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    Magdalena Vergara
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    Postcolonial refers to that which arrives after something is over, after an ending, after something has run its course, after colonial rule has somehow been terminated. What is postcolonial is different from what came before; it reformulates what came before. Postcolonial deals with things as they unfold in the present, after the end of the colonial, especially past injustices, inequities and interruptions.

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    Postcolonial refers to that which arrives after something is over, after an ending, after something has run its course, after colonial rule has somehow been terminated. What is postcolonial is different from what came before; it reformulates what came before. Postcolonial deals with things as they unfold in the present, after the end of the colonial, especially past injustices, inequities and interruptions.

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    130 visualizzazioni10 pagine

    Postcolonialism McGillis

    Caricato da

    Magdalena Vergara
    Postcolonial refers to that which arrives after something is over, after an ending, after something has run its course, after colonial rule has somehow been terminated. What is postcolonial is different from what came before; it reformulates what came before. Postcolonial deals with things as they unfold in the present, after the end of the colonial, especially past injustices, inequities and interruptions.

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    69 Postcolonialism Originating difference Roderick McGillis Postcolonial isa term with something in common with ‘multiculturalism’, and with a umber of other terms that use the prefix ‘post’ (postmodernism, poststructuralism, post- feminism, and so on). What i has in common with such terms is a meaning that irmplies | difference, multiplicity, othemess, reformulation and change. The postcolonial refers to that which arcves after something is over, after an ending, after something has run its | course, afer colonial rule has somehow been terminated. What is postcolonial is different from what came before; it ceformulates what came befor; it designates a change ina stu: “ition. In other words, postness connects the condition demarcated by the terms T set out above. Even multiculturalism is ‘post’ in the sense that itis @ condition that comes after ‘calturalisn’. Postness, as Stuart Hall notes, suggests ‘not only “after” but “going " beyond” (Hall 1996: 253). ‘After’ and ‘going beyond” might suggest that most post- | modern of conditions, the end of history. The postcolonial is that which comes after the colonial, and also that which goes beyond the colonial. In other words, the postcolonial | deals with chings as chey unfold in the present, after the end of the past, especially past Injustices, inequities and interruptions. The paradox of ‘afer’ is that what comes after is | ongoing; something is always coming after. And if something is always coming after, then ‘we might like to know ~ even need to know ~ what went before. ‘And, of course, the notion that colonialism is over, tucked away safely in the past having rua its course, is quite simply untrue. Colonialism continues to exist, but perhaps "not in the ways it once did. The term we now often use is ‘neo-colonialism’ (see Ashcroft eal. 1998: 162-3). Postcolonialism deals with the ongoing workings of the colonial ‘exterptise, This is why postcolonialism is direcdly connected to politics, to the nation-state, and to matters of race and ethnicity as they are inflected in political life. The nation-state itself is contentious concept, but the concept leads to questions of identity and subjec- Livin. How does a person identify herself in time and space? In what ways isan individual "subject co cultural, political and economic forces? In postcolonial terms, time and space are in motion, conflicted, subject to change. Perhaps this very emphasis on change is what connects the postcolonial to the other post conditions. ‘Post’ is a word that suggests "igidity and demarcation, as well as movernent and fini. Because the postcolonial refers to that which has passed beyond the colonial, many countries may lay claim to the postcolonial condition, although some prefer the term “post independence’ (see Khorana 1997). A glance at one postcolonial country will serve to highlight the complexities of the postcolonial. Canada illustrates ‘ust how tangled and multi-faceted the term “postcolonial” has now become in terms ofits temporal, spatial, Political and socio-cultural meanings’ (Moore Gilbert 1997: 10), As Moore-Gilbert points ‘out, the term “postcolonial? may apply to ‘at least five distinct but offen overlapping, oe e thewk ae m0 892_Roderick McGilis a foxmer colony's relation to the centre of imperial power (Canada and England); its relation to the United States; its conflicted internal relations (Quebec and, English Canade); the internal relations berween various levels of government and indige ‘nous peoples; and the relations within the country between older inhabitants and newer jmmigrants from various places, including decolonised places withn the former British Dominion. ‘When we turn from issues of postcoloniality in national and interaational contexts, and to such issues in literature, a similar complexity confionts us. First, we have postcolonial theory and pos:colonal criticisms; che former looks at the concept, at what ‘Postcolonial’ signifies, and the latter looks at specific works of cultural production, Second, we have canonical works of literature that we now read from the perspective of postcolonialism, in children’s literature, for example, the work of Kipling and Burnett. We also have writers from the distan: past that we might call postcolonial in the sense that they selconsciously deal with the oppressions of colonialism in the eighteenth centuty, Thomas Day provides an example in writing for children, and Quobaa Ottobah Cugoano in writing for adult. ‘Third, we have contemporary works of literature writcen by authors who write about post- -colonial themes from the outside; in Canada, South Africa and Austra we have plenty of ‘examples of books by white authors that chronicle native history ane culture. And last we havea lange ane growing body of explicitly postcolonial literature that derives from vriters ‘who themselves are members of formerly colonised peoples; this category is complicated by the face that a whole range of writers in countries such as Australa or South Alfica, or ‘even England, may lay claim to the postion of postcoloniality. Wat connects all these -manifestations of postcolonialsm is quite simply the desire on the part of those who claim postcolonial staus to locate literature within what I will call an ethics of literature. By an ‘ethics of literature, T mean that postcolonial literature (and I understand ‘literature ‘mean theoretical, critical and creative texts) is direct in dealing with political matters. The politics most noticeable here have to do with identity and belonging. We might make a ‘connection here between our notion of the postcolonial and the ‘ights revolution’ of the last wo decades or so, The ‘rights’ chat groups of people ask for or demand are more ‘often than not political rights (see Ignatieff 2000: 66), And clealy postcolonialism is sensitive to the rights of peoples to speak for themselves, to tell thei own stories, and to define their own subjectvicies. he Such sensitivity is apparent in a story by the Anglo-Indian waiter Ruskin Bond, In his autobiographical story “The Room of Many Colours’, Bond tels of a conversation ‘bevween himsel? and his father, His father asks the young Ruskin if he would ever like 10 -g0 to sea, What ensues is an exchange in which the father instructs his son in matters of family history. The boy asks: “Hlave you been around the world?" I asked, “No, only as far as England. That's where your grandfather was born.” “Ann nny grandinetler?™ ‘She came to India from Norway when she was quite small. ‘Pd like to go there.” ‘You will, one day. When you are older, P'l rake you to Norwey.” ‘Ts it better than England” ‘It’s quite different.” ‘sit beter than India?” “e's quite different.” Js India like England?” ‘No, it’s different.” ‘Well, what does “different” mean?” t means things are not the same, It means people are different. It means the weather is different. It means trees and birds and insects are different.” Will we always be in India?" 1 asked. "No, we'll have to go away one day. You see, it’s hard to explain, but it isn’t really our country.” (Bond 1989: 16-17) ‘This exchange points out just how complex the postcolonial condition is. Individuals find themselves inextricably caught up in political and eultural forces. The boy in the story, and Bond himself, know no other country as home but India; in reality, Ruskin Bond did not go away; he continues to live in India and to write about that country. He is well known in India as an Indian writer, but he is a member of a diasporie group, connected through family history and education to a non-Indian past, to a past and a country that played the coloniser to the colonised India. In this period of post-independence in India, here does a writer like Ruskin Bond fit in? “The same might be asked of a writer like Elana Bregin who finds herself shifted ro the periphery of the writing community in post apartheid South Africa, despite the fact that her writing during the late apartheid era was intensely engaged in the fight for political rights and eacial equality Since rights and change and identity are themes of postcolonialism, the literature that children read is a good place in which to express these themes. Children’s literacure has always functioned to socialise its readers. When we reflect that imperial Great Britain spread its vision of the world to India, Australia, various places in Aftica and so on through its education system, including its literature, we can see the connection between children and the subaltern chat was common in colonialist discourse, and that surfaces in recent commentary that sees children as colonial subjects (see Rose 1984; Nodelman 1992; McGilis 1997; for a counter-voice see Bradford 2001), Gauri Viswanathan (1995) has shown how influential English language and literature were in nineteenth-century India as part of Britain’s colonialist enterprise, and 2 similar:study might be made of other countries that found themselves in the British Dominion (see, for example, Chrisjohn and Young, The Circle Game (1997) for an examination of residential schools ia Canada). From a postcolonial perspective, literature interpellated and continues to interpellate its readers into social and political thinking; in other words, literature deals in ideological matters. Whereas colonial discourse consists, as Eleke Boehmer points out, of ‘that collec tion of symbolic practices, including textual codes and conventions and implied meanings, Which Europe employed in the process of its colonial expansion’ (1995: 50), postcolonial discourse consists of direct encounters with otherness and questions of race, identity and ‘power. Colonialist discourse can work through implication; postcolonial discourse cends to ‘work through conftontation. ‘Take, for example, Thomas King's picture book for young readers, A Coyote Columbus Story (1992), with pictures by William Kent Monkman. The title cues the colonial/post- colonial theme. Columbus supposedly ‘discovered’ North America in 1492, beginning halfa millennium of exploration, conquest and colonisation; Coyote is a trickster figure, a ‘creator, teacher, and keeper of magic’ (Andrews 2000: 260), of the people who live on the North American plains. The book's ttle brings these two names into conjunction: this 894 Roderick MeGiis Js a story about Columbus and about Coyote, But pethape this is a story about a dual character, a Coyote who is also a Columbus. In other words, the tite raises the possibility of hybridity, grafting Coyote on to Columbus (or vice versa), even as it signals two cultures, one European and the other Native or Aboriginal, This story tells of myth (Coyote) and history (Columbus). We also have the binaries, animal/human, human/ nature, old world/new world and, once we begin to read the story, we will realise other binaries such as play/work and male (Columbus)/female (Coyote). And finally, its worth noting the word ‘story’. For King to use this word in his ttle is for him to state the obvious. We expecta story in a picture book like this, but the foregrounding of the word indicates the importance of story itself We read here a ‘story’, that isa fiction, a narrative construction of combined word and image that has its roots in both written and oral creation. The title confionts us wich the collision of the White European world with the Native North American world, That this conffontation takes the form of a fiction should be apparent in the location of Columbus considerably north of the region of the western hemisphere on which he actually landed. And so, right from the beginning, the reader faces a tick, a joke. Coyote and Columbus form an unlikely pair to share a story. What signals tha chis book i postcolonial sits self consciousness about religion, gender and, of course, we can add an ecological note. Colonisation began as Europe took an interest in the animals North America had to offer, and a few hundred years later many of those animals are in danger of disappearing. Postcolonialism deals directly with matters of marginalisation and is history, but it does so in the context of emerging clarity and confidence of identity on the part of formerly colonised peoples. A book such as A Coyote Columbus Story could not have been written uundl identity polities emerged from a cultural context in which colonised people felt a sense of independence and strength, Thomas King, as a Native writer working in a non- Native environment, nevertheless feels safe creating a narrative critical of the dominant sroup in that environment. A similar expression of revisionary history and of alterity assuming a position of confi dence, even normale, is available in the Australian picture book Jimmy and Pat Meet the ‘Queen (1997) by Pat Lowe, with illusteations by Jimmy Pike. Lowe's story deals with the uestion of Native land claims. Following thé Mabo Decision in June 1992, in which Eddie Mabo’s claim to land aginst the government of Queensland was upheld, the Australian government passed the Native Tides Act (1993), which opened the way for Aboriginal peoples to claim certain lands back féom government ownership. The land available for reclamation is referred to as ‘vacant’, but the Aboriginal protagonist of this story knows that the land has never been vacant. ‘Vacancy’ is cuphemistic smoke £0 conceal the white person’s assumption of ownership of that which ‘belongs’ to another. Resistance to the notion of vacaney is resistance £0 a colonialist version of history. In Lowe's story, the husband and wife, Jimmy and Pat (she is white and hte is black), go to a meeting at which a white lawyer explains Native Tide to Vacant Crown Land. Jimmy has difficulty understanding why his people requite tile to land they already own, Pat explains that the Queen owns Crown Land, Her explanation does not satisfy imimy who thinks that if the Queen really does own this land, then she will be able to prove her ownership by finding the waterholes in the desert. Jimmy and Pat invite the Queen to visit chem, and she does, bringing with her only lots of baggage and her two corais. AS Clare Bradford has pointed out (2001: 208-11), in this book the Queen is totally out of place; she does not see the land in the way Aboriginal people see it; and she cannot survive here without help and instruction. But she refuses help and instruction with the words: ‘You win. This is your counuy and, as far as pave har at th announcement ‘And so the Walonjand Rot dinowg demcting Of wopia vision, although he porters reminds us that, Meee ie ory is ru... mos of thas’ happened ye frac 1997; acknowiedge. ments page). Prony ial Books consider the diasporic expeience, ca caforced movement of peoples (slavery), and ake voluntary of people (indentured labour, refige statue ant ce on), are ee S308 of what it means to be part of» daspore signifies she Stange new land she comes to. Mailene Neca, Philip's ) deals with the Caribbean dispors in Consee Jamaica sr count of diasporc experience inthe USA. Wie af {2h accounts have in common is struggle, the supe of dislocated or relocated people sich book its With dispacemen, resistance, racem snd canny hybridity. The struggle 208 books engage ini nota struggle to maintain scaly identiy. As Rey Chow puts ulna OTs MEADS writers set out “not to “preserict Be 0 negotiate their ta Mentcy"” (1993: 28). Ofen this negotiation mene that writers must recover jhe history of dispersion, and so we have postcolenesh narratives that foreground the Hixony of Chinese or Japanese or Aftican or Canbiean F Asian peoples in. North America In Canada, the work of Chinese Canadian wane Paul Yee returns again and she. The South Afcan peopl in this book stuyah nan ost-apartheid problems of pear peti ADDS and violence Ther sac, she pice thes fee infected. Symptoms of Post apartheid malaise area dec result of yexs of nunc gay disenfranchisement. Mpe bs A modern South Aftica, especially the Hillrow mes at Johannesburg, a densely Eepuite inne cy area fe wih cime, Welcome to Onr Eid por ‘song of prolonged render ultings but it (5) also song of hope and lon (84). Like the fiction drawn ase the Dovel, Welcome to Our Hilirow comments oe ye hacd realities of lf, devin fom and fading supportin pertonal and socal capone (5). Victor Ramraj has criticised postcolonial tor no attending to the local and the Personal. Te docs not, he argues, “encompass Satisfictorly, for instance, the hundreds of miilions in formcr Brish colonies in Asa and Affien ers ‘cultures, languages, and reli ine imoerabcolonal tensions, posolonaism is amaar feminism, which takes an Cone tn eae ft 18 Women wit and easing out the in gender rela- tone in Hteratre ftom even centuries ago, Both femme oat Postcolonial criticism are, ceetymeested in material eats; they wish to forges gees of oppression, injus. Ses and inequity As Moore-Gilber says: postcoloialon ‘896 Roderick McGills preoccupied principally with cultural forms which mediate, challenge or reflec upon the relations of domination and subordination ~ economic, cultural end political ~ berween (and often within) nations, races or cultures, which charactristically have their roots in the history of modern European colonialism and imperial and which, ‘equally characterstcally, continue co be apparent in the present era of neo-colonialism, (1997: 12) ‘The vision of posteolonialism in Welcome to Our Hilloraw or in the Malawi writer, Ken Kalonde’s Smiles round Africa (1997) is dask bue not without hope, a composite of ambi- suities, paradoxes, ironies’ (Mpe 2001: 23). In the wake of the colonialist past, modern ‘Africa teeters inte violence. Kalonde’s book of poems for quite young readers hasan ironic tile; one ofthe poems ask, ‘Shall We Survive?” The poems conffont the exétence of poor sanitation, lack of food, land mines, crime, disease, war, violence and political insensitivity In the world Kalonde describes, children are orphans, at the mercy of cruel and self adults. Chien begin life a compses: Father Africs Let us wake you up, Father Good morning, Father Father Afi, why do you accept arms? Why do you accept bloody hel? [sit because of ignorance? sit co please those who feed us? No-o! Father my dear, my Christian ‘When you wil stop accepting war We shall jump and dance as Afirikansi ‘Noe as corpses as we are (Kalonde 1997: 28) ‘The child speakers in this pocm and the other poems question the adults who have control over their destinies. But they also have a clear sense of what is necessary. The chi dren will jump and dance once peace comes. In another poem the children assere that they ‘have the right © life/And education and freedom and you know” (28). The poems end ‘without punctuation; they also sometimes end in mid-speech. The lack of closure signifies possibilty, an ongoing process, and perhaps even hope. ‘With Kslonde and Mpe, we have moved iato the area sometimes designated ‘world liter ature written in English’. And much postcolonial writing does derive from countries once connected to Britain and the Commonwealth. Srudies such as P. . Fayose’s Nigerian ‘Children’s Literature in Englisy (1995) and Elwyn Jenkins's Children of the Sun: Selected Whiters and Themes in South African Children’s Literature (1993) ate intersting contrast Both chronicle the folk tales of their respective countric, but their accounts of writin fur children differ markedly. A reader of Jenkins’s survey will have the impression char wites in South Aftica are mostly white, although he does tackle the diffcule issue of racism. The difference in Fayose's book is its focus exclusively on black writers, although she gives & clear indication of the influence of canonical British fiction in what the chikiren of Nigcie read and have sead over the years. The history of colonialism is markealy different ia [Nigeria and South Africa, but we sil need fall accounts of this history and its relationship Postcoloniaism: originating diference 897 to books forthe young, We need such histories precisely because colonial discourse is not a thing ofthe past; postcolonial discourse has not fllydisladged the myopia atthe centre. This is seen in modern reference books where entries are written by non-natives Similarly, « book such as Buret’s The Secret Garden is often defended as 'ant-imperialst? (Gee, for example, Thacker and Webb 2002: 99) in that Mary Lennot’s problems are a direct result of Briain’ imperial activies. Burnett, however, had no direst experience of that country. She describes India asa place of sickness and batrenness, and she contrasts it with England as a place of health and fertity. India is a land in need of some good British medicines its nota place where children should be raised. Burnett makes the same point in her eater book for children, A Little Princes (1908). Both Mary Lennox and Sara Crowe are beter off growing up in England than they ever could be in Inca, In Tee Secret Garden, Mary returns to England and, as a result of this retucn, she accomplishes two ends: she learns just how a good little imperialist must labour to lay claim to unworked (Cvacant’) land, in this case che garden at Misselthwaite Manor which has been neglected since the death of the lady of the manor, and she revives the cnergy and heath of the young man, Colin Craven, who will inherit the legacy of imperial activity. Postcolonialism allows us to see in 2 new light many of the eatler {and canonical) waiters of children’s literature, such as Edward Lear, Maria Edgeworth, Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard. We might trace the beginning of colonialist and postcolonialist thinking back to the mid-eighteenth century. In John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket ‘Book (1744), we read that ‘Britons for Lucre/Fly over the Main;/But, with Pleasure ansported,/Return back again.” And the reference to ‘the Slave” in the verse ‘All the Birds in the Air’ reminds us that Englanc’s slave-trading activity was under way at this time. Awareness of th injustices of colonial practices turns up in such children’s writers as ‘Thomas Day and Anna Barbauld, and most famously Wiliam Blake. His “The Little Black Boy’ from Songs of Innocence is well known ‘My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black, as if bereaved of light Perhaps less well known is Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s Hpnns in Prose for Children (1781). Hymn VIII describes the family as a strictly hierarchical unit: ‘the father is the master thereof” (Barbauld 1781/1977: 54), and then the power structure moves to mother and children and. servants. Barbauld moves fiom one family to several that make up a village, then to many villages and towns that make up a kingdom. The people of a kingdom are ‘countrymen’ who ‘speak the same language’ (57), and who ‘make war and peace together” (58). Many king dons make up tie world and the governor of this world is God. The people in the many kingdoms are all different from each other, but they are all ‘Gods family" (59). God cares for all, and none are so great that he cannot punish them, none so mean that he will not protect, them (60). Ar this point in the Hymn, Barbauld inserts the following direct address: Negro woman, who sittest pining in captivity, and weepest over thy sick child; though ‘no one seeth thee, God seeth thee; though no one pitieth thee, God pitieth thee: raise thy voice, forlorn and abandoned one; call upon him from amidst thy bonds, for assuredly he will hear thee. (0781/1977: 60-1) 898 Roderick McGilis ‘The next paragraph addresses the Monarch who rules over a hundred states and whore armies cover the land. Barbauld moves from the lowest to the highest in the human hier archy. and we might chide her for implying that both the Negro woman and the Monarch should accept their staion in life. On the other hand, Barbauld’s address to the beck Torman calls on her to “raise her voice, to speak her condition. Implicit in this paragraph, 1 think, is Barbauld’s desire to have her readers feel the plight of 2 woman who suffer because of her race, not because she in any way deserves to sufer. However we interpret Barbauld’s attitude, we would do well to review much of the {aul Kerature for the young with an eye to its connection to imperial themes. We might benefit from postcolonial reading of Victorian children’s books too. How might we read George MacDonald’s references to overseas trading in At the Back of the North Wind (1872)? The history of children’s reading will no doubt reveal recurving cmphasis en

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