Family, Violence and Gender in African Anglophone Novels and Contemporary Terrorist Threats [1 ed.] 9781443891912, 9781443898669

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Family, Violence and Gender in African Anglophone Novels and Contemporary Terrorist Threats

Family, Violence and Gender in African Anglophone Novels and Contemporary Terrorist Threats By

Chi Sum Garfield Lau

Family, Violence and Gender in African Anglophone Novels and Contemporary Terrorist Threats By Chi Sum Garfield Lau This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Chi Sum Garfield Lau All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9866-X ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9866-9

To those who fight against Wind and Tide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................ ix List of Abbreviations ................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The Legacy of Conradian Terror ........................................................... 3 Terror in African Anglophone Novels: An Overview ........................... 6 The Interplay of Family, Violence and Gender ................................... 11 Chapter Outlines .................................................................................. 19 Chapter I .................................................................................................... 25 The Breakdown of the Family: Ritualizing Violence in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace The Role of the Family in Pre-colonial Culture ................................... 30 From Tradition to Modernity ............................................................... 39 Post-colonial South African Identity.................................................... 45 The Return of Violence in Rural South Africa .................................... 52 Chapter II ................................................................................................... 61 The White Mistress: Colonial Family Roles in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country The Reinvention of Older Gender Norms ............................................ 71 Women Masters in the Colonized South African Country Setting ...... 76 The White Mistress and the Indigenous Servant.................................. 79 The Indigenous Father becoming Lover .............................................. 92 Chapter III ............................................................................................... 101 Globalization of the Commodity: Allegories of Disillusionment in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son The Erosion of the Husband in the Family ....................................... 106 The Commodification of the Father under Globalized Capitalism ... 111 The “Dangerous Pursuits” of Alternative Family ISAs .................... 118 Narratives, Allegories and National Ideology ................................... 125

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Conclusion ............................................................................................... 132 Resisting the Conradian Construction of Terror ............................... 133 Case Studies: Osama bin Laden and Malala Yousafzai .................... 140 Terroristic Retribution as False Promise ............................................ 147 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 149

PREFACE

Terror in the African Anglophone novels of Chinua Achebe, Doris Lessing, J.M. Coetzee and Laila Lalami originated as a consequence of a breakdown in the family structure. Traditionally, conventional patriarchy, in addition to securing the psychological and material needs of the family, has served as one of the building blocks of tribes and nations. Since the father figure within narrative is allegorized as a metonym of the state, the absence of patriarchal authority represents the disintegration of the link between individuals and national institutions. Consequently, characters may also turn to committing acts of terror as a rejection of the dominant national ideology. This book aims to demonstrate how the breakdown of the family and the conventional gendering of roles may give rise to terrorist violence in the African setting. To recontextualize the persistence of the Conradian definition of terror as an Anglo-European phenomenon brought to Africa, this book contrasts the ways in which the breakdown of the family affects both indigenous and Anglo-European households in Africa across generations. Under the reinvention of older gender norms, the unfulfilling AngloEuropean patriarchy exposes Anglo-European women to indigenous violence. Moreover, the absence of patriarchal authority leads indigenous families to seek substitutions in the form of alternative family institutions, such as religious and political organizations, that conflict with the national ideology. Furthermore, against the backdrop of globalized capitalism, commodity fetishism emerges as a substitute to compensate for the absent father figure. Therefore, there is an indisputable relationship between the breakdown of the family structure and individual acts of terror that aim at the fulfillment of capitalist fetish or individual desire, and at the expense of national security. Finally, the rhetorical dimension of terror against family and women in Africa will be proven to be the allegorized norm of globalized terror in the twenty-first century.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

HE Civilization Growing HOD Lenin Pleasure SA Sexuality Totem UWE Wretched Writings

Chinua Achebe’s Home and Exile Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents Najwa bin Laden , Omar bin Laden and Sean Sasson’s Growing up Bin Laden Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Louis Althusser’s “Lenin and Philosophy” Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent Sigmund Freud’s Sexuality and the Psychology of Love Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth Louis Althusser’s Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan

INTRODUCTION

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness,” wrote Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness (62). The defining legacy of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) is its portrayal of the nineteenth century African terror triggered by imperialists’ desire. Being “[h]unters for gold or pursuers of fame” (HOD 17), Anglo-European imperialists impose violence upon African indigenous peoples so as to achieve their own selfish desires. To emphasize the way in which individual experience is linked to national ideology, Conrad formulates his creation of literary terror against the historical backdrops of his time–in particular Anglo-European imperialism and Russian despotism–to demonstrate how terror at the narrative level serves as a national allegory of political and historical discourse. In Heart of Darkness, the narrator Marlow’s employment with the Belgians “to take charge of a twopenny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle” heading to Congo is a reflection of Conrad’s own African experience (HOD 28). Conrad had captained the Congo River steamer Roi des Belges for a Belgian company in the Congo Free State in 1890 (UWE x). In the introduction to the work, Conrad remarks that the narrative is, to a large extent, constructed on the basis of actual facts: “Heart of Darkness” is experience, too; but it is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers. (HOD 11, my emphasis)

Conrad’s later works, The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911), both similarly show Conrad’s ongoing determination to interweave his individual experience with a specific historical discourse. For instance, in his author’s note to The Secret Agent, Conrad explains that the “whole course [of the narrative] suggested and centered round the absurd cruelty of the Greenwich Park explosion” (xxxvi).1 The plot of 1

This refers to the incident in 1894 in which a group of activists attempted to blow up the Greenwich Observatory.

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Introduction

Under Western Eyes focuses on the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905. Conrad later refers to the latter of these two narratives as an outdated “historical novel dealing with the past” (UWE 315). Against the historical backdrop of Anglo-European imperialism, Conrad had suggested that individual desire was the key factor that turned people into diabolical subjects. More specifically, the European imperialists had traveled to Congo to exploit opportunities in the ivory trade. Those imperialists went on to legalize their exploitation of the African indigenous peoples through their subsequent colonization. Eventually, the imperialists also sought to replace indigenous modes of worship and rituals with their own Anglo-European, modernized modes of colonial exploitation. In his essay entitled “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” (1975), Chinua Achebe defends his African ancestors against the imperialists’ bias and racial criticisms. Achebe argues that Conrad’s novel has permanently made Africa “the other world” being subjected to Western desire (qtd. in Leitch 1783). To defend his African ancestors against the imperialists’ bias and racial criticisms, Achebe reveals the need for African indigenous peoples to produce their own narratives. He comments that “[u]ntil the lions produce their own historian, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter” (HE 73). By likening the relationship between African indigenous peoples and European imperialism to the contest between lions and hunter, Achebe implies that, so long as the hunter is the narrator of the process, the colonialist’s bias will be imposed to beautify the terror of colonization. This quandary formed the basis of Achebe’s decision to become a novelist, out of his desire to write a genuine African novel narrated through African eyes. From Achebe’s perspective the problem of misrepresentation occurs when descriptions and stories of Africa are narrated through the eyes of Western travelers and imperial powers. For Achebe, if Africa is to be represented thoroughly and fairly, then it should be represented by its indigenous inhabitants, who are familiar with the broader cultural milieu, and are able to view their respective countries from distinctly African perspectives. In this book, I have attempted to avoid the stereotypical representation of Africa from a Western perspective. In so doing, I analyze narratives written by Africans of different ethnic groups and of both genders. This choice makes it possible to show the legacy of the Conradian engagement against its historical backdrop and also serves as a response to Achebe’s accusation of Conrad’s racial bias. Furthermore, the ethnic hybridity of the selected African authors reflects the diversity of

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ways in which colonization continues to act upon modern Africa. Achebe and Laila Lalami are African writers from Nigeria and Morocco respectively who have benefited from colonial or Western styles of education and now present their home countries to the world through Anglophone writings. In contrast, J.M. Coetzee presents the legacy of Afrikaners in South Africa, descendants of the Anglo-European colonizers who aim to preserve, through their writings, some aspects of Western civilization in the post-colonial era. Doris Lessing’s case represents a different kind of Anglo-European hybridity. Lessing received the Nobel Prize for Literature as a British writer, yet her work chosen for this book, The Grass is Singing (1950), is based on her own experiences as a Briton settled in Southern Rhodesia. I suggest that through considering the individual viewpoints of a variety of modern African narratives, a truer picture of Africa may emerge. Through analysis of novels by the aforementioned four authors, this book investigates the formation of African terror beginning in the pre-colonial era. Taking the cue from Conrad, the six contemporary African narratives chosen for discussion signal the way in which history determines individual behavior and reflects the legacy of Conradian terror upon the Anglo-European colonizers as well as on the colonized indigenous peoples in Africa across successive generations. This book will demonstrate how the legacy of historical transitions and the persistence of Conradian terror as a theme have been carried into the present era in the selected African Anglophone narratives. I shall conclude this book with speculation on the ubiquity of terror and how the legacy of Conradian terror can be interpreted in different contemporary contexts through an analysis of the biographical case studies of Osama bin Laden and Malala Yousafzai.

The Legacy of Conradian Terror As a writer of numerous publications on terrorism, Jonathan R. White has commented discouragingly on the difficulty of defining terrorism, since the scope of analysis is so broad.2 In defining terror, I frame my argument on the basis of Conrad’s portrayal of the way in which European exploitation triggers African terror. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow suggests the danger of Africa lies in its “[u]nexpected, wild, and violent” nature (73). Kurtz’s final whisper “[t]he horror! The horror!” 2

See White, Jonathan R. Terrorism: An Introduction. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Wadsworth, 1997. 9. Print.

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Introduction

demonstrates how Conrad defines the horrors of Africa as an existential psychological experience (112). 3 In the novel, European exploitation represents the transformation of individual thoughts of desire into physical force with an “immediate hostile intention” (73). In “The Task of the Translator”, Walter Benjamin suggests that “since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life” (71). In giving a “continued life” to Kurtz’s “horror”, after completing Heart of Darkness, Conrad dispensed with exotic locals and chose instead to focus on settings closer to home: the European continent and his new home, Britain. Back in Anglo-European settings, Conrad continued to explore the possibilities of various forms of terroristic exploitation. Following the portrayal of Kurtz as a representation of the corrupted white patriarch, Conrad’s writings suggest that terror likewise originates from a breakdown in the family structure. Conrad shows in The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes how the corruption of the patriarch affects both children and women in families. In The Secret Agent, Conrad emphasizes the way that families link individuals to national institutions, by suggesting that the father acts as a metonym of the state. For Conrad, the importance of symbolic patriarchs, rather than biological fathers, is an indication of how the disintegration of families results in the absence of the patriarch, which creates a vacuum that will then be filled by ideological alternatives such as religion or nationalism. The absence of the natural patriarch in the novel empowers Verloc to act as a surrogate father to his brother-in-law, Stevie. Winnie Verloc endorses their relationship and comments that they “[m]ight have been father and son” (244). However, as a secret agent, Verloc’s selfish action of sacrificing Stevie so as to secure his livelihood collides with Verloc’s principle of safeguarding social order:4 All these people had to be protected. Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury. They had to be protected; and their horses, carriages, houses, servants had to be protected; and the source of their wealth had to be protected in the heart of the city and the heart of the country; (12)

Conrad demonstrates here how Verloc, as a symbolic patriarch, by making 3

See Marlow’s comment on Kurtz’s terrifying experience in Africa that “his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness” (HOD 107). 4 See Mr. Vladimir’s condemnation to Verloc that “you have done nothing to earn your money for the last three years” (SA 25).

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Stevie a scapegoat of family violence and terroristic exploitation, is the vehicle for the disintegration of the cohesion of the family. Upon realizing Verloc as both “the master of [the] house” and “the murderer of her Stevie” (266), Winnie’s “impossibility of imagining the details of such quiet execution added something maddening to her abstract terror” (268). While suffering from the emotional anguish of the loss of Stevie, Winnie takes revenge by killing her “murderer” husband (262-3). Hence, Conrad suggests the possibility that women may engage in acts of terror resisting patriarchal violence. The retributive punishment exacted on Mr. Verloc thus represents the price paid by the patriarch for causing the disintegration of the family structure. The case also reveals the way in which the corruption of the symbolic patriarch mirrors the threat posed to national security. In Under Western Eyes, Conrad further elaborates terror as the consequence of domestic crisis, that is, of the failure of group cohesion, which impacts upon the pitfalls of national and cultural identifications (“Western” as opposed to Russian). The characterization of Razumov presents a case study linking the failure of family and group identification at a personal and psychological level to political betrayal at the national level which, in turn, produces even greater levels of state coercion (and individual responses to it) in a vicious circle. Specifically, Conrad suggests that the absence of the natural father may drive terrorist-protagonists towards alternative forms of affiliation both within and beyond the family circle for identity confirmation. He shows how Haldin, having “inherited a revolutionary inspiration together with a resemblance from an uncle”, engages in political organizations that commit revolutionary acts against the despotic Russian regime (UWE 52).5 Alex Houen, commenting on Under Western Eyes, has suggested that “[t]errorism was seen both as a natural response to this crisis [of autocracy] and as an attempt to rectify it” (67). In the novel, Victor draws a distinction between his act of assassinating Mr. de P and autocratic destruction: You suppose that I am a terrorist, now–a destructor of what is. But consider that the true destroyers are they who destroy the spirit of progress and truth, not the avengers who merely kill the bodies of the persecutors of human dignity. (19)

5 As with Verloc and Stevie, the uncle is a surrogate father who inflicts ideology upon Haldin when the biological father is absent.

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Introduction

As an ardent believer in terroristic violence, Haldin has an idealist vision that his revolutionary spirit should pass on after his death, and will be everlasting until Russia enters a new era. As Conrad punctuates his treatment of terror through his accounts of individual corruption and domestic crises, Kurtz’s “horror” is changed from an existential psychological experience while living “in the midst of the incomprehensible” to “terror” in the social and ideological contexts (HOD 20). As I intend to analyze the discourse of terror from a literary perspective, I have adopted the Conradian experience of terror in theorizing about terroristic violence. By terror, I refer to the rhetorical dimension of terror against family and women. I define terror in African Anglophone narratives as a consequence of a breakdown in family structure, arising from the absence of patriarchal protection. By employing this definition, I give a “continued life” to the Conradian legacy of terror as an Anglo-European import evolves in Africa and highlight how individual acts of terror constitute a challenge to the narratives of the nation and national ideologies. Conradian terrorist-protagonists, such as Kurtz, Verloc and Razumov, attempt to use terror to restore their power. Their varying acts demonstrate their diabolical desire to protect their own self-interest at the expense of family and social ideologies. These characters exhibit the ongoing Conradian process of aligning individual desire with terroristic violence, both at home and abroad.

Terror in African Anglophone Novels: An Overview John Parker and Richard Rathbone have suggested that the passive representation of Africa is a legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. They state that “the modern idea of Africa emerged, in many ways, from the dehumanizing crucible of Atlantic slavery” (7). In Heart of Darkness, Conrad demonstrates how terror emerges in Africa as Anglo-European imperialists exploit African indigenous peoples in the name of bringing civilization to them. He reveals to us the truth behind the imperialist mission of brightening the “prehistoric man” in Africa (62): It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind–as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. (20, my emphasis)

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In this instance, the overwhelming desire to exploit the Africans represents the way in which the Europeans invert the discourse of civilization by turning themselves into robbers, brutes and murderers. Consequently, the depiction of conflict between Anglo-Europeans and African indigenous peoples sets the framework for terror in Africa across the succeeding generations. Despite the fact that Conradian terror originates as a distinctly Anglo-European phenomenon, I challenge the passive representation of Africa as lacking an indigenous politics or the potential for anticolonial resistance. To negate the stereotyping of Africa as the object of Western desire, I show how the rhetorical dimension of terror against family and women evolves from the irreconcilable combat between established traditions and widely advocated modernity. Things Fall Apart (1958) represents Chinua Achebe’s response to the Conradian depiction of imperialists’ desire in Africa “[t]o tear treasure out of the bowels of the land” (HOD 55). In the novel, Achebe shows that, when the imperialist capitalist engine threatens the indigenous family institution, the use of violence to preserve one’s culture is ironically seen as an uncivilized reaction. The protagonist of the novel, Okonkwo, ultimately chooses the most extreme form of violence, self-destruction, in his attempt to resist the modernizing values imposed by the imperialists. His death implies the inexorable overthrow of ritualistic tradition by modernity. A contrast to this can be seen in the work of Coetzee. In seeking to present the impacts of modernity upon Africa, Coetzee demonstrates the influence of imperialist colonialism over indigenous tradition. Yet, at the same time, he suggests in Disgrace (1999) that colonization fails to completely root out opposition to Anglo-European institutions. Thus, as South Africa decolonizes, African indigenous peoples seek vengeance upon their ex-colonizers through violent acts that directly challenge Anglo-European patriarchy. While Conrad’s work had earlier shown the blatant manner in which the imperialists sought to benefit from the ivory trade, Achebe and Coetzee have both suggested ways in which economic power sublimates terror. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe depicts the way in which material factor paves the way for colonization. More specifically, the economic benefits that the imperialists have gained from indigenous resources become a force which facilitates their attempts at colonization: There were many men and women in Umuofia who did not feel as strongly as Okonkwo about the new dispensation. The white man had

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Introduction indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia. (130)

The eventual acceptance of Christianity in Umuofia shows the way in which economic determinism leads to the overthrowing of the ritualistic traditions by modernity via Christianity. In Coetzee’s Disgrace, in contrast, the character of Lucy Lurie, an Afrikaner, is able to secure indigenous protection by giving up her land. These two situations mirror each other, yet they are manifestations of the same phenomenon. From the failure of Okonkwo to resist the inexorable modernity and the inability of David Lurie to protect his daughter from sexual assault, I argue that when family as an internal factor fails in its combat against the external menace of violence, capital becomes a surrogate instrument that offers protection to individuals and stabilizes conflicts. Coetzee’s observations on the defining role played by the fetishization of capital in postponing acts of terror forms a corollary to Conrad’s earlier observation. Conrad had pointed out how terror imposed upon the African indigenous peoples by the Anglo-European originates from the latter’s capitalist desire. Ironically, Achebe and Coetzee in turn show how capital serves to postpone acts of terror imposed by the indigenous peoples upon the colonizers.6 To discuss how patriarchal structures in the selected novels produce gendered behaviors that, ultimately, victimize both men and women, I have deliberately balanced the gender coverage of my analysis. This decision makes it possible not only to evaluate the effects of terror on patriarchal figures, but also to evaluate how the failure of the family institution terrorizes women in inter-racial conflicts between the colonizer and the colonized. To explore the experience of Anglo-European women in Africa, I draw from Lessing’s and Coetzee’s novels to show how these women are subjected to the paired forces of patriarchy and colonialism. I affirm the Conradian suggestion that, in the contemporary context, women’s exposure to terror is a result of their subordinate experiences in the domestic sphere. In order to fully explore how Anglo-European women react to their subaltern experience in the context of colonized South Africa, I will first investigate the way in which the colonial institution of the family, as portrayed in these novels, subjugates these women to the white 6

See Marlow’s comment on the European imperialists as “no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more” (HOD 20).

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patriarch in exchange for protection. In both The Grass is Singing (1950) and In the Heart of the Country (1977), the family roles of Mary and Magda respectively eventually enslave them as the “alluring mistresses” of their indigenous servants once the Anglo-European patriarchy is unable to protect them. By demonstrating how terror evolves in Africa under the conditions of globalized capitalism, the narratives of Laila Lalami challenge the Conradian equivalence of terror with national allegory. In Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005) and Secret Son (2009), she reveals the alarmingly congruous relations between the breakdown in family structure and the motivations for terror produced apart from or beyond the nation. Based on Lalami’s observations, in this book I show how terror is allegorized as a ubiquitous phenomenon in the twenty-first century under globalized capitalism. I show how commodity fetishism transcends the emptiness at the loss of the patriarch into materialism, which eventually leads to the disintegration of the family. While living in a society where individuals are defined by material possessions, Lalami’s protagonists discover how marriage, family and kinship have come to be commodified under conditions whereby material goods and commodities determine both the quality of one’s being and one’s life opportunities. The materialist framework of living their lives proves unsatisfactory for the characters Faten and Youssef, who come to embrace political or religious ideologies offering surrogate outlets beyond materialism. Since I argue that patriarchal authority serves as a metonym of the state, the commodified parent-child relationships thus signify the alienation of individuals from the state. As reactions to the commodified domestic experience, the acts of terror in Lalami’s narratives represent the erosion of national ideology. I differentiate Lalami’s works from Achebe and Coetzee’s novels by calling them post-national African Anglophone narratives. I have adopted the historical terms “pre-colonial” and “post-colonial” in referring to Achebe and Coetzee’s novels respectively, as these terms reveal the ways in which modern Africa is an ideological formation in transition. With the focus on the narrative construction of Africa, I understand this book does not historicize African countries individually. Kwame Anthony Appiah warns the danger of perceiving Africa as a monolithic unit: The reason that Africa cannot take an African cultural or political or intellectual life for granted is that there is no such thing: there are only so

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Introduction many traditions with their complex relationships–and, as often, their lack of any relationship–to each other. (107)

However, Ohadike’s findings on the changing perception towards the Igbo people complement my claim that Africa is an ideological construction in formation. Ohadike observes that “[b]efore the twentieth century, it would have been incorrect to speak of the Igbo as a single people” as the Igbo consisted of two hundred or more distinct separate groups (236). As a result of frequent ventures between these separate groups during the colonial period, the established perception undergoes changes: Many realized that what they thought were distinct languages were different dialects of the same language and that all Igbo-speaking people had the same basic culture and sociopolitical organization. In that sense, the concept of a common Igbo identity is a product of the twentieth century. (236)

Instead of collapsing Africa as a monolithic unit, my choice actually serves as a refutation to the passive formation of modern Africa solely by imperialist and colonial experience. In excluding how British colonialism in Nigeria or Southern Rhodesia differs from Dutch administration in South Africa or the French conquest of Morocco, this book aims to show that the commodified domestic experience imposes pressure on the history of Africa. This affirms Aijaz Ahmad’s suggestion that “[w]hat gives the world its unity, then, is not a humanist ideology but the ferocious struggle between capital and labour which is now strictly and fundamentally global in character” (104). Similarly, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak initiates her famous notion on “strategic essentialism” through defining it as “peoples stand in the same relation to global capitalism and should respond to it in the same way” (qtd. in Leitch 2194). Globalization is the force that facilitates collective terroristic response and de-historicizes Africa. Besides, to bring Conradian terror forward as an ideological construction, this book demonstrates how terroristic violence imposed upon African families alienates local history. Ernest Renan comments on the force that stimulates national cohesion and proposes “[u]nity is always affected by brutality” (11). Fredric Jameson’s approach on positive hermeneutic that “the reinvention of the collective and the associative, can concretely achieve the ‘decentering’ of the individual subject” likewise helps to explain how individual acts of terror filters out historical difference (125).

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The Interplay of Family, Violence and Gender To re-frame Conradian terror in the context of contemporary terroristic violence, I suggest that the materialism of globalization arises at the expense of family, traditions and national ideology. To demonstrate how a breakdown of family structure, the reinvention of older gender norms and globalized capitalism act as constituents of terror in African Anglophone narratives, this book charts the role played by each of these in relation to terror at the narrative level. Specifically, I analyze the role played by pre-colonial African families in inflicting indigenous ideology upon individuals and the way in which that indigenous ideology comes to be replaced by the ideology of the state under colonialism. Clayton G. MacKenzie analyses how “[t]he shifts of belief in Things Fall Apart are marked by the pragmatic transference of old pieties for new, a metamorphosis demanded by the realities of a revised socioeconomic hierarchy” (147). Anglo-European colonizers brought the idea of the state to colonized Africa, which Althusser refers to as having been “explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus.” (Lenin 92). To evaluate whether the indigenous culture in pre-colonial Africa is replaced by colonial state institutions, I juxtapose MacKenzie’s idea on the metamorphosis of traditional mores with the Althusserian notions on the difference between the state and Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). MacKenzie observes when “a new world order” arrives in Umuofia as imperialism pervades, the new relationship between the Igbo and the imperialists “is not founded on mystical ordination or divine machination. It is a relationship of pragmatism and commodity” (159). Althusser differentiates family, as an ISA, from the repressive apparatus. He suggests that ISAs “function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression” (Lenin 98, original emphasis).7 Althusser then defines ideology as “the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group” (Lenin 107). He concludes that family, as an ISA, differs from the (Repressive) State Apparatus as “the Repressive State Apparatus functions ‘by violence’, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function ‘by ideology’” (Lenin 97, original emphasis). Still, Althusser highlights the 7

See Althusser’s footnote that the family “‘has other ‘functions’ than that of an ISA. It intervenes in the reproduction of labor power. In different modes of production it is the unit of production and/or the unit of consumption” (Lenin 96).

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Introduction

way in which all ISAs serve to support the state and to maintain its ruling ideology. Thus, the family ISA as part of the colonial building project in Africa functions to safeguard national ideology. In examining the broader questions of how a breakdown in family structure may result in the characters’ resorting to violence which violates the national ideology, I will analyze both psychological and social factors by suggesting the ways in which patriarchal authority supersedes family contexts and attaches to state institutions. Althusser suggests that, in the Lacanian mode, phallic power, as the pillar of the family under conventional patriarchy, represents “the Order of the human signifier, that is, of the Law of Culture” (Writings 27). We can see an example of this in Things Fall Apart, in which phallic power, as identified with Okonkwo’s decisions as the patriarchal authority, exerts an influence upon the pre-colonial indigenous family and even upon tribal decision-making. Though this example seemingly reflects the way that pre-colonial patriarchy inflicts ideology upon individuals and members of the society, Okonkwo’s patriarchal role in the family actually supplies him with a false ideology with regard to his importance in the world. In almost the same way, Althusser proposes that ideology “represents [the] imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Lenin 109). Based upon the example of Mr. Verloc, who inflicts the patriarchal ideology upon Stevie while simultaneously using family as the construction site of terroristic violence, I seek to investigate in this book how the family institutions in African Anglophone narratives may demonstrate features that are different from the Althusserian framework of the family ISA. In particular, I integrate an Althusserian approach with a Lacanian model to show how family ideologies change as a response to the absence of phallic power.8 I use the term “family ISA” while noting, of course, that the application of this term to pre-colonial contexts is anachronistic on its face. Nevertheless, ISAs were introduced as part of the colonial nation-building project following the arrival of the Anglo-European imperialists in Africa.9 By linking the Althusserian ideological critique to the colonizing institutional processes, it is possible to read African Anglophone 8

Though the psychological approach and the institutional mode may sound distinct, for my forthcoming argument I will make use of Fanon’s ideas on violence in the process of decolonization in proving how such coordination is necessary. 9 See Leitch’s comment that “Nigeria was a construction of European colonial powers” (1781).

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narratives of the family as allegories of indigenous belonging under threat. In seeking to comprehend how the breakdown of the family structure, as it relates to the emergence of terror, is narrated on two parallel levels, this book focuses on questions of genre and form; namely, I read the works chosen as allegory. Specifically, the three Conradian novels chosen to represent the rhetorical dimension of terror were either inspired by or based on Conrad’s real historical encounters of terroristic violence. The prominence of this feature affirms Fredric Jameson’s observation on “the social origins of the narrative material” and Paul de Man’s claim that the allegorical aspect of poetic language seeks to transform “all individual experience directly into general truth” (Jameson 124; de Man 200). Jameson, in commenting on “third-world literature”, has suggested that allegorization acts as the “political interpretation of literary texts” (17). However, the question of whether works from authors of the so-called “third-world” are to be read as national allegory is a contentious one. For example, the theorist Aijaz Ahmad has attacked Jameson’s assumption that “all third-world texts are necessarily … to be read as … national allegories” (98). According to Ahmad, Jameson’s main argument falters under the binary opposition between “first” and “third” worlds. Ahmad further argues against the “third world” as being “defined purely in terms of an ‘experience’ of externally inserted phenomena” (100). Furthermore, he suggests that “there is no such thing as a ‘Third World Literature’” (96). Despite the problematic nature of this approach, as I aim at relating the allegorical aspect of African literature with global economic advents, I have chosen to adopt Ahmad’s viewpoint that the “illusion of Third-Worldist cultural nationalism finally had to be abandoned” (34). Still, I follow Jameson’s approach to explore how narratives are broadly aligned with national ideology. In so doing, I have been inspired by literary scholar Doris Sommer, who had earlier applied Jameson’s notion of “national allegory” to narratives of romance in Latin America. Inspired by her rhetorically asking “[i]s it possible, for example, that outside of Latin America, too, political passion was being grounded in erotics?” (32), I seek to evaluate whether the family ISA transforms individuals into instruments that secure national ideology through marriage. Building on Sommer’s work, I apply her notion of the “metonymic association between romantic love that needs the state’s blessing and political legitimacy that needs to be founded on love” (41). Based on this observation, I further suggest a connection between illegitimate marriage, as an extension of romantic love without the “state’s blessing”, and

14

Introduction

political illegitimacy as founded upon, in Foucault words, “the banished casual pleasure of sexuality” (qtd. in Sommer 38). As the family disintegrates due to the corruption of the patriarch, it becomes the site of, and instrument of, terroristic violence by acting against national or colonial ideology in the interests of a wider cultural preservation project. To determine how family, or its breakdown, influences individual acts of terror, I differentiate the conventional gendering of male and female family roles in affecting their behaviors as agents and objects respectively of terrorist violence. Conrad had earlier foreshadowed the appearance of terror against women in Heart of Darkness, in which Marlow’s decision to prevent Kurtz’s fiancée from learning the truth of Kurtz’s final words seemingly indicates the effort made by the white patriarch to protect white women: “The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark–too dark altogether….” (123)

Marlow’s affirmation of the decision that he has made makes it clear that he views women as vulnerable objects who would find the darkness of African terror unbearable. This exclusion of Anglo-European women from the truth of the African colonial project reflects the conventional gendering of family roles that restrict women to the domestic sphere: “They–the women I mean–are out of it–should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr Kurtz saying, ‘My intended.’ You should have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it.” (80-1)

That Marlow neglects the rights of Kurtz’s fiancée in knowing the truth and regards the lie he has told as a mere trifle show how the voice of the story itself disempowers women. Marlow’s “white lie” thus implies that Anglo-European women should forever be kept ignorant of the corruption of the patriarch, and therefore represents the efforts of the Anglo-European patriarchy to make its women place their trust in their husbands. Kurtz’s fiancée thus remains ignorant of the truth that Kurtz has actually been corrupted by his involvement in colonial exploitation.10 In contrast to their status back in the European Continent, 10

She regards Kurtz as a man whose “goodness shone in every act” (HOD 122).

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Anglo-European women living under the different historical and political discourse in colonized Africa are exposed to indigenous violence following the reinvention of older gender norms, as these women become the subordinate other within this milieu. To investigate how family, gender and race interact with individual acts of terror, I make use of Spivak’s suggestion that in the subaltern context of ethnicity, class and gender, “[t]he question of ‘woman’ seems most problematic in this context. Clearly, if you are poor, black and female you get it in three ways” (90). Similarly, Ella Shohat has theorized the “contradictory subject positioning” when colonial and gender discourses intersect (40): Western woman can simultaneously constitute “center” and “periphery”, identity and alterity. Western woman, in these narratives, exists in a relation of subordination to Western man and in a relation of domination toward “non-Western” men and women. (40)

That Shohat defines ethnicity as a crucial factor in theorizing gender relations sharpens the hierarchy of race over gender. Living under the unfulfilling conditions of patriarchy, women are driven to become women-masters of their indigenous servants. However, as the milieu in which they operate is characterized by male domination, these women-masters themselves eventually become targets of indigenous sexual violence. The situation affirms Peter Stallybrass’s observation that “[w]hen women were themselves the objects to be mapped out, virginity and marital ‘chastity’ were pictured as fragile states to be maintained by the surveillance of wives and daughters” (129). I contend that the Anglo-European patriarchy is responsible for subordinating Anglo-European women to the domestic domain while they simultaneously lack the knowledge of how the backdrop of African colonialism affects gender performance. The opening of Lessing’s novel demonstrates how the whites associate the indigenous peoples with violence: [The whites] felt a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction, as if some belief had been confirmed, as if something had happened which could only have been expected. When natives steal, murder or rape, that is the feeling white people have. (1)

On one hand, anger occurs among the whites as the crimes committed by the indigenous peoples challenge the colonial institutions. On the other hand, the whites feel “satisfaction” as the incidents confirm their belief in

16

Introduction

the brutality of the indigenous peoples. I demonstrate in this book how the whites’ suspicion towards the indigenous peoples lays the groundwork for the subsequent development of intimate relations between white women-masters and their indigenous servants. Fanon has suggested that these erotic relations between Anglo-European women and indigenous men represent the latter’s attempt “to elevate himself to the white man’s level” (Black Skin, White Masks 81). The erotic relations between white women masters and their indigenous servants thus imply the alteration of colonial power relations, which results in “a restructuring of the world” (Black Skin, White Masks 82). For this reason, I challenge Shohat’s idea as stated above and suggest the subordination of gender to race. As this book aims at assessing how material factors exert symbolic and ideological authority over the bodies and life opportunities of various women characters, I further apply Spivak’s usage of Althusser’s notion of the linkage between labor power and ruling ideology to account for the patriarchal desire to maintain dominance over women: The reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the ruling ideology for the workers, and a reproduction of the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression … (qtd. in Spivak 68)

Under conventional patriarchy, biological reproduction is aligned with the reproduction of labor power that helps to sustain the patriarchal ideology of a male-dominated world. Women are subordinated as instruments for reproducing labor power, whose role is limited to reproducing either male heirs, as future patriarchal figures, or female heirs, whose subordinate state reinforces patriarchal dominance. To elucidate the interplay between women’s bodies and commodity exchanges in patriarchal societies, Luce Irigaray points out that “[t]he exchange of women as goods accompanies and stimulates exchanges of other ‘wealth’ among groups of men” (172). Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg makes a similar claim that “social contract is preceded by and based upon the sexual contract” (126). When this gendered capitalist ideology is spread through globalization, individual acts of violence become a ubiquitous global phenomenon. Under the pressures of globalized capitalism, the commodification of experience motivates first despair, and then destructive outlets in individual acts of terror. In Totem and Taboo, Freud departed from pure psychoanalytic tradition and began an analysis of the ways that desire

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transforms culture. In explaining how the obsessive prohibitions of taboo become social products “persisting from generation to generation, perhaps merely as a result of tradition transmitted through parental and social authority”, Freud suggests that the cultural drive “organiz[es taboo] as an inherited psychical endowment” (Totem 31). Inspired by Freud’s shifting stance, this book accordingly focuses primarily on both the cultural and economic forces that drive the human subject’s desires toward objects apart from the self and which subsequently, may result in acts of terror. This shift toward the cultural context for desires is important, because it links individual choices to cultural determinism. Here I integrate Freud’s ideas on cultural drives with Marx’s ideas on commodity fetishism in showing how characters change as a response to the absence of the father. In his clinical studies, Freud had observed cases of “men whose object choice was ruled by a fetish” (Sexuality 204). Marx, in contrast to Freud, does not view fetishism at the level of individuals. Rather, Marx theorizes that fetishism is a social occurrence; making it inseparable from production. He further defines fetishism as follows: There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race … I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities. (165)

I make use of Marx’s notion of the relationship between products of labor and commodities to analyze how the unfulfilled fetish for paternal protection eventually results in the objectification of the parent-child relationship, which in turn results in an experience of alienation: [T]he commodity form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. (165)

In verifying my argument that the originating psychological drive is followed by materialist determination, I apply Raymond Williams’s notion that “[i]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (75). Formulating the notion of ISAs during the 1970s, Althusser could not possibly have predicted the impact of globalized capitalism upon the

18

Introduction

family and other ISAs. I adopt a contemporary approach to re-frame Althusser’s formulation and to investigate the social role of globalized capitalism on the family ISA in contemporary African Anglophone narratives. Specifically, I demonstrate how the absence of the father under globalized economy disrupts the link between individuals and state ideology. To do so, I relate globalized capitalism with Wallerstein’s idea on world-system: It is an economic but not a political entity, unlike empires, city-states and nation-states. In fact, it precisely encompasses within its bounds (it is hard to speak of boundaries) empires, city-states, and the emerging “nation-states”. It is a “world” system, not because it encompasses the whole world, but because it is larger than any juridically-defined political unit. (15)

The modern world-system has to be differentiated from the nation as it exerts beyond the national level. Eric Hayot comments on this distinctive feature and explains “[w]orld-systems are worlds, in the sense that they constitute a self-organizing, self-enclosed, and self-referential totality; but they are not to be confused with the actual world” (32, original emphasis). As I initiate father as a metonym of the state that links individual to national ideology, commodified parent-child relationship under globalized economy may result in the identification of material fulfillment with national ideology for both the father and the child. Such identification is thus a form of resistance against the actual national ideology. Subsequently, disillusionment towards the actual world occurs when the family ISA fails to fulfill the material needs of its members. To reinforce my choice of discussing African Anglophone narratives, I also illustrate the role of language in indicating power relations. In Heart of Darkness, the manager’s boy pronounces “Mistah Kurtz–he dead” (112). In mimicking the indigenous pidgin, Conrad differentiates the Anglo-Saxon users of English from the language’s African acquirers. Though the indigenous peoples are incapable of speaking the imperialist’s language perfectly, English has undeniably become an experience shared by the two parties. David Murray suggests that “[t]he ‘embrace’ of the West which creates a ‘shared’ experience sounds like an equitable enough affair, but it obscures the relative imbalances of power and knowledge …” (12). As the English tongue is no longer an exclusive privilege of the Anglo-Saxons, the indigenous experience of the English language alters their power relationship with the imperialists. Thus, the indigenous parody

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of the English language is perceived by the Anglo-Europeans as an injurious speech act that threatens their domination. Judith Butler has suggested of this that “[t]o be injured by speech is to suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are” (4). The indigenous role-playing mastery of the English language is allegorized as a challenge to the colonial mastery of the white race in Africa. In addition to serving as an indicator of power relations within colonial discourses, language is likewise an instrument used by the patriarch to reinforce his domineering position. Conventional patriarchy monopolizes both the written and verbal domains of language. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have related the dominance of male voices with the patriarchal control of the pen and the press. They suggest that “[t]he poet’s pen is in some sense (even more than figuratively) a penis” (4). Their observation indicates how patriarchal control of the written domain subordinates women’s voices. In analyzing how the rise of women writers alters power relations between the two genders, Elaine Showalter has proposed the subordination of gender to capital: Married women writers (such as Margaret Gatty, Emma Marshall, Isabella Banks, and Lucy Clifford) were frequently motivated to publish by their husbands’ financial failure, illness, or death, and thus took the double burdens of support. (47)

Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country and Lessing’s The Grass is Singing have likewise shown the burdens of Anglo-European women-masters during their patriarch’s absence. The depictions of patriarchs, who are either defeated by poor health or incompetent at financial management, is an indication that, when the reinvention of older gender norms fails to create an equilibrium within the household, women are driven to take up roles as women-masters. Thus, globalized capitalism affects the reinvention of older gender norms.

Chapter Outlines In Chapter I, I theorize how the struggle between modernity and tradition gives rise to terroristic violence. In Things Fall Apart, family relations and indigenous traditions are threatened by the inexorability of modernity. Under such circumstances, Okonkwo engages in ritual violence as a symbol of resistance against an external menace. His self-destruction implies even as it critiques the inexorability and

20

Introduction

inevitability of modern triumph over African traditions. To account for the overcoming of ritualistic traditions by modernity, I apply MacKenzie’s idea on the “cosmology of deities” in Achebe’s work to show how Umuofia is transformed from a religious tribe to a humanitarian society (150). This is in keeping with Freud’s suggestion that the sacrifice of individualistic desire for greater social benefits is the ultimate realm of modern civilization: The ultimate outcome should be a system of law to which all–or at least all those who qualify as members of the community–have contributed by partly forgoing the satisfaction of their drives, and which allows no one again subject to the same qualification–to become a victim of brute force. (Civilization 41)

I argue that colonization ultimately fails to root out the indigenous desire to restore ritualistic traditions. I make use of Fanon’s theory on the impact of colonization over indigenous rituals and psychology in illustrating how pre-colonial power relations are altered in post-colonial Africa: The arrival of the colonist signified syncretically the death of indigenous society, cultural lethargy, and petrifaction of the individual. For the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonist. (Wretched 50)

The chapter will explore the way in which the process of decolonization, as depicted in the post-colonial South African setting of Coetzee’s Disgrace, leaves people unprotected by either family or any form of institution. In asserting the bygone racial supremacy of his Anglo-European ancestors, David Lurie commits an act of sexual violence upon his indigenous student Melanie. I theorize that the teacher-student relationship between David and Melanie is an extension of the parent-child relationship. The father thereby becomes a domestic threat that subverts the moral code of both the family and the school ISAs. I employ this assumption in analyzing how unfulfilled patriarchal authority undermines national identification and identities, and may trigger individual acts of terror. One example of this is that David is ironically and indirectly punished when an act of sexual violence is committed against his daughter in the same post-colonial milieu. Consequently, I evaluate the effectiveness of the Althusserian mode in offering protection to individuals against terroristic violence. The return of indigenous violence upon the once-privileged Anglo-Europeans represents an

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indigenous challenge to colonial institutions. Chapter II moves from a discussion of the male patriarchs to a discussion of the roles of women vis-à-vis acts of terrorist violence which they suffer as a consequence of their subaltern status. As a response to Conrad’s suggestion that Winnie becomes the imposer of violence due to the violence of the subaltern experience that she has suffered from, I explore how African colonialism provides unique conditions for the emergence of gender oppression following the breakdown of families. One example of this is the way in which the reinvention of older gender norms restricts women to the domestic sphere, with their surplus of labor being accumulated by the patriarch. I make use of Anne McClintock’s observations on the transformations of industrial imperialism in analyzing how colonialism in Africa affects class, race, gender, economy and age: [T]he central transformations of industrial imperialism: class (servant to mistress), race (white woman to black slave), gender (woman to man), economy (land to city) and age (adult to baby), transformations that were drawn simultaneously from the cult of domesticity and the cult of empire. (142)

I highlight how the transformation of class, race and gender causes Anglo-European women to become the victims of African terroristic violence, while the inadequacy of the Anglo-European patriarchy drives its women to become women-masters. Thus, when the subordination of gender to race occurs, Anglo-European women become the white mistresses of their former indigenous servants. To back up my argument, I apply Hegel’s notion of the master-slave dialectic, in which the master (lord) becomes an entity dependent upon the slave (bondsman), with the latter being an independent subject: [T]he lord, who has interposed the bondsman between it [a thing] and himself, takes to himself only the dependent aspect of the things and has the pure enjoyment of it. The aspect of its independence he leaves to the bondsman, who works on it. (116)

The master consequently comes to the realization that s/he is actually rendered ignorant of the slave’s craft and power. In both In the Heart of the Country and The Grass is Singing, sexual violence imposed by the indigenous servant upon an Anglo-European mistress is presented as an indigenous challenge to the white patriarch. This observation confirms David Attwell’s notion of “the pathological underside of the colonial

22

Introduction

family, the relationships of intimacy and exclusivity between masters and servants” (62, original emphasis). White women in colonized Africa are thus exploited both in marriage and in their roles as the mistresses of their former indigenous servants. Chapter III challenges the suggestion, as portrayed in the works of Achebe and Coetzee, that pre-colonial and post-colonial violence are stabilized by capitalist forces when people are driven to seek compromise in order to realize their materialist desires. In Laila Lalami’s novels Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son, the respective protagonists Faten and Youssef are raised in the absence of fathers. I refer to these two novels and argue that this type of family background is a label of disgrace and results in alienation on the part of the child, thus driving the characters to seek refuge from their alienation in commodity fetishism. I again make use of Frederic Jameson’s notion on allegory to show how the subaltern experience consequently drives these protagonists to seek alternative family institutions in their initial attempts to become new bourgeois subjects: [O]nly a new and original form of collective social life can overcome the isolation and monadic autonomy of the older bourgeois subjects in a way that individual consciousness can be lived–and not merely theorized–as an “effect of structure” (Lacan). (125)

Here I refer to the “new and original form of collective social life” as an alternative family ISA, as this label often refers to an affiliation with a strong capitalist background, and which substitutes for the family. The desire to move from the periphery to the center, so as to escape their subaltern state, causes the characters to turn to the worship of violence and other “dangerous pursuits” through providing labor for these alternative family ISAs. To categorize the role played by the characters of Aziz, Youssef and Faten under globalized capitalism, I apply Wallerstein’s theory on the distinction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat: If we have defined the bourgeoisie as those who receive surplus-value they do not themselves create and use some of it to accumulate capital, it follows that the proletariat are those who yield part of the value they have created to others. In this sense there exists in the capitalist mode of production only bourgeois and proletarians. The polarity is structural. (Balibar and Wallerstein 120)

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In the novels, the affiliations consume the bodies of the characters via capitalist means. I regard the characters as proletarian-laborers who yield their profits to their respective affiliations. This book is structured on the hypothesis, and therefore will demonstrate, that the (absent) father acts as a metonym of the state. The family institution is an engine that links individuals to the state and secures the national ideology. Under the forces of globalized capitalism, the weakened paternal authority is believed to be substitutable by capitalist means. The fetishization of capital thereby results in individual acts that reject the national ideology. However, once the material aspects of life can no longer be satisfied, individuals experience disillusionment, which gives rise to a state of chaos at the societal level. Thus, the use of terroristic violence could both be a consequence of a breakdown in family structure and a response to the overcoming of tradition and kinship by modernity and globalized capitalism. The indispensable relationship between an eroding family structure and terror is not only an observation to be found in African Anglophone narratives, but rather, that this relationship can help us to better comprehend terror as a globalized phenomenon in the twenty-first century. To prove the general applicability of this relationship, the concluding chapter draws from two examples of terrorist violence in recent decades to validate the observations on literary terror within a contemporary context. First, the case of Osama bin Laden will be used to illustrate how the use of terroristic violence could both be a consequence of a breakdown in family structure and a response to the overcoming of tradition by modernity. Both Lalami’s novels and the real-life case of Osama bin Laden seemingly suggest a linkage between an alternative family institution in the form of a fundamentalist religious sect and terror. Thus, speculating that such a link exists in the contemporary context, this chapter also addresses the political situation in Egypt in 2012 to demonstrate how a fundamentalist religious sect can become an institutionalized apparatus that seeks to uphold traditions and national ideology. To prove the general applicability of Conrad’s formulation of terror in the selected African Anglophone novels and the possibility of women’s resistance against his definition, the examples of two contemporary African women will be drawn to show how Kurtz’s fiancée has been given a continued life in contemporary narratives. Within the narratives of Lalami, after having been victimized by the breakdown in the family structure, Faten and Amal have both chosen alternative approaches to living outside the structures and stories that the family ISA provides,

24

Introduction

including its patriarchal narratives. In doing so, both of these women successfully acquire a renewed sense of contentment as selves and as women. Finally, to demonstrate how women resist gender constraints outside the fictional framework, the case of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani schoolgirl who has fought against the Taliban prohibition of female education, will be discussed to how women strive for modernity. By showing how terror emerges in Conrad’s novels and within African Anglophone narratives and in actual contemporary contexts, this book adopts Conrad’s observation that “I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world” and suggests that terror is a ubiquitous norm (HOD 66).

CHAPTER I THE BREAKDOWN OF THE FAMILY: RITUALIZING VIOLENCE IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART AND J.M. COETZEE’S DISGRACE

“I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God.” ~ Osama bin Laden

In his novels The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes, Conrad focused on the role of violence in the domestic setting in triggering individual acts of terror, which demonstrate a rejection of national ideology. In order to explore the lasting influence of this Conradian notion, in this chapter I analyze how terror in African Anglophone narratives originates from a breakdown in the family structure. Though I have applied a more conservative definition and placed my focus on conventional patriarchy, I do not intend to be overly normative in reference to the concept of “family”. There are many kinds of family structures that are neither normative nor nuclear and it is not the purpose of this book to idealize a specific kind of family or the patriarchal authority invested in it. In displaying how various acts of violence are done in the name of patriarchy, dating from Kurtz’s corruption in Africa, I actually suggest terror as a constant response to the breakdown of the family. Building my analysis upon this foundation, I argue initially that a breakdown in the family structure as an internal factor does not solely give rise to individual acts of terror. Rather, it must be juxtaposed with an external force such as the overcoming of ritualistic tradition by modernity, which either creates a motive for committing acts of terror, or makes the family vulnerable to external threats of terror. In the first part of this chapter, I will demonstrate, with reference to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, that when ritualistic competition and

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Chapter I

the breakdown of the traditional family structure in pre-colonial Africa were interwoven with imperialist expansion, individual acts of terror occurred as a response to “the cosmological fear of anarchy”.1 After theorizing the way in which terroristic violence emerges in pre-colonial Africa as a response to the threat of colonization or Christianity, in the second part of this chapter I will then proceed to demonstrate how the legacy of colonization, persisting into the post-colonial era, affects both the once dominant Anglo-European imperialists and the subordinated African indigenous peoples. In so doing, I have chosen J.M. Coetzee’s post-colonial narrative Disgrace to illustrate how the altered power relations persisting between the descendants of African indigenous peoples and Anglo-European imperialists in South Africa give rise to terroristic violence. In addition to the logic of the sequence in terms of narrative time, my choice of discussing Coetzee after Achebe can also be explained with reference to the way in which Coetzee’s novel serves as a post-colonial response to Achebe’s concern with the overcoming of pre-colonial indigenous traditions by Western modernity. Specifically, I show how the decline in the Anglo-European influence in post-colonial South Africa results in the revival of pre-colonial indigenous violence. Achebe has explicitly drawn attention to the way in which tribal competition has long been an important part of Igbo ritual: Competition among these communities has remained a strong feature of Igbo life from antiquity through colonial times to the present. At its worst it could lead to conflict. But there were also compelling reasons for peace and cooperation arising from the need to foster vital regional institutions … (HE 7)

Further affirming the significance of this ritualistic tradition, Achebe shows in Things Fall Apart that Okonkwo, as a wrestler, brings “honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat” at the young age of eighteen (3). By noting the significance of this test of physical prowess, we see that the indigenous ideology aligning physical strength with tribal honor shaped his sense of masculinity from the time he was a child. The transformation from these taken-for-granted notions of tribal honor to an alternative system of values has been observed by Clayton G. MacKenzie, who notes that the metamorphosis of piety in Things Fall 1

Chinua Achebe mentions that the characters in Things Fall Apart are burdened by “the cosmological fear of anarchy” (HE 19).

The Breakdown of the Family

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Apart acts as “a switch from faith in a world where life is given, to commitment to one where security and achievement are measured and earned very differently” (162). Specifically, MacKenzie is referring to the way in which ritualistic traditions transmitted down through the generations are replaced by imperialist governance, which guarantees both physical protection and spiritual fulfillment. In analyzing the metamorphosis of indigenous rituals in Africa, I apply Louis Althusser’s notion of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) to illustrate how pre-colonial rituals, such as the aforementioned emphasis on competition, are superseded by colonial ISAs. In colonized Africa, the colonizers imposed restraints upon the colonized subjects through the establishment of a state. Demonstrations of masculine strength through tribal competitions in Africa were thus replaced by the state ideology during the colonial period. Coetzee’s Disgrace, in contrast, features the failure of the repressive state apparatus in post-colonial South Africa, and therefore the reassertion of demonstrations of pre-colonial masculinity. Thus, I suggest that the use of violent terroristic acts represents the revival of pre-colonial ritual in post-colonial Africa, and, without the protections of the state, acts as an inescapable threat. The unavoidability of terroristic violence simultaneously demonstrates the failure of the family to protect individuals. To further illustrate the way in which the weakening of patriarchy results in the breakdown of the family structure and the emergence of acts of terror which threaten the society, I theorize a linkage between individual desires, family ties and social stability, using Freud’s analysis of the unconscious and repression. For Freud, the failure of patriarchal figures to repress their own desires threatens the stability and harmony of the family: The unconscious, that is, the “repressed”, offers no resistance whatever to the endeavours of the therapy; indeed it has but a single aim itself, and that is to escape the oppressive forces bearing down on it, and either break through to consciousness, or else find release in some form of real action. (Pleasure 57)

The release of the unconscious and repressed desires “in some form of real action”, e.g. domestic and sexual violence, contributes to a breakdown in family structure. Freud also suggests that the repression of individual desire is an essential component of a civilized society: [C]ivilization is built up on renunciation, how much it presupposes the non-satisfaction of powerful drives–by suppression, repression or some

28

Chapter I other means. Such “cultural frustration” dominates the large sphere of interpersonal relations; as we already know, it is the cause of the hostility that all civilizations have to contend with. (Civilization 44)

Things Fall Apart seemingly reflects Freud’s observations on the trend line where the repression of individual desires move towards modern civilization. The novel explores the way in which the overcoming of indigenous traditions by modernity results in “cultural frustration”. However, Freud’s analysis was limited to a single industrial society, rather than the more complicated case of a society undergoing colonial oppression. Thus, we must keep in mind that the introduction of European civilization to Africa arose from the selfish desire of the imperialists to exploit African indigenous peoples. To reassert Africa’s independence from European narratives, Achebe has directly condemned Conrad’s depiction of Africa in Heart of Darkness as it “set[s] Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest” (qtd. in Leitch 1784). Rather than condemning or praising the European civilization imposed upon African indigenous peoples, I merely suggest that the failure of post-colonial state institutions to repress individual desire creates the possibility for violent terroristic acts. In the following analysis, I suggest ways in which state repression at both the individual psychological and cultural levels may invite terroristic violence at different stages of colonialism. From the literary examples chosen, we see that while indigenous peoples exercised violence as a means of resisting modernity in pre-colonial Africa, Afrikaners in post-colonial Africa also exercise violence as a response to newly arising post-colonial repression. Michael Marais suggests that David Lurie’s alignment of desire and responsibility reflects a dominant feature of Coetzee’s post-colonial South African narratives, in that Coetzee’s novels are “determined by a tension between desire and responsibility” (174). In her discussion of the linkage between sexual violence, desire and responsibility, Rosemary Jolly comments that “[t]he acts of rape that Coetzee’s fiction depicts involve fantasy on the part of the perpetrators; they are quintessential enactments of desire without responsibility” (94). To analyze David’s act of sexual assault in the post-colonial setting, I quote from Pamela Cooper and interpret David’s overriding of responsibility by individual desire as the failure of the Anglo-Europeans in recognizing the passing of the established colonial order in post-colonial Africa:

The Breakdown of the Family

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At fifty-two, Lurie is broadly representative of an older social order: the officially defunct South Africa of Afrikaner dominance, statutory racial oppression, and the uneasy pleasures of white privilege. (22)

The metamorphosis of social order means that David’s identity as a white no longer brings any racial privilege to him. As with Okonkwo in the pre-colonial context, David fails to recognize the metamorphosis of the social order that takes place in post-colonial South Africa. Consequently, violence transforms into a new form of ritual for him, and David thereby inhabits the roles of both terrorizing and terrorized subject of post-colonial violence. To understand the process of decolonization following the Second World War, I make use of Franz Fanon’s theory on decolonization in analyzing the overthrowing of Anglo-European civilization by the ex-colonized in post-colonial South Africa: [D]ecolonization is always a violent event … decolonization is quite simply the substitution of one “species” of mankind by another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total and seamless (Wretched 1).

Fanon adds that “[d]ecolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder” (Wretched 2). When colonial institutions fail to repress indigenous desire in post-colonial South Africa, then terroristic violence becomes a tool for reviving indigenous sovereignty: Colonized peoples are not alone. Despite the efforts of colonialism, their frontiers remain permeable to news and rumors. They discover that violence is atmospheric, it breaks out sporadically, and here and there sweeps away the colonial regime. (Wretched 30)

Fanon further elaborates that “atmospheric violence” represents “violence rippling under the skin” (Wretched 31). The demonstration of physical strength through violence is thus the indigenous ritualistic resistance to the Anglo-European civilization. This challenge to Anglo-European sovereignty represents the revival of the ritualistic competition in post-colonial Africa described in Things Fall Apart, and which had once been repressed by colonization. In the post-colonial context, the reemergence of violence in Coetzee’s work suggests the inapplicability of the Anglo-European model of civilization to post-colonial South Africa, as well as the failure of colonial state institutions in maintaining long-term peace. Under such

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circumstances, the Afrikaners may feel a sense of “cultural frustration”. Fanon has pointed out how the indigenous determination to react against state repression affects the psychology of the colonizers: The need for this change exists in a raw, repressed, and reckless state in the lives and consciousness of colonized men and women. But the eventuality of such a change is also experiences as a terrifying future in the consciousness of another “species” of men and women: the colons, the colonists. (Wretched 1)

The breakdown in the Anglo-European institutions leaves the Afrikaners weak and defenseless when they are thrown into an unfamiliar milieu, and thereby seeking to mitigate the indigenous threat in whatever way possible. Furthermore, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg suggests that Lucy Lurie, as an Afrikaner terrorized by indigenous sexual violence, has chosen to seek indigenous protection: In a plot move that many readers and critics find both unlikely and disturbing, Lucy, a lesbian, chooses not to report the rape to police and instead accepts the offer of marriage extended by Petrus–who has a kinship relation with one of the rapists–as a gesture of “protection”. (124)

Lucy’s decision to accept Petrus’ marriage proposal in exchange for domestic protection, despite violating her personal integrity, ironically becomes the best choice in a post-colonial South Africa where violence is ubiquitous.

The Role of the Family in Pre-colonial Culture Since Althusser’s theory is founded upon the existence of the state, which serves as “a ‘machine’ of repression” (Lenin 92), we must consider to what extent the notion of a family ISA is appropriate to the pre-colonial milieu described in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. As Achebe points out, the Igbo people have conventionally been known as a tribe (HE 4). Western scholars such as Clayton G. MacKenzie and Rebekah Hamilton have conventionally regarded the Igbo society as a clan and a tribe respectively, rather than as a nation. The use of these terms is potentially loaded for, as John Parker and Richard Rathbone suggest, “[the use of the] word ‘tribe’ to describe African societies emerged from a [Western] desire to commend the nation-state while suggesting the inherent inferiority of others” (45). For this reason, in his description of the Igbo, Achebe adds

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that “the Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with” (HE 6, my emphasis). Rather than employing these externally imposed terms such as tribe, clan and nation, if we, following Achebe, give the Igbo people a precise definition as an indigenous entity defined on their own terms, then we will be able to evaluate the nature of African terror in the pre-colonial period. Achebe consciously introduces his ancestral home, the setting of Things Fall Apart, to foreign readers while defending his portrayal of the Igbo against biased Western eyes. He first declares his perception of the Igbo people as follows: The Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria are more than ten million strong and must be accounted one of the major peoples of Africa. Conventional practice would call them a tribe, but I no longer follow that convention. I call them a nation. (HE 3-4, my emphasis)

Achebe counters the conventional conception of the Igbo people as a tribe by providing information about the size of the group, which is comparable to that of a nation. By saying that he “no longer” refers to the group as a tribe, Achebe implies the birth of “national” consciousness. This stands out with reference to Achebe’s earlier writing, i.e. when the third-person narrator in Things Fall Apart refers to the Igbo people as a clan.2 Achebe realizes later that the Igbo people, even before being given the name of Nigeria, should be referred to as a nation.3 Still, whether the Igbo people constitute a “nation” is open to debate. Although the Igbo are the legitimate inhabitants of the territory, the term “nation” often refers to a place under a central government and institutional system.4 The absence of the nationalist framework means that the pre-colonial Igbo family structure cannot be regarded as a family ISA within an Althusserian discourse, as the Igbo family structures predate both Western nations and the colonial structures exported from those nations. Despite this, Althusser’s framework is useful in showing how the functions of the pre-colonial family differ from the family ISA. My main 2

Published in 1958. Achebe describes Nigeria as the place “recently annexed and named” by Britain after the First World War (HE 31). He also provides evidence to demonstrate how the Igbo people fit the categorization of a “nation” rather than a “tribe” by comparing the literal definitions of the two key terms (HE 4-5). 4 The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines nation as “a country considered as a group of people with the same language, culture and history, who live in a particular area under one government” (my emphasis). 3

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argument is therefore that because family ISA serves to support the nation or state in Althusser’s Marxian terminology, the pre-colonial family fails to achieve this because the nation has yet to be formed. I argue, however, that although the pre-colonial family structure cannot be regarded as a family ISA, it still functions as both the embodiment and instrument of constructing ideology. In opening chapter of Things Fall Apart we see that Achebe paints his protagonist, Okonkwo, as a great wrestler whose achievements are inseparable from the indigenous rituals of competition and the emphasis on physical strength. This foreshadows Okonkwo’s decision to resort to violence, an abuse of his physical strength, in the fight against imperialist occupation once the indigenous ritual of competition fails to resist the colonial state institutions. The memory of his weak, effeminate father leads Okonkwo to assert his own power through violent means, both domestically as the head of the family and socially as a respected man of personal achievement: [Okonkwo] did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. (3)

Okonkwo sees the use of masculine strength as a ritual for tackling problems. Since Igbo culture is marked by the segregation of masculinity from being womanish in various aspects, Okonkwo’s alignment of the demonstration of physical strength with success may sound like a ritualization of the Igbo cult of masculinity. The economic means of production and practice of crime and punishment in Igbo culture confirm Hamilton’s observation that “[o]ne of the norms of Igbo culture is the sharp division between what is feminine and what is masculine” (283). For instance, within this agricultural society, crops are divided into women’s crops and men’s crops based on the amount of effort that must be expended in cultivating them. 5 The punishment of crimes is also differentiated along gender lines. Hamilton defines women’s crimes in Igbo culture as “those committed inadvertently” (283). Men’s crimes in Igbo culture can therefore be understood as those committed intentionally. However, it would be wrong to interpret Okonkwo’s aligning of physical strength with success as the 5

In Things Fall Apart, the “yam stood for manliness” (25). Hamilton explains that “it is harder and takes more time to cultivate and harvest yams than to raise other crops” (283).

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cult of violence in Igbo culture. Okonkwo’s choice of violence originates from his disappointment with his unmanly and unsuccessful father, which resulted in childhood abuse by his peers. Okonkwo, having been raised in a society in which domestic protection is very important, chooses violence because of the lack of domestic protection. Under traditional patriarchy, the patriarch is expected to provide “domestic sanctuary”, a term which I will employ throughout this book to illustrate the forms of protection provided by the household, which refers both to material and psychological fulfillments, and, in times of external menace, to the protection of the household. My theorization conforms to Freud’s suggestion that “the house [acts as] a substitute for the womb–one’s first dwelling place, probably still longed for, where one was safe and felt so comfortable” (Civilization 36). However, as head of his own household, Okonkwo also fails to provide domestic sanctuary under the standards of the indigenous patriarchy. I argue that this failure at the domestic level results in terror at the societal level. While following this analysis to its conclusion, I must also defend the Igbo culture with this caveat: though masculinity is valued in the community, peace is also highly praised. Okonkwo’s violation of the Igbo culture hinders the progress of the Igbo towards modern civilization, and eventually results in the individual acts of violence that lead to his suicidal act. To demonstrate how ideology of the patriarchal family is inflicted on individuals, we must first look to Okonkwo’s childhood to understand how his experiences affected his fetishization of violence. Okonkwo’s need to assert his masculinity through violent means originates from the twin blows of physical and psychological suffering, i.e. the poverty and the humiliation that he suffered during his childhood because of his “lazy and improvident” father Unoka (3). As a child, Okonkwo’s family was so poor that they had “barely enough to eat” (4). Unoka, instead of fulfilling his paternal obligations by securing the physical and psychological needs of the household, prioritized the satisfaction of his own personal pleasure over that of his family. This selfish attitude represents the failure of the patriarch to make substantial plans for the family, and thereby resulted in debts and hunger. In addition to suffering from the physical pain of poverty, Okonkwo also suffers from the psychological pain of humiliation. As a child, “a playmate has told him that his father was agbala” (11). Literally, agbala means “womanly”. Hamilton interprets the symbolic meaning of the expression as “a man of no accomplishment” (283). The absence of

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domestic sanctuary, as shown by the humiliating label and the physical tortures of poverty, drives Okonkwo to disavow his father’s deeds. While Unoka is “a coward and could not bear the sight of blood” (5), Okonkwo becomes “a man of action, a man of war” (9). The ideology that Okonkwo embraces goes against unsuccessful men. This ideology is impressed upon him at a young age due to the childhood suffering he experienced as a consequence of his father’s inadequacies. In addition to serving as an important device for inflicting masculine ideology upon individuals, the patriarchal family may also inflict false concepts upon individuals. I argue that by the time Okonkwo has become the head of his own household, he has falsely embraced the use of violence as a means of asserting his masculinity and importance. To account for Okonkwo’s rationalization of violence, Rhonda Cobham suggests that the absence of an efficient patriarch results in his shift to masculinity as a robust indicator of social identity: Okonkwo must fabricate a social context for his identity and values rather than simply assuming a system of references in relation to which he can define himself. He does so by isolating and responding to specific symbols of masculinity within his cultures as if they, in the abstract, could constitute all that a man needed to construct his social self. (514)

By ruling his household in a “masculine” way, that is, “with a heavy hand” (10), Okonkwo mistakenly believes that he has secured the psychological needs of his family, an element that his father Unoka had failed to provide for him. Okonkwo’s achievement of fame and wealth, both of which are built upon his physical strength as a great wrestler, lead him to falsely believe that he has bested “his most immediate point of male reference” (Cobham 514), this is to say, his father-who had failed to secure the family’s physical needs. Subsequently, I argue that Okonkwo’s rigid attachment to this belief in strength, and thereby violence, results in his inability to adapt to the social changes which take place as the Igbo move toward modernity and turn away from ritualistic traditions. Gradually, Okonkwo’s belief in violence comes to be rejected by both his family and his people. Although the patriarchal family inflicts a masculine ideology upon Okonkwo as a child, this does not mean that the family functions by ideology. I suggest that due to Okonkwo’s memory of his unmanly father, who brought great pain to his childhood, Okonkwo aims at assuring his paternal authority in the household through repression:

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Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness … [Okonkwo’s fear] was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. (10-1)

It is true that Okonkwo, unlike his father, succeeds in providing for the material needs of his family. However, as with his father, he actually fails in securing for their psychological needs. Specifically, his fiery temper causes his family members to live in constant fear of him. Ironically, he follows in his father’s footsteps by imposing a similar type of psychological torture upon his children. He falsely believes in the use of violence in the domestic setting as a means of reinforcing his masculine authority. Thus, in contrast to the Althusserian family ISA, Okonkwo uses coercion to reinforce his patriarchal rule. The ideology that Okonkwo uses to rule his family members reflects Althusser’s observation that ideology “is conceived as a pure illusion, a pure dream, i.e. as nothingness. All its reality is external to it” (Lenin 108). The patriarchal ideology that Okonkwo inflicts upon his family members is an illusory one, providing him with a faulty sense of his importance as the guardian of collective indigenous identity. Okonkwo’s choice of using violence to repress and control his household resembles the common depictions of African indigenous peoples as seen through Western eyes. By quoting from Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow’s The Africa that Never Was (1992), Achebe defends indigenous peoples by shocking his readers regarding the false presentation of Africa in European narratives: Dalzel, for instance, prefaced his work with an apologia for slavery: “Whatever evils the slave trade may be attended with … it is mercy … to poor wretches, who … would otherwise suffer from the butcher’s knife.” (HE 29)

The depiction of African indigenous peoples as brutal savages provides a convenient excuse for Anglo-European traders to “save” these “poor wretches” through “civilized means”. In defending the Igbo culture against Western bias, I wish to demonstrate the civilized aspects of Igbo culture before the imposition of Western civilization. Specifically, I make use of Freud to evaluate whether the Igbo were a civilized community. As discussed above, Freud believed

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that human beings progressed to the civilized state by giving up their individual desires for the sake of greater collective benefits: The replacement of the power of the individual by that of the community is the decisive step toward civilization. Its essence lies in the fact that the members of the community restrict themselves in their scope for satisfaction, whereas the individual knew no such restriction. (Civilization 41)

In a civilized community, individualism is observed. However, the power of individuals must be restricted by the need to accommodate members of the community. In the modern sense, hereditary appointments have been replaced by the voting system for electing leaders. Achebe mentions that Igbo narratives are responsible for certain misconceptions regarding the Igbo’s uncivilized nature: It seems to me the Igbo people, recognizing the primary necessity for individual freedom, as well as the virtual impossibility of its practical realization in society, went out of their way to give the individual a cosmological head start in their creation stories. (HE 17)

An example of this can be seen in the way that Okonkwo would like to exercise his individualism in the hope of guarding collective indigenous identity. However, he fails due to his false perceptions of the virtues of violence. Okonkwo’s misconceptions regarding the level of respect he enjoys and his role as a leader reveal that he has mistakenly come to believe that his physical strength and titles are synonymous with successful leadership. Though he is chosen by the nine villages “as the proud and imperious emissary of war” in their dispute with Mbaino and is “treated with great honour and respect” (10), he is not the leader of the Igbo people. The Igbo people demonstrate a social system that disregards the notion of one-man domination: [A]s for having one recognized leader, Igbo people would regard the absence of such a recognized leader as the very defining principle of their social and political identity. (HE 4-5)

Achebe also makes use of this evidence regarding Igbo culture to again negate the idea that the Igbo people form a tribe, rather than a nation. As Okonkwo’s mentality is tribal, his behavior violates the principles of the community. His behavior may be contrasted with the

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tranquil and harmonious aspects of the Igbo culture witnessed in the Week of Peace. As an agricultural community where masculine strength and toil are valued, for the Igbo the Week of Peace is “the carefree season between harvest and planting” that reminds them of the sacredness of tranquility (22). Its significance lies in the philosophy that maintaining peace in the community is practiced to appease the deities: [O]ur forefathers ordained that before we plant any crops in the earth we should observe a week in which a man does not say a harsh word to his neighbour. We live in peace with our fellows to honour our great goddess of earth without whose blessing our crops will not grow. (23)

The principle behind the Week of Peace in pre-colonial Igbo culture links humans and local deities by means of crops, the basis of the community. Traditional worship in Igbo culture thus contains a didactic aspect encouraging members of the community to harbor good intentions, thereby laying the groundwork for a harmonious and prosperous year. At the same time, we can see the selfish individualism of Okonkwo through his behavior during the Week of Peace, in which, in order to maintain his pride as the head of his household, he violates the indigenous ritual commandment of maintaining tranquility. This action demonstrates not only that he prioritizes himself over members of the family, but also that Okonkwo has come to prioritize self over communal decision and divine authority. Upon discovering that his youngest wife, Ojiugo, is not carrying out her domestic duties properly, Okonkwo breaks the peace and violently punishes her: In his anger he has forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess. (22)

Despite reminders, Okonkwo refuses to desist from his beating. In punishing his youngest wife for her improper behavior, he resumes his dignity as the patriarchal head who exercises control and domination over his wives and children. This behavior implies that his father’s unmanly character exerts an even greater influence over him than he knew. Okonkwo’s cult of violence violates the divine laws and simultaneously foreshadows his potential for violent self-destruction: Okonkwo will later perform a self-terrorizing act of suicide when he comes to understand that his solid achievements, built upon physical strength, are no longer

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meaningful as modern civilization prevails. Yet, even before the arrival of the imperialists, the Igbo people, who were divided into many clans, had settled disputes between clans peacefully. From their method of handling disputes at the level of the clan, it can be deduced that wars were not encouraged among the Igbo, so as to avoid the loss of lives: And so the neighbouring clans … feared Umuofia, and would not go to war against it without first trying a peaceful settlement. And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never went to war unless its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle–the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. (10)

Since Umuofia is “powerful in war and in magic” (9), it is easy to understand why the neighboring clans dare not declare war on it. Still, Umuofia aims at maintaining peace with its neighbors by trying a “peaceful settlement” first in times of disputes between clans. MacKenzie has also commented on the way in which traditional forms of worship serve to control human pride by maintaining peace, as “there can be no war without validation from the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves” (151). The decision made by the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves is regarded as sacred and ultimate. The belief that any disobedience against the Oracle “would surely have been beaten” reveals the hierarchy of the divine rule over humans (10). Quoting from David Cook’s African Literature: A Critical View (1977), MacKenzie points out that the hierarchy of divine rule over humans discourages the cowardly behavior of bullying the weak for selfish desires, as this “is not a rationalization of weakness but takes its stand from a position of strength” (qtd. in MacKenzie 151). Within Achebe’s narrative, we see yet another example of this hierarchy in the example of a murder in Umuofia. When the news that “a daughter of Umuofia” is murdered in Mbaino reaches Umuofia, though the crowd “shouted with anger and thirst for blood”, the final decisions on how to settle the dispute “follow the normal course of action” (9), that is, to let Mbaino choose between war or the offer of compensation to Umuofia. This “normal course” again demonstrates the peaceful nature of Umuofia. The Mbaino, being the weaker clan and fearing Umuofia for their strength in both warfare and ritual, eventually choose to offer compensation to Umuofia. Thus outright war, as expected, is prevented. To the modern reader, the sacrifice to the Umuofia clan of two human beings, a virgin to replace the murdered woman and a boy, sounds

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inhuman. However, the practice actually resembles the handling of modern warfare in which the defeated country may need to cede its territory and the corresponding inhabitants to the winning party. Thus, it would be an erroneous perception to simply conclude that the Igbo are more violent than other societies, as their method of resolving the conflict may simply be a more direct means than engaging in warfare. Yet, in contrast to the traditional handling of conflict, Okonkwo falsely believed in the primacy of violence to combat the imperialist threat.

From Tradition to Modernity Okonkwo’s cult of violence and his inability to transition with the changing Igbo culture result in his act of individualistic terror. His behavior and mentality ultimately lead him to self-destruction. Although the shift toward a colonial economic model at the expense of the indigenous center occurs following the arrival of the imperialists, Igbo culture had begun to undergo transformation even before the arrival of the imperialists, resulting in the overcoming of ritualistic tradition by modernity. In addition to their economic system, the imperialists also introduced to the Igbo a new religion that would challenge traditional worship and rituals: Christianity. Here, I again apply Freud to analyze the role played by Christianity among the indigenous peoples, taking the case of Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye’s, resistance against ritualistic violence as an example. Freud elaborates on the way in which external factors outside the family influence a child’s attitude towards cultural rituals long viewed as the norm: [The child] gradually learns to do this, prompted by various stimuli. It must make the strongest impression on him that some sources of stimulation, which he will later recognize as his own physical organs, can convey sensations to him at any time, while other things–including what he most craves, his mother’s breast–are temporarily removed from him and can be summoned back only by a cry for help. (Civilization 4)

Nwoye is haunted by the act of his own father in killing Ikemefuna and the murder of twin babies in Igbo culture. Nwoye thus comes to fear violence. Yet, being repressed by the Igbo emphasis on masculinity, he chooses to conceal his fear rather than to express it because, in Igbo culture, to show compassion is seen as womanish. It is the new religion of Christianity that recognizes Nwoye’s humanism. Following his conversion to Christianity, Nwoye acts against

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his father’s coercion. Nwoye’s act of embracing a foreign religion symbolizes the abandonment of traditional worship in Igbo culture. When he is found among the missionaries in Umuofia, he declares his new identity: “What are you doing here?” Obierika had asked when after many difficulties the missionaries had allowed him to speak to the boy. “I’m one of them,” replied Nwoye. “How is your father?” Obierika asked, not knowing what else to say. “I don’t know. He is not my father,” said Nwoye, unhappily. (105)

Nwoye proclaims his new identity as a Christian and denies his father. Here, Nwoye’s action implies the correlation of patriarchy with culture. The success of Christianity in pre-colonial Umuofia thus symbolizes the overcoming of indigenous tradition by modernity. While seeming to merely encourage the abandonment of indigenous rituals, the spread of Christianity simultaneously challenges the indigenous family. This can be seen in the discussion between Nwoye and the missionary Mr. Kiaga when, on realizing Nwoye’s decision to join the Christian school in Umuofia, Mr. Kiaga mentions that “[b]lessed is he who forsakes his father and his mother for my sake” while Nwoye is merely “happy to leave his father” (112). Okonkwo sees his son’s behavior as a betrayal of both himself and his ancestral roots: But Nwoye resembled his grandfather, Unoka, who was Okonkwo’s father. He pushed the thought out of his mind. He, Okonkwo, was called a flaming fire. How could he have begotten a woman for a son? At Nwoye’s age Okonkwo had already become famous throughout Umuofia for his wrestling and his fearlessness. (112-3)

Okonkwo views Nwoye’s behavior as womanish. The narrator’s reminder of how Okonkwo wrestles for wealth and titles foreshadows the way in which he will strive to wrestle against the waves of modernism and imperialist influence until his death. The reason for Okonkwo’s inability to accept his son’s conversion to Christianity clearly demonstrates Okonkwo’s failure to recognize changing conceptions in the modern era. As was mentioned above, it was Okonkwo’s hatred of his father that drove him to act deliberately against his father’s behavior, yet Nwoye’s behavior resembles that of Unoka, as Nwoye now rebels against both his father and his ancestral roots. Specifically, Nwoye disagrees with his father’s use of violence as a means of controlling the household. Here, the parallel cases

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of Okonkwo and Nwoye both imply the failure of patrilineal succession. For Freud, this rebellion against patriarchal authority is a crucial step in the emergence of modern civilization. Freud suggests that “[o]n overpowering their father, the sons found that the group could be stronger than the individual” (Civilization 47). Freud interprets sons’ behaviors in overpowering their fathers as the realization that the power of individuals cannot compare to that of the group. The idea is built upon the patriarchal convention that the father is the head of the family with absolute power, while all other family members are obediently repressed. Okonkwo’s behavior in overpowering his father had served to illustrate his individual desire to demonstrate his masculinity, and his corresponding power in ruling the household. His act is thus pre-modern. Nwoye, on the other hand, overpowers his brutal father with the belief that the power of the Church has a more convincing function in providing spiritual protection to him. Hence, the Church has become the surrogate father of Nwoye. Because the Church forms part of the colonialist nation-building project, Nwoye’s embrace of Christianity implicitly symbolizes his support of the colonist government. Despite individual rebellion against the indigenous family, the breakdown of the family structure does not immediately result in terror. Terror occurs only when the indigenous culture becomes internally divided and is eventually overcome by modernity. Okonkwo soon becomes disillusioned with the level of importance he feels he has as a member of Umuofia. When he and five other leaders of Umuofia are imprisoned by the imperialists as hostages, they have been insulted and humiliated: The six men ate nothing throughout that day and the next. They were not even given any water to drink, and they could not go out to urinate or go into the bush when they were pressed. At night the messengers came in to taunt them and to knock their shaven heads together. (142)

Hunger, insults and the threat to their lives push the leaders to the brink of giving up. Finally, the people in Umuofia pay the fine “to appease the white man” so as to save the lives of their leaders (143). Internal division within the indigenous culture takes place when an increasing number of people in Umuofia turn to the colonizer in support of the formation of a colonized state. My observation on the internal division of indigenous culture is supported by MacKenzie’s argument on the metamorphosis of traditional rituals as Christianity arrives in Umuofia:

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Chapter I The real power of missionary proselytization lay in the breaking down of community norms. The Evil Forest became no longer evil; the outcasts became no longer outcasts; the objects and rituals of traditional sacrament were destroyed. (157)

Okonkwo does not give up his struggle against imperialism as he “never did things by halves” (121). In this battle, the use of violence, his ritual, becomes unavoidable. Okonkwo’s earlier plan to kill the missionary or drive away the Christians had been rejected by his townsfolk. He calls for a second meeting in an attempt to revive the warlike spirit of his people: The bitterness in his heart was now mixed with a kind of child-like excitement. Before he had gone to bed he had brought down his war dress, which he had not touched since his return from exile. He had shaken out his smoked raffia skirt and examined his tall feather head-gear and his shield. (145)

This portrayal of Okonkwo’s readiness for war recalls the earlier depiction of him as “a man of action, a man of war” (9). To Okonkwo, it seemed as if the crowd in Umuofia had shown their support by attending the meeting. It “warmed(s) Okonkwo’s heart to see such strength of numbers” as he falsely believes in their support and his strength against the imperialists (146). He fails to realize that internal divisions within the indigenous community have already taken place. The real test for Okonkwo and his people arises when Okonkwo kills the head messenger while his people let the other messengers escape. Okonkwo knows that he has been betrayed by his people, whom he once believed shared the same goal with him, to stand united as great warriors. Freud’s differentiation of self and group can help to explain the crowd’s muttered voices “Why did he do it?” (149): There are some individuals who are venerated by their contemporaries, but whose greatness rests on qualities and achievements that are quite foreign to the aims and ideals of the many. (Civilization 1)

Okonkwo is undeniably a well-respected warrior among his people, but his methodology is no longer accepted by them in the struggle against the external menace. Their change of attitude, from a warlike clan with great warriors to a crowd of unmanly cowards, shocks Okonkwo: Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he

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mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women. (133)

The death of the masculine spirit and the collapse of indigenous rituals drive Okonkwo towards self-destruction. As modernity replaces indigenous ritual, the eventual release of terroristic violence upon the imperialists is incomprehensible to Okonkwo’s community. As with MacKenzie’s thesis of the “Metamorphosis of Piety”, the disintegration of indigenous practices in Umuofia is followed by the acceptance of Western modernity. Rather than waiting to be humiliated by the imperialists, Okonkwo chooses to rebel against Western civilization by ending his own life. This action reflects his faithfulness towards his own ancestral roots and ritualistic tradition. Since the Igbo people oppose Okonkwo’s deeds, he decides to in turn defy eternally the womanish behavior of the new Igbo community through his choice to commit suicide. In traditional Igbo culture, suicide is viewed as an abomination against the Earth. Okonkwo’s act of denial of the corrupted Igbo shows his determination to leave this evolved and unsuccessful land. In addition, as it is against Igbo ritual to bury a man who has committed suicide, he knows that his burial will be performed by the imperialists, and that this will serve to insult them. When Obierika, Okonkwo’s friend, asks the Commissioner to take Okonkwo’s body down from the tree, the Commissioner merely orders his chief messenger to do so: In the many years in which [the Commissioner] had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learnt a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting down a dead man from the tree. (151)

The manual work of bringing down a dead man from the tree represents the loss of dignity for the Commissioner. Okonkwo thus insists on the ritual of violence until the very moment of his death, and his death itself is a tool for resisting the smothering of ritualistic tradition by modernity. Furthermore, the decision of the District Commissioner to title his “African” narrative as The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger following Okonkwo’s suicide indicates the failure of the imperialists to comprehend the indigenous mentality. The imperialists treat the indigenous peoples as primitive and uncivilized, a false perception which allows the former to exploit the latter. The ending of this African narrative marks the attempts of the imperialist District Commissioner to narrate Okonkwo’s story through Western eyes. In

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Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said charts the interplay between literature and imperialism. He states that “[t]he power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them” (xiii). By means of the ironic ending, Achebe shows how important it is for African writers to strike back in narrating the history of Africa. In placing the emphasis upon this, Achebe has remarked that “while Conrad gives us an Africa of malignant mystery and incomprehensibility, Naipaul’s method is to ridicule claims to any human achievement in Africa” (HE 88). Cobham suggests the ending of the novel represents Achebe’s satirical attitude to how the British government “[gave] research grants to several ‘amateur’ sociological anthropologists to study Igbo society superficially” after the Women’s War in Abe in 1929 that challenged the colonial administration (519). Despite this, Achebe does not abandon objectivity, as he reminds his readers that “the lion” should also be condemned, for it “projects too strong an aura of strength to be entirely satisfactory [to Achebe] as a messenger of truth” (HE 74). Okonkwo’s personalized ritual of violence causes him to fail in realizing what MacKenzie refers to as “the metamorphosis” of traditional rituals around him. What Umuofia has to deal with is not only a group of imperialists, but also a group of kinsmen who have already turned to the imperialists and provide support to their new government. In the above analysis of Things Fall Apart, I have shown specifically how the Anglo-European inspired ISA continues to subvert indigenous culture and the perception of masculinity in pre-colonial Nigeria. In the coming section, I discuss how African indigenous peoples react against white supremacy as the influence of colonialism declines. In post-colonial South Africa, terroristic violence committed upon Anglo-European women represents the revival of indigenous patriarchy in Africa. In other words, colonization fails to uproot the emphasis on masculine strength among African indigenous peoples. Again, the breakdown of the family structure serves as the underlying cause of terror. In many ways, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace reflects the intensification of the tensions between the descendants of indigenous Africans such as Nwoye and the white descendants of individuals such as the commissioner in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Coetzee’s narrative symbolizes the legacy of colonization as it persists into the era of decolonization, and the way in which the post-colonial legacy affects the once-dominant imperialists. My observation resembles Marais’ suggestion that Disgrace demonstrates Coetzee’s “unlimited obligation to continue his engagement with history”

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(174). As an Afrikaner, the character of David Lurie in Disgrace represents the decline of white supremacy in post-colonial South Africa and the end of the established colonial ISA brought by his ancestors. Though David’s ancestors have introduced Anglo-European civilization to Africa, he discovers that the modern form of Anglo-European civilization and the state institutions are unable to protect his family. In the post-colonial milieu, violence becomes ubiquitous. As with Okonkwo, David experiences a belated recognition of the shift in the status quo.

Post-colonial South African Identity In explaining the shift of the status quo between the Africans and the Afrikaners in post-colonial South Africa after the decolonization of the early 1990s, I argue that the installation of Western civilization and colonial institutions resulted in a conflict between the repression of desire and the desire for exploitation in the post-colonial setting. As I intend to show how David’s belated recognition regarding the shift in the status quo results in his sexual exploitation of an African indigenous student, I again apply Freud’s notions on repression and sexual morality to Althusser’s idea of the state and its apparatuses. Freud argues that “[Western] civilization is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts” (Sexuality 15). Conflict between repression of desire and the desire to exploit occurs for David when this idea of Western civilization is juxtaposed with Althusser’s idea on the state and its apparatuses. Althusser suggests that “the State and its apparatuses only have meaning from the point of view of class struggle, as an apparatus of class struggle ensuring class oppression and guaranteeing the conditions of exploitation and its reproduction” (Lenin 125). As an Afrikaner in post-colonial South Africa, David still reassures himself as a colonizer with the right to exploit the colonized indigenous peoples. Thus, his repressed desire subsequently results in the sublimation of its failure. To give a detailed account of David’s failure to strike a balance between the repression of desire and his desire for exploitation, I first demonstrate how he attempts to control his desire through repression. The opening of the novel illustrates David’s frequent visits to a young African prostitute, Soraya, to “solve the problem of sex” (1). To call sex a problem implies the repression of sexual desire in social situations. Deleuze and Guattari have suggested that “[d]esire does not lack anything; it does not lack its object. It is, rather, the subject that is lacking desire, or desire that lacks a fixed subject; there is no fixed subject except by repression” (qtd.

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in Spivak 68). David’s frequent visits to Soraya seemingly reveal that the latter is the former’s fixed subject under repression. Furthermore, the narrator refers to Thursday, the day on which David makes his visits to Soraya, as “an oasis of luxe et volupté” while the remaining days of the week are referred to as “the desert” of David’s sexual life (1). The narration highlights the difficulty which David experiences in handling his desire for sex as a divorced man. As “an oasis of luxe et volupté”, Thursday brings relief to his repressed sexual desire. David regards himself as having solved the problem of sex “rather well” (1). His weekly habit of visiting Soraya symbolizes his dependence on patterns and established order, which foreshadows his belated recognition of the decline of white supremacy. This stubbornness echoes the opening depiction of David as a middle-aged man whose “temperament is not going to change, he is too old for that” (2). Jolly interprets David’s visits to Soraya as acts that fulfill his desire “to ensure immediate pleasure with the least expenditure of responsibility on his part” (94). David only has an economic responsibility in his relationship with Soraya, as the relationship is based solely on an economic transaction. To explore further how David’s desire and responsibility are related to the failure of colonial state institutions, making him first a perpetrator and then a victim of the system, I suggest that the tensions between desire and responsibility are aligned with individual conduct and social expectations. When David upsets the balance between repression and sexual morality, the boundary between his private and public lives becomes blurred. At first, David handles his private and public lives with care. His visits to Soraya are private, violating only the ethics of his social role as an adjunct professor. Similarly, Soraya leads a double life as well: at home as a maternal figure and at work as a lustful woman stimulated by economic temptation. Upon being seen by David while out shopping with her two sons, she deliberately avoids any interaction that might intrude on her private life. Her reaction reflects the dilemmatic nature of double lives; it is necessary to repress individual desire so as to fulfill one’s greater responsibility. This observation relates to the aforesaid Freudian notions on repression and sexual morality. Soraya has chosen her responsibility over her desires, a choice that, notably, links her duty to her family with her role in servicing the desires of strangers such as David. After her disappearance, David intends to relieve his sexual desire through “another Soraya”, a name indicating that Soraya merely represents a tool that allows him to solve the problem of sex. His decision to seek “another Soraya” eventually triggers the conflict between desire and responsibility

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which results in the sublimation of his desire. For David, the conflict between desire and responsibility occurs only when the boundary that separates his private and social lives becomes blurred. In the following analysis, I use David’s short-term relationship with a new secretary in his workplace to demonstrate his awareness of potential risk. Then, I will elaborate further on his recklessness in his affair with his student, Melanie Isaacs. As David persists in finding substitutions for “another Soraya”, he hides his identity with an alias. In his attempt to develop an extra-marital relationship with his new colleague, Dawn, he is careful enough to take her “to lunch at a restaurant a discreet distance from the campus” (8). The action of staying away from the campus area so as to avoid unnecessary gossip and troubles seemingly demonstrates his attempt to achieve a state of equilibrium between his desire and responsibility. He even has the thought of giving up and “retir[ing] from the game [of sex]” (9). Nevertheless, that idea is immediately discarded with the appearance of his student Melanie. David is incapable of balancing his sexual desire and responsibility in front of Melanie. Freud suggests that “[t]he ability to exchange the originally sexual aim for another which is no longer sexual but is physically related, is called the capacity for sublimation” (Sexuality 16). David’s inability to repress his sexual desire results in the transformation of his desire into physical acts meant to satisfy his sexual desire: sexual violence upon Melanie. This inappropriate behavior violates his ethical responsibilities as a teacher, while simultaneously revealing David’s weakening control over his sexual desire. In other words, he can no longer manage the “problem of sex” in an appropriate manner. David’s inability to control his sexual desire is related to his belated recognition of the decline of white supremacy and patriarchal authority. As an Afrikaner, David’s falsely believes in his sexual superiority over exotic women. For instance, instead of introducing Anglo-European women to him, Soraya’s agency introduces hostesses of multi-ethnic backgrounds to him. The assumption of David’s preference for exotic women foreshadows his forbidden relations with his exotic student. The educational ISA that David works for serves as an extended metaphor of the family ISA. In seeking to fulfill his sexual desires, David actually abuses his social role. He neglects his responsibilities as an executor of the educational ISA.6 In addition to highlighting the function 6 “… children at school also learn ‘rules’ of good behavior, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour …” (Lenin 89).

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of education in preparing students to enter the labor force, Althusser highlights the function of education in implanting students with ethics and morality, which is precisely the aspect of his role that David has ignored, as he comes to neglect his social responsibility following the blurring of his private and social lives. Though David and Soraya both lead double lives, their encounters are always maintained at David’s private level as a man who needs to solve “the problem of sex” and at the social level for Soraya, as a prostitute and provider for David’s needs (1). Conflict occurs when David intrudes into Soraya’s private life. Thus, after their accidental encounter outside the supermarket, Soraya is careful to stay away from David, so as to keep both of her double lives safe by segregating them from one another. David’s violation of Melanie similarly arises when he abuses his social role for the sake of his private desire. Melanie places her trust in her teacher when she views the invitation to his house in the social context. Their discussion of Romantic poets conforms to the expected teacher-student relationship and their social roles. As David’s sexual desire bursts out, he turns to topics that transgress the boundary of conduct in his social role. Althusser suggests that students at school should learn “rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour …” (Lenin 89). However, the revelation of David’s private life to Melanie violates the moral code of the educational ISA. In transgressing the proper conduct of his social role, David falsely believes in his racial supremacy and symbolic patriarchal authority. In terms of our assumption of his belief in his racial supremacy, let us not forget David’s preference for exotic women. Cooper suggests that David rationalizes his desire in the social context so as to exercise “the once unspoken right of a male professor with their students” (25). Cooper’s analysis explains David’s attempt to use his social authority as a means of satisfying his sexual desires and to intervene in Melanie’s private life. Just as Okonkwo had confused his personal achievement founded upon masculine strength for patriarchal authority, turning the domestic setting into an arena of domestic violence, David abuses his social position in a private matter and eventually commits an act of sexual violence. He turns the educational ISA into what Althusser refers as a repressive apparatus: The State is a “machine” of repression, which enables the ruling classes (in the nineteenth century the bourgeois class and the “class” of big landowners) to ensure their domination over the working class, thus

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enabling the former to subject the latter to the process of surplus-value extortion (i.e. to capitalist exploitation). (Lenin 92)

Althusser’s observation concerning how the ruling classes exploit the working class supports my argument about David’s assumption of his racial supremacy. As a descendant of the former colonizers in South Africa, David attempts to turn the educational ISA into an agent of colonial exploitation. This further affirms Althusser’s observation that the school serves to “ensure subjection to the ruling ideology” (Lenin 89, original emphasis). Cooper interprets David’s inappropriate behavior towards his Melanie as an act of “seduction”: Lurie’s seduction of Melanie is an attempt not only to reclaim sexual privilege, but to emphasize the traditional patriarchal procedures of the European culture in which such privilege, like Lurie himself, is embedded. (25)

David’s “seduction” of Melanie represents the failure of the state apparatus. His belief in his racial supremacy is revealed earlier in the novel during his affair with Soraya through his attempts to exert control over his indigenous sexual partner. He asks Soraya to wipe off her lipstick since he does not like it, and we learn that she obeys and “has never worn it since” (5). The narrator comments that she is a “ready learner, compliant, pliant” (5). David fails to understand that the exercise of racial supremacy in his relationship with Soraya is only possible because the relationship is founded solely upon economic exchange. While not strictly an example of the colonial patriarchy, this exchange mirrors the economic determinism of the colonial apparatus. However, Fanon has suggested that decolonization reverses the status quo of African indigenous peoples and European imperialists in the colonial period: Decolonization, therefore, implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation. Its definition can, if we want to describe it accurately, be summed up in the well-known words: “The last shall be first.” Decolonization is verification of this. (Wretched 2)

David’s acts of sexual violence against Melanie represent his belated recognition of the changes in the status quo in post-colonial Africa. To demonstrate how the colonial institution fails to control individual desire and posts a threat to national security, I further relate Althusser’s notion on the repressive nature of the state apparatus with Freud’s ideas on repression. David’s affections towards girls who are

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young enough to be his daughter confirms Freud’s theory on how the “incestuous fixations of the libido still play or again are playing the main role in his unconscious psychic life” (Totem 15). In his relationship with Soraya, readers are informed that “[t]echnically he is old enough to be her father; but then, technically, one can be a father at twelve” (1). The final clause of the statement represents David’s reluctance to admit his incestuous desire, which can be elaborated upon by Freud’s claim that “[the] rejection is above all the product of man’s deep aversion to his former incest wishes, which have since succumbed to repression” (Totem 15). Though David understands the implied significance of this relationship to the taboo on incest, he refuses to accept this matter-of-factly. His mentality reflects the linkage between ego and repression: [E]go is the source of the repressions that are intended to exclude certain psychic tendencies not only from consciousness, but also from all other areas where they might come into their own or be otherwise activated. (Pleasure 108)

In committing an act of sexual violence upon Melanie, David substitutes Melanie for his own daughter: He sits down on the bed, draws her to him. In his arms she begins to sob miserably. Despite all, he feels a tingling of desire. “There, there,” he whispers, trying to comfort her. “Tell me what is wrong.” Almost he says, “Tell daddy what is wrong.” (26)

That he “makes love to her one more time, on the bed in his daughter’s room” reflects the transfer of his incestuous desire to Melanie (29). Thus, the sexual act committed upon Melanie represents an incestuous act of rape, as he makes Melanie a victim under his corrupted patriarchy in an abuse of paternal trust. David’s sexual violence upon Melanie also upsets their social relations within the educational institution. As David is at first concerned about Melanie’s identity as a student, he experiences a moment of struggle over his inappropriate desire towards Melanie: But the girl he has brought home is not just thirty years his junior: she is a student, his student, under his tutelage. No matter what passes between them and now, they will have to meet again as teacher and pupil. Is he prepared for that? (13)

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His moment of struggle reflects the way in which the educational ISA influences individuals and, secondarily, serves to suppress their desires. When the code of morality of the ISA fails to repress individual desire, sexual violence occurs. After raping Melanie, David has a moment of recognition regarding his fault: A mistake, a huge mistake. At this moment, he has no doubt, she, Melanie, is trying to cleanse herself of it, of him. He sees her running a bath, stepping into the water, eyes closed like a sleepwalker’s. He would like to slide into a bath of his own. (25)

David pictures Melanie washing herself so as to get rid of what his guilt has inflicted upon her. By imagining himself sliding into a bath, the biblical connotation of baptism as a means of washing away sin appears. Yet, instead of repenting of his sins so as to be saved, David again violates his ethical responsibilities as a teacher by continuing his relationship with Melanie. Because David has abused his authority as an executor of the educational ISA, Melanie in return expects that special privilege should be granted to her. When David orders her to attend classes regularly and to make up for the test she missed, her reaction indicates disappointment and outrage: She stares back in puzzlement, even shock. You have cut me off from everyone, she seems to want to say. You have made me bear your secret. I am no longer just a student. How can you speak to me like this? (34, original emphasis)

Melanie’s disillusionment reflects the conflict of blurring one’s private identity with his/her social role. By eliminating the boundary of his private and social roles, David has imposed a biased judgment and prejudice in evaluating Melanie’s academic performance. The unpardonable mistake of granting Melanie credit despite her absence from the test results in his dismissal from the university. Ultimately, David’s misdeeds reflect the failure of the repressive apparatus to balance desire and responsibility. As an extension of the colonial apparatus, the failure of the educational ISA further implies that the Afrikaners’ privileges of racial and sexual supremacy can no longer last. David’s failure to safeguard the colonial state apparatus foreshadows his later failure to protect his own daughter from indigenous violence. In the following section, I illustrate the legacy of the colonial repressive apparatus in rural South Africa: the return of terroristic violence.

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The Return of Violence in Rural South Africa As the monitoring engine of law and order, the post-colonial institution serves to protect African indigenous peoples against the once privileged Afrikaners. Meanwhile, as David Lurie moves deeper into the rural South African setting, he not only experiences the demise of his Afrikaner privilege, but he and his daughter also become the targets of indigenous violence. In a rural setting where power of colonial institutions is defeated by the reappearance of local rituals, violence returns and becomes ubiquitous, and eventually replaces Anglo-European patriarchy. Following the decision made by the committee of inquiry, David is dismissed by the university with all benefits and privileges forfeited. The decision disgraces him and eliminates his economic privilege. He decides to leave the city and to stay with his daughter in her farmhouse miles away from Grahamstown, Eastern Cape. As mentioned above, David’s acts with Melanie represent his incestuous desires. As soon as he arrives at his daughter Lucy’s farmhouse, upon seeing his daughter, he immediately puts her under his lustful male gaze: For a moment he does not recognize her. A year has passed, and she has put on weight. Her hips and breasts are now (he searches for the best word) ample. Comfortably barefoot, she comes to greet him, holding her arms wide, embracing him, kissing him on the cheek. What a nice girl, he thinks, hugging her; a nice welcome at the end of a long trip! (59)

The sexual allusion that David makes in receiving Lucy’s hug is clear. His thoughts obviously violate the morality of a father-daughter relationship, calling into question his role as patriarch. Just as David had allowed Melanie to sleep on his daughter’s bed, Lucy performs a reciprocal act: she allows David to sleep on her lover, Helen’s bed. Realizing that Helen is away and that Lucy is left alone, David expresses concern for his daughter’s safety. However, following the return of violence to South Africa, David proves incapable of protecting his daughter from indigenous sexual violence. Although he accompanies Lucy during the time the robbers break into the house, David is placed in a helpless situation: He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa. He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and

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upcast eyes while the savage jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron. (95)

By pointing out the uselessness of European languages in the heart of Africa, David implies the failure of the colonial legal framework in South Africa. He becomes a helpless man in this lawless post-colonial rural milieu. His present state echoes the discussion between Okonkwo and Obierika on the incapacity of European imperialists to comprehend African customs in Things Fall Apart: “Does the white man understand our custom about land?” “How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad …” (129)

Colonialism fails to establish mutual understanding between the colonizer and the colonized. This legacy of colonial inadequacy thus persists into the post-colonial South African milieu. The revival of indigenous violence parallels the imbalance of power between African indigenous peoples and the Afrikaners, now inverted. Here I apply Fanon’s ideas on post-colonial violence in differentiating the desires of the decolonized in post-colonial Africa from those of the colonizers in the pre-colonial period. As Achebe’s novel approaches its end, Okonkwo’s self-destruction in the face of the unbearable reality of his culture’s failure signifies the replacement of indigenous rituals by colonial institutions. Under colonialism, the status quo of African indigenous peoples and European imperialists undergoes changes. Following colonization by the Dutch, the policy of turning South Africa into an apartheid state categorically alienates the colonized indigenous African peoples from their colonizers, the Afrikaners. Fanon suggests that colonialism fails to wipe out the indigenous desire to restore their dignity: On the contrary we must persuade ourselves that colonialism is incapable of procuring for colonized people the material conditions likely to make them forget their quest for dignity. (Wretched 147)

The quest to restore dignity is remembered among the indigenous peoples who are now being decolonized. As decolonization takes place, the repressive state apparatus introduced by the ex-colonizer can no longer exercise authority. Meanwhile, African indigenous peoples choose to express their desire through terroristic violence:

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Chapter I The colonized, who have made up their mind to make such an agenda into a driving force, have been prepared for violence from time immemorial. As soon as they are born it is obvious to them that their cramped world, riddled with taboos, can only be challenged by out and out violence. (Wretched 3)

Thus, the use of violence among the indigenous peoples poses a challenge to the colonial state apparatus. The mass rape of Lucy in Disgrace therefore seems to be a demonstration of indigenous strength that victimizes Anglo-European women. While imposing violence upon the ex-colonizer represents the restoration of indigenous pride in post-colonial South Africa, I regard the crime committed by the indigenous peoples as the mirror image of David’s misconduct. Through exploiting the body of his student, Melanie, David restores his pride as an Afrikaner and re-experiences the bygone racial supremacy in decolonized South Africa. On the other hand, his act represents the destruction of Western civilization, both in terms of its concepts of morality and patriarchal order, reflecting his racist mentality and turning him into an actual agent of racist violence. For the indigenous intruders committing sexual violence upon Lucy, the body of an Afrikaner woman allows them to free themselves from their haunted past memories of inferiority. Basil Davidson has suggested that, in the eighteenth century, the slave trade was a manifestation of this false perception of African inferiority. In Europe “the belief in African inferiority was already in full bloom” (HE 28). However, this belief was not shared by Africans themselves, according to Fanon: He is made to feel inferior, but by no means convinced of his inferiority. He patiently waits for the colonist to let his guard down and then jumps to him. The muscles of the colonized are always tensed. It is not that he is anxious or terrorized, but he is always ready to change his role as game for that of hunter. The colonized subject is a persecuted man who is forever dreaming of becoming the persecutor. (Wretched 16)

The indigenous peoples have thus been waiting for the restoration of authority so that they can once again exercise their rights. Just as Okonkwo demonstrates his masculine strength through imposing violence upon the white messenger, for the indigenous gangs, committing sexual violence upon Lucy symbolizes an attempt to avenge their ancestors and revive indigenous patriarchy:

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At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence. (Wretched 51)

It is through acts of terroristic violence that the decolonized restore their self-confidence. The demonstration of indigenous physical strength over the Afrikaners thereby represents a return to the form of African masculinity espoused by Okonkwo. In analyzing how terroristic violence is used by the decolonized to express their rejection of Anglo-European modernity, we can consider the case of Petrus, who is both Lucy’s helper and the plotter of her rape, and analyze how he successfully restores indigenous authority in rural Africa through violent means. Initially, David interprets the intruders’ aim as one of bringing shame and disgrace to Lucy: She does not reply. She would rather hide her face, and he knows why. Because of the disgrace. Because of the shame. That is what their visitors have achieved; that is what they have done to this confident, modern young woman. (115)

To disgrace Lucy is, however, only the first step taken by Petrus and the intruders. Through disgracing her, they destroy her confidence in inhabiting the indigenous sphere. Thus, they restore not only their own indigenous pride but also the long-forgotten tradition: indigenous patriarchy and masculine strength in the form of violence. The narration not only regards the incident as destructive towards Lucy’s confidence, but also implies the denial of Lucy’s lesbian identity and role as a modern woman. As a female Afrikaner living in rural South Africa, Lucy represents the burdens of modernity, despite her own innocence regarding the legacy of violence that she has inherited from her European ancestors, a legacy which is being brought to African indigenous peoples and, ultimately, herself. Her disgrace therefore symbolizes the rejection of European civilization in Africa and the inadequacy of modern institutions in dealing with violence in post-colonial South Africa. David, a professor of communications, first expresses the uselessness of European languages in saving his daughter from sexual violence. He even regards English as being an “unfit medium for the truth of South Africa” (117). His realization reflects the failure of the Anglo-Europeans to comprehend terroristic violence as a form of indigenous desire that had been repressed during the colonial period. In an earlier remark, David had defended himself as “a servant of Eros” (52). He had said that “[n]o

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animal would accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts” (90). Such a comment is all the more ironic because, by the end of the novel, his identification with animals is total. The sexual assault committed by the intruders reflects the impossibility for colonialism to wipe out the indigenous desire for vengeance, as suggested by Fanon: At the level of the unconscious, therefore, colonialism was not seeking to be perceived by the indigenous population as a sweet, kindhearted mother who protects her child from a hostile environment, but rather a mother who constantly prevents her basically perverse child from committing suicide or giving free rein to its malevolent instincts. (Wretched 149)

As the release of indigenous desire leads to the return of violence in the post-colonial context, clearly the sexual assaults committed by David and the intruders are alike, as both cases illustrate the failure of the repressive state apparatus. Yet, unlike the punishment of David’s transgression of sexual violence perpetrated upon Melanie, the institutional framework fails to protect Lucy entirely, and the men who attack her are never brought to justice. This stark difference in the treatment of two cases of sexual assault shows the deficiency of the legal framework in rural South Africa. On the other hand, Lucy has no intention of reporting the crime since she views the incident as a private one: “I will tell you, as long as you agree not to raise the subject again. The reason is that, as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my business, mine alone.” “This place being what?” “This place being South Africa.” (112)

David stops his private misconduct from being turned into a public matter while Lucy also regards the violence done to her as a private, rather than a public matter. This view is symptomatic of the failure of the legal institutions in post-colonial South Africa. Goldberg charts how Disgrace “negotiates the complexities of private and public aspects of rape as a central narrative event” (123). The major difference between David’s case and Lucy’s is that the former takes place in an urban setting and within the apparatus of an educational ISA. In rural South Africa, although institutional authority serves as the indicator of ethics, it cannot stop the

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release of repressed desire. The rape of Lucy represents the way in which the terror of violence becomes ubiquitous in the post-colonial milieu as “[i]t happens every day, every hour, every minute … in every quarter of the country” (98). To further differentiate the acts of sexual assault committed by David and that of the intruders as products of desire, I suggest that the ultimate desire of the intruders, as descendants of Okonkwo, is to persecute the Afrikaners, who are descendants of the Anglo-European imperialists in the indigenous Africans’ native land. While David’s desire is to reassert his superior Afrikaner identity through sexual relationships with exotic women, the intruders’ ultimate desire is represented by Petrus’ goal of controlling Lucy’s farm. Fanon links the significance of land to African indigenous peoples with the notion of dignity: For a colonized people, the most essential value, because it is the most meaningful, is first and foremost the land: the land, which must provide bread and, naturally, dignity. But this dignity has nothing to do with “human” dignity. (Wretched 9)

In Achebe’s novel, land is portrayed as the source of all life in the pre-colonial agriculturally based African society. However, land triggers a problem of sovereignty in Coetzee’s novel. For the Afrikaners, the African land represents the achievement of their Anglo-European ancestors in bringing modernity to Africa: The colonist makes history. His life is an epic, an odyssey. He is invested with the very beginning: “We made this land.” He is the guarantor for its existence: “If we leave, all will be lost, and this land will return to the Dark Ages” (Wretched 14-5).

In reviving indigenous sovereignty in South Africa, Petrus coercively controls Lucy’s farm and makes her his tenant. Unlike David, Lucy sees her compromise as an alternative, rather than as a surrender: “Stop calling it the farm, David. This is not a farm, it’s just a piece of land where I grow things–we both know that. But no, I’m not giving it up.” (200)

The different interpretations of land by Petrus and Lucy imply the core difference between the indigenous mentality and that of the Afrikaners. Lucy sees her choice as a possible step to maintaining her status as an inhabitant while Petrus regards the control of land as the crucial step in

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restoring dignity through economic control. Achebe and Coetzee have both suggested alternatives to replace the breakdown of the family structure and the failing patriarchy. Achebe suggests embracing the spiritual support that comes from religion and brotherhood, as a representation of the religious ISA, as can be seen in Nwoye’s turning to the missionaries and eventually becoming a Christian while disregarding his father Okonkwo.7 Coetzee suggests an alternative to replace the bygone European patriarchy and modern civilization in depicting Lucy’s decision to create a new and alternative form of family by accepting Petrus’ marriage proposal. In both cases, the established old order, either that of traditional worship and customs or the belief in white supremacy, has been unwillingly been replaced by the new. As with Gayle Rubin’s idea that “women are given in marriage” and “exchanged for favors” (175), Goldberg specifies the symbolic meaning of Petrus’ marriage proposal to Lucy: The proposal that initiates this simultaneously micro-(private, individual) and macro-(public) level contract is made to Lucy’s father after her rape, dramatizing the traditional exchange of women’s bodies among men as foundation for the state. (126-7)

At first, Petrus attempts to impose indigenous violence upon his ex-colonizer by expressing his marriage proposal to David. David regards the proposal as an act of blackmail. His response is foreshadowed by his earlier remark on Greek mythology, that “[t]he marriage of Cronus and Harmony [is] unnatural” (190). As a lesbian, Lucy’s decision to marry is an obvious compromise, evidence of a metamorphosis for the sake of security. Goldberg comments: [Lucy is] willing to give up absolute freedom and accept a rule of law that promised to bring the more secure–if mitigated–freedom of individual protection offered by the state. (124)

Lucy’s decision in accepting the marriage therefore represents her recognition of the failure of Western patriarchal authority and its powers of protection. Lucy’s acceptance of the marriage further symbolizes the return of sovereignty to the indigenous peoples. Lucy becomes pregnant as a result of the rape, and her child is linked to Petrus, who has a kinship connection 7

When Obierika asks Nwoye “How’s your father?”, he replies with “I don’t know. He is not my father” (105).

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with the rapists. By giving her land to Petrus and bearing a child for an indigenous African, her means of reproduction is now in the hands of Petrus, a representation of indigenous patriarchy. Petrus controls her production, both in terms of the power of reproduction and her economic means of production. Consequently, Petrus reverses the status of African indigenous peoples in South Africa and becomes “a new South African patriarch, figure for a people long excluded on the basis of race” (Goldberg 129). Lucy’s child thus represents the future of the new South Africa, shaped by post-colonial violence. Within the indigenous patriarchal ideology, Lucy’s acceptance of the marriage proposal also degrades her as a woman burdened by the function of child-bearing. Both Lucy and her child are thereby subordinated to indigenous ritual. David initially denies the possibility of this alternative family ISA, of a mixed marriage to maintain peace in post-colonial South Africa. In commenting that Lucy is being “mad to feel safe” (187), David voices the long-standing fear of South African lawlessness as the legacy of colonization. Still, he accepts that such an undeniable reality is shaped by history. At this stage, he has truly been “enriched by the experience” (56). He then decides to serve the former inferiors and tries “to make reparation for past misdeeds” through serving them (77). In this chapter, by tracing the way in which the breakdown in the family results in terroristic violence, and thereby resembles the legacy of The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes, I have demonstrated the link between the imposition and breakdown of colonial authority as it is based upon patriarchal violence, and the extent to which colonizers succeed in suppressing indigenous desire for their purposes. In both pre-colonial and post-colonial contexts, family serves to impose ideology upon individuals. When indigenous patriarchy is replaced by imperialist modernity, using violence to protect one’s family and kinship is, ironically, seen as uncivilized. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart illustrates the way in which imperialist modernization substitutes the sublimation of indigenous rituals with the “civilizing” mission. In Coetzee’s Disgrace, however, David’s behavior shows that the pathology of the ISA leads to individual corruption. The repetition of sexual assault reflects the repetition of his repressed desire. Coetzee suggests an alternative ISA to replace the bygone Anglo-European patriarchy in post-colonial Africa, in the form of mixed marriages. As can be seen in the two African narratives discussed in this chapter, maternal authority has been ignored or even actively suppressed .

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under indigenous patriarchy. Okonkwo believed that “no matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (38). This imposition of indigenous patriarchy upon women, as it reappears in Disgrace, also applies to the case of Lucy as an Afrikaner in post-colonial South Africa: a lesbian driven into a desperate heterosexual relationship with Petrus to secure indigenous protection. In the coming chapter, I analyze how the inexorable inclusion of Anglo-European women in Africa since the colonial period exerts disastrous impacts on them. As my analysis of Coetzee’s Disgrace suggests, the Anglo-European patriarchy is incapable of protecting its women from the terrorizing acts committed in the name of indigenous retribution. Since terror arises as a consequence of the breakdown of the family, it affects Anglo-European women first, as the reinvention of older gender norms under African colonialism confines these women to the domestic sphere.

CHAPTER II THE WHITE MISTRESS: COLONIAL FAMILY ROLES IN DORIS LESSING’S THE GRASS IS SINGING AND J.M. COETZEE’S IN THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY

“The woman before them remained impassive, showing no fear.” ~ Paulo Coelho's The Spy

Conrad had indicated in Heart of Darkness that the success of imperialism in Africa is “an accident arising from the weakness of others” (20). Achebe’s work traces the moment of this transition, as we see that internal tensions arise both as a backlash against traditional patriarchal violence and out of a desire to take advantage of the economic opportunities created by the newly arrived colonial powers. Therefore, the acceptance of Western modernity in Achebe’s description of Africa came hand in hand with the colonial powers’ efforts to expand their capitalist ventures. Yet, while the Anglo-European imperialists in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness had perceived Africa and her subjects solely with the intent of economic gain, the succeeding generations of Anglo-European families take up the African business of agriculture. As part of this process of Anglo-European survival, both the African soil and the indigenous laborers are thereby subjected to exploitation by the Anglo-European families. Doris Lessing and J.M. Coetzee have both chosen the African farm setting as the locale in which to depict the interactions and tensions between gender and family roles, and race. In Disgrace, when David migrates from Cape Town to the Eastern Cape, he realizes that the countryside is not subject to the framework of the rule of law. While the university in Cape Town had dismissed him for his sexual impropriety,

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Lucy’s mass rape in Eastern Cape goes unreported. The different treatments of these two cases of sexual violence committed against women represent the way in which David’s experience of coloniality in the country intersects with that of the city, and yet is different from the city. I relate this observation on how country and city settings affect the experience of coloniality with the way in which Kurtz’s “exalted and incredible degradation” goes unchecked in the wilderness of Africa (HOD 107). In the name of protecting Anglo-European women from the darkness of the African continent, Kurtz’s fiancée is excluded from Africa and thus remains ignorant of Kurtz’s corruption in the wildness of Africa. I shall demonstrate in this chapter how the presence of Anglo-European women of the succeeding generation in post-colonial Africa actually turns them into victims of both Anglo-European and indigenous patriarchs. When the indigenous patriarchy overrides the Anglo-European patriarchy, the violence committed against Anglo-European families signifies the way in which the indigenous patriarchy substitutes for Western modernity in the country setting. As with Okonkwo’s cult of violence, the violence committed against Anglo-Europeans is aligned with the demonstration of indigenous masculinity and physical strength. When the indigenous members of the countryside begin to engage in their tribal competitions again, the Anglo-European settlers in Africa are made to pay for the desires of their ancestors. Lessing has justified her choice of the country setting as the site of domestic terror because “[a]nger, violence, [and] death, seemed natural to this vast, harsh country …” (13). In addition to analyzing how Anglo-European domination is subsequently replaced by indigenous patriarchy in Africa, in this chapter I will show how the confinement of white women to domesticity both isolates and eventually victimizes them. Specifically, white women become the targets of violence committed by both the colonial white masters and the indigenous servants. Furthermore, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which the pursuit of capitalism in Africa led to the reinvention of older gender norms within Anglo-European families, thereby limiting women to the potentially dangerous and disempowering domestic context. To define older gender norms in the context of colonized South Africa, I cite the first-wave feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who suggests that confinement to the home and domestic duties keeps women unaware of their oppressed state: [W]omen cannot, by force, be confined to domestic concerns; for they will,

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however ignorant, intermeddle with more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which rise above their comprehension. (5)1

Ironically, older gender norms, such as the confinement of women to domestic roles, upset the equilibrium of the domestic economies in colonized South Africa, especially because Anglo-European women could sometimes perform the roles of men better than their masters. Another problematic aspect of the confinement of Anglo-European women to the domestic sphere is that this confinement frequently places them in close contact with their indigenous African servants. As those indigenous African servants become inseparable from the white households that they serve due to the importance of the labor that they provided on the white-owned farms, they seek to subordinate the domesticated Anglo-European woman masters by committing acts of sexual violence against them. Terror, as it emerges in the domestic setting, is an allegory for the failure of the reinvented older gender norms within these Anglo-European families, a failure which exposes women to retributive punishments when the indigenous patriarchy seeks to impose its own retributive sovereignty over white women as a response to the indigenous community’s former alienation from white women. To connect the reinvention of the older gender norms in Africa with the subordinate state of women, I integrate notions from feminist critiques of different generations to analyze how marriage serves as the primary driver commodifying women in the domestic domain. In Disgrace, Petrus commodifies Lucy by threatening her with sexual violence. As a result, Lucy has to forgo her land and her status as an independent woman in order to secure indigenous protection. To understand this link, I explore in this chapter how marriage and family commodify women and place them in a subordinate position. Regarding the self-perceptions of women as subordinate, Wollstonecraft blames the education system and the press, both of which were established by and controlled by the patriarchy, for causing women to consider themselves as subordinates of men rather than as fully human creatures: I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as woman than 1

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in her letter to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord in the first edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

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Wollstonecraft draws a relationship between books which “[consider] females rather as woman than human creatures” with the choice made by women “to inspire love” rather than “to cherish a nobler ambition”. In discussing Wollstonecraft’s writing background, Margaret Walters describes that “[i]n the later part of the [eighteenth] century, private schools for middle-class girls flourished, but many simply concentrated on helping their pupils to be graceful and well-mannered, readying them for ‘good’ marriages (31).” Against this historical background, Wollstonecraft sees a correlation between the restriction of women to the family and marriage with women’s lacking the knowledge necessary to break through gender norms. Wollstonecraft goes on to state that “[h]ow women are to exist in that state where there is to be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, we are not told” (34). Rather than placing the emphasis on women’s lack of education regarding alternatives to marrying, Doris Sommer argues that women must in fact be actively convinced that they should marry. She observes how nineteenth-century Latin American romantic novels played a prominent role in political stabilization: “heterosexual love was being scandalously exhibitionistic from the concern caused by masses of young women who read sentimental novels” (34). Here, I wish to draw attention to Sommer’s observation that romantic novels “succeed very well at inciting [women’s] desire” (34), and to add the critique that formerly national allegories of romance cannot be sustained in light of the ongoing destructive attacks of the globalized economy on the stability of the family. Stimulated by “the socially harnessable urge for heterosexual companionship and family” (Sommer 35), the characters of Mary in Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Magda in Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country are both willing to offer servitude to their respective indigenous patriarchs. Their actions carry similar implications as Lucy’s refusal to report her rape. Goldberg comments Lucy’s act “as the price she must pay for protection as a woman alone in the dangerous place” (130). Kate Millet has made the observation that this relationship of servitude between males and females in many ways resembles a feudal relationship: In this feudal relationship of male and female, pimp and queen, one might

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expect exchange of servitude for protection. But the typical pimp never protects his slave, and allows him/her to be beaten, betrayed, or even killed, responding only with ambiguous amusement. One is naturally curious to discover just what the queen does receive in return. The answer appears to be an intensity of humiliation which constitutes identity for those who despise themselves. (17-8)

In the following discussion, I analyze the ways in which women are victimized in marriage without realizing that they are not afforded protection by the Anglo-European patriarch in the colonial domestic domain. To revise Millet’s notion in the context of the capitalist economy, I apply Rubin’s notion of the commodification of marital relations in connecting romance and marriage with commodified domestic experience. Rubin theorizes that marriages in kinship-based societies are a form of gift exchange; she says that “[t]o enter into a gift exchange as a partner, one must have something to give. If women are for men to dispose of, they are in no position to give themselves away” (175). To validate Rubin’s observation in the colonial context of Africa, I suggest that the change in the gendering of family and social roles implies an alteration in contemporary marital relations as a consequence of globalized capitalism. Both Coetzee’s and Lessing’s novels imply that the domestication of white women in Anglo-European households actually fails to achieve a state of economic equilibrium. I argue, following Rubin, that the reinvention of older gender norms through marriage, as a gift exchange activity, “may also be the idiom of competition and rivalry” (172). Consequently, women become the targets of individual acts of terror when white patriarchy is challenged by newer capitalistic and postcolonial forces. In Coetzee’s and Lessing’s novels, the white household and the African farm are inseparable entities that form the center of economic activities in the country, and through which the white masters formerly exercised colonial rule. If the father figure had traditionally served as the metonym of the state and acted as a force to align patriarchy with the power of the nation, then the advent of the postcolonial reality puts pressure upon what Anne McClintock has called the “disavowal” of imperialist Victorian society by subsequent colonial masters. McClintock suggests that: [T]heir fetishism [of the colonial] inhabited the borders of a double disavowal by dominant Victorian society: denial of the value of women’s domestic work in the industrial metropolis and the devaluing of colonized

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The “denial of the value of women’s domestic work” can be interpreted with reference to Rubin’s observation that “no wage is paid for housework” (162). In other words, the white mistress is exploited by the patriarch, who acts like a capitalist in seeking to confine her to the domestic sphere. The indigenous servant is similarly exploited by the capitalist patriarch, for the servant works mechanically throughout the day so as to accumulate wealth for his white master. Unable to directly seek vengeance against the white master, the indigenous servant responds to the tyranny of the white patriarchy on the African farm by attempting to victimize the white mistress, who ironically occupies an even more subjugated condition than he does. Both Mary and Magda’s victimization at the hands of the indigenous men they have reached out to as equals confirms Rosemary Jolly’s suggestion that “rape, coerced sex, sex without mutuality, is what [a woman] should ‘learn’ in order to be initiated into society as a female subject” (95). Similarly, Ella Shohat suggests that the white woman in the colonialist narrative is “the desired object of the male protagonists and antagonists” (41). Pamela Cooper sets forth the concept that in Disgrace, “the archetypal portrayal of women tactically informs the novel’s exploration of masculinity as a primary sociopolitical force in the ‘new’ South Africa” (29). Just like the case of Lucy, the way in which Mary and Magda are exploited while undergoing the process of degradation, as the Anglo-European mistresses of their indigenous servants, mirrors and exposes the misery that white women face upon understanding their subordinate identity relative to patriarchal men everywhere. To analyze how the ambiguous relationship between the white mistress and the indigenous servant empowers the latter to become the indigenous master, I investigate the homology between the white master and the indigenous servant in terms of their roles in subordinating the white mistress. Fanon has argued that the indigenous man “wish[es] to be acknowledged not as black but as white” (Black Skin, White Masks 63, original emphasis). In order to “grasp white civilization and dignity”, the indigenous man needs an intimate relationship with a white woman (Black Skin, White Masks 63). Thus, I also theorize in this chapter that violence committed in the domestic sphere by indigenous Africans is a response to the altered master-and-slave relationship existing between Anglo-European colonizers and African indigenous peoples. Cooper observes how “on a broad symbolic level, the black phallus replacing the defunct white one as

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the features of patriarchal authority are configured in South Africa” (29). I make use of the correlation between Millett and Hegel’s observation on how the joint forces of capitalist decision-making, and gender and racial hierarchies result in the shift in power relations, in order to analyze how those aforementioned forces act upon Anglo-European households. Specifically, I will make use of Millett’s observations on the politics of the two sexes and Hegel’s theory on the interaction between self-consciousness and power in master-and-slave relations. Millett defines politics as “power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another” (23). Her theory highlights hierarchy, rather than equality, as the dominant feature in gender relations. Hegel also draws attention to this surface level, and suggests that the power relationship between the lord and the bondsman is as follows: Since to begin with they are unequal and opposed, and their reflection into a unity has not yet been achieved, they exist as two opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another. The former is lord, the other is bondsman. (115)

Yet, for Hegel, this power relationship between the lord and the bondsman reverses as soon as the bondsman gains self-consciousness. As the authority of the lord declines, the bondsman learns that he is very likely to reverse the existing power relations and become the future master of his lord. The two African narratives analyzed in this chapter share a focus on resistance by Anglo-European women to the reinvention of older gender norms. In The Grass is Singing, Lessing demonstrates the crisis of domesticating an Anglo-European woman master and an indigenous servant in the country setting. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country depicts the way in which a daughter plans to overthrow the immoral patriarchy and to replace it with a new family institution that would overturn the colonial racial hierarchy. Drawing from Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s suggestion relating men’s dominance through language with men’s dominance in society (4), I explain how maternal power is associated with the oral domain of language while patriarchy is linked with the written domain of language. We can see an example of this tension between the oral and the written forms of language in In the Heart of the Country in that the female

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protagonist Magda chooses to narrate her story at the level of her consciousness so as to challenge the monopoly of the written domain. The opening of the novel suggests the false possibility that the entries are abstracts from Magda’s diary.2 As the novel begins, Magda describes herself as one of the many girls living in colonies who “stays in her room reading or writing or fighting migraines” (1). She continues her self-introduction by mentioning “I am a spinster with a locked diary but I am more than that” (4). This statement leads to the question of whether the entries are part of her locked diary. In the novel, Magda’s power is constrained by patriarchs, first the white patriarch and later the indigenous patriarch that replaces him. I relate the image of Magda as a woman who keeps a locked diary to the Western tradition of women’s confinement. Elaine Showalter has observed that feminine novelists live “in repression, concealment, and self-censorship [as] deeply inhibiting, especially for those who wanted to write” (25). That Magda keeps a locked diary symbolizes the constraints faced by women writers in expressing intellectual thoughts through the press, as the press was monopolized by male writers. The image of Magda as a writer with a locked diary thus reveals how the written domain of language acts as a tool of patriarchal domination. The suggestion in the opening of the novel that the reader is viewing abstracts from Magda’s locked diary is, however, placed into question from the outset. Though the entries resemble a diary format, they are numbered rather than dated. More importantly, the sense of randomness found within the numbered entries provides a hint that the reader is actually witnessing a record of Magda’s consciousness. Coetzee’s deliberate effort to create the false perception of the novel as a collection of diary entries has been commented on by Renee Therese Schatteman, who argues that Coetzee’s narrative technique “produces textual meanings that are intellectually challenging and far-reaching in scope” (81). Coetzee’s deliberate creation of this false perception highlights the disjunction between written diary entries and Magda’s mental state. The final sentences of the novel give readers an additional hint that the entries do not exist in reality, but only in Magda’s mind: 2 The use of a diary-like entry format in In the Heart of the Country marks Coetzee’s first venture into this type of narrative experiment, which he would continue to employ throughout his writing career. Coetzee refined the format further and generated a higher degree of complexity in Diary of a Bad Year, published in 2007.

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I have uttered my life in my own voice throughout (what a consolation it is), I have chosen at every moment my own destiny, which is to die here in the petrified garden, behind locked gates, near my father’s bones, in a space echoing with hymns I could have written but did not because (I thought) it was too easy. (151)

In saying “hymns I could have written but did not because (I thought) it was too easy”, Magda indicates that her choice to reject the written domain represents her decision to choose the more difficult path. That is, she aims to live beyond the constraints of the written form. Under the conditions of conventional patriarchy, women’s narratives are destined to be “locked diaries”. Thus, though Magda’s entries may serve well as written entries to readers, they exist only in her imagination. Her remarks on the sense of consolation from uttering her life with her own voice reflect the way in which women are silenced by the patriarchal monopoly of the written domain. Furthermore, the entries have ironically indicated the powerful aspect of her voice at the level of her consciousness: I am not deluded; or if I am, my delusions are privileged. I could not make up such words as are spoken to me. They come from gods; or, if not, then from another world. The words last night were: When we dream that we are dreaming, the moment of awakening is at hand. (138, original emphasis)

Magda’s suggestion that her thoughts are empowered by divine or supernatural intelligence represents her confident resistance against the written domain controlled by patriarchs such as her father. Her indication that every awakening begins at the level of consciousness implies the powerful force of thoughts over the written domain. In The Grass is Singing, Lessing reveals how the power relations between men and women can be shown through discursivity. As a patriarchal heir to colonial authority, Dick’s determination to maintain a Victorian gender hierarchy can be seen from his intentional gendering of speeches. When his business companion Charlie Slatter and Slatter’s wife visit Dick and his wife Mary, Dick is naturally absorbed in the men’s talk with Charlie on farm matters, leaving Mary and Mrs. Slatter with their women’s talk on household issues. Dick’s behavior can be studied along with Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg’s suggestion that “the radical transformation of the state in its fraternal structure retains–and, arguably, is based upon–the natural subjugation of women” (126). Dick’s reaction to the Slatters’ departure reveals that he views his wife’s involvement in a

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women’s community as a tool to reassure his dominance as the master of the house: “But you must talk women’s talk sometimes,” said Dick, with awkward jocularity. She glanced at him in surprise: this tone was new to her. He was starting after the departing car, his face regretful. He was not regretting Charlie Slatter, whom he did not like, but the talk, the masculine talk which gave him self-assurance in his relations with Mary. (82-3)

Dick’s stereotypical gendering of speech so as to subordinate Mary reflects the legacy of Anglo-European patriarchy in the colonial setting. The gendering of family roles under Anglo-European patriarchy has become deeply rooted in the culture, making people unable to see its shortcomings when this hierarchy is transplanted to a different historical and political discourse: the colonized South African country setting. In encouraging Mary to “have a good gossip” with Mrs. Slatter (83), Dick unwittingly and symbolically places Mary under indigenous patriarchy. Rebekah Hamilton observes that “[i]n their strongly patriarchal culture, the women take comfort primarily from each other and from the pleasures of their shared storytelling” (284). The power of language as a tool not only of communication, but also of domination, as well as the unsuitability of European languages to the African context echoes a scene in Achebe’s novel, in which the imperialist’s failure to communicate with the indigenous peoples in pre-colonized Umuofia was partly responsible for his unfortunate death: “What did the white man say before they killed him?” asked Uchendu. “He said nothing,” answered one of Obierika’s companions. “He said something, only they did not understand him,” said Obierika. “He seemed to speak through his nose.” (102)

The imperialist discourse is perceived by an indigenous man as “nothing”. As colonialism alters the power relations between the whites as colonizers and the indigenous peoples as the colonized, the English language has seemingly become the language of the ruling class. David Murray correlates language as a tool of communication and as an indicator of power relations by drawing attention to the way in which the colonizer views a communication breakdown as the problem of the colonized: “By seeing communication as a problem for ‘them’ rather than ‘us’,

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ethnocentrism can be preserved in the feelings of superiority” (6). However, colonialism actually turns the English tongue into a shared experience of the colonizers and the colonized in Africa. The power to command the English language is no longer exclusive to the Anglo-Europeans. Here I correlate Judith Butler’s idea on the violence of oppressive language with the way in which indigenous parody of the English language is perceived by the colonizer as verbal assault.3 Butler remarks that “[o]ppressive language is not a substitute for the experience of violence. It enacts its own kind of violence” (9). The use of violence by the colonizer to punish the indigenous parody of English shows how the former treats the indigenous mastery of English as a competitive rival. Such a mentality echoes the ritual of indigenous competition and causes the colonizer to undergo a process of indigenization. Once indigenous patriarchy overcomes the Anglo-European patriarch, violence returns as a retributive punishment.

The Reinvention of Older Gender Norms Lessing’s novel explores the way in which the colonial setting gives rise to the reinvention of older gender norms. As with Sommer’s observations on the urges faced by women for heterosexual marriage and family, the character of Mary in The Grass is Singing shifts from rejecting the family institution to embracing it equivocally by means of marriage. Having been raised by a “fuddled father” and a “bitter mother”, Mary initially sees the family institution as unfulfilling (31). By contrast, she views her life at the boarding school as an extremely happy time. Her case affirms that the breakdown of the family is the driving force behind the search for an alternative family ISA. We have seen this earlier in Achebe’s novel, when Nwoye turns to Christianity in an attempt to replace his father’s household, a household which functions by violent coercion. The failure of the family institution in The Grass is Singing also explains Mary’s indifference towards the deaths of her parents and her lack of intention to form a new family, which would merely duplicate her own. When her parents die and she is left alone in the world, the narrator remarks that “[b]eing alone in the world had no terrors for her at all, she liked it” (32). Mary is a confident young woman who supports herself 3

Butler recalls Charles R. Lawrence III’s accusation of racist speech as “verbal assault” that makes the receiver feel “like receiving a slap in the face” (qtd. in Butler 4).

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financially through offering her talents in the labor market. Her working competence is demonstrated when we learn that “[s]he seemed born for typing and shorthand and book-keeping and the comfortable routine of an office” (32). This statement foreshadows her aspiration for a life beyond domestic duties. However, as the society continues to put pressure upon her, she is driven to pursue an unfitting “career” as spouse. Rubin’s notion that “[k]inship systems rest upon marriage” explains why the convention of pressuring women to marry is maintained in the colonial context (179). As a representative of the white patriarchy, Dick Turner searches for a hopelessly antiquated woman to be his spouse, that is to say, a woman who acts as would have been common in an earlier era. To Dick, “[w]omen in trousers did not seem to him females at all” (47). Furthermore, to sustain white patriarchy in the colonial context, marriage becomes a colonial instrument, not merely a sexist one that genders family roles. Lessing’s novel brings out the message that in the colonial setting, the maintenance of white civilization means that the white patriarch “will never, never admit that a white person, and most particularly, a white woman, can have a human relationship, whether for good or for evil, with a black person” (21). Thus, marriage as a means to maintain the white order is rationalized by the “natural” exclusion of inter-racial marriages. The justification for marriage in the colonial setting gives rise to social pressure and causes Mary “[to begin] looking around for someone to marry” (40). At first, Mary turns toward education as an avenue for fulfillment, as she considers family unfulfilling. This mentality highlights the important role played by alternative ISAs when the family ISA fails, as this failure makes Mary dependent on social relations. For instance, we learn that Mary lives in a girls’ club as “it reminded her of school” (34). However, driven by social pressures, Mary eventually develops low self-esteem regarding her status as a “spinster”: Mary’s idea of herself was destroyed and she was not fitted to recreate herself. She could not exist without that impersonal, casual relationship from other people; and now it seemed to her there was pity in the way they looked at her, and a little importance, too, as if she were really rather a futile woman after all. (42)

Mary’s status as an unwanted, unmarried woman leads to her feeling of alienation as it violates routine gender norms. Driven by gossip that “she ought to get married” (43), Mary looks for a potential husband to end her career in spinsterhood. From the narration implying that Mary’s potential

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husband could be Dick or “anybody”, we can infer that her marriage is simply a response to social pressure. This rationale both brings the couple together and, perhaps unrealistically, conceals foreseeable disputes. Following the reinvention of older gender norms in colonized Africa, Mary’s choice of marriage affirms Simone de Beauvoir’s account of women in the twentieth century who “really did have possibilities for economic independence but who instead became complicit in their own oppression by embracing marriage as a career in forms that presuppose, facilitate, and support male dominance” (Card 20). That Mary has forgotten the pleasure of being alone supports my earlier reference to Raymond Williams’ notion that the psychological drive is a consequence of social determination. Mary has again returned to the family ISA which she had earlier sought to escape. The marriage between Dick and Mary is doomed to failure due to the polarity of their perceptions towards the idea of home. As farm work keeps Dick busy in the field, he perceives their house as “a temporary dwelling, but not to live in permanently” (3). Thus, he fails to see the necessity of turning the house into a home for his marriage. Mary’s reaction upon seeing the domestic domain that she is to be confined to reveals the discrepancy between her ideal home and the house actually provided: She sat down, bewildered by the strangeness of it all. Dick was watching her face, she knew, for signs of disappointment, and she forced herself to smile, though she felt weak with foreboding: this tiny stuffy room, the bare brick floor, the greasy lamp, were not what she had imagined. (54)

The strangeness of the house for Mary implies her formerly superficial understanding of Dick and his lifestyle. Upon hearing Dick’s explanation of the history behind each item in the house, she recalls haunting memories of her own family: [S]he began to feel, slowly, that it was not in this house she was sitting, with her husband, but back with her mother, watching her endlessly contrive and patch and mend–till suddenly she got to her feet with an awkward scrambling movement, unable to bear it; possessed with the thought that her father, from his grave, had sent out his will and forced her back into the kind of life he had made her mother lead. (55-6)

That Mary’s recollection of the haunted past is resurrected in the new domestic milieu foreshadows the absence of domestic sanctuary in her

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new household with Dick. Besides this, her recollection of the haunted past also implies that her marriage with Dick is simply a repetition of her parents’ past. In other words, the new couple is merely repeating the errors made by Mary’s parents as the family ISA is resurrected and transformed under colonial capitalism. It is only when Mary has taken up her role as wife that she begins to understand the tortures faced by her mother in the past and why her mother treated her father “with a cold indifference” (30). That Mary imagines her dead father waking up from the grave and imposing the same tortures upon her symbolizes the persistent legacy of the patriarch. Just as was the case with Mary’s father, Dick’s incompetence in farm management results in the absence of both material and psychological fulfillment within his Anglo-European household. Mary then comes to a belated recognition that the happy and envied aspects of her life in town are replaced by a type of country life that she is utterly unfamiliar with. While domestication subjects women to patriarchal confinement, the reinvention of older gender norms results in suffering for both men and women. Both have little choice regarding the older gender norms that are imposed upon them, and both are subject to external forces, such as the demands of capitalism, which plays a vital role that affects the gendering of family roles. I have mentioned earlier that marriage as an instrument helps to maintain the patriarchal order. Here I add that in the African country setting, marriage restricts women from the social sphere and limits them to attachment with their family role, which we first see in Achebe’s novel, in which Okonkwo condemns his youngest wife Ojiugo because she went “to plait her hair at her friend’s house and did not return early enough to cook the afternoon meal” (22). Okonkwo’s act of condemnation represents his attempt, as male patriarch, to restrict his wife from the social sphere and to the domestic sphere. In studying the role played by female authority in Achebe’s novel, Rhonda Cobham comments that “the narrative leaves us with no example of female authority within the Igbo social structure that is not compatible with traditional Western ideals of femininity as nurturing, ornamental and in need of protection” (519). Turning again to Lessing’s novel, at the beginning of her marriage, Mary uses her own money to build an ideal home. Aside from investing capital, she has contributed her labor in an attempt to bring new changes to the domestic environment. As with Rubin’s idea that women are gifts in marriage, of which “the labor of women in the home contributes to the ultimate quantity of surplus value realized by the capitalist” (162-3), women are transformed by marriage from raw materials into final products

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to be bought and sold in systems of exchange dominated by men. Family is thus allegorized in the selected narratives as a kind of instrument that transforms labor power in the interests of systems of capital and capital exchange. Upon realizing that the house is both bare and deteriorated, Dick suggests to Mary that “[w]e can put up something else”, adding “[b]ut that is your job now” (54-5). Dick’s words seemingly reveal that marriage has granted Mary the rights of the mistress of the house, yet his words also represent the means by which the patriarchal order forces Mary to transform herself into a laborer who works to meet the desires of the patriarchal system, with Dick thereby becoming the capitalist who controls production. For Mary, being given the task of furnishing the house symbolizes that the domestic burden has been transferred to her, with her own labor also being exploited. When she has no more money to help with the house, she tries to accommodate herself to the duties of women in Victorian households: embroidery and reading, but she proves unsuited for either. The narratives of family romance that Mary reads are so much in contrast to her own experience that “she had not taken in a word” (65). However, Dick feels glad that “he had married a woman who read books” (66). His mentality validates Gilbert and Gubar’s observation that male writers and their works function to sustain patriarchy, as in Western literary civilization, the author is “the spiritual type of a patriarch” (7). Being thus exploited in terms of capital and labor, Mary soon realizes that she has been disempowered by domesticity and risks becoming unfit for the domain of labor entirely. As a married Anglo-European woman in the African country setting, Mary is gradually transformed into a domestic product no longer marketable in the work domain. She can only depend upon her husband, the capitalist who controls the means of production. As Mary finds herself unfit for the older gender norms imposed upon her, she becomes “haunted by a feeling of inadequacy because ‘she was not like that’” (107). She then decides to return to the town and to her old job in an attempt to start a new life. The way that the old employer rejects her job application reveals her loss of desirability in the labor market: Looking grieved, but at the same time shocked, even scandalized, he said that the job had been filled already, and that he was sorry. She felt, again, outraged; for all that time she had worked here, it had been part of herself, this office, and now he would not take her back. “I am sorry, Mary,” he

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As a married woman who has been away from the work domain for almost six years, her good job record no longer matters. Mary is rejected due to the gender ideology imposing “the rule against married women” in the workplace (110). The mutual exclusivity of the domestic and work domains implies the impossibility for Mary to leave Dick.

Women Masters in the Colonized South African Country Setting To explain how capitalist ideology and gender norms in the family result in the subaltern state of women, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak observes that family is both “a specific class formation” and “part of the masculine frame” (73). She adds that “the family’s role in patriarchal social relations is so heterogeneous and contested that merely replacing the family in this problematic is not going to break the frame” (73). In other words, the change of the patriarchal head is unable to alter women’s subordinate role in the family, Mary has therefore come to experience the same sufferings as her mother in the Anglo-European household she shares with Dick. Men’s desire to preserve patriarchy results in a stereotypical division of labor in the colonial setting that violates the principles of the household economy. Labor power is utilized by means of older gender norms, rather than on the basis of its effectiveness. Therefore, in the discussion below I demonstrate that Dick is unfit for the work domain while Mary is actually more effective in managing the laborers and the work. Dick’s devotion to the country, despite his poor understanding of farm management, conforms to the imperialists’ belief in being able to dig gold from the African soil. Despite his deep indebtedness and incompetence as a farmer, Dick eagerly grasps at every new opportunity to turn around his economic fortunes. He ignores Charlie Slatter’s warnings on the dim prospects of beekeeping and takes the risk anyway. This incident allows Mary to gain “her first glimpse into Dick’s real character” (90), which is his ignorance towards the impossibility of copying the English conditions on his African farm.4 Dick’s failure at beekeeping 4

Mary picks up a pamphlet on beekeeping from Dick and discovers that the pamphlet was “written for English conditions” (92).

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does not dissuade him from attempting other moneymaking ventures. Six months later, he tries to enter the costly pig breeding business. Mary then criticizes his dream as “[c]astles in the air about making money” as he tries out several types of business continuously, without evaluating such crucial factors as risk and market needs (96). As a so-called capitalist, Dick is obviously unsuccessful, as he lacks his partner’s basic management skills. Millett has observed that patriarchy in the institution of marriage hinders women from realizing their economic potential, and instead fosters women’s dependency on their marriage partners. In order to ensure the economic dominance of men in this arrangement, “the barter system of marriage (sex in return for security) must not be violated by outside commerce” (9). Here I integrate Millett’s observation with Luce Irigaray’s account of the two possible contradictory roles of women to suggest that the power of the patriarch actively hinders Mary’s ability: Women could be man’s equal. In this case she would enjoy, in a more or less near future. The same economic, social, political rights as men. She would be a potential man. But on the exchange market–especially, or exemplarily, the market of sexual exchange–women would also have to preserve and maintain what is called femininity. The value of a woman would accrue to her from her maternal role, and, in addition, from her “femininity” (84, original emphasis).

When Dick falls ill, Mary takes up his duties on the farm in addition to her domestic role. Despite the challenge of managing native laborers who “resented her, a woman, supervising them” (123), Mary shows her capability as the breadwinner of the household in the absence of the patriarch. She outperforms Dick in managing the finances of the farm as “[s]he surveyed what crops were grown, what animals there were, and analyzed without difficulty the causes of their poverty” (130). Mary’s case shows how being the financial controller of the household may allow women to mitigate their subaltern state. Mary’s role as breadwinner allows her to assert herself as the woman master of the household, and eventually, to silence the original master. Thus, the strength of the patriarch is solely founded upon his control of capital. That Mary’s new role enables her to get rid of her subaltern state is revealed through her subsequent interaction with Dick concerning her plans to reorganize the farm: As she spoke her voice became harsh, insistent, angry. Since he did not speak, but only listened uneasily, she got out his books and supported her

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Mary is ironically using Dick’s books, a representation of the tools used by the patriarch, to support her oral speech. However, the situation should not be interpreted as her overriding of the patriarchy. Under these circumstances, her power is still authorized by the patriarch, as represented by both Dick’s consent and the figures drawn from the male-dominated written domain. Thus, in this instance Mary has acquired patriarchal speech, rather than a voice of her own. Though Mary’s fortitude and achievements confirm her capabilities in the work domain, she does not belong to it. Mary works for Dick’s work domain within the domestic setting and her labor does not contribute to the labor market, but rather, is absorbed by the patriarchy. Mary’s situation shows how the Victorian legacy of female subordination through capitalist exploitation persists in colonized Africa. However, the stability of these transplanted Victorian gender roles is complicated by the oppressive race politics of African colonialism. To elaborate this point in further detail, I draw from McClintock’s observations regarding the value of domestic work in the Victorian era to show how the subordination of Anglo-European woman master to the indigenous servant occurs in Dick and Mary’s household. McClintock regards the Victorian era as “an age when wifely services were void of economic value” (141). As Mary’s servitude bears no economic value, her role is actually even more subordinate than that of the indigenous farm workers. Thus, though Dick’s illness results in the temporary absence of the patriarch and a change in the family roles, he is still exploiting Mary’s labor by strengthening his patriarchal dominance and maintaining the agrarian capital relationships on the farm, which Dick ultimately controls. Despite Mary’s competence in managing the farm, she chooses the harder path, which still requires her submission to the patriarch. Mary’s decision to retire to the domestic domain upon Dick’s recovery affirms the reinvention of the older gender norms in the colonial context. As with Wollstonecraft’s theorization that marriage subordinates women, the desire “to inspire love” drives Mary to discard the “nobler ambition” of developing her own career: And the third reason, though she was not aware of it, was the strongest … She needed a man stronger than herself, and she was trying to create one out of Dick. If he had genuinely, simply, because of the greater strength of

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his purpose, taken the ascendency over her, she would have loved him, and no longer hated herself for becoming tied to a failure. (143-4)

Mary chooses to make herself the weaker subordinate, and in Irigaray’s sense, to maintain her “femininity” in the household so that Dick’s strength and potential may be demonstrated. In this way, she ultimately collaborates with the subordination of married women. Her mindset follows the conventional gendering of family roles and results in the inefficient division of labor. Instead of being an affectionate wife who acts in a rational manner for the sake of the household, she becomes what Wollstonecraft refers to as an “alluring mistress” who supports tyranny. Having explained how Mary, as a married woman, turns to the patriarch at the expense of her own “nobler ambition” to be “man’s equal”, I will now extend my discussion on the behavior of unmarried women, as shown in the case of Magda in Coetzee’s novel, to demonstrate how the patriarch’s capitalist wealth promises protection to women in the colonial setting, a promise which ultimately justifies violence.

The White Mistress and the Indigenous Servant Though Magda is an unmarried white woman, the master-servant relationship that she faces is, unsurprisingly, similar to Mary’s case as a married woman. Both of these women are tied to a weak patriarch under African colonialism. Just as with Mary, Magda needs to handle the economy of the household when the patriarch is absent. Though Mary and Magda are white women masters, they can never become actual masters. Rather, they become the white mistresses of their indigenous servants when indigenous patriarchy overrides Anglo-European patriarchy. McClintock highlights this phenomenon by referring Africa as “a theatre for exhibiting, amongst other things, the cult of domesticity and the reinvention of patriarchy” (16-7). For Magda, the virtual death of the white patriarch results in her developing a close relationship with her indigenous servant Hendrik.5 However, without the economic support of the patriarch, Magda cannot maintain her pride as the woman master in the lawless African country setting. Given the primacy of economic power, as it is controlled by the patriarch, one of the crucial factors in sustaining conventional patriarchy is to continue the line of patriarchal inheritance. To ensure the domination of 5

The death of Magda’s father only exists at the level of Magda’s imagination.

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white patriarchy in the colonial discourse, male heirs are emphasized. I add that the emphasis on producing a male heir implies that female heirs are ignored. Meanwhile, women are degraded as mere objects for giving birth to male heirs. In In the Heart of the Country, Magda’s mother was not lucky enough to give birth to a male heir. Magda remarks that her mother was “a frail gentle loving woman who died under her husband’s thumb” (2). Following the death of Magda’s mother, Magda’s father marries again. Magda’s stepmother thereby becomes the fresh hope for bringing the family head a male heir. She represents maternal authority empowered by the father. From then on, as a female heir, Magda’s presence is meaningless: To my father I have been an absence all my life. Therefore instead of being the womanly warmth at the heart of this house I have been a zero, a null, a vacuum towards which all collapses inward, a turbulence, muffled, grey, like a chill draft eddying through the corridor, neglected, vengeful. (2)

Her decision to self-silence, in composing the “locked diary”, is thus explained as a strategy which at once both accommodates and resists patriarchy, and arises from her fantasy of being threatened by the new maternal authority empowered by the patriarch. Magda’s fantasies continue, and echo Spivak’s claim that culturally shaped gender norms are often bizarre. In one fantasy, Magda murders both her father and stepmother in her attempt to overthrow patriarchy: The axe sweeps up over my shoulder. All kinds of people have done this before me, wives, sons, lovers, heirs, rivals, I am not alone. Like a ball on a string it floats down at the end of my arm, sinks into the throat below me, and all is suddenly tumult. (12)

Magda’s fantasy of patricide reflects thus the actual severity of the patriarchal influence on her. Magda’s immoral act of patricide is an imitation and transformation of her father’s action. While Magda intends to talk to her father one evening, he is busy committing a forbidden act of adultery on the opposite side of the closed door. In fear and embarrassment, he responds to Magda’s question from the other side of the door by keeping silent. Here, Magda’s father’s silence is also a means to silence her. When she insists on questioning him, signifying her certainty about his presence, he excuses her gently, hoping that she would leave. Here, the father is making use of

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sound in silencing her as well. As Magda’s insistence persists, he reveals his beastly authority and utters “Now stop it! Stop irritating me! Go away!” (60). The combination of the gentle and furious aspects of the father assures his authority in silencing Magda. After the imaginary patricide, Magda questions whether she is “doing justice to the city” (14), which reflects the way in which the immoral nature of the patriarch results in her desire to overthrow it, though ironically through immoral means. In her fantasy of patricide, Magda attempts to overthrow the patriarchy by shooting her father. As soon as she has shot him, Magda gives a long and noteworthy speech that signifies her new identity as the master of the house. In the metaphorical sense, she is determined to replace the dominance of his-story in South African history with her own parable of anti-patriarchal vengeance: A woman determined to be the author of her own life would not have shrunk from hurling open the curtains and flooding the guilty deed with light, the light of the moon, the light of firebrands. But I, as I feared, hover ever between the exertions of drama and the languors of meditation. Though I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, I closed my eyes … to keep me from seeing my father’s nakedness. (68)

Magda confesses that she has not taken morality into consideration in her attempt to disrupt the established system of patriarchy. Despite a momentary triumph in overthrowing the patriarch, her father’s death signifies her exposure to exploitation by indigenous patriarchy. Without patriarchal protection, Magda can only rely upon the capitalist wealth inherited from her father for her survival. In contrast to Magda, Mary’s case demonstrates the situation faced by Anglo-European women in Africa when racial and gender oppression intersects in the absence of capitalist protection. Mary’s withdrawal from the farm fails to make Dick a better farmer, or a stronger patriarch. Both Mary and Magda attempt to rebuild the family upon facing unsatisfactory relations with the patriarch. However, they both fail to realize how the new family serves to maintain the subordinate position of women. For Mary, returning to the domestic domain means endless idleness and boredom: For even daydreams need an element of hope to give satisfaction to the dreamer. She would stop herself in the middle of one of her habitual fantasies about the old days, which she projected into her future, saying dully to herself that there would be no future. There was nothing. Nil. Emptiness. (149-50)

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Unable to dream of a palpable future, Mary discourages herself further by “saying dully” to herself that managing the domestic domain is a business without a future. Her tone of voice reflects the way in which the domestic domain has destroyed her spirit. She used to be “harsh, insistent, angry” when she spoke to Dick of her big plans for operating the farm (137). Mary’s state of nothingness conforms with Magda’s state of being “a zero, a null, a vacuum” (2). This coincidence reinforces the subordinate state of women under the patriarch as “the ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant” (Spivak 82). Mary becomes a product exclusive of the domestic domain due to the reinvention of older gender norms in her Anglo-European household. Her state of domestication resembles the indigenous women in the sense that the authorities believed “if African women worked outside of their homes, their own ‘domestication’ would be undermined” (Georgescu 32). She even attempts to take up the role of reproduction so as to end her state of idleness. Bored by endless idleness, she believes that having a child of her own would help her evolve from “nothing” to something. The confinement of women to the domestic domain itself generates the false perception that a woman can only be defined through her powers of reproduction. Mary’s situation is even worse than that. Her idea is immediately rejected by Dick due to the financial condition of the household: “But, Mary, you don’t know how poor we are.” “Of course I know. But I can’t go on like this. I must have something. I haven’t anything to do.” He saw she was desiring a child for her own sake, and that he still meant nothing to her, not in a real way. (152)

Dick’s disapproval of Mary’s proposal implies the way in which the capitalist drive controls patriarchal decision-making and determines its continuation. Family roles are degraded as mere products of consequence of the capitalist drive and institutional engine. Though the reinvention of gender norms restricts women to domesticity, the Anglo-European patriarch holds contradictory thoughts regarding women’s suitability for such an environment under African colonialism. As a representation of the white patriarch, Charlie comments that “[n]o woman knows how to handle niggers” (200). On the surface, this comment would seem to reveal women’s inability to manage indigenous workers. However, from the conversation between Charlie and another white master, Tony, we see that it is actually the indigenous

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patriarchy which creates the real sources of difficulty for the white women masters in managing a household with indigenous servants: “My old woman drives me mad–it’s something about this country. They have no idea how to deal with niggers.” “Needs a man to deal with niggers,” said Charlie. “Niggers don’t understand women giving them orders. They keep their own women in their right place.” He laughed. (18)

The indigenous restriction on the position of women reflects the legacy of Okonkwo’s patriarchal rule. For instance, Okonkwo feels pleased when “he heard [Nwoye] grumbling about women. That shows that in time he would be able to control his women-folk” (38). However, generations after Okonkwo, the distinctive features of African colonialism imply the impossibility of transferring the Victorian household in an Anglo-European setting directly to the African milieu. White women masters are forced by their white male masters to take over the tasks of the master: to manage the indigenous servants who inevitably disobey them. To demonstrate the linkage between domesticity and the subordinate state of women under African colonialism, I compare Mary’s status before and after she moves from the farm to the domestic domain. While taking up Dick’s role on the farm during his illness, Mary faced conflict with an indigenous farm laborer, Moses. Upon discovering that Moses has had a resting period beyond the permitted one-minute break, Mary asks him to get back to work. Out of thirst, he ignores her and “fetch[es] himself some water from the petrol tin that stood under a bush for coolness, nearby” (133). That Moses prioritizes his own physical needs over Mary’s command symbolizes how indigenous desire overrides Anglo-European authority in colonized Africa. This action foreshadows Moses’ later act of challenging white authority by turning Mary into his white mistress. Besides, it implies that Mary, as a colonial woman master, can never become an actual master under the restrictions of African colonialism. Mary, however, falsely believes in the stability of her mastery, without recognizing the potential threat the indigenous patriarch may also constitute. To ensure her own authority, she scolds Moses as he continues drinking, heedless of her white authority. Her whiteness was now apparently trumped by her gender inferiority. Moses’ reply not only triggers the eventual conflict between the white woman master and the indigenous worker, but also illustrates the different discourses of power

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operating between the language of the colonizer and indigenous dialects in the colonial setting: At this he stopped still, looked at her squarely and said in his own dialect which she did not understand, “I want to drink.” “Don’t talk that gibberish to me,” she snapped. She looked around for the bossboy, who was not in sight. The man said, in a halting ludicrous manner, “I … want … water.” He spoke in English, and suddenly smiled and opened his mouth and pointed his finger down his throat. (133)

Moses’ reply in the indigenous dialect reflects his identity in resistance: an indigenous African being enslaved under colonialism. Mary’s inability to comprehend the indigenous dialect recalls Murray’s observation on the communication between the whites and the indigenous Americans in the contact zone: “to speak a language which is utterly alien is the equivalent of speaking no language at all” (6). Mary’s subsequent response, of rejecting the indigenous dialect, symbolizes the colonizer’s lack of either concern or respect for the indigenous language and culture. Her inability to act without an interpreter resembles the actions taken by the pre-colonial white commissioner in Achebe’s novel, in which the white commissioner delivers messages to the indigenous peoples through an indigenous messenger. Mary, similarly, feels offended when Moses shifts to English and uses body language to parody his speech act. Murray has elaborated on how the use of a language power in the interests of communication actually serves to emphasize the injustice of communicative power imbalances: [I]t is important to note that what we have here are Indians speaking a new language. In other words they are doing something culturally more sophisticated than the whites can manage, but it is being used as evidence of their lack of civilization. (7-8)

Thus, Mary is offended because the English tongue is no longer an exclusive privilege of the colonizer. It has become a collective entity, shared by both the colonized and the colonizer’s communicative array. Accordingly, Mary responds angrily: “Don’t speak English to me” (133). Her reaction shows the attempt of the colonizers to repress the colonized subjects by removing their rights of self-expression, regardless of whether that self-expression takes place in their own indigenous dialect or in English.

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While Moses parodies his incapability in English, he uses body language to assist in his expression of desire. I extend here Butler’s notion on linguistic injury to suggest that Moses’ use of body language “parallel[s] the infliction of physical pain and injury” upon Mary as the Anglo-European woman master (4). Moses’ action offends Mary, as it seemingly mocks her inability to comprehend his words. Fanon’s idea that being associated with the indigenous peoples is itself a disgrace to whites may help to explain Mary’s anger, as he states: “A Negro? Shameful–it’s beneath contempt. Associating with anybody of that race is just utterly disgracing yourself” (qtd. in Black Skin, White Masks 66).6 Lessing’s narrator describes Mary’s anger as “an inarticulate rage” (133). She intends to scold Moses but “remained speechless” (133). Having suffered from Moses’ offensive action, Mary’s incapability of verbal assault confirms Butler’s belief that the “body’s pain is inexpressible language” (6). Out of anger, Mary then decides to punish Moses. Her choice of whipping represents the use of bodily torture matching in kind his parody of English as inarticulate speech. Here Mary’s use of violence to assert her status ironically mirrors the use of indigenous ritual in the African setting. Though Moses does not rebel at this stage and returns to his work, Mary’s use of violence likewise invites the subsequent re-emergence of indigenous terror in the domestic domain. In attempting to document how the master-servant relationship shifts to that of an intimate personal relationship between the white woman master and the indigenous worker, we must first understand how the latter subject is incorporated into the white household. Since the farm is the center of economic activities in support of the white household, there is an inseparable connection between the farm and the household. In the case of Magda, when her father dies and the household lacks a patriarchal figure, Henrik, the indigenous farm worker, emerges as an agent who steals from the white household as compensation for his lost wages. The incident shows the linkage between white patriarchy in the domestic domain and white domination over the African farm. In Lessing’s novel, Moses becomes an integral member of the white household due to the servant-less state of the domestic domain: Dick, unable to stand the dirt and bad food any longer, said he would bring up one of the farm natives for training as a houseboy. When the man presented himself at the door, Mary recognized him as the one she had 6

Fanon quotes from Un home pareil aux autres.

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Chapter II struck with the whip over the face two years before. (160)

Moses’ shifting role, from outsider to insider in Dick’s Anglo-European household, confirms how the farm and the household can sometimes be conceived as different, yet homologous, domains comprising the colonizer’s authority. Both domains offer a spatialization of power that maintains the subordination of African indigenous workers. Yet, being ignorant of Mary’s earlier conflict with Moses on the farm, Dick’s appointment of Moses to a domestic role paves the way for subsequent acts of terror in the domestic domain. Despite the shared subordinate experience in the colonial context linking the white woman master to the indigenous servant, there exists a distinct relationship between them within the domestic setting. As a white master, Charlie mentions that “we don’t like niggers murdering white women” (16). Violence imposed by the indigenous peoples upon white women represents a challenge to white supremacy in the colonial setting at the expense of women’s identities and bodies. That white women are victimized by both the white and the indigenous patriarchs reflects the subordination of race and gender to patriarchy. For white women, living in the contact zones of the colonies threatens to negate their race privilege and renders them liable to the same subaltern state that both indigenous men and women face. I refer to this phenomenon as the indigenization of Anglo-European women under African colonialism. Though white men regard indigenous servants as brutal savages, they drive their women into confinement within the domestic sphere and place them in charge of the management of these “brutes” although they realize the potential for danger. Lynette A. Jackson comments on this contradictory practice and states how “[t]he notions of the vulnerable white female and the sexually dangerous black male were central in colonial cultures” (195). Though racial hierarchy raises white women above their indigenous workers, the Anglo-European perception of natives as people that “howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces” explains for Mary’s fear towards Moses (HOD 63). Having been raised in a white household, Mary had been taught to keep a distance from the indigenous peoples: She was afraid of them, of course. Every woman in South Africa is brought up to be. In her childhood she had been forbidden to walk out alone, and when she had asked why, she had been told in the furtive, lowered, but matter-of-fact voice she associated with her mother, that they were nasty and might do horrible things to her. (60)

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Mary’s childhood experience implies the way that the family institution in the colonial setting uses racial segregation to serve its own patriarchal ideology, by the linking of behaviors to oppressive social functions (what I’ve been referring to as “the family ISA”). Though Mary mentions “[e]very woman in South Africa”, Lessing actually conveys the partiality of such a view: clearly, Mary can only refer to every white woman in South Africa, because she has never come into contact with any indigenous women. As a child, Mary had been ideologically inculcated to develop a fear of indigenous peoples. Having the perception that Moses may “do horrible things to her” (60), an assumption no doubt conditioned by their past conflict on the farm and the extant colonial bias against the indigenous peoples, destroys Mary’s sense of peace and safety at home: [T]he knowledge of that man alone in the house with her lay like a weight at the back of her mind. She was tight and controlled in his presence; she kept him working as long as she could, relentless over every speck of dust and every misplaced glass or plate that she noticed. (168)

Mary’s fear of Moses is related not only to her colonial mentality, but also to her alienated state in the domestic domain. The confinement to the domestic setting of white women and their indigenous servants in the colonial setting means that “[their] horizon had been narrowed to the house” (169). Mary naively hopes that by keeping Moses busy at work, he will have no time or energy to perpetrate evil deeds. The white colonizers’ inability to comprehend the natives reflects the white colonizers’ bias and results in the development of mental torture for the women oppressors, who come to live in fear of those they are oppressing. Mary’s frequent dismissal of servants leads Dick to believe that she is bad at household management. Dick’s decision to give Mary “one of the best boys” on the farm as her domestic worker means that he has no doubts regarding Moses’ work ability in the domestic domain (161). Hiring Moses also empowers Dick, who then imposes a renewed, and fiercely gendered, division of labor upon Mary, which forces her to return to her domestic responsibilities. This domestic confinement subordinates Mary equally to white patriarchy and the threat of indigenous violence: Moses was indifferent and calm against her as if she did not exist, except in so far as he obeyed her orders; Dick, formerly so good-natured and easy to please, now complained continually over her bad management … (169)

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Though Mary’s status is theoretically more privileged than the indigenous servant, the balance of power is altered. Instead of being a woman master, to the indigenous servant Mary appears simply to be the wife of the white master. She is subjected to her own form of violence, which is different from but analogous to the violence faced every day by the indigenous mass. Mary’s identity as the “wife of the white master” means that she is actually the mistress of the house, instead of the woman master. Because Dick believes that the resignation of the indigenous servants can only be related to the bad management of the mistress, Mary’s ability as the mistress of the house is therefore defined by the servants’ servitude, rather than by Mary’s skills. In making the argument that white patriarchy is ultimately responsible for the transformation of the master-servant relationship, such that indigenous anti-colonial violence results in domestic violence against white women, I apply Hegel’s idea on the master-and-slave dialectic. Mary, as the mistress of the house, and Moses, as the indigenous servant, confirm (and yet require the re-framing of) Hegel’s observation regarding the independent nature of the bondsman/servant and the dependent aspects of the lord/master: [T]he lord achieves his recognition through another consciousness; for in them, that other consciousness is expressly something unessential, both by its working on the thing, and by its dependence on a specific existence. (116)

Mary’s previous experience with servants resigning is a manifestation of the way that the lord becomes ever more dependent upon the existence of the bondsman: [W]henever a boy gave notice, although she always felt a sharp relief because the tensions that were created between herself and every servant would be dissolved by his going, she also felt indignant, as if it were an insult to herself. (171)

The servants’ resignation is regarded as “an insult” to the mistress, as it implies the mistress’ poor household management, rather than the servants’ inability to handle domestic duties. Dick’s indifference towards Mary and Moses’ realization of the reversed power relationship between himself and the mistress combine in the form of a forbidden and ambiguous relationship between the mistress and the servant.

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Fanon’s theorizing on the role played by white patriarchal authorization helps to explain the transformation of Mary and Moses’ relationship from tension to intimacy. Fanon observes that interracial intimacy under colonialism requires authorization from the white man.7 He states that “[i]t is essential that some white man say to [the black man], ‘Take my sister’” (Black Skin, White Masks 68). Moses’ appointment is authorized by Dick, the white patriarch. Moses thus becomes crucial to Mary’s existential role as the mistress of the house. While the resignation of other indigenous servants had given Mary “a sharp relief”, Mary’s immediate response to Moses’ resignation was that “she found herself thinking of Dick’s anger” (171). The departure of the servant is even portrayed as horrible to Mary: To her horror she discovered she was shaking with sobs again, there in front of the native! Helpless and weak, she stood beside the table, her back towards him, sobbing. For some time neither of them moved; then he came round where he could see her face, looking at her curiously, his brows contracted in speculation and wonder. She said at last, wild and panic: “You mustn’t go!” And she wept on, repeating over and over again, “You must stay! You must stay!” And all the time she was filled with shame and mortification because he was seeing her cry. (171)

Out of fear, Mary can no longer maintain her racial pride as an Anglo-European master over the indigenous subject. Sobbing in front of Moses signifies the poverty of her racial ideology, and reveals that the burden of maintaining a poor white household with an indigenous servant and an aloof husband has driven her to mental collapse. Moses’ resignation is “not her fault” and she has actually “done everything she could to keep this boy” (171). Mary’s case confirms Hegel’s supposition that the master-and-slave dialectic determines identity and consciousness: [The consciousness of the dialectic] has a twofold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self. (111, original emphasis)

In pleading with Moses, Mary forgets and forgoes her identity as the mistress of the house, even as she would affirm her intimacy with Moses 7

See the romance between the white woman Andrée Marielle and the black man Jean Veneuse (Black Skin, White Masks 68).

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in the form of a shared abjection. In the same gesture, she is at once constituted and degraded as the other: Mary becomes the subordinate being in the master-and-slave relationship with Moses as the new master and Mary as the bondswoman. Mary and Moses’ superseding of each other’s roles in the rural African domestic setting is a challenge to white patriarchy as well as an affirmation of indigenous patriarchy, since Mary now has two masters, not just one. Just as Mary’s role will henceforth be solely defined by Moses’, the latter will also be defined by the former. The supremacy of the white mistress relative to the indigenous servant is thus eventually changed to female servitude to the indigenous servant. The absence of the white patriarch and the subordinated status of white women, not only to the former colonizer but also to the recently decolonized indigenous servant, both represent the replacement of white patriarchy by indigenous patriarchy in the colonial household and allow the possibility for violence to emerge. My analysis demonstrates how violence in the colonial setting differs from that in the previous discussion on post-colonial violence as depicted in Disgrace. In Disgrace, when Lucy was made captive by the intruders, David had failed to save her from sexual assault. His state of helplessness represents the attempt, and ultimately the failure, of the white patriarchy in the colonial setting to provide domestic sanctuary. In The Grass is Singing, in contrast, the reinvention in the colonial setting of older gender norms depicts the way in which subordination of women is supported by white patriarchy. However, in both cases, sexual intimacy with white women concurs with Fanon’s formulation on the desire of the indigenous peoples: The look that the native turns on the settler’s town is a look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses his dream of possession–all manner of possession: to sit at the settler’s table, to sleep in the settler’s bed, with his wife if possible. (Wretched 30)

Sexual intimacy with white women is thus an expression of indigenous desire in the form of return of indigenous masculinity that challenges white patriarchy. In dissecting how the reversal of the master-and-servant relationship leads to individual acts of terror, I suggest that the incapability of the white patriarch drives white women into the embrace of the indigenous patriarchy. Dick’s failure to recognize the potential threat in the domestic setting results in the rise of an indigenous patriarch in his absence. Moses

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takes advantage of Dick’s illness, symbolizing the decline of Anglo-European patriarchy, to exert indigenous patriarchy in the household. Instead of using violence, a representation of indigenous masculinity, Moses presents himself as a caring and authoritative patriarchal head. One example of this can be seen in his reaction to Mary’s loss of composure upon learning of his resignation. Moses fills a glass of water for her so as to make her calm down. Moses’ tone also serves to indicate how his role in the household has changed from that of servant to that, seemingly, of peer: “Drink,” he said simply, as if he were speaking to one of his own women; and she drank. […] “Madame, lie down,” he said again, and his voice was gentle this time, almost fatherly. (172)

Moses’ new tone signals his self-assurance in his new role as the head of the household. In submitting to his authority, Mary assents in allowing an indigenous servant to become an indigenous master within an Anglo-European household. One of the reasons to account for Moses’ success in challenging the white patriarchy is that his behavior addresses the white patriarchy’s inadequacy. Mary had been raised in a family institution that failed to provide her with spiritual support, in which Mary’s father “squander[ed] his salary in drink” while her mother had a “passion of resentment” (29). As a child, Mary had even been made responsible for comforting her crying mother, “longing to get away, but feeling important too, and hating her father” (30). Just like Mary’s father, Dick cannot fulfill his role as the financial and spiritual provider of the household. We see this when Dick loses his temper, becoming both demanding and weak following the deterioration of his health. In portraying Moses’ voice, in contrast, as “firm and kind, like a father commanding her” (173), there is an indication that Moses possesses stronger qualities and character than Dick. Moses presents himself as a father figure possessing affection and masculine strength, and the formerly hierarchal relationship between the mistress and the servant has thus been inverted, at least partially realizing a potentially even more dangerous turn toward intimacy in the colonial context. Having demonstrated the way in which the hierarchal relationship between the white mistress and the indigenous servant is inverted in Lessing’s work, I move on to discuss the homology between the white

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master and the indigenous servant in terms of the way that they exercise patriarchy in the colonial setting. Fanon theorizes how blacks seek to gain recognition from whites by recounting that the black man is “[u]nable to be assimilated, unable to pass unnoticed, he consoles himself by associating with the dead, or at least the absent” (Black Skin, White Masks 65). When white patriarchy is absent, the black man exercises indigenous control. In doing so, the black man “wants to prove to the [Anglo-Europeans] that he is a man, their equal” (Black Skin, White Masks 66). However, as Moses has no kinship ties with Dick’s white household, he only aims at controlling it so as to assure “the satisfaction of being the master of a European woman” (Black Skin, White Masks 66). When Dick falls ill, Mary dreams that Dick is dead and there appears in her consciousness the belief that Moses and her father have become the same person. This association symbolizes the way in which the two patriarchs constrain Anglo-European women’s livelihoods in colonized Africa. The absence of white patriarchy makes Mary feel defenseless, and yet titillated, in the colonial setting: It was the voice of the African she heard. He was comforting her because of Dick’s death, consoling her protectively, but at the same time it was her father menacing and horrible, who touched her in desire. (188)

In Mary’s dream, Moses is presented both as an incestuous father and a desiring lover. The horrible imagery of Moses as an incestuous father is in stark contrast to the earlier depiction of him as an affectionate fatherly figure. This juxtaposition of various, colluding patriarchies reflects Mary’s ambivalence, encompassing fear, mistrust and desire, towards Moses, who is seen as at once consoling and enticing, dangerous and menacing. Here I have chosen the word mistrust, rather than distrust, as racial hierarchy in the colonial setting means that the whites are unable to comprehend indigenous subjectivity. The joint forces of racial bias against the blacks and the lack of confidence in the white patriarch mean that Mary is unable to place her trust in Moses as the new patriarch.

The Indigenous Father becoming Lover Mary eventually becomes the object of Moses’ sexual desire. By offering herself as an enticement for him to stay, she becomes the mistress of her servant. Her resulting subordination indicates her oppression as a woman and definitively cancels her privilege as a colonizer, signaled by

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means of an apparent shift in the decorative aesthetic of the home that she now shares with Moses: Charlie looked at Mary’s earrings, and at the sofa cover, which was of the material always sold to natives, an ugly patterned blue that has become a tradition in South Africa, so much associated with “kaffir truck” that it shocked Charlie to see it in a white man’s house. (202)

Mary’s choice of an African-patterned accessory to decorate her home, along with her wearing a pair of African earrings, signals a shift in the aesthetics of the colonial setting; it may also indicate, as Charlie sees it, the greatly feared stereotype of the white mistress having been mastered (implicitly sexually) as an “accessory” to the African man, his power, and its surrounding scene. As a white colonizer, Charlie is shocked by Mary’s “flirtatious coyness” when addressing Moses (203). The decline of Dick’s white patriarchy means that Charlie’s white supremacy in the colonial setting is also at risk. Thus, the assimilation of indigenous culture to the white colonial household serves as a metonym of the failure of Western modernity over indigenous African culture. Both Lessing and Coetzee demonstrate the homology between the white master and the indigenous servant in exercising patriarchy under African colonialism. In The Grass is Singing, Lessing associates Moses with Mary’s father, who places the fulfillment of individual desire before the family’s benefit. Additionally, Mary and Moses’ forbidden sexual intimacy indicates the homology of the white master and the indigenous servant. Coincidentally, the opening of Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country reflects a similar idea, showing how Magda’s father, the white master, returns home with his new bride (1). Around fifty “diary” entries later, there comes a depiction of Henrik, the indigenous servant, who “bring[s] a wife on to the farm” (30). The similar actions performed by the white master and the indigenous servant demonstrate how the desires of patriarchy are the same for both the master and the servant. In contrast to the depiction of Mary’s case, the ambiguous relationship between the colonizer and the servant, here Magda and Hendrik respectively, is partly a result of Magda’s desire to challenge the white patriarch. Magda bribes Henrik in exchange for the concealment of her patricidal act. Though her fantasy of patricide reflects her determination to achieve independence as a subject, the confinement of women to the domestic sphere represents the inadequacy of her experience under colonial capitalism. Following the death of her father, Magda’s

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status as the new mistress of the house nevertheless fails to sustain the capitalist conditions required of all colonial and colonized subjects, and Hendrik readily rapes Magda after failing to receive his salary following the death of his white employer. Jolly initiates that “Magda tries to build a relationship within this economy of rape in exchange for the withdrawal of material goods, as if it were the foundation of social and sexual intercourse” (95). This is a violent quid pro quo of Magda’s evolving status: just at the moment when she should achieve mastery in a just world, her body becomes the victim of patriarchal violence. Her presumption of newfound authority is thus violently corrected. As with Mary, Magda is forced to return to a servant’s role, and to serve her indigenous master in the absence of the white patriarch. Schatteman summarizes the dilemmatic role of Anglo-European women living under white patriarchy as: [T]he difficulties faced by women of the Afrikaner farm culture, who likely experienced anger over the tyranny of the patriarchy at the same time that they felt total dependency on the protection of the patriarch. (119)

Mary, who had initially worked in the city as an independent female, is driven to the country domestic scene due to social pressure to marry. Magda’s choice, in contrast, is at once bolder and more fantastic, given the times: she believes in the possibility of constructing a new family ISA with Hendrik that will bypass the racist logic of the colonial family. Yet, similar to way that Mary is exploited in her marriage, Magda is subsequently exploited in her role as the white servant of the indigenous master. White women colonizers are to a great degree unaware of their exploitation, at the hands of white patriarchy, in their roles as women masters of indigenous servants. Women are merely lesser surrogates of the white patriarch, lacking the latter’s symbolic authority, and worse, remaining vulnerable to the decolonizing violence and anger on the part of the indigenous servants in their midst. Both Mary and Magda choose to enter into forbidden relationships with their indigenous servants as the fulfillment of their erotic desires. Mary even develops into a confident woman, falsely believing that she is respected as Moses’ peer: When she sat down again she shook out her hair from her neck with both hands, with the gesture of a beautiful woman adoring her beauty. Moses was buttoning up the dress; she was looking in the mirror. The attitude of the native was of an indulgent luxuriousness. When he had finished the

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buttoning, he stood back, and watched the woman brushing her hair. “Thank you, Moses,” she said in a high commanding voice. (213)

Mary enjoys being appreciated by Moses as an object of beauty; this confers on her a sense of commanding authority this time, respect by Moses not as an employer or master, but as a woman. Moses’ admiration gives her the confidence and the power to command. Her behavior affirms Weinberg and Kamel’s notion that master-and-slave relations are “willingly and co-operatively produced” (qtd. in McClintock 148). In this way, Mary does not realize that her body has been exploited. As with Mary’s experience as an object of exploitation, first oppressed by white patriarchy and later, by indigenous desire, Magda’s body is exploited by Henrik as compensation for his unpaid salary. The rape provokes Magda’s hidden erotic desire, which she had previously repressed. Here, her behavior offers a rebuttal to Shohat’s notion that “the white woman has to be lured, made captive, and virtually raped to awaken her repressed desire” (41). Ultimately, however, Magda is victimized by her willingness to express her desire openly. Magda, as an Anglo-European in colonized Africa, “was born into a language of hierarchy, of distance and perspective” (106), as opposed to indigenized culture. Jolly suggests that the rape “initiate[s Magda] into society as a female subject” (95). Jolly’s suggestion is supported by Magda’s self-interrogation following the rape: Without disturbing him I pull the green counterpane over myself. Am I now a woman? Has this made me into a woman? So many tiny events, acts, movements one after another, muscles pulling bones this way and that, and their upshot is that I can say, I am finally a woman, or, Am I finally a woman? (117).

The rise of Magda’s power is detected through her frequency of utterance. That Magda is empowered to express herself after the rape signals the unfortunate linkage between violence and the power to speak. This reflects Peter Stallybrass’ notion on the relationship between silence and chastity: “Silence, the closed mouth, is made a sign of chastity” (127). The awakening of Magda’s sexuality with Hendrik gives her a voice. Sadly, however, the acts of violence which impart a voice to Magda also require her ongoing subordination to Hendrik, who has never treated her as more than a provider of sex, and a tool for releasing his inner desire, which had been subjugated through white oppression. The “liberation” of the servant simply gains him new access to another kind of gendered domination. In developing an intimate relationship, the white mistress and the

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servant bondsman both challenge white patriarchy, even as the woman’s prerogatives, sharing subordinate status with the indigenous man, are short-lived. Spivak remarks that “[t]he link to the workers’ struggle is located, simply, in desire” (67). The success of the mistress-and-servant cooperation correlates to the presumed fulfillment of desire and, regrettably, its own attending power dynamics. While the white mistress mistakenly regards having achieved intimate relations with indigenous subjects as the fulfillment of erotic desire in a new egalitarian pose, the indigenous servant simply enjoys the masculine satisfaction of having the white mistress as his own. Fanon bitterly reminds his readers of how some indigenous subjects gain satisfaction in proximity to the colonial mastery they have internalized: The majority of them, including those of lighter skin who often go to the extreme of denying both their countries and their mothers, tend to marry in Europe not so much out of love as for the satisfaction of being the master of a European woman; and a certain tang of proud revenge enters into this. (Black Skin, White Masks 69)

The colonized enjoy role-playing mastery over the white race by conquering white female bodies physically. When the forbidden relationship between Mary and Moses is exposed, the white patriarch strikes back in a last ditch effort to re-impose colonial sovereignty over both the indigenous subject and the colonial wife. Upon learning of the improper relationship, Charlie and Tony decide that they must help the Turners. However, rather than representing a sincere offer of help to the Turners, this assistance merely reflects their patriarchal awareness of the indigenous threat to white colonialism in Africa. In fact, before the incident, Charlie had always viewed the Turners as rivals and he had been waiting for their bankruptcy so as to take over their farmland (195). Thus, when Charlie is willing to offer help to his former rivals, the Turners, it is simply offered strategically in the interests of white patriarchy: It was not even pity for Dick that moved him. He was obeying the dictate of the first law of white South Africa, which is: “Thou shalt not let your fellow whites sink lower than a certain point; because if you do, the nigger will see he is as good as you are.” (205)

By helping Dick, Charlie aims at preventing the outbreak of other similar occurrences that would threaten white colonialism in Africa.

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While the renewed “race” pressure from the patriarch results in Mary’s reversed position as the mistress of the servant, her erotic desire maintains the forbidden relationship. I suggest that the power of the white patriarch overrides her erotic desire, as when Tony drives Moses away, Mary feels both relieved and worried: Mary sobbed, her head on her arms. “He’s gone,” she cried, “he’s gone, he’s gone!” her voice was hysterical with relief. And then she suddenly pushed him away, stood in front of him like a mad woman, and hissed, “You sent him away! He’ll never come back! It was all right till you came!” (217)

On the one hand, the forced departure of Moses signifies to Mary that she is no longer the mistress of her servant in terms of that role’s compensations. This sense of loss explains her condemnation of Tony’s action. On the other hand, she quickly recovers a sense of peace once the threat of having an indigenous peer in the domestic space no longer exists. She wakes up the following morning, and “relief flood[s] her” as she discovers that Moses is no longer there (223). Hegel’s theories on self-consciousness provide an explanation for Moses’ act of terror against Mary. When Mary and Moses are separated, their relationship falls apart. They become what Hegel refers to as beings who are “not attached to any specific [colonial] existence” (113, original emphasis). Hegel concludes: This presentation is a twofold action: action on the part of the other, and action on its own part. In so far as it is the action of the other, each seeks the death of the other. (113, original emphasis)

Only upon Moses’ departure does Mary realize that she has long wished to be free from him. However, the forced departure drives Moses to murder Mary: All her past slid away, and her mouth, opened in appeal, let out the beginning of a scream, which was stopped by a black wedge of hand inserted between her jaws. But the scream continued, in her stomach, choking her; and she lifted her hands, clawlike, to ward him off. (236)

Moses’ action of “wedging” his hand between Mary’s jaws is of two-fold significance. At the physical level, it is simply an attempt to muffle any sound that Mary might produce, and thereby to avoid detection, as Dick is sleeping in the next room. Second, and more importantly, Moses silencing

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of his former white mistress highlights his continued dominance over her. That Dick cannot prevent the act of terror from happening represents his belated recognition of the potential threat of danger. Moses’ concluding act of terror suggests that indigenous peoples aim at conquering the whites by exhibiting their masculine strength. Hendrik, however, has chosen to depart with his wife after exploiting both Magda’s capital and body. After being abandoned by Hendrik, Magda’s long monologue raises questions regarding her newfound subordinate state: How can I humiliate myself further? Must the white woman lick your backside before you will give her a single smile? Do you know that you have never kissed me, never, never, never? Don’t you people ever kiss? Don’t you ever kiss your wife? What is it that makes her so different from me? Does a woman have to hurt you before you can love her? Is that your secret, Hendrik? (128-9)

Unlike Mary, who has been silenced by Moses just prior to her death, Magda’s long monolog seems to signify the breaking of her silence, even as she has no actual listener save for the reader of Coetzee’s text. Hendrik’s abandonment of Magda affirms Shohat’s formulation on the colonial sexual politics of Anglo-European women and indigenous men. Shohat suggests that “the sexual interaction of black/Arab men and white women can only involve rape (since white women, within this perspective, cannot possibly desire black men)” (42, original emphasis). The rape of Magda and the death of Mary illustrate the short-lived triumph of the indigenous men, as indigenous violence against the white mistress in the colonial setting upsets the balance of power and presents an occasion not only for the reassertion of white supremacy but also, at least temporarily, an opportunity for patriarchal collusion. Since I aim at showing how terror in the selected African narratives is an allegory of the failure of gender roles, which leads to the disintegration of the family, I argue that the narrative structure must be altered depending upon the gender of the protagonist. Both Lessing and Coetzee suggest the possibility of women asserting some degree of authority at the level of fantasy. David Attwell notes: “Strictly speaking, very little ‘happens’ in [In the] Heart of the Country” (60). Following Attwell’s observation, the occurrence of actual events is rare throughout the novel. That is to say, Magda’s patricide is an “event” that, physically, does not exist in the novel. Rather, most of the “events”, including the patricide, are present only at the level of Magda’s consciousness.

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Still, the combination of physical absence and conscious presence implies a certain degree of moral and ethical resistance within Magda, which stopped her from committing patricide and adultery. Furthermore, the combination of physical absence and conscious presence of events implies that Magda’s moral and ethical resistance represents a nascent subjectivity which might challenge the white patriarchy. The choice of limiting her thought to the conscious level, and the picture of Magda as a dutiful daughter serving the aged father in the final episode of the novel, demonstrate that her desire has been silenced by the patriarch: But I have other cares besides quarrelling with my voices. Sometimes when the weather is fine, as it is today, sunny but not too warm, I carry father out of his room and seat him on the step, propped up with cushions in his old armchair, so that he can once again face out over the old acres, which he no longer sees, and be exposed to the birdsong, which he no longer hears. (147)

Instead of making verbal speeches, Magda’s choice of telling her story through depictions of her mental state gives her a sense of peace and harmony by the end of the novel, despite the colonial background that authorizes the violence committed upon her gender. Echoing the way in which Kurtz and Marlow in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness leave home with the hope of “returning with [their] round flanks full of treasure” at the expense of both family and faith (17), Lessing depicts Anglo-European families in the succeeding generation in Africa who are eventually disillusioned by the false promise of wealth. I have shown in this chapter how the Conradian legacy of the proletarianization of indigenous labor in Africa endangers Anglo-European families. Specifically, Anglo-European women in the colonial setting are victimized by their subaltern state: they are subjected to confinement imposed by their Anglo-European male counterparts and to the threat of sexual desire and violence arising from the indigenous men. In differentiating Magda and Mary as women occupying roles of power in their respective master-servant relations, the role played by capitalist wealth was highlighted. Capitalist wealth offers the possibility of short-term protection to Magda whilst Mary is ultimately victimized by individual acts of terror when conflicts between women in the role of master and their servants occur. Having shown how terroristic exploitation directed against women is somehow determined by the capitalist engine, the next chapter will move from the experience of the Anglo-European successors of Kurtz and

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Marlow to investigate how the colonial imports of capitalism and violence act upon African indigenous families. I shall explore how the intersection of the globalized economy with the absence of domestic sanctuary leads African youths to seek refuge in alternative family ISAs and other “dangerous pursuits”, which represents the rejection of both family and national ideologies. These relationships parallel the behavior of Charlie discussed in this chapter. Just as Charlie had privileged his capitalist economic concerns over the maintenance of white kinship, the protagonists in Lalami’s novels, namely Youssef and Aziz, substitute for their dysfunctional family ties by seeking material satisfaction. Such acts represent the alienation of the individual from the state. To further relate family as the key ISA that links individuals to the State, I will begin my analysis by exploring how the marital relationship serves as the principle of social formations. Specifically, I will show how reproduction at the level of the individual family represents the reproduction of labor power, which thereby results in the formation of the social base at national level.

CHAPTER III GLOBALIZATION OF THE COMMODITY: ALLEGORIES OF DISILLUSIONMENT IN LAILA LALAMI’S HOPE AND OTHER DANGEROUS PURSUITS AND SECRET SON

“But I guess a boy needs a father, and if he doesn’t have one he’ll invent one.” ~ John Updike's Terrorist

We have seen in previous chapters the way in which the power of economic concerns destabilized and threatened the primacy of the family in Achebe’s narrative of the pre-colonial Igbo, as well as the means by which women become subjugated to patriarchy in exchange for the promise of security. This chapter turns to an exploration of the experiences of indigenous Africans in a post-colonial setting, by evaluating the link between alternative ISAs and terror under the spread of globalized capitalism. The ensuing argument builds off of my previous suggestion regarding the role of economic determinations in defining identity as part of, and alienated from, the patriarchal basis of nation, for, as Freud has pointed out, in the process of modernization, “if there is no economic compensation, one can expect serious disturbances” (Civilization 44). The huge potential for economic growth brought to African indigenous peoples in Things Fall Apart was a powerful factor influencing the indigenous Igbo people’s willingness to accept the imperialists. In Disgrace, Lucy exchanges land, a representation of economic production, for indigenous protection in rural South Africa. Similarly, the profits from Magda’s father’s Anglo-European farm in In the Heart of the Country provide her with short-term protection from the potential for violence committed by her indigenous servant Hendrik. In The Grass is Singing, Mary, as a more efficient substitute manager of Dick’s farm, shows how the imperatives of globalized capitalism may override those of patriarchal authority. In this

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chapter, by theorizing that post-colonial African narratives of terror are allegories of globalized capitalism, I will highlight the ways in which the economic drive causes people to turn toward commodity fetishism in a post-national context. Here I aim at defining the role of economic determination in triggering individual acts of terror in both post-national African narratives and in the broader contemporary context. As evidence for this relationship, I demonstrate that these narrative allegories work on two levels, with the literal level operating in parallel with the symbolic level.1 The following quote from Jameson shows how individual choice at the literal narrative level carries a symbolic social referent: [T]he individual believer is able to “insert” himself or herself (to use the Althusserian formula)[. It] is precisely by way of the moral and anagogical interpretations that the textual apparatus is transformed into a “libidinal apparatus,” a machinery for ideological investment. (30, original emphasis)

In applying and testing Jameson’s hypothesis, I make use of two post-national African novels written by Laila Lalami to theorize how indigenous violence has changed under globalized capitalism. In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, we saw how pre-colonial violence was aligned with the Igbo ritual of competition, in particular its emphasis on masculinity and physical strength. Moving into the colonial period, we have seen how the narratives of In the Heart of the Country and The Grass is Singing portray indigenous violence as a representation of resistance against Anglo-European patriarchy. Finally, in the white Anglo-European post-colonial landscape of Disgrace, we have seen that violence is depicted as an indigenous reaction to the decline of white patriarchy. In Lalami’s post-national African context, violence is a representation of the indigenous strength and power that have seemingly been replaced by the commodity fetishism of capitalism. Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005) illustrates the desire of indigenous Moroccans to achieve upward class mobility in the early twenty-first century. The novel focuses on a group of Moroccans who are willing to risk their lives by becoming illegal immigrants to the European continent. In Europe, they engage in various types of criminal activities, ranging from illegal employment to prostitution, or what Lalami 1 Sommer describes allegory as “one discourse [that] consistently represents the other and invites a double reading of narrative events” (41).

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refers to as “dangerous pursuits”, in an attempt to rid themselves of their state of poverty. The arrival of these illegal African immigrants ironically suggests the possible import of indigenous violence back into Europe. In this way, the export of violence comes full circle: the once Anglo-European phenomenon of terror has now returned home. The case allegorizes how the contemporary migrant crisis enveloping Europe is prompted by globalization. Tying the discussion back to the primacy of economic determinations and the breakdown in the family, the fulfillment of capitalist desire in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits has been falsely viewed as a possible substitute for the absence of domestic sanctuary. Lalami’s second novel, Secret Son, reflects the legacy of the immigrants featured in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. Secret Son depicts the way in which the protagonist, in the absence of domestic sanctuary, seeks to turn spiritual emptiness into material fulfillment through commodity fetishism. Another example of this tendency at work is the way in which the emotional relationship between father and child is substituted for by a material relationship. Thus, globalized capitalism has become the surrogate father. As I theorize that the father is aligned at the allegorical level with the national ideology, the substitution of the father by material satisfaction represents the alienation of the individual from the state. Furthermore, by moving beyond the national level in applying the allegorical approach at the global level, I theorize that post-national narratives are in fact allegories of globalized capitalism. As a rebuttal to Jameson’s claim that the so-called “‘Third World’ is constituted by the singular ‘experience of colonialism and imperialism’” (Ahmad 102, original emphasis), Ahmad proposes that “the world was united “by the global operation of a single mode of production, namely the capitalist one, and the global resistance to this mode, a resistance which is itself unevenly developed in different parts of the globe” (103). I consequently suggest ways in which globalized capitalism, at the expense of the family institution and kinship ties, results in ubiquitous terror. In order to depict individual actions as the consequence of material determinations, I apply the Freudian cultural critique on fetish and the Marxist notion on commodity fetishism. Following the convention of Freud in Totem and Taboo that links individual psychology with cultural forms, I integrate Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretation of fetishism with Marx’s critique of the capitalist fetishism of commodities. Freud theorizes that a fetish derives from earliest childhood (Sexuality 204), during which an individual suffers the loss of something extremely important (Sexuality 205). Althusser extends this further by applying a Lacanian reading of

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fetish to suggest that whether the father is absent or present does not affect his power as “the Order of the human signifier, that is, of the Law of Culture” (Writings 27). Applying Althusser, I suggest that the absence of paternal authority may result in the child’s developing a fetish of searching for the absent father. When replacing the absent father proves impossible for the child, then the child will turn to one of various available substitutions, in this case, to materialist satisfaction. As those substitutions prove unsatisfactory, i.e. as the child grows disillusioned with globalized capitalism, then the absence of domestic sanctuary may consequently create the possibility of a turn to other substitutions as the new surrogate father, including terroristic violence. Thus, violence is the outcome when the individual experiences a gap between the fetish and the actual father. For the terrorist protagonists, the use of violence is a substitution for the absence of domestic sanctuary that would secure both their material and psychological needs. With reference to Lalami’s work, I aim to show how characters in post-national narratives turn to individual acts of terror because they falsely believe that successful families are determined by material satisfaction. For the terrorist-protagonists, the available means of satisfaction of the psychological drives come to be determined by the material aspects of life in the society. As the protagonists attempt to substitute for family by means of objects, they ignore the prominent role of spiritual fulfillment provided by the family institution. As shown from the two novels written by Lalami, due to the absence of domestic sanctuary, children raised within a broken family structure are more susceptible to committing individual acts of terror than those who were not raised under such a family structure. Therefore, for young people who are raised within the broken family structure, the absence of paternal protection becomes a label of disgrace, turning them into what Frederic Jameson theorizes as the archetypal figures of the Other: [T]he archetypal figures of the Other, about whom the essential point to be made is not so much that he is feared because he is evil; rather he is evil because he is Other, alien, different, strange, unclean, and unfamiliar. (115)

Such derogatory connotations drive the young protagonists to various “dangerous pursuits” in an attempt to substitute for the absence of an effective family institution. To interpret the specific reactions of these young protagonists to the

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pressures of globalized capitalism, I integrate Jameson’s definition of the Other with Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept of the “peripheral bourgeoisie”. Wallerstein suggests that “[h]ouseholds make up one of the key institutional structures of the capitalist world-economy.” (Balibar and Wallerstein 107). The capitalist world economy thus marginalizes those who suffer from the absence of domestic sanctuary or illegitimate birth. This dynamic can be seen at work in Secret Son through a comparison of the treatment of Youssef, as an illegitimate son, with his half-sister Amal, as a legitimate child. The disparate treatment of the father toward each of his two children demonstrates the way in which illegitimacy represents disinheritance from capitalist wealth and status, as Youssef is ineligible to partake of the wealth of his father. This is an instance of Wallerstein’s suggestion that “[m]ost bourgeoisie become bourgeoisie by inheritance” (Balibar and Wallerstein 118). For Youssef, being the product of an illicit extramarital fear results in his marginalized upbringing as a bourgeoisie without status. Both of the respective protagonists Youssef and Faten in Lalami’s two narratives experience disillusionment with the possibilities offered by the family institution, which consequently leads them to seek out alternative family ISAs. I argue that the protagonists’ turn to fundamentalist religious affiliations is an attempt to substitute for paternal authority. Jakobus M. Vorster has defined contemporary religious fundamentalism of the type sought out by Youssef and Faten as a phenomenon that is both religious and political: I conclude that contemporary religious fundamentalism can be defined as a way of reasoning which breeds ideologies that are both religious and political in nature and mount themselves against a perceived threat or enemy in order to protect their identities. (44)

This political nature of religious fundamentalism is clearly highlighted in Lalami’s novels, in which fundamentalist religious sects are depicted as political parties that aim at overthrowing the secular Arab state. Vorster comments that “violence in the name of Islam and Allah appeared to be an important feature of all the new fundamentalist movements in Muslim countries” (56). Therefore, through engaging in individual acts of terror or other “dangerous pursuits” for the sake of the alternative family, the protagonists hope that they can move from the periphery to the centre, while the alternative family itself represents a paradigm by which broken families can be unified within a new fundamentalist nation.

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Since individual acts of terror and other “dangerous pursuits” represent the erosion of the national ideology, such acts reveal how the failure of the family at the allegorical level may be linked to the destabilizations of state authority and power at the national level. Sommer suggests that “national novels have in fact been assuming what amounts to an allegorical relationship between personal and political narratives” (41). This alignment between a breakdown at the national level and at the level of the family correlates with Jameson’s notion that “certain texts have social and historical–sometimes even political–resonance” (17). Jameson applies Althusser’s theory on ideology to elaborate how the domestic milieu affects the social view of individuals: [I]f we take the term ideology here in Althusser’s sense as a representational structure which allows the individual subject to conceive or imagine his or her lived relationship to transpersonal realities such as the social structure or the collective logic of history. (30, original emphasis)

The breakdown of the family at the narrative level represents the failure of the family institution that serves to support the state. I make use of this assumption in analyzing how an unfulfilling paternal role, in terms of extra-marital affairs or illegitimate procreation, triggers individual acts of terror that threaten national security. Consequently, I theorize that within fiction, the father is a metonym of the state, while certain works of fiction feature domestic conflicts as national allegories.

The Erosion of the Husband in the Family In gendering terror as the response of women and children to the absence of domestic sanctuary and patriarchal abandonment, I begin with the fundamental cause: that the patriarch seeks capitalist wealth at the expense of the family in post-national African narratives. I will first discuss how this focus on capitalist wealth causes husbands and fathers to overemphasize their material contributions to the family under globalized capitalism. This emphasis on material sustenance as an expression of love leads to the emergence of commodity fetishism as a means of substituting for the missing bond with the absent patriarch. I make use of the story of Aziz Ammor in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits to show how this psychological drive becomes controlled by material determination. Aziz begins the “dangerous pursuit”

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of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in an attempt to leave Morocco for Spain. To achieve his dream of achieving prosperity in Europe, he has to leave behind his wife in the poverty-stricken city of Casablanca. I argue at the outset that globalized capitalism results in the breakdown of African families and kinship networks, as people become attached to material goods rather than to social acquaintances or family. As the husband of Zohra, Aziz’s decision to leave his hometown implies giving up on his family to seek an alternative, that is, material fulfillment. To present a balanced portrait of Aziz, we must empathically analyze what motivates him to give up his family. The reader is informed that if Aziz were to stay in Casablanca, then he would face unemployment and consequently, pressure due to his “tense relations with his in-laws” (80). Aziz’s conversation with his friend, Lahcen, reveals that his decision to leave is related to the burden of marriage: “It’s different for you. You’re single.” “Then why did you get married?” “What?” Lahcen pulled on his cigarette. “If you hadn’t married, you wouldn’t have to do this.” Aziz clicked his tongue. “Leave my wife out of this.” (82)

Though Aziz confirms that his identity as a husband burdens him as the financial pillar of the family, he does not blame his wife for driving him towards his choice to become an illegal worker in Spain. Aziz seemingly holds the conventional belief that as the husband he is responsible for maintaining the financial security of the family, and the choice is thus made out of his concern for the family. In analyzing whether capitalist determinations diminish family, I compare and contrast Aziz’s relationship with his family before and after his “dangerous pursuit” as an illegal immigrant in Spain. To demonstrate the change in Aziz’s in attitude and in his relationship with his family before and after his “dangerous pursuit”, the narrative of the novel is separated into “Part I: Before” and “Part II: After”. Aziz has been away from home for five years, double his planned length of stay of two or three years. His idealized picture of a glorious homecoming has been eroded by unfavorable elements at home: [T]he image of his family greeting him at the door of their apartment grew dimmer. His father had died during his absence, and now his mother and his wife lived alone. He also had trouble visualizing his wife’s face as

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The death of his father during his absence signifies the loss of irreplaceable moments, and alters his relationship with the family. In addition, the fading visage of his wife signifies the way that the static relationship within their marriage has been altered as a result of his “dangerous pursuit”. Static relationships no longer exist as the world undergoes evolutions and changes.2 As a result, there is a discrepancy between his ideal of a glorious homecoming and the disappointing situation that is the reality. Aziz’s homecoming thereby reflects the way that capitalist ideology worsens familial relations, specifically the way in which the desire for wealth causes him to reverse his original concepts regarding the relative importance of home and abroad. Globalized capitalism drives people to forgo family in order to satisfy ever-increasing material demands. Aziz, having spent five years in Spain, has saved fifty thousand dirhams. His wife Zohra comments that “[f]ifty thousand is a lot. You could use that for a start” (164). She further suggests that Aziz could start a business, but Aziz replies that “[i]t’s not enough” (164). We can see how his original plan of striving to keep up a basic subsistence is turned into a fetishistic acquisition of wealth. His reply also explains his decision to return to Madrid after a short stay in his home country. For Aziz, ironically, real material satisfaction only exists in an ideal sense. I apply here Wallerstein’s notion on capital accumulation to illustrate how Aziz’s perspective results in the commodification of the domestic experience: Rather than compare putative sets of characteristics of possibly parallel institutions, let us rather pose the problem from inside the ongoing capitalist world-economy. The endless accumulation of capital is the defining characteristic and raison d’être of this system. Over time, this endless accumulation pushes towards the commodification of everything [.] (Balibar and Wallersetin 107)

As Wallerstein has observed, the intention to accumulate more capital becomes an endless process. This means that Aziz will only be driven to 2

I apply the Marxian notion of dialectal materialism in illustrating how Aziz’s marriage alters his conditions for the fulfillment of material satisfaction. Terrell Carver interprets Marxian dialectical materialism as a rejection of “Feuerbach’s static, contemplative materialism in favor of a new materialist method that required analyses of the historical dynamics of changing relationships among people and between people and nature” (287).

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attempt additional “dangerous pursuits” at the expense of his family. The result of such actions resembles Marx’s idea on “material relations between persons and social relations between things” (164). The essence of kinship and blood ties between family members has been degraded to that of a material relationship. Capital has therefore been falsely viewed as the foundation of a real family with children, and the resulting commodification of domestic relations is thus a precondition of the breakdown of the family. Under the framework of globalized capitalism, Aziz fails to see how marriage, as the foundation of family and society, is actually the basis of all social relations. Upon returning to Casablanca, Aziz attempts to exploit his marital relationship with Zohra, since he sees only his financial obligations in the marriage. In Madrid, he compensates for his loneliness and satisfies his sexual needs by frequenting prostitutes. While John Mclean asserts that “sexual attraction [i]s the underlying principle of social formations” (qtd. in Sommer 32), I negate this idea in the context of Aziz, as he is only able to establish a material, rather than a social relationship, with the prostitutes. Therefore, I expand on Mclean’s idea and suggest that sexual attraction and, eventually, the formation of families through marriage, are the backbone of social formations. Just as in Disgrace David had solved the problem of sex through Soraya, Aziz’s problem is solved through a market transaction. In substituting the sexual satisfaction provided by Zohra at home with that of prostitutes abroad, Aziz commodifies the marital relationship. The case validates Luce Irigaray’s criticism that women bear similar qualities as commodities of exchange in patriarchal societies. She states that “each [woman] looks exactly like every other. They all have the same phantom-like reality. Metamorphosed in identical sublimations, samples of the same indistinguishable work” (175, original emphasis). We can see upon Aziz’s return home, he degrades Zohra’s role as a wife to that of a prostitute by transferring his lustful desire for the prostitutes in Madrid to Zohra, turning her into a substitute for them, rather than the reverse: Now he wondered what his wife would look like in a sexy bustier, straddling him, her arms up in the air, moaning her pleasure out loud. He couldn’t imagine Zohra doing it. But maybe she would, if he asked her. (170)

Aziz’s visualization of Zohra garbed as a prostitute and his inability to imagine her acting in such a manner represent the gap between the ideal

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and reality, while the thought of asking her to satisfy his demand symbolizes the erosion of the marital relationship. His thoughts degrade his spouse to a prostitute who offers sex to him only in exchange for money. Aziz’s changing perceptions regarding his marital relationship imply the commodification of domestic experience, echoing Marx’s suggestion on how the commodification of domestic experience destroys the essence of human relations: When Marx began to unravel the contradictions of the system, he did so on the understanding that capitalism negated our human essence and so had to be abolished if the human essence was to be realized. (Carver 281)

The essence of Aziz’s familial relations has been discarded after the “dangerous pursuit” of the European dream, while his human essence has been degraded to mere capitalist concern. In addition, Aziz’s materialist concerns drive him to forgo the chance of forming a real family with children: He told himself that he’d have to use a condom next time. He didn’t want to risk having children yet, not like this, not when they had to wait for her paperwork, not until he could support a family. He lay on the bed, unable to sleep. (171)

Similar to Dick’s rejection of Mary’s suggestion to have a child, Aziz’s insistence on waiting shows that procreation is subservient to the material drive. Under globalized capitalism, money becomes crucial and has primary importance in the formation of a family, which is thus ironically founded upon capital, rather than kinship or love, thereby resulting in the disintegration of the conventional family structure. Aziz’s unwillingness to bring Zohra to Madrid in the final part of the story clearly demonstrates that he has no intention to save his marriage from further collapse: He couldn’t think of her alone in an apartment, with no one to talk to, while he was at work. And he, too, had his own habits now. He closed his suitcase and lifted it off the bed. It felt lighter than when he had arrived. (175)

That Aziz imagines Zohra’s isolation in Madrid while he has “his own habits” there implies gender stereotypes and the alignment of marital with material relations. The portrayal of his feelings while departing from Casablanca signifies how his responsibility as a husband is actually

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aligned with seeing this as a burden. This portrayal also contrasts with how he protects Zohra from being seen as the arch cause of his burden in an earlier part of the story. Capital has thus become an alternative to family, driving the marital connection towards disintegration.

The Commodification of the Father under Globalized Capitalism Having elaborated on how the husband’s “dangerous pursuit” of capitalism results in the breakdown of the family at the narrative level, I now illustrate the role played by the paternal figure under globalized capitalism, as well as the influence of symbolic patriarchy on children who are raised within a broken family structure. To continue with the theme of how family and terror interact in Africa across generations, I highlight the way in which father-and-child relations affect individual acts of violence. Aziz’s “dangerous pursuit” resembles the actions of Okonkwo and David, in that it leads to a breakdown of the traditional family structure, yet due to Aziz’s unwillingness to form a real family with children, I refer to him as an abandoning “father” who becomes directly responsible for the breakdown of the family. By analyzing the examples of Youssef El Mekki in Secret Son and Faten Khatibi in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits we are able to see how unfulfilling parent-child relationships result in these individuals’ rejection of a national ideology. As a result, both turn to various “dangerous pursuits” at the expense of national stability, both at home and abroad. In comparing these two narratives, Arifa Akbar suggests that in Secret Son, Lalami “explores what it means for her characters to stay rather than flee from the socio-political morass that is modern-day Morocco”. We have already seen that Aziz sends home money to materially substitute for his role. For children raised in a family such as that of Zohra in Casablanca, the absence of the father is a label of disgrace, leading them to seek an outlet in commodity fetishism and, eventually, to turn to alternative family ISAs. Both Youssef and Faten have the common trait of having been raised in single-parent households lacking paternal authority. Though maternal protection exists, the presence of mothers cannot stop them from being labeled as Others in the Islamic paradigm of family. As suggested by Jameson, the label of otherness is also a label of disgrace that is associated with “uncleanliness” (115). That Youssef and Faten are

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involved in individual acts of terror and prostitution respectively reflects the derogatory way that they are identified as the Other. Both of these individuals are influenced by the breakdown of the family and eventually by the ideology of globalized capitalism. In Secret Son, Youssef is portrayed as having been raised in the absence of both father and kinship ties. His mother has no contact with Youssef’s father’s family after being abandoned by him. Similarly, Faten is raised without paternal protection, commenting “I didn’t see much of my father” (148). To specify the role played by absent paternalism in the breakdown of the family, I make use of Faten and Youssef’s perception towards the disgrace of paternal absence to demonstrate the functions of the father. I use Lacan’s notion regarding the power of the phallus and Marx’s idea on commodity fetishism to theorize the dual roles of the father figure as the symbolic signifier and financial pillar of the family. Applying Lacan’s idea that “the phallus is a signifier” in aligning the father figure with the symbolic signifier of domestic protection (316), children born without a father figure are disgraced because the symbolic signifier of domestic sanctuary is missing. This can be seen from Faten’s reply when she is asked about her parents:3 Salma intervened. “And are you from Rabat?” she asked Faten in a pleasant tone. “I was born there, but I grew up on Agadir. I’ve been back only for years now.” “So where do your parents live?” asked Larbi. “I live with my mother.” Faten’s voice dropped an octave. “In Douar Lhajja.” (45-6)

The avoidance of mentioning her father and the drop in her tone of voice show her embarrassment at the absence of her father. That “her father [had] left them[,] and the child support the court had ordered him to pay never having materialized” demonstrate how she has suffered from the lack of spiritual and material supports due to the absence of paternalism (134). The disgrace of absent paternalism can also be seen in the way that Youssef intends to conceal his real identity as an illegitimate child even from his closest friend, Amin, as being born out of wedlock is a label of disgrace and cause of shame: What could he tell Amin, in the end? That his mother had had a child out 3

Faten has been asked by Salma and Larbi, the parents of her friend Noura.

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of wedlock? He could not bear the shame of her actions, let alone the shame of describing them in words, out loud. And what would Amin think of him–the bastard child? No, this would not do. He had to play with the truth, create a version with which both he and Amin could live. (54)

From Youssef’s thoughts, it is clear to the reader that illegitimacy causes him shame within the Islamic paradigm. He therefore establishes a fake identity for himself: a child of divorced parents. This identity emphasizes how illegitimacy, as an extension of family breakdown, actually differs from it. Youssef is able to identify himself with a broken family but not with his illegitimate state because illegitimacy carries a sense of the derogatory while family breakdown is perceived as understandable. The label of disgrace results in Youssef’s fetishism of commodities while his legitimate half-sister, Amal, does not seek such an outlet. In the traditional sense, the father figure, signifying the power of the phallus in patriarchy, offers protection to his family. Lacan interprets the power of the phallus as the signifier, whose “active function [is] in determining certain effects in which the signifiable appears as submitting to its mark, by becoming through that passion the signified” (315). For Youssef, since the absence of father disgraces him, he interprets the wealth of his rich father as the signifier of material compensation. Upon seeing his father Nabil for the first time, Youssef equates the absent father with the accumulated wealth apart from the household: The sight of Nabil before him … unlocked something deep in Youssef, and when it opened, it demanded that he do something–anything. So when his father turned around to get his suit jacket, Youssef grabbed a star-shaped silver paperweight from the desk and slipped it into his pocket. He had never stolen anything, and immediately regretted it. (98)

That Youssef steals from his father represents an attempt to compensate for the absence of paternity through material means. The paperweight has symbolically become a substitution for the father, while the act of stealing signifies that Youssef falsely believes that material satisfaction could wipe out humiliation. Though he regrets the theft immediately, he continues to view Nabil as a material provider: upon seeing the luxuriousness of Nabil’s life, Youssef remarks that “[t]his should have been my life” (98, original emphasis). Dining at La Mouette, a restaurant that makes him question whether “people really pay this much for a meal”, he orders “the most expensive item on the menu” (99). Youssef’s fetish for paternal protection has metamorphosed into a commodified father-and-child relationship.

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Nabil’s role as the financial provider of the family and as a representative of bourgeoisie patriarchy inflicts a capitalist ideology upon Youssef. To compensate for his inability to provide Youssef with domestic protection, Nabil gives him an apartment. However the apartment is not equivalent to a domestic sanctuary in securing both material and psychological conditions. As with Aziz’s commodification of the domestic experience, Nabil’s action merely represents the replacement of paternity with a material relationship. For Youssef, this material compensation gives him the illusion that it is a form of paternal affection. Influenced by this commodity fetishization, Youssef breaks off his relations with his mother, Rachida Ouchak, by moving to the apartment: “Move? Of course not. We have a house, it’s ours, and I’m not about to give it up.” “You call this a house?” She took the insult in silence […] Youssef followed her. “Tell me,” he pleaded. “What is there to say? You obviously want to go.” “Of course I want to go. My father wants to take care of me–of us. Don’t we deserve it, after everything we’ve been through?” (110)

Influenced by Nabil’s bourgeoisie mentality, Youssef unconsciously perceives home as materially determined. The humiliating experience of living in the slums as an illegitimate child causes him to disregard his mother’s residence as either a home or a house. He insults Rachida because he blames her for his misery and remarks that “[w]hat his mother did wasn’t his fault” (111). Economic determination makes him “pardon” the absence of paternal protection since birth at the expense of his relationship with his mother. As a result, the real maternal relationship is replaced by a commodified paternal one. Youssef’s act of breaking his maternal relationship correlates with both Aziz’s act of breaking up the family structure and Nabil’s extra-marital affair. Below I discuss how Youssef verifies Marx’s ideology of “[e]conomic life as the chief form of isolation” (Singer 27). Money isolates individuals because it “dominates him [i.e. the individual] as he worships it” (Singer 27). Before identifying himself as Youssef Amrani, Youssef imagines material satisfaction through the fantasies he acquires from Hollywood movies, a visual representation of the way that capitalist enterprises result in the fetishization of material relationships. As a poor student living in the slums and surrounded by rich

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students at the university, Youssef longs to be the son of a wealthy businessman so that he might eventually become one of the Hollywood heroes in reality and no longer need to put on an act. Youssef imagines that “[i]f he could be Youssef Amrani, he would not have to play any part at all. He could be, at long last, himself” (73). Alienated by the fetishization of capitalist wealth, he not only breaks off his relationship with Rachida, but also his acquaintance with his poor friends living in Hay An Najat. Though Youssef is reluctant to “make a clean break” with these poor friends (124), he compromises by rewriting his life in a way that would turn him from a proletarian to a bourgeoisie: He did not want to make a “clean break” from his friends at all; they were a part of his life, part of who he was. Yet he was tempted by the promise inherent in his father’s words: a new beginning with his father, a chance to rewrite his life. (124)

Youssef’s act repeats what Nabil has done to Rachida in the past: abandoning her as the peripherized Other, who intrudes on his marital relationship with Malika. Influenced by Nabil, Youssef marginalizes and abandons his friends. Under globalized capitalism, material relations become the sole type of relations existing between individuals. In explaining Youssef’s alienation from the bourgeois status that he initially desired, I evaluate how his illegitimacy differentiates him from Amal, his half-sister, who becomes bourgeois by inheritance. Youssef is abandoned by his father Nabil for the sake of Nabil’s marriage and legitimate procreation, Amal. Youssef’s illegitimacy thus makes him the eponymous “secret son” of the novel’s title. Unlike Amal, whose birth is legitimate, Youssef’s birth represents the hidden and corrupted aspect of Nabil: an adulterer in the Islamic world of Morocco. Thus, though Nabil feels pleased that Youssef seeks him out, he attempts to keep Youssef merely as a secret son, even going so far as to present Youssef as his cousin’s nephew in front of his friend, Farid Benaboud. This behavior suggests that Nabil’s fetish for a son allows him to turn Youssef into an accessory. By doing so, Nabil is ironically repeating the mistake in his past that broke down the family, with Youssef repeating Rachida’s role. While his wife Malika was pregnant, Nabil had an extra-marital affair with Rachida. Similarly, Youssef now replaces Amal’s role in accompanying the father. While Youssef longs to receive paternal protection, Nabil simply fulfills his paternal obligations by providing economic compensation. For

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instance, though Youssef merely passes in his second-year exams, “he received a gift of five thousand dirhams from his father” (135). This sum of “recognition” causes Youssef to falsely align material satisfaction with paternal affection. As mentioned earlier, this makes him abandon Rachida in seeking material fulfillment, though ironically, he too will later be abandoned by his father. Nabil’s abandonment of Youssef highlights how he differentiates matrimony from illegitimate procreation, as “Amal was his real child; Youssef was the bastard” (199). I relate this with the Marxian notion of class struggle, and suggest that Youssef’s peripheral status represents a resistance to upward social mobility. Following Wallerstein, I argue that Youssef is a potential “new bourgeoisie without status”: [T]here are always new bourgeoisie without status, laying claim to entry to status. And since high status is worthless if too many persons have it, the nouveaux riches (the new achievers) are always seeking to oust others to make room for themselves. The obvious target is that subsequent of the old achievers who are coasting on their acquired status but no longer perform in the market. (Balibar and Wallerstein 118-9)

The value of bourgeoisie status lies inherently in the fact of accumulation within the context of scarcity. Thus, the “new bourgeoisie without status” aim at moving from the periphery towards the center of the social formation by ousting those peripheral bourgeoisie who are no longer profiting from others’ surplus labor. For Youssef’s half-sister, Amal, the embrace of individuality at the expense of paternal relations has seemingly turned her into a peripheral bourgeoisie without status, creating a space for her to be ousted. Her father Nabil’s extra-marital affair actually affects her status as his sole heir. Amal was able to sense the way in which her role as the sole heir had been altered: But one look at him that morning, and she had known, in her heart, that things had changed. A part of him–the part that for years had made Amal the very center of his universe–was gone. And if it was gone, then why was he here? Why was she here? (170)

The roles of Youssef and Amal have seemingly been reversed. That is, Youssef has moved from the periphery to the center of the society, with the family ISA as its determining structure, while Amal has become marginalized. However, Youssef is merely a substitution for Amal. Nabil’s affection towards Youssef is not based on paternal blood ties, but

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rather Youssef serves as a substitution because his obedience represents the kind of child that Nabil desires: He finally had the son he’d always wanted. [Amal] was the first draft of his book of love, and when it had not turned out the way he wanted, he had started over with Youssef. She would never compare to this son, who would listen to him, who would live up to his expectations. (172)

By referring to Youssef as “this son” and “the son he’d always wanted”, the narrative implies that Youssef was “an answer to a prayer” for an obedient son (271). On the other hand, Amal is the disobedient daughter who rebels against Nabil. However, Youssef fails to oust her completely and he is ultimately abandoned by Nabil. Youssef’s failure in class struggle would seem to affirm Wallerstein’s statement that “most bourgeoisie become bourgeoisie by inheritance” (Balibar and Wallerstein 118). Having been born out of wedlock, Youssef is by definition alienated from any potential inheritance associated with Nabil’s bourgeoisie status. Rachida’s earlier remark that Nabil’s family will never accept Youssef foreshadows that he has no share in his father’s capitalist wealth: “What his brothers will do? Do you think they will welcome a son into their midst? Someone who has a claim to the inheritance? Wake up, my son. Wake up.” (111)

Youssef’s disinheritance drives him to seek out an alternative family ISA in an attempt to de-proletarianize himself. I apply Wallerstein’s notion on the differentiation between proletarian and bourgeoisie in defining Youssef as a proletarian: A proletarian is someone who has only his labour-power to offer on the market, and no resources (that is, no past) on which to fall back. He lives off what he earns in the present. The bourgeois I am describing also no longer controls capital (has therefore no past) and lives off what he earns in the present. (Balibar and Wallerstein 149)

Youssef belongs to the category of proletarian in Wallerstein’s analysis because he has no past to fall back upon. After being dismissed from the job assigned to him by his father, Youssef discovers that the lock of his father’s apartment has also changed. He has suddenly lost everything that his father had provided him with, both in terms of the material aspects of life and the father himself. Youssef’s dream of achieving bourgeois status

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has thus been dispelled, and following his abandonment, he is left with nothing but labor to offer on the market. This situation drives him towards “dangerous pursuits” as a response to globalized capitalism.

The “Dangerous Pursuits” of Alternative Family ISAs To illustrate how Nabil’s abandonment of Youssef results in the latter’s choice of “dangerous pursuit”, I first suggest that commodified parental relationship under globalized capitalism may give rise to a disconnection between individuals and the state. In differentiating the modern world-system from a nation, Wallerstein points out that “it is a world-economy because the basic linkage between the parts of the system is economic, although this was reinforced to some extent by cultural links” while “[a]n empire, by contrast, is a political unit” (15, original emphasis). Eric Hayot’s further emphasis on “the difference between the ontological status of worlds in world-systems and their material or ontic ground with respect to the planet” shows how world economy differs from “the actual world” (32, original emphasis). Thus, Youssef’s alignment of material fulfillment as the essence of human conditions results in his disillusionment towards the real world when his material relations with his father and friends cannot be sustained. Having failed to inherit bourgeoisie status, Youssef follows Aziz’s path of turning to a “dangerous pursuit” when the knowledge that he has acquired through the institutional ISA proves useless in the labor market. Youssef’s desire for domestic and financial security results in the appearance of an alternative family ISA as a symbolic signifier. Lacan suggests that the “passion of the signifier now becomes a new dimension of the human condition” (315). Seeking to sublimate his passions, Youssef turns to a fundamentalist religious sect for support. Vorster suggests how Islamic fundamentalists view “the Qur’an as God’s literal and eternal word, should be interpreted according to the literal meaning of the words and concepts” (47). Thus, Islamic fundamentalism allows Youssef and other protagonists under similar circumstances to be rid of the economic system or the real world that marginalized them. Eventually, they commit individual acts of terror that reject national ideology. Since bourgeois status is most often inherited, a gap in Youssef’s characterization emerges between his divergent class histories, one earned via labor and the other via his lack of bourgeois status. Though both Youssef and Amal are college students, with “bright future[s] ahead [of them]” (111), Youssef soon discovers that his knowledge is worthless:

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But Youssef had come to believe that degrees did not matter. Smarter people than he, people with engineering or medical degrees, could not find jobs. They sat in the same cafés as the dropouts and the illiterates. (210)

Youssef’s comments show that university education, as provided by the educational ISA, can no longer guarantee a respectable livelihood and the reproduction of life opportunities that grant bourgeois status; the middle-class promise of educational benefit has failed. In Marx’s words, “the socially useful character of his private labour is reflected in the form that the product of labour has to be useful to others” (166). The institutional ISA fails to transform graduates into useful laborers in the market. As an unemployed university graduate, moreover, Youssef becomes disillusioned not only with the educational ISA, but also with the broader status quo. His disillusionment partially explains how anger can be redirected towards the institutional ISA in the form of a counterhegemonic resistance against other aspects of the institutional ISA. Youssef’s description of the police force reveals how the institutional ISA seemingly functions not by ideology but by coercion: Here, in the neighbourhood, everyone hated the police–men who never showed up when they were most needed, but were always around when they were least wanted. (211)

Rather than reinforcing law and order for the common person, the police exploit commoners through bribery. For Althusser, the police form one component of a repressive state apparatus. However, in contrast to Althusser’s formulation, the police in Lalami’s novel fail to reinforce the positive aspects of national ideology. I thus suggest that the failure of the state apparatus operates at the narrative level as an allegory of the failure of national ideology at the state level, with the erosion of family values being emblematic of state failure. The character of Faten, like Youssef, turns to religious fundamentalism as an alternative to the institutional ISA when she becomes disillusioned with the institutions of family and education. Faten, like Youssef, comes from a broken family in which the father is absent. She has also “flunked” in the examination and has little hope for a good future (29). Based on Vorster’s suggestion of the common features of religious fundamentalism, I suggest that membership in the fundamentalist religious community provides Faten with a sense of belonging and mutuality with the other members of the community, which the institutional ISA had failed to

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provide to her: A common denominator in the various strands of religious fundamentalism is the consciousness of the destination and tension between us as the “in-group” and them as the “out-group”. Due to their common experience of fear for the loss of identity, their reactionary disposition, their prejudice and intolerance, fundamentalists develop a strong sense of “in-group” frame of mind with a rigid homogenous culture. (53)

The fundamentalist community provides Faten with “a rigid homogenous culture”. Unlike Youssef, who is attracted by the hope of material fulfillment, Faten is not interested in the material aspects of life during the first part of the novel. She is unique among members of her generation as she understands that “[t]he world doesn’t revolve around fashion and movies” (31). Though this mentality is faithful to Islamic teachings, she is viewed as a fanatic within the market-focused, modern society in which she operates. The resistance which Faten experiences to her participation in a fundamentalist Islamic sect demonstrates the inability of the state and its institutions to incorporate religious fundamentalism that “protect[s] the Islam rule and culture in times of oppression” (Vorster 48). The father of her friend Noura, Larbi Amrani, opposes his daughter’s acquaintance with Faten. He is alarmed when Noura takes up wearing the hijab.4 Upon hearing Noura quoting from the Qur’an in condemning the family’s corruption, Larbi is afraid, moreover, that Noura will become a religious fanatic. For him, religious fundamentalism is in conflict with capitalist ideology. When Noura declares her intention to be a middle school teacher so as to educate the young generation, Larbi voices his disagreement: “Morocco needs me. You two always talk about the shortage of teachers,” Noura said. “Have you lost your mind? You’re not going to solve the shortage problem–” “Am I crazy to want to help my country?” … “Look, you’ll be of more help as an economist than as a schoolteacher,” Larbi said. “It’s that friend of hers,” he added, turning to his wife. “She’s filled her head with these ideas and now she can’t think for herself.” (42)

Despite being an employee of the Ministry of Education, Larbi ironically 4

A conventional Islamic headscarf for women.

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views the educational ISA as being useless in helping the country. He sees the creation of capital, that is, the financial sector, as the only positive career prospect, which explains his opposition to the religious sect that Noura and Faten are engaged with, as it conflicts with capitalism. Larbi’s fear that Noura may turn into a religious fanatic is related to his fear that patriarchal authority will be overthrown by the symbolic patriarchy of Islamic fundamentalism. The reading of Ma’alim fi ttarqi by Sayyid Outb implies that the religious organization that Noura and Faten belong to is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.5 While patriarchy is aligned with domestic protection and national ideology, such religious affiliations replace patriarchy in the domestic setting with anti-statist and anti-materialistic ideas. Within Lalami’s narrative, the Muslim Brotherhood is depicted as a fundamentalist religious sect that acts against the government. The anti-statist nature of the Muslim Brotherhood is revealed in Faten’s attempt to convince Noura that the corrupted nature of the state must be purified by religious faith: “The injustice we see every day,” she said, “is proof enough of the corruption of King Hassan, the government, and the political parties. But if we had been better Muslims, perhaps these problems wouldn’t have been visited on our nation and on our brethren elsewhere.” (28)

Faten sees religion as the only means of addressing social injustices and inequalities. As Faten attempts to inflict this ideology upon Noura, Noura rebels against her father. Upon seeing his own daughter embracing this fundamentalist ideology, Larbi’s paternal authority is put at risk: Larbi was in shock. His only daughter, dressed like some ignorant peasant! But even peasants didn’t dress like that. She wasn’t talking about wearing some traditional country outfit. No, she wanted the accoutrements of the new breed of Muslim brothers: headscarf tightly folded around her face, severe expression anchored in her eyes. His precious daughter … But, he tried to tell himself, maybe this was just a fleeting interest, maybe it would all go away. (37)

Imitating Faten, Noura wears a hijab, seeing it as a way to protect women from harassment. While religious fundamentalism conflicts with the institutional ISA, it replaces Larbi’s role in providing paternal guidance to Noura. Religious fundamentalism thus becomes a “dangerous pursuit” that 5

See Lalami’s depiction of Sayyid Qutb as “the Egyptian dissident and member of the Muslim Brotherhood” (34).

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drives its worshippers towards counter-hegemonic acts. Though Faten and Noura have both turned to religious fundamentalism in rejecting the overriding of traditional Islamic values by the globalized capitalist materialism, the presence of domestic sanctuary differentiates Noura’s case from that of Faten. In desperation and fear of failing the college examination for the second time, Faten turns to the dangerous pursuit of cheating. She even persuades Noura to help her to cheat in the examination. Larbi’s self-evaluation upon learning of Noura’s actions demonstrates the important role played by the father figure in modeling to his children: He had always had Noura’s best interests at heart. What was so bad about her life before? She had it all, and she was happy. Why did she have to turn to religion? Perhaps it was his absence from home, his fondness for the drink, or maybe it was all the bribes he took. It could be any of these things. He was at fault somehow. (54)

Similar to the way in which Youssef’s act of theft serves as a reciprocal action to Nabil’s misconduct, Noura’s willingness to help Faten cheat is also a reciprocal action to Larbi’s corruption. At the conclusion of the novel, rather than giving a definitive answer to the question of whether Noura has finally chosen to “walk the right path”, Lalami shows that Faten ultimately has lost her faith and is driven to become a prostitute in Madrid. Faten soon discovers that the Islamic Student Organization she has joined only makes use of her as a form of propaganda: She’d had the misfortune of making a derogatory comment about King Hassan within earshot of a snitch but had, rather miraculously, escaped arrest, thanks to a friendly tip. So when her iman suggested she leave the country, she had not argued with him. She has done as she was told. Except her iman wasn’t there when the Spanish coast guard caught her and the other illegal immigrants, nor was he around when she had to fend for herself in Spain. (135)

Faten realizes that the organization will eventually consume her body and will likewise fail in providing real spiritual assistance. She then embraces the economic mode of production, by selling her body for material gain and given up her religion, insofar as she believes that having faith is a luxury: [Noura] was rich; she had the luxury of having faith. But then, Faten

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thought, Noura also had the luxury of having no faith; she’d probably found the hijab too constraining and ended up taking it off to show off her designer clothes. That was the thing with money. It gave you choices. (144-5)

Faten’s thoughts demonstrate that she has come to view religious affiliations as material relationships rather than as social ones. She views choices as something exclusive to the wealthy bourgeoisie, while, as a member of the proletariat, she is left with no choices except to flee Morocco. In the mode of the globalized economy, she feels she can only turn to engaging in prostitution in Madrid. The character of Youssef in Secret Son, like Faten in Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, turns to religious fundamentalism as an alternative ISA providing him with surrogate kinship support. Youssef’s illegitimacy means that he cannot inherit wealth and is thereby forced to remain as a subjugated member of the working class. After his abandonment by Nabil, Youssef stays at home and refuses to go out. The narrator suggests that Youssef realizes “that he had only played the part of Youssef Amrani, but all long he had remained Youssef El Mekki” (192). This implies that he can no longer be his father’s son, the subject that he believes himself to be, without receiving material support from Nabil, because people living in a capitalist society come to be defined by means of their material relationships. Before discussing the reasons why Youssef ultimately turns to religiously motivated acts of terror, it is helpful to compare his yearnings with those of his half-sister Amal. Being raised in a bourgeois family, Amal has not lacked anything in a material sense since childhood. However, she experiences loneliness, as neither her family nor her boyfriend, Fernando, understands her position. This sense of loneliness, despite her material fulfillment, implies that her material satisfaction is not aligned with spiritual fulfillment. At first when she learns that she has a half-brother, she is “far too wrapped up in her own pain to think of the pain of others” (176-7). Feeling an urge to re-establish family relations, she expresses her desire to meet her half-brother, Youssef. A change in her attitude is thus demonstrated. She informs Rachida that she “was sorry about what [her] father did, and about what [her] mother did. About everything” (240). Amal’s conversation with Rachida implies that she does not see Youssef as a competitor for her father’s wealth. Rather, she sees him as a brother who has been ill-treated by her bourgeois parents. Amal therefore

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hopes for the establishment of a familial relationship with Youssef in order to reassure herself of the proper functioning of the family ISA. By contrast, Youssef turns to alternative forms of family ISA for support, eventually leading him to embrace individual acts of terror which reject the national ideology. One major difference between Youssef and Amal is that the former has been abandoned by both family and educational ISAs while the latter has not. The absence of domestic sanctuary makes Youssef more susceptible to committing individual acts of terror. The father, as the head of the family ISA, links individuals to national institutions by securing paternal authority in forms that are parallel to state authority, power, and economy. This authority can be explained by the symbolic power of phallic authority. Youssef, therefore, disillusioned by Nabil’s abandonment, turns to an alternative family ISA in the form of a fundamentalist religious sect as the new signifier and symbolic patriarchal authority. The alternative family ISA which substitutes for Nabil acts as a fetish and surrogate father that provides domestic sanctuary to Youssef, as demonstrated in the narrative when we learn that Youssef believes “his pain ha[d] found a home” upon hearing the words of Hatim (208), the chairman of the fundamentalist religious sect that Youssef turns to. Youssef’s decision to specifically turn to a fundamentalist religious sect and eventually to reject the national ideology can be explained with reference to Nabil’s extra-marital affair. Nabil’s extra-marital affair is linked to the cohesiveness of the national ideology and that Nabil’s act is repeated by Youssef. Nabil’s abandonment of Youssef as having the same symbolic effect as Freud’s suggestion that when “his father was dead … he had the right to regard himself as his successor” (Sexuality 208). As the successor of Nabil, Youssef then engages in acts that reject the national ideology. More specifically, Youssef’s illegitimate status implies that Nabil had viewed the purpose of sexual attraction as being the fulfillment of lust rather than legitimate procreation. Nabil’s extra-marital affair and the consequent abandonment of Rachida and Youssef show how the search for imaginary fetishes results in the disintegration of family structure. Likewise, David’s failure to balance his individual desire and responsibility resulted in the violence which destroyed his family stability. In addition, Magda’s father’s lustful desires trigger her repeated acts of patricide at the level of imagination. By assuming this alignment of individual behavior with the cohesiveness of the national ideology within these narratives, the following discussion offers a political interpretation of the narratives.

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Narratives, Allegories and National Ideology Nabil’s failure in his role as patriarch drives Youssef toward an alternative family ISA that rejects national ideology, while Nabil’s extra-marital affair, an example of individual corruption, symbolizes the moral degradation in Moroccan society. Lalami’s narrative depicts this nominally Islamic country as only superficially governed by religious morality. Based on the casual attitudes towards sexuality of the younger generation, it is clear the pursuit of modernity generates conflicts with Islamic values in Morocco.6 Nabil’s moral corruption makes him a bad role model for Youssef, who imitates his father’s acts in seeking to fulfill his individual desires through material relationships: He had barely tried to kiss her when she reached for his belt. They ended up on the bed, and when the moment came, he used one of the condoms he had taken from his father’s drawer. She would be the first of many, the combination of his looks and his new money working like magic. (135)

Youssef, like his father, establishes relationships with others primarily through the exchange of material wealth. At different points in the narrative, he occupies the role of his father’s mistress, in seeking to receive love or satisfaction for wealth, yet also comes to replace his father as the new patriarch following his abandonment by his father. Youssef, realizing that his father-and-child relationship is solely based on material relations, feels ashamed, as he has been disgraced by his illegitimate status in gendered terms: Youssef was ashamed to see he was more like a mistress than a son: he spent hours waiting for a man to show up and was happy only when they were together. What was becoming of him? (136)

This discovery of the commodification of the father-and-son relationship implies and echoes the earlier disintegration of the family structure. In acting as the “mistress” of his father, Youssef walks in his mother’s footsteps. I have argued throughout this book that narratives of fundamentalist awakening are broadly aligned with the failures of national ideology experienced at the level of family relations. Up to this point I have restricted my discussion to how failures of family narratives are allegories 6

Alia remarks to Youssef that “just because we had a good time yesterday doesn’t mean you’re my boyfriend” (71).

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that reject national ideology. Reacting against Jameson’s notion of “national allegory”, Sommer points out that the genre of national romance serves as the celebration or prediction of “identification between the Nation and its state” (30). She further explains the linkage between allegories of nation and state power by stating that “nationalism could be understood as a political movement against the state” (31). We can see an example of this at work in the narratives by the Anglo-European authors, in which all of the Anglo-European women, namely Lucy, Magda and Mary, are sexually exploited by indigenous males. The victimization of Anglo-European women at the narrative level not only implies the weakness of the white patriarchy under African colonialism, it also signifies that Anglo-European institutions are being challenged or even overthrown by indigenous patriarchy. In contrast to those examples, Youssef is raised in the absence of domestic sanctuary and twice abandoned by a patriarchal authority (first the father and then the state), resulting in his rejection of the family ISA. Youssef’s desire for domestic sanctuary has been transformed into a fetish towards a fundamentalist religious sect that threatens the national ideology. Youssef’s example illustrates that a strong sense of national ideology is built upon the stable construction of patriarchal authority. By extension, individual acts of terror are actions which eventually seek to compensate for the absence of domestic sanctuary. The fundamentalist religious sect that Youssef turns to seemingly helps people to establish social relationships through brotherhood. However, the sect actually establishes social relationships by fulfilling people’s material needs. For instance, Si Hatim, chairman of the Party, seeks people’s support by providing flood victims with contingent material assistance: “My brothers and sisters in faith, I have here in this van some tents and blankets and food. You will get help today, not tomorrow, not next week. Today!” he said triumphantly, his finger spearing the air above him. People cheered, a few of them clapped; everyone looked eagerly at the van. (17)

That the Party is able to provide immediate assistance to the victims is in stark contrast with the bureaucratic nature of the government. Hatim reminds his fellows that “[t]he Government has abandoned the people” (17). This hint indicates that his religious sect resembles the Muslim Brotherhood; in fact, the Party directly challenges the authority and power of the secular state.

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As the leader of a fundamentalist religious sect, Hatim consumes the bodies of young men in activities directed against the state. On one occasion when numerous university students take part in demonstrations against a fare hike, Youssef felt certain that “there was little chance that everything would change, but he still sang along with the others and threw his fists up in the air” (48, original emphasis). Youssef’s identity as a protestor gives him “the intoxicating feeling that he belonged” (48). Hatim, the chief of At Tariq Al Mustaqim–a controversial newspaper that seems to provoke counter-hegemonic movements among its readers in forming a so-called “By God. Through God. With God” platform – takes advantage of Youssef by using the power of the press. Though he had promised Youssef that his face would not appear in the photo, Hatim breaks this promise by publishing a photo in which Youssef is being beaten by “police officers in full riot gear” (59). Hatim manipulates Youssef in order to highlight the repressive nature of the institutional engine. He even gives the news report the headline “State brutality continues: Demonstrators beaten; Fifty arrested” (58). Youssef’s body has thus been passively exploited by Hatim. Though at first Youssef feels cheated, he is willing to devote himself to Hatim’s Party because of the sense of camaraderie and belonging that he feels. Youssef faces a dilemma in engaging in the “dangerous pursuit” of challenging state authority. When Hatim reveals that Benaboud has denounced him and the Party, Youssef, in turn, supports Hatim: Youssef could not imagine that Benaboud would print lies. After all, some of the claims he made came from the police themselves. Still, Hatim was right: Benaboud should have spoken to him first. And the line about the Party’s headquarters being in an abandoned warehouse–it proved that Benaboud has never set foot in Hay An Najat. Hatim was right to be angry. (219-20)

Youssef, already disappointed in equal measure by both his father and university education, resents both bourgeois capitalism and its institutions. Consequently, he is convinced by Hatim that he understands the needs and conditions of poor people living in slum areas. Hatim manages to capture Youssef’s attention at a time when Youssef has become disillusioned by the institutions aligned with the national ideology by promoting the battle that destroys “the forces of evil” (249).7 The fundamentalist religious sect thus comes to be perceived by 7

Hatim says to Youssef, “[t]he battle between the forces of good and the forces of

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the potential terrorist-protagonist Youssef as a tool for promoting the forces of good. When Youssef feels “unsure what to say” (249), Hatim takes advantage of his rejection of patriarchal authority to tempt him towards the “mother side” by asking whether Youssef is on the side of his mother or his father, again reminding Youssef that father is responsible for the miserable lives that he and his mother lead.8 Hatim presents the poverty and difficulty experienced by Youssef and his mother as a kind of injustice that should be rectified. Youssef, hoping to avenge his mother, decides to “stand up to all those who had wronged her” (256). Thus, Hatim has managed to successfully substitute for Nabil’s paternal authority. Youssef’s actions demonstrate the way in which the breakdown in the family links individual unhappiness to collective violence, which ultimately disturbs the national ideology. Youssef, hoping to bring “great honor [to himself] and [his] mother” (255), has no idea that Hatim intends merely to consume and sacrifice his body in the name of justice and Allah. Hatim aims to kill his rival Benaboud, and thus chooses Youssef to carry out this operation because of his familiarity with the Grand Hotel, Benaboud’s “favourite place to get a drink” (225), from the time he had worked there for Nabil. After having failed to derive a sense of use-value for the society from his studies at the educational ISA, engaging in revolutionary terrorist acts gives Youssef a sense of purpose. In coopting Youssef to carry out individual acts of terror, Hatim has thereby transformed fundamentalist religious acts of terror into a means of personal capitalist accumulation. Youssef intends to establish social relationships that substitute for paternal affection, though the sect seems to deny the importance of material determinations on the surface while simultaneously endorsing it. I apply Marx’s theory on commodities to suggest that Youssef’s relationships with Hatim and the fundamentalist religious sect are actually material relationships rather than social relationships. In defining the material relationships underlying commodities, Marx suggests “[s]o far as [a commodity] is a use-value, there is nothing mysterious” (163). Marx elaborates on the significance of exchange by arguing for the primacy of exchange value over use-value. 9 Youssef emerges as a commodity evil is upon us, and it is time, my son, for each of us to choose sides. Are you with us?” (249). 8 Hatim says to Youssef, “[y]ou must choose, my son. Are you on the side of your mother or your father?” (250). 9 See Marx (165).

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through his individual involvement in revolutionary terrorist acts because Youssef’s exchange value is judged by the human decisions made by Hatim, rather than by Youssef’s own use-value. Youssef, alienated from both family and the educational institutions of globalized capitalism, embraces a fundamentalist religious sect that commands him to commit acts of terror in the name of justice and Allah. His choice reinscribes what Raymond Williams regards as the “separation of ‘areas’ of thought and activity” in the broader cultural domain (78, original emphasis). Such a separation results in the formation of “material relations between persons and social relations between things” (Marx 166). However, Youssef is disillusioned by the fact that his individual acts of terror are merely symbolic and fail to actually resist social injustice or eliminate the wealth gap. Rather, they support globalized capitalism at the expense of his body and youth. Moreover, the material relationships connecting Youssef to his brothers in the sect fail to substitute for natural patriarchal authority in providing domestic sanctuary. The failure shows how Youssef is repeatedly objectified by material determination ensuing psychological drive. This claim is supported by Freud’s suggestion on how the psychological drive strives to return to that state that it departs from: The conservative organic drives have assimilated every one of these externally imposed modifications of the organism’s life-cycle and duly preserved them in order to repeat them, and therefore inevitably give the misleading impression of being forces bent on change and progress, whereas they merely seek to achieve an old goal by new means as well as old. (Pleasure 78)

Youssef’s disillusionment reflects the vicious circle created by the search for imaginary domestic sanctuary within the globalized capitalist milieu. After becoming disillusioned with the false promises of Hatim, Youssef is also betrayed by his good friend, Maati. The bond of brotherhood which initially motivated his involvement in the sect has thus been broken. While patriarchal figures such as Nabil and Hatim drive Youssef towards terror, Rachida provides maternal protection to Youssef. Having realized the falsehood underlying Hatim’s plan, Rachida warns Youssef using the language of their shared childhoods: She took a deep breath, and when she released it, she spoke in the language of her childhood, in Tamazight, the words rolling on her tongue like a declaration of love. “Hati lmaaqul aktinigh, aywi, amni.”

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The use of the mother tongue implies Rachida’s unconditional love towards Youssef, as she speaks to him using the most intimate means possible. Since Tamazight is described as the “new language” in the household, it is clear that Rachida has never used it before. Rather than considering this unknown language eccentric or inferior, Youssef feels a strong sense of familiarity as revealed the relief he feels. His sentimentality shows that maternal protection offers greater protection to Youssef than patriarchal authority does. The close blood tie between mother and child touches Youssef’s heart through a mother language, as Youssef’s inability to understand Tamazight does not affect his power to comprehend his mother’s speech. The re-familiarization of an old “new” tongue in Lalami’s novel symbolizes the return to the pre-colonial indigenous state that Achebe’s Okonkwo fails to achieve. After realizing the trap set by Hatim, Youssef carefully waits for the signs of the police to ensure that Benaboud will not be harmed. Though he disagrees with the police and the corrupt state they support, he naively believes that “[w]ith the police here, everything would be all right. Farid Benaboud would be safe” (286). Unfortunately, Youssef himself becomes the victim of the state apparatus when he is mistaken as the assassin, although he had only intended to prevent the assassination from occurring. He has been betrayed by his brothers in the sect, Amin and Maati, and has become yet another scapegoat caught between a terrorizing state and the terrorists who would overthrow it. The final section of the novel features the Commissaire pointing out his name as “Youssef El Mekki” (291). This ending highlights that the only social relationship remaining to Youssef is his tie to Rachida, who names him: His father had deserted him. His friend Amin had betrayed him. His friend Maati had spied on him. What was left? Who has left? The only constant in his life was his mother. She had played the role of the widow, when she had never had a husband; the role of an orphan, when all along she had had a father. She had done it for him. (282-3, original emphasis)

Youssef’s realization that he has been cherished by his mother is epiphanic. The novel concludes with the reader also suddenly becoming

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aware that all of Youssef’s connections with male fellows, including his father, were simply built upon material relationships or false substitutes. In this chapter, I have demonstrated how ideology determines family structures and the choices made to perpetuate survival in the mode of globalized capitalism. Both Youssef and Faten ultimately become disillusioned with family and educational ISAs while attempting to nurture effective family and social relations under the aegis of the state though I have differentiated Youssef’s case from that of Faten by showing how the latter is eventually compromised by globalized capitalism. Faten, in contrast to Youssef, comes to reject both the hegemonic family mechanism and her fundamentalist religious beliefs. Rather than embracing Allah, she comes to view material relationships as the sole constant and proceeds to persuade Noura to help her cheat in the examination. In this way, she more closely resembles Maati, Youssef’s friend and a member in the same revolutionary party who ultimately betrays Youssef. While Youssef’s fate is a return to the maternal relationship, Faten sacrifices her personal relationships to achieve her desired material relationships.

CONCLUSION

In the previous chapters, I have traced how the Conradian legacy of terror evolved to embody a response to the destabilization of the ideologies of family and womanhood in contemporary Anglophone narratives about Africa. I have also highlighted how Conradian narratives serve as a precondition for the continued allegorization of terror outside the role of the state. I then suggested that individual acts of terror in the third-world are a response to the Conradian experience of terror. In The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes, Conrad depicts terror as a battle between the English and Russian national cultures. Such depiction of terror was thus restricted to an Anglo-European context. However, the imperialist expansion and colonization into Africa resulted in the export of terror as indigenous traditions came to be replaced by Western modernity. Conrad had documented the export of this phenomenon of terror in Heart of Darkness, a work in which the portrayal of African terror led Achebe to label Conrad “a thoroughgoing racist” (qtd. Leitch 1789). Finally, by emphasizing the allegorical aspects of literature in reflecting terror as a globalized phenomenon, I have argued that terror at the narrative level reflects the persisting legacy of colonial attacks on the structure of the traditional African family in the contemporary context. To conclude, I attempt to link up literary texts with real-life histories and thereby to resituate living experiences as postscripts to the modernist legacy of Conradian allegory. To demonstrate this link, I will draw from the biographical sketches of Osama bin Laden and Malala Yousafzai to redefine and to test the universality of Conradian terror in the terms that this book has provided, namely, as a consequence of a breakdown in the ideologies of the family structure following a continued attack on indigenous traditions. Specifically, I will show how the family background of Osama bin Laden affected his turn toward terrorism that ultimately sought to destroy Western modernity. The ensuing death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 may likewise be read in relation to the allegorization of terror, which co-articulates individual actions with collective violence as a response to the endless struggle between modernity and ritualistic traditions. Another example of

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this struggle can be seen in the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s 2012 presidential election, which on the surface would show how the modern experience of terrorism resulted in a reinvention of African tradition in contemporary Africa. However, the short presidency of Mohamed Morsi, lasting only from 30 June 2012 to 3 July 2013, raises questions on the future of religious fundamentalism. Additionally, I posit that the rapid emergence of contemporary religious fundamentalism challenges the African state monopoly on religious thought and the values formerly associated with the religious ISA. Finally, I will suggest that the gendered and political alternatives chosen by contemporary women provide us with meaningful strategies of resistance, in a family context, when addressing the problem of terroristic actions as a ubiquitous norm prompted by desperation (i.e. as the only viable alternative to an unacceptable reality). Referencing paratexts in fiction and biography, I juxtapose the portrayal of Faten and Amal in Lalami’s novels to the life story of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani student who has resisted Taliban rule in Afghanistan at great personal risk. The behaviors of Faten, Amal and Malala represent a response made by women in the twenty-first century against their subordinate position. When viewed together, these paratexts capably represent a viable after-life of ideology and narrative to the Conradian legacy of terror, and the reinvention of that legacy as a tradition of contemporary fundamentalism in response to the failure of states to protect the family.

Resisting the Conradian Construction of Terror This book has presented Conrad as an insightful, if provocative, originator of the link between patriarchal corruption and the emergence of political violence. In The Secret Agent, Mr. Vladimir aims at creating “an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable” (33). He adds that “[t]he attack must have all the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy” (33). Conrad observed how the breakdown of the family ideology is actively assisted by false surrogates, either symbolic patriarchs or the money that they would bring as proxies. In The Secret Agent, the absence of a natural father empowers Adolf Verloc as the surrogate father, whose authority depends “on the blind docility and on the blind devotion of [Stevie]” (229). Verloc readily, even happily, victimizes Stevie so as to secure his profession and income, revealing how the corruption of the symbolic patriarch can motivate narratives of abandonment and ensuing rage. Verloc’s action

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perpetuates further violence (including Winnie’s retribution) and results in the disintegration of the family. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad had earlier suggested, via the novel’s steady gaze on the brutalization of African indigenous cultures by Anglo-European imperialism, that colonialism and capitalism are the origins of modern African violence. Fanon had also observed a relationship of collusion between capitalism and terrorist violence in Africa, stating that, in the early stages of colonization, the colonizers accumulate capital through turning “colonies [into] a source of raw materials” and the “colonial population [into] a consumer market” (Wretched 26). For the colonizers, the exploitation of African indigenous peoples, through violence, provided “protection of their ‘legitimate interests’ using economic agreements” (Wretched 27). Thus, Conrad’s fictionalization of Kurtz’s corruption in Africa also allegorizes the way in which terror emerged and was disseminated outward from its original Anglo-European setting. However, Conrad stops short of documenting the potential impact of terrorist violence upon Anglo-European women: rather than repeating Kurtz’s final whisper, Marlow tells Kurtz’s fiancée that “[t]he last word he pronounced was–your name” (123). By preventing Kurtz’s fiancée from knowing the truth of Kurtz’s final words, Marlow seeks to protect Anglo-European women from the knowledge of the specter of African violence committed on behalf of the corrupted colonial patriarch. In Conrad’s later Anglo-European-focused works, the male protagonists Verloc and Razumov repeat Marlow’s action by keeping Winnie and Nathalie respectively away from the truth: that their beloved brothers have been victimized by false patriarchs. However, as the plots of these novels grow more complicated, Conrad shows that it becomes impossible for the white patriarchs to conceal the truth forever. Conrad’s change in attitude implies that although Winnie and Nathalie are subjected to domestic confinement, they are not condemned to remain ignorant of the truth. Aside from her physical confinement, Winnie’s act of suicide following the deaths of Stevie and Verloc also shows how women are defined by men. Some years later, based on his experience writing The Secret Agent, Conrad decided to change the ending of Under Western Eyes by removing the plot point of the marriage between Razumov and Nathalie.1 This change indicates that Conrad had come to view certain social conventions as being unrealistic. 1 Panichas, George Andrew. Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision. Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 2007. 80. Print.

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The six African Anglophone narratives chosen for discussion exhibit the legacy of the aforementioned Conradian observations. While Verloc’s diabolic desire as a surrogate father requires that he make use of Stevie as a scapegoat, the incestuous sexual desire of David Lurie in Disgrace results in the victimization of his surrogate daughter Melanie, and is allegorized as his inability to protect his real daughter Lucy from indigenous sexual violence. Thus, the “disgraceful” expulsion of David Lurie does not merely imply his corruption as an individual. The incident, rather, represents the broader erosion of the ideological power of colonial patriarchy in the post-colonial South African setting and the reassertion of indigenous authority to refuse that type of teacher or father. Consequently, the threat (or promise) of the return of indigenous violence and retribution in post-colonial rural Africa seeks to destroy the order, institutions and ISAs established by Anglo-European colonizers. The ideological link between the patriarch and institutional authority conforms to Lévi-Strauss’s observation that “the prototype of the primitive chief was a symbolic father, so that the elementary forms of the state were a development of the family” (314). Thus, with the breakdown in colonial institutions, after David’s daughter Lucy is raped, neither David nor the government is capable of providing any help. Likewise, Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country and Lessing’s The Grass is Singing both present fictionalized representations of terror resulting from the absence of effective Anglo-European patriarchal authority and the fantasy of retrieving it. The absence of Magda’s father and Mary’s husband Dick triggers the victimization of Magda and Mary, respectively, by indigenous patriarchy. By contrast, in an instance where indigenous family and its structures are counted upon to safeguard ritualistic traditions against external menace, we have seen in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart how Okonkwo’s hubris effectively makes useless those indigenous cultural resources that would resist the predations of Western modernity and would substitute for them. Yet again, the failure and duplicity of the father of the family results in the broader incapacity of the indigenous culture to withstand an exogenous modernity imposed from outside. I have shown how Conrad’s Heart of Darkness depicted colonialism and capitalism as the fundamental causes of modern African violence, without which the reading of Achebe, Lessing, Coetzee and Lalami would fail. Thus, while the corruption and incapability of indigenous patriarchy serves as an internal factor that weakens family cohesion, Western modernity as an external menace poses a challenge to the collapsing

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traditional family structure. In Secret Son, Nabil’s frivolous attitude in marriage signifies moral degradation and the bankruptcy of Islamic values in Morocco. The commodification of the paternal relationship and, eventually, his abandonment of Youssef confirm how familial relations may become fetishized within a capitalist system. Youssef’s deteriorating relationships with his poor mother, Rachida, after his reunion with the wealthy father Nabil, shows how the objectification of familial relationships disintegrates family structure. As a metonym of the state power whose patriarchal role joins individual actions to national ideologies, the failure of the father, in allegorical terms, leads directly to the subject’s reconsideration of the State and, for a failing State, to God. In his writings on small-scale traditional societies, Lévi-Strauss observed how the corruption and incapability of the chief may arouse discontent from the group, which in turn causes the chief’s subjects to “leave the group and go off to join some other [chiefs] with a better reputation” (307). As with Lévi-Strauss’s suggestion that the moral degradation of the patriarchal head may result in his abandonment by the larger family, the young characters in the selected narratives, namely Nwoye, Faten, Noura and Youssef, have likewise turned to religious affiliation for their spiritual fulfillment. Nwoye’s shift to Christianity, represents the success of the Anglo-European imperialists in securing their ruling ideology by setting up the related ideological apparatuses. As with the case of Larbi and Noura, the immoral attributes of paternal figures do not necessarily correlate to individual acts of terror in a direct cause and effect relationship. Clearly, though Larbi’s personal actions such as “his absences from home, his fondness for the drink, or maybe it was all the bribes he took” determine Noura’s evolving perceptions about the threat to Islamic traditions presented by Western capital and its globalization (54). Faten and Youssef turn to compensatory fraternal bonds as a substitute for their absent fathers following their abandonment. Both failed “fathers” are evidence of the falling away from traditional Islam, a belief system that alone remained to offer psychological compensation apart from the abandonment of the world. Since the fraternal bonds that these two individuals turn to are actually political affiliations which reject the secular Arab state in the name of Allah, this substitution later entices them toward compensatory, yet potentially self-destructive, engagement in “dangerous pursuits” as allegorically redeeming acts. Driven by commodity fetishism, Youssef and Faten each turn to one of two contrasting narrative fates: respectively, terror as a rejection of the world and prostitution as a desperate attempt to

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survive in it. That the patriarchal abandonments of Nabil and Faten’s father result in Youssef’s and Faten’s respective embrace of religious fundamentalism affirms how a breakdown in the family structure threatens national ideology. The experiences of the Anglo-European women in the selected African Anglophone novels mirror those of the female characters in Conrad’s later novels, in that the Anglo-European women living in Africa achieve only a belated recognition of the truth. Driven by the social expectation that they marry, these women fail to recognize the corrupt nature of the patriarch. This failure to achieve the necessary understanding results in these women’s exposure to terror as the Anglo-European patriarch proves unable to protect the women under his care from violence. By clearly demonstrating the inability of the colonial patriarchy to provide protection to women, I challenged the effectiveness of the colonial family ISA. In the previous chapters, I have presented terror in twentieth-century African narratives as a continuation and rewriting of the implicitly gendered basis of Conrad’s construction of the imaginary “Africa”. A major purpose of this book has therefore been to underscore how the work of gender at once guarantees, and may potentially subvert, individual and group choices toward terroristic actions. However, the Conradian legacy of terror actually generates resistance against its gendered framework. I argue that repurposing gender in support of the matriarch-centered family can buttress traditional family and cultural values against the “tradition” of narrated violence as either meaningful or necessary. My argument echoes with Rubin’s suggestion that in order “to get rid of culture and substitute some entirely new phenomena on the face of the earth” (176), it is necessary to abandon the conventional gender system that imposes stereotypical obligations on both genders. Thus far, all of the patriarchal heads analyzed in this book, namely Unoka, Okonkwo, David, Magda’s father, Dick and Nabil, fail to offer domestic sanctuary to their families. Despite this, these narratives at times suggest a solution. For example, Achebe suggests the importance of the maternal element in Things Fall Apart when the character of Okonkwo returns to his mother’s town following his exile from Umuofia. Okonkwo’s choice implies that the maternal represents genuine domestic sanctuary, as derived from the concept of the mother’s womb. Within the novel, the character of Uchendu comments on the supreme quality of the mother in Igbo culture:

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In Achebe’s pre-colonial African narrative, the motherland is aligned with refuge and protection. Having been abandoned by his fatherland during his seven-year exile, Okonkwo rebuilds his fame and reputation in his motherland. However, Okonkwo still shows great disobedience to matriarchy. This is revealed by his action that “[e]ven in his first year in exile he had begun to plan for his return” (125). Rhonda Cobham relates Okonkwo’s reluctance to accept maternal authority with his father’s cowardice: Okonkwo, who can only define masculinity in relation to what his father was not, is understandably out of his depth when asked to accept a notion that his identity may also be formed by qualities represented by his mother. (519)

Acting in a rather different way, in Secret Son, when Youssef is abandoned by his father and disillusioned by the false promise of brotherhood, he returns to his mother, as he finally realizes the importance of his intimate blood ties with Rachida, which is in stark contrast to the ephemeral material relationships that exist between all of the male characters in the story. In an attempt to revise Conrad and Althusser in the context of globalization, I have suggested that contemporary women in African contexts must rid themselves of the legacy of Kurtz’s fiancée. While Kurtz’s fiancée fails to realize Marlow’s obvious attempt to keep women ignorant of their potential for resisting patriarchal dominance, the cases of Faten and Amal show how women living under the same allegorical formation as Kurtz’s fiancée but in different historical contexts resist the gendering of terror. Unlike Magda and Mary, who cling to the family ISA for protection and financial support, the characters of Faten and Amal in Lalami’s two novels develop an early recognition of the shortcomings of the family institution. Each has sought out an alternative ISA for family and home. The depiction of Islamic fundamentalism in Lalami’s narratives reveals how the reinvention of Islamic traditions cannot fully address the exclusion of women in Islamic idealism. As a victim of men’s lustful desires, Rachida in Lalami’s Secret Son is abandoned by Nabil as soon as

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that desire has shifted. The objectification of women in Islamic culture poses questions regarding the emergence of gendered resistance to terror. That Faten turns from religious devotion to prostitution in Spain reveals her determination to rid herself of the gender constraints of the traditional Islamic mode. In contrast to Magda and Mary who are bound by the falsity of patriarchal protection and eventually become disillusioned, Faten has never held any such illusions, and pays little attention to the false promises made by her clients. As a prostitute, Faten pragmatically believes that she has been “entrusted with people’s secrets and that her job was to dispose of them” (141). Although she continues to earn her living as a prostitute, her attitude shows that she is able, at one level, to oppose and to resist the domination of men over women. One clear example of this is when she shows strong resentment towards a client’s opinion that “[w]omen in this country … don’t know how to treat a man. Not the way you Arab girls do.” (148). Her behavior parallels Adrienne Rich’s idea that “the repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers” (qtd. in Carver 242). Lalami ends Faten’s narrative with a scene in which Faten’s roommate criticizes her cooking skills. Faten’s contentment upon hearing her roommate’s criticism reflects how women in the twenty-first century strive to fight against the confinement of lies. In addition to serving as a response to Marlow’s patriarchal lie, Faten’s contentment reveals her pursuit of truth. Amal’s personal choices, in contrast to those of Faten, propose the blurring of notions of home and abroad. Amal recalls her college days overseas when she was asked “[a]re there many Arabic women who go on to study in college?” (266) While Youssef’s subordinate experience as a peripheral bourgeoisie drives him to the use of violence to achieve domination, Amal’s subordinate experience in America allows her to evaluate both the positive and negative aspects of home and abroad evenhandedly: Home and away. She had known both; found good in both; loved and hated both. She did not want to have to choose one or the other, because in every choice something is gained but something is also lost. And in any case, why was home thought of as a place? What if it were something else? (266)

This questioning of a de-centered sense of place and home raised by Amal reveals a meaningful alternative to nationalist patriarchy. As a response to

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the patriarchal confinement faced by Magda and Mary at home, Amal’s new conception of home prevents the “continuing construction of the subaltern” as generated by the false belief in the patriarchy’s power to protect women from the possibility of external menace (Spivak 90).

Case studies: Osama bin Laden and Malala Yousafzai To examine the extent to which the allegorical aspects of these African Anglophone novels are applicable to their present-day postscripts of globalized terror, I now link the literary narratives to two real-life biographical case studies, first taking the case of Osama bin Laden and then that of Malala Yousafzai. To demonstrate from the case of Osama bin Laden that Western modernity poses a challenge to the traditional family structure in the third-world, we must first understand the paternal role played by Mohamed bin Laden as a wealthy tycoon engaged in multiple marriages. Though Islamic teaching seemingly institutionalizes polygamy as normal, the embrace of polygamy implies a pledge which is often ignored: [A]ccording to Islamic teaching, “you have to be fair, you have to give equal justice between all of them, and you have to divide the time, to give each of them what is enough for her.” (Coll 207-8)

Mohamed bin Laden failed observe the safeguard of ensuring equality across multiple marriages. Not only did he distinguish among his wives preferentially, by virtue of the number of children they bore him, but his behavior also indicates how he ignored the teaching that Muslims “[sh]ould not divorce frivolously” (Coll 209). After giving birth to Osama, Alia Ghanem was “divorced by Mohamed within a relatively short time” (Coll 75). Paralleling Nabil’s experience, Mohamed bin Laden abandons Alia and his children by using them as currency in a system of exchange. Thus, spouse and children become not only the symbols of an evolving family structure, as in most traditional societies, but also new commodities in a capitalist system. 2 His multiple marriages also resulted in a distant relationship between Mohamed and his children. Wright records that on Islamic festival days Mohamed “would give each child a gold coin” (73). 2

Lévi-Strauss remarks that in the Nambikwara indigenous society in Brazil, polygamy implies how “each man receives his wife from another man”, which “provides a guarantee against want and danger” (315).

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In Osama’s recollection of his relationship with Mohamed, he said that as he “[recited] a poem to him [Mohamed] … he gave me a hundred riyals, which was a huge amount of money in those days” (Wright 73). The blood ties among the bin Ladens were further commodified upon Mohamed’s death, which was an occasion of profound, perhaps even traumatic, change for the family. As the eldest son, Salem “increasingly asserted himself as the family’s new patriarch”, i.e. as the privileged custodian of his father’s wealth: “it was he who handed out allowances” (Coll 133). As the successor to Mohamed and new patriarch of the bin Ladens, Salem’s act accelerated the systemic tendency to align the parent-child relationships with object relationships. Nabil’s and Mohamed’s respective violations of Islamic discipline suggest an allegorical connection between the putative fictions of literature and the fictions of the actual and “real” with which individuals tell the stories of their lives. While Mohamed’s death resulted in an ensuing commodification of familial relations among the bin Ladens, the adverse impact that he exerted upon his children had begun long before, dating from his frivolous attitude toward marriage and divorce. The remarriage of Alia with Al-Attas was arranged by Mohamed himself. Although the sum of annual dividends that Osama received from the bin Ladens after Mohamed’s death gave him financial privilege which both Razumov and Youssef had lacked, that Coll describes Osama as “the odd boy out” and “the only child of an absent father” in the new household implies the irreplaceable attributes of the biological father (137). Osama’s deteriorating relationships with his extended family after the death of his father and his turn toward radical fundamentalism affirm the Marxian suggestion that “[m]oney [confers] the alienated essence of man’s labour and life” (Singer 27). To further understand how Mohamed bin Laden as patriarch may be aligned with national ideology, both in terms of capital and morality, I quote from Coll, who points out how Western modernity came to override Islamic values during Osama’s youth: [B]y the time this generation of bin Ladens became young adults, they found themselves bombarded by Western-influenced ideas about individual choice, by gleaming new shopping malls and international fashion brands, by Hollywood movies and alcohol and changing sexual mores–a dizzying world that was theirs for the taking, since they each received annual dividends that started in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (14)

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Osama, growing up in this milieu, came to believe that “Muslims are not close enough to Allah, and Muslim youth are too busy playing and having fun” (Wright 76). His subsequent determination to resist Western modernity became, in turn, legislated in the by-laws of Al-Qaeda, whose goal since its founding has been to rid “the Muslim world of Western influence” (Growing 78). Osama thereby turned to acts of terror and violence which specifically targeted America as the primary exporter of capitalism and modernity. That the patriarchal corruption of Mohamed and Nabil results in Osama’s and Youssef’s respective embrace of religious fundamentalism affirms how a breakdown in the family structure threatens national ideology. In Saudi Arabia, in particular, the alignment of family and religious ISAs is a significant agent safeguarding the connection between individuals and the government: In [Saudi Arabia], political parties are banned, even social clubs are frowned upon, and tribes are relatively weak; family and religious faith offer by far the most legitimate sources of public identity. (Coll 13)

Ruling as absolute monarchs, Saudi Arabia’s royal family, and King Faisal at its head, is not merely a metonym of the wider society as the First family. The Saudi royal family represents a system of patronage that extends throughout the entire kingdom. It follows that the bin Ladens, as a reputable family, must also be connected to the royal family. The bin Ladens ran the largest construction company in the country, making their business “an important part of the kingdom’s defense capability” (Coll 128). Mohamed’s company was thus recognized as having received the royal family’s patronage. Thus, Mohamed’s death not only represented a rupture within the family’s structure, but also a breach in the family’s relationship to the highest worldly authority. After Mohamed’s death, King Faisal mentioned to the bin Ladens that “I am going to be your father now” (Coll 128). This is a telling substitution coming from the mouth of the king: the ever-present symbol of patriarchy throughout Saudi Arabian society establishes himself as an actual surrogate for Mohamed, yet offers primarily material benefits with his royal pledge. In this context, then, Osama’s ensuing confrontation with Western modernity is informed by allegories of disenchantment that link the abandonment and absence of his biological father to the father-as-proxy that the State establishment would have substituted for him. Both failed “fathers” are evidence, to Osama, of the falling away from traditional

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Islam, a belief system that alone remained to offer psychological compensation apart from the abandonment of the world. In 1991, when Saddam’s Iraqi army threatened the Saudi border, Osama wrote to the King, “beseeching him not to call upon the Americans for protection” (Wright 156). Osama could see that the potential involvement of America and the United Nations in the combat against Saddam represented a potential threat. With American intervention, Osama saw not the bringing of “freedom and respect for human rights” to the Middle East, as stated by President George H.W. Bush (Wright 160), but rather, the threat of invasion of the Middle East by non-Muslims and their values. The royal family’s refusal to reject Western assistance resulted in Osama’s decision to establish an Islamic-caliphate in opposition to even Saudi temporal authority: He also wanted to create a new world order, one that was ruled by Muslims, not dictated by America and enforced by the UN. The scale of his ambition was beginning to reveal itself. In his fantasy he would enter history as the savior of Islam. (Wright 161)

Osama’s insistence upon rejecting Western modernity also represents the rejection of national ideology, including that of the Saudi state. His act also upsets the established linkage between the bin Ladens and the state. Coll refers to Osama’s later confrontation with Saudi Arabia’s royal family as a “violent opposition to his own family’s interest” (13). To further understand why Osama turned toward religious fundamentalism, it is important to consider how religiously motivated acts of terror may be perceived as justifiable when the state as an institution have failed its Islamic mandate. Coll describes Osama’s position among the bin Ladens as, initially, a “‘minor figure’ hovering censoriously on the family’s periphery” (203). I suggest that Osama’s engagement in the Muslim Brotherhood was a means for him to move from the periphery to the center of the ideology linking family to a radically revised national ideology. Coll notes that, in Saudi Arabia, the penetration of Western modernity “did not alter Islam’s central place in the daily lives of the great majority of the kingdom’s subjects” (202). This may be so. Yet, referencing Fanon, I have argued throughout this book that violence often attends decolonizing processes and the re-centering of indigenous values apart from foreign influence. The reinvention of an Islamic tradition apart from the Saudi Arabian state therefore eventually resulted in Osama’s pursuit of terror.

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When the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi became the president of Egypt in the summer of 2012, a formerly dissident branch of Islam became part of a state apparatus. By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood prior to the Arab Spring was “very much an underground movement in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s” (Wright 78). Coll suggests that Osama’s youthful engagement with the Brotherhood meant that his “understanding of Islam was inflected by messages of political dissent” (203). Published after the 9/11 attacks on America and prior to the Arab Spring, Lalami’s novels depict protagonists who follow a similar path toward dissent. The allegorical aspect of Lalami’s narratives helps us to understand Faten’s accusations against the government for enabling social injustices (28). Similarly, from his biography, we can see that Osama’s early involvement with the Brotherhood and his disenchantment with it led directly to the founding of Al-Qaeda. While the establishment of Al-Qaeda represents Osama’s terroristic rejection of a capitalist falsehood, the terroristic violence in the selected novels tenders a false promise to protagonists that violent acts (typically resulting in their deaths) may enable them to transcend the limitations of class, gender and race. Earlier, in Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, Haldin had similarly justified the assassination of Mr. de P as an act in the war against falsehood: This is not murder–it is war, war. My spirit shall go on warring in some Russian body till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. (21)

Haldin’s exalted belief in revolution, expressed in terms of terroristic violence conquering the falsity of modern civilization, links the struggles of Okonkwo to Youssef, and the retreat of Magda to that of David Lurie. In victory or defeat, all the characters I’ve analyzed react to the advent of Western modernity as a new universal, whether using “violent and non-violent means” (Growing 78). Terror, then, is a reaction to the modernizing process. Osama and other young terrorists, radicalized by the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood, have expressed their hope “to establish an Islamic state anywhere” (Wright 78). The examples of Haldin and Osama’s Al-Qaeda show how the Conradian legacy of terror has achieved ubiquity in forms that the State has produced and yet cannot, in all cases, control. Likewise, the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in 2012 demonstrates how the loss of family and tradition under globalized

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capitalism may result in a legitimated rejection of modernity. However, Morsi’s crushing defeat in the army coup of 2013 suggests that the state still cannot fully convince adherents to Islam that it is the best protector of indigenous Islamic values. Osama’s caliphate in the twenty-first century symbolizes the re-creation of the Medieval Islamic world in our own time. However, the end of Mohamed Morsi’s brief presidency calls into question whether this reinvention of tradition could receive widespread support from other countries in the Middle East. In Conrad’s novel, Haldin’s revolutionary spirit is inspired by that of his uncle. Osama and his comrades believed in the influence of individuals over the Muslims and even the non-Muslims. For instance, they “believed that the first [revolution] would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind” (Wright 78). At present, we can only let history verify the possibility of the “domino effect” triggered by the reinvention of Islamic tradition in Egypt. As the ruling party in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was identified with the religious ISA. At the theoretical level, there was no need for people who were subjected to the absence of paternal protection to turn to an alternative family ISA for protection. The president, acting simultaneously as the head of the state and the religious ISA, was the father figure offering protection to his people, yet it is doubtful whether the victory of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood resulted in the disappearance of terror and confirmed that “Islam is the solution”.3 The series of riots opposing the presidential office beginning in January 2013 challenged and eventually overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood as a religious ISA in Egypt.4 In Under Western Eyes, Haldin’s ideal was to establish a new Russia without falsehood. Similarly, Osama’s Al-Qaeda had the mission that “believers could launch their struggle for a perfect Islamic world” (Growing 78, my emphasis). Thus, though Haldin and Osama both hold idealist views about a perfect world, their rivals are different. Haldin fights against political despotism in Russia while Osama strove for the revival of Islamic convention under globalization. As for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, again we must let history determine the extent of its role in 3

BBC News Middle East suggests that “Islam is the solution” is the most famous Islamic slogan worldwide. See “Profile: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood”. 4 BBC News Middle East suggests that the factors underlying Egypt’s political crisis include “widespread law and order problems in Egypt and a loss of confidence in state institutions, particularly the security services and the judiciary”. See “Q&A: Egypt’s riots and political crisis”.

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leading to a “perfect Islamic world”. While Faten and Amal both represent women’s determination to break the conventional gendering of the family role, Malala Yousafzai’s biography presents a more unique case. Malala’s acts against the Taliban represent a response made by women in the twenty-first century against their subordinate position. In January 2009, the Taliban announced an edict in the Swat Valley banning education for girls. This edict reflects the legacy of Marlow’s lie in the twenty-first century, and is an obvious attempt to keep women ignorant of their potential for resisting patriarchal dominance. Being subordinated by the Taliban’s edict, the Pakistani student Malala decided to defend her rights for education by writing of her plight on the internet.5 Malala’s passion for education likely emerged within her family ISA, as Malala’s father, Ziauddin, was an education activist.6 However, that Malala was able to voice her opinion openly proves that she was not merely “a slavish echo” of her father.7 For instance, Ziauddin did not acknowledge his daughter’s authorship of the diary entries although others commented that they were wonderfully written.8 Members of the Taliban were able to find out her identity anyway, and responded by trying to murder her, whose insistence on education for girls demonstrates her rejection of Taliban rule over women. 9 Malala’s decision to protest through the media conforms to Amal’s suggestion that gendered geographies are distant from state-capitalist formations and their patriarchal ideology. The globalization of the media evoked international concern over Malala’s plight and the issue of human rights in the Swat Valley. Faten, Amal and Malala, then, each represent different ways in which Kurtz’s fiancée has changed in the twenty-first century. She speaks up for her own rights and is no longer confined by patriarchal lies.

5

Malala used the pseudonym Gul Makai in her diary entries for BBC in Urdu. See “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl”. 6 As an outspoken education activist, Malala’s father received death threats from the Taliban. See “Malala Yousafzai: Portrait of the girl blogger”. 7 See Nathalie’s comment that “Mother imagines that I am the slavish echo of my brother Victor.” (UWE 90) 8 Ziauddin “only smiled but could not even say that it was written by his daughter”. See “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl”. 9 Malala was shot by the Taliban in October 2012.

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Postscript: Terroristic Retribution as False Promise In my preceding analysis on colonial and post-colonial African narratives, I have quoted Fanon’s rhetoric on how violence functions as a “cleansing force” that attempts to liberate the colonized from their status of inferiority (Wretched 51). The imposition of violence against Anglo-European imperialists in the postcolonial period represents the response of indigenous peoples to external influence in Africa. Hendrik, Petrus and Moses have all committed acts of sexual violence upon their women masters. This book thus demonstrates that, as the conditions of post-colonialism pervade, the indigenous ritual of competition returns. Within these works, domestic terror enacted upon the white mistress represents African indigenous peoples’ attempt to break the “door of Darkness” by reviving indigenous culture (HOD 26). Through disgracing Anglo-European women, they have avenged their ancestor Okonkwo in a colonial discourse of African abjection. On the other hand, the descendants of Anglo-European imperialists are exposed to unfair retributive punishment. Thus, colonization had failed to successfully wipe out the indigenous ritual of competition; it has merely perpetuated it in newer, evolving forms. In a similar fashion, Osama regarded his orchestrated terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York as an act of retribution avenging Muslims and Arabs that had been killed by the Americans in the postwar era. Osama once commented that “[w]e treat others like they treat us. Those who kill our women and our innocent, we kill their women and innocent, until they stop doing so” (Coll 532). Nevertheless, based upon my readings of these African Anglophone narratives, even a retributive or redemptive violence fails to address the underlying causes and ideological conflicts that created terror in the first place. As shown in Lessing’s novel, Charlie Slatter merely attempts to reinforce the Anglo-European domination over the local culture when he realizes that Mary was sexually assaulted by Moses. In this case, the cure perpetuates the disease, as Charlie’s decision to fire Moses results directly in Mary’s death. Similarly, the 9/11 attacks did not result in the ultimate cessation of hostilities following the conclusion of the American military campaign in Afghanistan. Instead, the 9/11 attacks provoked a still-ongoing chain of retaliatory violence inaugurated by George W. Bush as “the War on Terror”, which, nearly fifteen years on, has no apparent end. For their part, Osama’s terrorist attacks have exposed ever more people in Afghanistan to retributive punishment, both by the Americans and from within the non-jihadist ranks of their own society. Just as Okonkwo’s self-destruction implies even as it critiques the

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inexorability and inevitability of modern triumph over African traditions, so too does the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 seem to symbolize the defeat of the Islamic holy war by the forces of Western modernization. However, this book demonstrates that, as the conditions of post-colonialism pervade, the indigenous ritual of competition returns. We must then ask, does the allegorized nature of literature imply that holy war may return? For instance, ISIS has replaced Al-Qaeda as the dominant religious organization invoking terrorist threats. Osama’s last will and testament and his son’s perception towards terroristic violence may give the world an indication of the future of terror when it has become a ubiquitous norm. In it, Osama urged his children “not to continue to wage the holy war” (Flock). He likewise exhorted his wives to guide the children “to the right path” (Flock). The warning to be given to his children to indicates his understanding that destruction only sows further destruction. As with Okonkwo, Osama sought to resist the overcoming of tradition by Western modernity, actions which consequently resulted in his own destruction and, in Okonkwo’s case, his son Nwoye’s betrayal. Both Osama and Okonkwo thus become the defeated defenders of tradition in an inexorable march toward the modernity that, paradoxically, made their resistance and identity possible. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Omar, the fourth son of Osama, likewise expressed doubts about his father’s responsibility: I, too, fed my own uncertainties with a million reasons why he could not have done this terrible deed. I did not want my father to be the one responsible. (Growing 285)

The loving son refuses to see his father as a mass murderer. Though he had hoped that Osama was not the “perpetrator”, the truth revealed by his father himself drove Omar to a state of despair (Growing 285). As the son of a father who waged war against Western modernity, Omar chooses an alternative to the allegory of perpetual terror: I am nothing like my father. While he prays for war, I pray for peace. And now we go our separate ways, each believing that we are right. I am, at last, my own man. I can live with that. (Growing 287)

Instead of waging a holy war, Omar promotes world peace. May his choice become a ubiquitous alternative for individuals born in the age of the breakdown of the family.

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