"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.

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?

Words, Words, Words...

“Words which he did not understand he said over and over to himself till he had learned them by heart: through them he had glimpses of the real world about him.” (64)

As most of us know, Portrait is essentially a bildungroman that traces the growth of Stephen. In the chapters on Stephen’s formative years, the subjective reality of an individual is most prevalent in the language used by Joyce; short phrases, disjuncture in syntax and “nonsensical” words. As readers, we are essentially placed into the shoes of the characters and catch a glimpse of the world- but the world according to Stephen. As readers, we’re lead to grasp for meanings and make sense of the writing just as Stephen makes sense of the world. How Stephen starts viewing the world and making sense of the world is shown to be influenced by external forces just as much as it is an interior subjectivity that we as readers are privy to.

Reading this text (or any other particular text for that matter) requires a conditioning of sorts. The repetition of words, phrases and events serve to condition readers to a particular style/ way of reading. Past the first chapter then (or maybe earlier for some of you), one is sufficiently acquainted with the style [“learning by heart”] to look beyond mere stylistics- we start decoding: picking out the significance of the particular style or the relation to its historical context amongst other things. We start getting glimpses of the world of the character, the text and the author.

The significance of the relationship between reading [which is personal experience] and ideology/epistemology [external force] is apparent here. Whatever we deem to be deeply personal or subjective is ultimately the product of something larger than ourselves. Supplementing what we’ve discussed in past seminars: the individual can never be separated from the community, our body belongs to the state and the text cannot be separated from its context.

The Sun, the Sand, and the Sea....

Landscape becomes the site of physical and metaphorical change in Woolf’s “Growing”. The change also suggest a disjuncture between the metropole and the colony- not merely physically but psychologically as well.

It starts with the “warm welcome” of the harsh tropics for the “innocent, unconscious imperialist” like himself: "the Colombo sun, which in the late morning hits one as if a burning hand were smacking one's face, the whole of my past life in London and Cambridge seemed suddenly to have vanished, to have faded away into unreality".

The new reality for him is this, the tropics. The climatic change becomes the first indicator of change- of the reality of his situation.

"The strange sense of complete break with the past, the physical sense or awareness of the final forgetting of the Thames, Tilbury, London, Cambridge, St. Paul's, and Brighton, which came upon me". The old memories and places have paved the way for these new sites of memory. The places and buildings become the second indicator of this new reality.

And finally, the fear of colonial administrators back in the metropole: "But I lived in it for many years... and it got into my heart and my bones… I lived inside it to some extent... so that something of its rhythm and tempo, like that of the lagoons and the jungle, crept permanently into my heart and my bones".

This is perhaps a final metamorphosis for the individual living in the colonies, perhaps? As indicated in the highlighted words- there’s a disjuncture from the past, a conjoining with the new. But of course, this does not necessarily mean that he no longer is an “English gentleman”. If so, the suggestion would be that memories and places maketh the [English] man.

Look How Far We've Come...

Upon reading Stoler's article about the colonial authorities sanctioning of sexual liasons and by extension, the body, it reminded me of how things hasn't changed that much.

Stoler relates the issue of metissage to this control over sexuality (of both Whites and Natives) when colonial authorities linked "domestic arrangements to the public order, family to the state, sex to subversion, and psychological essence to racial type" (516). Anyone who has taken Singapore Studies modules [Or even National Education classes] or Sociological modules would already know how family is seen as the basic unit of nation.

The emphasis on the private/intimate lives of the individual basically implies that the body [more importantly, the female body] belongs to the State. Anyone remembers the reiteration of the "National Service"/ "civic duty" of women at a recent politician's speech? To paraphrase everything: "Go on, have kids because our population is decreasing and our country needs you." Of course, we have government policies (in the form of "baby bonuses) that encourage this. Within the colonial period of course, the sexual liasons of the European men were also contained and monitored within direct/indirect policies (for instance, policies that intially allowed concubinage, and policies that allowed for the entry of European women into colonies).

The body tied so closely to the nation state reflects the biopolitics/body politics prevalent during the colonial period and carried through till today.

This brings to mind the viability of biopolitics/ body politics then and now. Within the article, we get a sense that these sanctioning of “sexual deviancy” is met with opposition (rightfully so, since it merely recodes race). But the fact that such control over the body still remains till this day suggests a few things to me. Firstly, that this is a good form of governance. Secondly, the seeming impossibility to “own” your own body for even with the progress of time, we have yet to deviate from biopolitics/ body politics. From the moment of birth everyone is tagged, institutionalized and run within the cog of the machine. Instead of running within the colonial machine, of course, we’re stuck is the machine of the nation-state. How depressssing.

"Their hearts are of gold..."

Capitalism moves insidiously into the heart of the Law within "Burmese Days". Equality before the law is shown to be perpetually non-existent. Any sort of equality or justice within the law is only shown to benefit a profit/power-making venture; "His [U Po Kyin’s] practice... was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality".

UPK is far from being the only “corrupter” of the Law within this text. As Flory points out in his debate with Dr. Veraswami, “the official holds the Burman down while the business man goes through his pockets… The British Empire is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the English”.

Law and order, [implemented, of course, with the governance of a particular colony], is laid down simply to reap profits for the Empire and ensure the smooth running of this business we call the Colonial Enterprise. Burma “might have slept in the Middle Ages for a century more if it had not proved a convenient spot for a railway terminus”.

The British who were “creeping round the world building prisons…and call[ing] it progress” could be seen as “modernizing” the colonies with such infrastructures for their own benefit, and “imprisoning” the colonies within their profit-making ventures.

Colonial law is a child of capitalism where the “universal” nature of Law becomes easily corrupted, used and abused. Capitalism, with its divisive rather than unifying nature, further corrupts the notion of Law [and to an extent, Modernism]. Hence, the notion of Modernization as well as the Law becomes nothing more than a farce in Burmese Days.

From a Distance

Physical and metaphorical distance is used at length in Orwell’s short story.

It was only in a “job like that [a colonial position] you see the dirty work of the Empire at close quarters”. The close proximity to the colonial administration reveals the lurid details of the Empire. Here, working within the “machine” allows for a microscopic view of the Empire that churns out dirty linen.

“That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes”. In this instance, the closer one gets to the event [perhaps truth?], the more complicated and superfluous the event gets. This particular microscopic view provides too many details that one loses sight of the larger “picture” at hand.

The elephant, at a distance, “looked no more dangerous than a cow”. However, the elephant might charge if one went too close to him. This lends to the idea of appearances, and how things appear to us at a distance.

Metaphorically speaking, this idea of appearance and distances can be related to theory and practice. The idea of the modern state as a theory, with its “universality” is well and good. However, the actual practice of the implementation of the modern state seems to be a “misfit” with the colonized country.

Distance, in terms of time, also allows for a “clearer” picture or “different” picture for the viewer. Revisionist history works in the same temper. It is with temporal distance that historians can start drawing links of the events that occurred. I’m not purporting that revisionist history is an objective, detached one. I’m positing that the closer one is to the event, it seems, the more subjective and complicit one may be.

297 words

Do You Know Lord Jim?

“I know my own mind”.

In those five words, Jim thwarts the attempts made by Marlow, the unknown narrator and the author himself, in a bid to understand and “grasp” Jim. Uttered assuredly by Jim, those words encapsulate the enterprise of reading, interpretation and representation.

The entire novel has Marlow recounting the past to his avid listeners, and in the process of narrating, Marlow embarks on a quest on reading and interpreting Jim for himself, and for others. The frustration for Marlow, (and us), lies having to “read” through a flurry of past actions, events and words, and interpret them, in order to understand Jim and the fascination that Marlow has of him. Jim, when excited, is usually fails to string together a coherent thought or sentences, instead, his actions are more “revealing” to Marlow. Following the opening quote, it is Jim, and only Jim, who can “know” his own mind, for language encounters its limits in this novel. (Note the excessiveness of language and the manner in which Marlow narrates- it is never linear in its progression to the end.)

Conrad, however, complicates things when Jim is shown to doubt himself. The incident of Patna, where he jumps off the ship is one such incident where Jim, doesn’t seem to fully understand his actions and himself. Readers then, are given privy, to a representation of Jim’s psyche as he starts to come to term with his actions; “There was no going back. It was as if I had jumped into a well- into an everlasting deep hole…”

A question then arises- how are we to understand others, if we don’t understand ourselves? It is with this question in mind, that the hypocrisy of the colonial enterprise comes to fore- particularly under its flag of a “civilizing” mission.


(298 words)

Academia and Ideologies.

“Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves”

Texts, particularly fictional texts, often do not tell us much except about themselves. This brings us back to the notion of representation within texts- and the precarious relationship it has with the author. Since we’re all mere cultural products of the prevalent ideologies- who is responsible for the representation?

“It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it”.

Perhaps this is why Achebe posits the change to move “the bloody racist” out of our literary canon. It seems to be the only way to negotiate within the system that is largely Eurocentric.

Now, Achebe writes with a passion against HoD’s position as part of “permanent literature”. His points are valid on all account. I’d like to posit that instead of perpetuating the distorted image of Africa within HoD, the continual dissection of Conrad’s text in academia allows for alternative interpretations of Conrad. Ideologies present within our present reading of the text, the readings before us and the context during Conrad’s time become evident with each dissection. Shoving HoD to the back shelves of the literary canon would merely leave such racist sentiments to perpetuate freely without voices like Achebe to point it out for us.

(225 words)

Response to: Aesthetic of Violence

What I understand to mean by the term “aesthetic of violence” is giving form, shape and meaning to violence, which in turn, attempts to rationalize and intellectualize what would otherwise be considered an irrational and intangible act.

Irrational because violence begets violence. There is a sort of senselessness in the cycle of violence in Fanon’s essay; “Terror, counter-terror, violence, counter-violence”. (47) An endless chain of reactions with no end in sight. This irrationality of violence is further reiterated when Fanon states that “colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.” (23)

The intangibility of violence arises from its close alliance to the almost primal instincts of Man- “the colonized’s way of relaxing is precisely this muscular orgy during which the most brutal aggressiveness and impulsive violence are channeled, transformed and spirited away.” (19) Here, violence is seen as a raw impulse that escapes the bodily confines.

Modernism, in its attempts of representations and re-presentations, proceeds in a similar fashion with the aestheticizing of violence, in the sense that both seek to give form to something, which ultimately, lies beyond our grasp. There are countless blog posts about polyphonic voices and the “knowability” of things which touch on this particular aspect of modernism adequately. What I would like to add, is perhaps for us to consider Plato’s Theory of Forms (my very basic understanding of the theory, might I add, through past class seminars) into our discussion on Modernism. This is particularly so, when dealing with Forster’s A Passage to India and the notions of a “real” India (interestingly enough- all countries start with a capitalized letter). Simplifying his theory- it basically states that all objects that we see are mere copies/imitations/shadows of an original. This implies that what we perceive are mere representations of the Real- which is precisely why the “real” India eludes Adela or Mrs Moore.

(Side note: I find the idea of echoes within Forster's text particularly interesting with regards to this. An echo is a reflection/mimicry of the original sound. The echoes made in the Marabar Caves are however, unrecognizable as it sounds nothing like the original- a resounding "boum". This makes it all the more disconcerting to Mrs Moore and to me as well. And yet, I can't wrap my mind around the idea of why Forster makes the echoes as such- existential anxieties aside?)

Is it safe to suggest then, that it is with a certain sense of self-awareness that modernist writings take to only presenting traces of that which lies beyond our perception in the first place?

Reading this Passage aloud....

One of the things that caught my attention while reading the text was the multitude of voices- Hindus, Moslems, British women, British men, Government officials, Colonial teachers and the list goes on. You’d think that with a multiplicity of voices (and hence perspectives), one would get a real sense of “India”. Levine states that “India was not a single country or entity… There was no single Indian language or religion”. (61) One can argue then, to gain a grasp of India, one had to look at it from all sides.

The text denies me the satisfaction of understanding "India", partly because of Forster’s underlying authorial voice, which dictates how the story pans out. Even as one reads the satirical representation of the British in India, through the eyes of the locals (who incidentally don’t agree on whether they can truly be friends with the British), one cannot refute the fact that Forster writes the passages for us. It is one author’s voice that pervades the text, writing the words that Dr Aziz or Fielding utters on these pages.

An act of ventriloquism, if you will.

Which begs the question- can a text ever be written to truly represent a people? On whose authority do we rely on to get a representation of a people? As shown in the text, even the locals cannot be relied upon to give us a clue into the people- Ralph Moore “was not so much a visitor as a guide” as compared to Dr Aziz.

One attempt at mediating this issue is through a narrator or author who does not purport to fully understand each character in his text. It is precisely the characters eluding the reader’s grasp that stops the text from becoming a ventriloquist performance for readers. Ironically, it is this elusive nature that allows the readers a foothold on gaining an understanding of India.

Is there a resolution to the issues of representation? No, not yet.