The empire writes back Document Transcript

1. The Empire Writes Back IntroductionPost-colonial literatures Writings by those

peoples formerly colonized by Britain and other European powers Colonial period
before independence and a term indicating a national writing Covering all the culture
affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present
dayLiteratures and English Studies institutionalisation and subsequent valorization of
English literary study [to] a shape and an ideological content developed in the colonial
context Privileged norm was enthroned at the heart of the formation of English
Studies as a template for the denial of the value of the peripheral, the marginal, the
uncanonized Conscious affiliation proceeding under the guise of filiation; a mimicry
of the centre proceeding from a desire not only to be accepted but to be adopted and
absorbed Development of the post-colonial literatures has necessitated a questioning of
many of the assumptions on which the study of English was basedDevelopment of post-
colonial literatures 1. During the imperial period writing in the language of the imperial
centre is inevitably, of course, produced by a literate elite whose primary identification is
with the colonizing power (privileging the centre) 2. Literature produced under imperial
licence by natives or outcasts, for instance the large body of poetry and prose
produced in the nineteenth century by the English educated Indian upper class, or African
missionary literature Result: potential for subversion in their themes cannot be fully
realized; prevented from fully exploring their anti-imperial potentialHegemony The
need for the empire to write back to a centre British texts all too frequently act as a
touchstone of taste and value Result: the weight of antiquity continues to dominate
cultural production in much of the post- colonial worldLanguage Medium through
which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated, and the medium through which
conceptions of truth, order, and reality become established British English
(Empire) and english (post-colonial countries)Place and Displacement Dislocation,
resulting from migration, the experience of enslavement, transportation, or voluntary
removal from indentured labour o The construction of place the gap which opens
between the experience of place and the language available to describe it forms a
classical and all-pervasive feature of post- colonial text
2. Cultural denigration, the conscious and unconscious oppression of the indigenous
personality and culture by a supposedly superior racial or cultural model o Pre-colonial
culture is suppressed by military conquest or enslavement Implication: Post-colonial
cultures need to escape from the implicit body of assumptions to which English was
attached, its aesthetic and social values, the formal and historically limited constraints of
genre, and the oppressive political and cultural assertion of metropolitan dominance, of
centre over margin; need to develop an appropriate usage in order to do so (by
becoming a distinct and unique form of english)Post-coloniality and theory Emerges
from the inability of European theory to deal adequately with the complexities and varied
cultural provenance of post-colonial writing Political and cultural monocentricism of
the colonial enterprise was a natural result of the philosophical traditions of the European
world and the systems of representation which this privileged. Paradoxically, imperial
expansion has had a radically destabilizing effect on its own preoccupations and power o
The alienating process which initially served to relegate the post-colonial world to the
margin turned upon itself and acted to push that world through a kind of mental barrier
into a position from which all experience could be viewed as uncentred, pluralistic, and
multifariousRe-placing theory: post-colonial writing and literary theoryPost-colonial
literatures and postmodernism Groundwork o Avoid the assumption that post-colonial
literatures supersede or replace the local and particular o European theories are mere
contexts for the recent developments in post-colonial theory o Danger of
reincorporating post-colonial culture into a new internationalist and universalist
paradismModernism and the colonial experience The discovery of cultures forced
Europeans to realize that their culture was only one amongst a plurality of ways of
conceiving of reality and organizing its representations in art and social practice o The
encounter of the Other inspired the legitimate search for the origins of civilization from
the frightening alternative of discovering in the primitive its true and permanent face
that threatens the European center o European art to universal validity are questioned, and
in which the constructed and impermanent nature of civilization is exposed
3. Implication: The encounter of Europeans with the Other (non-Europeans) is crucial
because the discovery of cultures essentially different from Europe in their basis and
development is a central factor in the production and reproduction of European art The
discovery of Africa was the dominant paradigm for the self-discovery of the 20th
century European world in all its self-contradiction, self-doubt, and self-destruction, for
the European journey out of the light of Reason into the Heart of DarknessNew Criticism
and post-colonial theory Product of a post-colonial USA intent on establishing the
legitimacy of its literary canon against the persistent domination of the English language
Emphasized on the individual work from the post-colonial world, thus allowing passage
to post- colonial writers Met with negativity: assimilation of post-colonial writers into a
metropolitan tradition retarded consideration of their works within an appropriate
cultural context, and so seriously militated against the development of a native or
indigenous theory Also due to New Criticisms misleading claims to objectivity
Implication: Post-colonial criticism began to move towards the investigation of a set of
theoretical problematics, focusing on what was again perceived to be different from the
Anglo- European modelPostmodernism and the post-colonial experience Questioning of
historical discourse and exposing its being culture specific rather than universal
(decentralization); turned the question to the Otherness Solution: to control the Other
Americans also began to acknowledge its own post-coloniality, which may have provided
ground for similarly subversive views of language and culture Implication: the
acceptance of post-coloniality as part of the American formation is then no longer a
badge of shame or immaturity Criticism: Post-colonial (centered on older nationalist
models of identity crisis and post- independence legitimacy) as the product of the
indirection, illegitimacy and emptiness of post- colonizing discourses Shock of
recognition European theories mirror the plight of settler colonies and colonies of
intervention in the direction of their literature and criticismPost-coloniality and
contemporary European theory Stresses the importance of ideological construction in
social-textual relations find echoes in post-colonial texts Lays stress on narrative as an
alternative mode of knowledge to the scientific, and draws out the implications of this for
our view of the relationship and privileging of contemporary scientific ideas of
competence over customary knowledge Criticism: Science opposes such self-
legitimizing narrative statements; classified the narrative dominated oral world as
savage, primitive, underdeveloped Refutes to entertain the possibility of an
unproblematic recuperation of the traditional Implication: attempts to articulate a weave
of practices grounded in the particular and the localPost-coloniality and discourse theory
4. Discourse as a system of possibility for knowledge (Foucault) Useful in locating the
series of rules which determine post-coloniality Invoke certain ways of thinking about
language, about truth, about power, and about the interrelationships between all three
Implication: a struggle for power that power focused in the control of the metropolitan
languageCounter-discourse: Richard Terdiman Notion of language functioning in
practice and usage, thus fully acknowledging the material site of the texts production
Echoes the concerns of post-colonial linguistics with the practical orientation of language
Discourses come into being in a structure of counter-discursive practices Implication:
Post-colonialism appropriates the idea that the sign obtains its meaning in conflict and
contradiction and apply it to post-colonial texts and societiesPost-coloniality and theories
of ideology Subjects are interpellated (called into being) within ideologies and that this
is inescapable; that is, that we become conscious under the power of construction resident
in imaginary subjection: Ideology interpellates individuals in imaginary subjection
Different modes by which in our culture, human being as made subject (Pecheux) o
Good subjects who result from Identification freely consenting to the discursive
which determines them o Bad subjects who result from counter-identification they
refuse the image offered and turn it back on the offerer o Disidentification product of
political and discursive practices which work on and against the dominant ideologies
Useful features of post-colonial studies o Permits an understanding of the subjective
appropriation of knowledges (as well as politics to which they give rise) o Displaces a
concern for the constituting subject to lay its stress on meaning and discourse as formed
in and through material struggle Narratives as a socially symbolic act
(Jameson)Marxism, anthropology, and post-colonial society Limited in its dealings with
these societies by its own conscious Eurocentricity Recently, sensitive adaptation in
arguing that such categories as class are applicable to all societies Implication:
understand social and historical phenomena not in their own terms but in terms of an
underlying system of structural relations, which because it contains within it internal
mechanisms tensions and contradictions, is of course of historical
transformationFeminism and post-colonialism Women in many societies have been
relegated to the position of Other, marginalized and, in a metaphorical sense,
colonized
5. Movement away from the biological stances toward more complex subversive
positions and towards increasing recognition that the principle of difference, lying as it
does at the very heart of their construction of Other, is basic to any contemporary
feminist theory Implications: Parallelism between women and colonized races; the
intimate experience of the politics of oppression and repression, and like them have been
forced to articulate their experiences in the language of their oppressorsThe politics of
theory: decolonizing colonialist discourse Objective is to offer ways of dismantling
colonialisms signifying system and exposing its operation in the silencing and
oppressing of the colonial subject Colonized is constructed within a disabling master
discourse of colonialism which specifies a degenerate native population to justify its
conquest and subsequent rule Criticism: questioning whether or not the models which
stress the inescapability of the discourse which constitutes colonizer-post-colonized are
not in fact only a sophisticated mask over the face of a continued, neo-colonial
domination of which colonialism was only one historical stage Syncretism condition
within which post-colonial societies operate, and accepting this does not, in any simple
sense, involve hiding the role culture plays in the continuing neo-colonial hegemonic
formation of the day-to-day experience of those societies (hybridity)Post-colonial
reconstructions: literature, meaning, value Objective: identify the importance of the
variant (post-colonial culture) over the standard (Eurocentricism) through a non-
Eurocentric perspective Literature o Radically questioned easy assumptions about the
characteristics of the genres we usually employ as structuring and categorizing definitives
o Our sense of the name literature has been altered by writers incorporating and
adapting traditional forms of imaginative expression to the exigencies of an inherited
english language o Writer incorporating forms from other traditions within acceptable
boundaries articulate clearly the constant adjustments we make to our perceptions of
literature o Pre-colonial syncretism develops a renewed sense of identity and self-
value in the independence period (i.e. music) o Criticism: risk of being accused of
plagiarism Meaning o Meaning in its Eurocentric concept the struggle of language,
utterer/writer, and meaning exchanged for power o Post-colonial all three functions
participate in the social situation of the written text o Therefore, meaning is a social
accomplishment characterized by the participation of the writer and reader functions
within the event of the particular discourse o Criticism: the absence of experience
necessary to fully comprehend the social discourse To a more extent, it is the problem in
the phenomenon of distance mental dislocation Result: giving language its
permanent and volatility at the same time However, post-colonial text does not wish
to create meaning, but indicate a shifting horizon of possible meanings Value
6. o Even though imitative in structure and form, post-colonial texts are judges with a
different set of standards in its success that render them originalPost-colonialism as a
reading strategy Subversion of a canon = set of reading principles Movement away
from Eurocentricism to alternative reading practice that fits the context in order to bestow
value upon the tex