looking at the brown stocking

Hello :)

I only have like two things to say about the essay by Auerbach: its idea of ‘multiple consciousness’ and its conclusion.

I guess Auerbach, in raising the question of ‘multiple consciousness’ (549) and how ‘(t)he tremendous tempo of the changes proved the more confusing because they could not be surveyed as a whole’ (549), indirectly provokes the reader to establish a connection between the Empire and impressionism in Woolf’s or general modernist writing. To me when I read this part of the essay I think of how the narrator’s omniscient knowledge before modernism is symbolic of the monarch/central governor figure which used to represent absolute authority, and as colonialism takes place, this absolute authority figure is confronted with different cultures and other authority figures in the colonies belonging to both Great Britain and other colonial powers. Take the example of Africa, the continent gets ‘crowded’ when various European powers become neighbours (think the continent being fully occupied on the map, as ‘marked with all the colours of a rainbow’, to quote Marlow in Heart of Darkness). This forces change in the form of governance in colonies because the colonial powers are now aware of and thus influenced by each other. Due to this ‘crowdedness’, one is forced to recognise and acknowledge his own view as subjective. This also relates to the structuralist idea of only seeing the world in fragments and not in entirety. This is when the empire ties in nicely with modernism—the recognition of an authentic response to a much-changed world is subjective. To the Lighthouse, according to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (:P), is Woolf’s attempt to examine the human experience of time, the indefinability of character, and external circumstances as they impinge on consciousness. The idea of consciousness being influenced by the experience and thus relative to time and space is to me intriguing because this unique experience in a particular point in time also lapses into another experience. It gives me the idea of experience as a spiral event motivated by random occurrences and association.

What the conclusion presents, as I see it, is a utopian vision of neo-colonialism which makes integration of differences, negotiation of exoticism and localising the exotic possible. This utopian idea of post-colonial unification alludes to a middle way in which everyone can identify because it is founded and sustained by the random occurrences in life. Cultural differences are made to seem insignificant in this middle way because it is the universality of humanity that sponsors this neo-colonialism. However, I find this vision limiting because the idea of ‘there are no longer even exotic peoples’ suggests unification of cultures, which then suggests homogeneous experience… which seems problematic because of, to put it simplistically, the asymmetrical economic development of the world and how the Third World is unlikely to catch up with the First world as demonstrated by the dependency theory.

Okay since this is a blog/forum, I should take it as an ideal environment for learning…and so it’s alright if I don’t make sense right? Heh, feel free to respond :)