Octave Mannoni, colonizer-colonized dialectic in Psychologie de la Colonisation

1
Octave Mannoni, colonizer-colonized dialectic in
Psychologie de la Colonisation

• Prospero and Caliban Psychology of Colonization
  Prospero (inferiority) complex / Caliban
  (dependency) complex Prospero as colonizer,
  whose grave lack of sociability combined with a
  pathological urge to dominate induces him to
  leave the competitive society of his home country
  for a colony where he can exercise power over a
  subservient people, whence his reluctance to
  return to his place of origin. Caliban as
  colonized subject, aiming not at independence but
  security in the master-servant bond neither
  inferior nor superior but yet wholly dependent.
• As in Hegels Master-Slave dialectic, neither
  colonizer nor colonized can exist without the
  other.

2
18 Five pounds

• New-found, calculated aggressive role 137
• Authority through violence of humiliation playing
  on victims estimates of themselves own
  enjoyment of cruelty, determination to survive
  139
• Paid-for sexual relation with J charade
  providing freedom from commitment // freedom from
  emotionally loaded transactions of childhood and
  adulthood, desire for freedom from past final
  return of payment 142

3
19 Beast and rider

• Taming of Proctor new perceptions of P through
  smell Ps sense of touch 143-4
• Change in M Remoteness of memory of wife, child
  and woman-friend 145
• Music of island 147
• Reflections on act of giving, possibility of
  dispensing with the object, leaving only the act
  artificial currency of gesture and attitude new
  life for P, 148 ritual with gifts 149
• New perception of position on island alone on
  alien planet, abandoned by race of motorway
  builder inhabitants bequeathing concrete
  wilderness 149
• Plan to teach P to read and write 150 see also
  143

4

• 20 Naming of the island failure
• 21 Delirium island and body Ms earlier
  ritual island and mind forgetting day of the
  week 156-7 flying money plan fails 157-9
  underworld crypt prepared for revered saints
  bones 160

5

• 22 The pavilion of doors
• Built by P 162
• M as mendicant desert chief presiding over his
  barren kingdom present state suspension of
  laws of physiology, the bodys economy of needs
  and responses163
• apparition of old man no longer terror but
  reassurance 164 I dont want anyone to know Im
  on the island 165
• 23 The trapeze
• Looking up at geometries of route signs and
  overhead wires 169
• Arrival of municipal repair vehicle cables,
  workmens trolley
• Proctors acrobatics and death

6
24 Escape

• J leaves. M dont call for help. Ill leave the
  island, but Ill do it in my own time 174
• Feeling his way through the grass (// P) to bury
  P in the floor of the crypt. Glad to be alone J
  Ps presence encouraging deviant strains
  irrelevant to task of coming to terms with the
  island. 175
• No real need to leave confirmed he had
  established his dominion over it. calm and in
  control of his self. When he had eaten (leaving
  offering at Ps grave) it would be time to rest,
  and to plan his escape from the island.

7
crash

• Crash barrier as border between different places,
  conditions, states of mind detonating within the
  skull, perceptions of the protagonists self and
  of his world (cfr conjectures as to silence 57,
  59-60).
• Removes the protagonist from the highway network
  (metaphor for networks of social and
  institutional relations, communication,
  technology, textuality to be replaced by other,
  alternative networks)
• Crash of car alludes to crash of social
  organization, culture, meaning and
  self-awareness. Linked to pervasive images of
  debris, piles of broken, decaying objects,
  obliterable signs, images also of mortality.
• Break up, disassembling and reassembling the
  self.

8

• loss of control (time, pain, body, memory,
  identity)
• vs.
• resumption of control
• Ms disabling crash and falls (// disabling falls
  of Proctor) vulnerability vs. strength
  disability vs. ability leading to different and
  deeper self awareness
• Crash as subconsciously desired
• escape from obligations (70-71), responsibility,
  emotionally overloaded relations,transactions
  142
• opportunity to see the self differently (13),
  outside the highway network, re-imagine the
  past, review beliefs, memories, expectations,
  values, including deviant strains

9

• attempts to escape the island
• vs.
• suspensions and deferral
• development from task of escaping to task of
  coming to terms with/mastering the island (56,
  65), culminating in realization
• In some ways the task he had set himself was
  meaningless. Already he felt no real need to
  leave the island, and this alone confirmed that
  he had established his dominion over it. He
  felt calm and in control of himself. 176

10
island

• Topography and history of the island ruined
  remains image of shared past or anticipation of
  shared future? Island as body, ocean, pocket of
  time a time capsule // Ms overnight case 44
  time and timelessness, reminders of mortality
• made of concrete and nature gone wild jungle of
  refuse imagined or dreamt, extension of car 67,
  or of self 69-70.
• Grass
• moving and feeling, 13, 68 timeless
• flow of earth and grass, seething, rising
  falling
• concrete
• technology, cars, mechanized people (drivers,
  passengers) time-bound
• traffic flows, streams

11

• Anthropomorphic nature of island and its
  vegetation resilience of grass as model of
  behaviour and survival 58
• timelessness of nature (nettles // gothic
  cathedral towers rocks of mineral forest on
  alien planet of future 70 see also 149 M.
  seeing himself alone on alien planet abandoned by
  race of motorway builders)
• Ms changing perception of island, motorway,
  city. See also Proctors perception of the island
  through touch and sound (echoes of Caliban The
  isle is full of noises/ Sounds and sweet airs /
  twangling instruments voices TT, 3.2.135-8)
  127-8, 147.

12
Characters

• Maitland as successful architect, fully
  integrated in the modern, technological world,
  transformed through experience after crash
  removes him the highway network and confronts him
  with the marginal, alternative world of the
  island and with different perceptions of his self
  (e.g. 27, 69-71, 117, 131, 137-9, 142, 163 also
  mirrorings of self 13, 29, 37), inadequacy of
  system of comfortable expectations 43.
• Mapping of self atlas of wounds,
  identification with island journeying through
  island journeying through self.
• Regression to infancy, animality
• Master-slave, colonizer-colonized psychology
  (135-7 repeating 102), sadism
• Jane Shepherd and Proctor as marginal characters,
  dropouts, castoffs complex relation to
  Maitland, costumes, past

13

• Performing, play-acting, make-believe 80-82,
  131, 134 role-playing 135-7 theatrical and
  metatheatrical aspects of Concrete Island,
  Maitlands story as an enactment of a
  confrontation with the self on the stage of a
  separate world.
• Power relations Maitland developing into
  colonizer figure (cfr Octave Mannoni, Prospero
  and Caliban The Psychology of colonisation, on
  inferiority complex of coloniser, dependency
  complex of colonised, seeking submission to an
  authoritative master.
• Manipulation of culture and communication
  (reading and writing lesson 151-3)
• Final, desired isolation on-with the island. 175