Edward Said Colonial Discourse Theory - Essay Example

Edward Said’s pioneering work of colonial dis theory, Orientalism, was also a precursor of post-colonial studies that emerged powerfully in thelast decade of Twentieth Century. By analyzing the ways in which Europe viewed the nations they subjugated, he fashioned out a new field of study that was intent on recognizing the difference between the real ‘orient’ and the ‘orient’ that was the creation of European fantasy. The only way in which the oriental nations could inform the world about the possibilities of their identity which are neglected in such discourses and to demystify the mythical orient was to speak for itself, or to bring to light the truth which is missing in the already existing notions about them. There had been many works prior to the observations made by Said and other like Frantz Fanon with regard to the colonialist ideology present in such categorizations. However, it is possible to find traces of Orientalist attitudes in recent works of art and literature as well, though most often presented as a critique of the colonialist past and its ramifications in the present. Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown is a novel that provides a few significant responses to the major divide of the Eastern and Western ideologies with regard to love, courtship rules, socio-cultural structures and the elements of terror that emerges from flawed power structures. Rushdie makes use of his Postmodernist narrative technique to deal with the post-colonial issue of East/West dichotomies that still define the world in unequal power structures. The novel depicts many instances where the lack of mutual understanding among Eastern and Western thought processes and life patterns lead to a collision of cultures that deem a peaceful co-existence impossible even to imagine. The novel portrays the romantic Hindu-Muslim co-existence in the Kashmir of early nineties. However, the sudden change in such an idyllic life through extremism, and communal riots makes the central theme of the book. This shift takes place due to many factors, among which the colonial past and the post-independence complexities thanks to the religious divide that the British created seems the most evident. A fourteen year old beautiful Hindu dancer, Bhoomi Kaul, also known as Boonyi, and her childhood companion Shalimar the Clown, a Muslim, are presented as the main actors of a passionate love affair. Their parents are intimate friends, and when they find out that their children are deeply in love, they arrange a marriage for them that follows both the Hindu and Muslim rites. But the trouble starts when Boonyi seduces the American Ambassador to India, Maximilian Ophuls. The Ambassador himself becomes the representative of incredibly interlinked experiences. In the Nazi occupied Strasbourg, he loses his Jewish parents who fail to save themselves since they refuse to abandon their family business of book publishing, or to move from there. Later, he emerges as a Resistance hero in southern France, and in England he marries Margaret Rhodes an anti-Nazi activist, after a glamorous love affair. He turns out to be a famous writer and an incurable philanderer. He is enamoured by the dance performance of Boonyi and takes her away from her village, Pachigam, and offers her a city apartment and dance lessons in exchange of her body. But she becomes an exploiter of the exploiter in her late realization that her “so-called liberation was no more than a gilded cage” (195). She devours the delicious chocolates and other food items without restrain and becomes a ghost of her own self, bloated beyond limit. She is also addicted to drugs during this period. Just as Ophuls is about to dump her, she declares that she is pregnant. Ophuls’ wife snatches Boony’s baby, originally named Kashmira, and goes back to Europe where she renames her India Ophuls. Shalimar’s transformation into a terrorist, which has started at the moment when Boonyi was taken away from Pachigam, is complete when Boonyi is dumped and she returns to Pachigam. She was already declared dead there, and Shalimar’s attempts to kill her are deterred by the fathers of Boonyi and Shalimar. But once the fathers are dead he kills her, finds out Max Ophuls and kills him as well, though he makes use of his label as a terrorist to accomplish these personal deeds. India, who assumes her real identity as Kashmira, makes a trip to the horror-stricken Kashmir and this transforms her to a determined lady who is prepared to take her destiny in her own hands. Shalimar the clown, who escapes from a life-imprisonment, finds his way to her apartment which is under tight protection. Rushdie ends the novel with an ambiguous note where Kashmira, wearing night-vision goggles, is waiting in the dark with a gun in her hand, for Shalimar the clown, and she can afford to take only one chance to pull the trigger, since he is a trained terrorist. Said explains that Orientalism “is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerate material investment” (6). Rushdie reveals that such a created body of theory and practice still remains in the global culture of contemporary world. India Ophuls, who leads a very comfortable life in her Los Angeles apartment, is completely unaware of her Indian lineage and nurtures the typical paranoid attitude towards Oriental people. The exotic features of her mother’s first husband, disguised as her father chauffer, evoke sensuous responses from her, but she is also concerned about his origins and intentions. “Was he legal? Did he have his papers? Did he even have a driving license? Why had he been employed?” (11). When he eventually kills her father in front of her, she is suddenly drawn to a trail of discoveries, at the wake of her realization that she herself is part of the exotic Orient that she used to place against her first world, irreligious self. Maximilian Ophuls, the Western man of power who is sensitive of his past full of misery in the times of the Holocaust, assumes that he could understand in his own terms. He even claims that the fact that he came from Alsace makes him understand the issues of India better than some other Western official. However, he fails to understand the significance Muslim people give to the concept of ‘honor’. While he makes himself proud of his understanding of the world and nurtures a panoramic image of global culture enriched by his vivid experiences, he fails to concentrate on the personal, local elements that may get hurt and disrupted in his scheme of grand designs. In an interview given to the German weekly magazine ‘Stern’, Rushdie has explains how his novel deals with the deep anxiety felt among many Islamic men about female sexual freedom and lost honor. He says that, …the West had failed to grasp the extent to which Islamic extremism was rooted in mens fear of womens sexuality….The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior. …Instead, great importance is given to honor. Shalimar the Clown is presented as an uneducated villager who has imbibed this sense of honor from his religious upbringing. He cannot digest the fact that a Westerner could seduce his wife and get away with it. He longs for revenge, not just for his personal needs but also for the religious and sociological needs. He gets involved with the terrorist organizations only in order to avenge the dishonor Max has brought to his peaceful married life. He reflects on his plans like this: Sooner or later he would find his way to the American ambassador and his honor would be avenged. What happened after that was unimportant. Honour ranked above everything else, above the sacred vows of matrimony, above the divine injunction against cold-blooded murder, above decency, above culture, above life itself. (258) Though the novel deals basically with the roots of terrorism in cultural clashes, it carefully exposes the Orientalist attitudes that play a major part in defining terrorism. The Western misconceptions of the Islamic ideological concepts and its naïve attempts to understand its innately different value system through the Western epistemological precepts forms a major part of the book. Shalimar is only described from various points of view, often tethering on mysticism, while all the other major characters of the novel are well delineated through first person narratives. Rushdie succeeds in presenting multiple views regarding the birth of terror, but contests the Orientalist preconceived notions. By juxtaposing the contrastive elements of Eastern and Western view points and lifestyles, Rushdie digs out some ghosts from Said’s Orientalism that set in a trail of anti-colonial reactions based on the Western misconceptions of the Orient. References Rushdie, Salman. Shalimar The Clown. London: Jonathan Cape, 2005 Said, Edward. Orientalism. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2001. Read More