Student Midterm submissions 2013 (2013 midterm assignment)

LITR 5831 World Literature Colonial-Postcolonial

Oyinna Ogbonna

Theorizing Transnational Migration through Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

During my review of the Postcolonial Literature Midterms on the class website, I learned that prior to taking the class, most students had not been exposed to postcolonial studies. They were quite familiar with colonial literature, and had read lots of literature from colonial times; however, they had read them for classes that did not emphasize an empathetic or postcolonial reading of colonial literature. As “Western” students of postcolonial literature, they were able to juxtapose colonial literature alongside postcolonial and transnational migratory literatures. For many, it was the first time that they had encountered responses to colonialism and the social ills associated with imperialism. For many, it was the first time they had read and understood the consequences of colonialism and imperialism from the colonial subject’s point of view.  A few others had already been exposed to postcolonial theory in their literature and gender theory classes; however, being in the Postcolonial/World Literature class provided them with a more detailed and focused approach to understanding colonialism and imperialism in the global south.

For Abby Estillore, postcolonial literature as a discourse signifies a stance against imperialism and Eurocentric ideology, where writers originally from former colonies not only reveal their identities to Western readers but also celebrate their ancestry in a way that finally gives the “Other” a voice.  She observes in her essay, “Self-Other and Nostalgia-Exile: Identity Crisis? Other: The Outsider Within,” that anger, shame, and inferiority are dominant themes in postcolonial literature and discusses these themes throughout her essay. In her reading of Lucy, Estillore finds that Lucy, as a new migrant in the United States, struggles with her dual identities as a Caribbean and as a former colonized English subject.  Furthermore, she believes that Lucy during her struggle to assimilate into American culture, learns to “take in the new” while letting “go of the old;” thus, “subverting” her experience as the Other (Estillore 3). Consequently, Lucy’s past, as an “Othered being,” according to Estillore, haunts her incessantly because she is unable to find peace in the past or present. And thus, from often blocking her dualized sense of self, Lucy undermines “her sense of Self,” which makes it impossible for her to settle into a place of her own.

Mallory Rogers writes in “The Path to the Emergence of a ‘New and Improved’ Native,” that Defoe, being the first European novelist, introduced the world to the childish pagan savage who looked nothing at all like the fair skinned European Crusoe, and therefore was inferior and deserved to be enslaved (Rogers 2).  Colonial literature such as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Rogers argues, not only established the so-called native’s role as the “inferior,” it also gave the colonizing West the opportunity to force their language, customs, religion and ways of life on the native.  Furthermore, Rogers argues, handing down the European language, religion and customs, was far from a means of fully absorbing the native into mainstream European, as the colonizer ensured that there would always be a distance between master and servant.  Finally, she points out that by attempting to integrate their colonial subjects into European culture through Western education and religious systems, the colonial masters only succeeded in inflicting a dual-personality or what W.E.B DuBois has coined as “double consciousness” on colonial societies.  Lucy’s emotional disconnect from her ancestral home and new home as an immigrant in the United States, according to Rogers, demonstrates this double consciousness in detail.   

The consensus in the 2009 and 2011 Postcolonial Literature class is that while colonial literature consolidated the colonized subject’s position as the “other,” postcolonial literature not only rejects the postcolonial subject’s position as the other, but at the same time, manifests the postcolonial subject as an individual with a convoluted identity.  As these students have pointed out, colonial writers greatly influenced their audiences with their sensationalizing of non-European people they encountered in their trips. We have to keep in mind that there were few means of entertainment during the imperial/colonial eras in Europe except for literature. Travel narratives about faraway “exotic lands with exotic people” were particularly devoured in European societies, and this has resulted in unfounded beliefs about non-whites that persist even today in the imagination of the West.  Colonial writers in their exaggerated descriptions of their encounters with the non-whites dehumanized them in such a way that most Europeans believed that they were justified in enslaving non-whites and extracting wealth, resources and labor from their homes.

Courtney Heintzelman in “Class, Gender and The PoCo Midterm” writes about how Lucy and contemporary migrants from former colonies leave their ancestral homes in search of “something better” and the difficulties they encounter during the process of assimilation. She does not give an in depth analysis of the complex assimilation processes these migrants deal with in their new countries, but rather presents a Westernized commentary on how contemporary migrants leave their home countries in search of better lives. Of course, as Kincaid writes in A Small Place, the situation is much deeper than that. It is important that Western trained students understand that many of these former colonies are “independent” in name only; moreover, contemporary migration has strong links to imperialism and colonization, neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism. One of the grave consequences of imperialism and colonialism is that former colonies were greatly exploited, leading to a loss of natural resources, labor and wealth. Furthermore, these former colonies continue to be exploited, not only by the neocolonial elite rulers installed by the former colonizers, but also under other new forms of colonialism and imperialism, and this is what Kincaid explores in A Small Place.

For instance, it is surprising, given the status of Native Americans as the colonized “other” in the United States, that America resists seeing themselves as colonizers. America continues to interfere in the affairs of former colonized societies in a way that is quite reminiscent of imperialism. Given this context, will it be justified if people from the global south, like Kincaid, cast Americans and Europeans—as descendants of slavers, colonizers and imperialists/and neo-imperialists—as anything other than villains? 

In summary, I found the web review assignment quite helpful, as it helps me to understand how students are processing issues of colonialism, imperialism and transnational migration in contemporary times. As a student from a mixed background, with a Nigerian father and American mother, I have been exposed to the social issues related to race, gender, culture and power. Growing up in Nigeria only two decades after its independence from Britain and one decade after the Nigeria/Biafra civil war, I have been exposed to the social conditions related to colonialism and imperialism. This course is tremendously helpful in bridging the gaps between the colonizer and the colonized, especially because it culminates in transnational migration, which has become rather controversial in the United States and European societies today. It is quite ironic that Western societies—after exploiting and extracting wealth from peoples of color—are now finding ways to shut them out of their borders. And the ones who find their ways into these societies often encounter marginalization as the “Other.”

Intertextual Scenarios

The intertextual relationship between colonial and postcolonial literature is evident in Robinson Crusoe, Lucy, A Small Place, and “Shooting an Elephant.” For Crusoe-era Europeans, migrating from home to exotic faraway regions in search of adventure, fame and fortune was the manly and expected thing, especially if one came from a poor background or was a second son with no expectations of inheritance. These adventurers did not particularly care about the harm they were causing the indigenous people; all they cared about was exerting their power over the natives and making a fortune in the process. This is what Kincaid explores over and over again in her works. In A Small Place, she exempts no one from her indictment and condemnation of Europeans as villains who willfully subjugated and stole every meaningful aspect of identity and culture in the colonies. But George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” demonstrates the complexities of the class stratifications within the European communities in the colonies, and how they tried to make sense of their roles as colonizers in non-settlement colonies.

To put this scenario into context, let’s consider the internal dialogue in “Shooting an Elephant,” where Orwell describes his role as a colonizer in relation to his anxieties and self-doubts among Burmese natives, humanizing him as a lone individual following a long chain of command where he really has no control. However, the Burmese only know that Orwell is a white colonial officer, a very much-hated figure of authority, and they go after him in any way they can. So like us (upon considering Orwell’s dilemma), Kincaid realizes the futility in condemning all Europeans or Westerners as villains. Her tone is less harsh and judgmental in Lucy, but she nonetheless, makes it a point to examine the differences between herself and Mariah through a racialized lens. She loves Mariah in spite of her yellow hair, blue eyes and confidence. And she eventually accepts Mariah’s love in spite of Mariah exhibiting signs of wanting to be the master and “the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also” (Kincaid 140). 

I grew up reading colonial and postcolonial texts in Nigeria, but I didn’t recognize them as anything other than entertainment. I grew up reading many classic English novels, and maybe because I was very young and uneducated in these matters, I never found anything wrong in the Eurocentric characterizations of indigenous peoples and their homelands. I thought it quite normal for white adventurers to swindle the indigenous people out of their lands and wealth to the point that I cheered them on as they killed off one unscrupulous savage after another. When I think of it today, I don’t know if my naiveté was from me being young, ignorant or color blind in the sense that I did not recognize myself in the indigenous savage described in the novels. I never stopped to question why indigenous people were always dehumanized and described as evil people who deserved to be subjugated and changed.

During my days as a student in the Christianized Igbo region of Nigeria, I thought it strange that biblical knowledge and prayers were a big part of our educational curricula, but I was only able to make this distinction because I came from a non-religious background. Even today, Christianity is such a force in the Igbo region in Nigeria that many cannot remember or imagine a time where traditional religious were practiced freely. Being the daughter of an atheist—with an old Igbo (un-Christian name)—I was demonized and ridiculed as much as the few “pagans” left in the region. I always felt something was wrong with this picture, but couldn’t put my finger on it because it didn’t bother anyone I knew. My father always made references to colonial mentality and brainwashed Christians, but he was the only one that seemed to be bothered by the situation. 

Years later when I learned that education and religion were major instruments of colonization, it all began to make sense. My father introduced me to some popular African postcolonial novels, but I never even understood those works as responses to colonial literature or colonialism itself. I did not know about postcolonial studies as a discourse until my junior year as an English student during my undergraduate career, and once I began reading postcolonial criticism, I began to seek out related courses.

I took my first postcolonial literature class in 2010 with a female Caribbean teacher who studied in an Ivy League university in England. Her approach to teaching postcolonial literature was mostly a gendered interpretation of British colonial era literature, such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and have us read it alongside postcolonial literature from the Caribbean, Africa and India, such as Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Ama Ata Aidoo’s No Sweetness Here, and Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things.” We also studied postcolonial theory from critics, such as Benjamin Anderson, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, as well as European literary theorists, including Karl Marx and Luce Irigaray.

I find the approach to studying postcolonial theory/criticism in this class (Fall 2013 World Literature: Colonial-Postcolonial) very useful because we are reading European colonial/travel narratives while carrying out analyses of postcolonial literature by region.  Apart from studying the aftermath of colonialism round the world, the assigned readings involve issues related to gender, neocolonialism and neo-imperialism, and contemporary transnational migration following colonialism in the former colonies. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King demonstrates the fluidity and ease with which Europeans traveled, settled and excavated wealth in regions outside of Europe.

Lucy as a postcolonial and transnational migration novel demonstrates the complexities that come with being a colonized subject, as well as living as the colonized other in a racially stratified America. Like most diasporic people of color, it is not only a struggle for Lucy to maintain her cultural ties and identity, but the assimilation process is also complex and challenging. Diasporic people like Lucy go through several processes such as being colonized other in their own homelands to becoming a “poor visitor” in the West where people can afford to be “miserable because the weather changed its mind.” Thus, the focus on transnational migration is, particularly, crucial in the times we live in, given the controversies generated in immigration debates in the United States and European countries where people are concerned with the sudden invasion of “aliens” into their home country. People need to understand the reasons behind migration movements from the global south to the West.

Part III: Research Project Plan for Term Paper/Essay

“To be unhomed is not to be homeless, nor can the “unhomely” be easily accommodated in that familiar division of social life into private and public spheres. The unhomely moment creeps up on you stealthily as your own shadow and suddenly you find yourself…taking the measure of your dwelling in a state of “incredulous terror.” And it is at this point that the world first shrinks…and then expands enormously… The recesses of the domestic space become sites for the most intricate invasions. In that displacement, the borders between home and the world become confused: and uncannily, the private and the public become part of each other, forcing upon us a vision that is as divided as it is disorienting. – Homi Bhabha (1994).[1]

Two of the questions raised in the 2013 Postcolonial Literature course objectives are whether colonizers can be understood as other than villains? And if the colonized must be cast as victims? While I think dehumanizing or calling colonial era Europeans and their descendants villains could be rather extreme on the individual level, we need to consider how Western colonization and imperialism has and continues to affect former colonies on a larger scale. Keeping these questions and Homi Bhabha’s quote in mind, my term paper shall consider the intertextual dialogue between Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place on a larger scale, and subsequently review dialogue between Lucy and Ruth, and Mariah on an individual level. I will also ponder on themes of resistance, alienation, and class in Lucy, Train to Pakistan, and “Shooting an Elephant.” Finally, I will use a contemporary novel and some essays on colonialism and modern day transmigration patterns to illuminate the issues raised in Robinson Crusoe, Lucy, Train to Pakistan and “Shooting an Elephant.”

The questions that this essay will attempt to answer are: how does her colonial past influence and shape Lucy’s decision to distance herself from her Caribbean roots? Is this distance at all related to her wanting to assimilate further into the dominant American/Eurocentric culture or more related to her relationship with her mother? Did she leave her parents and migrate to the United States out of choice or because of the lack of opportunities in Antigua? What are the parallels or similarities between contemporary transnational migration and colonial era migration/settlement? For example, does Orwell have much control over his situation as a colonizer in Burma? Does Kincaid—through Lucy and A Small Place—demonize people of European descent, such as Mariah and her family, on an individual scale or on a larger scale? What has been the role of class in colonial and imperial dictatorship: how can we compare societal class involvement during the West’s colonial and imperial dictatorship to contemporary exploitation through neocolonial and neo-imperial dictatorship? Finally, how have all these forms of domination and exploitation contributed to the manifestation of contemporary migration patterns?

This project is inspired by my web review of Mallory Rogers, Abby Estillore, and Courtney Heintzelman’s Fall 2011 essays. As mentioned in the early part of my essay, these students did an excellent job of summarizing the qualities of Postcolonial Studies as a discourse and what they learned from the assigned readings. However, the comments I read in the web review about why people from former colonies migrate to the West raised some issues that I believe are not fully explored in Kincaid’s Lucy. Reasons behind migration patterns and neocolonialism are fully explored in A Small Place, but since we only read an excerpt, I feel compelled, as an African American from parents of traditional and contemporary diasporic ancestry, to explore transnational migration further in my term paper.

Works Cited:

Estillore, Abby. “Self-Other and Nostalgia-Exile:  Identity Crisis?” <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731copo/models/2009/midterms/mtes09estillore.htm>

Heintzelman, Courtney. “Class, Gender, and The PoCo Midterm.” <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731copo/models/2009/midterms/mtes09heintz.htm>

Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. 1st ed. New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. eBook.

Rogers, Mallory. “The Path to the Emergence of a ‘New and Improved’ Native.” <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731copo/models/2011/midterms/mt11Rogers.htm> .