Language: The Colonized and the Colonizer

It is ironic that Fanon uses the language of the colonizer (French in his case) to present the case about language as an instrument of imperial ideological domination.  Like Joyce, and like many post-colonial intellectuals and writers from Acebe to Edward Said, he faces the paradox of needing to present the state, the case of his people and culture in a language that does not belong to him.  In Joyce's case, he fights that paradox by, among other things, calling into question the Englishman's own command of language.  The word 'tundish' comes to mind; in Portrait the professor thinks that it is an Irish word, when in truth it is as English a word as words can be (Heaney in his notes mentions that 'tundish' is in fact a mid-Elizabethian word).  The slave knows the master's language better than the master.  Ellis from Burmese Days would not have stood for this; "We shall have to sack [the native butler] if he gets to talk English too well," he says.

And yet English can itself be termed a 'colonized' language.  It has roots in both Germanic languages and Latin, with a liberal helping from latter-day French and German, not to mention Hindi, Mandarain, Chinese, Malay, and a whole host of other languages.  English is probably unique in this among imperial languages.  Is it truely 'colonized', or does the very act of borrowing transforms the word into another instrument of ideological domination?  'Anime' in its native Japanese context refers to any animated work, including 3D modelling; in English it has come to mean cell-shaded animation from Japan or done in 'the Japanese style'.  Is this an ideological stereotyping, or is this a simple case of borrowing from another culture?  Is the act of 'borrowing' in language ever free of power implications?  These are questions that I have yet to come up with answers for.

Being Always Subject to "Imperial Power"

In the section where she talks about 'Racist but Moral Women, Innocent but Immoral Men', Stoler notes that even if

'European women were positioned as the bearers of a redefined colonial morality[,] to suggest that they fashioned this racism out of whole cloth is to miss the political chronology in which new intensities of racist practice arose... ...Significantly, what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with a realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic' (Stoler 57).

This particularly struck me as it summed up nicely the feeling of futility one may feel in being part of the colonial enterprise. Recall the policeman in "Shooting an Elephant", and his painful awareness of his status as a representative of white prestige and thus the need to 'avoid looking a fool' (Orwell, "Shooting"). Recall also, Flory in "Burmese Days", where it is initially 'unthinkable' (Orwell, "Burmese Days") that he should stick up for Dr. Veeraswami, and ends up signing the document that Ellis writes. Both characters admit to the reality that 'when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys' (Orwell, "Shooting").

While Stoler's quote makes reference to women, it is clear that all entities under the colonial regime (women, men, animals; you name it) must follow their prescribed place in society, even if this place is irrational, immoral, or redundant. This is not to say that the status quo is static-on the contrary, it is ever-changing (Stoler gives the example of how concubinage is viewed differently over time). However, most noteworthy is the fact that this change only occurs when it is in keeping with the larger, current goals of the empire. Until then, one may agitate for change to little or no effect- such is 'imperial power' (Stoler's title).

(286 words excluding block quote)

a friend by any other name is a foe

My post will be about the "fraudulent recognition" of Flory as a friend. First off, other than the good doctor it's pretty much safe to say that Flory doesn't have any other friends (the "louts" at the Club he's so fond of denigrating won't be hard-pressed to call him one either, him and his "Bolshie" ideas). Strangely enough though the term "friend" is peppered liberally throughout the narrative, there are very few instances of Flory calling Veraswami that very name; he calls him "doctor" instead. This effectively puts distance between an Englishman and a Burmese and lends ballast to the disquieting sentiment that it is "a disagreeable thing when one's close friend is not one's social equal". This close friendship is one-sided; Flory is an exploiter in the same vein as the bigoted Ellis is but worse since he professes to be the doctor's friend and claims that that friendship "was not worth" the ugly rows that would break out were he to support the doctor's election to the club in the next breath. He only throws in his cloth together with Veraswami when he himself is in a position of power later on and therefore, untouchable. Veraswami's fanatic loyalty to the English is translated into his friendship with Flory, one that isn't reciprocated. Flory's suicide damns Veraswami to "pagodas, pariahs, pigs, priests and prostitutes" and yet still Veraswami makes the necessary arrangements in the wake of his messy death, in both his official capacity as doctor and personal as friend, lying to preserve Flory's legacy, a legacy nobody else cares for anyway. He's as much removed from shok de as you can get.
The asymmetric essences embodied by the colonizer and colonized here are that of Flory's renunciation of his only ally and Veraswami's dogged decency.

Flory and the Angel in the House...

I was especially interested in Stoler's depiction of the colonies as "laboratories of modernity," with those within it "subjects" that "reworked" the coloniser's "experiments" and the "possibility that their choices expressed a domestic subversion, a rejection of the terms of the civilising mission." (551) In conjunction with this, I was thinking about the development of modernism in postwar Britain, and the trend of sexual experimentation, with unorthodox relationships such as homosexuality and extramarital affairs being encouraged (or at least, so we seem encouraged to think through biographies of various modernist writers), and such experimentation being a part of the reaction modernism had against the Victorian values of family life.

As far as reaction towards Victorian values goes, Flory could be in ways construed as a modernist (or modern) hero, turning against the traditional English ranks to socialise with the natives, and abandoning the façade of Victorian morality to admit to its lie - "the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them." (33) When Passage's Collector sadly notes "after all, it's our women who make everything more difficult out here," it might well apply to poor old Flory, for it is Elizabeth's arrival that erects in him the Victorian vision of "the angel in the house" and its family trappings - a vision that, as discussed above, was fading even in England, as Elizabeth attests to: "'You should have a piano,' he said despairingly. 'I don't play the piano.'" With a Victorian idealisation of women as his downfall, Flory goes from modernist hero to Victorian loser, a failed subject in that "laboratory of modernity." In contrast, Stoler's "cultura[l] hybrids" would instead be true modernist heroes, their "lifestyles" (551) perhaps closer to the "domestic subversion" that the very modernists in Britain were grasping towards.

got hypermasculine meh?

According to Stoler, the “demasculinization of colonised men and the hypermasculinity of European males are understood as key elements in the assertion of white supremacy”. In Burmese Days, Orwell contrasts this masculine ideal against the realities of Flory and Co. as a means of challenging both the racial and gendered implications of this ideal.

While this hypermasculine ideal is very much embodied by the polo-playing, feral, virile, Verrall, the same cannot be said for Flory and Co., who spend their available time indulging in gin and tonics rather than games of tennis. Furthermore, the white colonisers are shown to be inadequate in comparison with the local males. There is, for instance, the token symbol of physical strength and purity:

“The Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty years old, half naked, leaf brown, with a body as perfect as that of a young man” (160)

Masculinity is expressed most clearly in their sexual exploits (I’m thinking of that skanky scene involving Mr Lankersteen and THREE Burmese girls, and similar) which are numerous and commonplace, and which involve the domination of local women such as Ma Hla May. However, doubly asymmetrical power relationships between colonizer/colonized and male/female makes it difficult for me to read such sexual relations as an embodiment of white masculine power – You don’t need to be particularly power to dominate over an already subjugated and subservient class of people. Furthermore, the presence of Elizabeth, with her love physical sport such as shooting and horse-riding, serves further to undermine the gendered stereotypes.

The issue of virility also arises: Concubinage revolves around sexual, but sterile (infertile?) unions and Flory for instance is described as being in a state of perpetual bachelorhood.

“Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still whereas Ko S’la had married, begotten five children, married again and become one of the obscure matyrs of bigamy” (51)

The idea of fecundity (or lack thereof) is thus another, more subtle way in which the ideal of white masculinity is critiqued and found to be wanting.

'Burmese Days' and 'Passage to India'; A Caricature

As people have already pointed out, there are many similarities between Burmese Days and A Passage to India.  The former book was published a decade after the latter, so it is not inconceivable that Orwell read PtI and was influenced by it.  In both cases, a picture of the Anglo-Indians is being painted, and there is a friendship between the eccentric Englishman and the Indian doctor, which leads the Englishman to stand up on his friend's behalf.  These similaries, however, serve to highlight the contrasts.  Aziz and Veraswami are almost polar opposites of each other in their attitutes to the British Empire.  Adela and Elizabeth arrive with opposite expectations of India/Burma.  Flory is much more insecure than Fielding... the list goes on.  Where Forster painted a more realist portrait of the Anglo-Indians and their world, Orwell paints a caricature, despite him terming Burmeses Days a 'naturalistic novel' in his article 'Why I Write'.  By doing this, Orwell is perhaps stripping his novel down to its basic agenda - as an expose of the folly of imperialism, much as PtI was oft cited as a reason why the British should leave India.

Liminal Eurasians in Burmese Days

Stoler’s essay about the metissage phenomenon of interracial unions and how Indo-Chinese in various Dutch colonies occupied a liminal position in colonial society due to their hybrid identity manifests itself in Burmese Days, specifically in the condition of the two Eurasian men Francis and Samuel. Their liminality is evident in how they are despised by not only the European community, but also alienated from the native Burmese community because their “political, economic and social bids” were in contradistinction to the demands of the native population, not in alliance with them. On the one hand, Europeans such as Elizabeth perpetuate pseudo-scientific racist myths about the allegedly inherently degenerate natures of Eurasians, asserting that “half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races”, and thus exclude them socially by not wanting to associate or “touch them with a stick”, while using such myths to rationalize and justify the political exclusionary, discriminatory practices implemented against them, such as “cutting them off from entering third-grade Government services.” On the other hand, Francis and Samuel’s relationship with the natives, although much friendlier because the natives allow the Eurasians to cadge and work for them, is also a tension-fraught one because the Eurasian men basically capitalize or exploit the colonial notions of racial difference as a means of survival. They perform “European-ness” by complaining of “prickly heat” and wearing “huge topis” that remind the natives that they’ve got European skulls susceptible to sunstroke even though they may not suffer from these conditions that plague white men, because it is precisely the “drop of white blood” that assures their survival, recommending them as superior beings worthy in the eyes of the natives who grudgingly allow them to living amongst them. Their liminality which is caused by the exclusion from a proper European education and abandonment by their English clergymen fathers is also expressed in how their attempts to showcase their mastery of the English language falls short because of the excessively overt use of highly conventionalized/ritualised forms of civilised English expressions such as “Good evening to you” and “most honored to make your acquaintance” which are interspersed with grammatically, structurally or syntactically unsound or awkward phrases such as “Myself I suffer torments each night” that are associated with the perceived stereotype of how a native Burmese who is unable to master the English language speaks.

Crossing boundaries

The “purity of the community… the essence of the community [as] an intangible “moral attitude”, a multiplicity of invisible lines” (Stoler 516) that cannot be crossed is seen in Flory, May and Dr Veraswami. Flory crosses the racial lines of imperialism by befriending and aligning his sympathies with the colonized. However, with Elizabeth’s arrival, the invisible lines that divide colonizers and colonized are unveiled as he realizes that he “longed all these years for somebody to talk to!” His acute loneliness stems from straddling between his colonist lineage and disapproved friendships with the locals. In May and Dr. Veraswami, there is a reversal of racism as they believe the colonists as superior to their own race and actively seeks to cross into the domains of the colonists’ community. May thought that becoming the wife of a white man would give her prestige and earn respect while Dr Veraswami believed his own race as inferior to the colonists.

Both Colonizers and colonized are trapped within the nets of imperialism. Dr. Veraswami and May can never cross into the other community while Flory can never assimilate into the Burmese because of the burden of his colonist status:

But we can't help it… a demon inside us driving us to talk. We walk about under a load of memories which we long to share and somehow never can. It's the price we pay for coming to this country.

The disgrace and fear of contamination of the white race by metissage cost Flory his life. Most of all, all who transgressed from and into the boundaries of ‘pure communities’ suffer humiliation, poverty and death while those who remained within their side of the picket fences (Elizabeth, Macgregor, Ellis etc) continue to perpetuate racial demarcation. In the end, both colonizers and colonized cannot escape their ‘birthmarks’.

It was not what he had done that horrified her…It was, finally, the birthmark that had damned him.

Victimization of Women

Stoler asserts that European women were controlled and 'policied' "by reaffirming the vulnerability of white women and the sexual threat posed by native men" (60). This positioning of women as weak, vulnerable and fragile has been and still is repeated across various instances of war.

In A Passage to India, we have the incredulous belief that "the darker races are physically attracted by the fairer" (222), thus placing the European woman as vulnerable to the sexual appetite of native men.

Part of Hilary Clinton's speech at the First Ladies' Conference on Domestic Violence, 17 Nov 1998: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat".
http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html

In an article titled, "The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building", Rafeeuddin Ahmed, Chef de Cabinet to UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim says: "In retrospect, I realize how much of my perception about women in war was influenced by the media. The incessant images of desperation and victimization tell only part of the story. The other part, the strength, courage and resilience, is rarely captured".
http://www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/tx_useraitypdb/women_war_peace.pdf

Women are constantly positioned and depicted as victims. However, I feel that Elizabeth of Burmese Days is somewhat a robust character. She appears to be a rather 'strong' character in the sense that she does not burst into tears (chapter 23 when Verall leaves at the train station, rather than bawling "she would betray nothing"), instead she is rather aggressive and assertive.

Therefore, what I mean to say is that Orwell doesn't really depict the vulnerability of European women (as per the character Elizabeth). But what is interesting is the vulnerability of European men to the sexual threat posed by native women is instead presented to us readers.

P.S. The darn page has an error and so I wasn't able to italize or underline anything properly. Dang it.

The Aesthetics of Colonial Concubinage

Much discussion has focused on the sexual relations between Flory and Ma Hla May (during this post, referred to as May) but less has been said about the modernist aestheticization of May’s concubinage.

When we first meet May, Orwell, through the narrator, casts May in an Orientalist light: she is dressed in traditional Burmese wear of the longyi, her petite frame, “typical” of representations of Asian females, is emphasized (“perhaps five feet tall”), and her “narrow eyes” are accentuated (here, we are reminded of Lily Briscoe’s Chinese eyes in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse). The narrator also takes great pain to describe to us the intricate details of May’s Orientalist clothes and her general appearance: she was “dressed in a longyi of pale blue embroidered Chinese satin, and a starched white muslim ingyi on which several gold lockets hung” (52).

If May is presented in an Orientalist fashion, the sexual subjugation that May is subject to under Flory’s concubinage is turned into a modernist aesthetic. As Flory’s “native” concubine, May is compared to a stylicized doll that is subject to Flory’s whims and moods: “she was like a doll, with her oval, still face the colour of new copper . . . an outlandish doll and yet a grotesquely beautiful one” (52). Rather than dwelling on May’s “abject status [as] slave” (Stoler 49) and the victimization that she undergoes as Flory’s concubine, Orwell, through the narrator, sees May as an aesthetic sculpture. The implication of the simile -- May’s “tiny, straight, slender body was as contourless as a bas-relief carved upon a tree” (52, italics mine) -- is that the “native” woman, May, is reduced to an artistic object in the Western artist’s imagination. In other words, colonial concubinage is hijacked from its colonial history and turned into modernist aesthetic.

When May is banished by Flory, her aesthetic value depreciates, to the extent that she takes on a ghastly appearance, with her “greasy” hair and her “face grey with powder . . . [looking] like a screaming hag of the bazaar” (273). Ultimately, May is condemned to be an aesthetic commodity, circulated and exchanged within the modernist (and colonialist) economy.

historicising texts

i think the stoler article helps to pull us back as subjective readers and interpreters to historicise texts within the economic and social realities that were actually occurring at the time--historical facts which we (or at least i) tend to overlook in lieu of textual evidence such as characterisation, metaphors, etc. for instance, instead of reading ma hla may as a devious temptress who manipulates and blackmails flory for her own capitalistic gains - an agent of her own capitalist agenda - as we did last class, we now can see her contextualised within the prevalence of concubinage, which "was tolerated precisely because "poor whites" were not." (Stoler 54) not only is she divested of her agency in such a context, she's tolerated because concubinage perpetuates "white prestige" as european women are perceived as too expensive to upkeep, and therefore native women become the convenient outlets of sexual release who are, naturally, divested of any legal rights. Stoler is quick to point out that "Colonized women could sometimes parlay their positions into personal profit and small rewards, but these were individual negotiations with no social, legal, or cumulative claims." (57) placed within such a machine, may becomes that cog lacking agency which in so far as she is able to act (eg. putting on the mask and taking it off after her performance as was discussed) deludes herself and flory into perceiving she is dangerous in any way, when it is the other way around and white men like flory are "protected" (or at least perceived to be paternalistically) by the white colonial regime. while this might seem like pointing the finger at exploitative white men again, the article qualifies this and asserts that to some extent they, like women both native and colonised, are all colonial subjects in their own right, subsumed within the mechanics of colonial exploitation.

Abandonment

Stoler talks about the issue of abandonment of mixed blood children in the colonial context as that which is predicated on specific race, cultural and gender coordinates. If the colonial project is based on colonial difference – race – then these mixed blood children who blur racial distinctions also disrupts colonialism and a European national identity.

The other significant thing is how criticism on abandoned mixed blood children falls more so on the immoral influences of native women rather than European men: “the indigenous woman who consents to live with a European is a veritable prostitute…when…the latter disappear or abandon her, she fatally returns to the vice which she came from…” Which seems to be exactly how Ma Hla May is portrayed in the text: a prostitute. Cultural, physical and moral contamination does not arise just out of racial differences but also becomes a gender issue. Elizabeth points out the belief that “these Eurasians are very degenerate…that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in both races” (126) – referring to these “worst” aspects as inherited from native women.

Stoler also mentions how the issue of abandonment centers on the lack of paternal [European] discipline and the threat of the single-mother family. Which can perhaps be refuted by Flory’s argument: “We always talk of them as though they’d sprung up from the ground like mushrooms, with all their faults ready-made. But when’s all said and done, we’re responsible for their existence” (126). The use of “we” suggests that there is a need to claim responsibility for these children, beyond an individual level to a national level – in which, perhaps the European colonizing nation will replace the father figure [that seems to have been missing from single-native-mother families]. But can these children, brought up by “immoral” native women, really be incorporated into the paternal colonizing nation?

(300!)

Eurasians not European Enough, Ma Hla May not Burmese Enough

As Stoler notes, Eurasian children were required to fulfill a myriad of criteria in order to gain the advantageous 'legal access to European equivalent status' (Stoler 538). Some examples of these are 'fluency in spoken and written' language of their home country, 'training in European morals and ideas', and the necessity of the 'distanc[ing] of [oneself] from his native being' (Stoler 538). This judgement comes from an official body, the courts, with directives put into place to determine the Eurasian child's citizenship. What is important here is how these point to an obsession with not only whether one is European, but whether one is European enough.

What is interesting about this, for me, is how this may be applied in reverse to the character of Ma Hla May. A similarly liminal figure, she too is subject to scrutiny in order to determine if she is Burmese enough, although in her case, her verdict is declared by the Burmese community. Her question, 'how can I go back to my village after [having been a bo-kadaw]' (Orwell 158) indicates the impossibility of her reintegration into Burmese society fully as a respectful woman- she is instead 'ruined' and 'shame[d]' (Orwell 159). Perhaps an alternative to Shiva's reading could be that Ma Hla May's native identity has been altered forever (instead of 'relinquished'), due to her failed relationship (as opposed to her mere 'union with Flory') with a white man. Ma Hla May is still native, but not native enough.

(300 words)

'Their drop of white blood is the sole asset they've got' (Flory 126)

Stoler’s article presents a realistic portrayal of the plight of Eurasians in a colonial society. The problem with Eurasians is that they have both the colonialist’s and the colonized’s blood in them and thus do not belong to any clearly defined categories. The Eurasians are products of transgressed boundaries, of blurred binaries that are problematic for those seeking to reinforce these binaries. The issue of loyalty to a certain culture then becomes the main focus, as Stoler highlights:

How then could the state mark some candidates so they would be excluded from the national community while retraining the possibility that other individuals would be granted the rights of inclusion because French and Dutch “blood prevailed in their veins”? (521).

This issue of loyalty and identity is presented in both the case study Stoler presents and through the portrayal of Francis and Samuel in Burmese Days. Stoler states the main problem with the boy’s case was whether he

could really be considered culturally and politically French and whether he was inculcated with the patriotic feelings and nationalist sentiments which might have prompted such a loyal response (523).

Similarly, both Francis and Samuel are condemned as outcasts of society because they lack the proper upbringing given to the privileged class: ‘Eurasians of that type – men who’ve been brought up in the bazaar and had no education – are done for from the start’ (126). Elizabeth’s view of them as ‘degenerate types’ (126) is reflective of the general sentiment Europeans held towards them. But as Flory highlights, can we really blame them? What choice do the Eurasians have as cursed products of transgressed boundaries? What future awaits them as members with no place in society? It is no wonder that Francis, Samuel and the boy hold on tightly to their European blood, if only to gain some sense of identity and belonging for themselves.

On a separate note, I find it interesting how attitudes towards Eurasians have changed. In Singapore, (I find) people tend to treat Eurasians with more awe and respect, and they seem to occupy a higher standing in society, almost similar to that of Caucasians. What brought about this change and why is it that where they were previously outcasts, they seem to have gained recognition today?

Sexual relationships

I find this quote in Stoler’s argument particularly useful in approaching Orwell’s Burmese Days:

none of these fears were very far removed from the more general concern that European men living with native women would themselves lose their Dutch or French identity and would become degenerate and décivilisé. Internal to this logic was a notion of cultural, physical, and moral contamination, the fear that those Europeans who did not subscribe to Dutch middle-class conventions of respectability would not only compromise the cultural distinctions of empire, but waver in their allegiances to metropolitan rule (533, 534)


Flory’s debauchery with May is made evident through his meeting with Elizabeth. Contact with Elizabeth brings out the ‘Englishness’ in him. Flory laments how his affair with May has “degenerate and décivilisé” him. Only by marrying Elizabeth can his ‘Englishness’ be restored. Flory’s affair with May ultimately destroys him. U Po Kyin attacks Flory’s “weakest spot” (his affair with May). Flory’s sexual deviance is, in Elizabeth’s opinion, a deviance from the ways of ‘Europeanness’ or ‘Englishness’ that is taboo and intolerable. Flory’s suicide in the end can be viewed as a self-destruction brought about by sexual deviance (métissage), an unpardonable sin in committed by the white man. Flory’s behaviour is subjected to changes depending on whether he is with May or Elizabeth. With May, Flory is more bolshevic, shows interest in the Burmese culture, leading a squalid and meaningless life. Elizabeth brings about a total change in Flory. He quits drinking and indulges in the English display of chivalry and gallantry (hunting and polo). This is closely linked to what Stoler is arguing about, how the sexual relations play an important role in colonial politics.

Sex (and money) in the Colonies

What struck me as I read Stoler was her suggestion that sex in the colonies was closely linked with the economics of colonial control. Stoler posits that it was the practical monetary concerns of keeping the costs of maintenance of expatriate families down that led (amongst other reasons) to the practice of concubinage. However, the practical use of European wives as household managers subsequently promoted marriage with European wives (besides having resulted from heightened fears of resistance and the implications of metissage on white prestige). Relating this to Burmese Days, Elizabeth can be read as the ultimate exemplication of the sexual "laws" that had been set in place to contain capital in the coloniser's hands.

Elizabeth’s gaze upon Flory is coloured by socio-economic terms (significance of her tortoise-shell glasses!) He appeals to her only when he shows mastery over the colonised space, by driving away the bull and by hunting, fitting her notions of a respectable "pukka" or first class sahib. She casts him aside when 'the Honourable' Verrall comes along, as his 700 rupees have become pittance in comparison. Elizabeth moreover is dreaded by Flory's servants, unable to pilfer money for themselves when she becomes mistress. Therefore Elizabeth's conflation with capital control, which exemplifies colonial marriage's conflation with capitalism in colonial discourse.

We the readers therefore clearly see the irony and deluded-ness of Flory in seeking "someone who would love Burma as he loved it and hate it as he hated it...Someone who understood him: a friend"(73) in someone like Elizabeth, a born "Burra memsahib"(300). These attributes Flory seeks in a wife are ultimately unprofitable as it jeopardises White Prestige and subsequently capital dominance. Therefore it is significant that it is women and their links with capital who lead to Flory's downfall. Hla May's screams for money "Pike-san-pay-like!" makes him poor “Porley” and ultimately destroys him socially and Elizabeth rejects him as a result. Flory is punished as he has become an “unprofitable” “cog in the wheels” (69) of colonialism. In light of this, Flory’s earlier opinion that "What shall it profit a man if he save his own soul and lose the whole world?" (80) can be read as a gospel of colonial discourse.

Blasphemous Burmese days!

Native spiritualism is something that we readers of colonial texts have come to expect. We see elements of it in Passage, in HD, in Lord Jim. So no surprises to see it in Burmese days--Burmese beaters conduct a sacrificial rite prior to the hunt, Ma Kin is deeply concerned about acquiring merit. What does interest me is what seems to be a not-so-subtle subversion of the usual native worship of native gods to a textual worship of White culture.
For starters, the terms “most holy god” and “the holy one” pop up routinely when the Burmese servants address White men. The European Club is referred to first as “the spiritual citadel”, and later as “that holy of holies”. The murder of a White man (Maxwell) is “a sacrilege”. Really, it is almost impossible to miss the religious (pun intended of course) spiritualization of Whiteness.
In the event that we did, however, the text certainly seems to take further steps to reiterate the point—mainly by eroding the position of prescribed native and European religion. U Po Kyin’s methods of acquiring merit turn Buddhism into something like a commercial enterprise where money is everything—purchasing a pagoda/salvation is akin to purchasing just another commodity. The pre-hunt sacrificial rite I mentioned earlier is attended to by Burmese with “serious, bored faces, like men in church”, implying with that single quote the spiritual apathy in both the ‘natives’ and the White Christians. In fact, the church service that takes place later in the book is described as “the great social event of their lives.” So. The sacred space of religion has become nothing more than a mating or match-making ground. Where is the reverence for the divine? It appears to be lost. Subsumed, I suppose, by the worship of Whiteness, or that “most holy god”.

Violence & the Crowd: Familiar?

In Burmese Days, we see the episode in which Flory and Elizabeth go shooting, and end up hunting down a tiger which they kill. This act of violence/killing, is just as graphic as the one we saw in Shooting an Elephant, but what was entirely different was how they set out to shoot( perform that act of violence in the first place). Elizabeth in particular seems to have quite an unsettling attitude toward violence; namely that she doesn’t quite care. When Flory was telling her about the “imperial pigeon”, how “the Burmese” believe it vomits when it dies and that it is “murder to shoot them”, all she asks is “Are they good to eat?” (All Ch 13)This (apart from being horrifically funny), suggests not just an absent “humanitarianism”(Stoler 514), but also a certain consumption of the colonial land in terms of its exotic material(which we could read as the imperial west needing the raw materials to fuel their industrialized west)Elizabeth loves violence, it is only after this shooting event she seemed to be drawn to Flory( but we all know how THAT turned out). In the end, its violence, violence, violence: Flory shoots Flo( who is part of Flory in well name and companionship), then shoots himself, and of course that whole violence of the riot, which reverberates a clear “rejection of the terms of the civilizing mission”(Stoler 551) with its ideas of civility, order and humanity in the western imperialist lifestyle.

The riot outside the Club shows another Orwellian scene of the crowd, previously seen in Shooting an Elephant with those “yellow faces”, in Burmese days they were “pouring in by the hundreds” and “rushing around aimlessly” without much purpose except to keep “flinging stones, yelling and hammering at the walls”. The crowd is always painted as a mass (MESS) of “whatever-ness” with their noise and physical mass being the focus rather than their intellect or social purpose .This depiction may reflect Stoler’s idea that there is a “conflation of racial category… cultural competence and national identity” (Stoler 514). The mass of the Burmese are lumped together in their race and ‘therefore’ their lack of culture which perhaps to the west mean their(Burmese) ‘national identity’ equate to general incompetence.

Escaping the Interior Struggle

Stoler’s work Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers discusses how state machinations in policies both at home and out in the colonies are intertwined with the internal turmoil of the European in the colonies. In the face of “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” (514), the case studies in Stoler’s article straddle the middle grounds of imperialist racism and colonial nationalism. Perhaps the best figure in Orwell’s Burmese Days to embody the interior conflict in the colonialist psyche is Flory. His interior frontier that is constantly challenged and negotiated, becomes what is of interest to us.

An European who sees through the hypocrisy of the colonial enterprise in Burma, Flory despises the pukka sahib characters and attitude, and at the same time has already internalized the imperial racism of the Orientals. Almost committing métissage with Ma Hla May, Flory’s character remains too “European” to tarnish his reputation and his lineage with an interracial marriage. His search for a European bride who will not develop the mentality and attitude of a pukka memsahib reflects his “inclusionary” attitudes and appreciation of the Burmese culture, untarnished by the “culture system” of colonialism.

Flory’s criterion for his bride, and his desire to groom Elizabeth into his ideal bride, show a microcosm of the “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” of the colonial government on the colonized populace. On the interior front, the lack of that ideal bride, since Elizabeth rejects him and he exists in a colonized landscape devoid of further opportunities, causes him to become incomplete in his desire to straddle the métis divide. The failure in his negotiation of the interior frontier by having a family that is an extension of his individual, and thereby a retort to the colonial enterprise’s model, leads him to a path of escapism viable only (in his view) by suicide. But is suicide that only option of rebellion and yet having the natural, innate instinct of establishing a family unit?

Doublethink!

Orwell manages to puncture the mystique of the colonial whites by depicting them off-duty, which is perfectly aligned with the reader’s assumption that once again, this book is going to be a great critique of imperialism (it is George Orwell after all). Orwell’s antipathy toward imperialism manifests itself rather bizarrely in his veiled disdain for Burmese nationalism, whom he paints as effectively terrorists, dacoits and puppet peasants firmly in the thrall of U Po Kyin who wishes to fulfil his desire to become even more of a “parasite” upon the British by becoming part of them, by inclusion into the Club. Burmese nationalism is then characterized as friable; the riot is easily broken up. Even the editor of the Burmese Patriot who was at the center of it all wasn’t spared- he evidently abandoned his hunger strike after a feeble six hours. At the end of it all we are left with the distinct impression that U Po Kyin, ironically, poses more of a challenge to British rule by wanting to become an agent himself and continuing his shenanigans. His cupidity is more likely to reshape colonial society by playing into the corruption that it is predicated on (Orwell has already glossed on the myopia of the British- no British officer would ever believe anything against his own men). After all, “absorbed in intrigue”, isn’t U Po Kyin “practically invulnerable”, being “too fine a judge of men”? Flory’s epithets come to mind: he praises the “absolute savages” that Elizabeth perceives, calling them “highly civilized”, even more so than them. Indeed, U Po Kyin is more vile, more ingratiatingly clever, and ultimately more imperialist than say Maxwell or Flory. Lynnette posits that desire is recycled into banality and it is this precise banality that U Po Kyin idealizes, living under the aegis of deception of the Empire on all fronts.