Lingua [Franca] Siapa?

The exploration of language as it affects/ is affected by the colonizer and the colonized is one that is perhaps most interesting when we consider Joyce. While language is obviously a carrier of culture, the adoption of language in terms of colonial dynamics is perhaps most aptly captured in Fanon’s idea that “the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors” (Fanon 38).

The language of the colonizer, indeed that that is foreign to the native language( British English to Irish in Joyce’s novel), is deemed as superior and the underlying need to survive in the colony ( or in the face of the empire) sees the native “ incarcerating a new type of man”(Fanon 36). Here we see the ideas of language as opportunity, language as professed through power and therefore language as a form of power to be partaken of.The link between identity and language is further confounded when we contemplate Fanon’s idea that “every dialect is a way of thinking”( Fanon 25) and that the native adoption of a “language different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation” ( Fanon 25). The complexity lies in the way the native tries to forge a new identity by acquiring the power of the new language, but at the same time renounces his own identity. What Fanon suggests is that the Negro/Native has “no culture, no civilization” (Fanon 34) to fall back on and so his native language is bankrupt of value in the opinion of the Western world( the colonizers)

What remains to be asked then, is who’s language is it really, this language of the colony? It takes on words of the native language/dialects, but is forcibly structured to that of the colonizers. Meaning in some cases remain constant, but take on different forms: Joyce’s novel sees Stephen wonder about how even in the existence of “different names for God in all the different languages in the world … still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God” (CH 1). Lingua Franca becomes Lingua Siapa, in the imposition of foreign on the local(in the eyes of the colonized) and of the local on the alien( in the eyes of the colonizer).

If we take into account Stephen’s role as an artist and his struggle to forge an identity in a changing Ireland through language we are left to contemplate the implication of language on expression and identity.The power behind the imposition, accessibility and usability language then complicates itself in the forging of a new (colonial) identity.

Power, (re)Structure, Everyone and One.

(warning I have taken painkillers for my back : a muscle relaxant im convinced they give horses)

The first thing that hit me about Joyce’s writing, was well, Joyce’s writing. His ‘unconventional ‘ use of punctuation especially when it comes to speech suggests that the dialogue that is shown becomes merely a reflection in the mind of the listener, rather than a product of the speaker per se. Its all very modernist, but this week im struggling to find the link(s) between the text and the reading.

Stephen’s struggle in school with Father Dolan seen in his situation over the broken glasses and hand-caning suggests the obvious issues with authority. In the novel we see tensions that arise between state and church when it comes to notions of authority. The culture that Stephen must rise against seems to be embedded in a tangle of power struggles. In much the same way as the colonies we have seen in previous texts on the course , Ireland becomes “ a half-way house between Britain and the Empire”(Jackson 136).

Struggling between formulating an identity of its own and being an extension of imperial impulses, Jackson notes Ireland struggled between a government style that was “colonial and metropolitan” (Jackson 126). The notion of “Cultural nationalism” and “political consciousness”( Jackson 136) that arises because of British imperialism comes from that “interrelationship of Irish Society with the British Empire” (Jackson 139). This seems to be something mirrored in other texts that we have done like Foster’s A Passage to India and Orwell’s Burmese Days where the locals start to become more aware of politics and how it affected lives.

Joyce’s novel revolves around Church, Self, Establishment and Power- four themes that are all, like Ireland ‘sand Britain’s fate: interrelated. In this sense perhaps we can draw links between Jackson, Joyce, Modernism and Colonialism by noting how power structures are altered on both a macro level; country(govt/ religion),society as well as micro level; individual.

Performativity; Power and a little Gender

The idea of theatricality or performativity is seen again in Woolf’s Growing. His open admittance that “in Ceylon [they] were always, subconsciously or consciously, playing a part, acting upon a stage.(Woolf24-25)” suggests that the role of the colonized is one that is not so much assumed as it is acted out. The underlying notion of having expectations to meet in the eyes of colonial standards by the establishment suggest that the relationship between colonizer and colonized was not only set up by expectation (and recognition) of a master-slave(power-powerless) dynamic, but also perpetuated by it. Stoler’s idea of “who counted as “European” and by what measure”(43) then becomes something that is vague in terms of actual personality traits, but becomes a much more vague label recognized by virtue of the way the colonizers and colonized act. This can be seen in Woolf’s autobiography where his dog defecates someone’s clean white clothes and no one takes notice and also when the Charles, his dog is sick all over the native owned place in Jaffna and no one took notice. The fact that the white man (and the whiteman’s dog) can behave in such a manner without consequence signals the obvious power positions.

While Stoler’s article of Gender suggest that sexual images illustrate the iconography of rule(45), what remained curious to me is Woolf’s illustration of women(white or non) in the excerpts, from the nonchalant way he says he “spent the night”(I forget the page) with a local woman to his merciless, descriptions of Miss Beeching with the “face rather like that of a good looking male Red Indian”( Woolf 26)and Mrs Lewis as “large, plump and flordly good-looking”(I forget which page), he seems to embody that colonial ideal of European “hypermasculinity”(cant find the page in Stoler) in his power of gender over the figures of Others; women and perhaps the most “othered’ the native women (who supposedly are “useful guides”(Stoler 49)

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.

Violence in Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant

The mere title blasts at you the idea of physical Violence in the word “shooting”. It connotes a deliberate desire to inflict pain through violence, and placing it in terms of modernism, the symbol of the gun (the mechanized weapon) is metaphorical of the other kinds of violence the West inflicts on the east. In terms of Social Violence we see strict classifications of class &capabilities where the “sub-divisional police officer “ suffered “anti-European feeling” and the locals are seen as merely a blur, a mass, “an immense crowd” and the victim as “ an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie”. The locals are identified as a large statistic, the colour of their skin, or by nature of the fact that in opposition to the intellectual, rational, modern west, theirs is physical work. Looking at psychological violence, we see the need to perform role(s) because of pressure from others, pressure of institution(s); The colonizer as colonizer and the colonized as the “other”. Linguistic Violence sees tensions between English and the native tongue in the difficulty of expression on an individual and communal level. The narrator describes the elephant as being one that while was not wild, was one “which had gone “must”. This (mis)use of language shows the inability to reconcile cultural differences in language and the way of life; the narrator’s rejection of his position as imperial authority, and as a westerner entrenched in the east. We see violence on language in the forced way in which the locals’ speech is mapped onto western tones/sentence structures. When the old lady warns, “Go away child! Go away this instant!”, the formal language of the west (which can be seen perhaps as the formal institution of imperial bureaucracy) imposes itself on the eastern speech(which can be seen perhaps as the ability for the east to be truthfully expressed).Linking this to Chatterjee, does this suppose that violence is also then a site of colonial difference?

Looking at Imagination in Modernism (Lord Jim e.g.s)

(page no.s are from old versh!)

· Read this (: :http://www.collegenews.org/x3052.xml

Citing Clark (2004) [assumes Flaubert and Manet are “fathers of modernism”]
1) “Modernism…movements between text and image.
2)”a novel understanding of the cultural imagination of early modernism”
3)”He shows [deliberate intent to] mix and contaminate their work: Flaubert with images, Manet with narration.”

The notion of this ‘contamination’ ; movement between text and image is something we see very often in modernist texts. The predominancy of nature; Forster’s Marabar caves, Conrad’s Congo wilderness and even in Lord Jim all accord a blurring between “text” and “image”. Taking this one step further it is then possible to see that this cultural imagination of early modernism comes from the focus on setting,landscape; natural features that are foreign to the colonizers, that there is the creation of culture through imagination exacting the senses. This focus on senses, emotions and responses to new situations suggest a focus on the inner self, the individual perception and feeling; the persona imagines what his surrounding is like and paints a picture that then affects our imagination.

“The danger, when not seen, had the imperfect vagueness or human though. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion” (CH2 p9)
-Here imagination becomes a force of power that allows for invocation of fear and negativity that is some what depressive; due to defamiliarization of location?

“At times his thoughts would be full of various deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality” (CH3 p15)
-Imagination is used to escape and a way to pursue happiness not found in the real (colonizing, unfamiliar world)

Creating Unstable Images

OTHERNESS
(i)Geographical/Physical Otherness
“Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where a man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.”(para 8, Achebe)

(ii)Cultural/ Social Otherness
“…what thrilled you was just the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise”
(as quoted of Heart of Darkness in Para 12 of Achebe)

Here is the idea of the
(i)Relation of other to the self and
(ii) that (shocking) self realization of similarities (rather than the differences between)
What is it really that is different/dissimilar?

PORTRAYAL:
(i)Narration and authorial interjection(s)
“Certainly, Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his story. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator.”(para 16, Achebe)

(ii)Western Interpretations- exoticization/stereotyping and general deliberate inaccuracy:
“As I said earlier, Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it.(para 30, Achebe)

The question to ask here, as it was with A Passage to India, is what can we really glean from the western view of a non western continent in terms of its geography, peoples and culture? If the narrator is crutched by another narrator, the implication of multiple perspectives and constantly altering views/representations is surely one that complicates and possibly destabilizes the notion(s) of western ‘supremacy’?

Thoughts?

Painting a Picture,well kind of.

(just a reminder, my page numbers are from some SUPER OLD edition )

Painting a picture:
A Passage to India for all its delving into religion, landscape, colloquialism and a myriad of description of clothes and culture still remains as a book of the West. In this sense, we see some resonance in Fanon’s idea that “the colonizer fabricates the colonial subject”(Fanon, 2). This seems to occur both within the book, where the British have a clear, set view of the Indians; “there you have the Indian all over: inattention to detail; the fundamental slackness that reveals the race” (CH8:80) as well as beyond the book, i.e. Forster as a British writing about India. This idea perhaps goes beyond just the question of Western exoticization of the East, or even of a possible skewered and/or inaccurate description, but leads us to ask the following:
(i) whether or not
(ii)and to what extent
we should question
(I)the validity of representing (II)and the right to represent
something/someplace/someone(s) that is not of the self in modernist fiction that ambitions to incorporate a certain mimesis.

Could the fact that Forster’s novel is a fiction be a certain cover under which to blur the lines between expression of feelings toward the whole colonialism/imperialism/empire building notion and a certain escapism on his part to express the other-worldliness of the East in that “licentious Oriental imagination”(CH31:267)?

In the later parts of the novel we see Aziz shedding a certain layer of his insecurity when he becomes a little more outspoken( possibly smarting from his ordeal) when he says “ ‘Discussion of the past is useless.’he said, with sudden sharpness in his tone”(CH30:262-263). This departure from Fanon’s suggestion that “the colonized subject is constantly on his guard and made to feel inferior” (16) suggest that in the later parts of the novel we see a very different India in terms of its inhabitants, both British and Indian. They perhaps, do not move any closer together nor any further apart, but grow increasingly different in their own realms. What I found very apt about Fanon’s “On Violence” was the description of “Atmospheric violence: this violence rippling under the skin”(Fanon 31) as reflecting Post-trial Chandrapole. While there is uneasiness, it is not overbearing and everyone moves on in their own roles; Adela leaves, Fielding retreats from his ‘middle ground’ between British and Indian to mingle more with English women and eventually marries, Ronny returns to his job. There is certain wariness and a general lack of goodwill to each other except for due course in civility and propriety, which rings a bell with Levine’s point on the British ‘law and government’ being ‘the noblest expression of humanity’(Levine 104).

I guess what I’ve been wondering about this week is the idea behind the idea of a place being about its people, in this case about India being about both the British and the Indians( and how they act/are portrayed/received). It struck me that when Fielding was asked about seeing the “Real India”, he said “ try seeing Indians” ( CH3: 27). Do people make a place, and does it only encompass the natives? Or is the idea that we are supposed to take away remain that of how and who treats the natives is what really matters?

*help me out, im abit confused!

In Difference

In Difference
(I’m using an old Penguin Modern Classic edition, so page numbers here are of little aid! Sorry!)

The values of the Enlightenment; Liberty, Equality and Fraternity are clearly echoes in A Passage to India. Both the British and the Indians struggle with the construction of and adaptation to the meaning of these ideals , reflected in the many layers of differences that are exemplified in the book.

Within the community:

Within British society in Chandrapole we see restrictions on the very liberty to choose where and how to live in the way the playing of the’ Anthem of the Army of Occupation…reminded every member of the club that he or she was British and in exile.’(p26-27) [CH3] The struggle for equality within British society in Chandrapole is also seen in the difference in status of women vs men and even amongst families ( Turtons ,Lesleys, Callenders). The idea of brotherhood is perhaps one that is taken as a source of psychological comfort and strength to them; that idea of being British, that ‘India isn’t home’ (p34) [Ch3]

In much the same way, the rise of education among the privileged (wealthy) and the rise of urbanity that allowed for that ‘increasingly mobile’ (Levine p70)indigenous population saw a class of Indian professionals ( Aziz, Das, Panna Lal, Mahmoud Ali, Hamidullah) that were motivated by western enlightenment but never quite manage to attain its values. Equality within the Indian caste system throughout the novel remains an unsaid impossibility with separations between the Mohammedians and Hindus as well as between the servants/drivers and the professionals. Fraternity is perhaps seen through the wave of national fervour in support of Aziz that we see in the courtroom and in the uproar created after Adela’s revelation (one that is perhaps as much to herself as to the courtroom).

Other ideas of difference:

Affluence and access to resources is not only what separates the British from the Indians but perhaps a certain sense of unease with the departure from their former way(s) of life. The British, in their exile, or in company of their spouses in exile are displaced to not just a foreign land but a foreign way of life to which they must adapt even while clinging on to comforts of home( Whiskey, plays like ‘Cousin Kate’ and card games). The Indians being put under colonial rule are subjected to the authority of the British, even while (some are) being educated and given a chance to rise up in society through interaction with the very same foreign (intruders?) presence. For the Indians , they adjust to the unease of accession to new authority as opposed to the ‘collection of states’ ruled ‘by local dynasties’ (Levine p.61). In a slightly more vexing way, the new class of Indian professionals faced a rising social status, but a n existence in a limbo between Indian and British, never quite belonging to either side or necessarily wanting to.

Just scratching the surface(s) here, hope I didn’t muck it up!