Framed: the problem with "discursive frameworks"

Aptly enough, the Chatterjee article enacts what it advocates: switching perspectives on colonialism (with a confidence in its agency to do so that we don’t see in Achebe and Fanon) in order to gain new insights into how our perceived reality is dictated by subjective cognitive frameworks.

One such schema is ideology. Chatterjee demonstrates how the meaning of ‘-isms’ – he mainly mentions three: imperialism, capitalism, modernity – can morph according to who defines them. Chatterjee has an invested interest in how these three relate to each other because he writes from the framework of Indian nationalism himself: for example, defining imperialism in terms of capitalism rather than civilizing/power terms calls to mind the Leninist definition of imperialism as “the highest stage of capitalism”. The subsequent implication that history progresses in stages (as Marxists argue) strengthens the claim that colonialism is but one stage in India’s history. Frameworks, therefore, shape thought and reality. In Shooting an Elephant, colonial rule manifests itself in frameworks of colonial difference: reference is made to a “Dravidian coolie”, which alludes to (outdated) 19th-century anthropology’s method of classifying race by language families; the narrator’s actions are made “legally…right” by British-imposed law.

However, Chatterjee works on the assumption that one has the power to change one’s framework. Shooting problematises this: cognitive frameworks can be deeply ingrained and might clash. The narrator (like Orwell himself) feels conflicted because he tries to espouse a liberal, anti-imperialist stance but his identity schema as a British officer simultaneously implicates certain views of the colonial subject. There is also the question of how liberating switching frameworks can really be – nationalism and Chatterjee’s conception of indigenous history all seem to fit Western epistemological moulds.

And while Chatterjee and Orwell work in counterpoint showing how frameworks can help shape/ossify reality, there still seems to be something lacking – maybe because language itself is a framework of sorts. Orwell said that “good prose is like a windowpane”, but ultimately a barrier of glass remains, separating window-frame from messy reality.