My random thoughts...

While Auerbach acknowledges that “it is still a long way to a common life of mankind on earth”, Auerbach states that we are moving towards “an economic and cultural leveling process”. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems to me that Auerbach is visioning a unified weltanschauung through “unprejudiced, precise, interior and exterior representation of the random moment in the lives of different people.” I find this an interesting thought yet at the same time, problematic. If we refer to Levine’s ‘Ruling An Empire’, converts were given Christian names and had to give up their identities and local customs in order to assimilate into the colonizer’s culture and language was an integral tool used by missionaries to ‘educate’ and promote western values. If we consider that the language of a people reflects the weltanschauung of that people in the form of their linguistic structures and nuances, the fact that we are reading these texts in the English language which is not the native language of most colonized countries, poses a problem. We all perceive things differently, even in the everyday trivialities (eg. the multifarious views of Mrs Ramsay through the eyes of different people), how much more so in different cultures with vastly different languages? Therefore, is “cultural leveling” really possible? Is Auerbach’s visioning of “unification and simplification” perhaps too simplistic and optimistic?

From what I gather in Gikandi’s article, the ethnic Other serves as a “source of new energies” and understanding the Other goes as far as it benefits Western civilization. There never was the intention of the West assimilating with the ‘savage’. Levine’s article reminds us of the reality of violence associated with imperialism especially helpful while reading Heart Of Darkness. However, what is the connection between Modernism and Empire? Are we brushing aside the violence that came with the African artifacts when the art is taken without the remembrance and understanding of its culture? The representation of reality it seems to me, is still rather one-sided where the Other is selectively brought to the fore when it is convenient in the case of Picasso’s African influences without interest in the people.

Sorry this is really sketchy as they are just random thought processes.