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:

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.

james' modernist ambivalence

james' modernist anxieties come through in his portrayal of dedalus as a character with a confused self identity, a pastiche of different parts constituting a somewhat schizophrenic personality. like forster's characters (adela and mrs. moore), but to much a greater extent, dedalus undergoes an existential crisis of self a few times in the novel: "nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it an echoe of the infuriated cries within him...he could scarcely recognise as his his own thoughts, and repeated dlowly to himself: I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus..." (94 of my el cheapo "enriched classics" copy) When he tries to remember his childhood, he failed to recall any of its vivid moments and instead "recalled only names: Dante, Parnell, Clane, Clongowes." (ibid) the reduction of his childhood memories to names reflects the deeply political background and politically confused identity of the Irish persona.

jackson's assertions that Ireland was a "half-way house between Britain and the Empire," and to Ireland the Empire was "a source both of constraint and liberation" depicts the colonised's dilemma as less one of racial subjugation and discrimination, as we saw with the other texts, but one of religion, politics and that of being used but at the same time helped or rewarded in some way. (i'm sure people doing irish poetry can shed more light on this!) jackson goes on further to describe the contradictions of Irish Home Rulers "being proud of Irish feats within the British Army, but contemptuous of the Army itself." dedalus' confusion about his self identity to the point of remembering names and not memories of his childhood hence reflects the experience of growing up in such a schizophrenic and politically contradictive environment. while such existential crises aren't uncommon in modernist texts written from the colonial side, including Woolf's and Forster's, i think that james depicts the unique political situation of the irish colonised as being caught in a difficult liminal space of being white and European, and yet exploited in similar ways as the "inferior" races of the East--and hence, ambivalent about one's political and historical identity but in a very different way perhaps, from that of the typical 'native'.

colonial identity = masculine identity

the colonial anxieties of emasculation continue in leonard woolf, as we see from his description of dutton and miss beeching: "He seemed to have shrunk and she to have swollen...I sometimes think this must be the ideal life for a male--and, after performing his male functions, is killed by her or just dies. Not that I thought that Mrs. Dutton would kill and eat Dutton; but she seemed somehow or other to have absorbed what little life and virility he possessed." (72) this proves again how the colonial identity is tied inextricably to the masculine identity and its anxieties of challenge from any frontier of the suppressed and disempowered--whether female, native or other. while interpretations of colonialism and imperialism as an outlet for excess male sexual energy or as a sublimation of sexuality (hyam) might seem a little exaggerated, stoler's claim that "imperial authority and racial distinctions were fundamentally structured in gendered terms" (42) is certainly legitimised by the overwhelming literary (and historical--as she has introduced in 'carnal knowledge') evidence brought to bear on the idea that the colonial identity is fundamentally tied to masculine identity and is, as such, gendered.

It is significant that while marriage and sex are sites wherein the male is able to exert his sexual dominance, they are paradoxically then also the sites of his possible failure and sexual ineptitude. Mrs. Dutton's swelling and appropriation of her husband's virility reflect masculine anxieties about marriage and sex as potential sites of impotence. furthermore, the idea that the masculine identity is tied to performing some kind of sexual function, after which he is rendered useless and ineffectual reduces the masculine identity as tied to a simple physical function--a shallow act lacking actual substance. Likewise, the colonial mask is a "facade" for woolf, and as we have discussed with orwell's elephant, colonialism is very much the assertion and upholding of the image of the potent, virile male with whom must lie all military, racial and sexual power. Stoler's gendered analysis then is very useful for dissecting the colonial identity as fundamentally tied to masculine identity.

historicising texts

i think the stoler article helps to pull us back as subjective readers and interpreters to historicise texts within the economic and social realities that were actually occurring at the time--historical facts which we (or at least i) tend to overlook in lieu of textual evidence such as characterisation, metaphors, etc. for instance, instead of reading ma hla may as a devious temptress who manipulates and blackmails flory for her own capitalistic gains - an agent of her own capitalist agenda - as we did last class, we now can see her contextualised within the prevalence of concubinage, which "was tolerated precisely because "poor whites" were not." (Stoler 54) not only is she divested of her agency in such a context, she's tolerated because concubinage perpetuates "white prestige" as european women are perceived as too expensive to upkeep, and therefore native women become the convenient outlets of sexual release who are, naturally, divested of any legal rights. Stoler is quick to point out that "Colonized women could sometimes parlay their positions into personal profit and small rewards, but these were individual negotiations with no social, legal, or cumulative claims." (57) placed within such a machine, may becomes that cog lacking agency which in so far as she is able to act (eg. putting on the mask and taking it off after her performance as was discussed) deludes herself and flory into perceiving she is dangerous in any way, when it is the other way around and white men like flory are "protected" (or at least perceived to be paternalistically) by the white colonial regime. while this might seem like pointing the finger at exploitative white men again, the article qualifies this and asserts that to some extent they, like women both native and colonised, are all colonial subjects in their own right, subsumed within the mechanics of colonial exploitation.

stereotypes in burmese days

spoilers for the ending ahead...

i felt that what could have been quite a convincing case made on Orwell's part against the Empire was seriously undermined by the flatness of the characterizations in burmese days. practically all but the protagonist were stereotypical characters fleshed out by the narrative only in so far as they (the characters) affected Flory or any main plot forces.

men: Dr. Veraswamy (subservient, obsequious native who worships colonials that serves to play up Flory's anti-imperialism), Ellis (racist colonial that does the same), Mr. Lackersteen, Mr. Macgregor, Westfield (faceless white colonials who cling together socially to preserve their 'whiteness'), Verrall (quintessential embodiment of patriarchal ideals of 'maleness' against which Flory's deficiencies are enhanced), UPK (corrupt native), etc...

women: Ma Hla May (fawning, materialistic Oriental mistress), Elizabeth and Mrs. Lackersteen (typical memsahibs who prize marriage above all and frown upon natives)

That Flory wants to believe more in these characters, particularly Elizabeth - whom he idealises and romanticises as better than the rest, and a means of escape from his loneliness - points to his naivete and obvious deficiencies as an adequate spokesperson and representative of the text's anti-imperialist sentiments. further, the text portrays these characters as one-dimensional agents of their individual simplistic capitalist or racist agendas, manipulating and puppeteering them in favour of the narrative's consensus that anti-imperialism, or even any sort of ambivalence towards clear-cut colonizer/colonized, white/black binaries, must end in tragedy and failure. (as evidenced by Flory's suicide)

value of one indian

so far my favourite of the course texts - short, sweet and a straightforward read! :)

the way orwell saw it was, he persecuted what he described as a rather benign-seeming animal to preserve his pride (and that of the empire's). yet what i find most interesting is, he does not recall the murdered Indian in his description of it as having a "preoccupied grandmotherly air" and being "no more dangerous than a cow." He "knew with perfect certainty that [he] ought not to shoot him." this, knowing that the beast has just violently dashed an Indian's body into the mud, seems to me to be quite incredible. it points to the fact that life is measured in very different terms in different settings. every life is (supposedly) equal in a nation, but in a colony, when judged against a magnificent gentle creature, an Indian's life really is worth nothing at all. while orwell does acknowledge his complicity in empire to the extent that he was glad the Indian was killed so that he was legally permitted to shoot the elephant, i think he does overlook this moral issue. yes, one could argue he was subscribing to the Eastern ways of attributing different value to different men (caste and hierarchy systems), or of the mindset that one life is quite insignificant given how many there are (in India for eg) - when in Rome do as the Romans do, but that does not reconcile with the British Empire's moral highhorse and their ideals of honour and justice, which is in fact the moral impetus for colonizing in the first place. clearly, the colonies are settings which corrupt the Englishman but perhaps it is more the drawing out of what is already present in him, than rendering him newly evil. however, i'm sure these are way more complex issues than i make them out to be.

(299)

Abjection

If abjection in Kristevian terms (I totally just made that word up) means to throw off aspects of oneself onto a figure, also simultaneously throwing it under the public gaze, then Marlow is certainly guilty of this. In HOD we see how he gets disturbed by thinking about the river as being connected to the Thames, and therefore just a different part of a whole--implying that people are not so very different as our cultures and societies leads us to believe, but perhaps are all the same. If so, then interior qualities such as the desire for chaos, violence and the carnivalesque get abjected onto the native Others in the novel. We see this most clearly in Kurtz, who lets his inner beasts run free, horrifying and at the same time fascinating Marlow, as a white man who outdoes the natives in barbarism.

I think the same happens in Lord Jim, but very differently. Marlow, as narrator, is free to shape the narrative and hence reader perceptions of Jim. In Chapter 26, he sees Jim as "a figure set up on a pedestal, to represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom...like a shadow in the light." (201 of my Signet edition) He valorizes Jim as a symbolic figure of heroism and virtue. I'm not sure if this is a reverse kind of abjection, but it certainly seems that Marlow's reading of Jim is shaped by this and perhaps then, symptomatic of his own desire to be likewise or at least to be able to throw his humanist aspirations onto someone else, however unworthy he may be. It is of course also significant that Jim is seen here as symbolic, a kind of empty signifier perhaps, who gets filled in slowly by various narrative accounts.

(300 excluding pointless asides :))

"Native Dialects"

Re: Achebe's observations abt the use of the term "native language". Although it's inevitable that all novels feature people and thus generalize, stereotype and misrepresent them to some extent, HoD does quite deliberately take speech away from the native inhabitants. Colonizers must impose their systems of control and in doing so, rewrite existing "native" systems in their language. It's a form of linguistic violence which usurps and debases other languages, much like colonization itself does.

We see how the Africans are often portrayed a black, faceless mass: "a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of eyes rolling." (51) It's easy to why they are portrayed so--to show them as a mob is to render them lacking individuality and hence humanity. Often their language is a "complaining clamour" to Marlow's ears, and he is frequently unable to distinguish whether they are welcoming, threatening or anything else because it's not English, therefore barbaric and mere noise. Nothing is said of any subtlety of expression in their faces either, except how ferocious they appear--because they are ugly black faces and nothing is to be read in them. Only Kurtz's mistress is described in any detail, and we all know what Conrad/Marlow thinks of women. One might think that Marlow, being a veteran sailor, would have picked up some of the "native" African language, but he does not condescend to even acknowledge it. The book by Towser/Towson is a ray of enlightening salvation amidst this uncivilization for the Russian--a means to preserve his sanity and most importantly, his "whiteness". (The English) Language and the written word are shown here to be a means of distinction and a mark of superiority--a championing tool of colonization.

(294)

Intellectual Violence

In "On Violence" Frantz Fanon writes that "during the struggle for liberation, when the colonized individual touches base again with his people, this artificial sentinel is smashed into smithereens. All the Mediterranean values, the triumph of the individual, of enlightenment and Beauty turn into pale, lifeless trinket...Those values which seemed to ennoble the soul proved worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged." (11) It's clear that the process of colonization inflicts on its subjects violence of an intellectual nature, on top of the physical. To colonize is to impose the colonizer's value and ideological systems onto the colonized, so as to ensure a totality of control. Not only are subjects to be physically controlled and managed (with policing systems and violence) but they are to be persuaded into their own subjectivization through an interpellation into their colonizer's value systems. As such, the colonized subject both ensures and reinforces his own colonization--much as the Indian upperclass does in A Passage to India. They are to be convinced that the colonizer's ideals and values are superior to their own, and therefore a valid basis for colonization in the first place.

We see an example of the imposition and manipulation of values on an individual and not national scale with Fielding and Aziz, when the former tries to persuade Aziz not to sue Miss Quested for her money. Aziz persists in his irrational preference for Mrs. Moore over Miss Quested even when, as Fielding points out, "Miss Quested anyhow behaved decently this morning, whereas the old lady never did anything for you at all, and it's pure conjecture that she would have come forward in your favour." (209 of my Borders edition) Aziz responds with "'Is emotion a sack of potatoes, so much the pound, to be measured out? Am I a machine? I shall be told I can use up my emotions by using them, next.'" And eventually, Fielding is able to manipulate Aziz successfully by raising "a questionable image of [Mrs. Moore] in the heart of Aziz, saying nothing that he believed to be untrue, but producing something that was probably far from the truth." (215) Fielding believes that it is logical and fair to let Miss Quested off the hook for what she has sacrificed in telling the truth in court. But Aziz's feelings and actions are motivated by irrational emotional impulses, such as his love (and Orientalization--hence, idealization) of Mrs. Moore whom he had met only three times, and his lack thereof for Miss Quested.

My point here is, that there is clearly a mismatch in what is valued and upheld in the colonizer and colonized societies, and that colonization intends to bypass and totalize this difference as part of its mechanism in an act of violence. Certainly, value systems differ as a consequence of the standard of living and level of progress of the respective societies. While white societies look to values such as freedom, individual choice and so on, because they have attained a certain level of affluence which allows them to look beyond everyday bread and butter issues, colonies are usually in a backward stage of development which correspondingly impedes this development in value systems. (Although whether what works for white colonizers necessarily would work for colonized subjects remains to be seen of course.) I've often personally experienced this divide, when on my exchange in Canada, I'd have discussions with Europeans about how things like freedom of press and expression, individual will and political freedom can be insignificant in light of more immediate pressing needs such as the economic and social demands on the individual of living in a competitive and populous country such as China. Of course, they didn't get me and I didn't get them but at least I tried!

In A Passage to India, we do see a reverence or at least a respect for the Indian culture and what its people value. The message of the novel seems to amount to a compromise, that peoples and societies differ and while we may never reconcile these differences, we can agree to disagree. It's very clear in both the novel and Fanon's essay that colonization is a propagator of conflict, division and violence that would never allow such compromise.

Significance of The Caves

The 'Caves', both as a chapter and as a setting in the novel, represents an important turning-point for the characters. As a consequence of visiting, Aziz gets accused of assault and becomes disillusioned with the idea of forming personal relationships with the colonials, Mrs. Moore suddenly comes upon a fit of nihilism which she never recovers from and Miss Quested's marriage engagement and reputation is ruined. We see that at the end of the entire ordeal of his trial and its aftermath, Aziz concludes that "the earth...the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace...they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices: 'No, not yet,'" (267-8) to forming a friendship with Fielding. The novel shows that to the end, relations between the Indians and their colonials can never escape the implications of power and capitalist exploitation the colonizer-colonized relationship is always grounded in. (We are shown this by Aziz's inability to refrain from suspecting that Fielding has persuaded him not to sue Miss Quested, only to marry her and steal the money which was rightfully his.) We also see that the visit to the caves scarred Mrs. Moore irrevocably, as the echo "bou-oum" "began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life." (123) "Everything exists, nothing has value" (ibid) becomes the existentialist notion with which Mrs. Moore's heart is seized.

The Marabar Caves is a setting of darkness, violence and obscurity. In light of the effects of the visit on its visitors I have outlined, it almost seems to embody the country's meting out of penance for crossing the boundaries of propriety between the colonizers and colonized. We see that in itself it is not "an attractive place or quite worth visiting" (116), a geographical feature of the village which neither the locals (Aziz "had no notion how to treat this particular aspect of India" (117)) nor the foreigners could comprehend. And yet it has profound effects on them all, and "it robbed infinity and eternity of their vastness, the only quality that accomodates them to mankind." (123) This disillusionment with life, friendships and man's goodness is meted out by the caves as the land's punishment for these incursions into the boundaries between colonizers and colonized. It is as if there are to be no grey areas in this unnatural situation where the colonials have taken and exploited land which is not theirs to take. I would read the caves, especially in its presentation as a natural and untainted (by colonial exploitation) land, to signify what Forster believes is the country's protest to colonialization and any hypocrisies of friendship it might inspire.

--Charlene (using a Borders edition so page numbers might not match)

Temporal Structure of a Modernist Scene

Auerbach in "The Brown Stocking" addresses Woolf's modernist treatment of the stocking scene in To the Lighthouse, noting in it first of all, the treatment of its temporal structure. Auerbach asserts that there are two temporal "continuities" or lines of thought which occur simultaneously--the exterior measuring of the stocking and Mrs. Ramsay's interior monologue and reminiscing, prompted by her exterior actions. As he puts it, "This entire insignificant occurrence is constantly interspersed with other elements which, although they do not interrupt its progress, take up far more time in the narration than the whole scene can possibly have lasted." (529) He notes that the "time and narration takes is not devoted to the occurrence itself...but to interludes." (537) Indeed, the scene is spaced out not by the exterior action of measuring the stocking, but is planned around the existence of these very interludes of Mrs. Ramsay's. The interludes then catalyse and forward the dramatic action and significance of the scene (if it can be called dramatic) and the mundane is structured around them instead of the opposite. Rather than action framing thoughts, thought frames and controls the action. (We see this when Mrs. Ramsay becomes irritated at a recollection of a Swiss girl praising the scenery of her hometown where her father was dying, and snaps at James.) Or rather, thought and action work symbiotically, as is more like real life.

This technique clearly foregrounds the existence of the consciousness and its interior monologues against the physicality of everyday actions, taking into consideration the amount of time and space dedicated to Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts as opposed to her actions. The opening quote Auerbach includes before his essays (I wonder if anyone else noticed this?) is the opening line to Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress": "Had we but world enough and time..." The poem's speaker (for those who haven't done EN3??? Romanticism!) tries to seduce his lover by convincing her that if a suspension of time were possible, he would spend every moment of eternity worshipping her, but since it is not, he ends with the 'carpe diem' call-to-action of her reciprocating his affections while they are still youthful. This speaks clearly to me of a parallel "freezing of time" in the literary text except with Woolf, it is not impossible but a daily occurrence wherein "the road taken by consciousness is sometimes traversed far more quickly than language is able to render it" (ibid). With exterior time "frozen" while interior time runs its course in the scene, Woolf manages to both divide and link the scene with two different threads of thought/action. To go a little further with this, time has become one of the inconquerable governing concepts which modernists seek to break down and subvert. I suppose this likens modernists with colonialists, by virtue of the fact that both seek to conquer what previously seemed inconquerable.

-- Charlene