Post Colonialism

Diversity Difference and the Black Atlantic

Identity is not only created by ourselves but by others too. In Diaspora identities, dominant discourses of 'race', ethnicity, class, nation and gender in the West can militate against the embracing of hybrid identity, by fixing them into certain positions - akin to the 'other' in Orientalism.

Colonialism can still maintain a discourse in a colonial nation by which they can represent diasporas.

Paul Gilroy has one key response to the question that continues here from 'New Ethnicities', how are communities built which don't homogenise? Can there be solidarity through difference?

Diversity/Multiculturalism

Depict the West as tolerant where all cultures are happily accommodated - but it is argued 'cultural diversity' shadows the continued inequalities experienced by migrants. It is a tool of the media.

Transnational connections, crossings, tensions and affiliations between black people located and moving between Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas and Britain.

Gilroy shows the extent to which black thinkers affected the development of the West, ridding the idea that it is racially and ethnically homogenous.

Analogy of a beehive; Dabydeen.

A number of different groups (in London) that are confined to their cells - with little cross cell communication.

London is culturally diverse but 'cultural diversity' becomes recreational (going for a Chinese/Indian takeaway). Very little cultural exchange occurs.

Gilroy pits the transnational quality of black history and experience against those ideas of community grounded in mistaken ideas of purity or cultural essentialism. He suggests that ‘cultural historians could take the Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis in their discussions of the modern world and use it to produce an explicitly transnational and intercultural perspective’ - due to blacks having an ancestry of travelling.

The use of trans- and inter- expose borders as porous, across which ideas are moved and changed.

This again promotes hybridity when challenging notions of home, belonging, roots and 'race'.

Diaspora Identities

Bhabha - borders between cultures are porous, not static with 'pre-given cultural contents and customs'. Advocated the use of 'cultural difference' - where culture is fluid, hybrid.

A culture being interactive and constantly re-composed is a political act. It matters how we conceptualise difference.

The Limits of Post Colonialism

The ship - symbolises a living, micro-cultural, micro-political system in motion. Bears witness to black oppression whilst also circulating possibilities and ideas around the globe.

Gilroy believes 'routes' are better for black identities than the notions of roots and rootedness - which are applied from colonial discourses.

There is still a necessity for black resistance.

How to do this without homogenisation?

'Solidarity through difference' can be built upon by plotting how those in one place use the resources and ideas of people (from history or different locations) in order to challenge dominant discourses. Creates finite acts of local resistance which are constantly updating.

Generalisation is perhaps its biggest weakness

Beryl Gilroy; Boy-Sandwich

The finding of a valuable painting called 'The Masks' (Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks comes to mind) enables his move. It's crossing - from Caribbean to EU and then to an unknown buyer - provide resources for Tyrone to rethink his identity in terms of routes not roots.

British born black teenager, gap year to care for grandparents - going to Cambridge.

Goes to a party - it is attacked by racists and his girlfriend is badly burnt.

A year before his brother had been killed in a racist attack.

Thus he decides to leave London when he finds a hidden fortune - which is applauded by the media (demonization) but he comes back.

Significant number of voyages in by colonised peoples to the major European empires (African migrants in England trace back to before Queen Eliz. I, Blacks 3% of London's population in late 18th century.)

He comes to realise that the Island cannot frame his diasporic present and this provides him with the new knowledge that he must return to his birth place - creating a new, transnational, route.

Sobering picture of black diaspora experience in London. Family has not been welcomed or allowed to settle.

Tyrone feels 'of, and not of' London - too often oppressed on behalf of his race but its where he has lived his whole life.

Sees the island of his ancestry as an imaginary homeland, taking refuge in it. But he does not have 'interior knowledge' of his grandparents, the obsession with island stunts his identity.

Problem with Western Theory

Limits of temporality

Boy-Sandwich brings to crisis ways of thinking about identity as a ‘certainty’ with secure roots, an accessible home and a continuous relationship between past and present, by showing that it does not work for migrant and diasporic peoples.

Prioritising western modes of thought

The prefix of post has too many troubling associations, in particular those to do with the representation of historical time implied by it.

It is prematurely celebratory.

New Ethnicities

Hall

Secondary colonisation by the west through academic imperatives and focuses on cultural difference (M. Mukherjee). The colonies provide the raw material whilst the west processes it under the title of postcolonialism.

Hall's work comes from sociology and cultural studies rather than literary works.

Like Bhabha keen to show diasporic and migrant cultures through hybriditiy, motion and multiplicity.

Focus on Britain's black community and less so on defining it as postcolonial.

Throughout the 20th century, esp. post WWII, there has been a major influx in migration from the colonised to new homes in the old colonial centres. (Britain specifically employed Caribbean natives to fill labour shortages)

Others come to study or escape political and economical difficulties in native lands.

Identifies two overlapping (but separate) phases, to show how 'blacks' represent themselves in response to racism and marginalisation.

Not all literature can be looked at under the lens of postcolonialism, nor is all of it intended to.

1st phase: Production of diasporic community: How are they organised and who organises them?

2nd phase: opens the debate concerning the variety of people in a diaporic community - is everyone reprented?

1. 'Black' - used to untie those of different minorities or racial background to create resistant communities (not unlike negritude).

Creation of a common Black experience, a 'singular & unifying framework' based on identity being formed across cultural and community differences.

Created a positive representation of the black community by the black community (however does so through homogenisation).

2. Internal conflict - as the 'essential black subject' is questioned.

Instead diversity of subjective positions, social experiences and cultural identities are asserted. (celebration of heterogenity).

McClintlock; although postcolonialism often challenged binary oppositions, it itself perpetuates them with colonialism/postcolonialism.

Non-European cultures become historicised with relation to European chronology.

There are other ways of dividing historical moments - which do not privilege colonialism.

BUT

1st world critics of this very culture (Spivak)

How can the community construct politics that do not homogenise but still promote diversity and solidarity?

Diasporic black identities are multiple and fluid (like any diasporic identity) with their own inner tensions thus the black writers and artists no longer represent the community.

Hall suggests that the 'essential black subject' and homogenisation of the black community has been useful politically, despite its rejection of individuality.

LGBT blacks allowed the paradigm shift from generalised black community to a flexible framework.

Hybrid identity allows for a change in identity for all people, not just diasporas.

Diaspora?

Griffiths argues that the wish for Indian literature to be read with only local and specific frames of referencing is to deny colonialism happened at all - dismissing millions

Brah's Diaspora Space

a complete questioning of fixity within a place

Home & Displacement

Discourse of power can still seek to legitimate certain forms of identity and prevent the emergence of particular self-identified identities but the diaspora space allows a challenge to this power and the ability to capture identity of the self.

Ghetto of Postcolonialism

Definition has shifted, one referred to the dispersion of the Jews but now encapsulates global movement. (Keown, Murphy & Proctor)

'home' is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. A place of no-return. Brah

Argued that global corporations are the new 'colonists' in the 20th century.

The global economic relationships between 1st and 3rd world reflect colonialism in the present and so postcolonialism is not as sufficient as neo-colonialism due to a lack of political content which can account for military actions.

Naipul (British living Trinidadian); a rush for the boat taking people back to India. 'dream' and 'illusion' repeated.

Courses in postcolonial literature are fashionable gestures, as the topic is broad it cannot be taught in a semester and there is little in the way of inclusion of intellectual challenges of the field.

Although this is an issue with the institution

Migration alters how they think of their old and new home. Creating imaginative as well as material consequences;

India viewing Trinidad - opportunity & promise

Indians in Trinidad - miserable working conditions, home sick

1. postcolonialism refers only to aesthetic practices; representations, discourses and values

2. it is not a historical marker

Mark Shackleton: Diaspora as Theory

"migrancy in terms of adaption and construction - adaption to changes, dislocations and transformations and the construction of new forms of knowledge and ways of seeing the world."

Diaspora in postcolonialism is a new way of being, an emergent mode of perception and engagement with the world.

Confusion as it is simultaneously used to describe the material world and the imaginative products and practices of it.

Postcolonialism and Feminism

India for Naipu is an illusory place despite its emotional significance. Therefore migration affects generations of the future, creating long lasting effects.

Limits of Geography

Migrants can seem to forget the reasons for leaving.

'Home' exists in the mind and is unreachable for the migrant place beyond the physica

2 approaches to Postcolonial critique:

• that literature exists outside colonialism
• that local concerns cannot help but be influenced by it

Each is condemned to neo-colonialist status:

• refusal to learn from postcolonial insights
• insensitive to historical context and happy to generalise

At once both separate and connected they both hold a mutual goal of challenging forms of oppression; patriarchy being the term which links their aims (implicit of colonialist politics and the main focus of feminist dissidence)

Robin Cohen; diasporas are communities of people living together in one country who 'acknowledge that the "old country"...always has some claim on their loyalty and emotions.'

1. Postcolonialism submits to the geographical divisions of Commonwealth literature.

Migration is not an interval between fixed points of departure and arrival but a mode of being in the world - migrancy

Sally Morgan; My Place

By submitting to Commonwealth divisions Britain (or colonial centres) continue to be privileged.

How radical is postcolonialism if it privileges select countries of colonialism, submitting to a colonial mapping of the world.?

But postcolonialism has expanded its scope and privileging has gone; such as the inclusion of Ireland today.

Even Scottish and Welsh literature has been seen as postcolonial.

Therefore it is not that it is restricted by a Commonwealth map but that new contexts and intercultural relations are being considered in the light of postcolonial concepts and thought.

Collectivity and community are very important. As is the sense of living in one place and looking to another. There is an inescapable link with their past migration history and sense of co-ethnicity.

Autobiography set in Australia, exploring the history of Morgan's family in the wider context of Australian history.

Double Colonization of Women

Migrancy and diaspora describe perpetual conditions that release new knowledge and ways of being, describing more than a finite journey.

What happens to the idea of 'home' for the traveller?

Capitalist Modernity

Women are twiced colonized; by colonialists and patriarchy.

But this effects 1st and 3rd world women differently.

Expansion from Anglophone to Francophone, Dutch and Hispanic too.

As she grows up (amongst trying times; dad's death, money issues) she realises she is treated differently.

Finds out she has aboriginal ancestry; leading to her quest to discover her family tree.

Mother and Grandmother reluctant to talk of their past.

Globalisation

Generational differences prevent this being purely a migrant association, as although some will claim British citizenship they also identify themselves and are affected by their ancestry.

Therefore more accurate to use 'diaspora identities' rather than 'migrant identities'.

Rushdie; attempted to bring Bombay, his past home, into the present through writing.

Those out of home and language may feel an intensified detachment.

Imaginations of home made in 'broken mirrors, some of whose fragments have been...lost'

Colonisers brought their own representations of society upon the colonised. This sometimes led to women losing the stance they had before, which was often of equal standing.

However, one of the issues with postcolonialism is that it can sometimes become detached from its historical and geographical referents and thus use of Commonwealth mapping may not be such a bad thing.

Living in-between

Postcolonialism promotes a vision of the world which does not acknowledge sufficiently the ongoing foundational impact of capital and modernity on the contemporary world’s reality – and because it does not acknowledge this foundational impact it cannot offer any way of critiquing it. (Dirlik)

Western women

epitomise the West's perceived higher moral and civil standards.

Threat or violence to women is the most dangerous of insubordination

‘there’s almost nothing written from a personal point of view about Aboriginal people'

Transformation of political, economical and cultural relations on a global scale.

Diasporas are composite communities, which are dynamic and shifting.

Eastern women

Sexualised

male desire

lacking restraint

excessive delight

licentiousness

Migrants to live 'of, and not of' each place (Phillips)

The migrant occupies a displaced position. How can they find a home when;

• politics and society prevent belonging
• ideas of their past home prevent a full idea of home where they are

My Place enables a feminist critique of the patriarchal values enshrined in historical representations of Australia.

2. It does not discriminate sufficiently between different experiences of colonialism

However gender inequalities are present in both cultures. E.G. Igbo tribe, women are only useful to preserve the male line, power is in the male ascendancy.

Australian history privileges the white (and the) male, Sally's narrative opposes this by voicing Aboriginal women's experiences.

The text evidences the 'double colonisation' we met before.

Home is not a stable and stabilising concept

but exclusionary and troublesome (rootedness)

Ideas of belonging cannot be applied in a diasporic context, new ways of creating identity are needed to be free of inaccurate assumptions and representations.

Loss of borders as organisations work transnationally; IMF, World Bank, Coca-Cola, GM etc.

Postcolonial intellectuals do not want us to think about the relationship between intellectual debate and economic power because they do not want to be exposed as profiting from global capitalism.

The collecting of 3rd world literature under postcolonialism is the main exponent of this.

Western women also perpetuated the patriarchal colonial discourse due to the pressures on them by society.

Identied as 'token travellers only' Kabbani

White women too are oppressed by patriarchy but are complicit in the marginalisation of Aboriginal women.

Not without issues. Paul Gilroy; in the wake of 9/11 diasporic peoples have continued to receive abuse due to new and remoulded prejudice of race and ethnicity.

They remain 'ghettoised' and excluded from feeling that they 'belong' to their new country.

To be a migrant or live in a diasporic community is to live without borders and beyond the notions of being at home or in a place.

Looking toward nationalism we see that ethnic or racial discourses attempt an homogenised definition of a group. Yet these are unsuited to the world where migration history and experience can alter the individuals perception of the place they are in.

The migrant is therefore best placed to realise that no knowledge is totalising.

Postcolonialism levels the 'critical differences' within and between nations. The gathering of diverse peoples under postcolonial neglects their individual historical outcomes.

Skimming over issues and refusing to look at them in depth - as with the continued primacy of men and neglect of women's contributions.

Postcolonialist female writers are challenged by the prospect of changing two cultures whilst being judged under them.

Postcolonial novels and books on postcolonial theory are merely more commodities in the global marketplace, which convert cultural difference into safe and palatable packages, change nothing significantly and shore up the unequal global status quo of the twenty-first century.

Can the subaltern speak? Morgan adopts an 'Aboriginal consciousness' - is it hers to take? or is she creating a form of it herself, speaking for rather than with?

Descendents of migrants can suffer similar oppression and generalisation, due to pre-conceived notions of a place, as their parents and grandparents. (the second class citizen)

The world is full of pain and loss but also of immense possibility - a chance to gain new fragments of knowledge which challenge older ideas

The fate of thousands of people can be altered by the decisions of those sat in boardrooms thousands of miles away, maybe speaking a different language or living a much more luxurious life to those whose economic fortunes are in their hands

e.g. Demonization by the western press and state institutions toward; asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants (Britain and Romania/Bulgaria)

It is too prescribed and anchored - there must be better concepts of which to more accurately explore discovered discourses

The 'in-between' space therefore is one of possibility and creativity - to create an individual discourse and to constantly change routes as there is no fixed place.

Yet many critics have worked with Marxist theory for years and capitalism is a part of colonialism and postcolonialism (as seen with Globalisation)

However embracing the Aboriginal consciousness can also be seen as an important political act - measured by an elderly women saying her explorations meant a great deal to the community as Morgan is proud to acknowledge her ancestry.

Do postcolonial representations perpetuate or question patriarchal values?

Argued that a male ethos runs through colonialism to postcolonialism, that both colonialism and resistances to it are male centred, restricting the freedom of women.

"we are Pakistanis, but you, will always be a Paki" - both belongs to and does not belong to this group (by use of the derogatory term)

Contemporary globalisation is indebted to colonialism in the communication networks, international relations and histories of migration and settlement which colonialism has bequeathed the present,

Diasporas can also be coercive (using force/threats) as well as progressive. They are also not free of internal inequalities of power and divisive prejudices.

"You don't know what it means that you, with a light skin, want to own us"

Materialist Critique

Can the Subaltern speak?

3rd world women

Limits of 1st world feminism

Feminism and 'race'

Hybrid Identity

Can western women ever adequately speak on behalf of 3rd world women?

Performance is the means to negotiate the new hybrid identities

Although a generalising label the can show how even benevolent and supportive attempts of engagement do not always empower women.

Tricontinent idea neglects other locations sustained in the struggle.

Omissions to preserve his Marxist inspired theory also lead to perpetuating focus on nationalist, heroic figures. Ignoring the subaltern and being implicit in neo-colonialism.

Marxist inspired critique, R.J.C. Young very influential.

Postcolonialism placed alongside the Marxist-inspired movements which challenged colonialism and Empire across the world.

• Most objected immediately to being colonised.
• Indebtedness to first world intellectuals

Morgan can never know the meaning of her actions for the Aborigines - which splits a homogenous 'Aboriginal Consciousness'.

The political act can be seen as a way of building affiliations with Aboriginal peoples and involve herself in bringing their lives to bear upon the Australian history.

Despite the fact their experiences will remain out of reach of her knowledge she participates in a mutually supportive project of contesting patriarchy and colonialism - and helping the subaltern speak.

Are human beings sovereign subjects, with autonomous agency over their consciousness. (I think therefore I am).

Poststructuralist thought would suggest that our subjectivity and consciousness are constituted by the shifting discourses of power which speak through us.

Essentially we are not the authors of ourselves, our identities are written for us, our consciousness if constructed from outside the self.

Black and Asian women aren't visible in Western feminism

When they are addressed it is normally under the idea that they need rescuing - this is a failure to understand their needs or consider social practices from their POV

Focus on border lives.

Borders both separate and join different places, they are an intermediate location where once contemplates moving beyond a barrier.

Imaginative border crossings are as much a consequence of migration as physical border crossing.

A migrant is an agent of change, employing received knowledge in a re-formed way. 're-staging the past' - ensures traditional knowledge isn't dismissed.

Spivak; an upper class woman from Calcutta.

Caught in the assumption 'what can I do for them?', she felt she could speak on behalf of the oppressed because she was rich and free.

She realises that this is an error, she should instead ask 'what can they do for me?'

The 3rd world continues to be subservient to the West for a variety of reasons and therefore western feminism cannot escape these implications and so must be careful not to replicate unequal power relations with 3rd world women (Mohanty). However it is in danger of doing so in its analysis of 3rd world women.

"introduces other, incommensurable cultural temporalities into the invention of tradition. This process estranges any access to an original identity or "received" tradition." Bhabha

Western feminists intervene, thinking their way is best, that they are enlightening, progressive and liberating. (much like the colonisers thought as a whole of the colonised - a microcosm of the larger colonisation)

Globalisation presents new challenges to postcolonialism, but evidence suggests that it is beginning to meet those challenges in important ways that continue to resource critical thought.

Denial of binary oppositions (key in postcolonialist discourse), as crossing borders disrupts conventional patterns.

Borders must have their dominant representations of history, identity and logic challenged by ambivalence and contradiction.

Spivak contends that critics should beware trying to retrieve the 'subaltern consciousness; or it shall lead to the fault of Foucault;

• Rerceiving the subaltern as self-defining 'sovereign subjects
• Presuming that the intellectual is a transparent medium through which the subatern can speak (un-opinionated voicing)

Identity through hybridity denies singular or pure identity - it is dynamic and never total

They are never complete, perpetually in motion.

1st world feminists often believe their gender gives them the right to speak for 3rd world women.

But she must 'learn to stop feeling privileged as a woman'.

Strays from 'deep, horizontal comradeship' which can fall foul binary logic.

Like Spivak Bhabha rejects a sovereign subject.

Identity is discursive - fluid

Subjectivity is discursively produced allowing possibility and re-formation

The new 'signs' of identity impact individuals and groups

Western feminism has an ethnocentric bias, believing their beliefs are applicable to all (another instance where homogenisation causes issues).

There is a subtle 'white solipsism' (that only the self exists)

Analytical presuppositions;

all women exist as a 'coherent group with identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or racial origin'.

Est. so by assuming all women are victims of oppression.

A homogenised, 'unified "powerless" group'.

If women are perpetually victims then men are perpetually the victimisers.

'Universal womanhood'; the arithmetic method - if it affects a large number it is universal.

Speaking on the oppressed behalf can often be a self centred endeavour, to critique the self and the first world. But ethnocentrism is rejected by refusing logic such as only Indian women can speak for other Indian women.

Subaltern consciousness (like 3rd world women) is a creation of discourse. All who attempt to retrieve the subaltern voice immediately compromise it as they are complicit with the colonial discursive dynamics they try to challenge.

We cannot encounter the subaltern on their own terms. Instead it is done through dominant models and with this the subaltern is silenced and lost.

It is further complicated with gender, as subaltern insurgency prioritises men.

The ability to disrupt received ways of thinking at the border (like performance with pedagogical thinking in nationalism) allow individuals, minimalised to haunt holistic discourse. (The subaltern speaking - as an individual in a globalised society). This is why literature is important as it is a tool that can enable this disruption - also allows the absent to have their voice heard (again the subaltern)

To stop this discourse women must be open to learning from the 'other'. To try and understand Asian & Black female culture. (Carby - and later Spivak on the subaltern)

Feminists must speak to women and not for them. Be willing to learn the limits of their methodologies.

Women's subaltern consciousness (according to Spivak's theory) can never be retrieved so long as they are looked for. As attempting to find and present them, mutes them.

Living in a new place will lead to pain throughout and on a number of fronts.

Frameworks of society are often use to further frame societies in a particualar way, wthout thinking that the framework may be inappropriate. Ignoring lived experience.

Subaltern woman is unrepresentable.

What should be challenged is the way in which they are silenced.

However, Spivak acknowledges that sometimes undesirable tools are needed for change - so to enable a subaltern woman we must first silence them in discourse to exemplify the need to not silence them.

As objects of western feminist analysis 3rd world women are robbed of their agency.

Creative dialogues in P.Colonial Feminism

Despite being able to question whether 1st world feminism can be used purposefully for the 3rd world it would not be right to dismiss it outright. It does have its uses

A creative dialogue is possible, where 1st and 3rd world voices collaborate and learn from each other.

The insights of W. feminism can illuminate post colonial texts which in turn enable those feminists to re-evaluate cultural assumptions. Therefore creating a dialogue which is mobile and mutually transformative. (Nasta)

'Commonwealth' to 'postcolonial'

Re-reading & writing English lit.

Although English holds -ve connotations, as discussed it does not prevent the re-interpretation and new ideas the language allows.

It is both enabling and disabling.

Literature not the only form of challenge. Cultural activities too allow representations of the people. That postcolonialism is transformative, although can still be subjected to containment.

Although the Empire (British) is past tense, the material & imaginative legacies left from (+ de-)colonisation are important.

Postcolonialism: definitions and dangers

As black women (and other subaltern figures) intervene and participate in existing schools of thought they are provided with agency against the dominant discourses. (Davies)

It is not the same as after colonialism; it maintains a stake in past, present and future.

Postcolonialism is an emancipatory concept as it allows people to interrogate aspects of literature which had been taken for granted. Allowing re-interpretation through the eyes of those in the nation. Mukherjee

• cultural endeavours from those from historically colonised localities, those concerned w/ its workings and legacy and their resistance (past + present)

• cultural texts from those who have migrated from countries w/ a history of colonisation or those descended from migrant families (diaspora experience) and its consequences

Colonisation must be thought of alongside 'capitalism' and 'imperialism' as the

• Re-reading texts from those that colonised, addressing the Empire directly or not

"desire for [profit]...led to the [est.] of the imperial structure"

(Denis Judd)

Reading does not just involve texts but in a wider sense incorporating other creative endeavours and postcolonialism leads us to a debate not a consensus.

No totality should be presumed, heterogenity runs throughout all parts (country/area/person/sexuality etc)

Education in India was more than just intellectually progressive (according to Lord Macaulay), it was a moral heightener too. Here we see the explicit want for native intellectuals to be interpreters for the masses.

This moral approach was also taken on by Evangelists; despite resistance to the denigration of India's own religions a Christian morality was subtly incorporated through the teaching of English literature.

Leading to Indian students being exposed to a code of values deemed Christian and universal but also identified with colonising nation.

Capitalism esp. has a mutually supportive relationship with colonialism, whereas imperialism differs as it is not focused on settlement. (Some argue that colonialism has stopped but imperialism hasn't as economic power is still sought (looked at with globalisation later))

The 3rd form of analysis: The Empire writes back

Reading new literatures from once colonised countries, focusing on their purpose of writing back to the centre - attempting to question colonial discourses.

Theories of Colonial discourse

Contrasted against liberal humanist readings postcolonial literatures are politically radical and locally situated rather than universally relevant.

This is where Commonwealth was dropped for postcolonial - to show a change in critical belief.

Reasons behind the shift from liberal humanist to postcolonial critique.

Postcolonialism therefore, according to Mukherjee, allows people to question the assumptions laid down by the colonising power which may still circulate today.

Such as 'The Heart of Darkness', still taught as an American 'great', Achebe argues that it is derogatory and dehumanising of Africa and Africans and its continued teaching as a 'great' perpetuates Conrad's late-Victorian racism.

Looks at how representations of people were used to continually oppress the colonised. Due to a belief that African & Indian descent is inferior to white people - even within colonies.

The Empire writes back, written by 3 Aussies, takes on Rushdie's argument that language needed to be decolonised.

"colonial indoctrination...is usually about oppression or subjugation" "the white man was to be honoured and respected" Sam Selvon- yet this was not taught,

Writers seen to be refashioning the language to create a sense of self made identity

Creation of 'englishes' by using untranslatable words in texts, glossing obscure tems, changing syntax and different structures.

Literature from once colonised countries are concerned with challenging the language of colonial power, un-learning its world view and producing new modes of representation

"colonising the mind" - taking control, perpetuating values and assume others will follow. Internalising these certain expectations shows how colonialism operates discursively (subject to subject)

Commonwealth Lit.

The Tempest

Prospero and Caliban have been seen as the archetypal coloniser and colonised (Césaire). They have thus been appropriated by these thinkers to highlight colonial dominance and postcolonial dissidence.

However this is not to say Shakespeare wrote about colonialism. Rather the text has become a resource to those writing about postcolonialism.

The texts however are also opened to new means of interpretation - productive critical dialogue.

3 criticisms

Used as a term from 1950s for lit. written in English from countries with a colonial history. (US & Ire. exempt).

Intro

"Language carries culture, and culture carries...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." Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Gender; neglects their differences, despite the sexes experiencing post-coloniality differently (McClintock). The same can be said for class differences.

Regional/National difference; little attempt to differentiate divergent places. Assumes homogenised experience globally.

Commonwealth aimed to promote: peace, democracy, non-racialism and consense building across member states.

Fanon suggests that equality can never be met, despite attempts at anglicisation as the other is an object.

Man (self) black man (other) "a man was expected to [be] like a man. I was expected to [be] like a black man"

"one reads Commonwealth writers because they bring new ideas, new interpretations of life to us" A. Norman Jeffares

Is writing back prevalent? assumption that all texts challenge colonial discourse. Neglects issues apart from European colonisation.

Turn to Theory

• unity in diversity

(homogenisation, enforcing the primacy of Britain)

Freedom from colonialism requires challenges to the dominant ways of thinking

The discipline that we know today stems from the success of Orientalism. Although this should not negate the contribution of those before such as Fanon and Ngugi (among others)

It deals with national and cultural issues which were believed to be able to cross boundaries but the best were able to transcend them too.

Reading Contrapuntally

Re-writing possibilities and problems

Seen as an extension to canonical lit. National specifics were second to universal meaning in the text. Historical contexts that inform work being seconded is described as liberal humanist. The most 'literary' texts for them always transcend the local contexts they were formed in.

Three forms of textual analysis become popular in the 80s & onwards:

Colonial Contexts

Western culture cannot be understood without recognising its fundamental investment in imperialism. Said

Postcolonialism or post-colonialism?

but

• Re-reading canonical texts, to see if past representations perpetuated or questioned the latent assumptions of colonial discourse.

Or those that are seemingly detached from colonialism, which are read provocatively.

Either with writers who dealt with colonial themes and argued their support/critique. ("Fleshing out and assessing [a text's] worldliness", Harrison)

Reading in context requires 2 things;

1. how are the contexts made present/absent

2. how do they intervene in debates of the time?

• Colonialism and resistance; a focus on Bhabha and Spivak

• Poststructuralist thought who look at the representation of the representation of colonised subjects across a variety of colonial texts.

Mansfield Park (Austen); plantation material is central to the novel. Sir Thomas can be seen as a colonial landlord who can restore order of those 'beneath' him.

Borders (inside/outside, England/Empire) are dynamic and dependent on the other.

• Productive critical dialogue, does more than 'fill in the gaps'
• Source text as point of inspiration and departure but meanings aren't fully determined by source text
• Resist or challenge colonialist ideas portrayed in source text
• Reader is an active agent

• Assumes knowledge of the source text, requiring educated reader
• Re-reading always tethered to its antecedent, so can never be truly independent of colonial culture
• The source text will always need to be referenced and so re-writings can never fully challenge their authority

To read a text in its historical, cultural and social contexts is to relate to how it dynamically and dialogically deals with the issues it raises.

Consequences of such a reading reveal 3 things;

1. worldliness of culture; literary texts emerge from and complex engagements with historical, political and economical conditions of the time.

2. encourages contrapuntal readings; to understand a novel is written under certain assumptions. That it is dependent on factors that are not necessarily written about, which may be in opposition to imperialism.

3. The text should not be devalued because of the reading.

A text does not have to be located in a colonial place or make colonialism a central theme for it to imply the realities of the British Empire.

The hyphenation implies that it is something that has happened and is a fixed point in time. However, not all colonies were liberated at the same time and some could argue that some colonization is still in place. Spelt without hyphenation then allows us to think of it as something which is done rather than something that is.

Jane Eyre re-read

Re-writing (Jane Eyre); Wide Sargasso Sea

Rhys is a colonial, despite her postcolonial attitude and strategies.

Post Colonialism

McLeod 2nd Ed.

Spivak: her reading underlines the investment in colonial realities which complicates the ease at which the novel can be read. It is much more sinister when associated with the slave trade - which is not explicit but implied (even more sinister as it is accepted as a form of income)

Reading Colonial Disourse

Bertha Mason central figure of inspiration (not to complete Eyre) and with this is allowed an image of her self, rather than one through Jane or Rochester.

W.S.S engages and refuses J. Eyre as an authoritative source, their relationship is both dynamic and dialogic enabling an interrogation of the agency of the 'classic' text to fit meaning.

Split into 3 parts and there is no controlling narrative; most is competition between Antoinette and husband.

Antoinette's husband lacks domestic cultural knowledge; which leads to him being annoyed and insulted

Husband wants to give knowledge rather than receive it - Patriarchal idealism but Antoinette answers back.

Marriage supposedly transfers the rights of representation over to the husband.

• Bertha as the other to Jane
• Jamaica depicted as hell on earth, binary opposition to Europe.
• Satanic and beastly nature of Bertha
• Colonialism & The Empire are providers (of wealth)
• To read without colonial analysis is very much to be in line with Imperial thought.
• The other must lose their lives to allow Jane (& others) to live as a heroine or to be pure & free
• St. John, head to India as a missionary worker - there is impending death

Is it Postcolonial?

Antoinette is the first and last narrator, containing her husband who is situated in the middle.

To suggest it and leave it as such is counter productive, as there is a danger of imposing the present on the past.

It is not wise to assume the author's values and beliefs from a novel's. (eg. Shakespeare is not anti-Scottish despite Macbeth).

This labelling, importantly, prevents the ability of a text to be seen as challenging colonialism.

Rhys exposes the ways in which colonial discourses create their own alterity rather than reflecting on the actual reality. Whilst highlighting the extent to which the husband is ignorant yet arrogant and self absorbed with his ego.

"colonialism...is an operation of discourse [which] interpellates colonial subjects by incorporating them in a system of representation" Tiffin & Lawson

Re-reading is also done to consider emergent forms of anti-colonialist views;

This echoes the relationship with the Caribbean and Britain, Rhys' novel is goverened by Jane Eyre in a dependent (inter)relationship.

She is in danger of giving Jane Eyre authority as the text of inspiration; making W.S.S dependent on Bronte's novel, mirroring Antoinette's subservience to her husband's design.

Critics

Complications to this relationship;

Specifically set after J. Eyre, a 'post-dated prequel, as it confuses the placement of Bertha.

Self awareness of making W.S.S independent from J. Eyre shows a future Britain reliant on their colonies (As J. Eyre is, with money)

The realm of knowledge is inseparable from the influence and operation of power.

Discourses (derived from Foucault) make and shape the world. They are not modes of reflection but agents of creation - bound by the interests and services of power.

Ideology assigns roles to others in a way that it is felt should be accepted and internalised by the 'other' as proper.

Power is more than punitive (as punishment) but also gratifying. By enabling some and incorporating the colonised as part of the Empire self-worth overrides the more coercive and oppressive tactics of colonialism.

Names;

Antoinette's name constantly changes due to her definition coming from men.

We cannot prescribe too much (such as calling Antoinette 'Bertha' and the husband 'Rochester' as this traps them in a definition which is what Antoinette is trying to escape from)

Reading Discourse in Context: Colonial Discourse Analysis

• refuses the humanist assumption that literary texts (can) exist above & beyond their historical contexts - always bound by them.

• Dares to point out the extent which the 'very best' western high culture is caught up in the sordid (dirty, morally distasteful) history of colonial exploitation.

• Attention to the machinery of colonial discourses; which provides a means of collecting resistance to the continuation of colonial representations which reamin after it has left.

• Places a text in history by exposing how their ideological and historical contexts influence the production of meaning with literary texts and how these representations have the power to influence their historical moment.

Said - Orientalism

Bhabha - Hybridity

Spivak - Subaltern

Fanon - National consciousness

Rushdie

Gilroy - Questioning the Nation

Nasta - creative dialogues

Moore-Gilbert - subaltern issues

The Nation in Question

NB: Orientalism is not the same as colonial discourse

Reading Orientalism

"nationalism cannot be...considered as the alternative to imperialism that it was once thought to be" Gikandi

A duty for the West to civilise the East - who are incapable of rule.

Generalized observation of Eastern culture to define the West through opposition.

The Orient comprises of North African and Middle Eastern countries. A collective noun that homogenises them. Orientalism is the West's representations of the Orient.

Although debatable, Gikandi presents the growing dissatisfaction with the idea of nation and nationalism. Partly due to the insoluble problems that occur after independence.

The Overland Mail; R. Kipling

The East is a place of pure human culture.

Their purity makes them inferior.

Binary oppositions used as definitions: occident/orient, civilised/uncivilised.

Landscape:

inhospitable and at dusk.

obstacles

dangers (robbers, the jungle and tigers)

Nature itself is dangerous and destructive

The higher the runner gets the more precarious

Many new nations became divided internally, with civil war and micro-nationalisms...or failed to offer what it had promised through economic progression and social justice.

Imagining of a national people creates the potential "straight jacket of...identity and homogeneity", Hardt & Negri

3 major observations

The divisions that threaten once-colonised nations show issues with the concept of a nation itself.

Is it declining because of an increasing global society - with corporations and the internet?

Progression.

There is a rise through the landscape - figuratively a microcosm of the British conquest.

The British have managed to scale the heights despite the obstacles.

The runner has to travel the same path.

India is wild.

It's inhospitable until in the presence of the British - who are associated with light, the break of day.

India is the sinister darkness that Britain conquers.

Where is everyone?

No landscape is completely devoid of people.

Kipling only refers to those that are important to the British (the runner and their obstacles). A limited perception and selective envisioning of space.

The production of a unified imaginary community can be both nationalism's greatest strength and its ultimate weakness.

BINARY OPPOSITION (Said's observation)

NIGHT/DAY, WILD/CIVILISED, BELOW/ABOVE

+ve Runner; trustworthy, reliable, competent

-ve Runner; could be the robber, no name, performing a duty of service, no other purpose

A derivative discourse?

Gender & Sexuality

Nationalism, representation and the elite.

Anxieties

How enabling is it for a once-colonised country to be using Western formats in their dissidence with subservience? Gilroy

Questioning the neo-colonial elite raises two important points.

Acknowledgment of possible disobedience

Nationalist Representations

Constant threat of the robber (who is closely linked with the runner) - stealing important documents that could be read by the native intellectual.

Nationalism is a gendered discourse, reverting back to older tradition to form part of the national consciousness in opposition to the colonisers.

This has led to problems with feminists; as cultural identity is formed with structures that they had been struggling against. (Mother India, Good Hindu wife).

A male chauvinism has been pointed to, in that using women as national icons steals them of their agency - with a dependence on the men in society.

Menacing duplicity, the colonised as able as the British - worrying resemblance

Reliance on the colonised

The 'liberal dilemma', Chatterjee.

Nations may promise liberty and universal suffrage but is complicit with undemocratic forms of Govt.

In colonial contexts this is problematic, as appropriation of the liberal aspects of the west lead to perpetuating the illiberal and colonial aspects of nationalism too.

Power & role reversal as the Runner brings the Empire's message to the British

Also posited that the agents of liberation are men and so the contributions of women are marginalised or dismissed (like the subaltern w/ the elite).

1: (following Fanon) replacement by the native intellectuals, who speak on behalf of the people but keep them disempowered.

2: Representations o the struggle only celebrate individual elite members, dismissing the role of the masses - the subaltern.

The nation is a western construct; emerging with capitalism and industrialisation - a fundamental concept of imperialist expansion.

Sexuality is also invoked, re-enacting some forms of Orientalism. As the feminine is symbolic of the nation, so then the nation is penetrated/violated/oppressed - with a reliance on men to resist these attacks.

The use of a western tool leaves them susceptible to continued colonial ideals.

This has led to a rejection of nationalism as it fails women, in that they are still considered subordinate in a patriarchal hierarchy.

Men & women experience liberation differently and often it is men who reap benefits and are the agents of change.

The nation as an idea; "an imagined political community" Anderson

Nationalism, 'race' and ethnicity

Lazarus however argues that independence does not lead to restructuring of Western society as this notion omits the idea that the people can restructure and transform the purposes of colonialism to their own end.

"the members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them" but they think they are a part of a great collective, holding a

Now we are comfortable with nations being a collection of countries separated by borders, but borders are not accidental. They are constructed and defenced. Nations are fabrications.

Historically, divisive criteria have been used as a way of forming national identity - racial/ethnic/religious. This has rewarded some but restricted others who are not apart of the 'accepted' group.

"deep, horizontal comradeship"

Chatterjee's 3 phases; derivation and transformation of the Western thought.

'Race' and ethnicity are not the same thing.

The 5 Positions of women in Nationalist discourses;

1. Biological reproducers - duty to reproduce, replenish numbers of 'rightful' people. (those not of 'proper' ethnic origin steralized.

2. Reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/nation groups - should not threaten national identity, stay with 'true' ethnic origin.

3. Transmitters of culture - educators to children of heritage and traditions

4. Signifiers of ethnic/national difference - used as icons; dismissing any contribution

5. Participants in the struggle - contrary to most representations. (particularly important as women DID contribute and resist patriarchy post-independence)

Ethnicity involves; birth, social practice, traditions, sexuality.

traditions, rituals, narratives and symbols manufacture, by performance and manifested in repetition, the idea of mutual belonging

'Race' is a human, political, construct. Skin colour has become the primary sign of racial difference, taken as evidence from natural differences (black/white).

• Moment of departure; Anti-colonial nationalism admits that European culture has attributes which allow progress which are lacked in the East. There is an attempt at marrying Western tech with Eastern spirit.
• Moment of manoeuvre; embracing 'anti-modern' ways to scold modernising violence. Elite take on the forms & functions of the people to gain mass support to be in control of their modern society (ie. Ghandi)
• Moment of arrival; 2nd phase realised, nationalist thought becomes unified, coherent and a rational discourse. The elite claim their 'modern' attributes are coterminous (of the same boundaries) with the pop. consciousness & enjoy the support of the people - unified w/ shared political aims.

Both used as a form of discrimination.

But both are used to posit a common bond/identity; which can be powerful for marginalised groups (Negritude)

Language, space and time

A national language (although widely debated) is paramount to national collectivity.

However, co-ordination of the elite masks the neo-colonial power relation which Fanon warns of.

Nations homogenise: fashion unity and togetherness, through the invention of tradition (eg. flags & anthems).

This includes their narrative which is selective of their history, creating one version of the past which is the only one that matters. Dismissing difference in individuality and the many other historical narratives.

This leads to certain days being celebrated as a fundamental part of their history (Independence day, Guy Fawkes Night, Labor Day) - enshrining an idea of the past whilst bringing together the people of the present.

Imagining the nation displays specific features, shown well by 2 modern forms of writing.

Realist novel: characters along the same temporal plane in a book, who never meet but are a part of society in one place. (microcosm of reality)

Newspapers: create communities from coincidence. Record events that happen roughly around the same time and normally in the previous 24 hours. This is then bound also by location - British newspapers will majoritively focus on events that occur within its borders (with a separate part for global news). The act of reading itself is collective within a nation - as we read it we know that others too are doing the same. A collective activity.

Nationalism and racism can therefore run alongside each other; perpetuating a concept that supports divisive processes.

Thus attempts at unification after independence can exacerbate existing conflicts between groups - leading to internal conflict.

(Nigeria; diff. ethnic and religious groups which has led to bloodshed and instability)

The Nation & Its Margins

Liberation & Domination

Representations of the self by defining against 'the other' - who in this instance is anyone not within the borders of the nation. (although borders are complex and fraught with difficulty when used to aid the creation of a nation)

Nationalist representations are highly unstable and fragile constructions which will never provide the unity they promise. Bhabha

English in the Colonies

Various anti-colonial nationalisms - they are not the same in Africa, S. Asia and the Americas

The +ve force of anti-colonialist nationalism "assert[ed] people's rights to self-determination and freedom from oppression" Thieme

English language is part of colonial 'inheritance'

As the lang. of the colonial power it complicates its status as the lang. of an independent nation.

How enabling is it to continue with it?

In settler nations there must be a differentiation from the British standard.

Nationalist Discourse and Culture

"true function of an art and culture is to interpret us to ourselves" Judith Wright

Simultaneous Double Narrative split.

Pedagogical (didactic); a fixed origin for the nation with a continuous history. Linking the present to past generations. Warrants the authority, legitimacy and primacy of the nation as the central political and social unit which creates a collective 'people'. People are an object.

Performative; icons and symbols must be continually rehearsed to keep a secure 'deep, horizontal comradeship'. National culture must be endlessly performed, here people are the subjects of the discourse as they are actively involved in the cementing of the nation.

The myth of nation is an effective tool of anti-colonialism as it provides a structure for the people to unite behind.

Borders: anti-colonial nationalisms work within the boundaries set by the West, despite not recognising them before their arrival. Despite being effective it was also problematic (particularly in Nigeria).

Standard English is unable to produce the description necessary for once colonised countries, adaption of English is therefore crucial to constructing a national image and identity.

The status of indigenous languages have often been ignored, what power do they obtain? This can lead to internal conflict due to language marginalisation/ eradication.

Therefore with the change from English to english, a form of internal colonialism occurs.

The theories of negritude and Fanon provide several resources to the people;

• make self-definitions as a right
• offer the means of solidarity despite difference
• value culture inheritance and current endeavours
• offer the means to build alternative histories to conflict with colonialist representations

"I have sought to master this language so that it would no longer master me" La Rocque

PLURALITY AND DIFFERENCE CAN NEVER BE BANISHED

Those anti-colonial movements where indigenous tribes rallied region and race were suspended (but not surpassed). Gender hierarchies complicated the 'deep, horizontal comradeship' which placed people as equals.

Although these movements were effective they faced many challenges which were due to their in inherent beliefs and the ones thrust upon them

Right to the land? Settler colonies denied the legitimacy of 'Aboriginal people' claims to the land - Australia declared terra nullius; belonging to no-one. Britain then imposed the crown and didn't need to propose treaties with the Aboriginal people as they had no claim.

Even when they began to fight back, they were silenced by their national identity being ignored. Not until 1992 was terra nullius revoked.

These are incompatible and so pull the nation in two directions at once and the homogenous 'people' fragments.

The pedagogical idea of a homogenised object can never be fulfilled due to the need of participants to rehearse traditions - which allows the subaltern to intervene and challenge dominant narratives and representations.

Nationalist discourse require:

Essence

Origin

Unity

Coherence

As coherence is not possible due to split positions the likelihood of unity is diminished and thus so is the idea of the nation.

Constructing national consciousness. Ngugi, A Grain of Wheat

Concerns the achievement of Kenyan independence in 1963

Innes found that nationalist writers tended to:

• assert the 'existence of a culture which was the antithesis of the colonial one'
• relationship between people and land to de-legitimate the claim of the colonisers
• Some gender representations of partiarchy (conflict between fathers and sons) of the colonisers and the feminisation of the nation as a motherland (problematic)

Nationalist discourse must always be challenged (for Bhabha)

How do writers create a national consciousness in such a busy period of decolonisation?

A narrative of the people contributes to the construction of a national consciousness depicted on their own terms.

Central characters are of the peasant community and their memories allow Ngugi to examine how the struggle for independence impacted on ordinary lives. The masses are the focus (3rd phase for Fanon) not the leaders.

Achebe: Anthills of the Savannah

Frantz Fanon

Negritude

Césaire & Senghor

A discourse celebrating the value of being black

Submits to Anderson's unity of space and time theory, which is crucial to the imagining of a nation. Achieved by events happening in a specific location and people's memories serving as guides to what was happening at the time.

responsibility of writers and intellectuals to forge new forms of national culture a part of the contribution to the development of the people's national consciousness

Powerful method to forge 'deep, horizontal comradeship' through dissidence.

Pan-continental set of aims to unite peoples living in different places with a shared ancestry and common origin.

Many central characters are of the elite.

-ve connotations still lie with the word black : 'black-market', 'black-sheep', 'black mark'.

Senghor

More than skin deep

Césair - from the Caribbean - struggled to fit in to Senghor's version of negritude. Believes it should be measured with 'a compass of suffering', in that unity should come through shared experience.

But this work is ambivalent to the essential differences of white and black people.

Rejects the call for nostalgic celebrations of a mythic African past.

Instead calls for a dynamic and vacillating (to and fro) relationship between past and present.

As national culture & consciousness are historical and dynamic things, fashioned by the people under particular conditions.

Kihika; the freedom fighter. Similarities with the native intellectual. Makes use of ancestral learning and colonial education to oppose authority. Using Bible quotation he invigorates the present people, aligning him with the 3rd phase of Fanon's anti-colonial dissidence.

However is given a mythic status and this leads to issues with Fanon's belief that the intellectual always serves the people due to the tensions between the individual and collective action.

An effort to provide cultural pride, to value what characteristics they have in their shared ancestry - a heavy emotional bond with things

Mugo is used to show the disjuncture between heroic myth-making and the truths that they may conceal. He becomes the village hero in Kihika's absence and inhetrites the aura of the man he betrayed. The praise he receives (and the knowledge someone else is accused of Kihika's betrayal) lead to constant pressure being places on Mugo, who struggles with his guilt.

At his confession he rids the myth and becomes a villain - but a hero too for saving an innocent life.

His-excellency (self imposed title) wants to control information (Big Brother like) and this is not welcomed by the editor of a national paper.

His-excellency manipulates facts to push the editor out, who, undeterred, condemns the govt. and is subsequently shot by police which is covered up by the govt.

A friend then heads on a collision course with His-excellency due to the cover-up, when he confronts a policeman who is dragging away a young girl he too is shot.

The oppressed discover unity in the simultaneity of their suffering, rather than with recourse to a common ancestral past - although it reains a valuable resource in the present.

"Every culture is first and foremost national" - presents an argument with pan-national/continental discourse of Negroism.

Ultimate aim of universal emancipation from the hate inspiring power relations of colonialism.

National culture is vital, unstable and always being regenerated. Creations which are unique at the moment of production.

3 phases of the 'native intellectual';

1st - 'unqualified assimilation', attempts at copying the trends of literature of the colonisers, thus ignoring the cultural traditions of the colonised. Identifying more with the colonisers they become estranged from their indigenous masses.

2nd - dissatisfaction with copying the colonisers and immerses oneself in the history of the people. Yet this still sets them apart from the masses as they maintain 'exterior relations' due to their dismissal of present struggle.

3rd - 'fighting phase', where the intellectual becomes directly involved with the people and their struggle. A dynamic relationship is created with the resources of the past and the present struggle. It is here that a revolutionary national culture is made.

The native intellectual must learn from the people (something we see later with Spivak) to reinterpret and reform traditional culture.

3rd world Englishes

Mugo's confession also parallels the anxieties surrounding independence. On one hand a celebration, on the other a disquieting day of judgement.

How do you proceed?

How do you reckon with those who committed crimes against the nation?

Who judges?

What do you forget and keep from pre-independence?

How do you move forward peaceably?

Echoes of neo-colonialism also seep through, as the ruling elite take advantage of the people, something Fanon warns of.

There are many languages in India, can great literature in English become nationalist literature?

A national consciousness is needed before and after independence. As if intellectuals gain power and then ignore the interests of the masses for the interests of themselves they simply conform to the old colonial system of the elite, creating a neo-colonialism.

A nation reliant on the economically on the West (being whored out for tourism and creating trade links with corporations) cannot be said to be free of the mechanisms of colonialism. (complicated by globalisation)

Gathers a variety of voices from a nation without homogenisation. This is re-iterated in the structure, which switches between 1st and 3rd person narrative. As the story is passed between each person their strengths and limits are shown.

Ahmad believes that if this is to happen then it becomes THE national language and Urdu, Hindu etc are regionalised.

A child of both collaborator and indigenous persons represents Kenya as the fledgling nation. The child is sick; plagued by the ills of old Kenya.

The fortunes of the elite (male) are placed amongst other voices and stories, part. women.

Beatrice is pivotal, westernised and oppressed by patriarchy is sensitive to inequality with gender - through her Achebe draws on the male chauvinism implicit in system.

Beatrice disturbs the elite's autonomy.

Gender is also looked at in class distinction - with Beatrice talking to a maid who speaks pidgin, which questions how well Beatrice can represent the voices of others (Spivak discovers this issue)

independence is not an end but a beginning

Mumbi, the mother, is therefore a maternal icon of the nation - a questionable action. Writing in English too requires analysis.

HOWEVER, Ahmad does not look at how the language is used, dismissing the ability of transformation posited by J.Wright.

English serves the privileged, educated elite and minimalises millions of Indians who are not literate in it.

Chinua Achebe however rejects Ngugi's theory.

"A language spoken by Africans on African soil, a language in which Africans write, justifies itself"

Therefore English is an African language due to locality changing linguistic conditions

The idea of nation isn't rejected however, despite the neo-colonialism present.

The issues of how to conduct a nation without this neo-colonial problem is discussed in the final chapter.

Baby naming ceremony; switch of gender roles as the mother chooses the name (normally done by the male and also the girl is named with a traditionally male name). There is also a large audience of the subaltern, a heterogeneous depiction of nationhood provides an alternative image.

The ceremony is where performance interrups the pedagogical.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is also hostile to English.

He stopped writing in English in 1980 as he felt the silencing of his home language was violent and destructive.

To dismiss a language is to dismiss a culture ("language carries culture").

Writing in English is to deal in the values of the opressor.

Ngugi belives English interrupts the creation of a national consciousness after independence.

Homogenisation never aids postcolonial discourses, despite the difficulty in avoiding it.

Indigenous people were minimalised and died out (ie. Caribbean), it is therefore difficult for them to regain the language they spoke - especially as the most frequently spoken languages are foreign (Slaves/Colonisers).

This provides a different view to Ngugi's Kenya.

'Nation language' E. Kamau Brathwaite.

Celebration of poets who inflect English with new syntax, rhythm, sound and forms of expression found in African speech.

Crucially it is not an elite language, rather a language of the masses.

However it does not provide a strict Caribbean collectivity as it celebrates individuality and difference - there are no 'norms and limits' set.

However; does not look at gender differences and nor can it be easily adjusted to suit Indian or European ancestry.