S8 Postcolonial Fiction Flashcards
Why is “post colonial” a problematic term?
- ”Post-” signalling first and foremost a temporal dimension
- But: how to recognise important writings during the period of colonisation?
- May imply whole range of experience from beginning to end of colonialism
- Also: new form of criticism / critical strategy, which reads texts in the light of
the phenomenon of European colonialism since the 15th century - How far does the ‘after-ness’ of the term range?
Which major forces impacted writing in Great Britain since WWII?
decolonisation and immigration
What are other terms used for Post-colonial english writing?
- In 1960s: ”Commonwealth literature” (launch of new Journal of
Commonwealth Literature in 1965) but term is misleading and
restricting - Alternative term: “New literatures in English” – but problematic
implication of ‘junior’ literature
Why was the term Post colonal chosen?
‘Post-colonial’ seems to be the choice which both embraces the historical
reality and focuses on that relationship which has provided the most important
creative and psychological impetus in the writing. Although it does not specify
that the discourse is limited to works in english, it does indicate the rationale
of the grouping in a common past and hints at the vision of a more liberated
and positive future. In practical terms, the description … is less restrictive than
‘Commonwealth’; it shares with ‘new literatures in English’ the ability to
include, for example, the english literature of the Philippines or of the United States as well as that of ‘pakeha’ (white) or Maori writing in New Zealand, or that of both Blacks and whites in South Africa. However, the term ‘post-colonial literatures’ is finally to be preferred over the oth- ers because it points the way towards a possible study of the effects of colonialism in and between writing in english and writing in indigenous languages in such contexts as Africa and India, as well as writing in other language diasporas (French, Spanish, Portuguese). (The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, 1989, p. 24)
Which types of colonies were there?
- Colonies of settlement: Canada, Australia, New Zealand
- Colonies of rule: India (including Bangladesh, Burma, and
Pakistan), most of the African colonies - Colonies of both settlement and rule: Colonies of the Carribean; South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya
Which are the four possible optins of the end of the british empire?
- they were bowled out by nationalists and freedom fighters
- they were run out by imperial over-stretch and economic constraint
- they retired hurt because of a collapse of morale and failure of will
- they were booed off the field by international criticism and especially united nations clamour
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sozaboy (1985)
- Experimental novel; mixture of Nigerian pidgin English, broken English, and
idiomatic English à grammar of colonial past is disordered and made strange - NOT a reflection of actual language use in Nigeria
So, although everyone was happy at first, after some time, everything begin to spoil small by small and they were saying that trouble have started … Radio begin dey hala as ’e never hala before. Big big
grammar. Long long words. Every time. Before before, the grammar was not plenty and everybody was happy. But now grammar begin to plenty and people were not happy. As grammar plenty, na so trouble plenty. And as trouble plenty, na so plenty people were dying … We motor people begin to make plenty money. Plenty trouble, plenty
money. And my master was prouding. Making yanga for all the people, all the time. (3)
Which are examples of literature that are in Dialogue with the Literary Past?
- T. S. Eliot and the modernist tradition
- Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day (1980): About post-partition Indian family; epigraph from Four Quartets (1944)
- Caryl Phillips, The Final Passage (1985): Migration from the Carribean to England, also epigraph from Four Quartets
- Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (1950): Rhodesia novel, title is line from The Waste Land
- Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960): Nigerian man between cultures; title from Eliot‘s “The Journey of the Magi”
What ist “writing back”?
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)
* Representation of Igbo culture from the inside, from its own point
of view, in its own richness and complexity
* Comparison between Igbo and British traditions (first, Igbo way of
life; then arrival of British missionaries and British colonial government)
* Strategy of making the British strange for the reader
“Writing back“ as challenging and subverting the dominant discourses of colonialism
Strategy of decolonising minds, imaginations, and sensibilities
Helps establishing field for post-colonial counter-discourses
What are examples for “writing back”
- Chinua Achebe `replying‘ to Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) to Bronte, Jane Eyre
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981) to Forster, A Passage to
India (1924) - Other key texts that have served as sources of counter-discourses for
postcolonial writers:
Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Instrumental in establishing an anxiety-ridden myth of first encounter between “civilised Europe” and the “virgin” but “savage” naWve Caribbean
Example of James Joyce “writing back”
- Also writing against British colonisers and their ideas of literary form as
mimicry of colonialist culture - Rejected writing ‘national’ literature and their celebration of military and
aristocratic heroes (exemplified by Yeats and others) - Instead: focus on underrepresented characters from humble backgrounds;
Dublin’s common men and women (Portrait of the Artist, Dubliners) - Created ‘nomadic’ fiction, stories of homecoming, travelling, restlessness in
Ulysses (1922) - Formal experiments: instead of linearity, broken plots, repetition, various
forms and styles; characters who resists becoming heroes and who affirm
Irishness; linguistic playfulness
Example Derek Walcott “writing back”
- Omeros (1990), based on the Odyssey and the Iliad
- Set in St Lucia
- Celebration of ordinary men and women in their daily struggle
- Includes passage in which the poet-narrator visits Ireland and envisions Joyce as his guide
- Rejection of nostalgia for precolonial past
- Main characters: Achilles and Helen, Philoctetes, Hector
- Counterpoint: former English soldier Plunkett, coloniser’s perspective
What should be considered when reading postcolonial literatures?
Reading Postcolonial Literatures
* Whose cultural capital (Bourdieu)?
* Problematic structures: the neo-imperialist implicatons of a postcolonial literary/critcal industry centred on, and largely catering to, the West’, an industry mainly ar;culated in English, depending on publishing houses in London and New York, offering ‘translated’ products for metropolitan consumers, and privileging ‘a handful of famous writers (Achebe, Naipaul, Rushdie)’ and ‘its three celebrity cri;cs (Bhabha, Said, Spivak)“ (Huggan 2001:46, quoted in Innes 2007: 199)
* Negotiating shiXing and overlapping identities and their tensions
