CHAPTER II Postcolonialism: A Glocalized

Perspective

You taught me language; and my profit on’t

Is, I know how to curse.

(Shakespeare. The Tempest. 1889:17)

32

“Colonialism and postcolonial struggles have been central to world

history over the last two centuries. They have produced and reduced nations,

massacred populations, dispossessed people of their land, culture, language

and history shifted vast number of people from one place to another”

(Pennycook,1998: 19). Africa, South America, Canada, Australia, New

Zealand, India, most of Indo-China, parts of the Middle East and the Islands of

the Indian and the Pacific oceans as well as those of the Caribbeans, all

remained imperial possessions. Continuance of the European rule, exploitation

of natural resources, and spread of the European culture and the continued

subordination of natives were the contributing forces behind the imperial rule.

Colonialism can be seen as a product of imperialism and it has

engendered diverse effects around the world. Colonialism and imperialism are

different systems. Colonialism is only one form of practice, which results

from the ideology of imperialism. It is one historically specific experience of

how imperialism can work through the act of settlement. Elleke Boehmer has

defined colonialism as the settlement of territory, the exploitation or

development of resources, and attempts to govern the indigenous inhabitants

of occupied lands (Boehmer as qtd. in McLeod 2000: 8). Ashcroft et al.

observe colonialism as a radically diasporic movement, involving the

33

temporary or permanent dispersion and settlement of millions of Europeans

over the entire world (Ashcroft et al., 2001: 69).

Imperialism does not demand settlement of different places in order to

work. Childs and Williams define imperialism as the extension and expansion

of trade and commerce under the protection of political, legal and military

controls (Williams as qtd. in McLeod 2000: 8). The spirit and manifestations

continue in the present by safeguarding the interests of masters over its

subjugated people in diversified forms such as trade, commerce, literature and

knowledge.

Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest were the early literary works to spread

English language and to acquaint the colonised with the ‘superior’ English

culture. Pennycook argues that the novel, The Life and Adventures of

Robinson Crusoe projects Crusoe as the model for the rational and dedicated

way in which the British created their empire (Pennycook, 1998: 12). During

his long stay on the Island, Crusoe saves the life of a native from the hands of

savages and names him Friday to commemorate the day of their meeting.

Phillipson (1992) argues:

34

Crusoe’s lesson to Friday, in which he made it his business to

teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy

and helpful, is perhaps the locus classicus of the start of English

linguistic imperialism …. Crusoe’s relationship with Friday

reflects the racial structure of Western society at the heyday of

slavery. Crusoe’s assumption of mastery over Friday and his

immediate start on the project of teaching Friday English are

iconic moments in the long history of the global spread of

English. (Phillipson as qtd. in Pennycook 1998: 11).

A.G Eyre’s (1971) An Outline History of England gives the

background information about British colonisers in India and Africa like this:

The traders were welcomed by coastal peoples, they set up

trading stations. And they made friendly agreement with local

rulers. But sooner or later, they and their hosts were attacked by

jealous inland peoples. To protect themselves they employed

armed forces of local men under British officers (Pennycook

1998; 9).

There had been a gradual extension of the British control over the

whole of India, which had been left in confusion by the breakdown of Moghul

35

Empire. English language was introduced as the official language of

education, which opened to Indians the literature and the universities of

Europe. The British colonial discourses prioritised the history of the coloniser

and their civilizing mission and kept quiet about the country which he

plundered. Fanon asserts:

The total result looked for by colonial domination was to

convince the natives that colonialism came to lighten their

darkness.The effect consciously sought by colonialism was to

drive into the native’s head the idea that if the settlers were to

leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation

and bestiality (Fanon 1967:169).

The emergence of Commonwealth literature and the development of

theories of colonial discourses were two important intellectual contexts of

postcolonialism. ‘Commonwealth literature’ was a term the critics began to

use from the 1950s to describe literatures in English emerging from countries

with a history of colonialism. At first the British monarch was recognised as

the head of the Commonwealth. After the Second World War, the term was

redefined in more equitable terms as an association of sovereign nations

without deference to a single authority. Commonwealth literature was created

36

as an attempt to bring together the writings of the former colonies scattered all

over the world on an equal platform. Yet the assumption remained that these

texts were primarily addressed to the Western English speaking audience.

Literary critics began to distinguish a fast growing body of literature written in

English which included works by such figures as R.K Narayan (India), George

Lamming (Barbados), Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand) and Chinua

Achebe (Nigeria). (Mcleod, 2000: 11).

The idea of the Commonwealth of Nations suggests a diverse

community with literature produced in India, Australia and the Caribbeans,

and was assumed to reach national borders and deal with universal concerns.

As the texts studied as Commonwealth literature were written in English, they

were to be evaluated in relation to English literature with the same criteria

used to account for the literary value of age-old English classics.

Commonwealth literature thus becomes a subset of colonial English literature,

evaluated in terms derived from the conventional study of English that stresses

the value of timelessness and universality. Like the liberal humaninists,

Commonwealth writers believed that good literature is of timeless

significance, and transcends the limitations and peculiarities of the age.

37

In the late 1970s and 1980s many critics endeavoured to discard liberal

humanist bias perceived in critics of Commonwealth literature and to read

literature in new ways. A careful analysis of the colonial discourses, which

developed during this period, would help to understand how and why this

happened. The theories of the colonial discourses have played a significant

role in the development of postcolonialism. They explore the ways that

representations and modes of perceptions are used as fundamental weapons of

colonial power to keep the colonised peoples subservient to colonial rule.

Internalising of certain expectations about human relationships that the

white man was not to be oppressed or subjugated, but should be honoured and

respected as the master by the colonised natives remained in the subconscious

mind of both the colonised and the coloniser. The colonised people were seen

as lacking history, culture, religion, intelligence and craft of administration

and thus it became clear that it was the European’s duty to fill the void.

Postcolonial writers differ from their Commonwealth predecessors in

their insistence on the historical, geographical and cultural specifics, which are

vital to both the writing and reading of text. Their writings are more radical

and oppositional and they focus on challenging the Western criteria of

excellence.John McLeod asserts:

38

If the study of Commonwealth literature was pursued in the

philanthropic spirit, the critical activity of postcolonialism was to

concentrate more on the other, darker side of exploitation and

dependence (McLeod, 2000:16).

Peter Brooker defines postcolonialism as the study of the ideological

and cultural impact of Western colonialism and in particular of its aftermath

– whether as a continuing influence (neocolonialism) or in the emergence of

newly articulated independent national and individual identities (Brooker,

1999:193).

John McLeod visualises postcolonialism as historically situated forms

of representation, reading practices and values which range across past and

present. (McLeod, 2000: 5). A common thread that runs through the

postcolonial writings is the absolute rejection of master narratives which can

be viewed as the artistic representation of western imperialism. In that

tradition the colonial ‘other’ is not only subordinated and marginalised but the

very existence of the ‘other’ as a cultural agency has been wiped out. Thus in

the newly emerging counter narratives the colonised who were swept to the

periphery and trifled by the colonising West as uncivilised and barbaric began

to fight their way back to the centre. T.N.Dhar observes:

39

In nations like Australia and India which have well-developed

metaphysical systems, the writers used their indigenous

resources to challenge European perspectives; invariably it is

reflected in their conscious deployment of myth. In countries

where no such systems are available, the challenge operates

through ‘the counter culture of imagination’ in which the writers

resort to dismantling of the narratives through polyphony,

interrogation of history and textuality, and by proposing

varieties of re-readings. The preoccupation of these writings is

not just to contest the validity of colonial versions of history but

also to create space for providing alternative ways of

understanding their past (Dhar, 1998: 27).

McLeod argues that postcolonialism is not the same as after-

colonialism as if colonial values are no longer to be reckoned with. It does not

define a radically new historical era; nor does it herald ‘a brave new world’

where all the ills of the colonial past will have been cured.

Postcolonialism recognises both historical continuity and

change. It acknowledges that the material realities and modes of

representation common to colonialism are still with us today

40

even if the political map of the world has changed through

decolonization (McLeod, 2000: 33).

In the present study, the term ‘postcolonialism’ is used as a single

word to refer to disparate forms of representations, reading practices and

values instead of the hyphenated term ‘post-colonialism’. John McLeod

expresses the view that the single word ‘postolonialism’ is more

appropriate than the hyphenated term ‘post-colonialism’ since the

hyphenated term denotes only a particular historical period or epoch,

such as ‘after colonialism’ ‘after independence’ or ‘after the end of the

Empire.’ Leela Gandhi also shares the same view on the grounds that

postcolonial condition is inaugurated with the onset rather than the end of

colonial occupations. She expresses her preference for the unbroken term

‘postcolonialism’ as it is more sensitive to the long history of colonial

consequences (Gandhi, 1998: 3). Postcolonialism is not contained by tidy

categories of historical periods or dates, although it remains firmly bound up

with historical experiences.

The ancestry of postcolonial criticism can be traced to Frantz Fanon’s

The Wretched of the Earth, published in French in 1961, and voicing what

41

might be called ‘cultural resistance’ to France’s African empire (Barry, 2002:

193). In The Wretched of the Earth Fanon observes:

Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its

grip and emptying the native’s brain of all forms and content. By

making use of a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the

oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it (Fanon

1967: 169).

For Fanon, the end of colonialism means not just political and economical

change but psychological change too. Fanon argues;

The first step for the colonised people in finding a voice and

identity is to reclaim their own past which had been devalued by

the European colonising power. If the first step towards a

postcolonial perspective is to reclaim one’s own past, then the

second is to begin to erode the colonialist ideology by which

past had been devalued (Barry, 2002: 193).

In Decolonising the Mind Ngugi observes:

The real aim of colonialism was to control people’s wealth and

this was imposed through military conquest and subsequent

42

political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination

was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through

culture, of how people perceived themselves and their

relationship to the world. Economic and political control can

never be complete or effective without mental control. To

control people’s culture is to control their tools of self definition

in relation to others (Ngugi 1981: 16).

Ngugi notices two aspects in the process of colonialism:

The destruction or deliberate undervaluing of a people’s culture,

their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education,

orature and literature and the conscious elevation of the

language of the coloniser. The domination of a people’s

language by the languages of the colonising nations was crucial

to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised (Ngugi

1981: 16).

The postcolonial writers attempt to give resistance to colonialism and

its exploitative ideology through various strategies. The shackles of cultural

imperialism are to be overthrown. The dominant ways of thinking, speaking

43

and writing are to be challenged. Salman Rushdie emphasises the need to

decolonise language:

The language, like so much else in the colonies needs to be

decolonised, to be remade in other images, if those who use it

from positions outside the Anglo- Saxon culture are to be more

than artistic Uncle Toms (Rushdie as qtd.in McLeod 22).

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o decides to write in Gikuyu or Ki- Swahili rather

than English to address an audience other than foreigners and the foreign

educated new elite (Ashcroft, 1989:130). He argues for ‘decolonisation of the

mind’ in order to evolve a purely a national culture during the transitional

period from colonisation to independence.

Terry Eagleton argues that postcolonial theory is directly rooted in

historical developments. In his book Literary Theory: An Introduction

Eagleton observes:

The collapse of the great European empires was replaced by the world

economic hegemony of the United States. The steady erosion of the

nation state and traditional geopolitical frontiers was accompanied by

mass global migrations and the creation of multicultural societies. The

44

intensified exploitation of the ethnic groups within the West and

‘peripheral’ societies elsewhere and the formidable power of new

transaction corporations have developed apace since the 1960’s and

with it a veritable revolution has taken place in our notions of space,

power, language and identity (Eagleton, 1996:204).

The dominance of mass media forces us to rethink of classical frontiers

by situating them within the framework of the cultural studies and

postcolonialism takes a decisive step beyond the questions of theoretical

method which held sway over an earlier phase of literary theory.

The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979) played a

significant role in triggering postcolonial studies. Like Fanon, Said explored

the extent to which colonialism created a way of seeing the world, an order of

things that was to be learned as true and proper but Said paid more attention to

the colonisers than the colonised. Orientalism draws upon development in the

Marxist theories of power, especially the political philosophy of Italian

intellectual Antonio Gramci and France’s Michel Foucault. Said examined

how the knowledge that the Western imperial powers formed about their

colonies helped continually to justify their subjugation. The Western

travellers recorded their observations about the oriental countries based upon

45

commonly held assumptions about ‘the orient’ as a mythic place of exoticism,

moral laxity, sexual degeneracy and so forth. These observations, presented as

scientific truths functioned to justify the very propriety of colonial

domination. Through Orientalism Said exposes the fact that Eurocentric

universalism takes for granted both the superiority of what is European or

Western, and the inferiority of what is not. “The essence of Orientalism is the

ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority”

(Said, 1979: 42) Said identifies a European cultural tradition of ‘Orientalism’,

which is a particular and long-standing way of identifying the East as ‘Other’

and inferior to the West. The Orient, he says, features in the Western mind ‘as

a sort of surrogate and even under-ground self’ (Barry, 2002:193). Said

emphasises construction of binary division between the Orient and the

Occident. West is considered to be the seat of knowledge and learning, while

East is represented as a place of ignorance, superstition and illiteracy. The

Orient exists as a timeless place, changeless and static, cut off from the

progress of Western history. The Orient is strange, fantastic, unusual and

bizarre. The Orient’s eccentricity often functions as a source of mirth, marvel

and curiosity for Western writers and artists. The Oriental male is considered

as effeminate and insufficiently manly. The exoticised Oriental female is

presented as an immodest, active creature of sexual pleasure who holds the

46

key to a myriad mysterious erotic delights. The Orient is deemed as feminine,

passive, submissive, exotic and luxurious while the West becomes masculine,

self-controlled and ascetic. The Orient is ‘penetrated’ by the traveller whose

passion it rouses; it is possessed, ravished, embraced and ultimately

domesticated by the muscular coloniser. Through ‘Orientalism’, Said tries to

project the degenerate image given to the Orient by the West.

The publication of Orientalism opened up a wide variety of textual

analyses which became notable for their eclecticism and interdisciplinarity,

combining insights of feminism, philosophy, psychology, politics,

anthropology and literary theory. Orientalism has been criticised as ahistorical

for making totalising assumptions about a vast varied expanse of

representations over a very long period of history.

Said explores the culture of resistance in terms of the capacity of the

colonised to write back to the Empire, a process that reconstructs the

relationship between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ and which he sees operating

through a rewriting or writing back to canonical texts such as Conrad’s Heart

of Darkness and Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Inspired by Rushdie’s argument concerning the need to decolonise

English language, The Empire Writes Back epitomised the increasingly

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popular view that literature from the once colonised countries was

fundamentally concerned with challenging the language of colonial power,

unlearning its worldview and producing new modes of representation. The

writers of the once colonised countries expressed their own sense of identity

by refashioning English to enable it to accommodate their experiences by

creating new ‘englishes’ through various strategies. For example, the

technique of selective lexical fidelity which leaves some words untranslated in

the text has been widely used for conveying cultural distinctiveness (Ashcroft

et al., 1989: 63).

The strategies of appropriation by transforming English enables

postcolonial writers to gain a world audience, and yet produce a culturally

appropriate idiom that announces itself as different even though it is English.

Ashcroft et al. assert that in this way postcolonial writers have contributed to

the transformation of English literature and to the dismantling of the

ideological assumption that have buttressed the canon of that literature as an

elite Western discourse (Ashcroftet al., 1989: 76) .

Glossing untranslatable words and giving parenthetical translation is

yet another method used to foreground the continual reality of cultural

distance. Juxtaposing words in this way suggests the view that the meaning of

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a word is its referent, but it is difficult to find a referent for more abstract

terms. The glossed word reveals the local cultural distinctiveness. “The

requisite sense of difference between the word and its referent is implicitly

recorded in the gap between the two. This gap is not negative but positive in

its effect. It presents the difference through which an identity can be

expressed” (Ashcrof et al., 1989: 61). But they notice a problem with glossing.

It may lead to a considerably stilted movement of plot as the story is forced to

drag explanatory machinery behind it. Postcolonial writers refuse to follow

Standard English syntax and use structures derived from other languages. The

new ‘english’ of the colonised place was ultimately irredeemably different

from the language of the colonial centre separated by an unbridgeable gap.

The publication of The Empire Writes Back greatly influenced

postcolonial literary criticism in English. The authors of the book have

challenged universal and timeless value of texts and analysed them primarily

within historical and geographical contexts. The Empire Writes Back was

criticised for neglecting gender difference between writers and national

difference between writings from divergent nations. Critics do not agree with

the view that all writings from the once colonised countries are ‘writing back

to the centre’ and they argue that cultural productions are created in response

to one’s own needs. People learned from Fanon and Said that Empires

49

colonise imaginations. Fanon shows how this works at a psychological level

for the oppressed, while Said demonstrates the legitimation of Empire for the

oppressor. If colonialism involves colonising the mind, then resistance to it

requires, in Ngugi’s phrase ‘decolonising the mind’.

Sensitised by Said and others to the operations of colonial discourses, a

new generation of critics turned to more theoretical materials in their works.

John McLeod finds it as the beginning of postcolonialism, which marked a

major departure from the humanitarian approaches which characterised

criticism of Commonwealth literature.

During the 1980s, two of the leading and most controversial

postcolonial theorists, Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Chakrvorty Spivak

emerged in the postcolonial scenario of India. In addition, Subaltern studies

scholars also pursued the issue of the suppressed and the secluded people

including women.

Homi K. Bhabha has become one of the leading voices in post

colonialism since the 1980s. The major influences on Bhabha were the

psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the post structuaralist Jaques Lacan and the

psychiatrist - turned literary critic, Frantz Fanon. In The Location of Culture,

Bhabha argues that colonialism is informed by a series of assumptions, which

50

aims to legitimate its view of other lands and peoples. “The objective of

colonial discourse,” writes Bhabha, “is to construe the colonised as a

population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin in order to justify

conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction” (Bhabha,

1994:70). In Bhabha’s terms, “colonial discourse produces the colonised as a

social reality which is at once an ‘other’ and yet entirely knowable and

visible” (Bhabha, 1994:70–71). The discourse of colonialism attempts to

domesticate the colonised subjects and abolish their radical ‘otherness’

bringing them inside Western understanding through the orientalist project of

constructing knowledge about them. The construction of ‘otherness’ is thus

split by the contradictory positioning of the colonised simultaneously ‘inside’

and ‘outside’ the Western knowledge (McLeod, 2000: 52-53). In trying to do

two things at once - construing the colonised as both ‘similar’ to and the

‘other’ of the coloniser- it ends up doing neither properly (McLeod, 2000:

54).

Homi K. Bhabha explores the possibility of reading colonialist

discourse as endlessly ambivalent, split and unstable; never able to install

securely the colonial values they seemed to support. He also describes

mimicry as the desire for a reformed, recognisable other, as a subject of a

difference that is almost the same, but not quite (Bhabha, 1994: 89). Bhabha

51

argues that they are invested with the power to menace the coloniser because

they threaten to disclose the ambivalence of the discourse of colonialism,

which the use of stereotypes anxiously wishes to conceal. Hearing their

language returning through the mouths of the colonised, the colonisers are

faced with the worrying threat of resemblance between the coloniser and the

colonised. McLeod observes:

The ambivalent position of the colonised mimic men is in

Bhabha’s thinking, a source of anti-colonial resistance as it

presents a challenge to the entire discourse of colonialism. By

speaking English, they challenge the representations, which

attempt to fix and define them. Thus Bhabha offers a positive,

active and insurgent mode of mimicry (McLeod, 2000:55).

Indian born philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has contributed

profusely to postcolonial literary theories. She has made a critical exploration

of the status of the non-Western culture and the cultural experience of the

recently decolonised people. She is an immigrant Indian intellectual, currently

settled in the USA. In The Postcolonial Crtic (1990) she identifies herself as a

postcolonial intellectual caught between socialist ideals of national

independence movement in India and the legacy of colonial education system

52

( Morton, 2003: 2). Spivak’s reputation was first made for her translation and

preface to Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1976). She has applied deconstructive

strategies to various theoretical engagements and textual analyses and her

critical interventions encompass a range of theoretical interest including

Marxism, Feminism, Deconstruction, postcolonial theory and globalisation.

Stephen Morton observes:

Along with other leading intellectuals such as Edward Said and

Homi K. Bhabha, Spivak has challenged the disciplinary

convention of literary criticism and academic philosophy by

focusing on the cultural text of those people who are often

marginalised by dominant Western culture: the new immigrant,

the women and the postcolonial subject (Morton, 2003: 1).

Spivak has questioned the notion that the Western world is more

civilized, democratic and developed than the non-Western world and argued

that the colonised nations had a progressive and advanced culture in the early

historical period than that of the European coloniser.

Spivak draws our attention towards the emergence of the United

States of America as a global economic super power to protect the interest of

multinational corporate finance. She has relentlessly questioned the ability of

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Western theoretical models of political resistance and social change to

adequately represent the histories and lives of the disenfranchised in India.

Spivak has argued that the everyday lives of many ‘Third world’ women are

so complex and unsystematic that they cannot be known or represented in any

straight forward way by the vocabularies of Western critical theory. (Morton,

2003: 50) In her influential essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak

addresses the problem concerning the subaltern and comes to the conclusion

that the subaltern cannot speak and she highlights the silent position of the

subaltern (Cahoone, 2003).

More recently, the dimensions of postcolonial theory have expanded to

address even more complex relationships particularly in the field of feminism

and cultural studies. Postcolonial feminists argue for more inclusive critiques

where the position of women within the colonial framework is scrutinised to

illuminate the ‘double bind’ of colonial and gender oppression. Chris Murray

notes:

Scholars in the field of cultural studies such as Masao Miyoshi

and Arif Dirlik question the premature appellation of the prefix

postcolonial when the globalisation of culture and capital may

54

be leading humanity towards a neo-colonial condition (Murray,

1999: 870).

Another growing concern of postcolonialism is related to the ecological

and the environmental problems encountered by the present day world due to

ecological imperialism, damaging effects of scientific and technological

advancement and Western industrialisation. Intellectuals all over the world

and ecofeminists in particular are currently engaged in charting out solutions

to this worsening threat that upset the very existence of living beings on earth.

Human settlement in the place meant for plants and animals, reclamation of

coastal areas for the construction of buildings, destruction of mangroves

which are habitat for seabirds, amphibians and aquatic animals are traced out

as the root cause for the ecological and environmental problems and the

source for hungry tides and earthquakes. The role played by Western

industrialisation and their modernisig programmes in enticing the developing

countries into the destruction of their environment is of great significance in

this context. The authors of The Empire Writes Back note that ‘postcolonial

societies have taken up the ‘civilizing’ benefits of modernity, only to find

themselves the ‘barbaric’ instigators of environmental damage. In such ways

the dynamic of imperial power is maintained globally (Ashcroft et al., 1989:

213).

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While deep ecologists place the blame for ecological deterioration on

the domination of nature by human beings (anthropocentrism), the

ecofeminists see the domination of both nature and women by men

(androcentrism) as the root cause of modern crisis, observes Carolyn

Merchant in her seminal work Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology

(Merchant, 1996: 9). Ecofeminism attempted a synthesis between the two

struggles previously thought to be separated--feminism and ecology. The

French feminist Francoise d’ Eaubonne’s launching of ecofeminism was

meant to remake the planet around a totally new model, for it was in danger

of dying and we along with it (Merchant, 1996: 10). Writing as a militant

radical French feminist Eaubonne placed the problem of the death of the

planet squarely on the shoulders of men:

The slogan of the Ecology feminism centre was to tear the planet

away from the male today in order to restore it for humanity

tomorrow. A society in the feminine would not mean power in

the hands of women but no power at all. The human being

would be treated as a human being, not as a male or female.

Women’s personal interests join those of the entire human

community, while male interests are separate from general

interests of the community (Merchant, 1996: 10).

56

Postcolonial writers respond to these global phenomena in various

ways. Amitav Ghosh addresses this postcolonial crisis through his novel The

Hungry Tide. This work can be read against the background of the social

activities taking place in the subcontinent, which are meant for saving the

earth and thereby saving humanity. The social activist, Medha Patkar’s

Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) has been spearheading

the movement against the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built across the Narmada

River in Gujarat, insisting on the proper rehabilitation of the displaced people.

The Booker Prize winner, Arundhathi Roy’s scathimg attack on the

construction of the dam on the Narmada River, Vandana Siva’s polemics on

the modern developmental projects, which she argues as maldevelopment are

all meant to retrieve the world from ecological deterioration and

environmental crisis. In her essay Development, Ecology and Women, the

Indian physicist and philosopher Vandana Siva assesses development as a

postcolonial project, a choice for accepting a model of progress in which the

entire world is remade itself on the model of the colonising modern West,

without having to undergo the subjugation and exploitation that colonialism

entailed. Development was thus reduced to a continuation of the process of

colonisation; it became an extension of the project of wealth creation in

modern Western patriarchy’s economic vision, which is based on the

57

exploitation and exclusion of women (of the West and the non West) on the

exploitation and degradation of nature and on the exploitation and erosion of

other cultures (Merchant, 1996: 273). Throughout the world ‘Third World’

women, especially peasants and tribals are struggling for liberation from

development, just as they earlier struggled for liberation from colonialism.

As the contemporary cultural critics Aijaz Ahmad, Arif Dirlik and Rey

Chow have emphasized, the rise of postcolonial studies in the US academy is

co-extensive with US foreign policy and economic investment in the ‘Third

world’. Morton observes:

This historical parallel might suggest that postcolonial studies

indirectly serve the interests of US foreign policy and global

economic expansion by producing knowledge about the Third

world. To counter this difficulty, Spivak persistently emphasises

how in her own critical thought she resists the temptation to

appear as a spokesperson or ‘native informant’ for the ‘Third

World’ in the ‘First World’ academy, even though she

acknowledges that the position of a famous postcolonial

intellectual who lives and works in the Western metropolitan

academy and champions the cause of minority groups is a

58

position that is beset with contradiction and paradox (Morton,

2003: 8).

Complaints raised against the practitioners and ideas of postcolonial

theory are also prevalent in the contemporary literary scenario. Meenakshi

Mukherjee observes:

The concepts and nomenclature of postcolonialism have been

fashioned in the Western, especially, American universities and

not adequate to meet the contemporary needs of nations with a

history of colonialism such as India. The imperatives of

postcolonialism are being set elsewhere particularly by migrant

Indian intellectuals who helped to make postcolonialism the

fashion in Western academia by drawing upon the latest

advances in literary theory. She points out Bhabha’s penchant

for Freud and Lacan and Spivak’s indebtedness to

deconstruction as examples. Mukherjee argues that countries

with a history of colonialism are being colonised again by

Western theoretical imperatives. (Mukherjee as qtd. in.

McLeod, 2000: 247).

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Arun P. Mukherjee finds the framing grid provided by postcolonial

theory as insufficient to decode the subtle ironies and parodies directed against

the departed coloniser. For Aijaz Ahmed, postcolonial theory is entirely

complicit with the globalising transnational tendencies of capitalism. Arif

Dirlik goes even farther, claiming that postcolonial intellectuals are trying to

hide their complicity with global capitalism. Dirlik asserts:

Postcolonialism is practised by a select few ‘Third World’

intellectuals; and empowered by their command of cosmopolitan

language of transnational academic theory, this select few

construct the world in their own hybridised self image by

projecting globally ‘what are but local experiences’ (Dirlik as

qtd.in. McLeod. 2000: 252).

Debate goes on in the current academic arena on the issue of how neo-

colonialism and global capitalism have taken up the control of ex-colonies or

Third World countries. Critics argue that “the new elite brought to power by

independence and often educated and trained by colonial powers were non-

representative of the mass and even acted as unwitting or willing agents

(compradors) for the formal colonial rulers. In a wider sense, neo-colonialism

has come to signify the inability of so-called Third World economies to

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develop an independent economic and political identity under the pressures of

globalization” (Ashcroft et al., 1998: 163). Apart from political and economic

exploitation, the colonised were culturally subjugated by the colonising west.

The value of traditional cultural forms was generally undermined by

colonisers, categorising them as mythic, naïve, superstitious or aesthetically

crude. Thus the colonised were forced to situate outside modern Eurocentric

sphere. It was to these biased representations that the postcolonial literatures

respond, not only to reverse the fictionality of the coloniser- narratives but

also to show how colonial representations do have an impact on the totality of

life for the colonised from the formation of colonial public policy and

education to construction of identity.

Many postcolonial writers have used the literary forms, techniques and

language varieties of the colonisers to express alternative views of the colonial

situation. The genre of the novel itself is modelled on the West. The Indian

English writers asserted themselves on the global literary scene with their

transnational writings engendered by experiences of migrancy, multicultarism

and multilingualism. There was an unprecedented increase in innovative

techniques and experimentation in novels. It was in this transitional phase of

postcolonialism that the vibrant and energetic voice of Amitav Ghosh

reverberated through the Indian literary scene. Ghosh’s fiction strives to bring

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the trials and tribulations of the marginalised people from the peripheries to

the centre. He has profusely made use of the theoretical concepts of Mikhail

Bakhtin like dialogism, polyphony and heteroglossia in his novels.

Dialogism is central to Bakhtin’s theoretical construct. In Problems of

Dostoevsky`s Poetics Bakhtin speaks of works as being either comparatively

monologic or dialogic. The Bedford Glossary analyses these theoretical

concepts of Bakhtin as follows:

A monologic work is one that is clearly dominated by a single

controlling voice or discourse even though it may contain

characters representing a multitude of viewpoints. Contrary

voices are subordinated to the authorial voice, which is usually,

though not always, representative of the dominant or official

ideology of the author’s culture. A dialogic work, by contrast is

one that permits numerous voices or discourses to emerge and to

engage in dialogue with one another…. Bakhtin argued that no

work can be completely monologic, because the narrator, no

matter how authorial and representative of the official culture

cannot avoid representing differing and even contrary view

points in the process of relating the thoughts and remarks of the

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diverse group of literary characters that inevitably populate the

incredible fictional world. These other voices, which make any

work polyphonic to some degree, inevitably disrupt the

authoritative voice, even though it may remain dominant. Thus,

for Bakhtin the monologic/dialogic opposition was not an

absolute: some works are more monologic, others more dialogic

(Murfin, 1998: 86).

Michael J. McDowell, in his essay ‘The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological

Insight’ notes:

The ideal form to represent reality, to Bakhtin is a dialogic

form, one in which multiple voices or point of view interact.

Monological forms, in contrast, encourage the singular speaking

subject to suppress whatever doesn’t fit his or her

ideology….An application of dialogics to landscape literature

can open up a text to enable an analysis of ecological

relationships among all landscape components including

humans. Dialogics helps first by placing an emphasis on

contradictory voices, rather than focusing mainly upon the

authoritative voice of the narrator (Glotfelty et al., 1996: 373).

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A literary work is a cite for dialogic interaction of multiple voices

which helps the writer to represent a variety of socio-ideological positions.

The character of a person emerges in the course of a dialogue and is composed

of languages from different social contexts.

‘Each utterance … whether in actual life or as represented in

literature owes its precise inflection and meaning to a number of

attendant factors – the specific social situation in which it is

spoken, the relation of its speaker to an actual or anticipated

listener and the relation of the utterance to the prior utterance to

which it is (explicitly or implicitly), a response (Abrams,

2001:63).

Bakhtin defines novel as a diversity of social speech types, sometimes

even diversity of languages and a diversity of individual voices artistically

organized (Bakhtin, 1981: 262). Novel orchestrates all its themes, the totality

of the world of objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the

social diversity of speech types and by differing individual voices.

(Bakhtin, 1981:263).

David Lodge in his essay ‘After Bakhtin,’ while analysing Bakhtin’s

literary theory observes:

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The genres canonised by traditional poetics -- tragedy, epic and

lyric -- are monlogic: they employ a single style and express a

single world view. The discourse of the novel in contrast is an

orchestration of diverse discourses culled from heterogeneous

sources, oral and written conveying different ideological

positions which are put in play without ever being subjected to

totalising judgment or interpretation….Originally Bakhtin

attributed the discovery of this discursive polyphony to

Dostoevsky. Later he came to think that it was inherent in novel

as a literary form, and he traced it back historically to the comic

and satiric writing of the classical period … and to the carnival

tradition in popular culture that sustained an unofficial resistance

to the monologic discourses of medieval Christendom (Fabb et

al., 1987: 92).

Etymologically; the word polyphony refers to ‘many voices.’ Bakhtin

asserts:

In a polyphonic novel a character’s word about himself and his

world is just as fully weighted as the author’s word usually is; it

is not subordinated to the character’s objectified image as

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merely one of it’s characteristics, nor does it serve as a

mouthpiece for the author’s voice. It possesses extraordinary

independence in the structure of the work: it sounds as it were,

alongside the author’s word and in a special way combines both

with it and with the full and equally valid voices of other

characters. (Bakhtin, 1984: 7).

The narrators and characters achieve independence in the novel through

heteroglossia.

Diglossia is a language situation in which two markedly divergent

varieties, each with its own set of social functions, co-exist as standard

throughout a community (Crystal, 1997: 43). Heteroglossia which means

‘differentiated speech’ to Bakhtin is the key term for describing the complex

stratification of language into genre, register, sociolect and dialect and the

mutual interanimation of these forms. It doesnot simply mean the variety of

different languages which occur in everyday life, but also their entry into

literary texts (Vice, 1997:18). Internal stratification of language, social

heteroglossia and the variety of individual voices in it are the essential

prerequisites for the authentic novelistic prose. Bakhtin observes:

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Heteroglossia enters the novel through authorial speech,

speeches of narrators, inserted genres and speeches of

characters. Each of them permits a wide variety of links and

interrelationships. Each generation at each social level has its

own language; moreover every age group has its own

vocabulary, its own particular accentual system that, in their turn

vary depending on social level, academic institution and other

stratifying factors…. It is even possible to have a family jargon

with its special vocabulary and unique accentual system

(Bakhtin, 1981: 290-91).

At any given moment languages of various epochs and periods of socio

-ideological life cohabit with one another. Language is heteroglot from top to

bottom. Language of heteroglossia manifests itself through polyphony and

carnivalisation.

Another linguistic device which became conspicuous within the

postcolonial discourse is polyglossia. The substitution of the individualised

language of the novelist for the style of the novel distorts the very essence of

stylistics of the novel. Bakhtin argues:

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Such substitution inevitably leads to the selection from the novel

of only those elements that can be fitted within the frame of a

single language system and that express, directly and without

mediation, an authorial individuality in language.The whole of

the novel and the specific tasks involved in constructing this

whole out of the heteroglot, muti-voiced, multi-styled and often

multi- languaged elements remain outside the boundaries of

such a study (Bakhtin, 1981: 264-265).

In the Glossary of The Dialogic imaginations, Polyglossia is defined as

the simultaneous presence of two or more national languages interacting

within a single cultural system. (Bakhtin, 1981:431). The role of novel in the

process of developing and renewing literature through polyglossia is

underscored in Bakhtin’s statement:

The new cultural and creative consciousness lives in an actively

polyglot world. The period of national languages co-existing but

closed and deaf to each other comes to an end. Languages throw

light on each other; one language can see itself only in the light

of another language…. There is no more peaceful co-existence

between territorial dialects, social and professional dialects and

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jargons, literary language and so forth. All this set into motion a

process of active, mutual cause and effect and interillumination.

The novel emerged and matured precisely when polyglossia was

at the peak of its activity. The novel could therefore assume

leadership in the process of developing and renewing literature

in its linguistic and stylistic dimension (Bakhtin, 1981: 12).

Diglossia, polyglossia and heteroglossia are some of the conspicuous

linguistic innovations employed by Amitav Ghosh in his novels. Ashcroft et

al. observe:

The world language called English is a continuum of

‘intersections’ in which the speaking habits in various

communities has intervened to reconstruct the language. This

reconstruction occurs in two ways: on the one hand regional

English varieties may introduce words which become familiar to

all English speakers, and on the other, the varieties themselves

produce national and regional peculiarities which distinguish

them from other forms of English (Ashcroft et al., 1989: 39).

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The postcolonial writers, as a part of inscribing alterity and installing

cultural distinctiveness resort to the technique of switching between two or

more codes which is termed as code- switching. David Crystal argues:

Switching between languages is extremely common and takes

many forms. A long narrative may switch from one language to

the other. Sentence may alternate. A sentence may begin in one

language and finish in another. Or phrases from both languages

may succeed each other in apparently random order.… When

the speakers cannot express themselves adequately in one

language, they switch on to the other to make good the

deficiency. The switch between languages can signal the

speaker’s attitude towards the listener - friendly irritated, distant,

ironical, jocular and so on (Crystal, 1997: 365).

Words and phrases from the local and regional dialects of different

languages like Hindi, Bengali and Arabic, which appear frequently in Ghosh’s

fiction makes his novelistic prose polyglossic. Instead of having one focal

point and one plot with a beginning middle and end, a multiplicity of plots

with multiple voices of multiple narrators characterise his novels. Brinda Bose

observes:

Amitav Ghosh must today be considered at the forefront of those writers

who chronologically followed Rushdie in the history of Indian novel in

English but emerged with such distinctive voice that today it may arguably

be said that it is a voice that may well sustain itself beyond its predecessors.

(Bose, 2003: 25).

An attempt is made in this study to read the novels of Amitav Ghosh in the light of

postcolonial theory and the literary theory formulated by Bakhtin.