Reading Contemporary FictionWeek 10Post-Colonial British Writing

Key Concepts

• Colonialism/Ideologies of Empire

• Binaries of empire

• Post-colonialism

• Images of London

• The role of the former colonised living in the metropolis ‘centre’

• White Teeth as a post-colonial novel

LONDON

• What do you think of when you hear ‘London’?

• Images

• People

• Places

• History

Images of London

• http://www.google.com.au/search?q=london&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=zJE&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&prmd=ivnsum&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=kCfHTfy2DoXcvwPC_vSyAQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CCQQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=547

Depictions of English-ness

“It is a mellow autumn day. I look out the window and am surprised that the Downs exist. There has always been something childish about England for me.

Haywards Heath

Wivelsfield

Burgess Hill

Hassock

contd

Names so silly and twee they must be made up. The constant surprise of this land, that it is actually green and actually pleasant. That it is actually there” (41). From The Gathering. Anne Enright. 2007

Imagining London

• Enright’s observations point to one of the central themes of post-colonial writing. The ways in which London (and England) has been written into our cultural consciousness. It’s a city we can all visualise, even if we have never seen it. As Australians, we are a colony of Britain and part of the Commonwealth. Terms such as ‘the mother country’ are part of our cultural lexicon.

• “At the height of imperial power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, London was the great metropolis, the world’s largest city” (Ball, 4).

Ideology of Empire

• The metropolis is the privileged centre; the colony is the lesser other

• Binaries of empire/colonialism:

• Centre/margin

• Civilisation/savagery, the primitive

• European/ non-European

• White/non-white

• Christian/pagan

• The ‘logic’ of colonialism is that any annexation of another country is ‘right,’ and of benefit to that country.

London and Empire

•What is interesting is that we still associate London with its empirical history. It is still seen as the centre of the contemporary world. As a metropolis or a ‘world city’.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6omQ5JjjLsE&feature=related

• 2:25 – 7:53

• After formal de-colonization “the international citizenry of empire converged on London in a phenomenon sometimes called the re-invasion of the centre or, in the words of Jamaican Poet, Louise Bennet, ‘Colonizin in reverse’” (Ball, p.4).

• As Ball also writes “With over two million non-white residents in the year 2000, London has been transformed; demographically it is becoming more and more global (or transnational) and less and less traditionally – that is, ethnically, racially or even nationally, - English or British” (p,5).

Geographies of the City• This conflicting ideas of London (the old empire and seat of

power versus the transnational city populated with non-British immigrants) can be seen throughout the city.

From Liverpool Street Station

Financial District Brick Lane

Imaginary London?

• This clash between our cultural conceptions of London (Big Ben, London Bridge, Covent Garden, Buckingham Palace and so on) and the actual city with its cultural and ethnic diversity (Lambeth, Brixton, Brick Lane) means that formulating a singular cultural identity is difficult, if not impossible. London is all these things at the same time.

Post-colonialism and London

• For a city such as London, postcolonialism has a multitude of meanings.

• The city has been formally de-colonised (as has the British Empire), yet it is imbued with the ideology of its colonial or Empirical glory.

• The city is also home to a diverse population – deriving primarily from seats of former colonies – India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Africa.

Post-Colonial Writers and London

• Ball suggests that for post-colonial authors writing from or about London, there are several factors which go into their work:

• Perception of London (from their own colonised view)

• Perception of London (compared to their place of origin)

Post-Colonial British Writing

• What lies at the heart of much British postcolonial writing, then, is the difficulty, and importance of, holding onto one’s cultural identity.

• Examples of post-colonial texts with a British focus: The God of Small Things, Bend it Like Beckham, East meets West, Brick Lane and, of course, White Teeth.

• Think about how these compare when examined next to the plethora of historical fictions which re-enforce our ideas about English Literature: Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf. Only a few of these writers actually write about London. And it is important to note that these writers show us how different London is compared to other English cities or villages.

Recent post-colonial texts: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

• Born in India, Roy writes in English, and her debut novel won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997. She has since written non-fiction activist books such as The Cost of Living.

• The God of Small Things is set in India. It explores colonialism in Indian culture by focussing on how the death of Sophie Mol – Chacko’s English daughter, brings the Indian caste system to light. The Kochamma family have both profited from colonialism and suffer because of it.

The God of Small Things

“Chacko said that going to see The Sound of Music was an extended exercise in Anglophilia.

Ammu said, ‘Oh come on the whole world goes to see The Sound of Music. It’s a World Hit.’

‘Nevertheless, my dear,’ Chacko said in his Reading Aloud Voice, ‘Never. The. Less’” (55)

Anglophilia (the privileging of England and ‘Englishness’) is a central concern of the text:

"They were a family of Anglophiles.  Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footsteps had been swept away" (52).

White Teeth

• The same cultural confusion can be seen in the character of Samad in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.

• “I don’t wish to be a modern man! I wish to live as I always meant to! I wish to return to the East” (145).

• Note here that Samad does not say he wishes to return to India, he says the East; he is referring to a cultural idea, rather than a geographical location.

• And as Shiva notes “And who … can pull the West out of ‘em once it’s in?” (145)

Magid and Millat

• It is when Samad separates his sons that we see just how the notions of East and West function in the book.

• Magid is sent to India, Millat remains in London. Yet it is Magid who becomes more ‘English’: Samad dreads his relatives seeing his son “this Iqbal the younger with his bow ties, and his Adam Smith and his E.M. bloody Forster and his atheism!” (424).

• As Abdul-Mickey notes when meeting the recently-returned Magid:

“Speaks fuckin’ nice, don’t he? Sounds like a right fuckin’ Olivier. Queen’s fucking English and make no mistake. What a nice fella. You’re the kind of clientele I could do wiv in here, Magid, let me tell you. Civilised and that” (449).

• On the other hand, it is Millat, who was born and bred in England, who turns to Muslim fundamentalism. For Millat, this is his way of rebelling against the status quo. Ironically, it is his love of Western gangster movies which provides the template for his rage.

• “It was his most shameful secret that whenever he opened a door … the opening of Goodfellas ran through his head … ‘As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster'” (446)

• He desperately tries not to think this, instead thinking “‘As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Muslim’. He knew in a way this was worse, but he just couldn’t help it … he always carried dice, even though he had no idea what a crap game actually was … he could cook a killer seafood linguine, though a lamb curry was completely beyond him” (446).

White Teeth

• Perhaps the difficulties inherent in the notion of cultural identity for the characters in White Teeth can best be summed up here:

• “No fictions, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs – this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of those magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language” (402).

• White Teeth is a post-colonial novel because:

• Its narrative draws in a range of characters from Anglo, Caribbean and Indian backgrounds, asking what it means to be ‘English.’

• Although it borrows from conventions of realism, it also complicates it by being such a sprawling narrative – in terms of time periods, characters and issues.

• Is told in a 3rd person voice, enabling range and diversity, but preventing too close an identification with a single protagonist.

• Resists tight closure – although Irie’s child pulls many threads together

• Explicitly challenges binaries of ‘race,’ gender and place