Colonialism and Literature

Colonialism

• Definition: A political-economic phenomenon where European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world.
• Impact: Created contacts between Western civilization and cultures deemed inferior, fostering a sense of superiority among Europeans.
• Justification: Europeans believed they had a 'sacred' duty to civilize other territories through commerce, civilizing projects, and Christianization.

Outline

• Colonialism – Empire and Modern Writing / Art
• Voyaging in (migrancy) and Voyaging out (exile)
• Primitivism
  • Anthropology, Psychology, and Art
  • Literature
• Myth
  • Anthropology
  • Psychology
  • Literary theory
  • Literature
• Postcolonialism
  • Voyaging in – Postcolonialism and Migration
  • Literature
  • Postcolonial theory

Empire and Modern Writing – Voyaging In and Voyaging Out

• Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936):
  • Indian-born writer who felt un-English and un-homely.
  • Recognized the significant influence of the Empire's experience and perceptions on British culture and literature.
  • Implications: Uncertainty, fears of degeneration, convictions of cultural superiority, and the placing of society within the colonial paradigm.
  • Consequence: Chronic paranoia and the creation of a contact zone with other cultures.
  • Poem “The English Flag”: Questioned the understanding of England by those who only know England.
    • “And what should they know of England who only England know?”
  • Poem “The White Man’s Burden”: Addressed the responsibility of the superior civilization towards its colonial subjects.
    • Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed
    • Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;
    • To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild—
    • Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.
• Olive Schreiner (1855-1920):
  • South African writer with an alienated viewpoint.
  • Explored feelings of absurdity and suppressed terror related to the project of dominating other peoples.
  • Challenged Enlightenment ideas of rational, progressive development that fueled 19th-century science, social thinking, and the imperial project.
  • Argued that these ideas failed to account for the cultural mentalities encountered in the colonial project.
  • The Story of an African Farm (1983): Showed the failure of progress, with attempts at development meeting failure. The children are orphans, the New Woman dies in childbirth. The grand narrative (postmodern concept) of progress, the pet project of Enlightenment shown to have failed.
• Leonard Woolf (1880-1969):
  • Argued that the empire bankrupted liberalism.
  • Critiqued the theoretical equality promoted versus the practical paternalism and despotism.
    • “Theoretically everyone is told that he is equal with everyone else, while practically we try to be paternal, despotic.”
• Impact of Colonialism: Social, political, and cultural.
• Perspective: R. Kipling and O. Schreiner observed colonialism from the outside in, representing colonial writing within the Empire.

Empire and Modern Writing – Voyaging Out

• Perspective: Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence observed colonialism from the inside out, representing metropolitan writers working from the center.
• James Joyce and W.B. Yeats:
  • Sought to supply their nation (Ireland, colonized by Britain) with cultural self-definition.
• James Joyce:
  • Believed the Irish had to stamp upon the English language with their own genius to reflect Irish colonial awareness.
  • Adopted the motto “non serviam” – protest against the restraints of family, nation and church.
  • Employed a three-fold strategy of “silence, exile and cunning.”
  • Turned banishment into a resource, making exile a significant myth.
  • His motto represents an act of civil disobedience, an artistic credo, and resistance to the language of others.
    • “His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.”
  • In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the dialogue with the Englishman (the dean) highlights clashing understandings of words.
  • Stephen claims to be the sovereign maker of spoken language.
  • Silence becomes a weapon, allowing withdrawal from the tyranny of narrow morality, religion, and nationalism.
  • Exile signifies freedom in the name of writing.

James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• Stephen's understanding of identity and place, as he writes:
  • Stephen Dedalus
  • Class of Elements
  • Clongowes Wood College
  • Sallins
  • County Kildare
  • Ireland
  • Europe
  • The World
  • The Universe
• He reflects on his place within the world, and questions the limits of the universe.
• Stephen's reflection on nationality, language, and religion and his desire to transcend those limitations:
  • “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.
  • You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
• His aspiration to forge the uncreated conscience of his race:
  • “Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
• His movement towards artistic creation:
  • APRIL 27.
  • Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
  • Dublin, 1904 Trieste, 1914”

Joseph Conrad

• Joseph Conrad (1857-1924):
  • Polish-born proto-modernist.
  • “An Outpost of Progress” (1896): Indicted colonial brutality, where contact with primitive man and nature brings profound trouble.
    • “The contact with primitive man and primitive nature brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart”
  • Heart of Darkness (1899):
    • Deals with extreme foreignness and the recognizability of ‘primitive nature’.
    • Explores the white man's attempt to distance himself from that which he partially recognizes as fundamental to himself.
    • Reveals how Europe exposes its own primitive heart in the act of ‘civilizing’ other peoples.
    • London, too, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

Heart of Darkness - Example

• Example of colonial brutality:
  • Describes black men toiling, connected by chains, and referred to as criminals.
  • Highlights the contrast between them and the white man. The white man is part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.”
• Cannibalism:
  • Use of cannibals as crew members, who were fine fellows in their place.
• Savage as Fireman:
  • The description of the savage fireman that looks like a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs.
  • Revealing that He was useful because he had been instructed.
• Details of the description of the fireman:
  • He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity— and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks.

Colonialism – Hypocritical Project

• Justification: Bringing ‘backwards peoples’ into the light of progress (commerce, Christianity, or both) was a major justification of the imperial mission.
• Kipling: Argued that lesser breeds should be saved from themselves (“The White Man’s Burden”, “Recessional”).
• Virginia Woolf:
  • Mrs. Dalloway (1925), The Waves (1931): Demonstrated rapid movements between streams-of-consciousness, showing intertwined thoughts.
  • Employed multivocality, where no voice is more authoritative or conclusive than another.
  • Reflected the changing state of Britain, crises in national and imperial confidence, and memories of Empire (India or Ceylon).
  • Included characters with imperial experience, such as Peter Walsh and Percival.