LATENT AND MANIFEST ORIENTALISM
Objectives:
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To enable the learner
understand Edward Said’s key ideas in his book ‘Orientalism’.
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To enable the learner
understand the problem of ‘representation’(inaccurate yet unchallengeable),
‘resistance’ and ‘space’(the west subversion and the real oriental land) in
postcolonial theory.
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To enable the learner
understand the underpinnings of the ideas about orient as propagated by the
west.
Edward Said's 'Latent and Manifest Orientalism'
Edward Said's evaluation and critique of the
set of beliefs known as 'Orientalism' forms an important background for
postcolonial studies. His work highlights the inaccuracies of a wide variety of
assumptions of the orients and questions various paradigms of thought which are
accepted on individual, academic and political levels. The orient signifies a
system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient
into western learning, western consciousness, and western empire. The Orient
exists for the West, as a mirror image of what is inferior and alien(the other)
to the West. Orientalism is "a manner of regularized writing, vision and
study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases
ostensibly suited to the Orient." The Oriental is the person represented
by such thinking. The man is depicted as feminine, weak, yet strangely
dangerous because he poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both
eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The oriental is a single image, a
sweeping generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and
national boundaries. In 'Latent and Manifest Orientalism', Said distinguished
between the terms latent and manifest orientalism in an attempt to support his
overall thesis that eurocentricity and racism had created a body of knowledge
regarding the East that was not only false, but the inverse of what the East
held as its own superiority.
Said has spent an inordinate amount of time
detailing his perception of 'latent orientalism'. He defined it as an almost
unconscious embodiment of an inaccurate yet unchallengeable body of ideas,
beliefs, clichés, or learning about the East. These ideas were then distilled
into what came to be widely known as the essential ideas characterizing the
Orient – its sensuality, its tendency to despotism, its aberrant mentality, its
habits of inaccuracy, its backwardness. Said also explains how the view of
latent orientalism becomes racist, imperialistic and ethnocentric product. In
addition, he explored the uses of Orientalism and asserts that its mere
existence was dependent upon another culture's perception of the east's
unimportance to the world in general. To corroborate his assertions, Said cites
the writings of Renen, Cuvier, Gobineau and Knox, each of whom he said kept
intact the separateness of the Orient, its eccentricity and its backwardness in
a framework constructed out of 'biological determinism'. However, it was the
emphasis on the Orientalist's view of the Orient as being unimportant as an
area in and of itself, of being a place whose principal worth was uniformly defined
in terms of Europe that became the pivotal point in Said's explanation of
Orientalism. For once the readers had been made utterly familiar with examples
that Said uses to support his view of Orientalism as a product of western
ideals and viewpoints, and latent orientalism as a form of reporting on this
viewpoint. Then, Said moves onto discuss the shift to manifest orientalism. He
also noted that latent orientalism was essentially hermeneutical, that it was
reportage of the westerner's version of the east from a distance. However, as
the sociopolitical climate changed and more interactions occurred between the
east and west, the distance was lessened and people from the west traveled to
the orient.
Said makes a distinction between latent and
manifest orientalism. Manifest orientalism has been comprised of "the
various stated views about Oriental society, languages, literatures, history,
sociology, etc.", whereas latent orientalism has been more stable,
unanimous and durable mode of thought. In manifest orientalism, the difference
between Orientalist writers, their personal style and form of writing have been
explicit, but the basic content of their writing, "the separateness of the
Orient, its eccentricity, its backwardness, its silent indifference, its
feminine penetrability, its supine malleability" has reflected the more or
less unified latent orientalism. Moreover, latent orientalism and race
classifications have supporters, especially in the nineteenth century. The
'Second-order Darwinism", of Orientalism has seemed to justify division of
races to backward and advanced, and further, using a binary typology, to
backward and advanced cultures and societies. The lesser civilizations have
been thought to have suffered from the limitations caused by the biological
composition of their race. Hence they have been seen as in need of
moral-political admonishment and even colonization by Europeans. The
Orientalist discourse has been highly similar to the discourse approaching the
delinquents, the insane, the women and the poor within Europe. They all have
been deemed lamentably alien. As other marginalized people, the Orientals have
been seen through (not looked at) and analyzed as problems (not as citizens),
or confined or taken over. As Said states, whenever something was designated as
Oriental, the act included an evaluative judgement. "Since the Oriental
was a member of a subject race, he had to be subjected."
To Said, latent orientalism seems to have also
been a significantly male-oriented worldview. Orientalist gaze in general has
had 'sexist blunders' rendering Oriental Women objects of a male power-fantasy.
The Oriental women have been seen as unlimitedly sensual, lacking in
rationality, and most importantly willing. Said claims that the male conception
of the world has made the Oriental discourse "static, frozen and fixed
eternally". Thus also the Orient had had no possibility of development,
and the Orient and the Oriental could not have been seen as transforming and
dynamic entities. In a way, the Orient –
like a woman to a man – has been seen as the weak and inferior partner. The
Oriental has needed the Orientalist to be animated. The Feminine Orient has
waited for European penetration and insemination by colonization.
The Orient as well as the Occident have been
and still are man-made, in a way the Orient could even be seen as a surrogate
or underground Self of Europe, giving strength and identity to European
culture. The West and the East as European ideas have had a long tradition
including certain way of thinking, imaging and vocabulary to give the ideas
"reality and presence in and for the west". Obviously there is an
Orient, a 'geographical' area that has its reality outside Western imagery, and
this Orient is not a creation without corresponding reality. The Orient is not
essentially an idea, because there are peoples, nations and cultures that are
situated in the area called the Orient. The lives of these peoples, who cannot
be united in any other way than geographically, have histories and customs, and
a reality that is something outside the scope of European imagery. Thus, in a
way Said acknowledges the existence of 'real' Orient, but in examining
Orientalism he is not interested in the truthfulness of the discourse compared
to the Orient of reality. In other words, Said's purpose is not to "draw a
better map" of the Orient. Instead, Said studies the "internal
consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient .. despite or beyond
any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a 'real' Orient. The fact that Said
is not giving any options to the Orientalism he so intensely criticizes, has not surprisingly, caused
frustration in the academic circles defending Orientalist disciplines, and at
least as many comments aiming to fortify Said's position.
Latent and manifest
Orientalism:
Latent Orientalism
describes the dreams and fantasies about the Orient that, in Said’s view,
remain relatively constant over time. Manifest Orientalism
refers to the myriad examples of Orientalist knowledge produced at different
historical junctures. Said proposes that while the manifestations of Orientalism will be
different, due to reasons of historical specifics and individual styles or
perspective, their underlying or latent
premises will always be the same.
The Shape of Orientalism:
1.
Orientalism constructs binary divisions between the Orient and the Occident: The Orient is frequently described in a series
of negative terms that serve to buttress a sense of the West’s superiority.
Thus, in Orientalism,
East and West are positioned through the construction of an unequal
dichotomy. Moreover, Orientalism
reveals more about those that describe the Orient than the peoples and places
that are being ‘described’. The West comes to know itself by proclaiming via Orientalism everything it
believes it is not. Consequently, Said claims that ‘European culture gained in
strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of
surrogate and even underground self.
2.
Orientalism is a Western Fantasy:
Orientalism is first and foremost a fabricated construct,
and is in no way reflects what may or may not actually be there in the Orient
itself; it doesn’t exist outside of the representations made about it by
Westerners. Orientalism
may be fundamentally imaginative, but materially effects result from its
advent.
3.
Orientalism is an institution:
The
imaginative assumptions of Orientalism
are often taken as hard facts. They make possible a whole institutional
structure where opinions, views and these about the Orient circulate as
objective knowledge, wholly reliable truth. The Orient, writes Said, became an
object ‘suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for
reconstruction in colonial office……’ (Orientalism, pp.7-8).
4.
Orientalism is literary:
Orientalism similarly influences the multitude of
literary (and non-literary) writings. It also made possible new forms of writing
that enshrined and often celebrated Western experience abroad.
5.
Orientalism is legitimating:
Orientalism is a system of representation bound to a
structure of political domination. Orientalist representations function to
justify the propriety of Western colonial rule of Eastern lands. They are an
important part of the arsenal of Empire.
Stereotypes of the Orient:
1.
The
Orient is timeless:
If the
West was considered the place of historical progress and scientific
development, then the Orient was deemed remote from the influence of historical
change. Conceived in this way, the Orient was often considered as ‘primitive’
or ‘backwards’.
2.
The
Orient is Strange:
The
stereotype of the Orient’s peculiarity makes the orient not just different, but
oddly different. The Orient’s eccentricity often functioned as a source of
mirth, marvel, and curiosity for Western writers and artists, but ultimately
its radically oddness was considered evidence enough of the Orient’s
inferiority.
3.
Orientalism makes assumptions about ‘race’:
Assumptions
were often made about the inherent ‘racial characteristics of Orientals,
despite of individual qualities and failings (e.g. the murderous and violent
Arab, the lazy Indians, the inscrutable Chinaman).
4.
Orientalism makes assumptions about gender:
The
Oriental male was frequently deemed insufficiently ‘manly’, and the Oriental
female was often depicted as immodest, active creature of sexual pleasure. This
doesn’t comply to the western gender roles, and adds to the general sense of
oddness and abnormality ascribe to the Orient.
5.
The
Orient is feminine:
In Orientalism, the East as a
whole is ‘feminised’, deemed passive, submissive, exotic, sexually mysterious,
while the West becomes ‘masculine’, active, dominant, heroic, and rational.
According to Said, this is in part a result of the fact that Orientalism was ‘an
exclusively male province’ (p.207). It is worth considering the extent to which
the Orient was depicted as a site of perverse desire on the part of many male
colonizers. Projected onto the Orient are fantasies of the West concerning
supposed moral degeneracy, confused and rampant sexuality. These fantasies did
much to stimulate the domination of the Orient, but also its continuing
fascination for many in the West.
6.
The
Orient is degenerate:
Oriental
peoples were often considered as possessing a tenuous moral sense, and the
readiness to indulge themselves in the more dubious aspects of human behaviour.
In other words, Orientalism
posited the notion that Oriental peoples needed to be civilized and made to
conform to the perceived higher moral standards upheld in the West.
Criticism of Orientalism
1.
Orientalism is ahistorical:
The
major criticism of Orientalism,
from which several of others stem, concerns its capacity to make totalizing
assumptions about a vast, varied expanse of representations over a very long
period of history. Said’s examples of Orientalist writing range from the
Italian poet Dante writing in the early fourteen century up to twentieth-century
writers. Can it be true that they all hold essentially the same latent assumptions? Can such
a massive archive of materials be so readily homogenized? Said’s work takes in
a broad, generalizing sweep of history but attends little to individual
historical moments, their anomalies and specifics.
2.
Said
ignores resistance by the colonized:
Said
rarely stops to examine how Oriental peoples received these representations nor
how these representations circulated in the colonies themselves. Said stands
accused of writing out the agency and the voice of colonized peoples from
history as he never stops to consider the challenges made to dominant
discourses. In so doing, his work is in danger of being just as ‘Orientalist’
as the field he is describing by not considering alternative representations
made by those subject to colonialism.
3.
Said
ignores resistance within the West:
According
to Said, ‘every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was
consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric (Orientalism, p.204). This is
a sweeping statement. What about those within the West who opposed colonialism
and were horrified by the treatment of colonized peoples.
4.
Said
ignores gender differences:
Said
argues that Orientalist representations were made in the main by men. This
explains why the Orient is a specifically male fantasy and is often represented
in feminine terms. But did western women write about the Orient? And if they
did, did they also resort to the same stereotypes? Said rarely looks at women’s
writing in Orientalism.
The Terms
The
Orient signifies
a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient
into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient
exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a
mirror image of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to the West.
Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or
Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives,
and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image
of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship. The Oriental is the person represented by such thinking. The man is depicted as feminine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries.
Latent Orientalism is the unconscious, untouchable certainty about what the Orient is. Its basic content is static and unanimous. The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric, backward, silently different, sensual, and passive. It has a tendency towards despotism and away from progress. It displays feminine penetrability and supine malleability. Its progress and value are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is always the Other, the conquerable, and the inferior.
Manifest Orientalism is what is spoken and acted upon. It includes information and changes in knowledge about the Orient as well as policy decisions founded in Orientalist thinking. It is the expression in words and actions of Latent Orientalism.
SUPPLEMENTARY
STUDYMATERIAL: DECOLONIZING THE MIND
-Prof. J. Dinesh Kumar
Objectives:
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To
enable the learner understand the very origin of the idea of ‘decolonization’in
its appropriate historical context of nationalism.
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To
enable the learner understand how nationalism guided the directions to be taken
for attaining decolonization.
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To
enable the learner understand the social forces in action both enabling and
disabling decolonization/native consciousness.
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To
enable the learner as a postcolonial subject answer: Is your mind an occupied
territory?
Negritude
Etymology:
The word ‘Negritude’ was coined (1939) by Aime Cesaire, from the French word
“negre”, which was equivalent to ‘black’ or ‘negro’ in France; but “nigger” in
Martinique. Cesaire deliberately and proudly incorporated this derogatory word
into the name of his ideological movement. The term negritude was coined by
Cesaire and it means in his own words “the simple recognition of the fact that
one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as blacks, of our
history and culture.” The movement, both literary and ideological is marked by
its rejection of European colonization and its role in the African Diaspora -
pride in blackness and traditional African values and cultures, mixed with an
undercurrent of Marxist ideals.
Origin:
Negritude was a literary and ideological movement led by francophone black
intellectuals, writers and politicians. The founders of negritude known as ‘the
three fathers’, were originally from three different French colonies in Africa
and the Caribbean but met while living in Paris in the early 1930’s; and came
with the journal ‘The Black Student’ (1934).
Negritude is a literary and political movement developed in the 1930’s
by a group that included the future Senegalese President Leopold Sedar Senghor,
Martinican poet Aime Cesaire and the Guianan Leon Damas. The negritude writers
found solidarity in a common black identity as a rejection of French Colonial
Racism. They believed that the shared black heritage of members of the African
diaspora was the best tool in fighting against French political and
intellectual hegemony and domination.
Although each of the ‘fathers’ had different ideas about the purpose and
style of negritude, the movement is generally characterized by, (i) reaction to
colonization: denunciation of Europe’s lack of humanity, rejection of western
domination and ideas; (ii) identity crisis: acceptance of and pride in being
black; valorization of African history, traditions and beliefs; (iii) Marxist
ideals.
Resistance to West and Black
Consciousness: Negritude originally a literary and
ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals reflects an
important and comprehensive reaction to the colonial situation. This movement,
which influenced Africans as well as Blacks around the world, specifically
rejects the political, social and moral domination of the West. The term, which
has been used in a general sense to describe the black world in opposition to
the west, assumes the total consciousness of belonging to the black race.
In the contrast to this broad definition, a narrower one pertains to
artistic expression. The literature of negritude includes the writings of black
intellectuals who affirm black personality and redefine the collective
experience of blacks. A preoccupation with the black experience and a
passionate praise of the black race provides a common base for the imaginative
expression in association with romantic myth of Africa .
The external factor defining the black man in modern society is
colonialism and the domination by the white man, with all the moral and
psychological implications. Negritude rehabilitates Africa
and all blacks from European ideology that holds the black inherently inferior
to the white – the rationale for western imperialism.
Aime Cesaire:
A poet, playwright and politician from Martinique, Aime Cesaire studied in
Paris, where he discovered the Black community and rediscovered Africa. He saw
negritude as the fact as being black, acceptance of this fact, and appreciation
of the history, culture and destiny of black people. He sought to recognize the
collective colonial experience of blacks – the slave trade and plantation
system – and attempted to redefine it. Cesaire’s ideology defined the early
years of negritude.
Leopold Sedar Senghor: Poet and first President of Senegal, he used negritude to work
towards a universal valuation of African people and their biological
contributions. While advocating the expression and celebration of traditional
African customs in spirit, he rejected a return to the old ways of doing
things. This interpretation of negritude tended to be the most common,
particularly in later years.
Leon-Gontran Damas: A French Guyanese poet and National Assembly member, he was then an
ardent and wild follower of negritude. His militant style of defending black
qualities made it clear that he was not working toward any kind of
reconciliation with the west.
Frantz Fanon:
Student of Cesaire, psychiatrist, and revolutionary theoretician, he dismissed
the movement as too simplistic.
During the post-war period, the concept of negritude developed along two
opposing lines of interpretation. The first sustains the notion as a cultural,
historically developing process. This, we have seen, was implicit in Cesaire’s
original conception of the term, and he increasingly abandoned any notion of
negritude as based upon a genetic or ‘blood’ inheritance: “my negritude has a
ground. It is a fact that there is a black culture: it is historical, there is
nothing biological in it.” Cesaire’s concept of negritude objectifies the
self-alienation of colonized black subjects through an act of creation: the
neologism. In his usage, an alienated black identity is forced to confront
itself as a reified object.
Senghor’s negritude is to use his own term, an ontology, or study of the
being of blacks in the world, a fundamentally ahistorical, transcultural
determination of the constituents and commonalities of “blackness” in African
Diaspora societies. “Negritude: the ensemble of characteristics, of manners of
thinking, of feeling, proper to the black race; belonging to the black race.” –
French Robert Dictionary.
A few writers attacked the perceived cultural imperialism on the part of
the francophone African intellectuals: “the tiger doesnot stalk about crying
his tigritude” – is itself is yet another manifestation of slave mentality, one
that stemmed from an inherent inferiority complex; also drawing attention to
Cesaire’s neologism, offers a trenchant warning against the fetishization of
blackness: “The Black does not exist … (negritude)is a sentimental and empty
trap. Starting from an illusory ‘racial’ community founded upon a heritage of
suffering, if obliterates the true problems that have always been of a
political, social and economic nature… our liberation will come through the
knowledge that there will never be any blacks. There have only ever been human
exploitations” – a development model of enlightenment that sustains and
advances the transformational project of black liberation, utopian freedom.
Underlining its historical dimension, the author of ‘The Wretched of the
Earth’ following Hegel’s 1804 Phenomenology of Spirit, undertakes a veritable
phenomenology of black consciousness as it moves from immersion in the
immediacy of experience to self-consciousness and fully historical human
existence.
Celebration of black African identity was the major focus of negritude
as defined by Senghor. In his view, colonization had stripped their culture of
not only their uniqueness, but also the means of expressing it, via a
transposition of a foreign language. While the writers of the negritude
movement did not use their indigenous languages, they did use French and other
languages in new ways, using them to express symbolically their connection to
traditional African culture, rituals and symbols. In fact, according to Senghor,
negritude defined the best means of expressing the essence of black identity,
and he often stressed the existence of a unique black psychology.
Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ –
Chapter: Conclusion(Outline)
Fanon's "Conclusion" is a direct appeal to like-minded individuals to
transform themselves in an effort to remake the world. It is a strident call
for the rejection of the European model that has brought the world to
"atomic and spiritual disintegration". He calls on us to not imitate
the Western world but to chart a new course, perhaps using the Western world as
a negative role model.
Indeed, Fanon calls on the Third World to solve the problems -- of human
relationships -- that Europe has not been able to solve. "It is a question
of the Third World starting a new history of Man", of avoiding the crimes
committed by Europe in its quest to conquer the world. "Humanity is
waiting for something from us other than such an imitation, which would be
almost an obscene caricature".
Thus Fanon
conclusively leaves us with an imperative -- a moral one – to "try to set
afoot a new man". The decolonized has the responsibility to create, to
invent, to chart a new course for humanity. And therein lies the challenge and
the responsibility of the Black scholar in America.
Criticals:
Criticals:
Fanon distinguishes between an open and
a closed culture in his analysis of the process of colonization. An open culture is one which has been
allowed to develop from its own potential, like a growing organism, without being
artificially slowed in one direction or another by an external culture. This
open culture is an indigenous entity which is capable of many different
direction and possibilities. The important thing is that the indigenous culture
must be allowed to determine its own goals based on its traditional past.
A libratory
post-colonial theory ought to provide us with concepts and words to
describe and explain what would constitute or what it would take to build such
a society.
For Fanon oppression is the practice and
institutionalization of violence by the colonial state, which is not only
motivated and perpetuated by economic motives, but also by psychological and
cultural interests. The revolutionary response of the oppressed to such
violence beings out a new language, a new people, a new humanity, and such
response has the potential to produce a liberated society.
‘The Wretched of the Earth’ hailed as
‘the handbook for the Black Revolution’, is a probing examination of
colonization, a compelling description of the process of decolonization, and a
prophetic analysis of independence movements around the world. The work
provides a glimpse of Fanon’s grand vision of international and intercultural
affairs, and Fanon gives specific prescriptions for individuals and
collectivities that continue to seek cultural and national liberation. Fanon’s
conclusion underscores the importance of this work for African and African
American liberation, to be sure; but, more importantly, it challenges African s
throughout the Diaspora to assume a leadership position in bringing about a
new, more humane world order.
Albert Memmi argues that Fanon overestimated the leadership role of the
Third World poor. (i) The colonized
people feel a hatred (ii) the colonized (the unchanging central figure of
Fanon), is a product of the colonial system. It is the colonizer who ‘made’ and
‘continues to make the colonized’. (iii) All the natives need to cooperate
(third world and not Africa, to avert cold war) not only do we want to progress
for ourselves, but we want it for everyone.
Fanon
takes great pains to distinguish between the kind of revolutionary culture he
is speaking of and the pseudo-national cultures most African states have
contented themselves with: folklore, negritude, truncated and self-interested
version of the national past. The revolution if it is not to lose itself in
chauvinism, racism, or other errors, must seek to evolve a national
consciousness which can transcend narrow nationalism. Only thus, Fanon argues,
will it be possible to attain a new humanism. It is Fanon at his most
theoretical, but also at his most universalist and humanitarian.
National Consciousness and Decolonization:
‘Colonial
Domination’ manages to disrupt the cultural life of conquered people. This
cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality –
the marginalizing of the natives and their customs, via a systematic enslaving
of men and women. A logical question that would arise in such a context – what
about the simple instinct for preservation of native culture in the natives?
(How the colonizers managed to suppress it?) Every effort was made to bring the
colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture; a culture which has
become a part of their instinctual behavior, to make the natives recognize the
unreality of his ‘nation’(In India too, the idea of nation took shape much
later in the freedom struggle movement.).
Does
the idea of nation call for a new culture of the indigenous culture? Within
this framework of colonial domination there is not and there will never be such
phenomena as new cultural departures or changes in the national culture. Here
and there valiant attempts are sometimes made to reanimate the cultural dynamic
and to give fresh impulses to its themes, its forms and its tonalities. The
immediate, palpable and obvious interest of such leaps ahead is nil. But if we
follow up the consequences to the very end we see that preparations are being
thus made to brush the cobwebs off national consciousness to question
oppression and to open up the struggle for freedom.
Is
National Consciousness nothing more than to negate the colonizers? A national
culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is
sought in systematic fashion(for an instance, boycott of foreign goods,
swadeshi movements). It very quickly becomes a culture condemned to secrecy.
This idea of clandestine culture is immediately seen in the reaction of the
occupying power which interprets attachment to traditions as faithfulness to
the spirit of the nation and as a refusal to submit to the colonial power. This
persistence is following forms of culture which are already condemned to
extinction is already a demonstration of nationality; but it is a demonstration
which is a throwback to the laws of inertia. There is no taking of the
offensive and no redefining of relationships. There is simply a concentration
on a hard core of culture which is becoming more and more shriveled up, inert
and empty.
Colonial
exploitation, poverty and endemic famine drive the native more and more to
open, organized revolt. The necessity for an open and decisive breach is formed
progressively and imperceptibly; and comes to be felt by the great majority of
the people. Those tensions which hitherto were non-existent come into being.
International events, the collapse of whole sections of colonial empires and
the contradictions inherent in the colonial system strengthen and uphold the
native’s combativity while promoting and giving support to national
consciousness.
These
new found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of
colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for
example, there is relative over-production. From being a reply on a minor scale
to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes
differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism.
The
colonialists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made
their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing
conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are infact
assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such
processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatization and to clear the
atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transistory. In fact, the progress
of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the
literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the
people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his
cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal.
In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallization
of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and
also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native
intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor,
whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through
ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on
the habit of addressing his own people.
It
is only from that moment that we can speak of a national literature. Here there
is, at the level of literary creation, the taking up and clarification of
themes which are typically nationalist. This may be properly called a
literature of combat, in the sense that it calls on the whole people to fight
for their existence as a nation. It is a literature of combat, because it
moulds the national consciousness, giving it form and contours and flinging
open before it new and boundless horizons; it is a literature of combat because
it assumes responsibility, and because it is the will to liberty expressed in
terms of time and space.
On
another level, the oral tradition – stories, epics and songs of the people –
which formerly were filed away as set pieces are now beginning to change. The
story tellers who used to relate inert episodes now bring them alive and
introduce into them modifications which are increasingly fundamental. There is a
tendency to bring conflicts uptodate and to modernize the kinds of struggle
which the stories evoke, together with the names of heroes and the types of
weapons. The method of allusion is more and more widely used. The formula ‘this
all happened long ago’ is substituted by that of ‘what we are going to speak of
happened somewhere else, but it might well have happened here today, and it
might happen tomorrow.’
The
contact of the people with the new movement gives rise to a new rhythm of life
and develops the imagination. Every time the story teller relates fresh episode
to his public, he presides over a real invocation. The existence of a new type
of man is revealed to the public. The present is no longer turned in upon
itself but spread out for all to see. The story teller once more gives free
vein to his imagination; he makes innovations and he creates a work of art. It
even happens that the characters, which are barely ready for such a
transformation – highway robbers or more or less antisocial vagabonds – are
taken up and remodeled. The emergence of the imagination and of the creative
urge in the songs and epic stories of a colonized country is worth following.
The story teller replies to the expectant people by successive approximations,
and makes his way, apparently alone but infact helped on by his public, towards
the seeking out of new patterns, that is to say, national patterns. Comedy and
farce disappear, or lose their attraction. As for dramatization, it is no
longer placed on the plane of the troubled intellectual and his tormented
conscience. By losing its characteristics of despair and revolt, the drama
becomes part of the common lot of the people and form part of an action in
preparation or already in progress.
Well
before the political or fighting phase of the national movement an attentive
spectator can thus feel and see the manifestations of new vigour and feel the
approaching conflict. He will note unusual forms of expression and themes which
are fresh and imbued with a power which is no longer that of invocation but
rather of the assembling of the people, a summoning together for a precise
purpose. Everything works together to awaken the native’s sensibility. His
world comes to lose its accursed character. The conditions necessary for the
inevitable conflict are brought together.
In
the colonial situation, culture, which is doubly deprived of the support of the
nation and of the state, falls away and dies. The condition for its existence
is therefore national liberation and the renaissance of the state. It is the
fight for national existence which sets culture moving and opens to it the
doors of creation. Later on it is the nation which will ensure the conditions
and framework necessary to culture. The nation gathers together the various
indispensable elements necessary for the creation of a culture, those elements
which alone can give it credibility, validity, life and creative power.
A
struggle which mobilizes all classes of the people and which expresses their
aims and their impatience, which is not afraid to count almost exclusively on
the people’s support, will of necessity triumph.
The
natives who are anxious for the culture of their country and who wish to give
to it a universal dimension ought not therefore to place their confidence in
the single principle of inevitable, undifferentiated independence written into
the consciousness of the people in order to achieve their task.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUPPLEMENTARY
STUDYMATERIAL:LANGUAGE IN POSTCOLONIALISM
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, MADRAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE
-Prof. J. Dinesh Kumar
Objectives:
-
To sensitive the
learner as to how language has been used as a tool by the colonizer and in turn
by the colonized for decolonizing.
-
To make the learner
understand how native culture is transmitted to the next generation via the
native language.
-
To help the learner
understand how alienating the native from the native language alienates the
native from his\her own culture and nation.
-
The learner understands
how ‘colonial education’ is part of the ideological formulation (cultural
hegemony).
-
The learner is informed
about the central issues in the debate concerning the selection of language by
the postcolonial third world writers.
-
The learner understands
the techniques employed by the third world writers in their writings(language
aspect) viz., abrogation and approximation.
-
To stimulate critical
thinking in the learners about decolonization in their immediate environment.
-
The state of literary
translation practices adopted in third world countries will also be discussed.
Methodology:
James Ngugi‘s seminal article ‘Decolonising the Mind’ will be used as a point
of reference to discuss the issue in hand. The view of the other theorists will
also be discussed.
COLONIAL EDUCATION
Colonial Education: The
process of colonization involves one nation or territory taking control of another
nation or territory either through the use of force or by acquisition. As a
by-product of colonization, the colonizing nation implements its own form of
schooling within their colonies.
The
purpose of colonial education: The idea of assimilation is important when dealing with colonial
education. Assimilation involves
those who are colonized being forced to conform to the cultures and traditions
of the colonizers. Gauri Viswanathan points out that "cultural
assimilation (is)...the most effective form of political action". She
continues with the argument that "cultural domination works by consent and
often precedes conquest by force". Colonizing governments realize that
they gain strength not necessarily through physical control, but through mental
control. This mental control is implemented through a central intellectual
location, the school system.
Kelly and Altbach state that "colonial
schools,...sought to extend foreign domination and economic exploitation of the
colony". They find that "education in...colonies seems directed at
absorption into the metropolis and
not separate and dependent development of the colonized in their own society
and culture". The process is an attempt to strip the colonized people away
from their indigenous learning structures and draw them toward the structures
of the colonizers.
Much of the reasoning
that favors such a learning system comes from supremacist ideas of leader
colonizers. Thomas B. Macaulay asserts his viewpoints about a British colony-
India, in an early nineteenth century speech. Macaulay insists that he has
"never found one among them [Orientalists, an opposing political group]
who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the
whole native literature of India and Arabia". He continues stating,
"It is, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which
has been collected from all the books written in Sanskrit language is less
valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at
preparatory schools in England". The ultimate goal of colonial education
might be deduced from the following statement by Macaulay: "We must at
present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the
millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but
English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect." While all
colonizers may not have shared Macaulay's lack of respect for the existing
systems of the colonized, they do share the idea that education is important in
facilitating the assimilation process.
The
impact of colonial education: Often, the implementation
of a new education system leaves those who are colonized with a lack of
identity and a limited sense of their past. The indigenous history and customs
once practiced and observed slowly slip away. The colonized become hybrids(through mimicry) of two vastly different cultural systems. Colonial
education creates a blurring that makes it difficult to differentiate between
the new, enforced ideas of the colonizers and the formerly accepted native
practices.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, a
citizen of the once colonized Kenya, displays his anger toward the isolationist
feelings colonial education causes. He asserts that the process
"annihilate(s) a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in
their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their
capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one
wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from
that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest
removed from themselves" (Decolonising the Mind).
Not only does colonial
education eventually create a sense of wanting to disassociate with native
heritage, but it affects the individual and the sense of self-confidence.
Thiong'o believes that "...education, far from giving people the
confidence in their ability and capacities to overcome obstacles or to become
masters of the laws governing external nature as human beings tends to make them
feel their inadequacies and their ability to do anything about the condition of
their lives" (The Global Education Process).
The
decolonization process: In order to eliminate the harmful, lasting effects of colonial
education, post-colonial nations or territories must remove the sense of
nothingness that is often present. Thiong'o insists that "To decolonize
our minds we must not see our own experiences as little islands that are not
connected with other processes" (The Global Education Process). Post-colonial
education must reverse the former reality of "education as a means of
mystifying knowledge and hence reality" (The Global Education Process). A
new education structure boosts the identity of a liberated people and unites
previously isolated individuals.
LANGUAGE AND POSTCOLONIALISM
Should the writer use a colonial
language to reach a wider audience or return to a native language more relevant
to groups in the post-colony? How can texts in translation from non-colonial
language enrich our understanding of postcolonial issues?
Ngugi’s
Response:
Most
radical among those writers who have chosen to turn away from English. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a Kenyan writer
of Gikuyu descent, began a very successful career writing in English before
turning to work almost entirely in his native Gikuyu. In his 1986 Decolonising
the Mind, his "farewell to English," Ngugi describes language as
a way people have not only of describing the world, but of understanding
themselves. For him, English in Africa is a "cultural bomb" that
continues a process of erasing memories of pre-colonial cultures and history
and as a way of installing the dominance of new, more insidious forms of
colonialism. Writing in Gikuyu, then, is Ngugi's way not only of harkening back
to Gikuyu traditions, but also of acknowledging and communicating their
present. Ngugi is not concerned primarily with universality, though models of
struggle can always move out and be translated for other cultures, but with
preserving the specificity of his individual groups. In a general statement,
Ngugi points out that language and culture are inseparable, and that therefore
the loss of the former results in the loss of the latter:
[A] specific culture is not
transmitted through language in its universality, but in its particularity as
the language of a specific community with a specific history. Written
literature and orature are the main means by which a particular language
transmits the images of the world contained in the culture it carries.
Language as communication and as culture are then products of each other. . . . Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. . . . Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world. (15-16)
Language as communication and as culture are then products of each other. . . . Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. . . . Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world. (15-16)
Chinua
Achebe’s Response:
“I feel
that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African
experience. But is will have to be a new English, still in full communion with
its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.” – Chinua
Achebe
Salman
Rushdie’s Response:
On the other side of the language debate
is Salman Rushdie. Although Rushdie’s novels often tackle the history of India,
Pakistan….He comments on how working in new Englishes can be a therapeutic act
of resistance, remaking a colonial language to reflect the postcolonial
experience.
In the essay ‘Imaginary Homelands’, he
explains that, far from being something that can simply be ignored or disposed
of, the English language is the place where writers can and must work out the
problems that confront with attitudes toward the use of English. Many have
referred to the argument about the appropriateness of this language to Indian
themes. And I hope all of use share the opinion that we can’t simply use the
language the British did; that it needs remaking for our own purposes. Those of
us who do use English do so inspite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps
because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a
reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggle between
the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To
conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free.”
The
New Englishes as a Technique:
‘The Empire Writes Back’ explores the
ways in which writers encounter a dominant, colonial language. (Writers in the
postcolonial world displace a standard English and replace it with a local
variant that does not have the perceived stain of being somehow sub-standard,
but rather reflects a distinct cultural outlook through local usage. The terms
they give these two processes are:
‘Abrogation’ is a refusal of the
categories of the imperial cultures, its aesthetic, its illusory standard of
normative or ‘correct’ usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed
meaning ‘inscribed’ in the words.
‘Appropriation’ is the process by which
the language is made to ‘bear the burden’ of one’s own cultural
experience…language is adapted as a tool and utilized to express widely
differing cultural experiences.
Summary
of viewpoints of the major theorists:
During colonization, colonizers usually
imposed their language onto the peoples they colonized, forbidding natives to
speak their mother tongues. In some cases, colonizers systematically prohibited
native languages. Many writers educated under colonization recount how students
were demoted, humiliated, or even beaten for speaking their native languages in
colonial schools.
1)In response to the systematic
imposition of colonial languages, some postcolonial writers and activists
advocate a complete return to the use of indigenous languages.
2)Other s wee the language(English)
imposed by the colonizer as a more practical alternative, using the colonial
language both to enhance inter-nation communication and to counter a colonial
past through deforming a ‘standard’ European tongue and reforming it in new
literary forms.
But
still, the
moment we write in English unwittingly we enter into the privileged class, no
matter whatever argument we offer.
|
Arguments
Favouring Postcolonial writers Writing in English
|
Arguments
Favouring Postcolonial writers Writing in their indigenous tongues
|
|
English as a practical
alternative
|
Complete return to the
native culture
|
|
To deform standard dialect
and to reform new literary forms
|
Indigenous language not
only helps to understand the world but also the self. English is a ‘cultural
bomb’ that erases precolonial memories
|
|
Act of resistance
|
Act of reconstruction
|
OUTLINE OF JAMES NGUGI’S ‘DECOLONISING THE MIND’
‘Decolonising the Mind’ is both an
explanation of how he came to write in Gikuyu, as well as an
exhortation(catchphrase/buzzword) for African writers to embrace their native
tongues in their art.
Ngugi makes a good case for the obvious
point: that the relation of Africans to those imposed(foreign languages imposed
by imperialism) languages is a very different one from that which the same
Africans have to the native languages they speak at home.
Ngugi rightly complains that an
educational focus that embraced essentially only foreign works(not only foreign
in language, but also in culture) was destructive: “Thus language and
literature were taking us further and further from ourselves to other selves,
from our world to other worlds.”
Clearly there was (and probably still
is) a need to create a literature that conveyed the true African experience –
from the perspective of the local, not the visitor or outsider. The local
language is an integral part of conveying that experience, often because much
of local tradition has been preserved in that language – for example, in the
songs and stories that have been passed down (the oral tradition – orature –
that Ngugi values so highly).
Most of African literature is oral. It
includes stories, riddles, proverbs and sayings. In ‘decolonising the mind’,
Ngugi discusses the importance of oral literature to his childhood. He says, “I
can vividly recall those evenings of storytelling around the fire side. It was
mostly the grownups telling the children but everybody was interested and
involved. We children would retell the stories the following day to other
children who worked in the fields.”
The stories main characters were usually
animals. Ngugi said “Hare being small, weak, but full of innovative wit, was
our hero. We identified with him as he struggled against the brutes of prey as
like lyon, lopard and hyena. His victories were our victories and we learnt
that the apparently weak can outwit the strong.” According to Ngugi, one cannot
study African literatures without studying the particular cultures and oral
traditions from which Africans draw their plots, styles and metaphor.
This blindness to the indigenous voice
of Africans is a direct result, according to Ngugi, of colonization. Ngugi
explains that during colonization, missionaries and colonial administrators
controlled published houses and the educational context of novels. This means
that only texts with religious stories or carefully selected stories which
would not tempt young Africans to question their own conditions were
propagated.
Africans were controlled by forcing them
to speak European languages – they attempted to teach children(future
generations) that speaking English is good that native languages are bad by
using negative reinforcement. This is a process recognized by the great
Martiniquen writer, Frantz Fanon. Language was twisted into a mechanism that
separated children from their own history because their own heritage were
shared only at home, relying on orature in their native language.
At school, they are told that the only
way to advance is to memorize the textbook history in the colonizer’s language.
By removing their native language from their education, they are separated from
their history which is replaced by European history in European languages. This
puts the lives of Africans more firmly in the control of the colonists.
Ngugi argues that colonization was
simply a process of physical force. Rather ‘the bullet was the means of
physical subjugation, language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.” In
Kenya, colonization propagated English as the language of education as a
result, orature in Kenyan indigenous language withered away. This was
devastating to African literature because, as Ngugi writes, “language carries
culture and culture carries (particularly through orature and literature) the
entire body of values by which we perceive ourselves and our place in the
world.” Therefore, how can the African experience be expressed properly in
another language?
The issue of which language should be
used to compose a truly African contemporary literature is thus one replete
with contradictions. Ngugi argues that writing in African languages is a
necessary step toward cultural identity and independence from centuries of
European exploitation. On the other hand, the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe
fully recognizing that English is symbolically and politically connected with
the despoiler of traditional culture with intolerance and bigotry says that
language is a weapon and they use it and there is no point in fighting a
language. And further adds, it does not matter what language one writers in, as
long as what one writes is good.
The book also focuses on art with a
purpose: be it pedagogic or political or helping preserve traditions or forge
identities, all the literature he considers serves a purpose.
The simple beauty of art is not a issue
for him – in part, no doubt, because he does not want to admit that politically
incorrect art (even art with say a blatantly imperialist message) might still
have some value.
The book addresses magnificent issues,
and Ngugi’s presentation is consistently engaging. Though aspects are already
dated, it can still serve as the basis for fruitful discussion of a subject
that continues to be of interest.
Terms: Decolonization:
The political independence did not necessarily mean a wholesale freeing of the
colonized from colonialist values, for these, along with political, economic
and cultural models, persisted in many cases after independence. Decolonization
is the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms.
This includes dismantling the hidden aspects of those institutional and
cultural forces that had maintained the colonist power and that remain ever
after political independence is achieved. The postcolonial societies believed
that a return to indigenous languages can restructure attitudes to the local
and the indigenous cultures, and can also form a more effective bridge to the
bulk of the population whose lives have continued to be conducted largely in
their mother tongues.
Subjectivity:
The question of the subject\subjectivity directly affects colonized people’s
perceptions of their identities and their capacities to resist the conditions
of their domination, their ‘subjection’. The concept of subjectivity
problematizes the simple relationship between the individual and language,
replacing human subject through ideology, discourse or language.
Appropriation:
By appropriating the imperial language, its discursive forms and its modes of
representation, post-colonial studies are able, as things stand, to intervene
more readily in the dominant discourse, to interpolate their own cultural
realities, or use that dominant language to describe those realities to a wide
audience of readers.
Abrogation:
The rejection by post-colonial writers of a normative concept of ‘correct’ or
‘standard’ English used by certain classes or groups, and of the corresponding
concept of inferior ‘dialects’ or ‘marginal variants’. Abrogation implies that
the master’s house is always adaptable and that the same tools offer a means of
conceptual transformation and liberation.
Chutnification\briyanization: Salman Rushdie’s use of the expression
‘chutnificaiton’ epitomizes his style in his novel ‘Midnight’s children’.
‘Chutney’ an Indian side and tangy dish, is used in adding flavor to the main
course of any meal. ‘Chutney’ itself is a noun form and is understood as such
in English. By affixing ‘-fication’, Rushdie changes this Indian work into an
English ‘chutnificaiton’ meaning ‘transformation’. Chutnification is the
intimate and homely preserving work of creativity.
Liminality
: The importance of the liminal for
postcolonial theory is precisely its usefulness for describing an ‘in-between’
space in which cultural change may occur. It is a region in which there is a
continual process of movement and interchange between different states. For
instance, the colonized subject may dwell in the liminal space between
‘colonial discourse’ and the assumption of a new ‘non-colonial’ identity. But
such identification is never simply a movement from one identity to another, it
is a constant process of engagement, contestation and appropriation.
For Bhaba the liminal is important
because liminality and hybridity go hand in hand. This ‘interstitial passage
between fixed identification opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity
that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy.
Hybridity
: As used in horticulture, the term
refers to the cross-breeding of two species by grafting or cross-pollination to
form a third, ‘hybrid’ species. It is in the in-between space that carries the
burden and meaning of culture, and this is what makes the notion of hybridity
so important. Hybridisaiton takes many forms: linguistic, cultural, political
and so on. Linguisitic examples includes ‘pidgin’ and ‘creole’.
Hegemony:
Hegemony. Initially a term referring to the dominance of one state within a
confederation, is now generally understood to mean domination by consent.
Fundamentally, hegemony is the power of
the ruling class to convince other classes that their interests are the
interests of all. Domination is thus exerted not by force, nor even necessarily
by active persuasion, but by a more subtle and inclusive power over the economy
and over state apparatuses such as education and the media by which the ruling
class interest is presented as the common interest and thus comes to be taken for
granted.
Mimicry:
An increasingly important term in postcolonial theory, because it has come to
describe the ambivalent relationship between colonizer and colonized. When
colonial discourse encourages the colonized subject to ‘mimic’ the colonizer,
by adopting the colonizer’s cultural habits, assumptions, institutions and
values, the result is never a simple reproduction of those traits. Rather, the
result is a ‘blurred copy’ of the colonizer that can be quite threatening. This
is because mimicry is never far away from mockery, since it can appear to
parody whatever it mimics. Mimicry therefore locates a crack in the certainty
of colonial dominance, an uncertainty in its control of the behavior of the
colonized.
The postcolonial writing, the
ambivalence of writing which is ‘menacing’ to colonial authority. The menace of
mimicry does not lie in its concealment of some real identity behind its mask,
but comes from its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of
colonial discourse also disrupts its authority.
Bibliography:Kelly, Gail P. and Philip G. Altbach. Introduction: "The Four Faces of Colonialism." Education and the Colonial Experience. Ed. Gail P. Kelly and Philip G. Altbach. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984. 1-5.
Macaulay, Thomas B. "Minute on Indian Education." http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/users/raley/english/macaulay.html
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Portsmith, NH: Heinemann, 1981.
---."The Global Education Process." 18 par. Online. Internet. nd. Available: http://ultrix. ramapo.edu/global.thiongo.html
Viswanathan, Gauri. "Currying Favor: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813-1854." The Oxford Literary Review 85-104. (unknown volume and date)
Panel Discussion: English Language used for Creative Expression in Postcolonial Societies – Boon or Bane?
Issues Addressed:
-
Why is
the language politicalized?
-
Issue
of sincerity in using a colonial language – to portray native life(Indian
sensibility compatible in English)
-
How to
counter the problem of reachability?
-
Why
not create a work of great merit in native language and it be automatically
translated to world languages?
-
How to
adapt(also adopt) British literary forms and its outcomes?
-
Awareness
of the position of the postcolonial writer as a postcolonial subject
-
Pan-Indian
and Language of Nationalist literature
-
Language
as shaping our present and future lifestyle
-
Lack
of double vision, only clouded by eurocentricism, neologism
Analysis of
Creative Writing in English from India in the light of theoretical positions of
English Studies
A. The
Credibility of Indian Writing in English – ‘acceptance’ both within and outside
the country:
1.
Evidences:
India is third largest English book producing country after US and UK.
The largest number of books published in India India India
2.
Traversed
path to attain credibility:
Indian literature in English has reached its pinnacle of glory of late
in the late 1990’s, but to attain such a status it has to pas through several
hurdles; as G.N. Devy points out: creative writing in English by an Indian can
never be dreamt even, but it has its status of its own owing to its two-fold
significance : (i) it is an authentic voice of Indian, (ii) the impetus with
which the ‘marginalized’ has attained the unprecedented source of creative
energy.
The self-consciousness or
self-reflexivity in Indian writing in English questions the validity of the
‘literary canon’ and the ideology it propagated by the imperial ‘centre’.
Indian writing in English writers had
to tackle the challenge to write about his experiences, in a language which has
developed in a very different cultural setting, in a ‘foreign’ language; how to
create a sense of reality and intensity of Indian life in the medium of English
language.
A. Using
English language and English literary tradition by IWE writers:
Indian
writing in English: Problems and Scope:
1.
Before
we proceed to analyze the scope of IWE, it would be fitting enough to analyze
the ‘language attitude’ towards the English language in India
(a)
Opposition
largely based on the tendency to view the language as a remnant of the foreign
imposition, a vestige of the colonial past and those who support tend to play
on the scope in economic, scientific and technological fronts.
(i)
Such
misconceptions do exist as language is associated with ‘power’ (the name of the
conqueror and his language stands on equal footing), which Sujatha Bhatt
sensibly brings out in her ‘Different History’: “Which language has not been
the oppressors tongue?”
(ii)
A
logical question that would rise would be how can the oppressor’s tongue be
used to voice the individuality of the colonized nations? The doubt over the
adequacy of the English to be a literary medium of genuinely Indian sensibility
is not without an answer.
One of the most important feature of
language is that it evolutionary and dynamic – which implies that the words of
a language are never born once for all with an aptness to just one type of
outlook and attitude, characters and temperament – which implies that ‘words’
do gain new meanings when the outlook and attitude behind it changes and this
exactly becomes the phenomena behind the concept of ‘abrogation’ and
‘appropriation’. “You taught me language; and my profit on’t Is, I know how to curse:
the red plague rid you. For learning me your language.” (Caliban, The Tempest).
This means that English no longer
only represents the Judeo-Christian tradition and western concepts of literary
creativity. The ranges of English have expanded, as the varieties within a
variety have been formed.
(b)
Sethna
remarks: “If a new and modern Rigveda, the Upanishads or Gita were to be
written it will be in English”. These texts are expression of the profoundest
soul-stirring articulated by the Indian consciousness. If such soul-stirring
articulated were once again to move an Indian, he would seek to express them
first in English. This shows how an intimate the inner bond can be which
Indians feel with the English language.
Sethna was careful to recognize that
not every Indian should have neither the ‘gift’ nor the ‘urge’ for using the
English language for creative self-expression. But he declares that to maintain
that Indian Writing in English can only be an exotic curiosity and (inorganic
shelved one) rather than an organic unfolding of genuine indianess is to
indulge in a sweeping superficiality.
(c)
A few
have seen the English language as an immense cultural assets, as our ‘window’
not only on world science but also on world culture. There is however, another
equally important dimension of English: English is a valuable resource for
India not only because it opens to us the magnificent countries of the world,
but also it renders possible to us the magnificent expression of our own soul
(the sole medium to carry the authentic soul of India both within and outside
the country – it has to be remembered it is the same language that developed
the national consciousness). Some Indians have felt that India
(d)
We
have established the language (English) as our cultural asset and the next
issue to deal with is using a non-native language for creative purposes. When
English has been used without any prejudice in the arena of commerce and
science (i.e., communicative purposes), the biased view in the arena of
literary activity has a cultural backdrop. Every culture across the world
asserts that literary activity (self-expression) can be possible only in a
native language.
We in the post-colonial and
post-modern world have realized through ‘deconstruction’ that diversity should
be respected and hence multiculturalism is in place – and hence expressing
oneself is more important than the langue he employs,(leave alone the politics
behind each language). The poet sans
time and place have always tried to break away from the shackles of
‘constructed hierarchies’; they are in fact working against the very prejudices
which the ‘labeling’(done for political reason) has brought out; the same is
significantly brought out by Syed Amannudin in his ‘Don’t Call me
Indo-Anglican’: “I damn all hyphenated mind \ prejudiced offspring of
unenlightened souls\ I denounce all labels and labelmakers \ I refuse to be a
moonrock specimen \ to be analyzed labeled and stored…” Poetry is only a
spontaneous blend of ‘imagination’ and ‘language’ and not (political) ‘life’
and ‘language’. Secondly, what is required of a poet is sensibility. This
‘sensibility’ can be viewed in two ways: one as ‘consciousness’ and the other
that of ‘Indian sensibility’. Indian sensibility is nothing but the Indian way
of seeing life (perception shaped by Indian Culture). Literature in order to
stand the test of time should possess aspects of ‘universality’ apart from
being ‘culturally-loaded’, it is in this context, the possession of global
consciousness in creative writing gains impetus. So to conclude, it is not a
matter of which language (native\ non-native) that one uses for expression
(creative writing) but that of possessing the ‘global consciousnesses apart
from being laden with Indian cultural positions.
English has become the natural medium
for the emerging international\global consciousness no matter whether English
is native to him or not may find it natural for him to use English as a medium
of self-expression.
(e)
Stylistic
influence from the local language seems to be a particular feature of much
Indian literature in English; the local language structure is reflected example
the literal translations of local idioms. According to Kachru, however
South-Asian novelists have not only nativized the language in terms of
stylistic features; they have also acculturated English in terms of the
South-Asian context. The process of ‘nativization’ is due both to transfer from
local language as well as to the new cultural environment ad communicative
needs. Because of deep social penetration and the extended range of functions
of English in diverse socio-linguistic contexts here are several varieties,
localized registers and genres for articulating local social, cultural and
religious identities. They have emerged as autonomous local varieties with
their own set of rules that make it impossible to treat them simply as mistakes
of deficient English.
(f)
One
has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought-movement
that looks maltreated in an alien language. But English is no more alien to us.
It is the language of our intellectual make-up (like Sanskrit was before), but
not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us
writing in our own language and in English. We cannot write like the English.
We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to loose at the
large world (global consciousness) as part of us. Thus our method of expression
therefore has to be in such a dialect.
IWE writer can have any personality
of a spectrum of personality of his choice. He can nurture different identities
within himself and need not suffer from any crisis of identity. What he has to
avoid is try to impress the western audience or the westernized Indian audience
to whom his writing is addressed.
B. Hegemony
Literary
traditions sans time and place has always have had norms(touchstone method, to
use Arnoldian term) and this norm in the initial phases of Indian literature in
English was that of the British literary canon. It is because of the continuum
of the cultural\literary hegemony that the Empire had to Write back. When any
creative writing by an Indian is taken for evaluation, it is compared with that
of the touch-stone passages in the British literary canon – this literary
hegemony is shaped by the English education in India, wherein the Indians were
taught methods to appreciate the literature of the English, which of course is
difference from Indian classical literature, so therein indirectly has brought
Indian classical literature to subscribe to their norms and when found
inadequate (obviously) then were discarded and this is how every Indian
literature in English was forced to adhere to the English norms. The Indian
creative writers resisted this literary hegemony, by consciously replacing the
realist methods of the British literature to the orature, narrative
story-telling techniques. But gradually due to the various political reasons,
were ‘incorporated’ into the main stream literature(canon\non-canon).
The reason behind such ‘incorporations’
is none other than the Empire writing back to the imperial centre. The
‘marginality’ has attained unprecedented source of creative energy. It is
stated that the reason behind the rise or post colonial theory is because of
the center’s inability to comprehend and manage the knowledge about the
‘marginalized’ position which they created (Focault’s idea of knowledge is
power – only to be reverted by the Orients and we have written back). The
‘center’ tried to establish monocenterism(Eurocentricism) by shaping the
consciousness of the marginalized(the constructed hierarchy) and their
‘priviledged norm’ in such a binarism, was taken to such an extent(through
ideologies perputation) through propaganda for instance that it was accepted
without any question and later it is the same stance that led to the Empire
writing back with unprecedented source of creative energy. The very norms for
‘approximation’ has equipped them with the ‘power of approximation’. It is this
‘approximation’ which in a way has led to the rise of regional or national
consciousness and to assert the differences from the imperial centre.
In the initial stages of literary
production in English in India, mostly in the hands of ‘boxwallahs’ and
memsahibs who were also responsible for the English(men) gaining political
stature in India; though there were elaborate descriptions of Indian landscape,
culture and folks and traditions, yet the perpertuated ideologies (c.f.
Macualay ‘Minutes’) of the English Studies, there were glorification of the
‘home’ and the ‘native’, but still the cultural hegemony of the dominant was
more than obvious. For an instance, one of the poem written by Rudyard Kipling
titled ‘Christmas Celebration in India’ talks elaborately upon India at the
heat of Christmas celebration is a clear indicator of why the empire wrote back
and the extent to which English cultural hegemony was a success.
In
the second phase of literary production was still under the ‘imperial license’,
every Indian writer in English looked upon the English(men) for recognition,and
indirectly for that to happen need to adhere to their norms.
Now ultimately the whole issue boils down
to the issue of ideological brain-washing: the center constructed a binarism
and priviledged themselves over the margins and very significant is the fact
they made the ‘margin’ to believe in the supremacy of the center. It is very
interesting to note (trace) how the English gained political stature in India India
Macualay a part of the ‘ideology of the
west’ could have asserted power over the land using military power, but he used
the English language as a tool of weapon to combat the advent or pressure from
the Christian missionaries and out of fear of political insubordination of the
Indians. Macualy actually meant to create a class of Indians to act as a medium
between the British Raj and its several thousands of subjects, has only
miscalculated the moral value of literature which has now armed the creative
writers in India
C. Translation:
The hegemony of English language in India
Translations
in pre-colonial India
These
are ‘retellings’ rather than ‘renderings’ and in most cases the author felt
free to add material of his composition but whatever translation activity that
underlay such composition depended a great deal on the right adjustment of
individual talent to tradition. Such acts of appropriation results in as much
as the writer learning the language of the older text. But in the postcolonial
times unlike the pre and colonial times wherein intra-indian language
translations were made, but in postcolonial times, seldom there are any such
intra-indian language translation, it is mostly an text in regional language
rendered into English translated to another regional language based only upon
the English texts rendered.
‘Literary
colonization’ started as part of a larger move towards cultural diplomacy, in
which US and USSR
Yet
another problem facing Indian English literature is the problem of
‘nativisation’ in both writings and translations. The Indian writers were made
to believe that however much they try to they cannot master the nuances of deep
structures, but ironically several Indian writers in English have baffled the
English with them being “more English than the English”, and yet there is a
sort of ‘indianness’ in it with several phrases and idioms linked to that of
their native language. Which is quite indicative of the fact that English has
now got into the very bloodstream of the Indians. Though there is always the
question of the supremacy of the source and target language in translation. The
writers of native language who has always been hostile to English Studies as
they believe it has usurped the rightful place of the indigenous literature
also should acknowledge that their indigenous tongue has been enriched or say
‘modernized’ (so for survival) with punctuations and other linguistic markers
and it is only with English that their chests of treasures of ideas and
literary sensibilities have reached huge masses across the world. So to
conclude, Indian writers in English are now free from anglophilia on one hand
and are being alienated within their own nation.
D. Indian
Diasporic Writings
Diasporic Indians like other diasporic peoples
have strong links to their homeland but also display a keen desire to
assimilate and belong to their present place of abode. This creates
counter-pulls in the psyche of the diasporics and is reflected in the
literature they produce. Thus the diasporic home is both a cage and a heaven –
in which the self is lost and is found. But still one problem confronts – the
authencity of the image portrayed by the diasporic writers – which often is not
about the contemporary India, but that of the India of the past – which
ofcourse goes against our argument of global consciousness and Indian
sensibility in Indian literature in English, but ironically, they form the
major chunk in the shelves of Indian literature in English. There can be two
broad divisions of IWE: Expatriate elite literature and native literature.
Creative voice of the Expatriate are being adapted and promoted as IWE at the
expense of the native creativity in English. It is bound to create a crisis of
national identity in literature.
Diaspora and expatriatism has made
the position of an author, his location a critical category. Equally
significant is the subject position of the oppressed people like Dalits and
women.
There has been a significant shift of
attention from the Elite to the underdogs in the writing of colonial history,
focusing more on the rural masses and the exploited plebeians – a broad group
often identified by the capacious term ‘subaltern’. The move is entirely appropriate
in its context(infact, much overdue), and in understanding colonial history,
this is a very important corrective. The status of women as colonized subjects
has remained a significant issue. In 1988 Holst-Peterson and Rutherford
produced a collection with the evocative title ‘A Double Colonisation’ which
has proven to be a durable description of the status of women in colonialism.
The concept of ‘double colonization’ refer to two comparable and overlapping
forms of dominance – patriarchy and imperialism.
Literary historiography has to
reframe its models of categorizing and evaluating. Literary histories have
always to be rewritten bearing in mind the changing contexts in which literary
works emerge. There is no such thing as a pan Indian ethos to articulate. It is
a myth to hold on nostalgically to such a belief (for purposes of nationalism
then). Post colonial studies remind us, time and again, of the growing need for
mini-narratives of disintegration and subaltern voices, of the failure of hegemonic
elitism, and consequently of the felt necessity to check and overthrow the
dominance of colonial and bourgeoisies elitism. The distinction between popular
and serious writings no longer holds good. Voice from the minorities,
expatriates, westernized Indians and Immigrants are heard loud and bold.
Rushdie rightly declared, “Literature has little or nothing to do with a
writer’s home or address”.
The moment we write in English
unwittingly we enter into the privileged class, no matter whatever argument we offer!
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