Beginning Postcolonialism

1. Beginning Postcolonialism Chapter 4

2. The disenchantment with nationalism • explores relationship between the imagined community of the nation and its internal divisions • advocates of nation faced two problems • complicity of national liberation movements in Western myth-making and • the complications caused by the fact that occupants of colonial lands did not possess a sense of comradeship, but were divided by gender, racial, religious, and cultural differences • nation may be an old fashioned idea discredited by failure • internationalism looks more attractive

3. Nationalism: a derivative discourse? • Since nation is a western idea, how useful is it to anti-colonial nationalist movements attempting to challenge their subservience to Western views of the world? • Nationalism may promise liberty and universal suffrage, but it is complicit in undemocratic forms of government and domination. • As nationalism claims to be modernizing its constituents, it must necessarily posit their need to be civilized, thus forcing its adherents into colonial ways of thinking.

4. Three Phases of Anticolonial Nationalism • Moment of departure – accept thesis of the need for reform in order to become powerful and to progress – attempt to marry the technological greatness of the West with the spiritual greatness of the East. • Moment of manoeuvre – the elite appropriate the forms and functions of folk culture in order to gain mass support for their attempt to take over control of modern forms of power. • Moment of arrival – nationalist elite are successful and claim that their modern attitudes are in line with the popular consciousness, who support the elite. But, this co-ordination masks an unequal, neo-colonial power relation.

5. Stop and Think • Does the appropriation of nationalism eliminate colonial attitudes? • How do the relations between the elite and the masses create difficulties in establishing nation? • Who benefits from national liberation? • Think about this in terms of U.S. colonial liberation movements? Who were the benefactors of U.S. liberation from Britain? Who experienced the most positive changes in their environment, in their liberties?

6. Nationalism, representation and the elite • Neo-colonialism • Celebrates the activities of individual members of the elite, not the roles played by less privileged individuals or groups. The subaltern consciousness is erased -- lesser rural gentry, impoverished landlords, rich peasants and upper-middle-class peasants role in reform are ignored. Elitism is supported.

7. Nationalism, “race” and ethnicity • Nationalism erases specificities, setting norms and limits, lops off tangentials. • Definitions of race and ethnicity • Race = human invention, not biological fact. Political constructions which serve the interests of certain groups. • Ethnicity = language, place of birth, other cultural or symbolic practices • Nationalism can privilege one race over another (internal and external (xenophobia) racism) and lead to a consolidation of national identity based upon hate and difference. (Example: Nigeria) • Stop and Think – How productive is the myth of the nation in a decolonized world?

8. Nationalism, gender and sexuality • Using women as icons of nation reinforces images of the passive female who depends upon active males to defend her honor. • And asserts the chief agents of decolonization as men. • Gendered representations of the nation intersect with issues of sexuality and re-enact some of the maneuvers of Orientalism. • Feminist programs have been sacrificed to the cause of national liberation and women after independence have been reconsigned to their former domestic roles. • See list p. 116 – ways women have been positioned in nationalistic discourses.

9. The nation and its margins • Nationalistic discourses are split by a disruptive double narrative movement -- Bhabha • Pedagogic discourse – claims fixed origin and asserts a sense of a continuous history. • It warrants the authority, legitimacy and primacy of the nation as a central political and social unit. • the people are the object of this discourse. They are constructed and acted upon. • the pedagogical narrative gives the impression of a the steady linear movement of time from past to present to future. • What are our constant signs?

10. The Nation and its Margins performative discourse – nationalist icons and popular signs are continually rehearsed by the people in order to keep secure the sense of comradeship • people are subjects, actively involved in the reproduction of its signs and traditions • performative discourse gives the impression of repetitious and recursive temporality • where is performance of nation exhibited in our culture?

11. Conceptual Ambivalence • The nation is split by conceptual ambivalence – pulled between the nation as fixed, originary essence and the nation as socially manufactured and devoid of a fixed origin. • All those on the margins – women, migrants, working class, peasantry, different races or ethnicities – intervene in the signifying process and challenge the dominant representations with narratives of their own. • Nations need homogeneously unified people and myths of origin, but as marginalized people move into the production of the nation’s representation, the homogeneity breaks down. See p. 120.

12. Stop and Think • In your view . . . (121)

13. The Problems of Using English English in Settler nations Relationship of colonizers to English --their English is no longer appropriate to the space they find themselves living in; --so, they create englishes that work for them. Relationship of natives to English --loss of indigenous language --lack of connection to English (124-125)

14. The Problem of Using English • English in the settled nations • English absorbing the national language title, making all else regional, minor, and forgettable. • English stealing or burying cultures • Problems/issues related to specific contexts (i.e. Caribbean) • Brathwaite – “nation language’ – Elewa and peasants in Achebe • Stop and Think – What are some examples of englishes in the U.S. today?

15. The Nation in Question: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah • Criticism of the chauvinism of the principle male characters=elite historiography in which subaltern voices remain silenced. • Beatrice disturbs this elitism. • Gender relations, though, are complicated by issues of class. How is Beatrice representative of Agatha or Elewa? A horizontal relationship based on similarities is disrupted by their vertical social differences.

16. The Nation in Question: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah • The englishes in Achebe’s book raise questions about the similarity of world views of the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. (And Chris learns, too, to challenge the definition of “education.” • Should the national language even BE English?

17. The Nation in Question: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah • How is the final scene an example of Bhaba’s idea of conceptual ambiguity, in which the performative interrupts the pedagogical? • New interpretation of an established ritual • New use of an old name • Unstopping of silenced voices • Leads in the direction of diversity in collectivity, instead foregrounding homogeneity of hierarchy

18. The Nation in Question: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah • Beatrice/Mumbi • How are Ngugi and Achebe’s visions/uses of women similar? • How are they different? • Remember Ikem’s comparing of old and new testament women? How do Beatrice and Mumbi fit into this scheme? Have they been rescued from the margins?