Therefore, it could be said that it was a replacement of the monarchical/ imperial classes with another power-hungry class at the top and in fact really no revolution after all. I get this sense therefore that Fanon is implying the same idea for the colonialized intellectual classes and suggests therefore that physical violence is the only means for the repressed (psychologically, socially and economically) colonised subject to totally counter traces of colonialism. Mere anarchy is the answer for Fanon.

Side note: This also led me to think about Singapore as a post-colonial country. We did after all gain our independence from the "colonialist" via the negotiations and leadership of the "colonial intellectuals". The British colonisers left a legacy of many things in Singapore that have come to be historicised in our Singapore history as boons of our colonial past, global trade capitalism being one of them. And as we all know, this has been carried on by our political leaders, motivated by what else but economic prosperity. "...today the national struggle of the colonized is part and parcel of an entirely new situation. Capitalism..." (26) So concerning this "struggle", is Fanon then suggesting we take up our pitchforks (more like bbq skewers) to rid ourselves fully of colonialism? Hmmm....

Pandering and Performing in A Passage to India

--Leong Hui Ran

A thing that struck me as I read through the first part of the book was the recurrent references to plays. We are introduced to Adela and the rest of the Anglo Indians at the club, during and after the staging of a play, Cousin Kate. I found it interesting that other than the regular staging up plays, the Club generally is this utterly un-arty bunch. It seems to me that their reasons for performance, other than amusement were those of reinforcing their identity as the British, the civilised and cultured. So here we see not just a performance on stage, but that of a performance of identity for the British. References to plays crop up from then on. Take the scene in Chapter 7, where Fielding comes back from his walk to the college and sees the 2 Indians, a Moslem and a Hindu, Adela and Ronny. “A scene from a play, thought Fielding.” Moreover, Fielding’s living area is a 3-walled structure, suggesting a stage. Aziz, can be seen as a highly performative and pandering character in this scene, a highly sensitive character who acts and bends his words and actions to suit the characters around him, undermining Adela’s hope that he is the key to finding the “real India”. However, he is not the only one we find. Ronny himself is likened to a public school boy, an impressionable “the red-nosed boy” who acts out what his more experienced counterparts direct him to do. Thus, the suggestion that the Self is rather a series of performances manifested. There is in fact no one essential “self” and also no one “essential India”. Thus, Professor Godbole’s song I found was poignant in its enigmatic and non-intelligibility. In its nature, it transcends the ability to be essentialised into any one genre and sentiment, it transcends “essential-isation”.

On another note, just a thought I had about the significance of Miss Quested’s name. “Miss Quested, what a name!” remarked Mrs Turton (Chapter 3). I’m struck by the past tense in her name. As some of my classmates have suggested, Miss Quested is unable escape perpetuating the imperial gaze in her “quest” to discover the real India. I readily concur and it is my opinion that the past tense in her name is significant in relation to this. Miss Q’s “quests” are ends in and of themselves as she is unavoidably interpellated and “pre-disposed” to know and discover India in her English, middle class manner. In that case, the question that arises as well is the question of the knowledge and representation of the Other. Can one ever represent or discover the “Real India”? Or is the quest rather, futile, as we as readers of books, people, reality already have made and ended the “quest” in being who we are, interpellated social beings? I think so and I think that’s what the modernist aesthetic in this novel has raised for me, especially through the narrative voice, which I feel is symptomatic of the modernist movement, showing a plethora of subjective voices and psyches and sometimes (for eg. In the case of Prof Godbole) unable to be omniscient and all-knowing of the character’s psyche. Therefore, the idea that all that one sees and interprets is fragmentary and subjective

PS: I’m not using page numbers as my edition’s some obscure Reading Classics edition. BTW, speaking about Miss Quested. On a fun note, does anyone remember this cartoon, Jonny Quest? It was my favourite cartoon growing up. The theme song kept ringing in my head as I read. Regressive and digressive moment for me, LOL!

The Fear of Contamination- Reading Levine and Gikandi

In reading the articles by Levine and Gikandi, the common concerns of fear of “contamination” and “anxiety of influence” struck me as interesting and worth looking into in these two articles. Levine, in her essay, delves into the attitudes of the colonisers towards the cultures of the colonised, that “It was colonized peoples who were expected to conform to British behaviors and values: movement in the other direction was considered contamination, not assimilation” (107) Interestingly, in Gikandi’s essay which was published as recently as 2003, Gikandi expresses his displeasure at modernism’s shedding of the “contaminants of the Other” (456) as it enshrines itself, canonises itself as part of Western culture. A thought that entered my mind as I read this was that, if Gikandi is right, then while the age of Western colonisation ended decades ago, the ethnocentrism of the West has persisted given its insistence on claiming modernism as purely a Western aesthetic, denying the role that their empires played that “made modernism possible” (456). Interestingly then, we, the once-colonised have not truly been released from the shackles of colonisation, as “colonialism of the mind” persists to this day with the West still insisting on and establishing its hegemony in the world of English literature.

Therefore, perhaps in our decision to take on this module and examining the canonised texts, we begin to acknowledge the role played by the colonised Other in the formation of the Modernist movement, that Gikandi claims has been dreadfully under-rated and perhaps begin to right the wrong that has been done in the process?

Sorry if this is short and rather sketchy, I’m experiencing a bad case of writer’s block this week, been thinking for hours. I'll post something much much better next week.

-Leong Hui Ran