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Anglophone literatures and
cultures
Diaspora.
Colonialism/post-colonialism: introduction to colonialism and post-colonialism
-No Great Mischief -The Mouse Deer Kingdom -Cambridge
Migration is a wide term: there can be migrants that run away from famine and persecution, migration of teachers... it a larger category of diasporas experiences. The three novels are written by contemporary writers.
Cambridge: the writer is from Caribbean, he tells us about slavery. Chiew-Siah Tei: Malaysian origin. She moved to UK. MacLoed: from the island of Scotland.
These books give us an idea of what diaspora is They show us migrants.
Programma standard: appunti completi delle lezioni, slide, conoscenza dei testi primari e critici.
Modalità esame: test multiple chioce + prova orale Appello unico a fine corso Superamento obbligatorio per accedere alla prova orale B, voto valido fino alla sessione invernale 2017. Includerà quesiti su romanzi (characters, setting, plot) passaggio del libro devo dire il nome del personaggio. Del libro Colonialism solo capitolo uno.
Part B. Più difficile. Capacità critica dello studente, due quesiti presi dalle domande e aggiornato nel corso delle lezioni. I quesiti verteranno sulle 3 romanzi.
Digital sources: Intranet (univr) http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/ Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oed.com/
Internet: Wikipedia
Gutenberg project
The British empire: a short history.
The United Kingdom
The three novels actually refer to the British Empire, they’re all set between the eighteenth-nineteenth century. In a certain sense they take place in the British Empire, but obviously we now refer to the ex British Empire because it doesn’t exist anymore.
The United Kingdom includes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is federation of states, England is just a nation within the federation. The United Kingdom was founded in 1707, this is an important year. The first novel refers to this historical period. It is an important date because it is the Union of Parliaments. Until 1707 Scotland and England shared the same king and the king’s place was in London. The two countries were very different: there were different legal systems, economic strategies, one side England was busy with its English empire, on the other side Scotland with its Scottish empire: both country came to the decision of not competing. Scotland was trying to be an English empire as well as England, but England was more powerful than Scotland. They were competing with each other and wasting energy and effort, so they decided to unite parliaments. The Scottish parliament voted in favour of the union, and in 1707 there were one parliament for both states. This is the Birth of the United Kingdom. Great Britain is the geographical term. It is relevant for no great mischief. 1707 marks the birth of the British empire and the United Kingdom, this was a marriage of convenience. The parliament in Edinburgh chose that the members of parliament were the aristocrats, clergy and members of the high class in general, and people in Scotland protested. But the parliament protected the interest of the higher classes.
The 18th century was marked by two risings (1715-1745). Rising and rebellion are different, these two terms are different: like insurrezione e ribellione. People rebel and refuse to be oppressed: rising when we respect the people that fight. The substance is the same. The meaning of rising is going against and unjust set up or regime, using rising means that it is respectful of authority whereas rebellion is not in the respect of authority. “Jacobite” comes from the Latin Iacobus, the Stuart's, the dynasty that wanted to restore the Stuart's on the throne of Scotland and England. Civil war was fought on British soil: Jacobite vs Ivan....There had been a Jacobite rising. Jacobite is not Jacobine, Jacobine is of French. Jacobus comes from the dynasty of the Stuarts that ruled Britain in the 17th century, in which many figures were called James. The Risen (insorti) wanted to restore the throne of England and Scotland and give it to the Stuarts. Basically the Jacobite wanted to restore the Stuart to the throne and this is also basically a civil war, the last civil war fought on English soil. During the years between 1715 and 1745 people migrated and went away from Scotland.
1801: Irish Act of Union: Ireland becomes part of the British kingdom. Parliament in Dublin is abolished. The Anglican Church is to be recognized as the official church in Ireland. No Catholics are to be allowed to hold public office.Ireland rebelled against this decision. Extreme form of violence against these people. Another important is the Irish act of union in 1801, Ireland became part of the English kingdom. Ireland much more than Scotland rebelled against decisions, it was a catholic country whereas England was protestant. Anglican was the official church and this was an extreme form of violence against the catholic. It was a very complex context.
Scotland’s Empire
- Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was an overseas trading company created by an act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1695
- “Darien Scheme” (Panama) failed in 1699.
- Competition between England and Scotland: ends with the Union of Parliaments of 1707
also developed in different ways and became something different. There are many practical distinctions, but the most important are new imperialism and old imperialism. Old imperialism: 16th – 18th centuries. How did imperialism start? It started with the East India Company, a trading Business, to America. This was also a phase in which all westerners collaborated with native. They were collaborative but not interested in imposing their culture and so on, this is what happened in many places, such as China, Japan, India in general. Basically the old imperialism is about economic penetration, that’s really what happened in synthesis. New imperialism: 19th century, in 1870s they colonized Asia and Africa by using military forces. They turned into something really violent for the control of territories, just thinking about India and Asia. Something ironic, something that happened especially in India, they wanted to exploit the territories, and they wanted also to create a class of educated Indians. These people became the leaders of the rebels against Britain because they were taught how to think. à industrial revolution They tried to have also raw materials, thank to which British factories could use materials that came from those places. The industrials evolution grew exponentially in the British empire. The whole economy of Britain depends/depended on raw materials. Military controls became essential. The worst crimes against humanities were committed, people were exploited because they tried to control places and countries. In the poster (slides) they sent a message of doing things in the right way, something as “we are working for you, you/we will benefit, so the exploitation is justified”. Tropical colonies, is a signal of difference: tropical is the other country, a synonymous of otherness. They serve us, we use them. There’s no respect of other countries, complete and absolute exploitation. Of course in the Caribbean there were cities but they (English) would take control of the exotic otherness which is inferior and can be exploited.
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British poster that depicts the British empire in 1927.
We can notice that Britain is the center of the world. It is subliminal, maybe we don't notice it consciously. British colonies are colored in red. We can see also the Moon, stars...it means that Britain is the centre of universe too.
“Buy Empire Goods from home and overseas”. The Empire is then presented as a big trade company. It is a global market.
This is how The British empire was represented in 1927. It conveys a sense of pride, productiveness and greatness, as if they were saying “We are not exploiting them”. The vision of the Empire is full of pride. They depict themselves as powerful.
KEY TERMS
What do they really mean? There is a difference in the two words, they have two meanings.
Imperialism: A policy in which a strong nation seeks to dominate other countries politically, economically and socially. It is a more general policy of a certain country. Imperialism happens generally, it is widespread.
Colonialism: it refers to the practice implemented actually by Imperialism. The terms are interrelated. The word “Colony” comes from the Latin “colonus”, which means “farmer, cultivator, planter or settler in a new country. A settler is who migrates in order to live in another country or to dominate.
During the Bristish Empire time, a settler is a person that goes to New Zealand, Australia…
Colonia means then “farm, land, estate, settlement”.
Colonial is a related term that in modern English means “relating to, of, belonging to a colony”. It has a negative meaning: it can also indicate something provincial, exotic, excentric, different, out of the normal. (According to the previous map, we can say that they thought that the rest of the world was not clever).
To sum up, we can say that Imperialism is an abstract concept, whereas Colonialism is concrete, it is the practice or manner of things colonial.
Capitalism: economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit. (The Industrial Revolution didn’t respect the human beings, there was exploitation of children, bad work conditions, tortures… ) Nationalism: The belief that people should be loyal mainly to their nation that is, to the people with whom they share a culture and a history, rather than to a king or ruler.
State is different from nation, they may not coincide.
- State refers to the political structure, a state has geographical boundaries, a certain political organization.
- Nation defines a community. The terms derives from “natus”, born. It has to do with identity (same language, religion, we live here and we share the same land). There is a new definition: nation exists as long as the people forming a community imagine themselves as a community. Nation is identity.
Boundaries are implied both in nation and in state. Borders can be imagined (A on one side, B on the other and there can be a huge difference). For somone, borders are an obstacle, a gate, a moment of change and closures.
Borders can be then seen as obstacles, something dangerous, they are a site of exchange and hybridization.
Nationalism is an ideology; there is not just one nationalism: there are different nations, thus different nationalisms. They all contain values, issues, aspects…
Extract from Thomas Carlyle in the Edinburgh Review. He was a poet of the Victorian Age, in the second half of 19th century.
“We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude nature; and by our
restless engines, come off always victorious and loaded with spoils”
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Post colonialism is a challenging period of studies, it is interdisciplinary. Its beginning can be found in the late 80s. We have an ethical vision: we feel citizens of this world and so the planet is under our responsibility, which is global. We care for the rest of the world, we are cosmopolitan and we want to make the world a better place. We want to have the knowledge to change the things around us. There is an aesthetically value but beyond that there is an understanding of the problems.
The other problematic of the world is the following: while we're dealing with the post-colonial word the age of the empire is over but the world we're living in is made of ruptures and continuities. While we look at the present we must look at the past too and we must interrogate it.
To anticipate: we are European and we have this history, but we are a different generation. What does it have to do with me? I'm fed up of saying I'm sorry, of the responsibility. Reply: we are proud of our nation, also for the past (Dante...). There is also a dark chapter of our history, which we are not responsible of. Something makes us also ashamed. It is not feeling personable responsible but we should know about it. National history must be made up of all the chapters!
Postcolonial studies don’t consist only of literary texts, but also art. It is an interdisciplinary and wilder field. Post-colonial studies analyse literature produced by cultures that develops in response to colonial domination. This was very different, it develops in different ways: Jamaica, Australia, Africa...English is the main language, it is taught at school and literature is genrally produced in this language. There are countries that were colonized by the French, bt the German..these countries speak their native languages, colonial languages and Creoles, which are languages born by the intersection of English and the native idioms (Jamaica had slavery due to the English domination, they currently speak English but they speak a Jamaican dialect, it is taught at school and there is a literature in this language. This is just an example of the richness of the post-colonial world). English is turned also in local varieties, new literatures are born.
Post-colonialism theories apply to study the literature written by colonized: do you represent colonialism? How? How do you show that your country was affected by imperialism? Shakespeare in The Tempest he represented colonialism through the island of the setting,Rudyard Kipling loved India and the books he wrote were about India.
Especially literature written by colonized and/or formerly colonized people (Chinua Achebe), African writer that won the Nobel prize. Anothernigerian is Wole Soyinka.
The study of the process of colonization and decolonization.
Colonization in the most of the cases consists of military actions. In the most cases though colonization is cultural, psychological, religious, political too... Decolonization is a more complex process: there is a war of independence in some cases, such as in North Africa, Tunisia, Algeria... Sometimes it happens through formal decisions and there is no violence. Even in these cases there is some sort of mechanism that has to do with language, cultural relations; country is decolonized not only on government levels but it happens especially in our mind. It is a psychological and cultural process. Colonization produce a sense of inferiority in the natives.
ISSUES OF IDENTITY
Another set of problems has to do with issues of identity. Chinua Achebe describes what happens in a village with the English colonization. Before there are missionaries. They change the community, this process gradually weakens the authority of the chief of the village. The army then conquers the village quickly and easily. It deals with identity: everything changes, they lose the identity, they lose their original language, everything is turned in English, a language they don't know. They became foreigners in their own country. The identity is affected, you are in a place that is no longer like it was before. Identity was changing in many different ways.
The British imposed on colonized countries forms of: -Goverment: they replace the local chiefs with their people to govern. -Education: British introduced education because they needed the natives to communicate with them. Little children went to school and they learnt nothing important but the Roman culture. The aim was promoting English language and culture to teach to people to be like British people
- Cultural values: British promoted an aggressive capitalist system.
- Social practices: marriage, Victorian social values...
Not all that happened is negative. There was a lot of suffering, injustice but the outcome was interesting. Advantages: we have today English as a lingua Franca.
They speak and write English, in addiction to their local languages. Use English: schools and universities, government, for example in Africa.
Examples: South Africans, Australia aboriginals, or the Maori in New Zealand they speak their languages on top of English. It's a richness for them, they are lucky.
Cultural colonization -Inculcation of the British system of government and education, British culture and British values.
- In the 19th century there was a denigration of the culture, morals, and even physical appearance of subjugated peoples. Race is something really invented in the 19th century to justify the exploitation for example.
- Denigration of culture: their culture is considered inferior. After you persuade them to be inferior you can control them easily.
Decolonization
It is political independence but It is a psychological process first of all: they must convince themselves not be inferior, they are special for thir culture. It takes a long time!
Psychological and social interplay between: -native, indigenous, precolonail culture. Colonizer retreated and left the lands they had invaded. -Removal of British military forces and government officials. -Language, infrastructures, economic bonds remain...
Ex-colonuals are left with a psychological inheritance of a negative self image and alienation from their own indigenous cultures which had been forbidden or devalued for so long. In most of these countries the inferiority is almost gone.
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Fear and eurocentrism: fear is always something natural, animals behave like this. Racism: we identify someone whose appearance is different, it focuses on different types of details. The difference is source of fear, this person is different from me, is he a threat? It happens in nature, it is a form of self defense. A group wants to distinguish and prevail. Racist doesn't use the human faculties.
Example of the kind of ideology. Colonialist ideology is still surfacing here and then and it caracteizes this world: racism for example. Practical and contemporary example: the media, they are powerful. Africa: how it is it portrayed? The newspaper are selective in their presentation; if we try to think of Africa: wars, famine, corruption, disease. It comes from the kind of representation we have, it often misrepresented.
Adverisment: it advertises a documentary by Al Jazeera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgAk4MOcjMk
UpFront - Reality Check: Africa is not a country. It is a continent. It has a great number of nations and languages, there are 4 of the fastest growing economies of the world, they have female presidents…
Eurocentrism > world order. It is one of the engines of the imperialism in nineteenth century: conquer new countries to teach them.
First world: Europe, USA.
Second world: white population of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa, former Soviet bloc
Third World: developing nations such as Africa, India, central and South America, Southeast Asia.
Fourth World: indigenous population, subjugated by white settlers, governed by the majority culture surrounding them, such as native Americans and aboriginal Australians.
criptic euro centrism: it's hidden, this hierarchy is is an example.
Colonialist ideology
Double consciousness: Concept developed by post colonialist theory: it describes what goes on in the mind of colonizers. It is a polarized vision of the world: binary opposition, terms mutually exclusive, organized in an egomaniac manner, norm and deviation. The double consciousness explains the colonizers vision or psychology, it is a way of perceiving the world devided in two parts, not seeing the connections and the similarities This vision divides in two of cultures. In the long run even the orientals are encouraged to see themselves in the same way. The interaction of the cultures happens, the original vision is eroded. At an unconscious level there is also a positive process. This a mechanism which produces an unstable sense of self. It is not a negative process actually This produces a feeling of being “caught” between cultures. This is a negative state, your caught because your heart belongs to a certain culture but you have to conform to another. This double conscious see affects colonized and colonizers: it creates a polarization, destabilization. They feel caught in two
cultures. This leads to Unhomeliness: feeling of not having a home, not feeling at home in your home, this is what happens to colonized subject. This leads to a new vision of the world, the post colonial one. It also affects the colonizers. “Psychological refugees”: these people are displaced psychologically, a refugee is someone who is pshisically displaced and goes to another country, but this can be also psychologcal.
De-colonization.
It can be psychological and ideological and it doesn't happen overnight. This is a complex process, such as the process of colonization. There are ramifications, different ways of rejecting colonialism. One of the things that many countries do is reclaiming the precolonial past. When we get the Indipendence let's forget what happened: it is a desire. History changes any countries that was colonized, it is important to keep remembering. Decolonization wants a new dialogue with the past, looking back at this history, re- appropriating it and re-writing it again.
Can Colonization be totally rejected? What it brought can never be eliminated. It can't be totally rejected. Can the ore colonial past be fully reclaimed? It is not easy, cultures can be lost in some generations.
Post Colonial theories: set of theories we can apply in different
Most cultures are changed by cross cultural contact, often through military invasion: Ancient Celtic culture was changed by Romans, who occupied British isles: today Celtic is minority that occupies only the Celtic frange. Let's decide who is British: interaction of group. Anglosaxon culture was changed by the many generation of French rule which followed the norman conquest.
Decoloniztion is not an easy process, what language should we speak and write? The language tends to be English.
The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o writes in his local language. He was baptized with the name James, than he wanted to change his name, he was one of the leader of the war for independence. The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe writes in English, “for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intended to use it.” He loves their own country after 100 years of domination. He believes that English is an African language, he thinks: “no one is going to teach me what the correct grammar is.”
This was a matter of debate. Going out of the regime? How? Language?
English as a Lingua Franca is the most common vision though. Arguments for using English: it provides common language for the various indigenous people within third world and fourth world nations to communicate with one another. English facilitates the emergence of those nations into global politics and economics.
Cultural syncretism it is a kind of negotiation between two or more cultures, such as in Mexico: catholic religion tradition and Mexican tradition of celebrating the death are mixed and the product consists of a new ritual. It is the overcome of negotiations between the things natives believe in and the things brought by colonizers Active participation The community collaborates to re-create the national identity. It is not just a phase of rebellion but also a phase of re-construction and re-creation. The writer is a teacher for the people, he is involved in the recreation, Chinua Achebe is an example. Appropriation “It's originally English language but now it is mine.” This is what Chinua Achebe meant. Colonized appropriate things that are typical of the colonizers: language, culture, values...This is the reason why English is spoken in millions of different accents today. Appropriation is also a phase of decolonization. Mimicry Mimicry means imitation, attempt at reproducing something. It has a negative connotation: imitating means conforming with something but not succeeding, it is a negative word. In the colonial context mimicry is quiet revolutionary and interesting: by mimicry we refer to the colonized subjects who imitate the colonizers; example: Australians speaking English who imitate grammar, style, rhythm of British English. Imitation of gestures, values..Imitation is never as good as the original. Mimicry is negative because it also implies an act of submission. It is a self humiliation. Postcolonial scholars have revealed that this is a very radical and revolutionary attitude. Any colonized country will go though a mimicry phase and this is one of the strategies of decolonization for some reasons: 1)the colonized learn to appropriate language, culture, values... 2)let's think of a different context: someone smiling in the same way, imitating me in the way I speak...how do we react? Get angry, scared? Would we laugh? Would we be alarmed? Would we feel embarrassed? It is a psychological shock. In the colonial context by imitating the colonizer the colonized undermines his own self identity. The colonized subject imitate, try to behave British for example. This is submission but mimic is a psychological process of a positive phase that leads to a self empowerment.
Postcolonial complexities
There is a distinction between invader colonies and white settler colonies. 'Invader colonies': Colonies that were established among non white people through the force of British army: exploitation, slavery…India, Africa, West Indies; 'White settler colonies' like Australia and New Zealand or South Africa. It is where the British actually moved and started a new life. Differently in India there are few settlers and most of them are male. People migrated, they travelled from the poor regions of Britain. They didn't go there with an army. The white settler cultures share some common ground with Britain, in terms of language (let's think of American English, it is the outcome of the mixture of migrants. Eventually all the differences created a different language), in ethnic terms, in culture. The colonized were treated with more respect, they had forms of self government, Granted Dominion status, political autonomy in the British Commonwealth. It is a very different set up.
What about the United States, Scotland and Ireland? Are they Postcolonial nations? USA were a colony of the British empire, they gained then the independence. Yes, they are postcolonial nations. They represented a new empire. Scotland and Ireland?
It is a complicated issue. They both were involved in the building of the British empire, many soldiers and migrants came from this part of the British Isle. There is no a final answer.
What is the risk of Postcolonial studies? They may fall in a new binary opposition: the distinction and the drastic separation of Europe and the Colonies. They are not separate, there are continuities, parallelism. Postcolonialism should help clonies to re-find their own identity. Colonialism impacted upon colonized countries. The aim of postcolonial studies is understanding that, whenever there is a cultural encounter, changes happen in both directions.
Postcolonial criticsm can be used to interpret literature in the western literay canon. Literary canon: “canon” means “the law”, in literature it refers to a number of authors or texts that are regarded as representative of a certain historical period, of an author, they are the text we must read to understand a certain field (history, culture, author..) Canon is not fixed but it changes because our ideas change. Example: feminism considered more and more women writers and today the canon has actually more women than in the past. Postcolonial criticism is also being used to revise the English literary canon. Example: “The Tempest” by Shakespeare can be read as a metaphor of colonization. “The Tempest” is re-read all over the world, it has been turned in the parabola of colonization.
{End of the general part with the basics of postcolonialism}
POST-COLONIAL THEORIES. Book: B. Ashcroft, G. Griffith, h. Tiffin “The Empire Writes Back”, 1989.
This book is important because it made Postcolonial studies approachable. (Postcolonial studies are taught all over the world).
Passage on the slide.
“More than three-quarters of the people living in the world today have had their lives shaped by the experience of colonialism. It is easy to see how important this has been in the political and economic spheres, but its general influence on the perceptual frameworks of contemporary peoples is often less evident. Literature offers one of the most important ways in which these new perceptions are expressed and it is in their writing, and through other arts such as painting, sculpture, music, and dance that the day-to-day realities experienced by colonized peoples have been most powerfully encoded and so profoundly influential.”
Useful concept of the passage: 3/4 of the people living today were somehow affected by colonialism. It's a huge amount. Literature is a tool of knowledge. It provides answers, a new view of the world. The second part of the passage explains that literature is important.
Title of the book: writing back. The empire answers. The ex-colonies (margins, periphery) now answer back to the center of the empire, Britain because they have something to say and to teach them. The book is about the knowledge they produced, they want to make themselves visible: influence takes place in many directions, from colonizers to colonized and especially vice versa. They produce an original knowledge and culture and they want to share it with the center. Salman Rushdie: “the empire writes back to the the centre”. Colonial encounters is production of knowledge in both directions.
this is that the world is not simply ‘there’ to be talked about, rather, it is through discourse that speakers and hearers, writers and readers come to an understanding about themselves, their relationship to each other and their place in the world…”
Discourse has to do with language, narrative and narrative frames. Literary texts played a create role in shaping, duffusing and creating knowledge.
Connected to the idea of discourse we go back to the idea of cultural imperialism.
Cultural imperialism
Culture is in literature, in a language, in popular culture. It is a tool in the hands of colonizers; they have the culture and the power. Culture is a very important weapon that supports imperialism and it is one way to spread it.
The definition of the self and other are based upon representations. How would we learn that people is different from us otherwise? Representation are in literature, in the media, films and documentary. Robinson Crusoe: representation that impressed A generation. Culture is more powerful than the army. Hegemony: this word wasdescribed by Gramsci. It means “controlled by consent”. Someone accepts us as controllers. Gramsci was a Marxist philosophers and the concept of hegemony belonged to the social classes. The working class feels inferior and it is subordinated to the upper class. The colonizers do the same. The power is the colonizers is their hegemonic power, not the army.
Colonial discourse Orientalism
Originally the study was by Western scholars of the near and far East (culture, society, language...) in opposition to the Occidental culture.
Orient: diversity of history, culture, ethnic group...it includes different varieties, from Africa to China. It is an example of how colonial culture flatters differences.
In the late 20th century, a term introduce by Edward Said to describe the historical and ideological process. In the imperial age scholars created false images that were instrumental to their control and exploitation. False images and myths about the Eastern or Oriental world have bene constucted by the West.
Edward Said (1935-2003).
-Palestinian American scholar. -University professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia university. -He is a founding figure in post colonialism.
Orientalism (1978) Ground breaking, controversial study
Said claims that the Orient:
exists for the West and it is constructed by and in relation to the West. is always “the Other”, the conquerable and the inferior.
Orientalism: the image of the Orient is expressed as an entire system of thought. The oriental: the person is presented by such thinking, through a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries (most of Asia, Middle East). Earlier Orientalism:the first “Orientalsists” in 19th century were scholars who translated the writings of ”the Orient” into English. Knowledge as a power.
Contemporary Orientalism
Sometimes this is a form a racism but it is more complex. Said argues that Orientalism can be found in current Western depictions of “Arab” cultures.
Said's Project:
- the orient cannot be studied in a non Orientalist manner;
- The scholar should study more focused and smaller culturally consistent regions, rather than the orient as a whole. -What has until now been known as the Orientalism must be given a voice.
“Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point, Orientalism can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient — dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.... Thus Orientalism is not only a positive doctrine about the Orient that exists at any one time in the West; it is also an influential academic tradition, as well as an area of concern defined by travellers, commercial enterprises, governments, military expeditions, readers of novels and accounts of exotic adventure, natural historians, and pilgrims to whom the Orient is a specific kind of knowledge about specific places, peoples and civilizations.” From: Edward Said , Orientalism, 1978
When we travel and we see things it is likely that what we see is conditioned by the discourse we live in. The west has created a dichotomy between the reality of the East and the Romantic notion of Orient:
- The West as civilized, just, moral, industrious, rational, demcratic (masculine).
- The Orient as savage, lewd, lazy, superstitious, irrational, despotic (feminine).
Example of the East-West dichotomy in Western literature: Shakespeare writes in a different discourse “Antony and Cleopatra”. Said chooses to show the Orient through ancient Egypt and its queen Cleopatra. Life in Egypt is depicted as valuesless, sentimental, effeminate, despotic. Life is Rome depicted as moral, rational and measured. Cleopatra vs Caesar/Octavia.
Photograph: we see hegemony and masculine superiority.
Let's go back to discourse. In the 18th 19th centuries Stereotyping was supported by scientists studies and the racial/ethnic Otherness was often represented.
The Orient as a fantasy.
There is a link between popularised Orientalism and erotism, mystery.
In “The Tempest” by Shakespear, Prosperous and his daughter Miranda are on the island. Caliban is a very interesting character; he is a native and described as monster by Shakespeare. Ugly, distorting, looking like a fish. This image is negative. Shakespeare never told us that he is black, in the 19th they say they are black. Prospero gets to be the master of the island and Caliban becomes a slave, a prisoner. Caliban must live confined in the worst part of the island. The context is very negative but Shakespeare allows Caliban to speak and he speaks in a poetic, elegant English. He is on the same level, language wise, as Prosperous.
Robinson Crusoe has similar characters (Friday) and a same setting. The native becomes the slave of Robinson, who becomes the master of the island.
There is a very different way of representing the native in the world. At the end of the tempest Caliban reteurns the master of his island. Prospero is represented eventually as the bad character. Miranda is like her father in philosophy, in the passage on the slide she is getting angry with Caliban while talking to him.
“(…) I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures Could not abide to be with. Therefore wast thou Deservedly confined into this rock, who hadst Deserved more than a prison.” W. Shakespeare, The Tempest , I,ii,11.353-
She said that she felt pity for him. It is not a good feeling, it means you feel superior but it is a mask of compassion. You're just a poor savage and I am superior. Took pain: she presents herself as a good person, she taught him a language (speaking in particular). Savage is the key word. When I arrived, you did not know your own meaning: it deals with Orientalism. The west created the idea of the orient, pretending that the other does not have a culture. She is humanizing Caliban. In the Caribbean, atrocious actions by the Europeans happened. In the 18th century (equality, French Revolution...) this is not possible, making the people slave and de-humanize them. Gabble: term born in Ireland. Ireland was colonized by Britain. The British went there and the Irish spoke Irish, which was a strange, new, savage language. Barbarian: bar bar, people who didn't speak Latin and the weren't able to speak, they produced only sounds, they don't have language, they speak like animals. I had no choice, I must confine you here, you deserved this because you are evil.
This Passage is an example of colonialist ideology.
Literary disocurse supports and feeds cultural imperialism. In centuries, literatures have great power of shaping minds, novels had always a huge influence.
Colonial life is represented in 18th and 19th English literature. In these centuries the Empire provides wealth to Britain, the empire supports the industrial revolution, it has a very central position. 18th and 19th literatures has the empire as a background, a decoration, it has a secondary role.
Jane Austen, Mansfiled Park: British wealth is presented as dependent on the business from the West Indian Estate
(exploitation of slaves).
The Other as a symbol of madness and darkness: Charlotte bronze, Jane eyre (the madwoman Bertha is a 'colonial').
Colonies are represented but the novels are set in England, there are characters form colonies who represent the dark, the deviation.
Africa: Heart of Darkness. It is a novel that has been critiqued a lot. Heart of darkness is about a gentleman, Marlow, who tells the sorry, about his journey in the heart of Congo, with a boat going upstream and this is a journey into Congo dominated by the Belgian empire. The Belgian Empire had a terrible reputation and record of cruelty against natives. British stigmatized this behavior, the book was written in a certain sense as a enditement of the cruelty. Description of the encounter of Mr Kurz, he went native. It is a complicated psychological novel; this is a keel that take us back in time in a colonial perspective. It is what we used to be when we were less advanced. Darwinian civilization.
Africa: darkness, stage for self discovery, to get in contact with an exotic culture, sexual discovery. Passage.
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a preGy thing when you look at it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An Idea at the back of it: not a sentimental pretence but an idea; an unselfish belief in the idea something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer sacrifice to…“
Literary texts are complex. Conrad is indignant against the atrocity committed in Africa, on the other hand he writes help stepping over cliches, like Africa is the heart of darkness. The belief of the idea of colonizing is unselfishness, sacrifice. How important the role of literature is, it has a big duty to bring civilization there. Redeem (important word): it covers the horror, there is a moral construction that justifies the terrible things. The book was attacked by many Africans.
18th and 19th century: imperialism. 🔃 Political, scientific, literay discourses 🔃 National identity
Literary texts are complex representations of discourse, they produce knowledge and they help us to understand this period and many other things.
Cultural hegemony theory
Antonio Gramsci is a political theorist, he developed the Marxist theory of hegemony. If you control culture, you have the power. Cultural institutions had the power of controlling a society by creating and diffusing norms: conformism,...to control. That dominant groups maintain power and protect common class interests, namely, wealth and ownership, through the use of cultural institutions and alliances with other members of the elite, not coercion.
The First theorists Franz Fanon (1925-1960)
