The empire writes back Theory and practice in postcolonial literatures

1、bill ashcroft, gareth griffiths & helen tiffin:the empire writes back. theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. londres, routledge, 1989, 246 p. extraitsle concept et la thoriequest-ce que les littratures post-coloniales?this book is concerned with writing by those peoples formerly colonize

2、d by britain, though much of what it deals with is of interest and relevance to countries colonized by other european powers, such as france, portugal, and spain. the semantic basis of the term post-colonial might seem to suggest a concern only with the national culture after the departure of the im

3、perial power. it has occasionally been employed in some earlier work in the area to distinguish between the periods before and after independence (colonial period and post-colonial period), for example, in constructing national literary histories, or in suggesting comparative studies between stages

4、in those histories. generally speaking, though, the term colonial has been used for the period before independence and a term indicating a national writing, such as modern canadian writing or recent west indian literature has been employed to distinguish the period after independence.we use the term

5、 post-colonial, however, to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. this is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by european imperial aggression. we also suggest that it is most

6、appropriate as the term for the new cross-cultural criticism which has emerged in recent years and for the discourse through which this is constituted. in this sense this book is concerned with the world as it exists during and after the period of european imperial domination and the effects of this

7、 on contemporary literatures.so the literatures of african countries, australia, bangladesh, canada, caribbean countries, india, malaysia, malta, new zealand, pakistan, singapore, south pacific island countries, and sri lanka are all post-colonial literatures. the literature of the usa should also b

8、e placed in this category. perhaps because of its current position of power, and the neo-colonizing role it has played, its post-colonial nature has not been generally recognized. but its relationship with the metropolitan centre as it evolved over the last two centuries has been paradigmatic for po

9、st-colonial literatures everywhere. what each of these literatures has in common beyond their special and distinctive regional characteristics is that they emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power

10、, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. it is this which makes them distinctively post-colonial.(pp. 1-2).justification du terme.one of the first difficulties in developing a wider comparative approach to the literatures has been that of finding an appropr

11、iate, name to describe them. some early attempts at a name which indicated the world-wide range of english writing never found general acceptance: for example, joseph joness word terranglia, which he employed to describe all writing in english throughout the world (jones 1965). the term commonwealth

12、 literature which also emerged in the 1960s, although it secured much readier acceptance, nevertheless had geographical and political limitations. it rested purely on the fact of a shared history and the resulting political grouping. in its loosest form it remained a descriptive term for a collectio

13、n of national literatures united by a past or present membership of the british commonwealth. but through its relatively widespread acceptance it opened the way for more rigorous conceptions which also postulated a common condition across all former colonies. for a long while these existed, or coexi

14、sted, if sometimes uneasily, under the umbrella of commonwealth literature.several attempts have been made to find a politically and theoretically more appropriate name for such literatures than commonwealth literature (see tiffin 1983). the limited and pejorative term third world literatures has be

15、en used in some university courses, but the most popular contenders have been new literatures in english and, most recently, post-colonial literatures. although the first avoids the inclusion of any reference to colonialism, and therefore may be more acceptable nationalists wishing to de-emphasize t

16、he colonial past, it is vague and misleading in other ways, implicitly privileging a european perspective in areas like india or africa, and providing theoretical direction or comparative framework. it also has the disadvantage that it compares the literatures to old literature in english, without a

17、lluding to the hegemonic power of the british tradition.the term colonial literatures might focus on what is shared the writing and therefore suggest the direction in which to proceed theoretically, but the connotations of the term are politically unacceptable to territories which have gained their

18、independence. post-colonial seems to be the choice which both embraces the historical reality and focuses on that relationship which has provided the most important creative and psychological impetus in the writing. although it does not specify that the discourse is limited to works in english, it d

19、oes indicate the rationale of the grouping in a common past and hints at the vision of a more liberated and positive future. in practical terms, the description we adopt - post-colonial - is less restrictive than commonwealth; it shares with new literatures in english the ability to include, for exa

20、mple, the english literature of the philippines or of the united states as well as that of pakeha (white) or maori writing in new zealand, or that of both blacks and whites in south africa.however, the term post-colonial literatures is finally to be preferred over the others because it points the wa

21、y towards a possible study of the effects of colonialism in and between writing in english and writing in indigenous languages in such contexts as africa and india, as well as writing in other language diasporas (french, spanish, portuguese). the literature of ireland might also be investigated in t

22、erms of our contemporary knowledge of post-colonialism, thus shedding new light on the british literary tradition. even so, better terms may still emerge. in his comparative study of the literatures of quebec and the black diaspora, dorsinville, for example, used the term post-european. although thi

23、s has not so far been used extensively in critical accounts of the field its political and theoretical implications have much to offer.(pp. 23-24).centre et priphrieenglish vs englishlanguageone of the main features of imperial oppression is control over language. the imperial education system insta

24、lls a standard version of the metropolitan language as the norm, and marginalizes all variants as impurities. as a character in mrs campbell praeds nineteenth-century australian novel policy and passion puts it, to be colonial is to talk australian slang; to be . everything that is abominable (campb

25、ell praed 1881:154).language becomes the medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated, and the medium through which conceptions of truth, order, and reality become established. such power is rejected in the emergence of an effective post-colonial voice. for this reason, the

26、discussion of post-colonial writing which follows is largely a discussion of the process by which the language, with its power, and the writing, with its signification of authority, has been wrested from the dominant european culture.in order to focus on the complex ways in which the english languag

27、e has been used in these societies, and to indicate their own sense of difference, we distinguish in this account between the standard british english inherited from the empire and the english which the language has become in post-colonial countries. though british imperialism resulted in the spread

28、 of a language, english, across the globe, the english of jamaicans is not the english of canadians, maoris, or kenyans. we need to distinguish between what is proposed as a standard code, english (the language of the erstwhile imperial centre), and the linguistic code, english, which has been trans

29、formed and subverted into several distinctive varieties throughout the world. for this reason the distinction between english and english will be used throughout our text as an indication of the various ways in which the language has been employed by different linguistic communities in the post-colo

30、nial world.the use of these terms asserts the fact that a continuum exists between the various linguistic practices which constitute english usage in the modern world. although linguistically the links between english and the various post-colonial englishes in use today can be seen as unbroken, the

31、political reality is that english sets itself apart from all other lesser variants and so demands to be interrogated about its claim to this special status.in practice the history of this distinction between english and english has been between the claims of a powerful centre and a multitude of inte

32、rsecting usages designated as peripheries. the language of these peripheries was shaped by an oppressive discourse of power. yet they have been the site of some of the most exciting and innovative literatures of the modern period and this has, at least in part, been the result of the energies uncove

33、red by the political tension between the idea of a normative code and a variety of regional usages.(p. 7-8).lmergence de langlais comme discipline acadmique concide avec celle de limprialisme colonial: centre et priphrie.the historical moment which saw the emergence of english as an academic discipl

34、ine also produced the nineteenth-century colonial form of imperialism (batsleer et al. 1985: 14, 19-25). gauri viswanathan has presented strong arguments for relating the institutionalisation and subsequent valorisation of english literary study to a shape and an ideological content developed in the

35、 colonial context, and specifically as it developed in india, where:british colonial administrators, provoked by missionaries on the one hand and fears of native insubordination on the other, discovered an ally in english literature to support them in maintaining control of the natives under the gui

36、se of a liberal education.(viswanathan 1987: 17)it can be argued that the study of english and the growth of empire proceeded from a single ideological climate and that the development of the one is intrinsically bound up with the development of the other, both at the level of simple utility (as pro

37、paganda for instance) and at the unconscious level, where it leads to the naturalizing of constructed values (e.g. civilization, humanity, etc.) which, conversely, established savagery, native, primitive, as their antitheses and as the object of a reforming zeal.a privileging norm was enthroned at t

38、he heart of the formation of english studies as a template for the denial of the value of the peripheral, the marginal, the uncanonized. literature was made as central to the cultural enterprise of empire as the monarchy was to its political formation. so when elements of the periphery and margin th

39、reatened the exclusive claims of the centre they were rapidly incorporated. this was a process, in edward saids terms, of conscious affiliation proceeding under the guise of filiation (said 1984), that is, a mimicry of the centre proceeding from a desire not only to be accepted but to be adopted and

40、 absorbed. it caused those from the periphery to immerse themselves in the imported culture, denying their origins in an attempt to become more english than the english. we see examples of this in such writers as henry james and t.s. eliot.(p. 3-4).la diversit priphrique contre lexotisme(lexotisme g

41、omme les diffrences entre priphries au profit de celles avec le centre)theories and models of post-colonial literatures could not emerge until the separate colonies were viewed in a framework centred on their own literary and cultural traditions. victorian britain had exulted in the disparateness of

42、 its empire, but in representing that empire predominantly as a site of the exotic, of adventure and exploitation, it had defined it as a contrastive element within the british world-view. differences between colonies were subordinated to their common difference from britain. thus the comparative ge

43、stures of journals like black and white (1891-1911) which purported to juxtapose different colonies, never escaped from the metropolitan-colonial axis.colonial education systems reinforced this axis by providing in-school readers (for example, the royal reader series in the west indies, or the queen

44、sland readers in australia) a normative core of british literature, landscape, and history (brownings thoughts in exile, wordsworths daffodils, sir philip sidneys chivalry) and a sprinkling of colonial adventure which often asserted british values against a hostile physical or human environment (sta

45、nleys explorations, newbolts desperate cricketers). it required the aggression of nationalist traditions to break this pattern of inevitable reference to britain as a standard and to provide space for the consideration of the literary and cultural patterns the colonies shared.three principal types o

46、f comparison have resulted, forming bases for a genuine post-colonial discourse. these are comparisons between countries of the white diaspora - the usa, canada, australia and new zealand - comparisons between areas of the black diaspora, and, thirdly, those which bridge these groupings, comparing,

47、say, literatures of the west indies with that of australia.(p. 18-19)dune criture temporelle une criture spatiale: modalits de lhybride selon homi bhabha et al.theories proposed by critics like homi bhabha and writers like wilson harris or edward brathwaite proceed from a consideration of the nature

48、 of post-colonial societies and the types of hybridization their various cultures have produced. in much european thinking, history, ancestry, and the past form a powerful reference point for epistemology. in post-colonial thought, however, as the australian poet les murray has said, time broadens i

49、nto space (murray 1969). works like joseph furphys such is life (1903), salman rushdies midnights children (1981), g.v. desanis all about h. hatterr (1948), the novels of wilson harris, and many others; all deliberately set out to disrupt european notions of history and the ordering of time. novels

50、like patrick whites voss (1957), or poem sequences like francis webbs eyre all alone( 1961) or leichhardt in theatre (1952) run european history aground in a new and overwhelming space which annihilates time and imperial purpose. received history is tampered with, rewritten, and realigned from the p

51、oint of view of the victims of its destructive progress. the same is true of raja raos kanthapura (1938), v. s. reids new day (1949), and rudy weibes the temptations of big bear (1973). in all these texts the perspective changes to that of the other.homi bhabha has noted the collusion between narrat

52、ive mode, history, and realist mimetic readings of texts. taking v.s. naipauls a house for mr biswas as his example, bhabha demonstrates the dangers of the way in which readings of post-colonial works as socially and historically mimetic foster their reabsorption into an english tradition, domestica

53、ting their radicalism by ignoring the important colonial disruptions to the english surface of the text (bhabha 1984a). similarly, the st lucian poet, derek walcott, in his essay, the muse of history, takes issue with what he regards as the west indian writers obsession with the destructions of the

54、historical past, and makes a plea for an escape from a prison of perpetual recriminations into the possibilities of a historyless world, where a fresh but not innocent adamic naming of place provides the writer with inexhaustible material and the potential of a new, but not naive, vision (walcott 19

55、74b).the west indian poet and historian e.k. brathwaite proposes a model which, while stressing the importance of the need to privilege the african connection over the european, also stresses the multi-cultural, syncretic nature of the west indian reality. similarly, for the guyanese novelist and cr

56、itic, wilson harris, cultures must be liberated from the destructive dialectic of history, and imagination is the key to this. harris sees imaginative escape as the ancient and only refuge of oppressed peoples, but the imagination also offers possibilities of escape from the politics of dominance an

57、d subservience. one of his most important images for this process is provided by the folk character of anancy, the spider man, from akan folklore. anancy can and does take many forms in his transplanted west indian setting, but for harris he provides the key to an imaginative recrossing of the notor

58、ious middle passage through which the slaves originally crossed from africa to the caribbean (harris 1970a: 8ff; see also brathwaite 1973:165-7). the trickster character 0f the spider man, like the limbo gateway of the middle passage, offers a narrow psychic space through which radical transformatio

59、n may occur. mixing past, present, future, and imperial and colonial cultures within his own fiction, harris deliberately strives after a new language and a new way of seeing the world. this view rejects the apparently inescapable polarities 0f language and deploys the destructive energies of european culture in the ser