Unlocking the postcolonial experience with the keys of history - Essay Example

Unlocking the Postcolonial Experience with the Keys of History In my reading of history I have found that the meaning of history is different for different people. Similarly the postcolonial experience is different for different individuals. In other words any history, which includes also the postcolonial one, has a subjective meaning for the individual. However, an objective approach to history can unlock the impasse of interpretation of history to the reasonable satisfaction of all people. I have observed that the tone of eulogy that characterized the early writers in the heyday of colonization has given way to less buoyant enthusiasm in the postcolonial literature after the liquidation of the empire. I should think that the Postcolonial writer now expresses his authentic subjective experience, not only of the colonial past, but also his perception of the aftermath of colonization. History is important in Postcolonial studies because it fixes the parameters for inclusion or exclusion the sources that we should study. Experience of a historical colonial past and the literature that reflects this is included as the canonical works for study. However, many argue that the colonial past though politically over is actually present because of the overwhelming influence still exerted by former rulers on their former colonies. Some others argue that colonization is still a reality as some powerful nations still exercise political power from a distance through their conglomerates.1 There is a school of thought that argues that colonial experience is universal in human history because some time in the remote or recent past most countries or peoples had the experience of being subjugated by another powerful people.2 What is Postcolonial I feel that it is necessary to have a clear idea of the term Postcolonial. It became prominent terminology in academic parlance with the publication of Edward Said' vehement critique of western ideas of the Orient in his work Orientalism. His work highlights the inaccuracies of a wide variety of assumptions accepted on individual, academic and political levels. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien to the west (Said 1978). According to Said a historian and a scholar should see the diversity of culture and allow room for a dynamic variety of human experience. However, I find that Said was insistent about the essential difference between the orient and the occident. So I feel that in spite of the stereotype that European perception has of the orient there is different subjective perception of one another. In this context it is desirable to read Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. From this we get a proper insight into the colonial mind.3 With the appearance in 1989 of the work The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, Postcolonial studies became a branch of study by itself and earlier terms like Colonial Literature, Commonwealth Literature and Third World Literature were replaced by Postcolonial. However many do not consider the term suitable. In fact some use term to signify a stand against Imperialism and Euro- centrism often surprisingly ante-Americanism. In this context I wish to compare and contrast the perspective of earlier writers who were conscious or unconscious appendages of the Raj by examining the work, In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh.4 Is American Experience Part of Postcolonialism Americas were one of the earliest scenes of European colonial adventure. The American expansion at the cost of the native American population is one of the saddest chapters of world history. Similarly the flourishing slave trade and the vestiges of which remained in our recent memory makes the America all the more a part of essential colonial experience. The white chroniclers of European explorations cinemetically focussed on what they saw through a single lense. However the Postcolonial historians capture the quite mystique of the discovery of the unfolding virgin America with the eyes of the natives Americans also.This voyage of mutual discovery of the Europeans and the native Americans, is serendipitous for the reader of Postcolonial approaches to history ; for as he reads through he discovers the strength and frailties that made him what he is today. It is usual for European explorers to use casually terms like "wilderness" and "unknown" to describe homelands of native people. In fact, these regions were the real milieu of Native American homes with their adjoining gardens and hunting lands. Now that America is the most powerful nation on earth, for many Americans who have the bite of the cake, the historic roots that made America what it is today may not be in the conscious mind. I would like to voyage into this dark territory of American past by the in depth study of Caryl Philip's Crossing the River. The book is documentary of the scattered offspring of Africa. The book is worth studying because of the disturbing vignettes of America's colonial past. Major Issues of Postcolonialism There are many issues that engage the attention in Postcolonialism. How has colonization affected the colonized people How did western world carve out much of the non-western world How did colonial education, science, religion etc impact the postcolonial societies What has happened to the knowledge systems of the colonies Should there be a process of decolonizzation to regain the identity of the people of the former colonies. Has the colonial language scorched the growth of the local languages and literature Who should be included in the postcolonial canon of writers These and many more issues are the major concerns of Postcolonialism. It is up to the historian and to the creators of literature that people look up to gain meaningful insight to these issues. In fact since much of the history that has been written and preserved has been the colonial history written by Europeans. History often is selective in its choice of subjects and the historians truth could be prejudiced, especially in the past, where has the historian was accountable to the prevailing national agenda. So much of the traditional literary works eulogized all that the English did: Every time a literary critic claims a universal ethical, moral, or emotional instance in a piece of English literature, he or she colludes in the violence of the colonial legacy in which the European value or truth is defined as the universal one. (Young, 2004, p. 163) The idea of English practices and modes of thinking is more refined and more ethical is a fallacy of the colonial times. I have decided to analyze the character St.John in Charlotte Bronte' Jane Eyre to understand how the missionaries that went to convert saw other cultures.5 The success of British colonial rule in India during the nineteenth century was not only dependent on the threat of military force, but also on the sophisticated use of rhetoric to convince the educated, Indian middle-class elite that British culture was more civilized and therefore a more superior form of government (Morton, 2002, p. 113) The Way Literature Reflects Colonial Experience Literature is a mirror in which the society is reflected. It is interesting to note that European mind itself was the first to offer a critique of the their adventure in the colonies. I wish to show this critique by analyzing Joseph Conrad's short novel Heart of Darkness.6 Much of the literature that is available for the study of early days of European adventure in other countries is mostly preserved in the jottings of early missionaries. It is a gold mine for historian to understand the many facets of colonial adventure. There are plethoras of motives that goad explorers to brave the tumultuous waves of perilous oceans, to confront the dusty heat waves of the desert and to scale the precipitous cliffs. Nevertheless, social historians have narrowed down the motives of the men to the inordinate craving for gold, God and glory. Those who went for the mundane lure of wealth may not have much reflected on the experience of their contact with the alien people. However, the missionaries who went out to save souls might have been shocked at the sight of natives whose ways were totally unacceptable. They dumped the natives as heathens: The attitudes of BFM missionaries toward American Indian manifestations of heathenism were thus unremittingly ethnocentric. These Presbyterians could see nothing worth preserving in the rich and varied Indian cultures they entered (Coleman 80). However many writers do not share this view of the missionaries today. Since the most ruthless criticism of European education and Christianity has come from the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, I have decided to explore how he reacts to the Christionization of his tribe and the introduction of English education. The work was written when Nigeria was still a colony. The book deserves special attention because after the leaving of the whites Nigerian society has not stabilized, especially in the recent times. The interaction with an alien element might produce cracks in an integrated system by accepting the values of the Europeans. Has that happened is my concern.7 There has been a plethora of literary production that has come from writers like Chinua Achebe, Homi Bhaba, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Amitav Ghosh, Taslima Nasrin, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Wole Soyinka, Arundhati Roy etc. Their works often reinterpret the colonial experience. Some times the colonial experience is reflected in writers who have not been classified as belonging to a particular genre. The classic case is that of Jean Rhys. Her Wide Sargasso Sea is a critique of male dominated colonial legacy that has made women a doormat in a world of boots. The recurring theme of her writing is the helpless female in patriarchal milieu. The feminist literature as a genre is relatively new. The autographic element in a post-colonial background lends it a special charm, while it offers a critique of the man-dominated colonial world. The novel explores the various contraries that are found in life. The oppositions are between self and the other, fiction and reality, black and white, master and slave and more particularly involving masculine and feminine. As a social criticism the novel is a documentation of the historic reality of the patterns of thinking and acting that has been perpetuated as colonial legacy. Conclusions Bergsonian attitude to time is that it is a continuum. The past, present and future do influence each other. Our understanding of the past will get modified depending on the imploration that we make into the future. Similarly future is being influenced by the past and present. It is the duty of a writer to write history with a scientific mind. Literature being a reflection of society will certainly reflect the perception of contemporary writers on colonial rule. Though an indictment of white man's colonial escapade is familiar in today's literature, writings that reflect positive aspects of colonial past also do have a place postcolonial experience. Notes. 1.The coinage banana republic is used to denote those countries ruled by the influence of the United Fruit Corporation than by their own indigenous governments. The term hegemony distinguishes the dominance through ideas and culture with out political power over others. American hegemony exercised in this way is often called the coca-Colonization of the world. 2. Romans had a huge colonial empire and the greatest of the colonial power, England, was a Roman province. English place names that end in caster, cester, chester etc are irascible evidence of the Roman rule of England. Similarly much of the Balkans was part of the Ottoman Empire. 3. Crusoe is the representation of the adventurous colonial mind. At the same time his unwillingness to treat others, as his equal is typical of the colonial mindset. Crusoe teaches Friday (a character) the word master even before teaching him yes or no. Crusoe is praiseworthy in his mastery of his fate but his praiseworthiness is in doubt when he exercises his mastery over others. Defoe's work is an exploration of these two sides of the colonial mind. 4. The work is by anthropologist. The work is of seminal interest because it is a unique case in which a slave's story is told. This makes it a foil to most British travelogues where the British Raj was dominant. 5.There has been both conscious and unconscious attempt to undermine host cultures and praise the English culture. The missionaries though their ignorance of other cultures considered the Hinduism to be a pagan religion full of worship of animals and savage practices. The Priest, St.John, in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre calls the Hindus in India as the worshippers of Juggernaut. But who is Juggernaut Any one with a little insight into Indian words knows that it means only the Lord of the Universe. 6.The first detour from the tradition of orchestrated glorification of the white man's adventure in the dark continent came from the Polish born English writer Joseph Conrad whose work Heart of Darkness is the first indictment of the white man's colonial adventure. It is a seminal fictional study of the dark continent in the heyday of the white man's colonial adventure for glory, gold and God. The European colonist, as the self-appointed savior of the Africans, bearing the white man's burden of civilizing the savage bush niggers, is accused in Conrad's work as the most defunct specimen of humanity as well as the perpetrator of the ruinous self-deception. It is a shocking document that exploded the smug satisfaction of the white colonial jaunt that masqueraded as an altruistic quest for the benefits of the colonizing nations (Orr & Billy, 1999). 7. Achabe's monumental work Things Fall Apart argues that western education and Christianity have eroded the natural vitality of the Ibos of Nigeria with alien's patterns of thinking intruding into their simple and efficiently functioning system with the coming of the white man. In the individual level perhaps the contact with the white man has given better employment and social opportunities but it is at a great cost to their culture. Works cited Billy Tedd & Orr Leonard (1999). A Joseph Conrad Companion; Greenwood Press.Westport, CT. Chinua Achebe(1958) Things Fall Apart. Expanded edition with notes. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996 Coleman C Michael: Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes toward American Indians, 1837-1893. Edward Said (1978). Orientalism, New York: Vintage Morton Stephen (2002).Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Routledge. New York. Robert J. C. Young (2004) .White Mythologies: Writing History and the West: Routledge. New York. 2004. ========== Read More