asummaryof“ColonialismandLiteraturebyAniaLoomba”.doc

An Interpretation of “Colonialism and Literature by Ania Loomba” In recent literary criticism, there is increasing attention paid to the relationship between literature and colonialism. However, literature used to be thought as so “universal and transcendent” or so “subjective, individual or personal” that it should be political innocent. It is not until recently that literary criticism began to deal with the relationship between colonialism and literature. One reason for such a trend is that humanity has been causing growing attention since post modern period began; as a result, hegemony becomes suspicious and the marginal begins to emergethe once colonized is sure to come. As a response in literature, both literature and colonialism are reconsidered. Literature can be studied in both colonial and anti-colonial discourses. First of all, the characteristics of literature should be explored. As literary texts are composed of language and signs which are believed to be “the sites where different ideologies intersect and clash with one another” (70), they surely are where ideological interactions can take place. Besides, literary texts “also show the complex articulation between a single individual, social contexts and the play of language. (70)” So it is understandable that the colonizers can take advantage of literary texts to construct cultural authority through educational system or market both in the metropolis and in the colonies. Moreover, literary texts can “encode the tensions, complexities and nuances within colonial cultures” (70) as well. Whats more, literature can also be “an important means of appropriating, inverting or challenging dominant means of representation and colonial ideologies. (70)”Language and literature, to some degree, help to create colonial authority by helping to “construct the binary of a European self and a non-European other” (73). Cultural encounters are crucial to the formation of any culture; because “the line that separates inside and outside, the self and the other is not fixed but always shifting. (71)” How someone interprets a different culture for the first time is already biased, because he defines the other based on his ways of seeing provided by his own culture and society as well as his intentions. So when the Europeans encountered the new worlds, they interpreted the native as “other” who are different from them in order to justify colonization and enslavement. It is such cultural distinctions on which English colonialism relied. Inevitably, literature is tainted by such cultural distinctions. First, writings dealing with both private and public concerns are “shaped by cross-cultural encounters” (71). Second, the colonial contact is “reflected in the language or imagery of literary texts” (72). Third, “a central aspect of what literary contexts have to say is about identity, relationships and culture. (72)” This way, literature “both reflects and creates ways of seeing and modes of articulation that are central to the colonial process. (74)” But it cannot be ignored that literary texts also militate against dominant ideologies, which is certainly not a matter of authorial intention. (74)Literature and culture practices also “embody cultural interactions” (75) which show historical clues. As a result, “literary texts, both through what they say and in the process of their writing, are central to colonial history, and in fact can help us towards a nuanced analysis of that history. (75)” In earlier period “when European colonial discourse is in its formative stages, we can see the overlaps of literary texts, visual representations and other writings. (76)” In later periods, “the interrelatedness of literary with non-literary texts and the relation of both the colonial discourses and practices” (78) become even more obvious. In some other historically specific conditions, “the threat of native rebellion produces a very different kind of colonial stereotype which represents the colonized as a rapist who comes to ravish the white woman who in turn comes to symbolize European culture. (79)” Later, it is analyzed that “specific texts are not always simply pro- or anti-colonial, but can be both at the same time. (81)” Then, “it is not just that literary texts are useful for specific analyzing colonial discourse, but that the tools we use for their analysis can also be used for understanding the other texts of empire. (81)” “Today even those works where the imperial theme appears to be marginal are being reinterpreted in the context of European expansion. (81)”Another aspect of literature and colonialism concerns educational system, because it “has to do not with what texts mean but what they are made to mean by dominant critical views, which are then enshrined within the educational system. (84)” As is mentioned earlier in the passage, the colonizers can take advantage of literary texts to construct cultural authority through educational system. Actually, even those literary texts that are “distant from or even critical of colonial ideologies can be made to serve colonial interests through education system that devalue native literatures, and by Euro-centric critical practices which insist on certain western texts being the markers of superior culture and value. (85)” Whats more, “literary studies were to play a key role in attempting to impart Western values to the natives, constructing European culture as superior and as a measure of human values, and thereby in maintaining colonial rule. (85)” So literature and culture function to enhance political control, during which process educational systems are important means for dissemination of dominant ideologies in order to assert an unbridgeable gap between colonizers and colonized peoples. (88) Howe