TEXT AND SIGN

1
TEXT AND SIGN

• CAMELIA ELIAS
• Dept of Culture and Identity, English Program

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postcolonialist/diaspora theories

• session 4

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post(-)colonialism

• With or without a hyphen
• post-colonialism (chronological separation)
• postcolonialism (no chronological separation)
• ity or ism
• postcoloniality (the object of study)
• postcolonialism (the theory)

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colonialism

• The historical process whereby the West
  attempts systematically to cancel or negate the
  cultural difference and value of the non-West
  (Leela Gandhi, 1998)
• colonial critique ? deals with imperialistic
  views
• post-colonial criticism ? examines the effects of
  imperialistic views in postcolonial societies
• Postcolonial criticism ? a set of theoretical and
  critical strategies used to examine the culture,
  literature, politics, history, of former colonies
• it embraces no single method or school

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postcolonialism

• questions the effects of empire
• raises issues such as racism and exploitation
• assesses the position of the colonial or
  post-colonial subject
• offers a counter-narrative to the long tradition
  of European imperial narratives

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postcolonialism ? poststructuralist questioning

• How did the experience of colonization affect
  those who were colonized while also influencing
  the colonizers?
• How were colonial powers able to gain control
  over so large a portion of the non-Western world?
  
• What traces have been left by colonial education,
  science and technology in postcolonial societies?
  
• What were the forms of resistance against
  colonial control?
• How did colonial education and language influence
  the culture and identity of the colonized?
• What are the emergent forms of postcolonial
  identity after the departure of the colonizers?
• To what extent has decolonization (a
  reconstruction free from colonial influence) been
  possible?
• Should decolonization proceed through an
  aggressive return to the pre-colonial past
• How do gender, race, and class function in
  colonial and postcolonial discourse?
• Are new forms of imperialism replacing
  colonization and how?

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two sides of colonialism

• the militaristic side (the physical conquest and
  occupation of territories)
• the civilizational side (the conquest and
  occupation of minds, selves, and cultures)
• ? Colonialism does not end with the end of
  colonial occupation
• ? Resistance begins before the end of colonial
  occupation

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when, where, and why
When exactly does the postcolonial begin? When
third world intellectuals have arrived in the
first world academe (Arif Dirlik)

• Edward Said
• moved colonial discourse into the first world
  academy and into literary and cultural theory
• was also very influential in third world
  universities (esp. in India)

• Gayatri Spivak
• Can the Subaltern Speak (1988)
• My position is generally a reactive one. I am
  viewed by Marxists as too codic, by feminists as
  too male-identified, by indigenous theorists as
  too committed to Western Theory. I am uneasily
  pleased about this.

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Said Orientalism (1978)

• Orientals or Arabs are thereafter shown to be
  gullible, devoid of energy and initiative, much
  given to fulsome flattery, intrigue, cunning
  and unkindness to animals Orientals cannot walk
  on either a road or pavement (their disordered
  minds fail to understand what the clever European
  grasps immediately, that roads and pavements are
  made for walking) Orientals are inveterate
  liars, they are lethargic and suspicious, and
  in everything oppose the clarity, directness, and
  nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race. (38-39)

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Said Orientalism

• These contemporary Orientalist attitudes flood
  the press and the popular mind. Arabs, for
  example, are thought of as camel-riding,
  terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose
  undeserved wealth is an affront to real
  civilization. Always there lurks the assumption
  that although the Western consumer belongs to a
  numerical minority, he is entitled either to own
  or expend (or both) the majority of the worlds
  resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental,
  is a true human being. (108)

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emergence

• An aftermath of the end of colonial occupation
  after WW2 and the emergence of independent states
• A result of the focus on marginality in academic
  discourse (poststructuralism, deconstruction,
  postmodernism)

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theoretical background

• Marxism
• critique of society
• base/superstructure and ideology
• literature and the humanities as related to
  economic structures
• Poststructuralism
• anti-humanism
• Foucault (discourse as a structure of power,
  power is everywhere, knowledge is power)

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methods

• Challenging the canon
• re-reading Western literature
• emergent literatures
• focus on difference
• Essentialism is most commonly understood as a
  belief in the real, true essence of things, the
  invariably and fixed properties which define the
  whatness of a given entity Importantly,
  essentialism is typically defined in opposition
  to difference (Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking,
  xi, xii)

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methods

• read Western literature from the colonial period
• study how texts construct authority ? authority
  is artificial
• articulate a political aim

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Stuart Hall

• born in Jamaica, Kingston, 1932
• studied at Oxford
• professor of sociology at the Open University, UK
• Race the Floating Signifier
• on race (cut)

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identity (S. Hall)

• Identity is the narrative, the stories which
  cultures tell themselves about who they are and
  where they came from
• (S. Hall, Negotiating Caribbean Identity).

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identity (S. Hall)

• identity is not only a story, a narrative which
  we tell ourselves about ourselves, it is stories
  which change with historical circumstances. And
  identity shifts with the way in which we think
  and hear them and experience them. Far from only
  coming from the still small point of truth inside
  us, identities actually come from outside, they
  are the way in which we are recognized and then
  come to step into the place of the recognitions
  which others give us. Without the others there is
  no self, there is no self-recognition
• (Negotiating Caribbean Identity, 8).

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The European Encounter with the Americas

• Western
• Clothed
• Fashion
• Labour
• Ethics
• Masculine
• Reason
• Culture

• Americas
• Naked
• Adornment
• Leisure
• Pleasure
• Feminine
• Emotion
• Nature

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Key points from HallsThe West and the Rest
in Formations of Modernity, 1992

• West and non-West are concepts with
  histories they are not natural kinds
• The idea of the West emerged because of contact
  with non-West therefore these ideas also have
  geographies related to real places
• West and non-West are ideas that are part of
  discourses
• These geohistorical discourses inform our
  everyday thinking today

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Homi Bhabha (1949)

• argues against the tendency to essentialize Third
  World countries into a homogenous identity.
  Instead, he claims that all sense of nationhood
  is narrativized. (Nation and Narration (1990))
• there is always ambivalence at the site of
  colonial dominance.
• ambivalence constructed through mimicry,
  interstice, hybridity, liminality
• cultural production is always most productive
  where it is most ambivalent. (The Location of
  Culture (1994)

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Bhabhas ambivalence of colonial discourse

• draws on Foucault's concept of power (decentred,
  multiple, all permeating)
• points out the problematic position of the people
  exerting colonial rule.
• places the colonizers within the domain of
  colonial discourse
• breaks down the simple binary colonizer/colonized
  and opens a space for a theorization of
  ambivalences, contradictions and hidden feelings.
  
• the complex construction of difference and
  sameness in the colonial relationship centrally
  involves identification as well as the crisis of
  identification, a complex, ambivalent and often
  contradictory mode of representation.

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mimicry

• metaphor for a process of acculturation and
  adaptation of imposed cultural concepts and
  patterns by the colonized
• a strategic adaptation by the colonized as a
  subtle act of resistance.
• In its contradictions it unfolds the whole
  ambivalence of the colonial discourse.

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Of Mimicry and Man (Bhabha)

• The discourse of mimicry is constructed around
  an ambivalence in order to be effective, mimicry
  must continually produce its slippage, its
  excess, its difference. Mimicry is, thus, the
  sign of a double articulation a complex strategy
  of reform, regulation, and discipline, which
  'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power.
  
• Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate,
  however, a difference or recalcitrance which
  coheres the dominant strategic function of
  colonial power, intensifies surveillance and
  poses an immanent threat to both 'normalized'
  knowledges and disciplinary powers. (122-123).

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Listen Mr Oxford don

• Me not no Oxford don me a simple immigrantfrom
  Clapham Common I didn't graduate I immigrate
  But listen Mr Oxford donI'm a man on de run
  and a man on de run is a dangerous one I ent
  have no gunI ent have no knife but mugging de
  Queen's Englishis the story of my life I dont
  need no axeto split/ up yu syntax I dont need
  no hammerto mash up yu grammar
• I warning you Mr Oxford don I'm a wanted man
  and a wanted man is a dangerous one

• Dem accuse me of assaulton de Oxford
  dictionary/imagin a concise peaceful man like
  me/dem want me serve time for inciting rhyme to
  riot but I tekking it quiet down here in
  Clapham CommonI'm not a violent man Mr Oxford
  donI only armed wit mih human breath but human
  breath is a dangerous weapon So mek dem send
  one big word after me I ent serving no jail
  sentence I slashing suffix in self-defenceI
  bashing future wit present tense and if
  necessary I making de Queen's English
  accessory/to my offence
• John Agard

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cultural identity

• collective
• shared history among individuals affiliated by
  race or ethnicity is stable or fixed
• unstable, metamorphic, contradictory
• marked by multiple points of similarity and
  difference
• strongest in its hybrid mode

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diaspora criticism

• Greek diaspora, a scattering lt dia-, across
  speirein, to sow
• 1. a) the scattering of the Jews after the
  Babylonian exile.
• b) the Jews scattered throughout the world.   
• 2. any scattering of people with a common
  origin, background, beliefs, etc.

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reasons for emergence

• The history of exile, (labour) migration,
  slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism
• HISTORY OF EXILE"Then the LORD will scatter you
  among all peoples, from one end of the earth to
  the other, and there you shall serve other gods,
  which neither you nor your fathers have known --
  wood and stone. And among those nations you shall
  find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot
  have a resting place but there the LORD will
  give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and
  anguish of soul..." (Deuteronomy 2864-65)

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migration

• Labour migration, narratives of slavery
• colonialism and postcolonialism emphasize the
  interruption of identity
• coercion
• Slavery was abolished around 1860 in the US
• Slavery was replaced by indentured labour
• Massive migration after WW2

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the rise of nationalism

• nationalism has its roots in the intellectual
  heritage of European enlightenment and modernity
  the notion of a supposedly authentic, natural
  and stable (national) identity
• MODERNITY characterized by a belief in
• reason
• authenticity
• individualized identities
• PRESENT determined by context

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culture globalization

• the culture and experience of the diaspora in
  the West but not of it (Paul Gilroy)
• focuses on the doubleness or double consciousness
  of black subjectivity
• doubleness
• hybridity (Hall)
• cultural intermixture (Gilroy)
• Were all ethnics to be American is to possess
  a hyphenated identity (Henry Louis Gates)
• nations have no stable identity

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imagined identity

• the nation is not a natural or even a real
  entity. It is an imagined community and
  imagined as inherently limited and sovereign.
• Imagined communities
• (Benedict Anderson)

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theoretical background

• Poetry of Negritude (Aimé Cesaire, Martinique)
• Leopld Seghnor (Senegal, 1906-2001)
• L'èmotion est nègre, la raision est héllène.
  Emotion is black, reason is Greek
• Negritude is the totality of the cultural values
  of the Black world.
• Pan-Africanism
• Frantz Fanon (Martinique, 1925-1961)
• To speak . . . means above all to assume a
  culture, to support the weight of a
  civilization.
• Fanonism

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carnival theory

• Carnival theory and dialogic criticism (Mikhail
  Bakhtin)
• magical realism
• the carnivalesque

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theory

• Text Nomadic writing (Richard Stamelman)
  unstable, always on the move, always in
  conversation with other texts
• narrative (of) displacement and unfinishedness
• narrative (of) imaginary home and symbolic
  re-turn
• narrative (of) otherness
• narrative (of) hybridity
• dialogic, carnivalistic,
• non-essentialist and non-logocentric narrative
• Text-context
• the historical embeddedness of texts
• (re)positioning of text in relation to context
  (Stuart Hall)

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methods

• study of the literatures of displaced groups and
  emerging diasporic communities, focussing on the
  notions of home and foreignness
• study of the relationship between silenced and
  hegemonic discourses in diasporic literary
  texts
• study of the forms of resistance and
  complicity within diasporic literature e.g.,
  Signifyin(g) (Henry Louis Gates), strategic
  essentialism (Gayatri Spivak), the new mestiza
  (Gloria Anzaldúa), double consciousness (W.E.B.
  du Bois/Paul Gilroy)

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concerns

• politics of position (Hall)
• politics of fulfilment (Gilroy) a future society
  will realize whats left unfulfilled by a present
  society
• politics of transfiguration the emergence of new
  desires, social relations, and modes of
  association

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"A Family Supper" (1982)

• How are the East and the West thematized in
  the story?
• How are the notions of home and belonging
  thematized in the novel?
• Can each of the three main characters be read as
  a representative figure for the
  colonized/diasporic subject, and if so, how?
• Comment on the silences, gaps and pauses in the
  text.
• Can you interpret the ghost story within a
  postcolonial/diaspora framework?
• How is the past/future thematized in the story?
• Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in
  1954. Ishiguros family moved to England in 1960.
  Try to imagine that the story was written by an
  English-English writer. Does it affect your
  interpretation?