And we have arrived at the end....

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues that ‘[t]o speak a language is to take on a world, a culture’ (38). In doing so, we lose a sense of our own national identity and culture, and there is a certain fear in there being a lost in the continuation of this culture. We certainly see this conflict embodied between Stephen and Davin: Stephen represents the higher culture of Irish that has been ‘assimilated’ into English culture (in other words, the privileged one. Think LKY and the like) and is an example of the anxieties surrounding a potential loss in identity that Fanon highlights in his article; Davin represents the peasant, the Irish that is fiercely trying to hold on to his Irish identity –‘Whatsoever of thought or of feeling came to him from England or by way of English culture his mind stood armed against in obedience to a password’ (196).

Perhaps we can understand this conflict better by looking at our own Singaporean context. In absorbing the English language as our first language, we have created a common language that helps to unify everyone together, making it possible for people of different races, cultures and backgrounds to communicate with one another. But at the same time, we have lost, or at the risk of losing, the very cultures that our very forefathers had brought along with them when they came to Singapore. One of my Malaysian friends asked me today why is it that in Singapore, we have the option of dual sound for Japanese and Korean dramas but not for Hong Kong dramas or dramas in dialects? My answer was that the government wanted to unify the Chinese together by pushing for Mandarin as the Chinese’ Mother Tongue, and not the dialects. Yet, there still exists a worry that in doing so, we are losing the unique culture that each dialect group brings with them. We are like Stephen and Davin: being easily assimilated into the Western culture to the extent that when I went to England people reacted with surprise that 1. I dress the way they dress. 2. I talk the way they talk. 3. My major is English Literature; at the same time, we are struggling to hold on to our Asian values, to our own traditional cultures and negotiating a Singaporean culture at the same time.

Since this is the last blog post of the week, I’d like to say that at the end of this module, I have looked deeper into my own sense of self and my own notion of a national identity. I question what is it that I have lost by growing up in Singapore, by being introduced to English at an early language and loving (and thus consuming) English and English culture more than say Mandarin and Chinese culture. Looking back, I wished I had put in more effort in Chinese and learnt more about my own culture; at the same time, I also wonder what life would have been like if I had grown up in Malaysia (being a Malaysian at first) as opposed to in Singapore. What language would I be speaking and would I be comfortable with? What culture will I be in? What mask will I be wearing? Perhaps, I should like Stephen, attempt ‘to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race’ just to make sense of things. Just kidding.

Finally, a text from the colonized

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

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

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

Restoring my faith...

I felt that Woolf was a much more honest writer than Orwell was, and he presented the dilemmas colonial masters faced in a much clearer light. Woolf highlighted the performative aspects colonialists had to play but at the same time, demonstrated to the reader his attempts at negotiating between the performativeness and truthfulness.

I think part of the reason why I felt that Growing was more real than the other works we have read on the course is because he does not adopt this high and mighty imperialist attitude towards the colonized. There were several instances where we see him as who he is, another human being in an alien land. When he wrote about the death of an Arab man, the description was simple and sad:

The four men “waded back slowly; the feet of the dead man stuck out, toes pointing up, very stark over the shoulders of the men in front. The body laid on the sand. The bearded face of the dead man looked very calm, very dignified in the faint light (95).

Woolf did not dehumanize the Arab man, did not try to impose strict binaries but rather his description of the man as ‘dignified’ touched me. Just when I had lost all faith in colonial masters as humans and saw them as just greedy and self-absorbed men, I’m glad Woolf came along to restore some faith in them. And I thought it was hilarious how he said he was ‘infuriated when I saw a rather unpleasant looking white man introduced into my room by the peon without my permission’ (129). Where he said ‘[t]he longer I was in Ceylon, the more prejudiced I became against “white men”’ (129), for me, it’s the more empire writings I read, ‘the more prejudiced I become against “white men”’ (129).

'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?

I am lonely, let me in!

I find it interesting to read Burmese Days after “Shooting an Elephant”. If I had not read “Shooting an Elephant” first, my attitude towards Burmese Days might have been quite different. As it is, I have problems with Elizabeth’s and Flory’s characters.

In my previous post, I said Orwell in “Shooting an Elephant” reflects the conflicts the White man faces simply because he is seen as a colonist. Flory seems to embody these conflicts and magnify them in Burmese Days. Both show an intense dislike for the British Empire and proclaim an interest in and sympathy for the Burmese. Both also reveal the pressures they are under to perform their proper prescribed roles in the colony. For Orwell, it was the act of having to shoot the elephant that highlighted his helplessness, that he even lacked control over whether or not he could shoot an elephant. For Flory, this helplessness was more profound. First, as a friend of Dr. Veraswami, he does not have as much power as the rest of the Europeans in the club. Second, despite his constant criticisms of ‘the British prestige, the white man’s burden, the pukka sahib sans peur et sans reproche’ (36), he still subscribes to it. He gives excuses for not being able to help his Oriental friend out: ‘No, he could not face that row! It was not worth it’ (46). Despite what Flory says, I still find that he desires to be a part of the White community, to fit in or at least, have someone else just like him. Which was why he desired Elizabeth, someone whom he thought would understand him and shared his point-of-view. This desire for her reflects his desire to conform and assimilate into British society more than to show his open-mindedness towards Burmese culture. Ultimately, Flory is still a White man who wants to belong somewhere, and this somewhere is still British society, whether he likes it or not.

Shooting the heart

Reading Orwell’s Shooting An Elephant provides a refreshing insight into the difficulties of the imperialist. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but most of the times when I read colonial texts I tend to align myself more with the colonized as the victimized rather than with the colonizer. But here in SAE, it is not so simple. Orwell’s presentation of the dilemmas he face, in being both an imperialist and seemingly sympathetic attitude towards the Burmese, makes him one of the most humane characters. The way he is caught between the imperialists and the Burmese reminds me of Ronny in A Passage to India: how they have to change their attitudes and wear masks just so as to fit into their prescribed space. As Orwell highlights, ‘Feelings like these [hatred towards both the imperialists and the Burmese] are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty’. We are not presented with as much insight into Ronny’s mind, but I don’t think he buys entirely into the whole colonialism business but rather succumbs to the motion because he’s stuck in it; hence his constant parroting of the “wiser” senior imperialists.

Yet for Orwell, when the opportunity was presented for him to remain true to himself, he is pressurized to act otherwise. Despite how much he says he wants to let the elephant go, he can’t. He not only has to save his own face and act like a proper White man (‘A sahib has got to act like a sahib’), he is answerable to the Burmese themselves. It’s like a circus act: You want to see me shoot an elephant? Well, then you’ll see it! Ultimately, we come to the realization that neither the imperialist nor the colonized are truly free.

300 words

*As an aside, when I saw that we’re going to read this work on the course, I wondered if it was the same as the comprehension passage I did in secondary school. It was the same, although the one I read back then was a shorter edited version. And I remember my teacher tearing when she read aloud the part where Orwell just kept shooting the elephant…somehow, that memory just kept replaying itself when I was reading this again.*

-Yuen Mei-

Lord Jim , the bane of my essaying life

In the midst of essay-writing time, Lord Jim comes trotting along. Things would be much easier if it was a short text or it was written in a more comprehensible style, but no, Conrad had to make my life even more miserable by frequently losing me in the course of the narrative. And so, I am thus compelled to write a post about this horribly confusing choice of multiple narratives that render readers like me confounded.

First, let me clarify what I mean by ‘multiple narratives’ in Lord Jim. Yes, the novel is written mostly from the point-of-view of Marlow, who interestingly functions as a third person narrator retelling the story of Jim to an audience – both the listeners and us readers. Yet, within this retelling, he refers to other characters that give their own perspectives of the events that occur or of Lord Jim himself. The result is we have differing readings of the character of Lord Jim, and we never really know (or at least, I don’t know, till the part I’ve read up to) who he is. Which reminds me of the issue of the real ‘India’ in A Passage to India: no one is able to give us a definitive representation of his character. In a way it kind of reflects real people: we have multiple sides to ourselves that no one reading by any person, including ourselves, will produce an apt presentation of who we are. Just like Lord Jim, our real selves will never be quite fully understood, nor aptly represented by others. In the process of telling Jim’s story, Marlow and others bring in their own ideas of who he is, and these are ultimately tainted by their own impressions of and interactions with him.

-Yuen Mei-

Defending Achebe (just 'cos I'm trying to be different :P)

I’m quite fascinated by the discussions that Achebe’s article has thus far generated on the blog – they’re all very interesting, and mostly defend Conrad’s work. When I first read Achebe’s article I was quite disturbed by his aggressiveness in attacking HOD, and his assertion that HOD is ‘an offensive and deplorable book’ (11). But when I read all the people defending Conrad, I wonder if perhaps Achebe could be defended as well? I mean, his criticism must have some valid points in it to frequently be prescribed as the article to be read alongside HOD.

Thinking deeper about Achebe’s article, I realize that Achebe wasn’t solely attacking Conrad per se. Achebe, to me, was just using Conrad’s HOD to prove his bigger point: Western literary texts that deal with the empire mostly tend to perpetuate the overarching view of the empire as the Other; in this case, Achebe’s Africa is the Other. When Achebe wrote

Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality (3).

Doesn’t it echo some of the other readings we’ve done on this course? That oftentimes, these binaries are present in these literary works and our readings of them could influence our own perceptions of Africa. Art has the power to influence, and Achebe worries that this influence is a negative one – one that continues to encourage these binaries rather than break them down. Hence, at the end of his criticism, Achebe proposes a possible change, ‘Perhaps this is the time when it can begin, when the high optimism engendered by the breathtaking achievements of Western science and industry is giving way to doubt and even confusion’ (14).

(297 words)

-Yuen Mei-

Fanon's pen is mightier than your sword

What struck me, and disturbs me, about Fanon’s “On Violence” is the aggressive style and tone that he adopts in writing the chapter. The words he uses are very harsh and violent and Fanon doesn’t mince his words, attacking and driving home his point again and again. Perhaps he meant for his readers to be disturbed by his style, and to think about the points he raised. Fanon definitely had an agenda in mind when he wrote this, and I think he does achieve it as far as anti-colonialism goes; but whether it still resounds with readers today I’m not too sure. Perhaps for those who share a similarly violent de-colonization background in their fight for independence (which brings to mind all those Southeast Asian histories that I studied in JC—remember the Vietnamese and the Burmese?), but coming from a Singaporean background, the violence he portrays doesn’t strike a strong chord in me, probably because what we’ve studied is Singapore’s rather mild de-colonization process (even the fight with the communists pale in comparison with what Fanon portrays here). Yet, keeping in mind that Singapore didn’t have it all that bad, I had to control my discomfort over his writing and finish the reading. I must say that Fanon’s work is rather revolutionary in itself (which reminds me of Aziz’s poem that Godbole liked the most), and after reading the chapter, I had to go and search for some background information of him out of pure curiosity.

What interested me was that he was ‘born into a mixed family background: his father was the descendent of African slaves, and his mother was said to be an illegitimate child of mixed race’ (from Wikipedia, not the best source to cite from but oh well) and he himself was a victim of racism from the French which formulated his entire anti-colonialism framework. I was also struck by his uneasy relationship with the French language, which he wrote in Black Skin, White Masks, ‘To speak . . . means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization’ (17-18); for Fanon, as was what we’ve previously discussed, the adoption of the colonizer’s language is a violence done to oneself because in doing so, he has absorbed the French’s culture and way of thinking which then conflicts with and alienates his blackness. So, since his article was originally written in French, his presentation of anti-colonial sentiments in a particularly violent style in the colonizer’s language is interesting because in doing so, he is performing violence towards the colonizer using their own language and words rather than using an ethnic language. In “On Violence”, what is more fascinating is his avocation of the peasants as true revolutionaries because ‘it has nothing to lose and everything to gain’ (23) as opposed to other classes because the peasants are the only ones who don’t see any improvements in their situations whether the country is colonized or de-colonized. Considering the plight of Third World countries in the world today, I’d say Fanon’s observation is a rather sharp and sound one.

The biggest nugget I took away from this chapter is the idea of ‘absolute violence’ and the belief that violence begets more violence, but the only way to end it all is absolute violence which destroys everything, leaving behind a clean and blank slate. Only then can the world truly move on from the endless cycle of violence done to and done onto.

On another note, I wonder how much of this reading constitutes Fanon’s voice, and how much of it is the translator’s? Because I’m quite sure some things were lost in translation, and I can’t help but question if we will gain a different sense and understanding in reading the original rather than the translated. Alas, I don’t know French so I guess I’ll never know.

-Yuen Mei-

The contaminated, India and history

In light of the Gikandi and Levine readings that we did last week-- about how the colonized could be Westernized but the colonizers, in adopting the culture of the colonized, are seen as contaminated – doesn’t it seem particularly applicable to Passage to India and in particular, Fielding?

Consider the British’s reaction towards him: there is this distance between Fielding and his own people because he isn’t like them. In choosing to keep company with the Indians, the English, in particular the women shun him. ‘He had found it convenient and pleasant to associate with Indians and he must pay the price’ (VII 53). Fielding is an example of one whom the colonizers see as ‘contaminated’; in desiring to indulge in his relationships with Indians, he has become a misfit, one who neither fits-in with the British nor with the Indians. But Fielding isn’t the only one. How about Mrs. Moore, and Ronny’s reaction to her friendship with Aziz? Certainly it is frowned upon, as is Miss Derek because, as Ronny puts it, ‘[…] how a decent girl like Miss Derek can take service under natives puzzles me…’ (VIII 83). It makes one think about the kind of danger these ‘contaminated’ pose to English culture: what fear do the British have? They desire to keep and retain what they can of home in an alien land, yet they can’t avoid not coming into contact with the Indians. The only thing the British can do is to take precautions and ensure that their culture doesn’t become interchanged. Forster wrote that the British in India were like the exiled – I think for them to ensure that they don’t become further exiled, they have to preserve what they can of their own culture and essentially, their own identity.

I also find it particularly interesting how Adela keeps insisting on seeing the ‘real’ India. Many classmates have already asked in their posts, ‘what IS the real India?’ I don’t think we’ll ever know. The British, by colonizing India, has already changed what India was. For Adela to see the real India, she has to first see through the British, to see beyond the anglicized Indians, and even then what she sees may not be an accurate representation of what India is. Her surname itself is worth analyzing: Quested, as in questing for what India is, and yet the past tense of the name suggests that she has already decided what ‘real’ India should be before even reaching India (I hope I’m not pushing it too far). Why else will she keep rejecting the India that she’s shown and keeps insisting to see something else, something that comes closer to what she perceives the ‘real’ India to be? Then again, Forster also presents the idea of perceptions, how we always perceive things and tend to be biased towards our own perceptions. Aziz has his own romanticized image of India, so does Fielding, so does Ronny and every other character in the novel. Who is right and who is wrong? Or are they all correct? It’s like saying, “let us show you the real Singapore!” but what is the real Singapore? Adela is essentially a tourist in another country. She has been conditioned by her own country’s value systems and beliefs and has adopted her own views on India. Her perception is, in other words, already coloured. People tend to see what they want to see, and for Adela, Ronny, Mrs. Moore, Aziz etc., we’re presented with what they want to see their environment as. It’s like us being tourists to another country – we each have our own notions of what we want to see in that country, and what the ‘real’ country is about.

In a way, I think history is also like this. History is after all, ‘His Story’, and as stories go, they tend to be told by someone. And since it is told by someone, the story tends to have biasness that reveals the storyteller’s own conditioning and beliefs. Like how Levine could be said to be biased in her “Ruling an Empire”, I think all historians are biased, even if they strive not to come across as one. History is a story that is told from the point-of-view of someone who believes in his or her version of the history – much like how Adela believes in her own idea of the ‘real’ India.

-Yuen Mei-