LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Final Exams 2008

Essay 1: Describe and evaluate your learning experience or learning curve (Objective 3 + others)

Dawlat Yassin

Literary Experience with Colonial And Postcolonial Literature

Being from a Middle Eastern country has given me the opportunity to study colonialism in both history and literature. When I saw the course of colonial and postcolonial literature in the schedule for this fall, I was excited and immediately decided to register for it. I was sure I would find something interesting and useful for me. I have studied almost half the course material in my undergraduate classes, but that was viewed from a Middle Eastern perspective, and each work was interpreted separately; independent from the other works. This course offers colonial literature in dialogue with postcolonial literature, and at the same time, it gives me the chance to look at the same material from a western point of view.

Having been introduced into the issue of colonialism from the colonized point of view early in my school years, I held the idea that colonialism is not more than an evil that happened in the past when ambitious empires invaded and occupied the lands of weaker nations. To me, discussing colonialism needed not be more than the narrative which told how abominable the colonizers’ offensive acts were, and in what manners those acts needed to be condemned and resisted. But after studying the issue from more than one perspective and taking into consideration the intertextuality between colonial and postcolonial literature, I came to know how complicated the colonial experience was on both sides, the colonizer and the colonized. It is more than an evil to be condemned and resisted; it is an issue that deserves searching its causes and effects as well as the manner in which it took place. Reading the same texts from different points of view has helped me take the issue in a more neutral way.

Since I am well acquainted with colonial and post colonial issues, I expected people to be familiar with them too. What captured my attention in the syllabus was objective 3c. that talked about “American ignorance of larger world and alternative worldviews”. This idea was wholly new to me.  The first thing I needed to know was the reason behind the American isolationist or nationalist trend of thinking. The United State of America had no real or complete colonial experience neither as a colonizer, nor as a colonized, that affected its history on the long run. Previous and current students from an American background must have had different experiences from mine. They talked about the effects of cultural bias on their readings of colonial and postcolonial texts. In her final test for Fall 2005, Aaron Morris wrote: “In regards to my entrenched American thoughts, I am not sure that I have balanced my nationalistic and isolationist ways of thinking.  I find myself so deeply embedded in American Culture that I am not sure I can be extricated”.  However, Danielle Lynch had studied students finals for Fall 2005 in her web highlight presentation for Spring 2008 and concluded that,

The consensus during the Spring 2005 semester, in fact, was that even as grad lit students, it’s difficult to read any text without an “American” bias. Perhaps this is because the United States is the only country where colonialism seemed to seamlessly work. Therefore, we find it difficult to imagine the trials and tribulations of those in Africa, Asia or the Caribbean, all of which fulfill Objective 3C: American Resistance to or ignorance of postcolonial criticism.

In her final test for Fall 2005, Mary Brooks captured another reason behind the American isolationist way of thinking that alienated them from other struggles in other areas of the world despite the official American presence in most international struggles.

The American way of individuality and independence does not leave much room for the struggles of an oppressed people.  It leaves even less room for the struggle for identity inherent in postcolonial studies.  As Walcott states so clearly in his online interview, the postcolonial struggle is for the “whole creation and exploration of an identity” (Walcott).  It is this struggle that drives the exploration for the creation of an identity in the postcolonial societies

These notes helped me digest the idea of American entrapment within their isolationist way of life and thinking which alienated them wholly or partly from colonial and postcolonial criticism.

The other feature that made the course exceptional was that colonial literature was read in dialogue with postcolonial literature. In his Final test of Fall 2005, Robert D. Ausmus wrote, “I found reading these texts in dialogue with each other very beneficial.  Using this particular method provides readers an opportunity to make an informed decision based upon evaluating both sides of an issue”

Studying colonial literature in dialogue with postcolonial literature gives students a broad comprehension of what the situation has been before colonialism, during it and in the era that follows nations’ independence. It is still true that colonialism is an unjustifiable violation of the colonized people’s freedom, property, and land, but once it happened, it is capable of producing complicated effects that are worth searching. The dialogue between colonial and post colonial texts helps students get a broader comprehension of the “colonial -postcolonial experience” and how it works on the individual, national, and international level.

On the individual level, the contact between two different cultures results in an irreversible postcolonial situation that could sometimes alienate people and blur their identities. Postcolonial identity can not be pure, rather it is a hybrid one that costs people a lot of physical and psychological struggle to capture and define it. A good example of this post colonial hybrid identity is represented in Derek Wallcot’s “A Far Cry from Africa”. Walcott’s identity becomes a dilemma; he is “poisoned” with both bloods, the native’s and the colonizer’s. His mixed and unidentified identity tortures him (my midterm). Again, It is an irreversible hybridism that alienates and isolates the individual as we see with Iqbal in a Train to Pakistan. He has been raised and educated on British ways. Iqbal adopts some foreign political and religious (no religion) ideologies that banishes him into a psychological exile, and prevents real contact with his own countrymen.

On the national level, it ends up with oppressed people fighting for their independence which once attained, nations usually enter into a period of chaos and disorder. There is no going back to pre-colonial situation or regaining a pre-colonial identity. Neither the colonizers nor the colonized culture is pure anymore, for each affects and got affected by the other culture. However, it is usually the newly independent nations which undergo the crisis of identity. This appears clearly in Train to Pakistan where people start adhering to their own religious or sectarian groups against each other.

Again, Lebanon is a country that comes into being with its current borders at the hands of French colonizers.  Since independence from France, Lebanon has never been adopted as a model for harmony. Sectarian feelings dominate among its citizens since its creation until the present day. Lebanon’s identity is still controversial. (research posting) The current crisis in Lebanon is a good example of the post colonial situation. The position of the president has been vacant for more than six months with no hope of a near agreement on a person that can represent all or at least most of the religious, ethnic and political groups.

On the international level, new nations come into existence after being part of larger empires for decades or centuries. This in itself requires new forms of relations between countries, new alliances; yesterday’s friends might be today’s enemies and vice versa. A Train to Pakistan starts after the English withdrawal and the proposed partition of India. The Partition takes place, and two independent states come into existence. This dictates new forms of relationships with the former colonial country that ruled them for three and a half centuries, between themselves and the world.

Studying colonial and post colonial literature, from different points of view and putting them into dialogue make readers think twice before they condemn all that result from colonialism. It explains how post colonialists reacted to the harm done to their native culture, and on what terms they come to reconcile with an irreversible hybrid identity.