Last-minute Tundish...

Fanon makes clear the immense role language plays in constructing the identities of the colonizer and colonized and states, “to speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.” (38) The French that the Antilles Negro speaks seems self-empowerment, but is also complicity with a culture that deems him inferior. In Portrait Stephen refuses to learn Irish: “this race and this country and this life produced me…I shall express myself as I am.” (220) By Fanon’s formulation, Stephen’s attempts to forge an Irish identity through his colonizer’s language is paradoxical, self-defeating – by using English, he is already “tak[ing] on [an English] world.”

However, I find it a problematic conclusion - Stephen’s discussion of the tundish with the Dean reads on one level like Fanon’s examples of European enforcement of black inferiority by talking down in pidgin Creole, with Stephen’s morose reflection that “the language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205) when the Dean takes the word as a lowly Irish construction. As it turns out, it is “English and good old blunt English too,” (204) while “funnel,” conversely, is of French origin, a remnant of the time England itself was ‘colonised’, or conquered, by the Normans. The Dean’s identity as an Englishman and Stephen’s identity as an Irishman, however, define the identity of the respective words in their conversation – the French word appears more English than the English word that appears Irish, and Stephen’s revelation arguably does not make the Dean any less English nor he any the more.

This perhaps demonstrates that the identities of the colonizer and colonized also play an immense role in constructing their languages, and redeems somewhat Stephen’s decision to refashion English for an Irish identity – as well as Fanon’s contradictory usage of French for his theses.

And I thought soul-buying was the Devil's trade...

With Portrait, our course has finally come full circle - we started out debating what our texts of Empire had to do with Modernism, and we will doubtlessly now debate what this text of Modernism has to do with Empire. (Kidding…sort of…) I'll have to admit to looking out for references to Empire throughout the first three chapters, eyeing each instance Stephen considers the boundaries of his world with suspicion… Of course, overlooking for now the complicated relation Ireland has to the British Empire, the only obvious references I've seen in them are the ex-students "now…in the burning tropics," (117) and "saint Francis Xavier…the apostle of the Indies," (115) and the latter is something that struck me.

"He went from country to country in the east, from Africa to India, from India to Japan, baptising the people. He is said to have baptised as many as ten thousand idolaters in one month…He wished then to go to China to win still more souls for God…" (115)

Perhaps I'd spent too much time last week staring at the commodification of women in Stoler's article, but the impression this description of the "great soldier of God" (115) gives me is that of a commodification of the African and Asian natives on the part of the Church. From this extract, it occurs to me that the missionaries who ventured to the colonies were seeking as much of a profit as the colonists (whose overriding economic agenda has been impressed on us week after week) - albeit a profit for their immortal souls. Natives are not looked upon as persons in their own right, but merely as potential converts for a "soul in devotion pressing like fingers the keyboard of a great cash register." (160) Of course it's a lot easier to grab such great bargains, converts by the swathe, in regions where Christianity is newly introduced than back home - a "true conqueror" saint Francis Xavier indeed was, as shrewd a businessman as any in the EIC…

[So sorry for posting so late last week, Dr. Koh! I'm posting a little earlier this week in penance...]

Colonial Fiction...

Something that strikes me incredibly about Growing is the “theatrical unreality” (23) of colonial life that Woolf draws our attention to early on. Notably, he says “I could never make up my mind whether Kipling had moulded his characters accurately in the image of Anglo-Indian society or whether we were moulding our characters accurately in the image of a Kipling story. (46) We have been in this module studying fictional constructions of colonial portrayal, only to be told that real colonials were very much like fictional constructions. While Woolf’s account then reflects favourably on the Orwellian and Forsterian characters we have debated the realism of; it also more ominously brings to mind the lesson Conrad makes for us of “Lord Jim,” who, consuming adventure fiction, died a deluded romantic hero. Here, we see Woolf’s suspicion that real life colonials have consumed Kipling’s colonial fiction and thus fashion their conduct in a textbook portrayal of what they believe through popular fiction their colonial lives should be like.

Of course, through Stoler’s examination of the myth and realities of colonial living, we are made intensely aware of the fictionality and constructedness of the supremacy of the Empire and European identity, which makes the real colonial’s strict adherence to fictional prescriptions of conduct hardly any more unreasonable than a strict adherence to manuals bearing mythical beliefs of the make-up of Europeans and the colonised. In such a light, anti-imperialist texts, or at least texts such as Growing that highlight the unnaturalness of such conduct become important in opposition to Empire-supporting narratives such as The White Man’s Burden.

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.

I've read something like this before, but Napolean was actually a pig in that one.

"Shooting," an "essay," possessed disputable fictionality, and I quailed to think the narrator's seemingly unconscious hypocrisy might have been Orwell's own. However, in Burmese Days, I find much less 'reproduction of racist structures,' and though I also find everyone disagreeable, there is a certain representational democracy in that. There is a poignant truth in "booze as the cement of empire," (32) especially with the thesis' address to poor 'native intellectual' Dr. Veraswami, who has internalised the coloniser's Manichean delineations. Where "Shooting" exasperated me, here I do grasp the sense of the European protagonist (and writer) as an ordinary, relatively decent man able to see the beauty of an "alien yet kindly land," (249) but caught in the cogs of Empire and the pukka sahib's "Precepts." (39)

The portrayal of the female characters, however, clashes with this fair(ish) representation of both coloniser and colonised. We have discussed the misogynistic impulses of Passage, but where at least Adela is just, Elizabeth is explicitly "silly, snobbish, heartless," (207) with her causes for sympathy outweighed by her "hardness of manner" (263) and "mercenary thoughts" (255) Doubtlessly there is comic irony in the conclusion "she fills with complete success the position for which Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib," (263) but it nevertheless bestows the suggestion of 'natural order' upon this "position" and thus upon Imperialism and the 'racial hiearchy' enforced by the "rule of colonial difference," a naturalness underlined by Elizabeth's earlier discriminatory rejection of Flory (and lepers and lunatics) as "instinct…deeper than reason or even self-interest." (255) With the intensely negative portrayals of the women and such suggestions that their unpleasantness and prejudice are naturally part of them, I feel that the otherwise sympathisable portrayal of pukka sahibs as racist imperialist bastards by circumstance is terribly undermined.

Shooting an Imperialist…

(I hope all we have to read is "Shooting an Elephant" the short story, rather than the anthology!)

Every time I read "Shooting an Elephant" I find myself hoping it's ironic rather than faithfully autobiographical. If it's the latter, Achebe should switch targets, because for an 'anti-imperialist' text, "Shooting" is sure racist. Perhaps Orwell was aware that serial imperialists could probably be best persuaded to drop the 'white man's burden' by considering that "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys," but the sheer negativity of Orwell's portrayal of the Burmese makes you wonder why his narrator even bothers to mention his imperialist "guilt." For all his anti-imperialism, his words embody the white supremacist's ideology - that "an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie" is reflected well in his respective descriptions of the "preoccupied grandmotherly" animal he hated to shoot, and the "sea of yellow faces above…garish clothes" that "[push]" him "to and fro" like an "absurd puppet," of whom he was "very glad the coolie had been killed."

It reminds me very much of the revisionist case Chatterjee covers, where historians such as Washbrook, ostensibly attempting to "restore the 'Indianness' of this historical narrative and 'recover the subject from European history,'" (30) put forth a history that "can with such ease spirit away the violent intrusion of colonialism and make all of its features the innate property of an indigenous history." (32) Of this and Orwell, as a postcolonial subject I can't help but think, 'if you're on our side, I'd hate to see who's against us.' If we recall that imperialism is, as Chatterjee points out, predicated on the "mark[er of difference [that] is race," (19) in replicating this racist presentation with no recourse, "Shooting" technically replicates too imperialist ideology, and is thus, despite its claims, ultimately a text that testifies to the 'truth and justice' of imperialism.

(P.S. Dr Koh, a thousand - nay, million - apologies for erroneously bothering you about the readings! The corrective email had totally slipped my mind through, er, post-mid-term amnesia doubtlessly fuelled by vain hopes of not having to read another article for my presentation week… *kowtow, kowtow, grovel*)

Ack, I nearly forgot about this...

*SPOILER (BEYOND CHAPTER 30) ALERT*
(But I've only skimmed the remaining chapters because I'm too busy freaking out over a big pres I've got tomorrow aaaaaah so apologies if I misconstrued anything.)

Part of the point I'd intended last week (lost in pruning) is that Conrad's portrayal of women reads to me as if he were even more of a misogynist, a reading underscored by Lord Jim. I've only read three Conrad works and in each the fate of the 'heroines' is to pine for their dead love for the rest of their "soundless, inert li[ves]," (331) even where they were (and often) the cause of that death. Conrad's misogynism is fairly documented, and in Gestures of Healing, Clayton notes that Marlow might not have "lied" - "the Intended can be equated with the Horror." (84) To continue my lost point: in missing this entirely and seeing her only as the positively-portrayed "refined, European woman," (14) Achebe performs an act of misogyny parallel to the racism he accuses Conrad and his admirers of, one that is "such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected." (19)

If arguing Achebe's concern is mainly for African benefit, not women - nor Asians - all the more he should understand the limits of Conrad's own concerns. Jim gives us a stellar opportunity to put ourselves in Achebe's shoes: Conrad's portrayal of Asians is considerably 'high[er]-res' than his Africans - corresponding to the depths of his relative experience - and I feel he does us "beggars" a greater disservice. The good Dain Waris is so due to his "European mind," (213) Jim gets his heroic end at the relatively complex but ultimately vengeful hands of Doramin, rinse and repeat. Drawn in finer strokes, we are thus decisively cast as inferior even to a flawed specimen of whiteness - but that doesn't make Conrad any more a "bloody racist" (19) than the average 19th/20thC European: ala Althusser, we cannot escape from our contextual ideology.

(As a non-word-counted aside - I'm not harping on and on about Achebe because I'm anti-anti-racism, I just think that it's flawed for him to criticise Conrad and negate Darkness out of his and its context - I mean, I devoted an entire term paper last semester to slamming Michael Bay (for Transformers (2007)) as a "bloody racist" - but unlike Conrad, Bay is working within a historical context (i.e. ours) where he should 'know better.')

This 300w business is KEEL(HAUL)ING me...

I'm picking on a single Achebe point - the contrast between the women. Although the seemingly positive light the "savage and superb" African is presented in can be deflected by analysing her portrayal as a version of the exoticised noble savage and heeding Achebe's claim that "she is in her place and so can win Conrad's special brand of approval," I believe that the portrayal of the "refined, European woman" that Achebe sees her as a "savage" and inferior "counterpart to" (14) is not as positive as Achebe clearly makes it out to be either. She is strongly aligned with the twisted Kurtz and while Conrad "bestow[s]…human expression" (Achebe, 15) upon her, her words "silenc[e]" Marlow "into an appalled dumbness," (155) and invoke in him "a chill grip on [his] chest" (157): "eloquent" she may be, she is nevertheless a ghastly "phantom." (156) Her final pronouncement is also significant - what "she knew…was sure" (157) of is wrong. Next to her oppressive, horrifying, and mistaken figure, the "barbarous and superb woman" who "did not so much as flinch" (146) at the whistle seems to me rather the preferable encounter. Furthermore, she does speak, "shout[ing] something," (145) albeit something that Marlow does not understand - but neither does he seem to understand the "appall[ing]" declarations of love for Kurtz expressed by the other.

With just this, I'm not really contesting Achebe's claim that Conrad was "a bloody racist," (19) but I feel he oversimplifies Darkness, as this example shows. I find it interesting that reading Achebe seems to produce audience indignation on Conrad's behalf. As my post might indicate, I feel this justified, but I also wonder whether, ala Gikandi's conclusion, it arises because we still can't "displace" Conrad "from the ritualised place that he occupies in the modern" (476) library.

Boumshead Revisited

Last week, I was highly ambivalent about A Passage to India, in part because of Forster's sweeping generalisations of both the white administration and the natives despite that "there is no such person in existence as the general Indian." (XXX, 232) Reading Fanon this week, it dawns upon me that perhaps if I apply his fundamental tenet, that "the colonial world is a Manichaean world," (6) to Passage, I might be able to alleviate my "echo," as it were. Fanon's colonial world is a "compartmentalised world, this world divided in two," (Fanon, 5) and it is this world that Forster writes of, a world of binaries for which generalisations thus must hold. For the natives, "he too generalised from his disappointments - it is difficult for members of a subject race to do otherwise;" (II, 6) for the colonisers (and this is already a kinder view), "all unfortunate natives are criminals at heart, for the simple reason that they live south of latitude 30." (XVIII, 143) Mrs Moore's "Christian tenderness had gone" (XXI, 172) in the face of "boum, it amounts to the same," (XXIII, 180) but as she leaves India, "'I have not seen the right places,' she thought," the "untouched places," (181) and "longed to stop" at even Bombay, "the huge city which the West has built and abandoned with a gesture of despair" (182) - India's final words to her are "'So you thought an echo was India; you took the Marabar caves as final? They laughed, 'What have we in common with them, or they with Asirgarh? Good-bye!'" (182) Perhaps India is right, there are "a hundred Indias," (I, 8) India is itself irreducible; then perhaps Fanon is too right, it is colonialism that reduces it to "a world compartmentalized, Manichaean and petrified." (15) Then, too, Forster is right: his generalisations are by definition truth in a Manichaean world, and the Westerners of whom I complained defy his stereotypes merely "new-comer[s]" not yet "fatigued" by that "hostile" Indian soil (II, 11) - thus it is that the Western "Oriental" Mrs Moore must go mad, Adela must depart, and even Fielding must eventually cease to be "the renegade" (XXIV, 192) and "thro[w] in his lot with Anglo-India by marrying a countrywoman." (XXXVII, 279) The Manichaean world that colonialism creates is what makes it so that Fielding and Aziz "must inevitably part," and it is only when colonialism and the Manichaean binaries of coloniser and colonised are "driv[en]…into the sea" (282) that "[Fielding] and [Aziz] shall be friends." (282) Problem solved! Except not, for "my echo has come back again badly." (XXIV, 184)

My ambivalence has spread to Fanon. In "On Violence" he too generalises - rather, if it is said Forster generalises, Fanon fairly dictates. His writings are as Manichaean as the colonialised world he speaks of - in his unyielding insistence upon the definitive thoughts and actions of 'the colonised', 'the intellectuals', 'the coloniser', 'the European nations', slowly but surely it becomes impossible to stave off uncomfortable comparisons to the blundering, insula, Western anthropological studies that Gikandi and Levine had raised, and indeed, McBryde's very own "Oriental Pathology, his favourite theme." (XXIII, 189) To compare thus nevertheless appals me - it seems to align Fanon with the very colonisers he raged against, to make of him an early-Aziz who at once seeks to "shake the dust of Anglo-India off his feet" (II, 10) and yet "felt important and competent" to have the English as "his guests." (XIII, 113) Somewhere, Fanon is spinning in his grave; I hastily attempt to rectify my trespass and grant the benefit of the doubt: of course, the world of which he speaks is a colonised one, Manichaean due to the colonialism, like Forster's, and of course his writings would too be thus Manichaean, how could it be otherwise in such a world? Treacherously I cannot help but continue to think perhaps to re-enact this Manichaeanism in his text makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, as compartmentalising as the colonisers, as imperative as to which is the right - the only - way…Fanon still spins - enough. I cannot bear to accuse him of complicity, perhaps it would suffice to conjecture that the tone, the structure of his writing bears testament to his theory - colonialism stains the colonised; we are still brimming with anger, slowly smashing the barriers and statues of this psuedo-petrified world. This is my decision now, but perhaps by the end of this course, it'll be Fanon instead that I'm smashing. But now, yes, now I cannot bear it, and neither can I bear to smash Forster - which brings me to my next thought "On Violence." Forster's colonised India bears much resemblance to Fanon's Manichaean world, and yet the most important aspect of Fanon's colonialised world appears to be largely, as I mentioned in my last blog posting, elided in Passage - that of violence. Next to Fanon's 'manifesto,' the lack of outright violence in Passage seems ever more underscored. Fanon is of the colonised, Forster of the coloniser - even this alone would suggest that after all is said and done, Forster still writes through Western eyes, that he elides the political currents, the Indian violence, because - what? Any number of reasons, he did not think them significant enough, he did not want to give the Indians too much credit, it all boils down to the idea that he has "reduced" India in spite of his words. But as I said, I cannot bear to smash Forster now, and instead I will propound: I have not read much Forster but of what I have, I can barely imagine him writing directly of war. Maybe it's just not his "thing." Instead of colonialism, I see his elision of violence as more of modernism. Instead of reduction, I prefer to think of it as perhaps a kind of metonymy. There is, I think, much to thrash out and dispute if one were to read Forster through Auerbach, but nevertheless, to simplistically lift wholesale: "it is precisely the random moment which is comparatively independent of the controversial and unstable orders over which men fight and despair; it passes unaffected by them, as daily life. The more it is exploited, the more the elementary things which our lives have in common come to light." (552) Rather than the bloodiness of the riots, Forster pins the crux of the novel and its Manichaean colonial tensions on perhaps such a (once again, relatively) random moment: an event that may or may not have happened, a trial that dissolves and an urge to violence that diffuses. "The Marabar caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a district." (XXV, 206) This, perhaps, more than the blood and thunder, is what (hopefully) displays to one that "the strata of societies and their different ways of life have become inextricably mingled," (Auerbach, 552) so, perhaps, one day the coloniser and the colonised "shall be friends." Aziz's conclusion, after all, shows that Forster is not unaware of the need on the native's part for the violence of which Fanon speaks: "if it's fifty five-hundred years we shall get rid of you; yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea." (XXXVII, 282)

These blog posts are getting way too long for my rapidly disintegrating study schedule - the next one will (have to) be shorter, but I just have to finish off with (another) clarification. What I meant by stating in class that the novel takes pains to establish that the characters are "not-gay" was really, being the sort of person who can't bear to smash Forster, simply that, for a novelist who seemed to have taken pains to conceal his own orientation from the public audience all his life, I can't help but feel like we're rebuffing his pains in possibly concluding that Fielding and Aziz were friends largely because they're 'gay for each other' (you gotta admit that was taking over the entire discussion for a bit…). Not that I'm not saying it can't be a factor, especially considering the highly homosocial if not homoerotically charged conclusion with its "myriads of kisses," (279) just that I feel it mightn't have been supposed to be a factor so obviously and easily considered by the audience Forster intended, who weren't supposed to know about his homosexuality. Just a little consideration of the possible intention of the author - which, I know, I know, is an outdated concept…

The Unbearable Triteness of Boum and Other Problems

A Passage to India fills me with ambivalence - similar to my ambivalence over Kipling's Kim, and it is notable that twenty years separate them and my ambivalence does not wane (though admittedly twenty years is but a short span in history, literary or otherwise). Indeed, Forster is sympathetic towards the natives, indeed the white administration is portrayed far worse than the locals, but indeed it is nevertheless still a white man's sympathy. If there is a 'hero' in this polyphonic text, it is Fielding. Generalisations (on the part of the seemingly objective narrator, laying aside the generalisations made by characters whose viewpoints are incorporated into the narration) about India and Indians are made sweepingly even as Aziz points out "there is no such person in existence as the general Indian' (XXX, 232) - when Fielding reali[ses] "the profundity of the gulf that divided him from them. They always do something disappointing," his point is constantly being proven by the irrationalities and cruelties of every Indian character, no matter how likeable. In contrast, the generalisations too made about Westerners in India are often disproved by Fielding and to an extent Adela, the only characters in the book who always follow the path of truth without prompting. The capper is Ralph Moore, who descends during an Indian holy festival and directs the native Aziz to the uncanny image of the Rajah, prompting Aziz to "[feel] that his companion was not so much a visitor as a guide" (XXXVI, 274) - even if Aziz had declared him an "Oriental" (XXXVI, 272), it is still a white man who performs this ultimate messianic act. It struck me as a hypocrisy of sorts, the hypocrisy - conscious or otherwise? - of an English intellectual who can quite rightly lambaste the white administration but can too seem not to think it presumptuous to declare "there is something hostile in [Indian] soil" (11) and just about conclude with a white messiah. Dr. Koh's Ashis Nandy quote actually helped to quell my ire here; "all representations of India are ultimately autobiographical," and I tried to remind myself so too is Forster's. Even if his Indians indeed "always do something disappointing" and "there is something hostile in that soil," "a hundred Indias…whisp[er] outside beneath the indifferent moon" and the thought that "India seem[s] one"(I, 8) is merely illusion, whether for his Indians or him.

And yet, still ambivalence, for though "a hundred Indias…whisper" - "boum, it amounts to the same." (XXIII, 180) What am I to think of Mrs Moore's existentialist crisis? In Part III, we perhaps come to see that "boum" is hardly a problem for India as it is for Mrs Moore and Adela, for "it amounts to the same" is celebrated: "they loved all men, the whole universe…to melt into the universal warmth." (XXXIII, 249) Could it be a sign of the irreconcilability of the Eastern and Western mind, that the Caves, as the sky, say "no, not there" (XXXVII, 282) in "boum," so that Mrs Moore in her proclaimed Orientalness can "know" (XXIX, 228) but as inevitably a Westerner cannot cope with? The Western mind that "hope[s]" Shri Krishna will "[come] in some other song" where the Indian mind cannot "[understand the] question [of whether he comes in some other song]" and accepts that "he neglects to come," (VII, 66) that "God is not born yet - that will occur at midnight - but He has also been born centuries ago, nor can He ever be born." (XXXIII, 247) But then, if "Boum, it amounts to the same," what of the fact that the "hundred Indias" are not the same, and Sri Krishna is of the Hindu and Aziz is Moslem? Do Forster's contradictions have a point, or is he too struggling with India and "boum?" So for now, more ambivalence. I look forward to discussion, and while there are several other issues that seized my interest greatly, I'll save them for next week's blog post, just in case. One last point, to raise my dear Levine (whom, I have too noticed, seems oddly significantly less polemic in "Britain in India" than in "Ruling an Empire"), "Britain in India" illustrates that the India of which Forster writes was subject to a great many tensions, and often violent action. In Passage, I see little of chronicled widespread movement, and instead a strong focus on a singular and relatively trivial matter, that even when the community is moved to action, it is an easily subdued affair. Even the violence during Mohurram is all but elided, and defused with comedy. "It amounts to the same," Auerbach's (relatively) "random moment," (552) or something else altogether (such as lingering colonial sentiment, which I hesitate to suggest)? I cannot presume Forster's intentions, but I struggle to judge if I consider it a feature or a flaw.

And a clarification on Levine (er, outside of my two legitimate passages): contrary to what I fear might be popular opinion, I don't have a problem with her content in "Ruling an Empire" - there is not a lot she says that I don't agree with to one extent or another. What I have a problem with is that either 1. she takes it for granted that I would agree with everything she says, or 2. she is desperate to convince me that I should agree with everything she says. If it is 1, I take offence that she presumes me, the audience, so presumptously (as Dr. Koh conjectured in class), if it is 2, I am aghast at how blatantly she goes about her convincing, that I can see so clearly that what is intended to be read as fact is a desperately argued argument. It's just sloppy. Of course every "objective" historical article is really a subjective persuasive argument, but I consider it the hallmark of a successful(ly masquerading) historian to be able to couch the latter as the former. But you may also consider me a history prude, and it is only one person's opinion.

Response: Gikandi, Levine and Auerbach

Uh, I haven't seen a precedent, so I hope I'm doing this right. Here's a response to the three readings this week, focusing primarily on the Gikandi. It ran a bit longer than I'd expected - apologies! I'll definitely work on trimming future responses... My first read-through of "Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference" left me sceptical of how far Gikandi had fulfilled the Picasso-centric goals of his piece as laid out in the early passages with his rather general conclusions of "perspective and spectatorship." (476) However, looking at it again, I wonder more appreciatively whether the article does not in its execution mirror the challenge of "displac[ing] Picasso…from [his] ritualised place" (476) he is keen for studies of modernism to take up. After all, the tight focus on Picasso the article begins with gives way to wider considerations of modernism, and allows, particularly, the African 'other's' perspective to dominate such considerations near the close, diluting and eventually edging out the Picasso factor - and thus view from traditional Modernist studies - to finally leave at least this reader with the stronger impression of the African take on the development of modernism. Of course, I say this, but all in all I still can't be sure whether that was Gikandi's intention, or if he simply meandered as was my original impression…

Something else that struck me from the article was an observation that I felt was a disturbing echo of another in Levine's "Ruling an empire," a chapter I thought was a straightforward read, if somewhat heavy on the disdain the author felt for the Empire's belittling of its colonial subjects - certainly it is a justified disdain and the obvious and contemporarily 'proper' way to view colonial rule, but it fairly drips from every other sentence engaging the colonial view of its subjects, a feature of the narration I found distracting in an excerpt with so much factual information. In any case, Levine notes that, in spite of the missionaries' criticism of "imperial policy and practice," they were "nonetheless a part of imperial conquest" (120) - "it was not imperialism as a philosophy that missionaries criticised." (121) Upon reading this, I was immediately put in mind of Gikandi's statement that "even when artists such as Picasso questioned colonial practices, they seemed to reproduce the colonialist model of African societies; they questioned the practice but not the theory of colonialism." (476) As Levine points out, literary portrayal from even the Victorian era of such missionaries has largely been "unflattering," (121) so their duplicity is hardly a surprise; however, to realise that 'revolutionary' artists often respected in literary studies were guilty of the same duplicity that seems self-evident in the case of missionaries does chill me. The insularity that shaped the Western view of the 'other' that is often accepted as fact, that both Levine and Gikandi point out as a flaw of commonly accepted knowledge is thus made real to me with startling clarity, and I realise I still have a way to go in my personal "displacement and deritualisation," as Gikandi would have it. (476) Reflecting thus on my thoughts after reading Auerbach's "The Brown Stocking," this realisation is underlined. Other than a brief raised eyebrow at the effusiveness of "Yet what realistic depth is achieved in every individual occurrence, for example the measuring of the stocking!" (552) I had found very little quarrel with the chapter, thinking it fascinating and enlightening about a topic I still know precious little about. Only after Gikandi and Levine did I think to ponder more on the brief mention of "exotic peoples" (552) and the lack thereof contributing to the development of the modernist technique. Now that I think about it, Auerbach's conclusion thus seems incredibly simplified. I'm not sure what to make of it yet, but at least, thanks to Gikandi's challenge, I'm coming into awareness of the possibility that something may be made of it.

Tan Hui Jun, Jean [HT074193A]