To Bury or Exhume the White Gods - Essay Example

of Narratives and Counter-narratives One of the major projects that were undertaken by Postmodernism was to challenge established narratives of history. These narratives were then denounced as subject to the imagination and propagandist intentions of the people who were in power at certain points in time. History then becomes a tool in the hands of those who oppressed certain sections of the society for their own economic benefits. Culture is then seen as a construct that can be changed for the benefit of the mental enslavement of the people of a particular area so that they do not question the power of their oppressors. It also becomes the means by which the oppressed are made to believe in the ethical justice of the systems of production that engender their own oppression. These theories have great scope for application in postcolonial studies that seek to challenge narratives that are based on the versions of the colonizer’s memory. There are now attempts to revise the histories that have been written by such writers for the mental enslavement of the colonized. These counter-narratives too, however, stand the risk of being incorporated into the power structures of the imperialist narrative. This is to a certain extent inevitable as they come for e certain point in history when the effects of colonialism are still being overturned. It is in this context that Camilla Townsend’s article “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico” becomes important as it attempts to bridge certain gaps in historical narratives and at the same point of time also seeks to point certain flaws in the counter-narratives that one finds in the postmodern age. The essay thus points to the need for a history with lesser chinks (Townsend). The essay seeks to talk of the narratives that have been used to counter the narratives of Hernando Cortes and his conquistadors. Many such narratives talk of the situation where the people who were indigenous inhabitants of Mexico thought of the conquistadors to be gods. An elaborate system of lies is constructed whereby indigenous systems are arm-twisted into accommodating the colonizer into their narrative. The incorporation of Cortes into the narrative of the Indian God, Quetzalcoatl is a very good example of this. The God who is considered to have left the Indians’ land for the East was prophesied to come later on at a certain point of time. This narrative was changed a lot to accommodate the arrival of the colonizer into Mexico. There are several aspects that one needs to look into while analyzing this story, according to Townsend (Townsend). One such aspect is the existence of pre-colonial hegemonies. The importance of this lies in the fact that it enables the historian to analyze historical narratives without painting any particular character or race as the villain. While it is inevitable that the colonizer would be invested with much of the blame, an analysis of such hegemonies that were practiced during pre-colonial times would discourage any didactic narratives that may be put forward by historians of the colonized. The narratives that include the story of Quetzalcoatl has also a lot to do with the fact that hegemonic forces of the Indian cultures sought to mask their own ineffectiveness through creating narratives that blame the subaltern categories of the society. Religion and other such structures of the society are controlled by the hegemonic power structures of that society. Any problem that results from it is however, usually placed on the shoulders of the masses as they are the ones that are said to believe in religion and other such ‘superstitions’. The narratives that included the Indians as complicit characters were then created not by the masses but by the courtiers of the king. This close coterie then sought to create a myth that masked their own inability to tackle the problem of the colonizers. This is one problem that has not been tackled by the counter-narratives that have been written till now. Miguel Leon-Portilla’s narrative The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico too is an example of one such narrative that tries to take the point of view of the indigenous inhabitants into account while framing itself (Townsend). However, this project too is problematic as the view of the hegemonic groups of the pre-colonial era is the one that is taken into account. This follows the trajectory that historical narratives before the postmodern era used to follow. In those narratives, there was always a bias in favor of those narratives and facts that were about the upper classes of a society. There is thus, an attempt to look at history from below in the narrative that Townsend creates. There is thus a challenge towards not just the narratives of the conquistadors but also to the phenomenon of the creation of history which is then seen as an activity inspired by economic benefits. History is then an ideology that is used for the benefit of the colonizers. It would be useful to look at the different aspects of this history that have been established as facts for the purpose of analyzing further the question of narrative and how it is employed by the colonizer. It was during the sixteenth century that Hernando Cortes arrived in Mexico and this led to the colonization of this part of the world. This was the beginning of the colonization of the rest of South America. After this, there was rampant slavery in this part of the world so as to sustain the plantation economy that the colonizers had built up at this point of time. This was another phase in the colonization of this continent. People of different continents and races were transported to South America so as to fuel this economy. This led to a mixing of the races in South America, something that has given it a fairly diverse and robust culture today. Much of the everyday that one sees today is thus an effect of the colonial powers that have been at the helm for centuries now. An analysis of narratives is one way of understanding how and why certain aspects of modern reality are the way they are. It is thus, an exercise that needs to be geared towards understanding a certain cultural identity without necessarily having to adhere strictly to the codes and restrictions that are set by such cultural identities. Narratives then can be seen as archives that need to be unearthed. The importance of this lies in the fact that the present of a nation depends greatly upon the past of that nation. The configurations of power and the forms of oppression that take place in a country depend upon the historical narratives that are written. This is what makes the process of history-making so important. Coming back to the idea of the archive, the archive is what enables the construction of history and it is often the dominant section of the society that decides what is required to be a history. For instance, when one assigns the status of a monument and a historical site to the ruins of a colonial establishment, one situates it within a historical narrative that may give it greater importance that what it deserves. One may also be, through such a narrative, be exhibiting a bias towards the colonizer’s lifestyle and consequently ideology. The fascination that many have with the legacy of the colonizer, and its status as tourist attractions in many parts of the world, may also be ascribed to the fact that other histories are not written. This is then due to the fact that archives of the colonized are often not considered to be a part of the process of the creation of history. An example of this can be seen in the deliberate devaluation of oral narratives that were the method through which colonized cultures often communicated their texts and epics. These were very important parts of their culture and have in the recent past been talked of as being sites of archiving that need to be revisited so as to reconstruct a history that does not leave out the experience of the subaltern. While Townsend’s essay talks of written accounts, oral sources and their analyses would have made the entire exercise more fruitful and her essay would have been closer to her goal. What she attempts to do is also however, to point to the reader the gaps in history and she is successful in doing so. Oral narratives have been criticized for not being permanent sources; however, there are instances of entire epics being carried over generations without being written down. They were transmitted orally and were retained, albeit with differences with each passing generation. The text then becomes a proof of various generational shifts that can then be decoded into a history. The history of the source then becomes the history of a culture and its people. One can then come to the question of whether the revision of history goes too far in order to construct an alternate narrative. This then leads one to the question of whether the question of suspicion cannot be applied to the narratives that are created by the colonized. For how long does such a process of revision continue and is there any possibility of a final moment of truth when a true history that does not have any mix of untruth in it emerges? The answer to this question is a difficult one and may be outside the scope of this paper. However, there also remains the concern that there may also be an erasure of the history of colonial oppression in case every history and strand of it is considered to be suspect and untrustworthy. While every narrative needs to be viewed with suspicion, it should also not be trashed and certain facts must be garnered. In the postmodern age however, it is inevitable that multiple narratives would exist together without any of them being considered the most authentic one of the lot. This is a predicament that is particular to the conditions of living of the world that one is a part of in the twenty first century rather than merely an aspect of historiography that one has to be concerned about. The revisionism thus leads to a reconfiguration of the positions of power that were held by different people in the entire world and different power structures. They have been able to destabilize the position of superiority that narratives of the colonizers and in the case of Townsend’s essay, the conquistadors had. The differences in the way situations are perceived can be seen in this shift from a worldview where the white histories were accepted as sacrosanct. At this point in history, there is an acceptance of the fact that there were separate narratives that shaped the experiences of people all over the world. Revisionism has created an environment where it is possible to challenge entrenched power systems through a dismantling of the structures of historical narratives that were often employed to prop up structures of power. Revisionism follows a post-structuralist approach that was instrumental in the growth of postmodernism as a form of approaching history and other such structures of the society that one is a part of. The importance of such a postcolonial challenge that revisionist histories offer can be seen in the light of the challenges to the established power structures that are offered by many through social media and the internet. Social networking has led to the creation of alternate sites for archiving and also for creating narratives that can bring together several perspectives from around the world. The world then becomes a place where multiple discourses interact and form a web of power structures that, even though more difficult to analyze, shall at least become a place where more and more dispossessed people and communities have power to call their own. It is thus, part of a struggle for such communities to unearth their identities from a multitude of narratives that erase their past. Works Cited Townsend, Camilla. “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico.” The American Historical Review 108: 3. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. Read More