LITR 5831 Colonial &
Postcolonial Literature
Lecture Notes
Second meeting on Jasmine
web review
Brief History
colonial / national boundaries sometimes divide ethnic groups, sometimes force them together (often unequally)
issue rose again in public consciousness during Iraq War, awareness of incompatible ethnic / religious groups (Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds) whom British in 1920 had pulled together in creating "State of Iraq" from former territories of Ottoman / Turkish Empire
Winds of Change
"Freedom!"
Nkrumah of Ghana
Pan-Africanism, United States of Africa? (cf. Pan-Arabism, United Nations)
World Wars 1 & 2 as battle for overseas empires > turning point against colonialism
Two effects of war:
Colonizing powers weakened, exhausted by war
Native soldiers from colonized countries met native soldiers from other countries and learned of decolonization or independence movements
purpose: Things Fall Apart takes place in the southern, Igbo region of Nigeria
Achebe an Igbo, participated in Igbo secession movement of 1970s
Why studying E. O. Wilson?
First, he's a noted writer: nonfiction, 2 Pulitzer Prizes
literary studies traditionally limited to poems, plays, fiction but increasingly expands to nonfiction ("discourse studies")
What narratives or stories do colonialism and postcolonialism tell?
1. millennial narratives:
colonial interventions in developing world bring "new heaven and new earth"
nostalgic desire to return to pre-fall Eden
2. evolutionary narratives:
world doesn't really end, just changes
can't return to earlier phase of evolutionary history; instead, past and present recombine to create future
postcolonial studies as interdisciplinary field
Wilson as rare moment when academic culture becomes current in popular culture
later in class: history
also social sciences--poco studies often informed by anthropology--Joyce (& Zachary) in Cross-Cultural Studies
Wilson as founder of sociobiology > evolutionary psychology as way of understanding human self-other dynamics
moral questions raised by colonial-postcolonial literature > "beyond good and evil"
how humans move from local, small-scale, closely-related ethnic societies (tribalism, "group belonging," self-identifying comfort zone) to large-scale diversity and cooperation with strangers
next week:
tribalism x "eusocial"
human condition as essentially divided
one side won't triumph, shouldn't triumph?
dialogue only way to manage
x- purity > hybridity
people of color, Tiger Woods or Colin Powell or Barack Obama or trans-ethnic celebrities, models; what are you?--an American.
nation of laws, nations with treaties (Wilson, On Human Nature p. 120)
E. O. Wilson: Of Ants and Men (PBS documentary 1 October 2015)
chapter 18
122 Dr. Mary Webb, no husband and big balance, sociology
or social work
123 channeling? Digging for bodies?
124 out-of-body experiences
guru, bi-monthly group
[cf. glossolalia in Abo]
I’m just approximating [Bakhtin]
124-5 only person in Iowa with nostalgia for kangaroo
flesh
125 pre-Edenic
125 [anachronistic metaphor; record player]
slight Australian diction
reincarnation
American need to . . . possess a vision so privately
126 data bank of bodyflow
waiter: Hi, I’m Duane
reborn several times
moved by Mary Webb’s story
127 record-player metaphor
which of us . .
. ?
Lillian Gordon, kind Quaker lady
128 trucks, laborers, cf. India
so much trash in America
vaguely Asian features
129 yet to see an American face
130 I won’t ask yours . . .
India? Punjab? Sikh? > Hindu
Lillian Gordon too me home with her, older daughter’s
bedroom
131 Kanjobal, Guatemala?
Low tolerance for reminiscence, bitterness or nostalgia
Let the past make you wary . . . not deform you
x-a missionary, new visions x-old
a facilitator > ordinariness
132 lucky India a British colony
shoes biggest giveaway
put those things away
Third World Heels
Walk American
133 “Jazzy”
Dairy Queen . . . healing food
134 Kanjobal women, locked and companionable
135 think you’re born here. Most Americans can’t imagine
anything else.
Special case.
Chapter 19
136 courts bust Lillian
$20 + hand-knitted slippers
learned a pattern, never varied
saint’s relics
137 best
in American experience and character;
An American Kind of
Saint
demographics weren’t there
redevelop Florida > “slower, more gracious time”
Paradise Bay Complex
138 sanctuary > hotel; hell > paradise: my America
brochure: fit, blond young couples
speed of transformation, fluidity of American character
and landscape
140 here living like dogs because they’ve taken
everything from us
bitterness buoys, makes special x Vijh & Wife built on
hope
only more greed, more people like myself
archipelago of ghettos seething with aliens
Chapter 20
141 Tahiti, out of Iowa
142 running, not running away
can
wanting
be fatal?
Elasticity of Indian family
Trouble in me . . . jumped a track
143 Professorji, Devinder > “Dave Vadhera”
143 Nirmala, sari store
Hindi film for VCR
English deserting me
145 American clothes disguised widowhood
145-6 “Everything here” Indian food stores, Punjabi
newspapers, Hindi film magazines
146 apartment building: 32 Indian families
educated Punjabi-speaking Hindu Jats
147 stress, or big bank balance?
Mother-in-law denied authority—wives stay thin, barren
148 gained weight
Flushing a neighborhood in Jullundhar
Fortress of Punjabiness
Unnamed, unfulfilled wants
150 Professorji accedes
secretive, parsimonious with affections
151 marital accord:
silence, order, authority
submission, beauty, innocence
151
him
importer, sorter of human hair
Khyber BarBQ
152 still a scientist, self-respect
Nothing rooted anymore. Everything in motion
153 American woman’s hair lacks virginity and innocence
His real life was in an unlivable land across oceans
Week later, calling Kate
Chapter 21
154 Du reshuffling circuitry, combining new functions
+ disconnect
cf. Prakash, surgeon’s touch
155 the son Prakash and I might have had
scavenging, adaptation, appropriate technology
“Transitional Agriculture . . . .”
something out of hand in heartland
“civility”
156 Scott’s good for watching TV with
recombinant electronics
altered gene pool of common American appliance
x learn > what I do
157 killed a man . . . . so have I. More than one.
Bud most reliable, considerate man I know.
Du + tuner: “Maybe I’ll make a bomb.”
158
Jews Take Over . . .
[traditional]
Things weren’t always this ugly
Chapter 22
159 Kate: corner loft huge, 5 Flushing apartments
160 possibility: live like this and not be struck down
161 cf. mother’s taste: simple, ample, plain, functional,
frugal, even spiritual
note to Professorji properly self-condemning
162 Professorji’s lesson life-affirming, invaluable,
inexpressibly touching
kept a certain kind of Punjab alive
Sam—marine iguana
163 Truly I had been reborn
164 no going back
Chapter 23
165 became an American
Columbia U
166 dressed like students
crooked teeth
small child + adults
167 part of family
fell in love . . . prof . . . broad democracy . . .
entirely American
wanted . . . extravagant
169 subnuclear particle physics; book editor
170 the assumption behind it
[casually loaded signs]
could not imagine a non-genetic child; cf. widow
remarriage
171 no concept of shame in this society
fell in love with world, ease, careless confidence,
graceful self-absorption
172 a child sleeping alone
173 a room of my own
174 apartment cf museum
175 caregiver, a professional (+ family) x maidservant
176 Taylor fun: “Jase”
Jyoti would have saved
Squandering
177 day mummy
talk makes trouble, it doesn’t solve it
178 weak gravity
Letitia from Trinidad, Jamaica from Barbados, a snob
179 unionize
cleaning up white folks’ dirt
getting rooted
money piling up
180 move out, American thing to do
181 In America, nothing lasts
Wylie fell out . . . my chance at real happiness . . . go
for it
The real thing, this time
America had thrown me again
183 Claremont codes
184 a brave new world for me
185 Taylor academic family
x-nostalgia = coward
186 merchandise on TV
Return to Sender
188 dark-skinned hot-dog vendor
chapter 24
190 Xmas—Bud a traditionalist
Xmas goose
191 NY another small town
Bud’s shooting the first
192 signs of violence—flat authority of voice, flat
affect
adjustment to the
80s
193 Du would have known what to do
195 international banking conspiracy
frozen foods section of the Hy-Vee
196 Karin too planning changes
counseling sessions in church basements
cf. assassinating the Mahatma
197 Lillian Gordon, Mother Ripplemeyer . . . belong to
that tribe
skidded to a different groove
Iowa a state where miracles still happened
A husband for each woman
Prakash-Jasmine
Taylor-Jase
Bud-Jane
Half-Face – Kali
198 out of ordinary = planning
codes of Hollywood honor
199 starving Indian = veiled dark woman, wars, floods,
famines on TV
glamour, something unattainable + mother
200 darkness, mystery, inscrutability + vitality, wisdom
Bud leaving Karin: catalyst, not cause
Brought back from dead x nos aving
201 horsepower, whorepower
rifle-toting youth
American before perverted [empire?]
Gold Digger & Lazarus
Mennonite relief fund for starving Ethiopians
202 helped somebody like me
a simpler America, generic past x too exotic, alien
103 astrologer: among aliens
forgiveness?
Neutralizing harm, not absolute
& permanent conquest
204 guilt not exotic but different < Lutheran (Hmong)
Church
Hmong women, animists & Lutheran
Maybe go off to L.A.
Talking to herself
Disintegration of virtues: dutifulness, decency,
compassion
205 perfect TV families of the 50s
x-end of world—high divorce rate, she was the norm
205 suicide hot line
doesn’t have to be war
206 I’m not the enemy
207 Thad, mailman, month in Kathmandu—world of
communications
Hasnapur x-letters
Felt safe, never alone
208 Taylor will find me
209 man without secrets
210 Mr. T & A-team = assholes
whose little boy am I? [allusion?]
Taylor the Rescuer
211 Duty and prudence count
chapter 25
213 pot roast and gobi aloo—sacrilegious smells
214 Du 5-6 languages, 5-6
countries, 2-3 centuries > condensed, simplified
Tale of Two
Cities
many selves
Bud: straight and smooth lines of history . . . until
Harlan
215 Darrel: massacre and mayhem
created confusion and destruction
how many more shapes, selves, husbands?
Disparate things remind of Taylor > Jase
216 third world packaging
food = granting / withholding love
Darrel the Romantic
217 a man transformed
live poor, die rich > Tahiti
face twisted
whole failed, ambitious design of his evening, his life
218 big banks, Eastern banks—blown circuitry
frontier of madness closer
I’m the truth
Elders and maples
219 Vietnamese . . . conspiratorial . . . John
220 Hmong with contempt
221 knew him in camps
higher mission
knows his real friends
222 murder or suicide a fine line . . . a girl I once
knew
my transformation genetic, Du’s hyphenated, a hybrid, cf.
devices
223 How
dare
he leave me alone out here?
Wirings and circuits
You gave me a new life . . . he steps into his future
Kick of baby through rifle stock
Vishnu the Preserver
224 tring to think like Lillian Gordon
heartland . . . home . . . not it
corssbreeding appliances, hoarding and restoring
225 “scabrous”
Viet-American: don’t question either half too hard
226 bank in Dalton
decent in a difficult time
228 world divided: those who stay and leave
puritan country: born with guild or quickly learn it
229 expert: way of life coming to an end
Green Revolution
Last born to submission, expectation of ignorance
Final phase of social order untouched for thousands of
years
Release Darrel from land
Same virus
232 white Christian survivalists
that noise? Hogs
236 Jane with Rochester
Carol Lutz sells farm
237 businesslike . . . Puritans
Toyota
238 don’t panic . . . Age of Plastic
239 New York’s over . . . heaving west > CA
want to do right thing, not be a terrible person
why not? Free country
pull down an imaginary shade
240 caught between promise of America and old-world
dutifulness
not leaving Bud; going somewhere
x-guilt, > relief
adventure, risk, transformation
241 greedy with want and reckless from hope