Keaton Patterson

10 December 2011

 Other Voices:

A Dialogue of Identity in Four Parts—Projection, Revision, Division, Hybridity

            Postcolonial studies provide ample theoretical ground for exploring the dynamics of identity formation and the politics surrounding it, especially when this phenomenon involves the meeting of different cultures. In a number of colonial and postcolonial texts, including Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, Train to Pakistan, and Jasmine, the question of identity is of central importance. How is identity formed, deconstructed, reformed, imposed, and defined? Moreover, how does it change when coming into contact with an alien environment or when a familiar environment undergoes alienating changes? To examine such questions, it is necessary to place these texts into a dialogue with one another, highlighting the commonalities and conflicts regarding identity formation that are exposed by their intertexuality. As a result, such works of literary fiction also provide insights into world history and international relations that have importance for other fields, including history, anthropology, and political science.

            Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an intense meditation on the meaning of identity when it is stripped of the familiar external signs that shape it. The absurdity and corruption of the colonial endeavor on the European mind, and the sheer enigma of the wild that defies cultural signification drive Marlow to the brink of madness and push Kurtz far over the edge. However, the use of Africa as a metaphor for this intellectual and ontological breakdown has been the subject of immense controversy. According to Achebe’s landmark essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” the use of “Africa as setting and backdrop …eliminates the African as human factor … [portraying] Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril” (1790). For, while Conrad is scathing in his critique of European conduct in Africa, he also projects the modern European identity crisis onto the degradation of Africa and the Africans. As a result, instead of being a land and a people with their own identities and agency, in Heart of Darkness, they are merely psychological constructs. Therefore, while the setting is Africa, the subject is the European mind. In order for Conrad to define and explore this sense of identity formation, he needs a contrasting element—a source of “otherness”—on to which he can project that which must be repressed. Africa serves this purpose.

            With Things Fall Apart, Achebe set about revising the “image of Africa” that he saw Conrad tarnishing by painting a fuller, more human portrait of African culture, society, and identity before colonial contact. Part of the way in which Achebe accomplishes this end is by refuting the European perception of Africa as a land and a people before time and culture, devoid of civilization. As Francis Abiola Irele states in the introduction to the Norton edition of Things Fall Apart, instead of the dark wilds that Conrad depicts Africa to be, Achebe shows “[t]he original state of this [Igbo and thus African] society is one of coherence and order” (xi). Contrary to the European notion that civilization is brought to Africa through colonialism, there is instead the removal of one culture and identity in order to impose another. One of the ways in which this is subtly portrayed is in the switch from an oral to a written tradition that develops throughout the novel. For, before colonialism, “[a]mong the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten” (6). However, by the end of the novel, with the Igbo people under the complete political and cultural control of the Europeans, the history of Africa is to be written down, and “one must be firm in cutting out details” (117). Depicting the moment of colonization, Things Fall Apart centers on this hijacking of culture and history under colonialism, this erasure of African identity that will be employed for artistic purposes in Heart of Darkness. However, it is only when these two are put in dialogue with one another that this operation becomes apparent.

            Train to Pakistan is unique among these texts for its portrayal of decolonization, focusing on the partitioning of India and Pakistan that followed gaining independence from the British. In depicting the fervent ethnic nationalism that led to countless deaths between the formerly oppressed peoples of India, Khushwant Singh explores the politics of identity among the newly liberated. The turmoil of the partition is clearly depicted as a remnant of colonial rule, in which defining one's self through national allegiance (formerly alien to Indian culture) is all-consuming. The exchanging of atrocities among Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims even leaves one witness stating, “We were better off under the British. At least there was security” (49). It is apparent throughout the novel that the prevailing sentiment during the partitioning is that ethnic loyalties and identities are more important than human unity. Such an idea is a direct holdover from colonialism based on the ethnic superiority of whites. As a result, India is divided against itself upon gaining its newly acquired freedom. The sense of identity among the masses has been so changed through colonial contact that it must be reconstructed through ethnic opposition. In other words, colonization ultimately caused India to internalize the concept of “otherness,” directing the sense of difference it signifies towards itself.

            Jasmine picks up after the events of Train to Pakistan, addressing an anthropological concept affecting identity within postcolonial studies that is highly controversial—hybridity. Fleeing from the traditional constraints of Indian society as well as the lingering ethnic violence of the partitioning, the heroine of this novel changes her identity according to her locale and circumstance. In part, this fluctuation of identity is a result of cultural immersion and assimilation that most immigrants experience in a new land, such as America: “Once we start letting go—let go just one thing, like not wearing our normal clothes, or a turban or not wearing a tika on the forehead—the rest goes on its own down a sinkhole” (29). However, interestingly Jasmine (or any of the other names/identities which she goes by) desires to change, to become something new. Unlike, the projection of Conrad, the revisionism of Achebe, or the division depicted in Train to Pakistan, Jasmine expresses the desire for a new hybrid identity—one that is not controlled by colonial influence or ethnic tradition. As a result, this novel addresses the postcolonial future more so than the past or the present (as with the previously mentioned texts). It points towards the development of a hybrid identity and understanding of the world in which the dictates of colonial domination or ethnic tradition (that depend on a static conception of identity) are no longer relevant.

            In all of these texts, identity formation and the politics governing its process in colonial and postcolonial times is a major factor. The projection, revision, division, and hybridity of identity and culture that are results of colonial contact have had (and still have) a vast impact on global human relations. It is apparent that literature is one of the venues in which such conflicts will be resolved. According to Camille Buxton, “Literature often assumes the responsibility of not only navigating the space between divergent cultures, but of explaining the resulting hybrid culture” (para. 5). In the case of colonial-postcolonial literature, nothing could be truer. It is through literature that peoples and culture talk to themselves about themselves in order to discover in fact who they are. In a global environment such as in the present, when the flux of change is constant and effects even the most basic tenets of identity, it is through the discourse of literature and other aesthetic mediums that a balance is found.