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.

The individual and the Community

The introduction to the Penguin edition of Portrait reads, “Stephen recognizes himself to be a member of a community; it is in relation to the collective, the race, that he formulates his individual aspiration. Similarly, it is in relation to his community that he learns the techniques of individuation, although it is by a process of inversion that he achieves his ambition to be self-born”.

I found this so apt and suited to some of the things we have discussed in class this whole semester- this whole idea of the individual and the community. I think starting form Passage, to Burmese Days, we have looked at how their authors tend to zoom out of a discourse of the community and focus on the individual impulse, hence complicating colonial discourse, which is usually understood on the larger, communal level, and this zooming in on the individual, we have labeled as being a very modernist technique.

Joyce however, complicates this very separation of the individual and community, where we realize that it does not really make sense to focus on an individual alone because the individual gains himself and shapes himself based on or in response to his community. Hence, Stephen’s individuality and interiority cannot be seen as being separate and excluded from the larger world he lives in for it is the community that allows him this individuation. Therefore, if we were to go back and revisit characters like Flory, Ronny and Aziz, perhaps we could now read them as not merely characters whose interiority we gain access to due to the modernist mode of representation, but as characters whose interiority is only possible because of both how their community shapes them, as well as our own community that allows us to read them.

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Stoler and Concubinage

Pardon me for this late entry! here are my thoughts on Stoler's article...

Stoler argues that the colonizer-colonized categories and labels were layed out by "forms of sexual control" and "defined the domestic arrangements of Europeans and the cultural investments by which they identified themselves"(42). Hence, she says that inperial authority is structured in highly gendered terms, and this sexuality and gender to a large extent gave the colonial system its order and manner.

I find this interesting because it assumes that the women were of a subordinate position, when i would instead propose that women in fact had an upper hand in a system like this, whether they realised it or not. They were being instrumental in shifting the colonial system of meaning from self-interest and moral superiority, making clear the weak links in narratives of colonial legitimization.

When stoler says, "most of these women remained servants... but some combined their service with varied degrees of independence and authorit"(49), the point here is that women had a way out, or rather, a way to manipulate their position and manipulate their men to their benefit, and we do see an example of this in May in Burmese Days.

So while Stoler seems to talk aboout "reinforced hierarchies" due to concubinage, i think the more important issue is how these hierarchies are problematised. There is a definite shift from the twice colonized subaltern woman(by patriarchy and by the colonizer) to the subaltern woman with agency and upon whom the colonizing sommunity was deeply dependent on.

exclusion and inclusion

I find this whole issue of inclusion and exclusion very interesting. As Stoler notes, in most scenarios, “class, gender, and cultural markers deny and designate exclusionary practices at the same time”(521) and that none of these categories “is privileged at any moment”(521). Stoler goes on to elaborate the complexities involved with these categories and how they carried slightly different meanings in different situations.
However, what about the idea of self- exclusion or inclusion? Is inclusion and exclusion to a particular group only defined and sanctioned by the ones in authority, or can it be discussed from a more personal, individualistic level? For instance, in Burmese Days, we see Flory othering his own people, constantly referring to his white people as “Them”, with an obvious dislike towards them. On the other hand, we see Dr. Veraswami getting agitated when Flory criticizes his own white club members. Hence, while Flory excludes himself form the white community, in his attitude towards them, the Doctor includes and associates himself with the white community, like mimic man. Perhaps then it is this sense of inclusion and exclusion that is far more strong and important, for it defeats any categories set out by the larger authority. Yet, the question really is, even while an individual can include or exclude himself from HIS group or community in thought, can he ever be freed from his larger community that defines him? Can he ever be free form its expectations and demands of him? Orwell leaves this open- he criticizes neither the Doctor nor Flory, which seems to suggest that both are right in wanting what they want, and both are also perhaps stuck in a sort of liminal, inevitable position, somewhere in between inclusion and exclusion- which perhaps is the colonial experience for both the colonizer and colonized.

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Glorious?

By telling the story of a small number of English expatriates living in Burma, far from major centers of power and commerce, Orwell highlights the consequences of believing and claiming that an individual's actions must conform to common communal thought rather than to the individual's mind.

In the case of colonial Burma, the central false premise is that there's any difference between black and white. Both oppressor and oppressed believe implicitly that the English are more worthy, more capable, more real than then Burmese or Indians. U Po Kyin is described as having "grasped that his own people were no match for this race of giants".

John Flory must count as the hero of the piece, though deeply flawed. A factor for a teak-wood company, he retreated to Burma in the face of an inability to come to terms with English society. Disfigured by a birthmark on one cheek, and deeply scarred by the complete social rejection this minor blemish produced in the England of his boyhood and youth, he hides in this most distant outpost of the Empire, running a lumber camp and coming into the town of Kyauktada when he can, spending his evenings at the local European Club, "playing bridge and getting three parts drunk”, hardly a glamourous picture for a white person in a colonized landscape. Flory is a good man, but his lack of self-esteem and self-confidence make him weak in the face of the enormous social pressures exerted by the tiny community of Europeans, from which he is profoundly alienated. To some extent, he is doubly alienated and stifled in this novel- by the colonized as well as his own people, placing him in a liminality that is in some ways similar to the narrator in Shooting the Elephant- a position that is enticingly glorious yet unfriendly.

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“He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it”

What I find most interesting in Orwell’s work is this whole idea of theory and convention being in opposition to a reality- a reality that ultimately mends itself and shapes itself to fit into theory, but that which in itself is highly individualised and moral. Hence, the mask is really the convention; the mainstream colonial discourse of how the colonizer ought to be, how he is percieved and how he ought to relate to the ‘native’ other. In Shooting the Elephant, of course this is questioned, for we have a narrator who struggles to fit into the mask granted to him, and who on the contrary feels pressure in needing to act out his role, and in trying not to appear inadequate as a person in power. Like Chatterjee implies, it is a performance that needs constant revision and monitoring because unlike theory or convention which is performing to given rules and codes, this is a performance that is not shielded by or elevated by a “stage”, a platform, or divider. Instead, we see the narrator with the masses, the ‘native’ community, and somehow the lines and binaries are less clear and helpful.

However, this mask is not merely one that the colonizer wears. The “yellow faces”, “happy and excited over this bit of fun” wear masks too- the ‘natives’ though conventionally subalterns, seem almost amused in watching the officer trying to fulfill his role and shoot the elephant. Like the narrator tells himself, he is the puppet, the ‘native’ the puppeteers, controlling his every move merely by expecting him to act like the colonizer, the all powerful one. Yet if this truly gives them power and authority is still questionable, for Orwell still presents them as the voiceless/faceless community

Modernism and the Human Condition

I find Conrad's use of Marlow very useful. The novel is told in the form of a story narrated by Marlow, and within his narration are stories told by other characters, offering us multiple viewpoints, often with no linearity of events. And it is through these stories and factual accounts and external perspectives that we gain an insight into Jim. Yet, thsese are never enough for us to understand and comprehend Jim completely because, as Conrad describes, he is still seen through a "mist", forever remaining mysterious and irrecoverable.

This set me thinking about the texts we have done so far, Passage, HOD, and now Lord Jim, all of which grapple with this idea of the rational, scientific, even theoretical knowable entity, compared to a more elusive, undefinable one, which may be called the human condition. It is as though modernism and the rational thought that it prescribes is inadequate to grasp, represent and identify with the complex human condition. Yet, it is only through modernist thought, and only with using rationality and factuality and a fragmented discourse that we realise how irrational and mysterious the human condition is. Whether it is India, or the African cannibals, or Jim in this case, we sense their complexity only when set against very clear, rational thinking, which suggests that such an approach is necessary. To go one step further, it is also through this process that we know that even the propagators of modernism, or colonialism, or simply the whites themselves, though preaching rationality and anxious to be able to pin down everything, and in themselves highly complex individuals, with very non-conforming, irrational, "misty" inner states.

The white man's anxiety

i do agree with Achebe that Europe and its people were at once as primitive as the africans and Conrad's work dismisses or leaves out any mention of this past, almost as though Europe has always been forward and civilised. I also completely agree with the point that when we talk about Africa and its rituals, superstitions and customs, Conrad, like many of us, speak of it as though such customs are exclusive to a place like Africa, failing to see that any community, even a "civilised" one has its own set of customs that may always be deemed as odd by an outsider. Hence, defining Africa and speaking of its culture without considering that we speak about this culture from our own specific locations and cultures and assumptions, which are equally limiting and alien, is what i think Achebe criticises Conrad for.

there is also this question of progression. how is the progress of an empire defined? Does not a community progress if it chooses not to follow the temlpates of modernism, and instead secure its culture and customs? Conrad's text favours this sort of progression, where language, race, speaking, body behaviour are the marks of a civilised and rational being. And somehow like Achebe says, Conrad has this anxiety to be able to describe and put in words everything that he encounters, but alot of which transcend the ability to be described. We see this in Forster's novel too where India constantly escapes being pinned down and being known. But India's and Africa's progression does not lie it their knowability but on the contrary, in their evasiveness. So they are not an "antithesis" to Europe, nor like Achebe says are they reflections of Europe's past. On the contrary i feel they stand very distinctly, uncomparably from Europe, and this is the white man's anxiety.
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Violence against an absolute

For me, as i continued to finish off Forster's novel, the thing that struck me the most was the breaking down of the absolute- an absolute colonizer, an absolute colonized subject, and thus an inability to clearly substantiate or define anything. Largely differing from Fanon, who seems to present us with binaries, and manichean aesthetics which "compartmentalise" the whole colonial context very neatly, Forster continues to wage war against such a representation. When the narrator so knowingly admits in the novel, " and the night that encircled them, absolute as it seemed, was itself only a spurious unity, being modified by the gleams of day that leaked up round the edges of the earth, and by the stars", to me this is symbolic of the breaking down of the whole notion of a whole or absolute; that any sense of englishness or indianness will always never be constant or definable simple because it is constanly being translated and mediated through various different tongues and representations.

Hence, to fanon, this binary is very clear, and he presents a very homogenised colonial and colonized community, where the colonized are always "reduced to the state of an animal" by the colonizer, and the colonizer is always feared or looked up to with envy by the colonized. Yet, Forster challenges this with his characters like Fielding and Aziz, who do not readily fit into Fanon's theories and conventions. So perhaps violence in modernism is really a violence against simple generalisations, and an attempt to represent communities, but which are made up of very distinct individuals who who do not necessarily conform to what is expected of their community. However then the problem arises when we also realise that any act of violence projected onto a community only strengthens it, like Fanon suggests. Similarly, any attempt of Forster's to break down definitions seems to. on the contrary define and attribute very specific qualities to the very things he claims transcend definition.

Levine, Forster and the Indian Animal

The indian animal, having "no sense of an interior", to which the interior is "a normal growth of the eternal jungle" (35)- This is an idea from Forster's A Passage to India that struck me as most interetsing and that made me see parrallels in Levine's Britain in India. The lack of an interiority or perhaps civility on the part of the Indian is an opinion held by the British, exemplified in Ronny in the nivel, who remarks "Nothing is private in India"(33). This notion of everything being thrown out into the open, the Indian ways of excess and abundance and "cultureless" behaviour, and Mrs Moore's reactions to the indian wasp in her room, all point to Britain's idea of itself being in many ways more cultured, more civilised and more knowing and discerning than the indians. which make its rule over india easier. Yet, the inherent paradox in this came clear to me in Levine's essay. The truth is that Britain's rule will always be one pinned down by fear and insecurity. It is not completely a ruling that stems from or is motivated by an attempt to aid India and modernise it. It is more of a desperate claim for power, where as Levine suggests, "India became more and more important not only for its products but increasingly as a symbol of Britan's overseas power after the loss of America". Hence, any labelling of the indians as people who lack civility and interiority may be seen as means to claim and foreground this sense of power and superiority.

Therefore, to the British( and Miss Quested is an embodiment of this), the "real India" is everything but the indina people themselves. They want to look for the essence of India while it stands in front of them. And on the other hand, to the Indian, everything is India, and everything can be adapted to, even the wooded peg in a British official's house. Hence, while Levine's criticism of the British and their dependency of India is starkingly obvious, Forster seems a little more subtle in his approach. .