One of the things that caught my attention while reading the text was the multitude of voices- Hindus, Moslems, British women, British men, Government officials, Colonial teachers and the list goes on. You’d think that with a multiplicity of voices (and hence perspectives), one would get a real sense of “India”. Levine states that “India was not a single country or entity… There was no single Indian language or religion”. (61) One can argue then, to gain a grasp of India, one had to look at it from all sides.
The text denies me the satisfaction of understanding "India", partly because of Forster’s underlying authorial voice, which dictates how the story pans out. Even as one reads the satirical representation of the British in India, through the eyes of the locals (who incidentally don’t agree on whether they can truly be friends with the British), one cannot refute the fact that Forster writes the passages for us. It is one author’s voice that pervades the text, writing the words that Dr Aziz or Fielding utters on these pages.
An act of ventriloquism, if you will.
Which begs the question- can a text ever be written to truly represent a people? On whose authority do we rely on to get a representation of a people? As shown in the text, even the locals cannot be relied upon to give us a clue into the people- Ralph Moore “was not so much a visitor as a guide” as compared to Dr Aziz.
The text denies me the satisfaction of understanding "India", partly because of Forster’s underlying authorial voice, which dictates how the story pans out. Even as one reads the satirical representation of the British in India, through the eyes of the locals (who incidentally don’t agree on whether they can truly be friends with the British), one cannot refute the fact that Forster writes the passages for us. It is one author’s voice that pervades the text, writing the words that Dr Aziz or Fielding utters on these pages.
An act of ventriloquism, if you will.
Which begs the question- can a text ever be written to truly represent a people? On whose authority do we rely on to get a representation of a people? As shown in the text, even the locals cannot be relied upon to give us a clue into the people- Ralph Moore “was not so much a visitor as a guide” as compared to Dr Aziz.
One attempt at mediating this issue is through a narrator or author who does not purport to fully understand each character in his text. It is precisely the characters eluding the reader’s grasp that stops the text from becoming a ventriloquist performance for readers. Ironically, it is this elusive nature that allows the readers a foothold on gaining an understanding of India.
Is there a resolution to the issues of representation? No, not yet.
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Promising... would have liked to have heard more about the "act of ventroliquism"!
I have been thinking about this "ventroliquism" and silence. Using postcolonial feminist theory, the suppressed/marginalised group has to "break the silence" to gain power. However, this is impossible if the suppressed/marginalised group is already suppressed/marginalised! It is pretty much a catch-22 situation.
The second best option is that an education sympathiser from the dominant group speaks for the suppressed/marginalised which is what Fielding does. But not only does he speak for them, I think he mediates the Indian perspective for a Western audience, makes it less foreign and tries to get the reader to share his emphaties since he straddles and understands both cultures.
Ultimately, it would be best if the suppressed/marginalised can speak for themselves, but if they are educated or gain money/status/power and hence the agency to speak, technically they are no longer suppressed/marginalised. So the answer is to Spivak's question is that the subaltern can, strictly speaking, never speak. How pessimistic!
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