Post-Colonialisms (II)

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Post-Colonialisms (II)

• (Post-)Colonial Identities and Strategies of
  Resistance

1. Colonialism, Orientalism and Racism 3.
Hybridity and the Other Postcolonial Questions
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Starting Questions

• Any questions about your readings?
• What have you learned so far re. colonialism and
  postcolonialism?

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Outline

• A Review and Overview
• Colonial Racial Identities
• Postcolonial Identities

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Post-Colonialism A Review and Overview

• Colonialisms Racism
• Problems with the term post-colonial (textbook
  4 290-94)
• Definitions Their Interconnections (thru
  capitalism)
• Cultural Imperialism (Orientalism) examples of
  Colonial Other (e.g. Stedman)
• Racism Stereotypes Containment and
  Appropriation.
• New Colonial Identities and their Revision
• Race and Representation
• Mimicry and the Subaltern
• 2. Post-Colonial Identities
• Language Literature
• History
• Identity Construction
• Strategies
• Examples of identity politics

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Colonial Texts/Identities their Revisions

• Major Texts frequently revised
• The Tempest, --17th c. usurpation and
  abandonment (Caliban)
• Robinson Crusoe 18th c. a colony established
  (Friday) Foe by J. M. Coetzee
• Jane Eyre, -- 19th c a woman brought back home.
  (Other in the Self Bertha) WSS
• Heart of Darkness. --20th c.material
  pursuit/spiritual disintegration (Kurtz Self
  discovery black mistress and the intended.)
• Mansfield Park (Sir Thomas textbook 3 275-76)
• Ways of revision
• re-defined certain features of colonizers or
  colonial relations, or re-centering some ignored
  characters

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The Tempests

• Contemporary revisions (general trends)

Prospero De-privileged
Miranda (actually the most powerless) Supported by sisters Gang-raped
Ariel Queered
Caliban Rise to power queered
Present, with her magic
Sycorax
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The TempestsPostcolonial Interpretations (1)

• Ethnopsychiatry (D. O. Mannoni)
• Caliban complex that of inferiority and
  dependency
• When thou cam'st first,Thou strok'st me and
  made much of me wouldst give meWater with
  berries in't and teach me howTo name the bigger
  light, and how the less,That burn by day and
  night and then I lov'd thee,And show'd thee all
  the qualities o' th' isle,The fresh springs,
  brine-pits, barren place, and fertile.
• . . . and here you sty meIn this hard
  rock,

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Ethnopsychiatry Caliban complex

• that of inferiority and dependency
• Gifts with self-interest ? return of love and
  Dependency ? betrayal or demands of more gifts
  from the colonized (textbook 4 278)
• Use and abuse the language taught (281)
• Another interpretation by F. Fanon in The
  Wretched of the Earth
• Caliban needs to use violence
  --cathartic violence to cleanse him of his
  inferiority complex.

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Ethnopsychiatry (2) Prospero complex

• that of inferiority/superiority and
  escape/vocation
• Hidden in the assumptions of the superiority of
  European culture
• Inability to adapt to reality ? flight from home
  or with a desire to travel
• Excessive idealism.
• Prospero anxiety (over Calibans rebellion) and
  sexual guilt (over the possibility of incest?
  thus feeling threatened by both Ferdinand and
  Caliban in their confidence in their sexual
  appeal.) (Zabus 22-23)

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Ethnopsychiatry (3) Prospero complex

• Do you agree with this interpretation?
• Can you find examples of people with Caliban
  complex or Prospero complex? (textbook 4 279)
• There are variations in the interpretation of
  these two prototypes. But Prosperofor whatever
  reasonsattempts to subject the Other, and the
  two are caught in a master-slave mutual
  dependency.
• How about Ariel and Miranda?
• Miranda, one of the two children of Prospero
  (280)
• Ariel -- Intellectual Go-between (messenger)
• Type-casting can always be limiting and
  simplifying, despite the truths they reveal about
  some people.

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Race Definition (textbook 4 285-86)

• Constructionism Racial attributes (e.g. what
  being a Chinese means) not seen as naturally
  born, but as socially acquired. (e.g. Focus,
  Black Like Me)
• The classification (biological) of humans into
  races is now widely regarded as arbitrary from a
  biological viewpoint because actual genetic
  differences between racial groups are trivial.
• e.g. Up from Slavery, Black Like Me, Focus
• 2. However, racial groups are real in a
  sociological sense insofar as people with
  different skin colour, etc., are commonly
  positioned and treated differently.
  (www.soc-canada.com/ppp/ch09.ppt)
• In other words, race is now not essentially
  defined, but more of a social-historical
  construction. ? strategic use of essentialism or
  ethnicity. (textbook 4 298-99)

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Race Different definitions

• new racism -- involves the belief that the races
  are inherently different from one another in a
  cultural and behavioural sense, and problems
  result when they try to live together.
• Different definitions of race in different
  nations e.g. race related to nationality in UK
  and in Taiwan, but not in the U.S.
• Subtler forms of racism containment and
  appropriation.

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Race Anti-Essentialist Definition vs. Literary
Appropriation

• The problematic argument of authenticity
  (TEXTBOOK 4 288)
• What do you think about a white writers
  pretending to be of another racial group in order
  to win a literary prize?
• The Education of Little Tree (by by Asa Earl
  Carter under the pseudonym Forrest Carter)
• What do you think about the presentation of the
  aborigines in mainstream American/Taiwanese
  texts? (e.g., ?????, Obasans inclusioDances with
  Wolvesn of Rough Lock Bill?) (TEXTBOOK 4 296-97)

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Race Anti-Essentialist Definition vs. Literary
Appropriation

• Different Responses
• Appropriation of Indian Mythology (Lee Maracle)
  ? falsehood and mythologizing.
• OK if done with caution(Atwood)
• the problem of speaking position and
  marketability
• The issue of tokenism (speaking as,
  representability) ? the dominant group
  determining what is visible and marketable and
  thus what gets represented.
• Cross-Cultural Understanding always imperfect
  (300) more later

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Colonial Identities (1) Mimicry (textbook 5
464-)

• Orientalism The colonized fixed or simplified
  as Other.
• Between the colonizer and the colonized
• -- Self defined in terms of the Other the two
  are thus inseparable and mutually dependent
• -- Uncertainty of the colonizers
• Stereotyping as fetishism -- revealed through
  their repetition, which is also a process of
  "recognition and disavowal of racial/cultural/hist
  orical differences"
• Undermined by mimicry (which is all the same but
  not quite). ? Hybrid
• Two possible critiques of this view
• armchair theory, not realistic
• too general and abstract.

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Mimicry Theory Examples

• (See textbook chap 5 469)
• Ambivalence between producing a reformed,
  recognizable Other and insisting on difference
• Ambivalence between avowal and disavowal of
  castration
• e.g. Taiwanese Imitation of Madonna
• E.g. Michael Jackson
• The Man Who Would be King

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Colonial Identities Mimicry and the Subaltern
The Subaltern cannot speak (Spivak).

Différance
C center
Colonial Mimicry All the same but not quite--
Indian gentleman or Indian celebration of U.K.s
national day.
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Colonial Identities the Subaltern G. Spivak
(textbook 465)

• Spivak focuses on racial, gender and class
  differences, acknowledging her position as a
  third-world intellectual.
• Unlike the intellectuals, the Subaltern can not
  speak. The colonized who are not given the
  language to speak, or whose voices are not heard,
  leave no mark in official history.
• e.g. Sati and a woman killing herself at a time
  not proper for Sati (????).
• Possible criticism the subaltern can speak and
  have been expressing themselves a lot.

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Postcolonial Identities II. Language

1. The Caliban legacy ? to give up using the
   masters language to claim English as their own
   language and change it ? englishes
2. For Afro-Americans, Australians and Canadians,
   English is their only language.

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Postcolonial Identities II. Language (2)
--Strategies

• 1. Preserving and developing ones mother tongues
  with Romanization, etc.
• 2. Changing or reversing or confusing the
  language hierarchy
• e.g. the use of Taiwanese and Hakka in Taiwan
  ??? the value of Chinglish
• 3. mixing languages with different strategies of
  translation
• (Three stages of the use of colonizers
  language Adopt, Adapt, Adept)
• -- e.g. My Man Bovanne -- re-naming vs. Ms.
  Hazels language

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Postcolonial Identities III. Filmic/Literary
Re-Visioning Taiwans History

• Signs and Spaces of Identity
• Japanese rule
• ?????(miners and prostitutes in ???)
• ?????(14 Tanakas castrated identity)
• ???? (4, 5 Puppet Show)
• 228 White Terror Taiwanese Perspective
• ????(6 1950s )
• 1947????(? traced back to the aborigines in the
  Japanese rule, and with Dutch missionaries 1652,
  see here)
• 3) Immigration to Taiwan -- Mainland Chinese
  perspectives (e.g. soldiers/immigrants)
• ?????false identities?
• ???(Happy Prince and natural landscape) air
  force white terror
• ?????????--1960s Taipei gangs, the influence
  of American culture

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Taiwans Changing Signs of Nation Nationalism
(2)
????? ???? ????? vs. ????? --Japanese song, names and sword ??????????
1945 e.g. ???? ??
1950-60 e.g. ??????? 1960 ?????? (??????,??,????) ????????? ????
1970-87 e.g. ?????????? ????lt????gt
1987 e.g.1988 ??????? ???? ???--?????????
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Postcolonial Identities III. Re-Visioned
Taiwans History ? postmodern autoethnography

• As autoethnography (textbook chap 5 471)
• forms of self-representation by colonised others
  which appropriate and engage with the traditions
  of their colonizers
• Ray Chow challenges the subject/object split in
  the Orientalist gaze in autoethnography 'the
  experience of being looked at' and the 'memory of
  past objecthood' is 'the primary event in
  cross-cultural representation'.

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Postcolonial Identities III. Re-Visioned
Taiwans History ? postmodern autoethnography

• Postmodern autoethnography
• -- Beyond autobiography and identity politics
  Autoethnographic forms of representation address
  questions of identity, ethnicity, sexuality,
  gender, authenticity, elite and popular by
  situating the national within a transnational
  global traffic of mixed media and commodity
  capitalism.
• engages with the hybridity, mediation,'contaminati
  on' and 'corruption' of postcolonial forms of
  expression
• E.g. The Woman Warrior and 1947????

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Postcolonial Identities III. Filmic/Literary
Re-Visioning Taiwans History

• 4) Examples of neo-colonialism, colonial mimicry
  and third-world intellectuals positions
• The American Armies in Taiwan -- ??.??(our
  example)?
• The Japaneselt????.??gt?lt???gt?lt???????gt? lt?????gt?
• 5) Examples of Taiwanese hybridity (next time)

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Postcolonial Identities III. Identity and
Strategies
Purity Authenticity

• Identity
• Separatism (Nativism),
• Integration, Active participation,
• Assimilation.
• Beyond identity

• Strategies
• Essentialist Construction
• Mimicry
• Re-Creation,
• Cultural Syncreticism,
• Consciously Subversive Mimicry
• Hybridization

Duality --hyphenation
Beyond Identity Politics
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Postcolonial Identities III. Hybridity
different kinds

• Hybrid identity as energizing and empowering, but
  not derivative.
• (Against Multiculturalism, or the idea of
  authenticity and purity)
• Cultural Difference with gaps and fissures in
  need of constant negotiation.
• Culture as a strategy of survival is both
  transnational and translational. (Homi Bhabha)

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Conscious Mimicry

• Yong Soon Min Make Me, 1989

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Conscious Mimicry/Parody

• Ken Chu
• I Need some More Hair Products (1988)

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Identity Politics My Man Bonvanne
                                                
                                                  
                                                  
                                                  
                                                  
                                                  
                                                  
                                                  
                                                  
                                            
Based on the short story by Toni

• Toni Cade Bambara (1939 - 1995),
• author of The Lesson
• the narrator, Miss Hazel Peoples
• -- her language Black English
• (ebonics)
• -- her style drinks, laughs too loud and wears a
  wig with
• cornrows underneath (6-7)

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My Man Bonvanne

• The setting? Beginning?
• Old Folks Why does Miss Hazel dance so closely
  with Bonvanne? What role does she play in her
  relationship with Bovanne? (p. 3-4 "Wasn't about
  tits. p. 5, 9-10)
• Black Nationalists Her childrens disagreement
  and Ms. Hazels response (Joe Lee p. 4, Elo pp.
  5-6, and Task p. 6 )
• What does the last bathing ritual mean?

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My Man Bonvanne

• the Activists or intellectuals. vs. Grass Roots
  People (pp. 3, 6)
• Identity politics ? Political correctness
• 1. Focus too much on their cause and ignore a
  real contact with the people they should care
  about. (3)
• 2. In the childrens criticism of their mother
  (5-7)
• -- they are fixated on their views of proper
  dress, proper Black appearance and proper
  things to do for the elderly, ignoring their
  really needs (emotional, sexual and material).
• 3. re-naming Nisi ? Tamu
• Ms. Hazel When asked to organize a council of
  elders, she said Me? Didn nobody ask me nuthin.
  Tamu? You mean Nisi? She change her name? (p.
  6, also p. 8)

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My Man Bonvanne

• Old Folks personal connections with the narrator
• blind people got a humming jones if you notice
  (3) ? Not jammin my breasts into the man. Wasn't
  bout tits. Was bout vibrations. (4)
• Bovanne a nice ole gent from the block
  useless for the Black Nationalists
• Dances with him because he is ignored by the
  others offering a little Mama comfort
• with Elo 7-8 I carried that child strapped to
  her chest until she was nearly two (7)
• Self-assertive -- How come nobody ax me (6, 8)

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My Man Bonvanne Ending

• Respect and Care for the Old Folks
• Give him a nice warm bath with jasmine leaves in
  the water (9)
• "Cause you gots to take care of the older folks.
  ... Cause old folks is the nation. That what
  Nisi was saying and I mean to do my part" (9-10).
  
• self-confirmation
• I surely am a very pretty woman

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You have learned . . .

• A. Colonialism
• More examples of race and Racism (e.g.
  Containment and Appropriation)
• Colonial Types (Prospero complex and Caliban
  complex) in The Tempest
• Mimicry and the Subaltern
• 2. Post-Colonial Identities
• Language and Identity
• Different ways of constructing Colonial History
• Identity Construction positions
  (Separatism/Nativism Active participation,
  Assimilation), and strategies (Re-Creation,
  Cultural Syncreticism, Mimicry)
• Beyond identity politics

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We will talk more about . . .

• Colonial and Postcolonial Identities in the
  contemporary world
• Can the Subaltern speak? (The Piano Buddha
  Bless America)
• Essentialism vs. Constructionism
• Globalization Multiculturalismits different
  forms.

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Reference

• Kseniya Simonovas sand drawing of Ukrainian
  history during WWII. http//wesha.homeip.net/
• 1941?,???????????,
• 1944?10?,????????
• 1945?10?,????????????????????????????????
• 1991?8?24?,???????,????,?????????