Said believes that literary fiction reflects the history and attitudes of imperialism. His studies in colonial and post-colonial literature prove that "cultural forms as the novel... were immensely important in the formation of imperial attitudes..." In his Introduction to Culture & Imperialism he says that culture is a source of identity which was used by the imperialists to further their aims and later the anti-imperialists used the same literary forms to fight imperialism. The first attempt resulted in a culture-biased literature which, Said believes, was "a part of the general European effort to rule distant lands." The later resulted in narrow nationalisms, which have caused much of the modern political discord.
Said defines culture as those practices that have "relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms". He includes in culture the arts of description, communication and representation that often exist in aesthetic forms and whose principal aim is pleasure. Among these cultural forms he takes the novel to be the most important and believes that "stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world". He sees European writings on these as "part of the general European effort to rule distant lands and peoples". Therefore "when it comes to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it...these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative". He is of the view that "the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment mobilized people in the colonial world to rise up and throw off imperial subjection". So he points out that the sway of European imperialism was never peaceful as was presented in the colonial fiction, "there was always some form of active resistance and in the overwhelming majority of cases the resistance finally won out".
In contrast with Arnold's belief that culture has a civilizing effect on "modem, aggressive, mercantile and brutalizing urban existence", Said believes that "In time, culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with the nation or state". This breeds the nation of culture as identity and tends to separate "us" from "them" and produces religious and nationalist fundamentalism. People come to believe in the superiority of their culture and expect others to "belong loyally even uncritically, to their nations and traditions while denigrating or fighting against others. Culture thus becomes a theatre, a battleground on which people claim superiority.
Related to this is Said's thesis that these notions of superiority closely follow the notions of subject of inferior races which prevailed among the imperialist officials in India or Algeria. He believes that while artists and writers seldom took issue with them, "these notions were widely accepted and they helped fuel the imperial acquisition of territories in Africa throughout the nineteenth century". Thus culture and politics become entangled with culture being the handmaiden of politics Carlyle, Dickens and Thackeray with their ideas about colonial expansion and inferior races therefore need to be seen in this light.
Referring to Dickens' "Great Expectations", Said points out that the reason Abel Magwitch is not acceptable to Pip is that he is "from Australia, a penal colony designed for the rehabilitation but not the repatriation of transported English criminals". The novel therefore should be seen not one about a big city but rather one set in the history of colonialism. The real context of the novel is the social apartheid, pursuit of profit, and the building of empire. Dickens had not written the novel with intentions to reveal this but the new generation of critics, `the children of decolonization' have seen in such texts of western literature "a standing interest in what was considered a lesser world, populated with lesser people of colour, portrayed as open to the intervention of so many Robinson Crusoes".
Said finds imperialist rhetoric of the 19th century echoing in the laws that US has landed to impose the New World Order as the saviour of the world peace. He finds in it the same self congratulation,... triumphalism,... proclamations of responsibility" as could be heard from the 19th century imperialists denounced by writers like Conrad. When Holroyd in Nostromo says, "Of course some day we shall step in... We shall run the world's business whether the world like it or not. The world can't help it — and neither can we, I guess" he presents the same illusion of benevolence the US is force upon the world today.
Yet even in Conrad, Said sees a complete blindness to "other histories, other cultures, other aspirations". He was unable to see that he wrote as a Westerner about Westerners for Westerners with little or no regard for the people of another culture as individuals. He therefore suffered from the same malady as is common to novelists and theoreticians of imperialism who deliver the non European world either for analysis and judgment or for satisfying the exotic tastes of the audiences
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