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UNIT 2: POST-COLONIALISM: THEORISING ENCOUNTERS AND ITS
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Western Imperialism and its legacy. It is particularly useful in the attempt to get a grasp on the realities of erstwhile colonies.
As a theory, postcolonial theory has its precursor in works such as Edward Said‘s Orientalism (1978). Peter Barry enumerates the tenets upheld by postcolonial scholars in textual analysis:
1. They reject the claims to universalism made on behalf of canonical Western literature and seek to show its limitations of outlook, especially its general inability to empathise across boundaries of cultural and ethnic difference.
2. They examine the representation of other cultures in literature as a way of achieving this end.
3. They show how such literature is often evasively and crucially silent on matters concerned with colonisation and imperialism.
4. They foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity and examine their treatment in relevant literary works.
5. They celebrate hybridity and 'cultural poly valency', that is, the situation whereby individuals and groups belong simultaneously to more than one culture (for instance, that of the coloniser, through a colonial school system, and that of the colonised, through local and oral traditions).
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6. They develop a perspective, not just applicable to postcolonial literatures, whereby states of marginality, plurality and perceived 'Otherness' are seen as sources of energy and potential change.
Application of the Post-colonial Theory To Literature of Encounters: A Comparative Reading of E.M Forster’s A Passage to India and Ferdinand Oyono’s Old Man and the Medal through postcolonial lens
E.M Forster‘s A Passage to India (1924) is a central text in the discourse of Encounters and colonialism in post-colonial literary studies. It depicts individual Indians and Britons in India within the context of the British Raj. It examines the relationship between Britons and Indians. A Passage to India poses a very key question to the discourse of encounters in prose fiction: can the coloniser and colonised be friends? This question underscores the relationship between Dr. Aziz, the Indian and his British friend, Dr. Fielding Aziz‘s cordiality with the Britons almost jeopardises his life and career as he is accused of sexually assaulting Adela Quested when he serves as her tour guide to Marabar caves. It is discovered later during the trial which ensues that Adela was not assaulted but had actually been destabilised by the echoes and suffered a shock. This seems to show an inherent distrust of the ‗natives‘ on the part of the Britons. Aziz eventually comes to discover that he cannot be friends with Fielding, regardless of how well-meaning fielding is.
The colonial construct itself makes it a delusion to consider the possibility of friendship between Aziz and Fielding. The closing chapter is particularly eloquent on this point:
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Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do and cried:
―Down with the English anyhow. That‘s certain... we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then, and then... you and I shall be friends.
―Why can‘t we be friends now?‖ said the other, holding him affectionately. ―It‘s what I want. It‘s what you want.‖
But the horses didn‘t want it... the earth didn‘t want it,,, the temples, the tank,the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn‘t want it, they said in their hundred voices, ―No, not yet,‖ and the sky said, ―No, not there‖ (150).
Forster‘s point in the excerpt above is that two people who meet on the different sides of the divide of coloniser and colonised are fundamentally divided by the unnatural construct which imperialism is and cannot be friends even if they wish to be.
Ferdinand Oyono in The Old Man and the Medal (1967) also tackles the concept of friendship between Africans and Westerners in a colonial construct. However, Oyono, a Cameroonian, writes from the point of view of the colonised. Meka, on learning he would be receiving a medal from the Chief of the French is exhilarated:
―Isn‘t the friend of a chief something of a chief himself?‖ (39). The Commandant encourages Meka in his delusion by telling him he is now ―somebody among men‖
(19). However, after the ceremony, ―the whites get into their cars. Father Vandermayer invites Meka to get into the back of his van though there was no one with him in the cabin‖ (98). An intoxicated Meka questions the truth of the white man‘s friendship with the blacks. His suspicions are confirmed when the white Chief declines Meka‘s invitation to dine with him (107). After this encounter, the natives confirm their doubt about the friendship of the whites: the whites do not eat from the same plate with the blacks and during the banquet, there is no African on the
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platform with the whites. When he is arrested and taken to Gullet for loitering around the European quarter, Gullet spits on Meka‘s face and calls him a lunatic (133). After suffering inhuman treatments in the hands of the whites, it becomes clear that the St. Christopher medal given to Meka is a mere pretense and official ritual to compensate him for his lost land and children, in furtherance of the French cause in the colony. Meka is of interest merely because he has been a very useful tool in the hands of the colonial machinery
The two narratives, A Passage to India and The Old Man and the Medal, shrink down the grand narrative of the interaction between two cultures to the interaction between two individuals representing each culture in order to pass across an overwhelming commentary on the colonial context.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE TWO NARRATIVES
1. They both tell stories of unusual friendships developed and broken within the colonial construct.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO NARRATIVES
1. While A Passage to Indian was written by Forster, a Briton- a citizen of the colonising country, The Old Man and the Medal is a book written by Oyono, an African writer and prioritises the view point of the colonised.
2. Consequently, Fielding is portrayed more sympathetically by the author as against the matter of fact way Oyono portrays the Commandant. While Fielding seems to be genuinely friendly with Aziz, The Commandant only patronises Meka.
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1. Compare and contrast the pair of Aziz – Fielding and Meka - Commandant.
References Primary Texts
Forster, E.M. (1924). A Passage to India. Uk: Edward Arnold
Oyono, F. (1967). The Old Man and the Medal. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers Ltd.
Secondary Texts
Abrams, M.H. (1999). A Glossary of Literary Terms seventh edition. Boston:
Heinle&Heinle.
Barry, P. (1995). Beginning Theory; An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.Manchester: UP.
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UNIT 3: MODERN AFRICAN PROSE FICTION AND TELL-TALE SIGNS