Ch.

1 FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POSTCOLONIAL

COLONIALISM and DECOLONISATION
Colonialism is related to “capitalism” and “imperialism”
Colonialism was the part of the commercial venture of western nations that developed from the late 17 th /early
18th centuries, moved by the desire to create and control opportunities to generate international markets at the
lowest cost to Europeans.
- Capitalism= was a big business employing African slaves. The B. Empire could produce product at
minimal cost and sell them for high profits, bringing wealth to Western nations through the economic
exploitation of others.
- Imperialism= is an ideological project which support the legitimacy of economic and military control of a
nation by another, so it become the expansion of commerce under the protection of political controls
Colonialism is one form of practice, control, which results from imperialism and concerns the settlement of
people in a new location (unlike imperialism which don’t concern the placing of people; it’s just about exercising
power)
Colonialism is over today as a practice
The 20th century saw the decolonization of millions of people once subjected to the authority of the British
crown.
British empire has 3 different periods of decolonization starting when the colonized nations won the right to
govern their own affairs:
1. The loss of American colonies and declaration of American independence in the late 18 th century
2. From the end of 19th century to the first decades of the 20th: in this period were born the “dominions”, a
term used to describe Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. These nations had large
European population settled overseas that often destroyed the indigenous populations of these lands and
organized their government bound to the British empire. Canada was the first to achieve its political
autonomy; then 1931 with the “Statute of Westminster” gave those nations full of governmental control
and deferred the British authority.
3. At the end of the 2nd World War. There are many reasons for decolonization but the fundamental one
concerned the growth of the nationalist movements. Other reasons: the decline of the BE (British empire)
as a world power and in the meantime the ascendency of United States and Soviet Union. + the changes
to technologies of production and international finance which made possible capitalist ambitions to be
pursued without the need for colonial settlement.

THE COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE

It was a term used by literary critics from the 1950s to describe literatures in English emerging exclusively from
countries with a history of colonialism that incorporated both writers from European settler communities and
writers of those countries.
 The establishment of the BRITISH COMMONWEALTH of NATIONS was one of the consequences of
the decline of BE.
At first the term was used to refer to those dominions which still has and allegiance to Britain.
Today exists in mane only and it just wants to promote democracy, peace, non-racialism but still there are
some troubles.
Texts of this literature were addressed primarily to a western English-speaking readership.
The Commonwealth-Literature concerned the relationship btw (between) literature and nations.
The development of a nationalist sentiment was one of the most important reasons for the birth of this literature.
However, this literature wants to transcend the national and cultural issues of the singular nations. Many critics
were preoccupied with identifying a common goal shared among writers from different nations. It was assumed
to deal with universal concerns.
THEORIES OF COLONIAL DISCOURSE: F. Fanon and E. Said
Theories of colonial discourses (at the plural form bc. of its many varieties) explore the ways that
representations and modes of perceptions are used as weapons of colonial power to keep the colonized people
subservient to the colonial rule.
 How colonialism suggest certain ways of seeing, attitudes and values?
Colonialism is perpetuated by justifying the idea that it was right to rule over other people while the colonized
had to accept their (the colonizers’ one) supremacy: so, colonialism established ways of thinking (it’s a process
called “colonizing the mind”)
Colonial discourses put together language and power: language is more than a way of communication; it is a
weapon of power that carries with it a set of assumption (set of belief of the western about the orient encoded in
the language), it constitutes out worldview ordering reality. The language of the empire represented the natural
order of life.
The 1950s emerged an important work that focused on the psychological damage suffered by colonized people:
the psychiatrist Franz Fanon wrote about the damage French colonialism have had upon millions of people. His
experience of racism, while being educated by- and working for French, affected him deeply so that the joined
the Algerian rebels fighting against the French.
He wrote a polemical book about the mechanism of colonialism and its psychological effects. He focused on the
cost to the individual who lives in a world where the color of the skin is object of derision. Fanon was forced to
see himself as an object at the mercy of a group that identifies him as a inferior, less than human (common
situation among colonized). He felt violated: identity was something French made for him (them= colonized),
denying him /them the right to define his own identity as a subject
“Black skin, white mask” explains the consequences of identity formation for colonized subjects, forced into the
internalization of the self as an “other”
One response to such drama is to embrace the civilized ideals of French “wearing a white mask” of civilization
that will cover up the “uncivilized nature” indexed by the color of the skin
NB: Colonialism doesn’t stop when a colony achieves its independence; the effect of it, are still present inf our
thinking
Another important book of the 20th century is “Orientalism” by Edward Said. He focuses on the relationship btw
colonizer and colonized. He looked at the theories of power and examined how the knowledge that western
imperial powers formed about the colonies helped to justify their subjugation. The western recorded their
observations on assumptions about the Orient as a mythic place of exoticism and sexual degeneration- these
observations were presented as scientific truths that wanted to justify colonial domination. Colonialism could be
justified in moral terms as a way of spreading civilization and saving natives from their barbarism

The TURN TO THEROY IN THE 1980s

The success of Orientalism encouraged new kind of studies which probably signed the beginning of post-
colonialism
Three forms of textual analysis:
1. It involved re-reading canonical English literature (vedi ch.5) in order to examine if past representations
questioned the assumptions of colonial discourses. It proceeded in 2 directions:
- Critics looked at writers who dealt with colonial themes and argued whether their work were supportive
of contested colonial discourses
- Texts that seem to have little to do with colonialism can be re-read in terms of colonial discourses
2. Critics who worked on the representations of colonized subjects. Said, Bhabha and Spivak explored the
problem of whether or not was possible to read those texts “against the grain” and discover that colonized
subjects resisted against colonial values (not submitted but rebel)
3. The 3rd form of literary analysis put together reading of the new literatures from countries with a history
of colonialism. These literatures were concerned with “writing back to the centre” questioning colonial
discourses. (post-colonial literature describes these writers and their works to signal a new generation of
 critics). It focused on new ways of seeing and gave voice to once-colonized peoples. We found this
approach in “The Empire writes back to the centre”. Its authors noticed how writers were expressing their
sense of identity by refashioning English (writers created new Englishes inserting untranslatable words
and refusing to follow standard English syntax)
New values were expressed, old values rejected

Post-colonialism: definition and dangers

It doesn’t mean “after colonialism”, nor a new era. Colonialism doesn’t stop when the colonies achieve their
independence. Post- colonialism involves the challenge to colonial ways of knowing “writing back” in opposition
to such view. But colonial ways of knowing still circulate, they haven’t disappeared as the empire declined the
internal colonialism persist in many of once-colonized countries; so, post-colonialism recognizes historical
continuity and the necessity of change. It acknowledges that the realities established through colonialism are very
much with us today.
It involved: re-reading texts produced by people from countries with a history of colonialism, during colonial
period by members of the colonizing nations.

Ch. 2 READING COLONIAL DISCOURSE

The existence of a set of beliefs helps justifying the occupation of other people’s land. These beliefs are encoded
in a language that colonizers speak and to which colonized people are subjected. So, through a process called
interpellation, individual subjects internalize the values of the society and start thinking of the society in a
particular way. The ideology assigns someone an identity which this somebody will internalize as true:
Fanon can be an example of the pain of being represented pejoratively by other people.
Colonial discourses enable people feel important. Knowledge is strictly connected with power. Discourses
constitute and produce our sense of reality.
Reading cultural text in the context of colonial discourses serves several purposes:
1) The colonial discourse analysis refuses the humanist assumption that literary texts exist above and beyond
their historical contexts.
It situated texts in history by exposing how their ideological and historical context influence the production of
meanings in literary texts and how literary representations have the power to influence the historical moment.
2) The analysis of colonial discourses identifies how much the best of Western culture go fast in the history of
colonial exploitation and dispossession.
3) The attention to colonial discourses can be a way of resistance to colonial representations and realities that
remain after the end of formal colonization.

“Orientalism” by Edward Said

It is a theorization of how colonial discourses might operate in a particular historical and colonial context. The
definition of orientalism has been important in investigating postcolonial studies today
NB= Orientalism≠ Colonial discourses
Said’s book is a study of how Western colonial powers of British and France ruled North African and Middle
Eastern lands from the 18th century.
- The “Orient” refers to these places.
- “Orientalism” refers to the sum of West’s representations of the “Orient”.
Among other things Said looks at how modes of representations persisted and this highlights that colonials
couldn’t disappear just with the independence.
The SHAPE of Orientalism
1) Orientalism constructs BINARY DIVISIONS (btw Orient and the Occident)
The Orient is conceived as being everything that West is not: it’s alter ego. In introduction to
“Orientalism”: the Orient has been important to define the West as its contrasting idea. West gained
identity by making Orient his surrogate.
The Orient is described in negative terms to buttress the sense of superiority of the West.
It is a place of ignorance while West is the global seat of knowledge and learning.
The West is in a superior rank and the Orient is “its other” in an eternal subservient position.
2) Orientalism is a WESTERN FANTASY
Orient is the result from West’s dreams and assumptions about what this different place contains.
Orientalism is a fabricated construct, images that become Orient’s reality for those of the West that
imposes upon the Orient their visions.
3) Orientalism is an INSTITUTION
They find their way to create institutional and academic infrastructures where opinions and views about
Orient circulate as legitimate knowledge. The Orient became an “object suitable for study in the
academy”.
4) Orientalism in LITERARY
Orientalism also made possible new forms of representation and genres of writings that celebrated
Western experience abroad such as adventures popular in the Victorian period.
5) Orientalism is LEGITIMATING
Orientalist representations justify Western’s colonial domination of foreign lands.
6) Alatent Orientalism (it describes dreams and fantasies about Orient; constant over time) and a manifest
Orientalism (it refers to the examples of Orientalist knowledge that produced different historical events).
But while manifestations of Orientalism may be different, due to historical specifics and individual
perspective, their bases will be the same.
STEREOTYPES of the Orient
1) The Orient is TIMELESS
The West is considered a place of historical progress and scientific development while the Orient is
considered unchanging and regarded as primitive. So that for a Western traveler, traveling to Orient would be
like moving back in time.
2) The Orient is STRANGE
Orient is also considered bizarre, strange, place of mysticism and curiosity for writers and artists: this
peculiarity fascinated and horrified West in equal measure.
3) Orientalism makes assumptions about “RACE”
Oriental people often appeared in Western representations as examples of stereotypes (like the violent
Arabian, the lazy Indian, the sexually obsessed African) and they became general negative representation
typical of Orientalism. (ex. All Indian are lazy). Their race summed up what kind of person he/she was likely
to be
4) Orientalism makes assumptions about GENDER
Oriental male is displayed as luxuriousness and the female as exoticized, depicted nude and presented as
immoral and a creature of sexual pleasure.
There is also a gendering opposition between West and Orient. The East is seen as more feminized, passive,
exotic and the West is more masculine: dominant, heroic, rational.
Even more, travel to Orient may seems to be going to a place where moral codes of behavior did not
function.
5) The Oriental is DEGENERATE
Oriental stereotypes fixed typical weakness, laziness, violence. Orientalism seems to say that Oriental people
needed to be made civilized by the West which could justify this way its colonial domination.
 CRITICIM of “Orientalism” (>WHY?= in order to gain a fuller sense of how colonial discourses operate)
The representations made by Said are not monolithic, uncontested
1) Orientalism is AHISTORICAL
One major criticism concerns its capacity to make TOTALISING assumptions about those
representations over a long period of history. John Mc Kenzie said that Said’s book is ahistorical
because he didn’t face individual historical moments. Said privileges latent Orientalism over manifest, as
if nothing has changed over 2 millennia.
2) Said ignores RESISTENCE by the colonized + resistance within the West
Orientalism didn’t stop to examine how Orientalist peoples may have contested colonial discourses and
this is the major failing of the book: he ignores the Oriental resistance against the West. It doesn’t
consider an alternative representation made by those subjects to colonialism (how they might have been
received/challenge Western representations). + according to Said “every European is racist,
ethnocentric”, but there are also Western who opposed colonialism, horrified by the treatment of
colonized people.
3) Said ignores GENDER DIFFERENCES
Many women travelled to the colonies, made their observations, but Said rarely looks at women’s writing
in Orientalism. Sara Mills points out that the position of women in relation to Orientalism is different to
that of men. They occupy a dominant position due to colonialism (bc are Western), but a subordinate
place in patriarchy (bc are woman-> in relation to Western men)

AMBIVALENCE and MIMICRY in colonial discourses

Dennis Porter argues that texts can bring different ways of seeing Orientalism. The instability of the colonial
discourse (AMBIVALENCE)preoccupied Bhabha, who’s writing is often very difficult to comprehend because
of his complex style. Like Said, Bhabha said that colonial discourses are characterized by statements which want
to legitimate the colonial settlement of other lands and peoples. An aim that is never fully met because of the
“discourse of colonialism” goes in 2 contrary directions:
1) On one hand, the discourse of colonialism underling the sense of difference (the Oriental as “the other”,
strange figure, beyond Western comprehension, culture and civilization)
2) On the other, it wants to reduce the sense “otherness”, as the colonized are brought “inside” Western
understanding through the construction of knowledge about them =they reduce the distance between the two
worlds using Western modes of representation.
1+2) The colonizers are fascinated and frightened by colonized at the same time: colonized are perceived as
domesticated, harmless but also wild and mysterious.
The colonized subject is always ambivalently in motion and the repetitions of STEREOTYPES are means to
arrest the ambivalence fixing the colonized in a position
Bhabha’s “discourse of colonialism” differs from Said’s “Orientalism” because it is characterized by
ambivalence and repetition
Bhabha describes MIMICRY (=imitation) as one of the most effective strategies of colonial power: in colonized
locations, British authorities required natives to work on their behalf and teach them English.
BUT hearing their language, the clonised are closer to the Western and have the “power” to collapse the
Orientalist structure of knowledge, in which these oppositional distinctions btw colonized and colonizers are
made.

Colonial discourses and Rudyard Kipling: “The Overland Mail”

Kipling was born in India, educated in England but spent time in his home country that was also Britain’s largest
colony. He travelled a lot and his work speak often of the countries he visited and the people he met.
” The Overland Mail” concerns the transportation, by Indian runners, of letters to British exiles in India who are
residing in the Indian hill stations. The poem’s movement through the landscape reveals the conquest of India by
the British.
All the work is based on asymmetrical oppositions dividing the world in two opposing sides. The landscape of
India is empty, depopulate; we reach the calm of the British in the hills while India seems wild and out of
control as Said suggested in Orientalism: where there is Western civilization there is daylight and a sinister
darkness is associated with India.
>The main characters of the poem are the robber  dangerous, we can notice the concept of “the other”: the
colonized that exist as “the other” to the West; is the threat to authority
> and the Indian runner no name, is domesticated as the obedient servant of the empire, that provides the
foot-service to the hills> makes him admirable and important. But, is an ambivalent figure in the poem, both
praised and commanded, congratulated and disciplined; his presence is vital to the exiles but he also creates
anxieties which emerge in the repetition of the speaker’s commands. (“must”) > the speaker acknowledges the
possibility of runner’s disobedience and at the same time disowns his capacity through these repetitions= attempt
to fix the obedience.
Kipling seems to celebrate the colonized subject.

Ch. 3 NATIONALIS REPRESENTATIONS

Various attitudes towards nationalist representations in literary during the stage of decolonization in 1950s/
60s
chapter concerned with representations related to anti-colonial nationalism ->impact upon different contexts
-a writer contribute to the forging of national consciousness by narrating the people’s struggle;
-the process of forging national symbols;
- the challenge of independence
-the danger of neocolonialism.

Imagining the NATION

It is one of the most important modes of social and political organization. The idea of nation seems to have its
origin in Western world because it was considered a fundamental part of the imperialist expansion.
Nations are like fabrications: designed by people upon which build particular foundations.
A nation is first of all is an idea, “an imagined political community” where individuals are part of a collective.
Central to the idea of nation there are notions of collectivity and belonging
The sense of being a member of a group, is the result of traditions, rituals and symbols: these elements
important to the construction of the myth of the nation which function is to unite many individuals into one
people create a sense of community, a feeling of ownership, a sense of a shared history and common origins. -
>The flag and the national anthem are part of the invention of tradition in which all nations participate. Also, the
nation has its own history that legitimate is existence and celebrate its present identity (Independence Day in US -
4 July); the annual commemoration of events such as “Thanksgiving” > looks back to an occasion that is
considered a defining moment in the history of the nation> links people’s relationship with their past as well as
highlight their togetherness in the present
(remember “the cliff of Dover”-writer Morris> excitement among English on boat= symbol of returning home
from a land of strangers> sense of belong to a land- land belongs to them)

The standardization of one unitary LANGUAGE is a feature of the nation that all members can understand
and with which communicate.

Benedict Anderson points out that features of an imagined community are exemplified by 2 forms of writing:
novel and newspaper. > SPACE + TIME are common assumptions to these genres.
Nation= realist novel-> people are connected by the same fixed landscape and presented simultaneously
performing different activities at the same time =this simultaneity also work in the form of the daily newspaper:
they provide news talking about events that occurred more or less at the same time but a reader will feel more
connected to an event that occurred in a location close to him
>Nation makse the individuals imagine their simultaneity with others.
Other element fundamental to nationalist representation is the construction of otherness (creation of the “other”
in Orientalist constructions of differences) The drawing of borders between nations is fundamental to make a
distinction between a group and other.
SUMMERY: MYTH OF NATION
 Are imagined communities
 Individuals come to imagine their simultaneity with others.
 Depends upon invention and performance of histories, traditions, symbols> link to the past and present
 Evokes feeling of belonging
 Standardizes a unitary language accessible to everyone
 Places borders that separate people from the “other”/ outsiders

National liberation vs imperialist domination

The myth of nation has been the most powerful weapon against colonialism: it create many independence
movements. Many of these movements took inspiration from each other and it happened also that peoples from
the same lands were divided or people from different lands were put together because Western powers
reorganized those lands, so they cooperated in order to establish once again their original borders.
One of the results of the Empire / imperialism was the movement of people across the globe: for the migrants the
relationship with their land become a problem: which nation was “truly” theirs?
2 responses (in the context of Africa) for the question of national consciousness during decolonization:
Negritude
It is associated at the work of two francophone writers: Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire. They fought back
at derogatory views of black people (=as primitive and degenerate, savage) by writing poetry, essays that
represented being black as valuable.
Colonial discourses represent black peoples as primitive and degenerate, having no culture;
the negritude writers wrote on the qualities of black people and cultures.
In the 19th century throughout Europe there was the idea we lived in a hierarchy of races based upon skin color
with the white Europeans as the most civilized and black Africans as the most savage.
Negritude was an attempt to reverse blackness from its definition always in negative terms, so it was
reconstructed as something positive and valuable.
At the heart of Negritude there was the celebration of blackness that goes beyond the color of the skin. For
>Senghor, Negritude was a project to return a sense of dignity.
>Cesaire’s descended from the African slaves, he never lived in Africa and could not know it like Senghor. The
recovery of an African past as a source of values and renewal was more problematic for a black people in the
Caribbean. Consequently, Cesaire version of Negritude was about people united more by their shared
experience of oppression than by their essential qualities.
To sum up, the long-term aim of negritude was the emancipation of the entire human race, from the sorry
conditions of colonialism.

Franz Fanon was an important figure of post-colonialism and anticolonial resistance. In postcolonial studies, his
work has been significant as giving a way to conceptualize the construction of identity under colonialism. Fanon
emphasized the responsibility of writers and intellectuals to forge new forms of national culture as part of the
contribution to the development of the people’s national consciousness. [National consciousness + national
culture important the succession of anticolonial resistance].
>He rejected the nostalgic celebration of a mythic African past and preferred to talk about the relationship
between past and present.
>Fanon’s ideas were influenced by Marxist notions of revolution, so in theorizing the resistance to colonialism
he used a critical attitude to the African past and also to the idea of “Negro”.
>He begins with a critique of Negritude and the native intellectual (those writers of the colonized nation who
have been educated under colonial power- ex Bhabha “mimic-man”). >Both refuse the view that colonized
peoples had no meaningful culture before the arrival of colonizers + have an abstract notion of pan-African
culture that generalized their historical circumstances, ignoring the different conditions of African peoples in
different locations.
>Intellectuals have a vital role about creating a national culture in three phases:
1) the unqualified assimilation: the native intellectual tries to reproduce cultural traditions in literature of
colonizing power
2) literature of “just before the battle”: native intellectual are too concerned with the past, glorifying cultural
traditions of the colonized ones > ignore the struggles in the present
3) the fighting phase: the intellectual becomes directly involved in people’s struggle against colonialism.> they
become more attuned to the present struggles rather than looking back to the past in order to modify and reform
the traditional culture and then create a new national consciousness. = Nationalistic victory

Neo-Colonialism
It is the existence of a nation subservience to the interests of Europe, but supported by the indigenous elite
(=replicate colonial administration) even if colonialism is formally ended. This class is neocolonial, continue
acting in the way colonialists did. They don't govern in the interest of people and the nation remains
economically dependent on the West, allows big foreign companies to establish themselves in the new nation.
Fanon condemned those that he saw as betrayers of people.

Literature could have an important role in the construction of a national consciousness:

- Is the existence of a new culture in antithesis of the colonial ones
- It is emphasized the relation btw people and their own land
- There was a tendency to gender representations of colonial domination and nationalist resistance

Ngugi’s wa Thiong’o “A Grain of Wheat”: example of national consciousness

The importance of the idea of the nation as central of the literature written at the time of decolonization
This work concerns the achievement of Kenyan independence and sum what we have just seen:
-a writer contribute to the forging of national consciousness by narrating the people’s struggle;
-the process of forging national symbols;
- the challenge of independence
-the danger of neocolonialism.
Ngugi’s first focus is on ordinary people not their leaders. The subject is the peasant community of Thabai Ridge
and through their memories he examined how the struggle for the independence impacted on their life.
Narrative collective voice=> construction of a national consciousness.
Promotes the unities of time and space that Benedict considered as crucial to the imagining of nation
This novel raises all issues relevant to the myth of nation and the coming of independence.
We can see Ngugi as a native intellectual that also made critiques of nationalist politics. In his work there is hope
for a better future for the nation.

Ch. 4 THE NATION QUESTION

The disenchantment with Nationalism
As a consequence of the historical experience of decolonization, emerged a sense of disenchantment with the
idea of nation/nationalism, WHEN national liberation movement (Africa/ Caribbean) had to face problems after
the achievement of the formal independence.
Although the myth of nation might unify people in opposition to colonialism, it seems to stimulate division and
conflict within the national population  the internal differences (gender, races, religious...) threaten the creation
of national unity  the contradiction of nationalism impact upon both reading and writing nationalist
representation.
Nationalism: a derivative discourse?
The nation is first a Western idea and European Nationalism is strictly connected with the rise of
industrialization and democracy but anti-colonial movement point out that becomes a way of legitimating
colonial expansion in moral terms.
Chatterjee , an Indian political scientist and anthropologist, define this conflict as “liberal dilemma”= the liberal
aspects of Western nationalism (promised moral political rights of liberty and self-determination for the
people)actually were only a mean to justify the conquer and subdue those nations culturally incapable of ruling
themselves bc considered backwards.
This idea that the notion of nation is emerged from Western colonial discourses raises some questions such the
possibility that anti-colonial movements could have perpetuate these assumptions about the necessity to
modernize backwards community.
Problematic relationship btw nationalist elites and the masses:
Chatterjee’s narrative of Indian nationalism focuses on 3 important phases in which nationalism is derived from
Western thought but, it is transformed and turned to new anti-colonial purpose:
1) The moment of departure: anti-colonial nationalist movement accept the possession of attributes by
European culture which make them equipped for progress and power while these attributes are
lacking in the East culture. > The masses should accept to modernize themselves through the help of
colonized elites, but being careful not to fall under the submission of colonized belonging to Western,
educated elite.
2) The moment of manoeuvre: the elite appropriates popular or folk culture in order to gain mass
support to take over control (assuemere il controllo) of modern forms of technological economic
power from colonizers.
3) The moment of arrival: nationalist though emerged as unified, coherent and rational discourse.
They say that modern attitudes are linked to popular consciousness and enjoy the support of the people.

NATIONALISM and:
1) REPRESENTATION and the ELITE
2 important issues concerned with the relationship btw nationalist elites and masses
-Following Fanon, anticolonial nationalism seems to replace Western ruling class with a Western-educated
indigenous.  this class apparently to speak on behalf of the people, but it functions to keep masses
disempowered
-The representation of Indian nationalist struggle tends to celebrate the activities of the individual members of the
elite and do not recognize the activity of less privileged individual against the colonial rule (the so-called
Subaltern) issue been main theme of the “Subaltern Studies” group- scholars.
As Guha in his essay explain, Indian nationalism privileges elite consciousness over the subaltern one which
efforts and decisions are rarely regarded
 {HOW RECOVER SUBALTERN CONSCIOUSNESS?  Gayatri Spivak” Can the subaltern speak?”
(Ch6)}
2) “RACE” and ETHNICITY
In context of nationalism, ideas of race, ethnicity (and religion) have been used to further illiberal aims> to
construct the myth of national unity with its norms and limits and to decide who may or not belong to the rightful
people. Racist ideologies produce a sense of national identity gained through the exclusion and denigration of
others. All constructions of racial difference are based on human inventions. Racial differences are political
constructions which serve the interests of certain groups of people, each different from the other.
>RACE (as category) = the result of social process, called racialization
Skin color has predominantly been the primary sign of racial difference.
>RACISM = is the ideology that upholds the discrimination against certain people.
>ETHNICITY = tends to involve a variety of social practices, rituals and traditions characterize a group.
Race≠ ethnicity->not synonymous, but they can both be used for discrimination.
Balibar distinguished between:
-External racism is a form of xenophobia, when groups of people locate outside the nation are discriminated for
their race.
-Internal racism is directed at those who live in the nation but considered as not belonging to the community. It
can result in its most extreme form in the extermination or oppression of radicalized groups.
Ex. The post-independence Nigeria: which population consists in different ethnic groups > the sense of unity
lacks and in the recent years bloody conflicts happened

3) GENDER and SEXUALITY

Nationalism is a gendered discourse
In nationalist representations nation is often associated to the female figure as a mother threatened by foreign
aggression that often appear in terms of sexual violation.
Also, the process of liberation is considered an exclusively male success, which ignores the contributions made
by millions of women.
Historically, men and women experience national liberation differently: women do not reap/gather equal benefits
from decolonization for reasons of gender inequality; they have been considered for their “domestic” role
Women historically have been positioned:
1- as biological reproducers: their duty is to produce children
2-as reproducers of the boundaries of national groups: in the act of reproduction women are supposed to have
sex with men of the same social class.
3-as transmitters of culture: they are the primary educators of children.
4- as signifiers of national differences: women are used as icons> mother-figures of the nation.
5-as participants in national, political, military and economic struggles: they actively contribute to nationalist
struggles, after decolonization they have resisted the operation of patriarchy

4) Nation and MARGINS

Although the idea of nationalism has the purpose to unify the population into one people, it cannot ever be free
from marginalizing, illiberal tendencies
According to Homi Bhabha, nationalist representations are unstable and contradictory constructions which
cannot produce the unity they promise bc split by ambivalence, what Bhabha defines as the “double narrative
movement” that split the nation> with 2 contradictory modes of nationalist representation:
1)nationalism = PEDAGOGIC discourse
Peagogical narratives are linear movement of time from past to present to future.
The authority of the nation is the central political and social unit and the people are the object of pedagogical
discourse that constructs an idealized imagine of unity in the past
2)nationalism=PERFORMATIVE discourse
It refers to the ways in which nationalist icons (representation that help to fix its “norms and limits”) must be
continuously repeated by the people (> become subject of nationalist discourses) in order to keep secure the
idealized imagine of unity
>The pedagogical ideal of the homogenous people can never be realized because those at the MARGINS of its
norms and limits (women, working class, different race, migrants) intervene in the process of performing sings
and challenge the dominant representations with their own new narratives

The PROBLEM of using ENGLISH

In many parts of the British empire, English was the primary language of government and administration and was
used in the education of colonized subjects. The English language has become a national language in once-
colonized countries.
 English in SETTLER NATIONS (ex. Australia, New Zealand)
European- descended Australian writers in the settler nations wanted to differentiate their use of English from the
standard English form (evolved in Britain)
One solution (Bill Ashcroft): reworking of English changing it it’s a mean to differentiate themselves and to
construct images of national and cultural identity in settler colonies.

 English in the SETTLED NATIONS

Indian literature in English is often read as a national literature particularly in Western universities despite the
fact that it is produced by an English-speaking minority >>Today, English remains one of the predominant
languages of education but its form has been changed by its users. A language with different kind of rhythms,
sounds, syntax and forms of expression. This is “nation language" which functions is the articulation of an
appropriate register or voice> become the inspiration for new ways of using English literary and linguistic forms
in poetry. Through nation language, poets find their unique voice.
Ahmad (Marxist critic) English emerged not as one of the Indian languages, but as the language that continues to
serve the interests of the educated elite and not the people as a whole.

The nation in question: CHINUA ACHEBE’S “ANTHILLIS OF THE SAVANNAH”

In a West African context; It offers a critique of the nation after independence
depicts the destructive activities of the Western-educated elite and urges a new kind of nation-
building>possibility of a nation not build in a patriarchal structure, but could include those marginalized
>It calls attention to the fact that its narrative of the Nation cannot depict the nation’s people as a whole.
It suggests that the fortunes of the nation have been damaged by the chauvinistic/ nationalistic educated elite

Ch. 5 RE-READING AND RE-WRITING ENGLISH LITERATURE

Meenakshi Mukherjee has defended post colonialism has it makes us reinterpret some of the old canonical
text from Europe, from the prospective of our specific historical and geographical location.

All canonical text refers to the canon of english literature: the writers and their work. The teaching of
english literature in the colonies has been understood by some critics as one of the many ways in which
western colonial powers, such as Britain, asserted their cultural and moral superiority. Education is a crucial
apparatus of the state by which values are asserted as the best or the most true. Colonialism uses
educational institutions to augment the perceived legitimacy and the property of itself.

The study of english literature became the study of models of moral worth to the extent to the english
literature seemed first and foremost about morality. This weaving together of morality with a specifically
english literature had important ideological consequences. So, the teaching of english literature, particularly
in Indian context, was complicit with the maintenance of colonial power. For many countries with a history
of colonialism English literary texts have become considered as complicit in the colonising enterprise itself.

Achebe denounced Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness on the grounds that it proved Conrad was a real
racist: he denounced his dehumanising representation of Africa and that this novel was falsely presented as
of exceptional literary value.

But, generally, the received literary classics can become resources for other writings to articulate
postcolonial positions who use them as a point of departure. So, while many writers reveals how a classic
can be guilty of colonialism, they also make a new way of facing with them. At the same time, very few
writers take the easy option of dismissing classic texts because they seem complicit in colonialist ways.
Postcolonial literary criticism has affinities with other studies of recent years that concerned with reading
literary texts in relation to their historical and cultural context. “Context” refers to something more than
the historical background: it is used to suggest the knowledge in circulation at the time the text was written
and the ways in which people conceived their reality in the past.

Colonialism operates discursively by asserting knowledge about race, gender, differences in culture and
colonialist representation tend to support a view of the world which justifies the legitimacy of colonialism.
Reading text, in relation to its context, involves doing two things at the same time:
- identifying how such contexts are made present or absent in the text
- exploring how the text may intervene in the debates of its day and approve or resist dominant views of
the world.

We must not forget that literary text are always mediations: they actively interrogate the world and take
positions in relation to prevailing views of seeing. To read a text in its historical and cultural context is to
consider the ways it dynamically and dialogically manage (si occupa) the problems it raises.

For many post colonial critics, reading a “classic” of literature written at the same time of colonialism often
involves exploring his relationship with many of the problems and assumptions fundamental to colonial
discourses. Just because the main theme of a text is not colonialism and it is not set in a colonial location, it
doesn’t follow that such text are free from realities of the British empire.

Reading text contrapuntally: is one of which remains conscious of both the metropolitan history narrated
and those other histories against which the dominating scours acts. To sum up it have to take account of
the process of the imperialism and that of resistance to it.

Ch. 6 POSTCOLONIALISM AND FEMINISM

Postcolonialism and feminism share the mutual goal of challenging forms of oppressions and are strictly
linked. By using them together we can maintain a sense of tensions and, at the same time, a connection.

The feminist reading practices are involved in the contestation of patriarchal authority.
Patriarchy: refers to those systems which invest power in men an marginalise women.
Feminism: a set of ideas which recognise that women are subordinate to men and seek to address
imbalances of power between the sexes.

Like colonialism, patriarchy manifests both in concrete ways and at the level of the imagination; it also
asserts certain representation systems that create a certain order of the world presented as normal and
true; it exists in the middle of resistances to its authorities.

“First World” feminism and “Third World” women relate to a system of ways of mapping the global
relationships of the world’s nations which emerged after the Second World War. The “First World” is
referred to the rich, predominantly Western nations. The “Second World” denoted the Soviet Union and
the “Third World” consisted in the former colonies economically under-developed and dependent for their
economic fortune.

This mapping of the world has remained influential in many discourses.

In terms of feminism and post colonialism, “First World” feminism is an unhappy generalisation that avoid
the variety of feminism and the debates about them.

Feminism in: “Imaginings of Sand”, “Jane Eyre”, “My Place” and “Wide Sargasso Sea”
Double colonisation: refers to the ways in which women experienced the oppression of colonialism and, at
the same time, of the patriarchy. But, we also to consider that double colonisation affects colonised and
also colonising women in various ways but, of course, they weren’t in the same position.

The Easter woman is conceived as an exotic creature, heterosexual male desire; the Western woman, on the
contrary, is the one who represent the moral and civil standards of the society. Western women were also
seen as complicit with colonial discourses. For colonised women, in many “Third World” colonies, Western
patriarchal values have had a profound effects on indigenous gender roles: Hazel Carby argues that British
colonies interrupted indigenous familial and community structures and imposed its own models. This have
had a significant impact on gender roles in indigenous communities, whose established traditions and social
systems were broken, sometimes to the detriment of women. He suggests that indigenous gender roles
could be more equitable than the sexist gender stereotypes from the colonising culture.
Katrak has argued that Mahatma Gandhi’s resistance to British colonial rule in India used gendered
representations for the purposes of Indian women from their patriarchal subordination to men. Gandhi
appropriated images of passive women to promote his campaign of “passive resistance” to British colonial
rule, only for the purposes of breaking colonial authority. Postcolonialism, like colonialism is a male centred
and patriarchal discourse in which women’s voices are marginalised.
Western of “First World” feminism has been criticised by postcolonial critics because of the lack of
attention to the problems suffered by women with links to countries with a history of colonialism. Western
feminism is criticised for the Orientalist way it represents the social practices of other races as barbarous,
from which black and Asian women need rescuing by their Western sisters. So, it fails to take into
consideration the needs of these women.

The horror about the arranged marriages of Asian. In advocating an end, Western feminists do not consider
Asian women’s views. Western feminism frequently suffers from an ethnocentric bias in presuming that the
solutions, which white Western women have advocated in combating their oppression, are equally
applicable to all. “First World” feminist is often mistaken in considering that her gender authorises her to
speak for “Third World” women. Feminists must learn to speak to women and not for women; they must
be willing to learn the limits of their methodologies through an encounter with women in different
contexts. The category of “Third World” women is an effect of discourse rather than an existent reality.

Ch. 7 DIASPORA IDENTITIES

British Empire was an international affair. Through colonisation, people voyaged out from Britain settling
around the world in different places. But significant too were the voyages in by colonised people from
around the world who travelled to the major European empires. Often these voyages took place as
plantation owners taking slaves to put work as servants in their homes. The European empires changed life
in colonised countries, then Europe too was changes forever by its colonial encounters. The advent of
European colonialism augmented the voyages in ad out of Europe and the people who have settled there.

The existence of African people in Britain can be traced back to and indeed before Elizabethan times. In the
context of the British Empire, there is now a well-established field of study concerning the writings of those
colonised peoples who became located in Britain during the colonial period. As a consequence of the
postcolonial critique of the relations between culture and imperialism, such cultural endeavours (sforzi) are
much more well known to students. In addition, decolonisation had major consequences for the migration
of people from once colonised countries to the European cities. Many cultural texts have been created as a
consequence of these migrations and took the themes of migration and diaspora.

The former colonising nations have experienced the arrival of many peoples from once colonising countries
who have established new homes at the old colonial centres. In Britain some colonial peoples were recruited
by the government to cope with labour shortages. Others arrived to study or escape political and economic
difficulties in their native lands; some followed the family members who migrated before them.

James Clifford noted that the term diaspora ha become: “loose in the world for reasons having to do with
decolonisation, immigration and other phenomena that encourage multi-locale attachment and travelling
within and across nations”. The term once referred specifically to the dispersal of Jews, but is now more
likely to evoke a plethora of global movements and migrations.

It is tempting to think of diaspora peoples as migrant peoples and indeed many living in diasporas certainly
are. However, generational differences are important. Children born to migrant peoples in Britain may
claim to British citizenship, but their sense of identity borne from living in a diaspora community can be
influenced by the “past migration history” of their parents or grandparents that makes them forge
emotional and cultural bonds with more than one nation even if they’ve never lives in. this is one reason
why it is more accurate to talk about diaspora identities rather than migrant identities; not all of those who
live in a diaspora or share an emotional connection to the old country, have experienced migration.
The experiences of migrancy and living in a diaspora have animated much recent postcolonial literature,
criticism and theory with the fact that postcolonial studies can appear to prioritise diasporic concerns. The
literature produced by diaspora writers has proved popular in Western literary criticism. Similarly, in the
work of academics the new possibilities (new ways of thinking about individual identities) and problems,
given by the experience of migrant and diaspora life, have been easily explored.

Such work has been resourced by critics who discover a new way to understand contemporary human
existence.
But diaspora peoples often remain ghettoised and excluded from feeling they belong to the new country
and suffer their cultural practices to be discriminated.

Naipaul’s memoir “Prologue to an Autobiography”; he came from a family descended from Indian migrants
to the Caribbean. He records an incident occurred in 1932, when Indian labourers were promised the
passage back to India from Trinidad by the government once their contracts had expired.
The ship returned to Trinidad and collected more immigrant Indians. Migration alters how migrants think
about their home and host countries. The Trinidad os an illusion: viewed from India, it seemed a place of
opportunity, but they experienced miserable working conditions. And also India changed into something
illusory, a dream.

Naipaul’s example help us understand how migration results in the idea of the home country becoming
split from the experience of returning home and the challenges of belonging which this inevitably creates.

He invites us to think about migrant as constructing certain ways of seeing that impact upon both migrants
and their descendants in a number of ways. For migrant and diasporic peoples, home is a complex idea:
they occupy a displaced position, dislocated from a past homeland that can only ever be imagined but not
fully grounded in their present location. Migrants envision their existence in terms of fragments. Although
migrants may pass through the political borders of nations, such norms and limits can be used to exclude
migrants from being accommodated inside the imaginative borders of the nation.

The dominant discourses of race, ethnicity and gender may exclude them from being recognised as part of
the nation’s people. For these reasons and others, many diasporic writers have been keen to point out that
home can no longer be relied upon as a stable and stabilising concept. To be a migrant or to live in a
diasporic location is to live beyond old notions of being “at home”. Migrants can share both similarities and
differences with their descendants and the relationship between generations con be complex rather than
forming a neat contrast.
Descendants of migrants can suffer similar experiences to their parents or grandparents.

The position that both migrants and their children are deemed to occupy is: living in between different
nations, feeling neither here nor there. We might think of the discourses of nationalism, ethnicity or race as
examples of models of belonging which attempt to root the individual within a clearly defined and
homogenised group.
But these models no longer seem suited to a world where the experience and legacy of migration are altering
the ways in which individuals think of their relation to place and how they may lay claim to lands that are
difficult in terms of “home” or “belonging”. To live as a migrant may also evoke the fact to live in a world
of immense possibility with the realisation that new knowledges and ways of seeing can be constructed out
of myriad combinations.
The grounded certainties of roots are replaced with the transnational contingencies of routes.

The “in-between” position of the migrant, his or her errant, the impartial perceptions of the world of and
‘not of’ every place, have been used as the starting point for creating new dynamic ways of thinking about
identity which go beyond older static models such as national identity and the notion of “rootedness”.
One enthusiastic exponent of this line was Bhabha, that in Location of Culture talks about new ways of
thinking about identity born from ‘the great history of languages, landscapes of migration and diaspora.
Bhabha describes these new forms of postcolonial identity, making slippage between migrant and
postcolonial.
This text addresses those who live on the margins of different nations, in-between contrary homelands such
as migrants and diasporic people. For Bhabha, living at the border requires a new ‘art of the present’,
embracing the logic of the border and using it to rethink the dominant ways we represent things like
history, identity and community.
For Bhabha, the border is the place where conventional patterns are disturbed by the possibility of crossing.
Bhabha suggests that imaginative border-crossings are as much as a consequence of migration as the
physical crossing of borders. The border is a place of possibility and agency for new concepts and ideas. So,
the imaginative crossing at the “beyond” offer ways of thinking about communal identity that depart from
old ideas. Standing at the border, the migrant is empowered to intervene actively in the transmission of
cultural inheritance or tradition rather than passively accept.

The migrant is empowered to act as an agent of change.

The subject becomes produced from the process of hybridisation.
The concept of hybridity has proved very important for diaspora peoples. Hybrid identities are never total
and completing themselves remain perpetually in motion. Bhabha suggests that literature concerning
migrants, decolonised, could take on the task of a housing the received ways of thinking about the world and
discovering the hybridity, the difference that exists within. Cultural differences are figured as unrepresented
Bhabha’s attention to the border, the “beyond” considers the opportunity for new hybrid forms of
knowledge.

Bhabha’s work represents one example of how critical thoughts had attempted to build new forms of
postcolonial knowledge that are energised by the experiences and by migration. Stuart Hall is keen to
conceptualise migrant and diasporic cultures in terms of motion, multiplicity and hybridity.

In asserting a common black experience created a singular and unifying framework based on the building up
of identity across ethnic and cultural differences between the different communities.
But, in a second moment, these unifying modes become contested from within the black community as
individuals begin to question the existence of believing in an essential black subject. In other words, black
artist and writers, no longer worked on behalf of the black community because that composite community
cannot be easily homogenised. This creates a challenge for the black community: Hall’s work shows that for
historical and cultural reasons the construction of a generalised black community served an important
political purpose despite the fact that we might want to question some of the assumptions upon which these
representations rest. By focusing on a variety of contemporary cultural representations of black people,
Hall calls attention to the ways in which the generalising images of a diaspora community or typical subjects
may not be representative of all those who would consider themselves as living in a diaspora.

Avtar Brah talked about the “diaspora space”: an intersection of borders where all subjects and identities
become contested where the accepted and the transgressive mix. This space is not some kind of postmodern
playground where all kinds of identities are equally valuable and available as if in a multicultural
supermarket.
If the experience of diaspora communities in Western nations may be one of segregation and ghettoisation
rather then border-crossing and cultural exchange than, the need to rethink how cultures interrelate becomes
even more urgent, in order to demolish the divisive ways of thinking that keep us in place and displaced in
the first place.
The act of reconceptualising identity and culture in diasporic is one way of exposing all people to a new
sense of themselves and their communities.