The Empire Writes Back Document Transcript

8/12/2019 The Empire Writes Back Document Transcript

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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 cultureaffected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the presentdayLiteratures and English Studies institutionalisation and subsequent valorization ofEnglish literary study [to] a shape and an ideological content developed in the colonialcontext Privileged norm was enthroned at the heart of the formation of EnglishStudies as a template for the denial of the value of the peripheral, the marginal, theuncanonized Conscious affiliation proceeding under the guise of filiation; a mimicryof the centre proceeding from a desire not only to be accepted but to be adopted andabsorbed Development of the post -colonial literatures has necessitated a questioning ofmany 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 imperialcentre is inevitably, of course, produced by a literate elite whose primary identification iswith the colonizing power (privileging the centre) 2. Literature produced under im periallicence 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 Africanmissionary literature Result: potential for subversion in their themes cannot be fullyrealized; prevented from fully exploring their anti- imperial potentialHegemony Theneed for the empire to write back to a centre British texts all too frequently act as atouchstone of taste and value Result: the weight of antiquity continues to dominatecultural production in much of the post- colonial worldLanguage Medium throughwhich a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated, and the medium through whichconceptions 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 voluntaryremoval 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 aclassical 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-colonialculture is suppressed by military conquest or enslavement Implication: Post -colonialcultures need to escape from the implicit body of assumptions to which English wasattached, its aesthetic and social values, the formal and historically limited constraints ofgenre, and the oppressive political and cultural assertion of metropolitan dominance, ofcentre 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 Emergesfrom the inability of European theory to deal adequately with the complexities and variedcultural provenance of post- colonial writing Political and cultural monocentricis m ofthe colonial enterprise was a natural result of the philosophical traditions of the Europeanworld and the systems of representation which this privileged. Paradoxically, imperialexpansion has had a radically destabilizing effect on its own preoccupations and power oThe alienating process which initially served to relegate the post-colonial world to themargin turned upon itself and acted to push that world through a kind of mental barrier


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into a position from which all experience could be viewed as uncentred, pluralistic, andmultifariousRe-placing theory: post-colonial writing and literary theoryPost-colonialliteratures and postmodernism Groundwork o Avoid the assumption that post -colonialliteratures supersede or replace the local and particular o European theories are merecontexts 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 forcedEuropeans to realize that their culture was only one amongst a plurality of ways ofconceiving of reality and organizing its representations in art and social practice o Theencounter of the Other inspired the legitimate search for the origins of civilization fromthe frightening alternative of discovering in the primitive its true and permanent facethat threatens the European center o European art to universal validity are questioned, andin which the constructed and impermanent natur e 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 anddevelopment is a central factor in the productio n and reproduction of European art The

discovery of Africa was the dominant paradigm for the self -discovery of the 20thcentury European world in all its self-contradiction, self-doubt, and self-destruction, forthe European journey out of the light of Reason into the Heart of DarknessNew Criticismand post- colonial theory Product of a post -colonial USA intent on establishing thelegitimacy of its literary canon against the persistent domination of the English language Emphasized on the individual w ork from the post-colonial world, thus allowing passageto post- colonial writers Met with negativity: assimilation of post -colonial writers into ametropolitan tradition retarded consideration of their works within an appropriatecultural context, and so seriously militated against the development of a native orindigenous theory Also due to New Criticisms misleading claims to objectivity Implication: Post-colonial criticism began to move towards the investigation of a set oftheoretical problematics, focusing on what was again perceived to be different from theAnglo- European modelPostmodernism and the post- colonial experience Questioning ofhistorical 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 providedground for similarly subversive views of language and culture Implication: theacceptance of post-coloniality as part of the American formation is then no longer abadge of shame or immaturity Criticism: Post -colonial (centered on older nationalistmodels of identity crisis and post- independence legitimacy) as the product of theindirectio n, illegitimacy and emptiness of post- colonizing discourses Shock ofrecognition European theories mirror the plight of settler colonies and colonies ofintervention in the direction of their literature and criticismPost-coloniality andcontemporary European theory Stresses the importance of ideological construction insocial-textual relations find echoes in post- colonial texts Lays stress on narrative as analternative mode of knowledge to the scientific, and draws out the implications of this forour view of the relationship and privileging of contemporary scientific ideas ofcompetence over customary knowledge Criticism: Science opposes such self -legitimizing narrative statements; classified the narrative dominated oral world assavage, primitive, underdeveloped Refutes to entertain the possibility of an


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unproblematic recuperation of the traditional Implication: attempts to articulate a weaveof 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 theseries of rules which determine post -coloniality Invoke certain ways of thinking aboutlanguage, about truth, about power, and about the interrelationships b etween all three

Implication: a struggle for power that power focused in the control of the metropolitanlanguageCounter- discourse: Richard Terdiman Notion of language functioning in practice and usage, thus fully acknowledging the material site of t he 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 andcontradiction and apply it to post-colonial texts and societiesPost-coloniality and theoriesof ideology Subjects are interpellated (called into being) within ideologies and that thisis inescapable; that is, that we become conscious under the power of construction residentin 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 discursivewhich determines them o Bad subjects who result from counter -identification theyrefuse the image offered and turn it back on the offerer o Disidentification product of

political and dis cursive practices which work on and against the dominant ideologies Useful features of post- colonial studies o Permits an understanding of the subjectiveappropriation of knowledges (as well as politics to which they give rise) o Displaces aconcern for the constituting subject to lay its stress on meaning and discourse as formedin and through material struggle Narratives as a socially symbolic act(Jameson)Marxism, anthropology, and post- colonial society Limited in its dealings withthese societ ies by its own conscious Eurocentricity Recently, sensitive adaptation inarguing 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 anunderlying system of structural relations, which because it contains within it internalmechanisms tensions and contradictions, is of course of historicaltransformationFeminism and post -colonialism Women in many societies have beenrelegated 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 itdoes at the very heart of their construction of Other, is basic to any contemporaryfeminist theory Implications: Parallelism between women and colonized races; theintimate experience of the politics of oppression and repression, and like them have beenforced to articulate their experiences in the language of their oppressorsThe politics oftheory: decolonizing colonialist discourse Objective is to offer ways of dismantlingcolonialisms signifying system and exposing its operation in the silencing andoppressing o f the colonial subject Colonized is constructed within a disabling masterdiscourse of colonialism which specifies a degenerate native population to justify itsconquest and subsequent rule Criticism: questioning whether or not the models whichstress the inescapability of the discourse which constitutes colonizer-post-colonized arenot in fact only a sophisticated mask over the face of a continued, neo-colonial


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domination of which colonialism was only one historical stage Syncretism conditionwithin which post-colonial societies operate, and accepting this does not, in any simplesense, involve hiding the role culture plays in the continuing neo-colonial hegemonicformation of the day-to-day experience of those societies (hybridity)Post-colonialreconstructions: 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 definitiveso Our sense of the name literature has been altered by writers incorporating andadapting traditional forms of imaginative expression to the exigencies of an inheritedenglish language o Writer incorporating forms from other traditions within acceptable

boundaries articulate clearly the constant adjustments we make to our perceptions ofliterature 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 socialaccomplishment characterized by the participation of the writer and reader functionswithin the event of the particular discourse o Criticism: the absen ce of experiencenecessary to fully comprehend the social discourse To a more extent, it is the problem inthe phenomenon of distance mental dislocation Result: giving language its

permanent and volatility at the same time However, post-colonial text does not wishto 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 adifferent set of standards in its success that render them originalP ost-colonialism as areading strategy Subversion of a canon = set of reading principles Movement awayfrom Eurocentricism to alternative reading practice that fits the context in order to bestow

value upon the tex

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The Empire Writes Back Document Transcript