Waiterrrl, hor woarh ji buie jiu (Bing me a beeya)

Fanon's very first paragraph left an indelible impression on me:

"The Black man has two dimensions. one with his fellows, the other with the white man. A negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro. That this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question ..." (17)

In the texts that we have studied, I argue that this phenomenon is not just limited to the Black man, but almost everyone in the colonies. I find this split in identity or consciousness intriguing, mostly in part that it is a very modernist aesthetic, something of schizophrenia. This pattern of fragmentation and splitting of identities, or double-standards, can be traced to administrations of colonial rule. How colonialism is ruled on difference, but it is also very ambiguous because the government in the colony is mediated to a degree to suit the cultural context, marking its difference of metropole rule. I think it can be said that colonial rule is schizophrenic in itself.

As compared to his previous essay, I quite sympathize with Fanon this time round. His lamentation that the Black man seeks to emulate European culture and rejects his indigenous culture is poignant. This psychological brainwashing that European culture and language as the benchmark and symbol of progress/modernity is a form of cultural genocide of Black man culture.

I feel for this on a personal level perhaps because I have never mastered Teochew (think LKY bilingual policy), which severely handicaps my communication with my grandmother. We can communicate only through a series of guesswork, gestures, and awkward smiles. It is this irreparable loss of being able to communicate in Teochew, to connect to a lost past, to understand the nuances of my dialect (for want of a better word) group that struck me personally.

Leakage

I find it interesting how colonialism has switched from a racial problem, to a religious one. At least one thing stays the same, that colonialism is essentially a rule of difference. In Ireland, the Empire’s involvement made use of religious difference, between Protestants and Catholics. To elaborate further, this rule of difference is ironically an effort by the British Empire to work with local allies. As Jackson states, “[t]he cultivation of these allies might be linked to the policies of division and rule which were often the hallmark of the British colonial presence” (130). In addition, “[t]he British, in Ireland and elsehwerre, were always keen to exploit division, and to transfer their affections and support from one local community to another, depending on their calculation of advantage” (131).

Jackson’s commentary on colonialism in Ireland is refreshing, because it states some of the positive side effects of colonialism. He is careful not to appear as endorsing or valorizing British colonialism in Ireland, but it made me curious about the ‘leakages’ or side effects that colonialism had not intended.

These ‘leakages’ can, I think, be related back to the modernist techniques. The idea of resisting totality, of ‘leakages’, is perhaps another way of highlighting plurality of meanings, the futile efforts in containing and establishing control for something inevitably eludes and escapes. In a strange way, I see Stephen’s rejection of everything, as a form of ‘leakage’, to resist taking any sides and to abandon all forms of binding structures.

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning (268, 269)

show me the women

There is hardly any mention of women, much less notable and interesting woman personalities in Leonard Woolf’s Growing. I think this is very much explained by Stoler’s article on how colonial policies discourage the immigration of European women into the colonies, limiting marriages only to high ranking officials and keeping salaries of European recruits “artificially low” to prevent them from starting a family (48). I think that it is the scarcity of European women, rather than Leonard Woolf’s deliberate omission that explains the lack of female personalities in his autobiography.

Leonard Woolf did pay special attention to the Lewis and Price couple. Mrs Lewis was “[l]arge, plump, floridly good-looking”, “a Jane Austen character complete in face, form, speech, mind – a Mrs Jennings” (42). She is “an inveterate matchmaker” equipped with “artless and embarrassing manoeuvres” (43). Mr John Penry Lewis was a “[l]arge, slow, fat, shy man” who was “extremely lazy and not fond of responsibility”, “took little interest in administration” (41). Mrs Price “was the exact opposite of Mrs Lewis. She was a real Victorian lady” (114). She is “rather silent and extremely nervous”, with an “impenetrable reserve” (114). Ferdinando Hamlyn Price was “[t]all, thin, athletic looking, baldish, with a long hatchet-face” and was “congenitally and incorrigibly lazy” (105).

There are a few observations to be made. Both Mrs Lewis and Mrs Price have “delicate sensibilities” and need for “elevated standards of living” (55). Mrs Price whose “life with Price and Ceylon ... terrified her” (114), Mrs Lewis and her gramaphone (88). Marriages are confined to high ranking colonial officials (i.e. G.A). Married men are lazy and seldom dealt with colonial administration, preferring to delegate the jobs to young and single subordinates (i.e. Leonard Woolf).

Contrary to Stoler’s article, I do not see European women and marriage as having that much of an impact on colonial rule. Then again, perhaps that is what Stoler is concerned with, the overlooking and omission in assessing the influence of European women with regards to colonial policies.

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.

you're sooooo good!

I find it slightly disturbing that from Chapter 1 to 18 of Burmese Days, all the Natives I have come across are fawning over the Europeans. Dr Veraswami came out tops in his disillusionment of the greatness of Europeans:

And consider how noble a type iss the English gentleman! Their glorious loyalty to one another! The public school spirit! Even those of them whose manner iss unfortunate – some Englishmen are arrogant, I concede – have great, sterling qualities that we Orientals lack. Beneath their rough exterior, their hearts are of gold.

The Doctor’s disillusionment is so ludicrous that I begin to suspect if he is truly sincere with all this talk. Apparently, he is: “Dr. Veraswami had a passionate admiration for the English, which a thousand snubs from Englishmen had not shaken”.

However, while LOL (at least I did) at Veraswami’s highly misguided admiration, it also exposes how (a) this image of the almighty European is an empty illusion, (b) how there are natives who are as brainwashed as Dr Veraswami in worshiping the Europeans and/or the idea of an European.

While Dr Veraswami is certainly sincere in his remarks, I am rather sure that the narrator does not share the same view. I think the narrator is taking a jibe at Europeans indirectly, and who else does it better other than a misguided Native. Everything that praises the Europeans is presented in a comic and ironic fashion. There is a reversal of roles here: we have Flory (a white), who openly criticizes the hypocrisy of Colonizers, and we have Dr Veraswami (a native), defending the Europeans and their greatness. It is Dr Veraswami’s “positive eagerness that he, as an Indian, belonged to an inferior and degenerated race” that makes bitter irony in his defense of the Europeans.

The punchline:

“The weakness of your argument, my dear friend,” he said, beaming at his own irony, “the weakness appears to be, that you are not thieves.” (mine in bold)

Magic rifle

It’s difficult to compare this week’s readings, but I’ll give it a shot (pun!) anyway.

To support his claim that “the spread of modern institutions or technologies had not weakened the hold of caste in anyway, Vincent Smith argues that

The necessities of cheap railway travelling compel people to crowd into carriages and touch one another closely for many hours ... The immense practical advantages of a copious supply of good water from stand-pipes in the larger towns are permitted to outweigh the ceremonial pollution which undoubtedly takes place … but such merely superficial modifications of caste regulations.

I have a similar observation in Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant. The rifle superficially and temporarily unites the narrator and the Burmese but the essential difference between them as colonizer and colonized are never at anytime or in anyway effaced even though there are moments of shared ‘connection’ between the two.

The narrator “was momentarily worth watching” by the Burmese when he has “the magical rifle” in his hands. The rifle also unites the narrator and the Burmese for the common purpose of hunting down the elephant. The narrator with his “rifle in hand” has “two thousand people marching at my heels” while he tracks down the runaway elephant. The rifle unites the narrator and the Burmese psychologically, albeit in different contexts. The narrator was psychologically pressured by the Burmese to shoot the elephant and exhibit his “sahib” omnipotence, while the Burmese are psychologically excited by the spectacle of the narrator killing the elephant and to scavenge the meat and tusks off the dead elephant. At the pull of the trigger, the narrator “heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd”. Once the rifle has been utilized and the elephant shot, everything reverts back to ‘normal’ (the indifference between colonizer and colonized). The indifference is made more explicit with the discussion of the coolie’s death as measured in his economic value (“elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie”) and as legal evidence to give the narrator “sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant”.

I might be pushing this a bit far, but the various steamships in Heart of Darkness, the Patna in Lord Jim, and the trains and cars in A Passage to India seems to provide spaces for the colonizer and colonized to come together?

Cryptic Creepy Crawlies

Stein’s room was filled with “horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of butterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass cases of lifeless wings” (167). The “[c]atacombs of beetles” and “graves of butterflies” sets the stage for the discussion of Jim (168, 175). 

Pondering over an “extraordinary perfect specimen” of a butterfly he had chanced upon and captured after surviving an ambush by his adversaries, Stein draws references between butterfly (masterpiece) and Man (amazing, but not a masterpiece). 

There are obvious parallels between the butterfly and Jim. Both are associated with death. The butterfly was found and caught after a killing, while Jim was known for the Patna incident. Both are extraordinary and rare. Both are admired by their respective collectors (Stein - entomology and Marlow - human specimens). 

One can draw references between the studying of the butterfly to the study of Jim. However, Marlow and Stein talked in coded terms and “avoided pronouncing Jim’s name” (177). It seems to me whether Jim should be a beetle (unsavory image) and “creep twenty feet underground and stay there” (165) or “fly high with a strong flight” like the butterfly (172). 

The discussions on being a romantic, of Absolute Truth and Beauty as “elusive, obscure, half-submerged” (178) suggest a pained nostalgia of the departure of Victorian values and perhaps, literary style (butterfly as a Victorian symbol too). The prospect of preserving the dead  (tradition and culture) with the dead (literature?), similar to what entomology does, is not a satisfying one. However, there are no other options, giving rise to an immense pessimism of loss and mortality, themes closely associated to modernism, and the Empire (through Stein). 

(283)

Response to Chinua Achebe reading

As mentioned in the article, “Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray – a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate”. I was thus reminded of this particular quote I have read in the Preface written by Oscar Wilde for his own book, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all” (Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

I think the quote pretty much explains itself in opposition to Achebe’s point about “artistic good faith”.

In addition, I think that the plurality of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is precisely what makes it so interesting and perhaps, worth spending time studying. HOD can be read as a racist text, but at the same time, its subversion of the Empire’s civilizing mission also critiques the Empire’s idea of progress as a form of regression.

If I may add, I believe that pluralism is central to the reading of modernist texts.

I shall conclude with another one of my favourite quotes:

“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital” (Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

(224 words!)

Fanon, Forster, Violence

Fanon’s ‘On Violence” makes quite an exciting read. The never-ending violence between the colonizer and the colonized, the strategies they each employ against one another, and how the colonized undergoes a transformation (from “thing” to man) during the violent process of decolonization.

However, putting Fanon and Forster together, Forster’s A Passage to India is not as violent, but a rather nullifying experience. Forster has this knack of building up dramatic tension only to flatten it. The expected climatic experience after all that dramatic tension is not fulfilled. If we read Fanon into Forster, I would say that the trial of Aziz would have been the linchpin to the violent process of decolonization, but it was not.

“The Marabar Caves had been a terrible strain on the local administrations; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a District” (223).

However, we do get a sense that decolonization is in its infancy. Aziz’s victory made the Indians “aggressive. They wanted to develop an offensive, and tried to do so by discovering new grievances and wrongs, many of which had no existence" (245). Also, the victory led to a unification of sorts between the Hindu and Moslem (251). There are several changes on the colonizer’s side too, such as the Political Agent no longer having as much power and influence as before (280)

Yet, it is always made clear that the violent decolonization process is not going to happen.

"British officialism remained, as all-pervading and as unpleasant as the sun; and what was next to be done against it was not very obvious" (245, 246).

The colonizer’s Repressive State Apparatuses are still in place, in the form of surveillance.

"The Criminal Investigation Department kept an eye on Aziz ever since the trial -- they had nothing actionable against him, but Indians who have been unfortunate must be watched, and to the end of his life he remained under observation" (279).

Although decolonization is not happening on a large social scale, we do see the character of Aziz develop from a “thing” into a semblance of a “man”. I say ‘semblance’ as Aziz did not become the radical and violent colonized rebel suggested by Fanon. Aziz merely affirms his cynicism of his oppression as a colonized subject. Looking back, he acknowledges that “[t]his pose of ‘seeing India’ which had seduced him to Miss Quested at Chandrapore was only a form of ruling India; no sympathy lay behind it” (292).

I think that Forster has presented a far more realistic account of decolonization as compared to Fanon. I quite agree with the possibilities that Fanon suggests with regards to the whole decolonization process, but it is unsatisfying as it is also reductive. Fanon’s decolonization process is like a step-by-step “An Idiot’s guide to Decolonization”, colonized and colonizer relationships are over-simplified as he views them both as items/objects/units (inflexible), rather than humans (flexible). What disturbs me most is perhaps that he does not consider the forging of friendships/relationships/love etc between the colonizer and the colonized possible other than a violent relationship. He argues that the colonized is always waiting for a chance to replace the colonizer, whereas Forster suggests to us the possibility of a union between the colonizer and the colonized.

Toes

The quote “[t]he man who doesn’t toe the line is lost … If you leave the line, you have a gap in the line” struck me as particularly meaningful when thinking about issues related to modernism and empire (160).

The statement was made by McBryde as a word of caution to Fielding for being on the side of the Indians. In McBryde’s opinion, Fielding’s disregard for conforming to the standards and rules established by the Anglo-Indian community in Chandrapore will result in his expulsion, hence “lost”. The second part of the quote is McBryde’s obvious hinting at Fielding’s obligation and duty to his own kind.

In the colonial enterprise where everyone is obliged to “toe the line”, there is certainly “no room for – well – personal views” (160). Everything is based on the collective, which in a sense erases unique individual identities. The “wife of a small railway clerk” who was “generally snubbed”, becomes a symbol of “all that was worth fighting and dying for” with her “abundant figure and corn-gold hair” (170). The body is idealized and transformed into a symbol that makes it “all worth fighting and dying for”. All sense of the individual is erased from the body. Leaving the “line” results in a “gap”, a space that can be exploited and used against the collective. The anxiety that the hegemony of colonial rule will be threatened is a significant concern for the colonists. This is certainly a direct opposite of modernism, which celebrates the individual and rejects any rigid categorizing. And it is in this polarity (Empire / Modernism), that I find interesting, albeit in a nebulous way for now.

If we view “the line” as (Victorian?) literary tradition, modernist writers are certainly the culprits that do not “toe the line”. In leaving “the line”, they created “a gap in the line”, which I see it as an opening up of a space for multiple perspectives and voices. To allow for “a close approach to objective reality by means of numerous subjective reality by means of numerous subjective impressions received by various individuals” (Auerbach). Yet, there is also a sense of “los[s]”, with no omniscient meaning to be derived and no conclusions to be arrived at.

Linking the two points I have tried to make, I see the employing of the modernist technique as a possible/adequate way of addressing the issues of colonialism. Rather than taking sides (imperialist vs anti-imperialist), it opens up a gap to engage readers in formulating their own viewpoints and opinions. The ambivalence in A Passage to India has been astutely commented on by Jean, which I think is the main point of the novel. It is a “passage”, rather than Destination India.

Gikandi and Auerbach

Harlow

Gikandi’s Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference got me thinking about Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. The article stated that “the primitive was a conduit to understanding “civilized” man, art and poetry, not an endpoint in itself; there was no incentive to understand the Other unless it would lead to an understanding of Western civilization either in its “childhood” or moments of crisis” (458). I find this statement useful towards the reading of HOD. The story centers on imperialism and the white (“civilized”) man’s anxiety towards his interaction/similarity with the natives (the Other). Any mentioning of Africa and the Other happens at the periphery so as to fulfill the ultimate task of understanding the white man, who occupies the centre. Interestingly in HOD, the natives only appear at the margins of the river while the white men are located centrally in the river. The hired natives on the boat are positioned around Marlow, never occupying the central position/authority as he does. The article also mentioned that Picasso values Williams “merely as an object or subject of art, not as an artist, not as a body, not even as a human subject” (456). In this sense, perhaps the essentializing of Africa and Africans in HOD renders them into mere inanimate objects (no individuality)? The depiction of Africans as units of labour literally objectifies them to fulfill Conrad’s artistic expression of the slavery issue?

Auerbach’s “The Brown Stocking” was an interesting read. The explanation on how Virginia Woolf weaves the exterior occurrences and inner thought processes seamlessly through themes and images is enlightening. However, I find myself asking if there is any significance in this reading with regards to issues of the Empire, perhaps it only applies to the Modernism aspect of this module?

Cheng Wenzhang (Max)