Alice Catherine Louvier

13 December 2009

New Tools for My Arsenal

When I signed up for the class, I knew that the term “colonial/post colonial” referred to more than the colonial period of United States. I also knew (or thought I did) how colonization affected formerly colonized parts of the world. However, this class has humbled me. Before the class, I did not equate trans- or pan- national culture with trans-national migrants like those in the novels. I thought of the highly educated Diasporas from places like India or Nigeria (among others): a cosmopolitan global elite. To me, the pan-national community consisted of mostly affluent people who came to western countries for education and ended up with jobs away from homelands offering too few professional possibilities. While the situation I described might be problematic, it is not anywhere near as problematic as the issues facing our protagonists. Arrogantly, I believed I understood the devastation left behind in post-colonial countries, but in reality I failed to notice the numbers of dispossessed people in front of me. Baharati Mukherjee suggests that the glorious future that lured Jasmine and her Indian fellows to America is a myth when she makes Prakash’s college a sham, and shows the humiliation of Professorji’s position.  While I have known people who achieved that sort of mythic success, I never thought about how unlikely it was.

Learning to read texts in light of New Historicism provides an extra layer of analysis and leads me to make connections that I did not formerly see. I must admit, I am one of those people who are fond of close readings. That is why I tend to like novellas or short stories (a severely underappreciated medium) in prose. The structure is usually more controlled. However, I have come to realize that the location of the work in history is very relevant to understanding any work, and intertextual reading enhances that even farther. The author of the “New Criticism” section on the website says: “While New Criticism may not offer us a wide range of perspectives on texts, it does attempt to deal with the text as a work of literary art and nothing else.” My immediate reaction is to say “art is not a “nothing else” kind of thing.” Secondly, I do not think Historicism and New Criticism are mutually exclusive systems. On my mid-term, I did an intertextual reading of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Derek Walcott’s “Crusoe’s Island.” I found that looking at the historical origins of Defoe’s novel enriched its meaning. Furthermore, an intertextual reading of “Caruso’s Island” and Robinson Crusoe reveals a relationship that enhances understanding of both works (Historicism). However, Walcott’s intertextual reference to Robinson Crusoe is like his use of imagery from The Iliad and Genesis; knowledge of all three literary references is necessary information for a close reading (New Criticism). I know that Derek Walcott prides himself for his sophisticated use of the English language and refined poetic structure and I think that he might like to be appreciated for his poem as a work of literary art.

One of the most important outcomes of the semester’s readings is the respect it has given me for the literary art and artists from the post-colonial areas. Frankly, I find it amazing that I have gotten this far without having been exposed to post-colonial texts. While I have to take some responsibility for not seeking it out, I think that Americans tend to relate third world countries with illiteracy rates and poor education. We are prone to believe that exemplary writers cannot come from such “ignorance.” In general, people in the US are pretty patronizing. We have plenty to offer them and they have nothing to offer us. Unfortunately, we are missing out on some really great literature in believing that.

I think Americans refuse to see the value of literature containing unapologetically post-colonial attitudes. In fact, disrespect for people with a “lesser voice is programmed into the English language. I know that Dr. White talks about “multivocality” on the website, and that is an apt representation of the authorial voice of the novel. However part of my research led me to look at the “voice” of the text itself. In this case “voice” means something like “perspective.” In a comparison of Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals” to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Eric Cheyfitz said that a piece of literature speaks either univocally or equivocally.  In the essay, Cheyfitz clearly believes that equivocal discourse is the more desirable of the two. That confused me. Since “equivocal” means “ambiguous,” I think of it as an undesirable adverb. So I looked up the etymology. Not surprisingly, univocal means one voice (uni + vocal = one voice). However, I was surprised to find out that equivocal means equal voice (equi + vocal=equal voice). This is relevant because it shows how the English language translates “equal voice,” into a negative. Bahktin says that “images of language are inseparable from images of various world views…” If words contain a world-view, then the negative connotation of “equivocal” shows how strongly English speakers programmed to disrespect equal voice.

The insidious Englishness of English is the reason that Jamaica Kincaid expresses frustration in A Small Room when she says, “…the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime.” Unfortunately, the bulk of the post-colonial literature we have (at least that I know about) comes in the aftermath of British imperialism. That is probably because it is written in English, and no matter what, one always gets the most from a text by reading it in the language of its composition.  I believe the poem by Leopold Sedar Senghor is translated from French. The ability to blame the English for the devastation of the “other” people provides a convenient layer of insulation between the American “self” and the colonial “other.” I am not sure how to bridge the gap because so many of the countries formerly part of the British Empire speak English and so much of the world that is affected by US neo-Imperial involvement is in the South Asian/North African countries of the Middle East. I am tempted to say that this is because the people do not speak English, but then I run the risk of sounding like the people I accuse of similar comments about other colonized areas.

I think Colonial/Post-Colonial has been a very enriching experience…enough so that I will continue to use the precepts that I learned in the class throughout the rest of my academic career. Regardless of many Literature teachers aversion to historicism, for me a formerly nameless phenomenon, I plan on making it part of my future arsenal of interpretive devices. I have already confessed my proclivity for short fiction because of the structure. For the same reason, I tend to like poetry, and I must admit that I am leaving the class more attached to the poets than the prose authors. I really liked  Train to Pakistan, although I am not sure “liked” is the right word, but I think that Derek Walcott is going to be my most endearing find in the class I learned a lot of techniques and information that will remain with me, but I think that a new author alone would be a huge impact on my life.