self-subjugation

In "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", Stephen diagnoses Ireland as being subjugated not only by the Catholic Church and the English colonisers, but also by the Irish people themselves. As Seamus Deane notes in his Introduction to the Penguin edition of the novel, “The double empire of London and Rome weighed so heavily on the Irish because they had grown to love their enslavement and to fear freedom and its responsibilities” (Introduction xxxv). The colonised Irish people are definitely then shown to be culpable in their own subjugation.

This reminded me a lot of "Burmese Days", where the natives too are represented as being inept and complicit in their own subjugation. While the Irish fear responsibilities as Deane says, the natives in "Burmese Days" are shown to be inept and incapable of taking up any responsibilities. This is evident when the camp that Flory presides over becomes a scene of complete disarray during his absence—“The whole camp was at sixes and sevens…Nearly thirty coolies were missing, the sick elephant was worse than ever, and a vast pile of teak logs which should have been sent off ten days earlier were still waiting because the engine would not work” (Chapter XVIII, page 207). Through this example the natives are definitely shown to be so inept that they seem better off under the dominion of a white master.

The natives are also shown to be complicit in their own subjugation through their pandering to the white master, as evident in the character of Dr Veraswami,who constantly deprecates the East and plays up the might of the British colonisers and the empire despite being kept in a servile position by this very colonial enterprise.

By portraying the colonised as being complicit too in their own subjugation, I think these two novels work to show how colonialism is not always a black and white affair where the colonisers are the ones subjugating and the colonised the ones suffering. They definitely paint colonialism to be a more complex affair where both the coloniser AND the colonised have a part to play in the conquering of the native country.

language as a mark of difference

Language, figures in many of the books on our course, as a sign of the coloniser’s domination over the colonised. For example, in “Burmese Days”, Veraswami is depicted as constantly speaking with an extra ‘s’ behind many of his words, almost as if the text is drawing attention to the difference in the way he speaks, a difference that perhaps marks him as being different from the colonial masters who are native speakers of the language. The text also highlights this inferiority in language in Ma Hla May who is depicted as saying during her denouncement of Flory in the church, “”Yes, that’s the one I mean—Flory Flory!” (She pronounced it Porley) (284).

This is also evident in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” where language exists as a sign of the English colonisation of Ireland. For example, the Dean thinks that “tundish” is an Irish word despite it belonging to the English vocabulary, and in this instance, Stephen appears to know the English language better than the Dean. However, despite this, Stephen is always mindful of the fact that he is ultimately still using the language of the colonisers, as evident when he says, “The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine… His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language” (205). Hence language here too, will always be a mark of Stephen’s inferiority because the language is ultimately not his, but the coloniser’s, and the fact that he has mastered it so well only goes to show his degree of colonisation by them!

the act of colonialism

Woolf seems to paint colonialism as something akin to a farcical act and I got a first hint of this when he says that it was the act of pretending to be grand “in a strange Asiatic country’ that “gave the touch of unreality and theatricality” to the lives of the White ruling caste. In London, they were what they were, they were not acting. But in Ceylon, they “were all always…playing a part, acting upon a stage”; the backcloth of which was imperialism” (24).

This notion of theatricality and acting is continued when Woolf describes how he attained a good impression in Jaffna. He says, “My reputation as …a Sahib…was therefore established within three hours of my arrival, for a civil servant, wearing bright green flannel collars and accompanied by a dog who within the space of ten minutes killed a cat and a large snake, commanded respect”. Here, the comical and almost ludicrous manner by which Woolf gained this immediate respect as a White master undermines his own prestige because it is almost as if White respectability depended not on true substance, but on whether one possessed the right costumes and props to pull off the White master’s act of prestige.

This idea of acting is also evident in how the civil servants met every evening for a game of tennis, which had become something like “a ritual, almost a sacrament”, before adjourning for social conversation—“the ritual of British conversation which inevitably followed British exercise”. All these social rituals seem to me like outward shows of sophistication and civility, mere acts of the white man’s supposed prestige and superiority over the natives. All these definitely reduce colonialism to a very empty and substance-less shell for me—a very staged-up act that is ultimately hollow at the core.

Stoler and Orwell

Stoler’s article about colonial categories and people who ambiguously straddled, crossed, and threatened imperial divides (514) can be applied to “Burmese Days” particularly through the characters of Francis, Samuel and Flory. Francis and Samuel being “sons of white fathers and native mothers” are what Stoler calls the progeny of “métissage”, people straddling the boundary between white and native man. Their fate as outsiders to the white society despite their “drop of white blood” (126) is sealed, because, as Stoler says, even with a rhetoric affirming that education and upbringing were transformative processes, Europeanness of métis children could never be assured to colonial officials. What more then for Francis and Samuel who are described as being “brought up in the bazaar”, having “had no education”, and having no proper upbringing (126)—in the white man’s eyes, not only their mixed parentage, but also their lack of any transformative processes would have effectively stained whatever white blood they biologically possessed. This is perhaps why the two men “excited a peculiar dislike in” Elizabeth and why she even terms them “awfully degenerate types” (126)—precisely because these Eurasians were seen as “threat to white prestige, an embodiment of European degeneration” (515).

Flory is another example of a transgressor of boundaries because instead of adhering to Manichean categories in his associations, he has a friendship with Veraswami and even a sexual relation with Ma Hla May. Elizabeth’s disgust towards Flory’s sexual relation once again represents the colonial society’s concern that European men living with native women would be “contaminated” by these native associations (533). This is particularly evident when Flory’s “ugliness” only became apparent to Elizabeth after she witnessed Ma Hla May’s denouncement of Flory and realised that he had “been the lover of that grey-faced maniacal creature” (286), almost as if May had infected Flory with her ugliness through her association with him.

Chatterjee and Burmese Days

I think Chatterjee’s article has certain resonances in Burmese Days, because language is indeed a “simple and practical sign of difference” (Chatterjee 25) between the colonizer and colonized in the text. This is evident when Ellis tells his butler, “Don’t talk like that, damn you—“I find it very difficult!”…“Please master, can’t keeping ice cool”—that’s how you ought to talk. We shall have to sack this fellow if he gets to talk English too well. I can’t stick servants who talk English” (23). I think Ellis is infuriated precisely because that which differentiated his butler and him as different peoples has been lost—the colonized native can now imbibe the white colonial master’s speech perfectly, what then separates them and marks Ellis as superior?

This idea of language being a sign of difference is also evident in Verswami who is constantly depicted as speaking with an ‘s’ at the end of some words like “iss”, “wass”, “hass”. By showing how Veraswami speaks a less perfect form of English, the text inadvertently shows how he is different and ultimately inferior to his colonial master.

However, there is one occasion where I feel that the difference that is based on language is shown to be reconcilable. This is the scene where Flory and Elizabeth are on a canoe together and Flory asks the canoewoman “How far, grandmamma?’ (163):

‘The distance a man can shout’, she said after reflection.
‘About half a mile,’ Flory translated.

Despite the apparent differences in the languages of the colonized and the colonizer, here, there is a very successful translation from a language that is based on sentiment to one that is based on rationality and I thought this was a very brief moment where differences were shown to be reconcilable and meaning translatable across culture and language.

Shooting an Elephant- a different kind of anti-colonial text

“Shooting an Elephant” is to me an anti-colonial text that is very different from the way Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is anti-imperialist or anti-colonialist. This stems from the fact that Orwell evaluates colonialism from the standpoint of the coloniser and how it affects him adversely, rather than from that of the colonised.

This is evident when it is the Europeans who are targeted by the natives rather than the other way round, as typically depicted in anti-colonial texts. In Chatterjee’s article, she discussed the idea of “colonial difference” and how differences between the cultures of the colonised and coloniser were what legitimised the power and authority of the coloniser. I find it interesting that Orwell depicts the reversal of this situation and shows how it is precisely this difference that causes the European coloniser to be “baited” and mocked at by the natives. This difference, which initially distinguished the Europeans as being superior has now become the very thing that marks their victimisation.

Orwell also evaluates colonialism from the standpoint of the coloniser by showing how colonialism takes freedom away not from the colonised but from the coloniser himself, as evident when the narrator felt compelled to shoot the elephant just to live up to the expectations of the natives. The fact that the narrator could even envision himself as “a puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces” further proves how he has fallen under the control of the colonised peoples, moving solely according to their will. Colonialism, here, deprives the coloniser and not the colonised of freedom. As the narrator says, “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”.

It is for these reasons that SAE strikes me as very different kind of anti-colonial text.

Misguided idealism in Conrad's texts

Reading Lord Jim made me think about one similarity that it has with Heart of Darkness—the theme of misguided idealism. This is apparent in the character of Jim who constantly envisions himself living out his heroic aspirations. In fact, he is even described as frequently having thoughts “full of valorous deeds” and that “he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements (25). At one point, Jim even sees “himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane” (13-14). However, this is shown to be highly ironic when he abandons the supposedly sinking Patna. Brought to the test, Jim falls short of his romantic and heroic projections of himself.

This misguided idealism can also be found in HOD in the characters of Marlow’s aunt and the Intended. For example, when Marlow tells his aunt of his decision to join the Belgian company, she sees him as “something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle” and this suggests how she genuinely believes in the religious moral rhetoric behind colonialism. There is a very ironic use of Christian-inflected terms here and Marlow’s aunt is a case in point of misguided idealism! Misguided idealism is also seen in the Intended who continues to believe that Kurtz is a benevolent humanitarian on a civilising mission in Africa, largely due to the fact that Marlow withholds Kurtz’s true depravity from her.

However, despite both texts having the theme of misguided idealism, in HOD, it is more a critique of the misguided idealism of colonialism. While some remain misguided about the true intentions of the colonial enterprise, others continue to perpetuate others’ misguided idealism. In LJ, it is more a critique of one man’s character and his overly-romanticised visions of himself.

(295 words)

Conrad, “a thoroughgoing racist”?

I agree to a certain extent with Achebe that Conrad does fall prey to perpetuating discriminatory representations of Africans. For example, they are constantly described as being black “shapes” (1968) or “figures” (1976), almost as if they were inanimate objects void of humanity, with no “inherited experience” (1985) nor language. The constant reference to them yelling, clapping and stamping their feet also builds on the stereotype of them being a “black and incomprehensible frenzy” (1985)!

However, I don’t think that this is a deliberate attempt by Conrad to induce “hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery” as Achebe charges him with, nor do I think that Conrad implies any denigration in his descriptions. I think Conrad’s critique of colonialism still overrides these racial stereotypes and some of these descriptions could in fact ironically expose the depravity of the colonisers. For example, Conrad constantly refers to the Africans as the “blackness”, or “the heart of darkness”, alluding not only to the physical colour of the Africans but also perhaps to them being relatively more primitive. While these can be read as stereotypes, they could ironically also expose the moral corruption of the colonisers when the colonisers themselves ultimately become associated with this very “heart of darkness”. For example, Kurtz is described as being “an impenetrable darkness” himself—a man “lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines” (2010). This physical blackness and darkness of the Africans thus becomes transplanted into a metaphor for the white man’s depravity and state of soul.

Thus, while Conrad does fall prey to racial stereotyping, I do not think that he means it pejoratively and is probably not the “thoroughgoing racist” that Achebe paints him out to be.

(294 words)

Forster and colonialism

Where does Forster stand in the issue of colonialism? This was one of the questions that was brought up during the seminar last week and after reading the novel, I think Forster maintains a very ambivalent stand in the issue of colonialism throughout his novel. He takes sides with neither the colonized nor colonizer but rather, maintains a more neutral stance in portraying the issue of colonialism. Hence neither side is vilified nor valorised totally. This is evident for example in Forster’s oscillation between painting the colonized Indians in a more unfavourable light and painting them in a more sympathetic light. For example in Chapter XIX, the readers witness how Godbole wishes to return to his birthplace to “start a high school there on sound English lines, that shall be as like Government College as possible” because “at present there is only vernacular education” (165). Here, what is implicit in Godbole’s decision is that he deems “vernacular education” as being inferior to the supposedly “sound” English education and to further compound matters, he even wants the school to be named after Mr Fielding or “King-Emperor George the Fifth” (166)! Not only does Godbole (unconsciously or not) view his country as being subordinate to the coloniser’s, he even wants to acculturate his own people to become part of the coloniser’s country rather than to his own! Here Forster paints the Indians in a more negative light, showing how they too are complicit in their own colonisation; Forster adopts a more nuanced view in showing which party is culpable in perpetuating colonialism.

However, despite this more negative depiction, Forster later swings to portraying the Indian society in a very redeeming light, and this is particularly evident in Chapter XXVII. Forster writes, “Civilization strays about like a ghost here, revisiting the ruins of empire, and is to be found not in great works of art or mighty deeds, but in the gestures well-bred Indians make when they sit or lie down. Fielding, who had dressed up in native costume, learned from his excessive awkwardness in it that all his motions were makeshifts, whereas when the Nawab Bahadur stretched out his hand for food, or Nureddin applauded a song, something beautiful had been accomplished which needed no development…When the whirring of action ceases, it becomes visible, and reveals a civilisation which the West can disturb but will never acquire…” (236). In this short paragraph, Forster effectively undermines the association of the coloniser with civilisation and instead shows how the colonised can in fact be more civilised than the coloniser with his “excessive awkwardness” (236). This nuanced portrayal of the colonised is also evident in Forster’s portrayal of the coloniser and all these are suggestive of Forster’s ambivalent stand in the issue of colonialism. He depicts the issue in all its complexities and does not risk reducing the issue of colonialism into a binary of neat but oversimplified compartments.

As opposed to Forster, I think Fanon is more absolute in how he depicts colonialism. While I agree that to a very large extent, the colonised have been victimised by the colonisers, I think Fanon overly victimises the colonised while vilifying the colonisers such that the binary between coloniser and colonised becomes too stark. When readers read of how the colonised have “to work themselves to exhaustion while a contemptuous and bloated Europe looks on” (55) or how Fanon calls for the European masses to “wake up, put on their thinking caps and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty” (62), it becomes all too apparent which side Fanon is on and which side he condemns. This lack of grey areas (something very intrinsic to reality) makes me question if Fanon has perhaps been too absolute in his portrayal of the issue of colonialism, while failing to acknowledge that not everything can be seen simply in black and white.

-sarah

Categories and labels

Reading “A Passage to India” made me think about categories and labels as being particularly problematic in the dialectic between the colonizer and the colonized. I thought the text presented categories and labels as being problematic firstly because they run the risk of pigeon-holing people into inaccurate and restrictive classifications based on the characteristics they are SUPPOSED to have, rather than the characteristics they do possess. This is evident for example in Chapter VIII, when Ronny recounts how “Aziz was exquisitely dressed, from tie-pin to spats, but he had forgotten his back collar-stud”. He then proclaims that this was “the Indian all over: inattention to detail; the fundamental slackness that reveals all the race” (75). The truth is Aziz had lent his collar-stud to Mr Fielding but Ronny conveniently attributes Aziz’s lack of a collar-pin to his “slackness” that was supposed to be characteristic of his race. Here, Ronny has wrongly judged Aziz just because of his belonging to a certain race category.

Colonizers were not the only ones guilty of this pigeon-holing. The colonized too, pigeon-holed their colonizers based on race too! This is evident already in Chapter II, where Aziz, Mahmoud Ali and Hamidullah broadly classified all Englishwomen as being “exactly alike” (9), and that granted the exceptions, “all Englishwomen are haughty and venal” (11). Again, the locals here have branded their colonial masters with certain characteristics based very loosely on their race and nationality and it is this labelling and categorising by both parties that create further misunderstandings between the colonizer and colonized and which widen the chasm between them. These categories only work to unite each nation while dividing both nations, and thus categories become particularly problematic in this colonizer-colonized dialectic.

Categories and labels are problematic also because they do not accommodate heterogeneity and difference between peoples. One example of this would be Mr Harris, who was Eurasian. Due to his mixed heritage, “when English and Indians were both present he grew self-conscious, because he did not know to whom he belonged. For a little he was vexed by opposite currents in his blood, then they blended, and he belonged to no one but himself” (84). Not being clearly European, or clearly Indian, Harris resists being classified and this places him in a state of limbo, belonging to neither race/nationality group. However, despite being in this state of limbo, I think that this is perhaps a more ideal space to exist in as it gives potential for Mr Harris to be seen as an individual, out of any narrow categories, as an individual who “belonged to no one but himself”. While not belonging to any group, Harris does not run the risk of being “mislabelled”.

While I recognise that these categories could have been deliberately drawn up by the colonial masters to differentiate themselves from the colonized, I think that these categories ultimately backfire because not only are the colonized and “in-betweens” subjected to being mislabelled or left behind, so too are the colonizers themselves. As Adela says on becoming labelled as an “Anglo-Indian” once she marries: “it’s inevitable. I can’t avoid the label. What I do hope to avoid is the mentality… Some women are so-well, ungenerous and snobby about Indians, and I should feel too ashamed for words if I turned like them” (135).

To end off, I thought this quote by Aziz quite apt—“Nothing embraces the whole of India, nothing, nothing…” (135). Perhaps then, a people should be united by diversity and multiplicity rather than a universal label.