...www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165 Empire and Excess: Kipling and the Critique of Said’s Orientalism Sourit Bhattacharya Edward Said’s Orientalism remains one of the most influential books of the last quarter of twentieth century. In an informative manner, Said locates the seeds of Orientalism right in the medieval European imagination that solidifies itself in the nineteenth century. It is through knowledge, power, reason, scientific technologies and disciplinary set-up, philosophical supremacy and commercial benefit that the Europeans tried to redefine and restructure the East. The result was the emergence of a new form of ‘power’ based on information and control. Behind all the sacrificial and religious garb of the ‘white man’s burden’, Said notes, there runs hideous machinery that distorts the forms of knowledge, and remoulds the subject-object relationship in a Eurocentric mirror reflection. The orient becomes a textual study, a place, seen in mass, and considered to be transformed in such implacable homogeneity. Said writes: “In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient.”1 The Orient, like the ‘terra nullius’ notion of Australian imperialism, never exists, or exists in a manner which is vast, amorphous...
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...those theories, texts, political strategies that engage in such questioning that aim to challenge structural inequalities and bring about social justice. It is often helpful to view Postcolonialism in comparative framework alongside political practices, with which it shares key objectives and expressions: Feminism. It is possible broadly speaking to trace three main historical and cultural genealogies (families) of contemporary Postcolonial critical practices; there is, first, the shaping force of anti-colonial and non-Western national liberation struggles by Marxist revolutionaries. Secondly, there is deconstructive impact of French post-structuralist thinking (of Derrida) which has shaped the influential postcolonial theories of critics like Edward...
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...Edward Said is one of the forefathers of Orientalism and thus he pushed that East played a major role in shaping the West. Next, he would go on to write a book called “Orientalism” in which he claimed that Asia and India gave false justification to the West which made them want to capture and colonize Eastern countries. Two main arguments that Said claimed was that the East and the West were divided into two separate boundaries of the world. Said also felt that it was the job of the West to civilize the East. The West was considered to be the civilized boundary and the East was uncivilized. Finally he believed that stereotypes would give false justification towards Western boundaries about the East. Said believed that it was the job of the West who were the civilized people to educate and change the uncivilized. He felt that East needed guidance and help in order to stay a float as a country and be successful. You see that in the movie Madame Butterfly Said’s ideas played a major role in it. You can say that in the movie René Gallimard played the role of the West and Song Liling represents the East. Throughout the play you can see Said’s main ideas run through the love affair of René and Song. You watch as Song tries to teach René ancient riddles and traditions. She tried to show him the good in the East by having him explore the mysteriousness of he arts. Then on the other hand you see René try...
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...Literature’: Studies of individual national literatures Late 1970’s-80’s—Theories of colonial discourse: Frantz Fanon and Edward Said 1980’s—Turn to postcolonial theory Founding Work: Albert Memmi—The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957) Frantz Fanon—Black Skin, White Masks (1952), The Wretched of the Earth (1961) Edward Said—Orientalism (1978) Notable Theorist: Homi Bhabha—The Location of Culture (1994) Gayatri Spivak—“Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) Writing Back—Some Examples of Postcolonial Literature: Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back: Theory, and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989) express that the“…crucial function of language as a medium of power demands that post-colonial writing define itself by seizing the language of the centre and replacing it in a discourse fully adapted to the colonized place” (38). Naguib Mahfouz—Palace Walk (1956) Chinua Achebe—Things Fall Apart (1958) V.S. Naipaul—Mystic Masseur (1959) Jean Rhys—Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) Gabriel García Márquez—One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) Salman Rushdie—Midnight’s Children (1981) Isabel Allende—The House of the Spirits (1982) J.M Coetzee—Foe (1986) Arundhati Roy—The God of Small Things (1997) Peter Carey—Jack Maggs (1997) Further Reading: Peter Childs—Post-Colonial Theory and English Literature: A Reader (1999) Edward Said—Culture and Imperialism (1993) Gayatri Spivak—“Three Women’s Texts...
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...the issues that hold various Western countries together in a grasp in order to define their weaker counterparts. Post colonialism is the study of exclusion, denigration ‘othering’ and resistance which takes place under systems of colonial control where countries struggle to deal with colonial legacy. When one looks at the text Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee, the ideology of Orientalism and Mimicry unfolds and speaks of the unspeakable encounters of the Empire as opposed to the Barbarians thus, creating the distinctions between the empire and the colony. Therefore, it is the purpose of this essay to justify how the foretold philosophers theory, excavate understanding of Morrison and Coetzee’s text. Orientalism as according to Edward Said “Orientalism is the product of circumstances that are fundamentally, indeed, radically fractious.” To simply state, orientalism is the result of circumstances that revolves around misunderstanding of another inferior race that however results in anger and prejudices. This is evident when we look closely at Coetzee’s novel where there is an unnamed Magistrate who serves as the radical self and the other. As the novel progresses, the natives do not fit into the label ‘Barbarians’ despite the fact they live on the boundary, uncivilized in the face of the Empire, barbaric and inferior. These barbarians are then blamed for things that they do not even commit and are tortured on the terms of the command of the Colonel Joll. For instance, “Those...
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...English studies as a discipline is drawing variously on sociology, history, psychology, etc. The relationship between history and literature is interesting one as it reinforces a particular type of discourse. Afghanistan is a land-locked Asian country of 251,825 square miles (652,225 square kilometres) bordered by Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China. The modern nation emerged during the eighteenth century by Pashtun tribes in reaction to the decline of the Persian and Indian empires. For a long period in history, Afghanistan has been ravaged by invasions, civil wars and terrorist activities. As the country continues to rebuild and recover, it is still struggling against poverty, poor infrastructure, large concentration of land mines and other unexploded ordnance, as well as a huge illegal poppy cultivation and opium trade. Afghanistan also remains subject to occasionally violent political jockeying. Khaled Hosseini, a native of Afghanistan left the country at the age of eleven and settled in the United States. Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner arrived at the perfect post-9/11 moment, hooking reader curious about the suddenly notorious Islamic nation of Afghanistan, and then reeling them in with a deeply affecting and sentimental melodrama of undying friendship, treachery, Taliban cruelty, and redemption. The present paper discusses Khaled Hosseini’s two novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns set against the background of civil war and the...
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...The Location of Culture, by Homi K. Bhabha; 285 pp. New York: Routledge, 1994, $49.95. This book assembles several of Homi Bhabha's most significant essays, allowing for an examination of his contribution to contemporary literary theory. As a self-described postcolonial critic, often compared with Edward Said or Gayatri Spivak, Bhabha is perhaps most well-known for his theory of cultural hybridity, which he develops in "Signs Taken For Wonders" and several other essays included in this collection. Bhabha argues that hybridity results from various forms of colonization, which lead to cultural collisions and interchanges. In the attempt to assert colonial power in order to create anglicized subjects, "[t]he trace of what is disavowed is not repressed but repeated as something different--a mutation, a hybrid" (p. 111). This hybrid trace contradicts both the attempt to fix and control indigenous cultures and the illusion of cultural isolation or purity. His project thus adapts poststructuralist challenges to stable or fixed identities, attempting to "rename" postmodernism from a postcolonial perspective (p. 175), and allowing sustained attention to the ways in which race, gender, community, and nationality converge. One of his major contributions to theories of cultural production and identity is that he examines these various intersections closely, and avoids simply listing them or elevating one aspect of his analysis over others. Eight of the twelve chapters in this volume have...
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...Definition of Postcolonialism Postcolonialism is the study of the legacy of the era of European, and sometimes American, direct global domination, which ended roughly in the mid-20th century, and the residual political, socio-economic, and psychological effects of that colonial history. Postcolonialism examines the manner in which emerging societies grapple with the challenges of self-determination and how they incorporate or reject the Western norms and conventions, such as legal or political systems, left in place after direct administration by colonial powers ended. Ironically, much early postcolonial theory, with its emphasis on overt rejection of imposed Western norms, was tied to Marxist theory, which also originated in Europe. Contemporary studies focus more on the effects of postcolonial globalization and the development of indigenous solutions to local needs. INTRODUCTION (Enote) By definition, postcolonialism is a period of time after colonialism, and postcolonial literature is typically characterized by its opposition to the colonial. However, some critics have argued that any literature that expresses an opposition to colonialism, even if it is produced during a colonial period, may be defined as postcolonial, primarily due to its oppositional nature. Postcolonial literature often focuses on race relations and the effects of racism and usually indicts white and/or colonial societies. Despite a basic consensus on the general themes of postcolonial writing, however...
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...or historical source reveals the full and unvarnished truth, so memory is a imperfect guide. Sometimes the significance of recovered data is hard to determine. Furthermore, many rumored "histories" can be shown to have been invented; at the same time, however, these fabrications still tell us much about a society's beliefs and dreams. In reality, the best histories are the best stories. History is anything but an endeavor that should be consigned to some dusty shelf on the top floor of a library nobody ever visits. It's, ironically, the most modern, most relevant, most incendiary discipline there is, to judge by nothing more than the number of car bombings, shootings and other atrocities committed in the name of warring pasts. Edward Said’s “Orientalism” has reverberated in each of the disciplines that collectively constitute Middle East Studies, including history. The book had positive effects. It forced us to take seriously the reality of the power relations produced and reinforced by British and French colonialism, and to detect the way in which those power relations are reflected in texts. As a result of Said’s work, most historians of the Middle East have produced scholarship that is strongly critical of the British and French colonial projects in the region. These are works that have exposed the power of colonialism to destroy not only lived lives but also imagined futures. Most recent historians of the Arab Middle East have drawn the lesson that...
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...Post-colonialism theory is focused on analyzing and explaining how the effects of colonization and imperialism have on people and nations (. In a simple sense, this theory can be broken down into three categories: person, nation, and world. These three categories examine how imperialism impacted the psyche of humans from a micro level (person) up to a macro level (world). While the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is most likely analyzed through a feminist lens, the core of the story does allow it to be examined through a post-colonialism lens also. At its center, the story is about the other (a woman seemingly held captive in a man’s world). We see three key characteristics displayed by our other, self-doubt, her inability to protect/provide...
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...1 AMERICAN IMPERALISM 19TH CENTURY HIS204 AMERICAN HISTORY SINCE 1865 INSTRUCTOR: JOSEPH SCAHILL AUGUST 16, 2010 VANESSA HARVEY 2 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 19TH CENTURY Imperialism played a huge part in the economics of large industrial or military – powerful nation and even the world economy in the last two centuries. Imperialism has benefited the citizens of the imperial nations, including the United States by expanding foreign commerce and thereby helping the domestic economics of each nation. By having control over lands overseas a nation can have more output for itself and foreign trade, It exports would be greater than its imports; therefore by increasing its wealth. For many imperial nations, control over a land meant more than domination. It means repression and brutality as in the case with Britain, even the United States particularly in the Philippines. Throughout the 19th century, Americans expanded their influence across the continent through the West Ward movement. Although sovereign Native American nations were suppressed and even eliminated in the process, America was not acting as an “imperial power.” At the start of the 19th century, Imperial China, under the Qing dynasty, represented a stable and prosperous nation. There was no reason to believe that the next hundred years would change that, yet the start of the next century, the dynasty had rendered powerless, and the armies of various Western powers were descending on Peking to...
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...The Concept of a Community is imagined Communities are imagined so basically Anil’s ghost which is her national identity is imagined and colonial war goes out prove and reveal the truth that these imagined identities are fake and that the only true identifies are ones carved by individuals. The concept of "nation" is truly a cultural construct Nation, and identity, begins with one's family and closest friends, and slowly moves out from this center. In our contemporary example, two residents of the same country may live in completely different geographical climates, having very little in common with each other. In such a case, one may have a personal identity, and identify with a more local "nation," yet be part of a political nation as defined by demarcated boundary lines, drawn on a map. In his definitive book about the concept of "nation" and "nationalism," Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson says, "In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community--and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (Anderson 5). This does not necessarily mean that the imagined nation is a concept that is fundamentally bad. Although merely imagined, a national identity is something that holds a diversely different group of people together to prevent war. As Anderson says, "All communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined" (Anderson 6). Identity...
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...No Place Like Home Edward Said's States is an excerpt from his book After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. It's a story about Palestine, once a country, but now spread out into a million pieces of the people that once called it home. The pieces being more of memories of a time when Palestinians could be who they are, not a scattered and forgotten people. They all face a new struggle, a struggle to find their identity. "Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are- is difficult to maintain in exile. Most other people take their identity for granted. Not the Palestinian, who is required to show proofs of identity more or less constantly." (Page 546) Said, being Palestinian himself, tells us this story in what was called a "hybrid" type of writing. He does this by letting the pictures take precedence in telling his story but then describes each picture by going back and forth from a history point of view, to his own recollections of his childhood. The way he describes each picture makes you feel as if you were at one time in that picture and can feel an emotional connection to it. Through each photo, we get a really sense of what it is like to be Palestinian, to have it all taken away and how they started new. The way Said puts the story together without any time frame, is an example of why his writing style was described as a hybrid. He will start with describing a picture by telling us facts about his country and then interrupt himself, like he's actually have...
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...Every 1st October, all primary schools would play a certain song in the school hall for the students to commemorate Children's Day. This song, titled "Semoga Bahagia" is written by Zubir Said, the composer of the Singapore National Anthem. In the school hall, children will be led by a teacher to sing together with the music while also learning the meaning of the lyrics. However what does "Semoga Bahagia" really mean? In the most literal sense it translates to "May You Achieve Happiness". On the surface, the lyrics of the songs extol the virtues of being gracious to one another while also working hard for the future. As Singapore is going to celebrate its 50th birthday as a nation, in this documentary, we aim to find out what happiness means to the youth, as well as the adults in Singapore, and how they achieve this state of happiness. In Dazhong Primary School, one of the many primary schools in Singapore, a Music teacher, Ms. Hamidah, will attempt to explain the history behind the song. Through her perspective, we will also find out the everyday scenes that is happening in a primary school as she teaches a Music class to a group of children. She then shows us what is her daily responsibilities as a teacher in school, as well as her interactions with fellow teachers in the office. This would show the school system of Singapore While the film progresses, one of the children, a 10-year old primary school student, Patrick, would share his perspective on what it means to be...
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...falling in love with Edward Cullen, a vampire. Additional novels in the series are New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. A seventeen year old Bella Swan leaves Arizona to live with her father in the small and clouded house in Forks she doesn’t like it. Living in Forks, with its constant mist and rain, wasn’t bad much she will have to make a whole new friends a new school. Edward and his whole family are vampires. Edward himself was made a vampire when he was seventeen years old. Edward and his family are vampires who drink animal blood. First day at school, he seems disgust her. He disappears for a few days. Another day Edward saves Bella by stopping the van with only his hand because Bella is nearly crushed by Tyler's van in the school parking, it makes Bella want to know Edward more. Bella is saved by Edward again when she is almost attacked after that Edward takes Bella to dinner and home. On the car, she tells him of the stories that he is a vampire. Edward says he tried to stay away. Over time, Edward and Bella fall in love. While Cullen’s family and Bella playing sport in woods there were another vampires, James a tracker vampire who knows about Cullens' relationship with a human, He wants to hunt Bella. The Cullen family try to separate Bella and Edward, and send Bella to Phoenix to hide in a hotel. James attacks her , Edward and other Cullens rescue her and destroy James. Bella says she wants to become a vampire, but Edward won't do that. As I said that it is interesting...
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