Last Post!!! :)))

I just have to say this— doesn’t the bit in Fanon’s article about Charles Andre-Julien introducing Aime Cesaire as “a Negro poet with a university degree” and “a great black poet” remind you of Obama?! “The first black president…” and such? His race foregrounded his presidential post/campaign only because he belongs to a group that was once (or still?) discriminated for its race/skin color in America.

Anyway, going back to Fanon’s article, I liked how Fanon wanted to “help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment”, to not be a “slave of their archetypes”. I think this idea is to some extent, I hope I’m not stretching it here, being developed in Portrait, though the ‘their’ is not limited to the complexes borne out of colonialism or only referring to colonizers’ expectations of the colonized individual. Fanon showed that language means power, that it means adopting a culture and Portrait shows that language also means discourse, a system of beliefs. After all, the novel is about what everyone, belonging to different systems, expects from Stephen right? So can we say that the nationalist discourse (Parnell,etc) in specific, since this is actually directly borne out of colonialism, also sets up expectations (on the nationalist’s behalf) of Stephen and actually a colonizer would anticipate that the colonized Catholic Irish man would naturally support Parnell. Or am I reading Fanon all wrong? Eeps.

Anyhow, I think it is significant that in the end, Stephen chooses to reject all the (conflicting) discourses he is exposed to; he instead fashions an identity for himself that lies outside and beyond the reach of these systems. Stephen hears a sermon and tries to speak/act the religious discourse/way. He fails because it goes against his natural tendency to appreciate beauty. The epiphany is then an understanding about his own self, about the kind of language he is meant to use which involves describing his experience of seeing and living. The language of an artist’s.

Modernism and Empire and, Identity

This is the first time I’m reading anything by Joyce and well, it was an experience. Anyway, I felt that it was a novel about influences and I really saw modernism and empire come together in this novel because Stephen is trying to find/shape his personal identity as a person (I always thought modernism has much to do issues of identity because of its style of using stream of consciousness, multiple viewpoints). I thought it was adorable but also meaningful and astute when Joyce wrote from a child’s perspective and Stephen sees himself as belonging to “Ireland…Europe…The world…The universe”. The discipline of geography itself appears redundant because countries only stay put on the map. In reality, people move, migrate, cross boundaries, invade territories. In this process of moving then, identities lose their clear-cut definition. A white man in England would be just that; in India however, he would have a different identity, perhaps as a pukka sahib. So what escapes the colonized child’s attention is that Ireland does not just belong to Europe; it belongs to the Empire. His own identity is as such, because of the Empire, is fragmented even before he starts to shape it.

When reading the Christmas dinner bit in Portrait, the part about how “the British imperial rule in nineteenth-century Ireland generated a political culture where families might be divided through their Irish or imperial allegiance” from Jackson’s article was brought to mind for me. In this scene, it is not about ‘Us. v. Them’ or even Protestant v. Catholic. Joyce shows another type of division in which “Irish allegiance” gets problematized. It appears at one level to be a debate about whether religion should enter politics or whether the latter should remain secular. But I felt (since Stephen is sitting at the adult table for Christmas for the first time and watching this scene unfold) that this debate would only further complicate the construction of self-identity for the protagonist. Mr. Casey, Mr. Dedalus and Dante are all Catholics and they are all for the liberation of Ireland (since Dante whacked a man who had “taken his hat off when the band played God save the Queen” with her umbrella) but yet, what a heated argument! Who is the ideal patriot? Who is the ideal Catholic? Empire thus enters to prevent someone from ever resolving such issues of identity and like Jackson says, an individual or family ends up housing within itself contradictions or ambiguities.

May's tight spot

Last week’s presentation group mentioned how the tone in which Ma Hla May’s end was narrated seemed to suggest that she deserved her end. I agreed with them then and after reading Stoler, I think this point can be expanded. Stoler mentioned how the courts/societies often concurred that the native woman would inevitably go back to her prostitute ways after separating from the White man and this evoked May for me. Though May was not a prostitute before, having been ousted from the relationship with Flory, she ends up in a brothel.

Rather than ponder whether Orwell conformed to the same ideas as the Indies & Indochina officials, I just want to flesh out the fact that the native women, not just the White man, is put in a tight spot by such mixed unions because everything of hers is put on the line. I really don’t like the character May (and I’m not a feminist) but she deserves sympathy. She can’t go back to her village without being made to remember her “ex” and her concubine life. She can’t demand anything from Flory except money. It is as if May relinquished her native identity by union with Flory and she can’t take it back nor she can’t claim Whiteness by association. Mixed bloods can at least straddle both identities— May can’t even do that. So the brothel where women are not people or selves with identity but are bodies, is where May can reside with her lack of identity.

(250 words)

Fielding and Flory

I’m 9 chapters into Burmese Days(oops?) and I couldn’t help noticing how this novel evokes (Levine, Fanon and Chatterjee naturally but, particularly) Forster’s novel. Discussion about imperialism/colonialism undeniably entails looking at the dialogue between the white man and the native and the juxtaposition of these groups can be found in both these novels. But I found the dialogue and generally, relationships in BD to be more complex than they were in PI. I say so largely because I drew parallels between Aziz & Fielding and, Veraswami & Flory. In retrospect, A & F’s relationship seems so…cliché. White man inherently good, will withstand whole community for his principles, native collapses under white prejudice, native now got ‘once bitten, twice shy’ syndrome so relationship with white man affected. The native still comes out looking like the weak link in the relationship, as the one who couldn’t understand the white man’s generosity.

That’s what I found refreshing about Orwell’s novel and Flory. Flory is anti- imperialist, his best friend is a native and he doesn’t like the fools at the Club. But he is restricted by his own inaction, by his utter refusal to take any sides/responsibility or to voice his genuine opinion. He is his own enemy in a sense. And with Fielding, a reader can almost predict that Fielding is going to vouch for Aziz but at this point, considering the conversation between Flory and Veraswami in chap 3 and Flory’s honest explanation that he wants to avoid “rows”, I can’t predict what he is going to do. Forster seems to still make use of the traditional white hero figure to represent the so-called unconventional Anglo-Indian Fielding while Forster complicates that figure by depicting inner struggle and showing what it really means to be that unconventional.

(295 words)

Ripon and The Shooter are homies

I got this sense from Chatterjee that the Whites themselves were divided into opposing camps and that the colonial regime was a struggle for them too. I don’t just mean that on the level of liberal vs. conservative but on a greater level, between doing something which was right for everyone and doing something which was right for a select few and in line, for oneself. Between believing that theory and practice ought to reflect each other and “sensibly” believing that theory is just easy talk and practice is a whole other matter. The Ilbert Bill Affair was damning evidence, for me at least, that some Whites earnestly wanted to help develop India and its people. Ripon was particularly interesting because as a liberal, he introduced the bill but as a politician, he took it back.

And Ripon was who I thought of as I read Orwell and followed the thoughts/feelings of the protagonist. The protagonist says “Theoretically-and secretly, of course- I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British” but practically, he cannot be so. The incident of shooting the elephant he says, better highlighted to him “the real motives for which despotic governments act” which is basically, the need to maintain that position of authority/of being stronger and wiser than the native. That is why Ripon and the protagonist struck me as being stuck in the same situation of having to do what was necessary over what felt right to oneself. Ripon may have genuinely wanted to help correct the “anomaly” but to rectify that “error in tactics”, he had to retreat and allow the “European British subjects” to maintain their position of privilege. The protagonist wanted to spare the elephant but to maintain his position of authority, he had to shoot the elephant.

What were you trying to do Conrad?

We keep coming to this discussion of whether the native is given a voice or not. If he’s given one, we criticize it as the author attempting to ventriloquize or speak for the native. If the native isn’t given a voice, then we turn around and say the native is a subaltern. So what does the native have to say so that he doesn’t appear ventriloquized? In line with this is the description of the East or basically, foreign lands. If the author describes it positively, he runs the risk of exoticization. If he describes it as being in a bad state, then we say he’s being all white and pompous. How much is the author of literature in that era trapped? This is all an outcome of last week and us trying to verify whether Conrad is racist or not. I feel like I’m reading for clues to either exonerate him or incriminate him.

Which is what I was doing when I was reading the bit about the pilgrims in chapter 2- are the Muslims being typically portrayed as dogmatic followers of the faith? Conrad keeps reiterating how they all have abandoned everything just for the sake of going Mecca. And why are they “the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief” (he later repeats similarly “exacting faith”)? Conrad’s personal view that Islam was demanding in its requirements? The German skipper likens them to “cattle” and like cattle they are abandoned on Patna, nothing to be heard from them except that one “water” request.

OR is Conrad suggesting that their faith saved them? Even the “screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers…seemed to wink at her (Patna)…as if in derision of errand of faith”. This seems speculative but like I said, am trying to exonerate Conrad as much as incriminate him.

(299 words)

Let it remain and be a stain...

Canonization- who decides what’s great literature? What makes great literature? In a reading done for another class, the author of that article said that great literature has to have a purpose, basically arguing against Art for Art’s sake. According to him then, ought HoD be canonized? What purpose did it serve other than for the colonized to give themselves pats on the back for being white and civilized and to perpetuate the African stereotype? See, as I read Achebe, I found myself agreeing with him, that HoD ought to be removed from the Western canon (since we are reading it even now as Achebe pointed out).

But then I thought, no it shouldn’t be. Because we aren’t sharing Conrad’s sentiments as the people of his times did or people 50 years later still did when Achebe wrote his article. We see the blatant racism, we see the Manichean aesthetics in place. Let me put it this way- the first ever time I heard of HoD was in JC when my White Lit teacher condemned the book for its blatant racism. So it would have been tragic if Conrad’s novel had been removed from the Western canon because then Achebe wouldn’t have seen/known the day a white man would slam the book. Achebe got what he wished for only because the book has remained in the canon. It being canonized has allowed it to proliferate outside the Western culture and world but while its fame reaches, its sentiments don’t. And now, even Whites are disgusted by the book.

It being canonized is a good thing- let it remain like a stain upon the Western literary history. If HoD once turned people against Africa, let the new readings turn people today against HoD and those who condoned and celebrated such a mentality.

(300 words)

PS: Prof Koh, you didn't "mark" my previous post. Just a reminder (",)

Fanon and Forster- who's being more wretched?

Before I start, I just want to say that it’s quite amusing how as the weeks pass by, blog posts are beginning to look more and more like mini-research papers. (“,)

Anyhow, let’s break down the person who is currently the wretched of my life, Frantz Fanon. I first encountered Fanon in my South Asian lit class last semester, albeit a shorter version, and I must say what struck me most was the difficulty I had in mapping Fanon onto Forster. Because Fanon mapped perfectly onto many of my texts in that module, including more recent works like Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Salman Rushdie’s Fury. I remembering being taken aback by his writing style because the brother was so fierce but I also remember being persuaded by him, as in, I believed that violence was the way to go if the colonized wanted freedom (no offense to Mr.Gandhi). But somehow, I felt like his binaries could not be imposed onto Forster’s novel all that readily thanks to characters like Mrs Moore and Fielding. Furthermore, I can’t completely swallow the idea of doing violence onto colonist characters in the novel, including people like Mrs. Turton and even Major Callendar who is rumoured to have tortured a native in the novel.

Is it because its fiction and Mrs Turton is so obviously caricatured while what Fanon talked about were real people, like that creep Lacoste, stepping over others? Or is it because Fanon wrote by aligning himself with the oppressed while Forster wrote standing outside both camps and as a neutral party? Maybe the neutrality comes to him easy precisely because he himself had to never endure such oppression. Because what we get in Passage is not violent colonization, or violent decolonization for that matter. The riots are mentioned in passing- in short, violence is relegated to the background in Passage. Is Forster imposing his own kind of violence by not fully elaborating the struggles the colonized went through?

In Passage, we get to see relationships, we get to see interaction, motives and presumptions about each community formed by the other. In this sense, I could map Fanon onto Forster but even then I feel like the former falls short. Fanon talks about how the colonist fabricates the colonized subject. But I believe that fabrication or stereotyping, can be expected of anybody. All of us do it, we judge a person on looks, on the kind of community he hails from, his friends, his grades, etc. And that is what Forster shows, how both sides fabricate each other.

Levine, Forster and Ashis Nandy

Having done one reading by Levine last week and concurrently reading “A Passage to India” had an effect on how I read the Levine reading this week, for many things struck me at different points in the reading. For one, I felt like there was a noticeable change in Levine’s tone in this reading. In class last week, we were debating whether Levine was too pronounced in her disdain for the Brits. I did notice that disdain and it didn’t bother me then but, the lack of it in this reading, that overt disdain was surprising for me. However, the essay was nonetheless still enlightening for me because I have always read about how the British treated their colonial subjects generally but not what specifically India meant to them, for them. Without explicitly stating it so, Levine pointed out for me how the Brits’ decisions regarding India were manipulative, strategic, unscrupulous and hypocritical. Perhaps what bothered the person who blogged about Levine’s overt disdain last week, was how even when Levine mentioned the good plans that the Brits carried out, she quickly undercut it by mentioning the flaws within those plans—not giving them credit where they deserve it? The thought alone no more counts?

Whatever her intent was in always swiftly undercutting the Brits’ “good plans”, the article on the whole made one very important point or posed this one question for me--- did the Brits know their Indians? This was what connected Levine’s article for me to Forster’s novel. The reforms that the Brits undertook, though not completely useless or failures, demonstrate that the Brits were selective about who made up their India when it came to culture- the Brahmins. Looking out for “good” culture, the Brahmins who naturally practiced a different lifestyle from other Indians who had those “typically Indian behaviours or ideas”, would indeed appeal to the Brits’ elitist senses. So they actually did know their Indians, just that it was a particular class. Just like Adela who “in her ignorance, she regarded him(Aziz) as ‘India’, and never surmised that his outlook was limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India”. Just like Ronny who adopted what the Callendars and Turtons preached about the Indians because they “had been not one year in the country but twenty and whose instincts were superhuman”.

This is where I am compelled to agree that Ashis Nandy was spot-on when she(he?) wrote those wise words that “All representations of India are ultimately autobiographical”. Levine highlighted how the wives of the Brits by coming to India resulted in certain areas of India “resembling more and more the environment left behind in Britain”, a.k.a home. Mr Fielding in a similar train of thought muses how the increasing influx of their women, “made life on the home pattern yearly more possible”. This importing of their culture while refusing the Indians’ own, this keen desire to recreate a mini-Britain on Indian soil, this wanting to feel at home yet averting away from all that is Indian and remaining in their Clubs amongst their tennis and tea would indeed result in a certain representation of India that exudes dissatisfaction- because that will be their experience. Another person, another set of expectations, another type of experience. I think representation of anything becomes autobiographical. Yupyup.

- Shiva

In celebration of the random, my random ramblings...

The Auerbach reading stands out for me even now, after doing the three readings because, one, the way in which Auerbach went about presenting his case was compelling and two, he made so many salient points just by examining that one short extract by Virginia Woolf. One such point was that the representation of reality in modern texts, with its shifting consciousness, non-linear narrative, celebration of the random moments were “the first forewarnings of the approaching unification and simplification” It would be a nice way to counter the hopelessness that pervades the extract, if not generally most modern texts, wouldn’t it? What I got most vividly through Levine’s and Gikandi’s articles was the strong dichotomies that were put in place during imperialist periods- colonizer vs. colonized, self vs. other, white vs. black. Levine pointed out how imperialism was reflected in politics, economics and basically every sphere of life, including literature. So when Auerbach traced throughout the centuries the stylistic shift that resulted in shifting and multiple consciousness, though the device is hardly considered new now, and suggested that it means that “the strata of societies and their different ways of life have become inextricably mingled” such that “there are no longer exotic people”, I think Auerbach without completely focusing on imperialism, pointed out how Modernism and Empire come hand in hand. Levine mentioned how up until the late 19^th century, novels still reflected the Anglo-Saxon mind, their beliefs and concerns so the random moments, the centrality given to the banal and the mundane in Woolf’s extract/ modern texts was the first lesson for me as how to great the shift was.

Similarly, the one point that stood out for me in Levine’s article which was basically how entangled and yet, distanced the colonizers and the colonized were with each other. Levine reminded us how no matter what they did, the Whites always ended up giving themselves a pat on the back. They either prided themselves of being the only capable of saving the non-White, non-Briton ‘savages’, their White Man’s Burden in short, or they congratulated themselves on being brave enough to venture into these uncivilized parts of the world. Yet, they fretted about living in close proximity with their colonized subjects, as if by proximity, they could catch their ‘savageness’, their ‘otherness’. In fact, Levine mentioned how “the distance between colonist and colonials was both spatial and social in most cases”. This actually, while reading, brought me back to Auerbach’s point that modern texts play with space and time and aim to step beyond that one single immediate reality and I was wondering whether this was the reason why the modern movement felt the need to move beyond that one single reality---was it their way of overcoming boundaries? So that it was no longer the reality as Whites or colonizers had known it or had created all that while? I don’t know, I might be stretching it at this point but just a thought.

One last insert, a personal pondering, before I end. Levine mentioned how missionaries gave new Christian names to their colonized converts and I thought how the identity of the colonized must have been very distorted because of imperialism. So they are taught Christian and Western values but yet, they were never fully assimilated. In Wilkie Collin's Moonstone, the Indian character in the novel, in one scene, despite possessing the Western attire and mannerisms and speaking perfect English, only aroused suspicion and fear in the other character's, Mr Bruff's, mind. In postcolonial lit, one thing I recall was how the colonized individual who had appropriated Western manners was received by his own kinsmen- with utter distaste. So it will be interesting to see how modern texts deal with this sense of fragmented sense of self.

- Shiva