Finally, a text from the colonized

It is interesting how we are now reading a text where the colonized are Whites, the colony is Britain’s first and the author is the colonized. With the other texts, we have been debating about the White man as colonizer from reading what the author (who incidentally is writing from a position of the colonizer that gets to travel and visit other colonies) and we have recognized certain problems with these readings. While certain parts of the other texts could be argued to be shedding light on the plight of the colonized, the texts are also concerned with protecting their own standing as one that still privileges the colonizer. Furthermore, the texts are also more interested in highlighting the conflicts the White man, as part of the colonizing mission, caught in this cycle of imperialism faces than presenting detailed images of the hardships the colonized undergo. Hence, Portrait as a text written from the perspective of the colonized provides an interesting argument against the other texts that we have been reading thus far.

I have to admit, I don’t like Stephen. He’s a little too wishy-washy for me. However, it is quite refreshing to see how he negotiates the conflicts he feels towards the British Empire, his religion, himself and to Ireland. As a character who might be representing James Joyce himself, Stephen’s decision that he has to be an artist in order to deal with these conflicts is fascinating: “I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” (276). What possibilities do art hold as a tool for finding oneself as an individual, and as establishing oneself as part of a community? How does art figure into nationalism and the idea of a nation?

Personally, I think art, in particular the written form, allows the artist to use language to retaliate, to create a space onto which they are able to project their own vision of Ireland. Art is a potential tool for revolution, and hence it is important to both the colonizers and the colonized. While one wants to use it to protect his vested interests, the other uses it to band their own people together in the realization of a nation.