New Developments in Postcolonial Studies 2017007735, 9783631675496, 9783653069808, 9783631711248, 9783631711255

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Studies in Linguistics, Anglophone Liter atures and Cultures 6

Małgorzata Martynuska / Elz˙bieta Rokosz-Piejko (eds.)

New Developments in Postcolonial Studies

Studies in Linguistics, Anglophone Liter atures and Cultures 6

Małgorzata Martynuska / Elz˙bieta Rokosz-Piejko (eds.)

New Developments in Postcolonial Studies This book analyses the applicability of postcolonial theories and contemporary issues, and also revisits previously tackled cultural, social and literary phenomena. The contributions examine contemporary social, economic and cultural processes. The authors look back at older cultural texts, coming from either former colonies or former colonisers. They furthermore refer to the fact that theories of postcolonialism are currently more frequently applied to study countries originally not classified as colonial. They attempt to define and explain the experiences of the native peoples of colonial territories in various historical situations of dependence.

The Editors Małgorzata Martynuska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Rzeszów, Poland. Her current research focuses on cultural hybridity of Hispanics living in the US. Elz˙bieta Rokosz-Piejko is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Rzeszów, Poland. She specialises in American literature and in adaptation studies.

New Developments in Postcolonial Studies

STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS, ANGLOPHONE LITERATURES AND CULTURES Edited by Robert Kiełtyka and Agnieszka Uberman Advisory Board: Piotr P. Chruszczewski (Wrocław, Poland) Grzegorz A. Kleparski (Rzeszów, Poland) Zoltán Kövecses (Budapest, Hungary) Anna Malicka-Kleparska (Lublin, Poland) Sándor Martsa (Pécs, Hungary) Tadeusz Rachwał (Warsaw, Poland) Elżbieta Rokosz-Piejko (Rzeszów, Poland) Slávka Tomascíková (Košice, Slovakia)

VOLUME 6

Notes on the quality assurance and peer review of this publication Prior to publication, the quality of the work published in this series is reviewed by the editors and members of Advisory Board of the series.

Małgorzata Martynuska / Elżbieta Rokosz-Piejko (eds.)

New Developments in Postcolonial Studies

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Martynuska, Małgorzata editor. | Rokosz-Piejko, Elżbieta editor. Title: New developments in postcolonial studies / Małgorzata Martynuska, Elżbieta Rokosz-Piejko. Description: Frankfurt am Main ; New York : Peter Lang, 2017. | Series: Studies in linguistics, Anglophone literatures and cultures ; vol. 6 Identifiers: LCCN 2017007735 | ISBN 9783631675496 Subjects: LCSH: English literature—20th century—History and criticism. | Commonwealth literature (English) —History and criticism. | Postcolonialism in literature. | Colonisation in literature. | Commonwealth countries—In literature. | Postcolonialsm. Classification: LCC PR9080 .N45 2017 | DDC 820.9/9171241—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007735 This publication was financially supported by the Institute of English Studies, University of Rzeszów. Cover image: © Andrey Kuzmin & Fotolia.com Reviewed by Grzegorz Moroz Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 2364-7558 ISBN 978-3-631-67549-6 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-06980-8 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71124-8 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-71125-5 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-06980-8 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2017 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Table of Contents Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................9 Introduction.................................................................................................................11 Part I Postcolonial Literature(s) Anna Branach-Kallas Sharing Space with Others: Re-Thinking the Multicultural Encounter...............19 Aldona Bakiera Education as a Tool for Creating Hybrid Anglo-Welsh Identity in 19th- and 20th-century Welsh Novels.....................................................................35 Oksana Weretiuk Postcolonial Ireland in McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy....................................45 Barbara Ludwiczak The Image of the Other in The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury – A Supplement to Postcolonial Reading of Anthony Trollope’s Travel Works..........................................................55 Małgorzata Warchał Buddhist Ecocriticism in Selected Works of Aldous Huxley’s and Chris Arthur’s Essays...........................................................................................65 Anjali Daimari Towards a Postcolonial Ecocriticism: A Reading of Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam.......................................................................................................75 Patrycja Austin Liminality as Seen Through the Gardens of Salman Rushdie’s Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty Eight Days ....................................................89

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Izabela Bierowiec When Hybrids Collide – Co-Hybridisation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane..........................................................................................99 Dolikajyoti Sharma Cracked Within: Reading the Sri Lankan Civil War in Jean Arasanayagam’s The Dividing Line............................................................ 111 Rachael Sumner Orality, Textuality and Literary Legacy in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen........................................................................................................... 123 Part II Postcolonial States, Hybrid Identites, Disregarded Territories Fabrício Dias da Rocha Stimuli and Challenges of “Mozambican Identity” in Africa. A Brief Analysis of the Processes of the Construction of National and Cultural Identity in Mozambique: A Postcolonial Approach...................... 135 Małgorzata Martynuska Cooking up Cubanidad: Cultural Hybridity in the Case of Cuban American Cuisine.......................................................................... 145 Johanna Grabow The Long Road to the South Pole: Post-colonial Antarctica.......................................................................................... 159 Part III Postcolonial (?) Poland Gregory Allen Square Pegs into Round Holes: The Contemporary (Mis)Use of Postcolonial Theory in Poland and an Alternative.......................................... 169 Mira Malczyńska-Biały Neocolonialism in Polish Consumer Society....................................................... 179

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Anna Jamrozek-Sowa Russian Invaders and Their Polish Subjects from the Perspective of Władysław Lech Terlecki................................................................ 189 Part IV Postcolonial Literature in Translation Łukasz Barciński Colonisation of Mind in Translation as Illustrated Through the Polish Rendition of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie......................................... 209 Marta Mamet-Michalkiewicz Postcolonial Literature in Translation: Polish Translations of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses................................................................. 223 List of Contributors.................................................................................................. 233

Acknowledgments We are most grateful to our colleague dr Patrycja Austin, without whose ideas, contacts, energy and devotion the authors of the articles included in this volume would never have become involved in the project. We also wish to express our gratitude to Prof. Marek Koziorowski, Vice-Rector of the University of Rzeszów, and to Prof. Zenon Ożóg, Dean of the Faculty of Philology, for their benevolence and significant financial support.

Introduction The present volume titled New Developments in Postcolonial Studies is a collection of eighteen essays, all of which touch upon–from a variety of perspectives–the question of the applicability of postcolonial theories to analyses of contemporary issues, as well as to revisiting previously tackled cultural, social and literary phenomena. Presenting such a selection of texts–varied and interdisciplinary as they are–we would like to contribute to the ongoing discussion upon the postcolonial reality and both current and emerging developments in the field of postcolonial studies. The articles, grouped thematically, either examine from the postcolonial perspective contemporary social, economic and cultural processes and phenomena, or look back at older cultural texts, coming from either former colonies, or former colonisers, taking into account the fact that the theory of postcolonialism is currently being more frequently applied to the study of countries originally not classified as colonial, to explain and emphasize the experiences of the native peoples of those lands in various historical situations of dependence. The first and the longest section of the volume, titled Postcolonial Literature(s), offers analyses of a variety of literary texts. The opening essay, “Sharing Space with Others: Re-Thinking the Multicultural Encounter” authored by Anna Branach-Kallas, is an attempt to discuss selected theoretical propositions in English and French responding to the dilemma of how to share postcolonial space with the Other. The author adopts postcolonial trauma theory to analyse Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s Révolutions (2003), Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006) and Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (2008). The two essays which follow refer to the postcolonial status of Wales and Ireland, reflected in selected literary works. Aldona Bakiera in “Education as a Tool for Creating Hybrid Anglo-Welsh Identity in 19th- and 20th-century Welsh Novels” provides a postcolonial reading of two novels: Feet in Chains (1936) by Kate Roberts and The Life of Rebeca Jones (2012) by Angharad Price. The author focuses on the process of identity transformation in the characters as a result of their English educational experience and argues that the process is that of displacement of their Welsh identity and the gradual emergence of a hybrid Anglo-Welsh identity. Oksana Weretiuk in “Postcolonial Ireland in McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy” examines the way in which McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (1998) might be located within the paradigm of postcolonial studies, suggesting a postcolonial interpretation of McCarthy’s perception

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Introduction

of Ireland, Irishness, and Irish history. The next article, Barbara Ludwiczak’s “The Image of the Other in The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury–A Supplement to Postcolonial Reading of Anthony Trollope’s Travel Works” is an analysis of the image of the Other featured in twelve letters written during the writer’s eight-month journey around the world in 1875. The author tries to prove that Trollope’s attitude towards colonialism evolved and the letters appear as the writer’s first and only attempt to understand the aboriginal peoples. Małgorzata Warchał’s “Buddhist Ecocriticism in Selected Works of Aldous Huxley’s and Chris Arthur’s Essays” is the first of the articles included in this volume which refer to ecocriticism and its connections with postcolonial studies. The author examines selected works of Aldous Huxley and a contemporary Irish essayist, Chris Arthur, with reference to Buddhist ecocriticism, i.e. a combination of Buddhist and ecological ethics. The other article which applies postcolonial ecocriticism to a literary analysis is Anjali Daimari’s essay titled “Towards a Postcolonial Ecocriticism: A Reading of Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam”. The text is an attempt at reading the North-Eastern Indian writer’s 2006 novel taking into consideration the significance of the natural environment of the setting, being an integral part of the backdrop and landscape of the region. Patrycja Austin in her article “Liminality as Seen Through the Gardens of Salman Rushdie’s Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty Eight Days” follows John Thieme’s belief expressed in his recent publication Postcolonial Literary Geographies. Out of Place that gardens in postcolonial literature are discursively constructed liminal spaces, and she analyses various forms of border crossing in Salman Rushdie’s 2015 novel, focusing on the problems of migration and belonging, colonialism and postcoloniality, the intermingling of cultures, ecological crisis and terrorism. Izabela Bierowiec’s “When Hybrids Collide–CoHybridisation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane” is an attempt at identifying the mutual influence of social hybrids as depicted by the Bangladeshi-born British writer in her 2003 novel. The point of the author is that immigrants of different generations residing within a common, yet fairly isolated area within the host society undergo a specific type of assimilation. The remaining two essays of Part I discuss a selection of texts heralding from former colonies. Dolikajyoti Sharma in “Cracked Within: Reading the Sri Lankan Civil War in Jean Arasanayagam’s The Dividing Line” looks at the 2002 collection of short stories by the Sri Lankan writer of Dutch-Burgher descent, who uses the themes of displacement and exile to question the postcolonial nation-state of Sri Lanka and the identities imposed on those forced to flee from their homes during the civil war in the 1980s. As the author notices, the stories included in the anthology, set in both

Introduction

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pre- and post-Independence milieus, seem to imply that the relative positions of the Sinhalas, Tamils and Burghers in the 1980s are a perpetuation of the institutional and cultural hierarchies that characterized colonial Sri Lanka. The last article, Rachael Sumner’s “Orality, Textuality and Literary Legacy in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen”, focuses on the Nigerian writer’s 2015 novel, which is characterised by intertextuality, linguistic code switching and the raising of local events to the level of national myth. As the author suggests, such techniques position Obioma’s narrative firmly within Nigerian literary and oral traditions, while also infusing the text with postcolonial political agency. Part II, titled Postcolonial States, Hybrid Identities, Disregarded Territories, contains three essays examining selected social and cultural phenomena in their broadly understood postcolonial context. Fabrício Dias Da Rocha in “Stimuli and Challenges of ‘Mozambican Identity’ in Africa. A Brief Analysis of the Processes of the Construction of National and Cultural Identity in Mozambique: A Postcolonial Approach” discusses the process of the formation of Mozambican national and cultural identity as influenced by numerous historical and social processes, with special attention drawn to impact of the Portuguese colonization of the country. The author is trying to (de)construct what would be the Mozambican national being through situational observation of “non-black national minorities” experiences in the country’s postcolonial reality. In the next article, “Cooking up Cubanidad: Cultural Hybridity in the Case of Cuban American Cuisine”, Małgorzata Martynuska explores the notion of hybridity which involves the fusion of two relatively distinct forms or identities and a cross-cultural contact which often occurs across national borders. The article deals with cultural hybridity in the case of Cuban American cuisine and analyses the re-creation of food practices after the migratory experience, pointing out how Cuban-style dishes have been reinvented in the American context creating culturally hybrid cuisine, known as Nuevo Cubano, in Florida also called Floribbean Cuisine. The last of the group, Johanna Grabow’s “The Long Road to the South Pole: Post-colonial Antarctica”, provides us with the author’s attempt to integrate Antarctica into the post-colonial discourse. Despite being claimed in its parts by various states, Antarctica presents a challenge to those discussing post-colonialism, as it has no indigenous population, no artificial borders and no displaced peoples, being thus neglected as a “polar wasteland” for a long time. The author examines various engagements, seemingly colonial in their nature, such as Richard E. Byrd’s exploration work, as well as the ubiquitous role of science on the continent, to evaluate them from the postcolonial perspective.

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Introduction

Part III titled Postcolonial (?) Poland is the result of the attempt to incorporate within our project Polish literature and culture scholars who could contribute to the volume with their opinions concerning the connection–or its lack–between postcolonial studies and post-dependence studies within which Polish literature and culture can/is analysed. The three articles included here concern Polish history, literature and society viewed through the prism of postcolonial theories. Gregory Allen in “Square Pegs into Round Holes: The Contemporary (Mis)Use of Postcolonial Theory in Poland and an Alternative” explores the contemporary use of the postcolonial theory as a framework for Western interactions with Central and Eastern Europe. He argues that while such a framework provides a valid critical perspective, postcolonial theory seems to be stretched beyond its limits and a new approach is needed. Mira Malczyńska-Biały’s article “Neocolonialism in Polish Consumer Society” discusses the development of consumer society in Poland after 1989 as resulting partly from the process of neo-colonisation. The study shows that the modern model of a consumer goes beyond the scope of purchase as well as consumption and is related to the mass globalization of the consumption and generating a “consumer subculture”. Anna Jamrozek-Sowa’s article “Russian Invaders and Their Polish Subjects from the Perspective of Władysław Lech Terlecki”, which closes the section, provides a brief outline of the applicability of postcolonial theories to the analysis of Polish literature either of the time of the partition of Poland, or of the post-World War II years of political dependence on the Soviet Union. The author eventually proceeds to an analysis of selected novels by Władysław Lech Terlecki (1933–1999), namely Dwie głowy ptaka (1970), Wyspa kata (1999) and Czarny romans (1974), in which she concentrates, among others, on the use of the language by the colonisers (the Russians) and on the imposition of their dominant discourse upon the oppressed. The last two articles of the volume, included in the Part IV, Postcolonial Literature in Translation, focus on some of the problems and challenges which translators of postcolonial literature encounter, and both use translations of Salman Rushdie’s novels as the material for the anlyses. Łukasz Barciński in “Colonisation of Mind in Translation as Illustrated Through the Polish Rendition of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie” examines the extent to which poststructural theory can be useful in defining postcolonial literature and the process of its translation. The author focuses on the similarities between the process of translation and the creation of postcolonial literature, referring both to the linguistic aspects and the psychological state of the author/translator. The final article, closing both the section and the volume as a whole, is Marta MametMichalkiewicz’s “Postcolonial Literature in Translation: Polish Translations of

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Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses”, which offers a comparative analysis of two Polish translations of the novel, focusing on such aspects as untranslatability of postcolonial Otherness, hybridity, polyphony and intertextuality. The analysis of the Polish translations included here becomes an excellent starting point for a discussion on translation of Otherness of the text/in the text. The authors of the articles collected in this volume pose a number of questions, indicate new areas of research, open possible discussions, contributing in that way to the international postcolonial discourse. All we hope for is that any readers interested in what postcolonialism means, or can be understood as today, will find the collection interesting and possibly inspiring. Editors

Part I Postcolonial Literature(s)

Anna Branach-Kallas

Sharing Space with Others: Re-Thinking the Multicultural Encounter Abstract: The article is an attempt to discuss selected theoretical propositions in English and French responding to the dilemma of how to share postcolonial space with the Other. The author adopts postcolonial trauma theory to analyse Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s Révolutions, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood. Key words: trauma studies, postcolonial studies, Otherness, multiculturalism.

The title of my paper refers to the fundamental existential dilemma connected with the postcolonial encounter in the multiracial and multicultural context, encapsulated by Mary Pratt’s concept of the contact zone as the space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations… . A ‘contact’ perspective emphasizes how subjects get constituted in and by their relations to each other. It treats the relations among colonizers and colonized, or travellers and ‘travelees’, not in terms of separateness, but in terms of co-presence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, and often within radically asymmetrical relations of power. (Pratt 2008, 8)

One might say that postcolonial scholars since the publication of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) in its English translation (1967) and Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) have been preoccupied with the contact zone and have placed it in various historical and philosophical configurations. However, in the introduction to Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, the editors suggest that the term postcolonial studies “has outlived its utility” because of the “expansion of subject matter, analytical method, and historical scope” (Loomba et al 2005, 3). In many ways, recent developments, the most pressing of which is (the increasing speed of) globalisation, and, we might add, the immigration crisis, have rendered the analysis of the contact zones in the colonial past and postcolonial present more difficult than before. My intention in this paper is to approach with critical distance what Neil Lazarus has called pomo-postcolonialist theory (pomo from post-modernism) (Lazarus 2005, 427), a tendency that for many has defined “the postcolonial perspective” (Bhabha 1994, 173; Lazarus 2005, 423) since the 1990s, and to reflect upon alternative paradigms that move away from theoretical thought shaped, to a

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large degree, by post-structuralism and deconstruction1. My focus will be first on the correlation between theory and diasporic literatures, while later in this paper I will move to a broader analysis of postcolonial fictions. Since the 1990s, transnational identities constructed on the border of nations and diasporas have been enthusiastically conceptualised in terms of fusion, fluidity, in–betweenness, hybridity2, understood as a potential for transformation, rather than a biological fact or a static heterogeneity of being (Ashcroft 2001, 127). In his Locations of Culture (1994) Homi Bhabha, who migrated to Britain from Bombay to settle in the US, reflects upon those who live “in–between,” in a hybrid dimension, on the borders of different homelands, on the peripheries of nations. According to Bhabha, living at the edge might be used to reconsider the dominant representations of individual and collective identities, both in the past and the present. It is at the margin that Bhabha situates his concept of the Third Space as the “terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood–singular or communal–that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself ” (Bhabha 1994, 1–2). Standing at the periphery, the migrant is therefore empowered to negotiate his identity between often contradictory homogenizing cultural traditions, those of his/her homeland and those of the country of immigration, which are not passively accepted as unchanging legacies but are “translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (Bhabha 1994, 37). In this view, identity is a never-ending process, with the potential to forge new avenues for unpredictable alliances and solidarities. The Third Space thus becomes the locus of cultural encounters, exchanges and hybrid fusions (Bhabha 1994, 1–8; 36–39). Much fiction published in the late 1980s and 1990s offers perfect material for such a reading of migrant identities. The best example of such an approach is provided by British Indian novelists, above all Salman Rushdie, especially his now classic The Satanic Verses (1988), where the famous writer embraces the condition of migrancy, suggesting that it is through impurity, intermingling, “Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and that [that] newness enters the world” (Rushdie 1991, 394). Rushdie develops a “mythology of migrancy” (see Krishnaswamy 2004) that transforms uprooting and

1 On the relation between postcolonialism and postmodernism, see Appiah 1997; Krishnaswamy 2004. On the predominance of master concepts of fluidity in contemporary culture see Pile and Thrift 1995. 2 In contrast to earlier theoretical paradigms, starting with Edward Said’s Orientalism, and in connection with a shift of focus from the colonial context to the multicultural dynamics of modern Euro-American democracies.

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non-belonging into tropes of exuberant freedom and cosmopolitan nomadism3. The famous opening quotation from Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) also illustrates the potential connected with diaspora people: My name is Karim Ami, and I am and Englishman born and bred, almost. I am often considered to be a funny kind of Englishman, a new breed as it were, having emerged from two old histories. But I don’t care–Englishman I am (though not proud of it), from the South London suburbs and going somewhere. Perhaps it is the odd mixture of continents and blood, of here and there, of belonging and not, that makes me restless and easily bored. (Kureishi 1990, 3)

In Anita and Me (1996) Meera Syal openly adopts the in-between perspective, when her female protagonist, a young Indian immigrant in the English mining village of Tollington comments: I knew I was a freak of some kind, too mouthy, clumsy and scabby to be a real Indian girl, too Indian to be a Tollingtonian wench, but living in the grey area between all categories felt increasingly like home. (Syal 1996, 15).

Rejecting the ideas of roots and fixity as inadequate, both Kureishi’s and Syal’s protagonists develop new ways of seeing, which enables them to scrutinise English and Indian idiosyncrasies4 with a profound insight and to resituate subjectivity in another dimension, Bhabha’s Third Space, which departs from traditional concepts of origins and belonging. As a result, the modern diaspora experience is no longer defined by boundaries of essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of identity which lives with and through, and not despite difference, by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference. (Hall 1994, 402; italics in the original)

If Homi Bhabha has been praised and criticised for his concept of hybridity, it is important to remember that other postcolonial scholars, writing in very different postcolonial contexts, have developed equally fluid concepts of postcolonial selves. The British critic of a mixed English and Guyanese ancestry Paul Gilroy in his Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), exploring the connections between Black people migrating in-between Africa, the Caribbean,

3 For a critique of Rushdie’s predominant position in studies of migrancy see Lazarus 2005, 424. See Krishnaswamy 2004 for a critique of Rushdie’s mythology of migrancy that “decontextualizes ‘Third World’ immigration in order to minimize or obscure differences of class and gender” (Krishnaswamy 2004, 106). 4 See my analysis of Anita and Me (Branach-Kallas 2004).

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the Americas and Britain, has proposed a transnational model of identity which questions the certainty of roots by opposing to them the contingency of routes. Although initially firmly rooted in the Black diaspora’s experience, the concept of routes has been applied in various diaspora contexts to speak about migrants who do not possess stable roots in a nation or ethnic/racial group and whose identity is shaped by complex itineraries in-between various places and multicultural encounters. The Martinican writer, poet and critic Édouard Glissant, in turn, in his Poétique de la Relation (1990) and Introduction à une poétique du divers (1995) inspired by the Deleuzian concept of rhizome, again questions the idea of identity as root, based on filiation, binarism and conquest, and opts for a relation identity, conceptualized in the contradictory, pluralistic contacts within contemporary multicultural, creolized societies. Glissant does not exclude the idea of rootedness, yet rejects the totality and separateness of the concept of root, re–conceptualizing it as the rhizome that moves to encounter other roots. Caribbean-Canadian author Dionne Brand’s novel What We All Long For (2005) offers interesting material for such an interpretation. The novel focuses on a group of four Toronto-based friends of various racial origins (mostly Black and Asian) and their family stories. By representing the interactions between the four Torontonians, all in their early twenties, Brand examines immigrant identities in the global world, questioning older forms of identification and envisioning new forms of community, based on shifting alliances with ethnically or racially different others. Leaving their homes, it is in Toronto, the city, its multiple global connections and encounters, that the protagonists of the novel rediscover and reshape themselves: Each left home in the morning as if making a long journey, untangling themselves from the seaweed of other shores wrapped around their parents. Breaking their doorways, they left the sleepwalk of their mothers and fathers and ran across the unobserved borders of the city, sliding across ice to arrive at their own birthplace–the city. They were born in the city from people born elsewhere. (Brand 2005, 20)

The multiple and unpredictable relationships with people, formed by different cultural legacies, provide them with “the thrill of being someone else” (Brand 2005, 154). Brand’s emphasis on the instability of roots and on the unexpected trajectories of her protagonists in–between the legacy of their parents’ homelands and the global city shares much with Gilroy’s idea of routes and la pensée du rhizome elaborated by Glissant5. In her Le su et l’incertain / The Known and the Uncertain (2012), written in both English and French (a provocative response to the marginalisation of Francophone 5 I have developed these ideas in Branach-Kallas 2011.

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history in postcolonial theory), Françoise Lionnet, Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, proposes to see the Indian Ocean, so far neglected in postcolonial studies, as the first space of creolised postcolonial encounters. Lionnet attempts to reconceptualise the notion of cosmopolitanism, traditionally defined in terms of freedom, refinement and tolerance, as well as the idea of creolization, associated with the cliché of insularity of groups without history. Undermining the binary opposition between the two concepts, the critic brings them into dialogue with each other, and thus relocates “creolization as the cosmopolitanism of the subaltern, and cosmopolitanism as the creolization of the elites” (Lionnet 2012, 65). This is how French Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio portrays his protagonist Ouma, a nomadic Manaf, born of a Maroon father and an Indian mother, in The Prospector (Le Chercheur d’or, 1985), set in the Mascarene Archipelago (Mauritius, Reunion, and Rodrigues). Ouma’s personality is not static; educated by nuns in a convent in France, Ouma, both a Creole and a cosmopolitan, has to come back to Rodrigues as an adolescent girl and to learn the nomadic rules of the Manafs’ life. Her wisdom is therefore based on cultural syncretism and a knowledge of the European world that Le Clézio’s white, Mauritian born protagonists paradoxically do not possess, which undermines the gap between the subaltern and the elite and stresses the fluidity of oceanic travels and exchanges. This enthusiasm for the transformative, intersectional condition of the migrant is also encapsulated by Avtar Brah, a British critic of South Asian origins, in her now famous Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (1996), where she defines diaspora space as a conceptual category [which] is ‘inhabited’, not only by those who have migrated and their descendants, but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous. In other words, the concept of diaspora space (as opposed to that of diaspora) includes the entanglement, the intertwining of the genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put’. The diaspora space is the site where the native is as much a diasporian as the diasporian is the native. (Brah 1996, 209; italics in the original)

Such multicultural encounters within diasporic space, redefining national and diasporic identities, have been fictionalised by many post-colonial authors in the recent years. What is more, the potential of diasporic people to carry new ideas across nations and continents has been advocated as one of the most important driving forces of modernity (see Appadurai 1996).

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Nevertheless, such an approach might seem the result of excessive idealisation that posits the multicultural encounter as a democratic ideal6. According to Frederick Cooper, there are risks in deploying such concepts generically and at a high level of abstraction, for they may say too little (about the different forms in which hybridity appears) or not enough (about the specific conjunctures in which hybridity or dualism gain ascendancy). (Cooper 2005, 416)

Displacement “as a theoretical signifier, a textual strategy, and a lived experience” (Bammer 1994, xiii) might be thus indiscriminately conflated in a decontextualized reading. What is occluded in such interpretations of postcolonial literatures are the complex tensions of multicultural dynamics. There is also a danger of an ahistorical analysis, which erases the complicated, historically and culturally conditioned, process of racialisation7. What about the dark sides of migration and multicultural encounters? What about postcoloniality as a condition that continues to affect culturally dislocated peoples as well as migrants and their descendants living in the diaspora? Even in the novels briefly analysed above, exchange is one-directional and rarely involves reciprocity in the relations between white and coloured characters. In fictions as diverse as Kerri Sakamoto’s The Electrical Field (1998), Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), Jen Sookfong Lee’s The End of East (2007) or Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), migration and the postcolonial encounters are explored in much more Manichean terms. It might therefore be enlightening to approach such works from the perspective of postcolonial trauma. Postcolonial trauma studies have recently developed under the influence of Holocaust and memory studies. Trauma, a psychoanalytic category, encompasses various individual reactions to extreme events, such as distress, memory disturbances, dissociation and/or depression. In this light, migration and life in the multicultural cities can themselves be conceptualised as traumatic. Geographical displacement and the accompanying sense of cultural dislocation can be approached as the so called transformation trauma, resulting in radical challenges to the accepted system of values and the disruption of the support networks typical

6 See Angus 1997 and Foster 2007 for a discussion of multicutluralism as a democratic ideal. 7 “Race” is the product of racialization, the historical and social processes that result in “the imposition of race constructs and hierarchies on marked and demarked ‘groups’ whose members come to signify divergence from the normative body inscribed by whiteness” (Miki 1998, 127).

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of a given social group (Orwid 2009, 85; Widera-Wysoczańska 2011, 111). Immigration thus involves an ontological and epistemological shift, requiring from the migrants immediate transition to new lifestyles, ways of earning money, social hierarchies, intellectual frameworks, and existential goals. This is perfectly illustrated by Kiran Desai in her 2006 Booker Prize winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss, where she imagines Biju, a young Indian man who, seduced by the American dream, immigrates to the United States as the land of promise and opportunity. In New York, however, he suffers from poverty and destitution, sharing the same house/beds in shifts with other migrants, and later sleeping on the table in the restaurant he works at. It is in the US that he becomes aware of the heavy luggage of stereotypes that he carries within himself: The habit of hate had accompanied Biju, and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India. (Desai 2006, 104)

Hybridity, the third space, creolization do not really function in the novel as the burden of inherited stereotypes proves stronger than the ideal of democratic tolerance. Feeling more and more insecure when his inbred cultural codes are challenged, Biju decides he must maintain his religious beliefs and the principles of his ancestors to keep his dignity. He therefore decides to work in an all-Indian restaurant cooking only Indian food. Yet, instead of diasporic solidarity, he is roughly exploited by his employer at the Ghandi Café. Eventually, he realizes that in fact he is losing hold of his life, facing the unbearable lightness of displacement: Year by year, his life wasn’t amounting to anything at all; in a space that should have included family, friends, he was the only one displacing the air. And yet, another part of him had expanded; his self-consciousness, his self-pity–oh the tediousness of it. (Desai 2006, 358)

Interestingly, The Inheritance of Loss is in fact one of the few immigrant novels that depict the return of the immigrant to the homeland. What Biju desires most is not so much becoming a legal immigrant as “the triumphant After the Green Card Return Home” (Desai 2006, 133). Discouraged by his own beloved father, who believes Biju is making a fortune in the US as well as earning dignity and self-respect, Biju decides, nevertheless, to go back to India, “to experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all” (Desai 2006, 359). In Biju’s case, the experience of immigration proves therefore tragic and humiliating. This is why, although he comes back to India robbed and ruined, for the first time in years he feels safe and free of the migrant’s burden:

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Anna Branach-Kallas Sweet drabness of home–he felt everything shifting and clicking into place around him, felt himself slowly shrink back to size, the enormous anxiety of being a foreigner ebbing–that unbearable arrogance and shame of the immigrant. (Desai 2006, 401)

Most importantly, in her novel Desai places the destitution of the Third World migrant in a larger perspective, as the inheritance of loss resulting from the postcolonial condition. Displacement thus involves migration of traumatic memories, from one nation–state to another, from one continent to another, placing them in new constellations (Craps 2013, 74). Desai illustrates the exploitation of coloured migrants from all over the world in global cities and places their marginalized condition in a larger perspective of colonialism and racism: Former slaves and natives, Eskimos and Hiroshima people, Amazonian Indians and American Indians and Chiapas Indians and Chilean Indians and American Indians and Indian Indians. Australian aborigines, Guatemalans and Colombians and Brazilians and Argentinians, Nigerians, Burmese, Angolans, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Bolivians, Afghans, Cambodians, Rwandans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Liberians, Borneans, Papua New Guineans, South Africans, Iraqis, Iranians, Turks, Armenians, Palestinians, French Guyanese, Surinamese, Sierra Leonese, Malagasys, Senegalese, Maldivians, Sri Lankans, Malaysians, Kenyans, Panamanians, Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Costa Ricans, Congoans, Mauritanians, Marshall Islanders, Tahitians, Gabonese, Beninese, Malians, Jamaicans, Botswanans, Burundians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Uruguayans, Nicaraguans, Ugandans, Ivory Coastians, Zambians, Guinea-Bissauans, Cameroonians, Laotians, Zaireans coming at you screaming colonialism, screaming slavery, screaming mining companies screaming banana companies oil companies screaming CIA spy among the missionaries screaming it was Kissinger who killed their father and why don’t you forgive third-world debt; Lumumba, they shouted, and Allende; on the other side, Pinochet, they said, Mobutu; contaminated milk from Nestlé, they said; Agent Orange; dirty dealings by Xerox. World Bank, UN, IMF, everything run by white people. Every day in the papers another thing! (Desai 2006, 180–181)

Trauma can be thus conceptualised in a more collective sense as a social and/or cultural response to extreme historical events. Whereas psychological or physical trauma is experienced as profound emotional anguish on the level of the self, “cultural trauma refers to a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric, affecting a group of people that has achieved some degree of cohesion” (Eyerman 2004, 61). In this perspective, colonization appears a fundamentally traumatic formation, with its post-traumatic aftermath in the post-colonial state (see Craps and Buelens 2008, 2). The connection between trauma and the formation of diasporas has already been conceptualised by Robin Cohen in his classic Global Diasporas: An Introduction (1997), which approaches the history

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of the Jewish Diaspora as a model for further reflection8. Among victim diasporas, the forced displacement of African peoples occupies a special position as well. The experiences of kidnapping, Middle Passage, slavery and systematic racism in contemporary multicultural nation-states appear as traumatic formations. Trauma is therefore the dominant psychological structure in neo-slave narratives that establish a direct link between the forced displacements of the past and the cultural dislocation of Black people today, such as Crossing the River (1993) by Caryl Phillips, At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999) by Dionne Brand, or Le livre d’Emma (2001) by Marie-Célie Agnant. These texts approach dispersal as traumatic, showing the devastating effects of physical displacement of Africans in the New World. They connect the captured Africans in the Middle Passage and the dislocated slaves of the Caribbean islands with their twentieth century descendants lost in the mazes of miscegenation, and the racial and linguistic labyrinths of modern cities. If they question the fixity of roots, illustrating that fissures and discontinuities are crucial for Black diasporic identities in the global world, Philips, Agnant and Brand also demonstrate that fluidity and mobility, a constant sense of drift, are as traumatic as the lack of fixed origins. In these novels, trauma is an intergenerational legacy that has shaped the lives of Black people dispersed all over the world since the times of slavery9. It might seem, therefore, that if trauma can be conceptualised as a space of multicultural encounter, it rather exacerbates antagonisms and discord between the perpetrators of European coloniality and its victims. As Frederick Cooper contends, The question is whether one can be satisfied with the simple naming of imperialism or colonialism as the dark side of universality, progress, or modernity, or whether we need to know something more about imperialism and colonialism. (Cooper 2005, 402)

An interesting alternative can be found in Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), so far rarely applied to postcolonial studies. Rothberg proposes to juxtapose very different, often apparently disjunctive, historical pasts, to create a heterogeneous network of remembering and amnesia, similarities and asymmetries, conflicts and solidarities. Such a reading can lead to intriguing results if applied to postcolonial novels that

8 Cohen discusses the Jewish diaspora, with its catastrophic origins, homelessness and statelessness, as a model for diaspora studies. Among other victim diasporas he places the Africans and the Armenians. Traumatic dispersal lies at the core of his classic definition of traditional diasporas (see Cohen 1997, 1–55). 9 For a comparative analysis of trauma in Brand’s and Agnant’s novels see Branach-Kallas 2010, 151–213.

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bring together various experiences of displacement. For instance, in The Nature of Blood (1997), the Kittitian-British novelist, Caryl Phillips, unsettlingly juxtaposes in parallel narrative layers the experience of the Holocaust with anti-Semitism in an Italian town in the fifteenth-century, racism in sixteenth-century Venice, post-World War II Israeli terrorism and the dislocation of Ethiopian Jews in Israel. What is the result of this apparently incoherent multidirectional memory that risks (con)fusing very different historical experiences? In a most disquieting way, Caryl Phillips draws connections and stresses dissimilarities to illustrate European racist obsession with the purity of blood. He thus “seeks to move beyond the isolation imposed by trauma by letting multiple histories of suffering address one another without collapsing one into the other” (Craps 2013, 101). Consequently, colonial history appears as a relational construct, shaped by various similar yet non-identical phenomena (Rothberg 2013, 172), connected by the tropes of ruin and amnesia that “will not submit [themselves] to re-membering, to being put together as a whole, intelligible history” (Punter 2000, 56). Most importantly, the resulting shift in comparative ethics involves an accepting of accountability for histories that are not necessarily our own and, by means of juxtaposition, revising our understanding of each of them (Rothberg 2013, 176–177). As Dominic LaCapra reminds us, understanding another’s trauma is not a question of cognition only, of the processing of information, but of affectivity. Empathy is therefore crucial in this process, nevertheless, empathy should not involve full identification with the other, but the recognition of, and respect for, the other’s alterity (LaCapra 2001, 40–41), recognizing certain analogues, yet also the limits of our understanding, an unsettling yet empathetic reaction resulting from the reading of The Nature of Blood. A different, yet also disquieting perspective is proposed in Révolutions (2003), a novel by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Révolutions encompasses various traumatic his–and her–stories from the French Revolution, through the colonisation of Mauritius and the revolts of maroon slaves, to the displacement of the imperial diasporas as a result of the collapse of empires, the Algerian War of Independence and the dispossession of Arab immigrants in France. The consciousness of the central protagonist, a young man in Nice in the 1960s, whose Breton ancestors, discriminated against in revolutionary France, migrated to Mauritius to found a utopia based on the ideas of liberté, égalité, fraternité, functions as a locus of various traumatic memories. Le Clézio does not depict a homogenous landscape of violence; neither does he conflate distinct historical experiences, but, moving beyond a Eurocentric vision of history, he provides a comparative framework for various historical traumas, subtly pointing out how they are interconnected with one another. The novelist is careful to illustrate distinct dynamics of interaction by

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showing how different peoples have confronted various forms of colonial power and experienced diverse itineraries of migration. Opposing the temptation of amnesia, Le Clézio offers glimpses–flashbacks–of traumatic events, the history of which lacks closure and continues to evolve in the present. Like Phillips, he shifts the perspective and gives voice to various subjects, from impoverished white Mauritian colonisers to the most destitute Black slaves. However, juxtaposing stories of white settlers, displaced, unhappily, after the collapse of empires, with various dislocated colonial selves, Le Clézio complicates the notion of encounter, providing an imaginative space for rethinking the ways that binary relationships–such as self/other and victim/perpetrator–can transform into more complicated configurations such that new figures come into view: the other of the other, the victim of the victim. (Rothberg 2009, 166)

As a result, he creates a form of asymmetric understanding and differentiated solidarity, which evades an antagonistic tendency to compare colonial traumas as more or less devastating or more or less authentic than others (Rothberg 2013, 176). Traumatic First World testimonies are thus brought into productive dialogue with traumatic colonial histories. Révolutions is particularly haunting, since it stages protagonists who are world travellers seeking in vain to implement the ideals of the French Revolution in France, among the white settlers and the (enslaved) coloured populations of Mauritius, in the past and today. Most importantly, Le Clézio interrogates the ideals of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, suggesting that to be recognized as fully human one needs to be a citizen. Citizenship thus appears a basic guarantee of a secure social existence, an idea that seems particularly disturbing today in the wake of the refugee crisis. Undoubtedly, postcolonial trauma studies result from a shift in paradigms; while theories of fluidity coincided with the development of postmodernism in Euro-American culture, the focus on postcolonial trauma seems a response to the turn to “the real world”–“history, politics, ethics” (Craps 2013, 1) in various cultural discourses today. Significantly, to approach (post)colonialism as “merely there, awaiting better and better methodology in order to elicit deeper and deeper or more and more encompassing meanings” might be a flawed way of thinking in itself (Scott 2005, 398). However, the question is which readings, of both literature and cultural theory, have a more effective potential of transformation? Which approach tells us more about the responsibility of the elites in imposing colonial hierarchies all over the world? If, as Cathy Caruth has famously argued, trauma might provide “the very link between cultures” in a catastrophic age (Caruth 1995, 11), both Phillips and Le Clézio certainly support this idea, yet complicate the notion of postcolonial trauma and, illustrating similarities, also point to fundamental differences in various (post)colonial contexts. They thus provide special insight into

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a differentiated poetics of migration, illustrating specific histories of displacement and the crucial differences between Jews in Diaspora, slaves, exiled intellectuals, migrant labourers and political refugees. On the other hand, can witnessing another’s trauma really “contribute to cross-cultural solidarity and the creation of new forms of community” (Craps 2013, 2)10? Isn’t it more productive to see multicultural societies as spaces of fusion and solidarity rather than to be disturbed by the memory of renunciations sustained by the diasporas that have allowed multicultural nations–and modern citizenship–to flourish? Is it more enabling to assume the victim position or to see oneself and one’s group as an agent of change? Or perhaps, hybridity needs to be reconfigured in response to accelerating globalization, as a space of encounter of multiple traumatic memories in a heterogeneous present? As Rothberg suggests, nowadays, New forms of cultural and economic exchange multiply the possibilities for identification with the histories of others. Yet the multiplicity of those very same means of communication also ensures that the paths of identification will be difficult to stabilize or limit. (Rothberg 2009, 171)

Nevertheless, the concept of margin or boundary, so enthusiastically deconstructed in the 1990s, seems to require a change of paradigm as, increasingly nowadays, frontiers become fortified zones where people are controlled and detained. As the recent events in Europe have shown to us, as long as the contact zone remains a comfort zone for some, sharing space with others in certain ways might appear an increasingly difficult endeavour, putting into question both the creative potential of hybridity and the empathic potential of trauma, as well as, ultimately, the creation of both global and local solidarities.

References Agnant, Marie-Célie. 2006. The Book of Emma. Trans. Zilpha Ellis. Toronto: Insomniac Press. Angus, Ian. 1997. A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness. Montreal and Kingston–London–Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 10 Craps notices that Western cultures have remained blind to the traumas suffered by non-Western communities and have been unable to accept other ways of coping with trauma proposed by them (Craps 2013, 12; 23). In this sense, “trauma theory needs to become more inclusive and culturally sensitive by acknowledging the sufferings of Non-Western and minority groups more fully, for their own sake, and on their own terms” (Craps 2013, 38).

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Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1997. “Is the ‘Post’ in ‘Postcolonial’ the ‘Post-’ in ‘Postmodern’?” In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohaf, 420–444. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Ashcroft, Bill. 2001. On Post-colonial Futures: Transformations of Colonial Culture. London and New York: Continuum. Bammer, Angelika. 1994. Introduction. In Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question, edited by Angelika Bammer, xi–xx. Indiana: Bloomington and Indianapolis. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Brah, Avtar. 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London and New York: Routledge. Branach-Kallas, Anna. 2004. “Travelling in-between: the Nation and the Diaspora in Myra Syal’s Anita and Me.” In The Nation of the Other: Constructions of Nation in Contemporary Cultural and Literary Discourses, edited by Anna Branach-Kallas and Katarzyna Więckowska, 139–148. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika. Branach-Kallas, Anna. 2010. Corporeal Itineraries: Body, Nation, Diaspora in Selected Canadian Fiction. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika. Branach-Kallas, Anna. 2011. “Toronto’s Polyphony of Longings: Diasporic Encounters in Dionne Brand’s ‘What We All Long For.”’ In Towards Critical Multiculturalism: Dialogues Between / Among Canadian Diasporas / Vers un multiculturalisme critique: dialogues entre les diasporas canadiennes, edited by Ewelina Bujnowska, Marcin Gabryś, and Tomasz Sikora, 276–291. Katowice: Agencja Artystyczna PARA. Brand, Dionne. 1999. At the Full and Change of the Moon. New York: Grove Press. Brand, Dionne. 2005. What We All Long For. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada. Caruth, Cathy. 1995. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 3–12. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Cooper, Frederick. 2005. “Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History.” In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba et al, 401–422. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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Craps, Stef. 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma out of Bounds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Craps, Stef, and Gert Buelens. 2008. “Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels.” Studies in the Novel 40 (1/2): 1–12. Desai, Kiran. 2006. The Inheritance of Loss. London: Penguin Books. Eyerman, Ron. 2004. “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity.” In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., 60–111. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London: University of California Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1952.Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Foster, Cecile. 2007. Blackness and Modernity: The Colour of Humanity and the Quest for Freedom. Montreal and Kingston–London–Ithaca: McGill- Queen’s University Press. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Glissant, Édouard. 1990. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Gallimard. Glissant, Édouard. 1996. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris: Gallimard. Hall, Stuart. 1994. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, 392–403. New York: Columbia University Press. Krishnaswamy, Revathi. 2004. “Mythologies of Migrancy: Postcolonialism, Postmodernism and the Politics of (Dis) Location.” In Linked Histories: Postcolonial Studies in a Globalized World, edited by Pamela McCallum, 91–108. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Kureishi, Hanif. 1990. The Buddha of Suburbia. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press. Lazarus, Neil. 2005. “The Politics of Postcolonial Modernism.” In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba et al., 423–438. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave. 1993. The Prospector. Transl. by Carol Marks. Boston: David R. Gordine. Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave. 2003. Révolutions. Paris: Galllimard. Lionnet, Françoise. 2012. Le su et l’incertain. Cosmopolitiques créoles de l’océan Indien / The Known and the Uncertain. Creole Cosmopolitics of the Indian Ocean. La Pelouse, Trou d’Eau Douce, Ile Maurice: L’Atelier de l’écriture.

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Loomba, Ania et al. 2005. “Beyond What? An Introduction.” In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba et al., 1–38. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Miki, Roy. 1998. Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing. Toronto: The Mercury Press. Orwid, Maria. 2009. Trauma. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. Pile, Steve, and Nigel Thrift. 1995. “Mapping the Subject.” In Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, edited by Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift, 13–51. London and New York: Routledge. Phillips, Caryl. 1993. Crossing the River. London: Picador. Phillips, Caryl. The Nature of Blood. 2008. London: Vintage. Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge. Punter, David. 2000. Postcolonial Imaginings: Fictions of a New Order. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2013. “Między Paryżem a Warszawą. Pamięć wielokulturowa, etyka i odpowiedzialność historyczna.” In Od pamięci biodziedzicznej do postpamięci, edited by Teresa Szostek, Roma Sendyka and Ryszard Nycz, 161– 188. Warszawa: Instystut Badań Literackich PAN. Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. London: Granta. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Scott, David. 2005. “The Social Construction of Postcolonial Studies.” In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba et al., 385–400. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Syal, Meera. 1996. Anita and Me. London: Flamingo. Widera-Wysoczańska, Agnieszka. 2011. “PTSD ‘proste’ i ‘złożone’ jako konsekwencje zdarzeń traumatycznych u osób dorosłych.” In Interpersonalna trauma. Mechanizmy i konsekwencje, edited by Agnieszka Widera-Wysoczańska and Alicja Kuczyńska, 91–123. Warszawa: Difin.

Aldona Bakiera

Education as a Tool for Creating Hybrid Anglo-Welsh Identity in 19th- and 20th-century Welsh Novels Abstract: The present article, which is an attempt at a postcolonial reading of two Welsh novels: Feet in Chains (1936) by Kate Roberts and The Life of Rebeca Jones (2012) by Angharad Price, focuses on the process of identity transformation in the characters as a result of their English educational experience and argues that the process is that of displacement of their Welsh identity and the gradual emergence of a hybrid Anglo-Welsh identity. Key words: education, Wales, hybrid identity, Welsh literature, marginalisation.

Postcolonial theory originated in Western academia as a critical response to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2007; Buchholtz 2009; Goldberg and Quayson 2002; Huggan 2013; Lazarus 2004; Loomba 1998; McLeod 2000; Memmi 2013; Said 1979; Sharp 2009). However, it is now generally recognized that the post-colonial perspective may be productively applied not only to the former colonies of the European powers but also more broadly to the study of societies outside a direct imperial or colonial context (Burket 2013; Huggan 2007; Kelertas 2006; King 2000; Shilling 2014; Singh and Schmidt 2000; Spivak 2008). The theory of postcolonialism is currently being adapted to the study of countries originally not classified as colonial, to explain and emphasize the experiences of the native people of those lands in various historical situations of dependence. In The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft et al claim that …the term post-colonial might provide a different way of understanding colonial relations: no longer a simple binary opposition, black colonised vs. white colonisers; Third World vs. the West, but an engagement with all the varied manifestations of colonial power, including those in settler colonies. (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2002, 200)

Postcolonial theory has attracted a wide range of academic circles, particularly scholars not directly involved in colonial discourse, who were able to apply its theoretical premises to countries with a more general history of dependence. An example of such a country is Wales, often erroneously perceived as an integral part of England. For centuries, beginning as early as the 13th in the medieval period, Wales was subject to England’s aggressive expansion within the British Isles

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and the ensuing marginalization and displacement of its culture and traditions (Davies R. R. 2000; Davies J. 1995; Davies N. 2000). Various manifestations of this dependency and oppression have been explicitly or allegorically represented in many literary works by Welsh authors, both past and present (Bohata and Williams 2004–2015). One of the first studies adopting the postcolonial view is Stephen Knight’s A Hundred Years of Fiction (2004, XI), where he claims that Welsh people have suffered from “colonial treatment” and that postcolonial theory is a new perspective on their experiences of subjugation. According to Ania Loomba (1998, 8), the very first criterion for the application of postcolonialism study to other countries is “the control of other people’s land”, which applies well to Wales, whose territorial control by England was sealed and legalised by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, a perfect “example of colonial cultural policy”, according to Norman Davies (2000, 418). However, land appropriation and exploitation are not considered the most severe aspects of dependence in modern cultural theory. One of the first postcolonial scholars–Frantz Fanon (1986, 42)–states that more serious is the effect it has on the colonised person “in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality”. In the case of Wales, the gradual loss of traditional Welsh culture was caused not only by the economic dislocation, but also by the systematic policy of active discouragement and eradication of the Welsh language and religion. The English language not only dominated the political and economic systems in Wales, but also became the only admissible means of teaching at schools, where Welsh children were forced to learn the rules of formal English and taught that it was the only means for them to have any chance for a better future. According to Kirsti Bohata (2004, 20): The history of education in nineteenth and twentieth-century Wales is central to any postcolonial interpretation of national history and has a significant bearing on Welsh writing in English–from the Blue Books to the fight to teach a curriculum which reflects Welsh issues, the still contentious matter of teaching all subjects through the medium of Welsh and the lack of Anglophone Welsh literature in schools.

The Treachery of the Blue Books of 1847–the name given in Wales to a report by three English commissioners on the state of education in the province published in that year–led directly to the implementation of the Education Act of 1870, by means of which “the entire United Kingdom was moving into the era of universal (English) literacy” (Davies 2000, 658). The urge to educate Welsh children by English rules was sometimes so strong that it often involved physical and mental punishment: On official instructions, schoolteachers resorted to a practice that was humiliating for the children and degrading for the school. The ‘Welsh Not’ was a board bearing the word

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‘NOT’ that was hung round the neck of any child caught speaking Welsh. What it stood for was ‘the Saxon Commandment’: ‘Thou shalt not speak thy native language’. (2000, 658–659)

The literary analysis in this paper is based on the assumption that the educational system of England and the Anglicized educational system of Wales constituted the oppressor’s tool for effective “colonisation”, eventually leading to the creation of a hybrid Anglo-Welsh identity. It was a merger of the English educational discourse and the Welsh local context leading to a synergy of the coloniser and the colonised, a cultural in-between position. Consequently, education in Wales can be classified as Homi Bhabha’s “Third Space”–a space for mingling of cultures, the emergence of new cultural forms, the obliteration of the existing boundaries and creation of a new cultural quality. In Bhabha’s (1994, 37–39) own words, All forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity. But for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‘thirdspace,’ which enables other positions to emerge.

He goes on to say that the Third Space is not pre-given, it has to be created from scratch, or “enunciated”. Certain elements of both cultures need to be questioned, others re-defined, negated, or fully accepted. Thus the influence of the English educational system on Welsh characters in the discussed novels cannot be treated as a total triumph of that system and the defeat of Welsh culture, but rather as the emergence of a new cultural quality. Fig. 1. Adapted from Toni Dobinson, Occupying the ‘Third Space’.

This study is directly inspired by the pioneering work of Kirsti Bohata (2004, 27–28), who looks at how Wales has been constructed as a colonized nation in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Welsh writing in English, and claims that there is a

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Aldona Bakiera …need to explore further some of the recurrent motifs of self-division and fracture, … a need to engage with other European explorations of postcolonialism , in order to reveal further how the experiences of one of the oldest ‘colonies’ of Europe, with a still-young literature in English, can highlight some of the fallacies as well as the usefulness of some of the more universalising features of postcolonial theory.

Two novels originally written in Welsh and subsequently translated into English are analysed in this paper in the postcolonial perspective: Feet in Chains (1936) by Kate Roberts and The Life of Rebeca Jones (2012) by Angharad Price. In each of these texts, set in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively, there appear Welsh characters of low working class backgrounds whose pursuit of knowledge and a higher social status than that of their parents brings them in contact with English educational institutions. The analysis focuses on the process of identity transformation in these characters as a result of the displacement of their Welsh identity and the emergence of a hybrid Anglo-Welsh identity. Using the established method of close reading, this article tries to demonstrate what it is that undergoes transformation in these characters, especially in their sensibility, beliefs and knowledge of local customs, and how they embody the condition of double consciousness and hybridity theorized by Homi Bhabha and others as discussed above. Feet in Chains by Kate Roberts and The Life of Rebeca Jones by Angharad Price, although published 76 years apart, both deal with the social issues of poor Welsh quarrymen and the changing role of women in their society. Traditional Welsh upbringing of both authors in the rural area of Gwynedd in North Wales, an area with a high proportion of Welsh-speakers, beautiful countryside and rich Welsh heritage, makes them similar in their strong ties with nature, history and sensitivity towards the local people, including the poor and their everyday struggle to endure. In their works the issue of traditional Welshness is also confronted with the challenges of globalisation and transformation of society resulting from industrialization and subjugation to England. This latter aspect is exposed in Feet in Chains and The Life of Rebeca Jones through the portrayal of English education imposed on Wales and its young generation. The theme of education in Feet in Chains and The Life of Rebeca Jones constitutes subplots, not concerning the protagonists (Jane Gruffydd in Feet in Chains and Rebeca Jones in The Life of Rebeca Jones) – the characters directly affected by the English educational system in Wales and England are Owen and Twm Gruffydd in the first novel and Gruff and William Jones in the second one. Both novels are set in the same area of North Wales and at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries and the cultural backgrounds of both families are similar, with minor differences. Traditional upbringing in the rural areas of North Wales rendered in both novels is mostly marked by attachment to nature, community, and family; the model

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of patriarchal society and gender roles is observed, where the father is the only wage-earner, while the mother is confined to the realm of the household and the family’s farm. The core of Welshness for the Gruffydds and the Joneses consists of their native language, religion, and attachment to the local community. After the introduction of the English language into Welsh schools at the end of the 19th century, the Gruffydds’ and the Jones’ children became the first members of their families to be taught the language of the oppressor as the second language. Another facet distinguishing Welshmen from Englishmen in the novels is religious denomination. Although at the end of 19th century Anglicanism was the established religion in Wales, most native people, especially in the North, attended Nonconformist chapel services (Price D. T. W. 1990). The Gruffydd and Jones families are Nonconformists like their ancestors and most local people, they attend services at local Nonconformist chapels which are not only places of worship but also the refuge of Welshness and the Welsh language. The families in both novels struggle against poverty–despite owning farms, the central source of their maintenance is work in a quarry. The birth of a baby boy is viewed as a prospect of improvement of the family’s financial position, as the local country boys almost always go to work in the quarry with their fathers. Yet, when Owen and Twm Gruffydd win scholarships to the County School and Gruffydd and William Jones are born blind, traditional Welsh values focused on the wellbeing of the whole family have to change and they become undermined by the needs and opportunities of the individuals. Although the motivation of both sets of parents concerning sending their boys to schools differ (Rebeca and Evan Jones view education as the only prospect for their blind boys, while for Ifan Gruffydd it is mostly driven by ambition, envy and pride when he accepts Owen’s entering the realm of education), the effects of the educational process on the children are similar: they develop new hybrid Anglo-Welsh identities. The novels show the impact of education on this process of identity transformation in three spheres: linguistic, religious and community relations. Traditional English education which aimed at enlightening the nation of “Welsh brutes” had its focal point in the English language. For the Gruffydds’ and the Jones’ children, school is the first place where they are faced with English– “[they] received most of [their] early education in English, but at Sunday School all reading and writing was in Welsh” (Price A. 2002, 34–35). Sunday schools function as places of the Welsh language education (especially writing, which was not usually taught at home) enabling and encouraging children to develop and retain their Welshness. In one scene Owen Gruffydd is questioned about Welsh vocabulary by the deacon:

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Aldona Bakiera Owen went up to the deacon’s pew, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to say a word. But when the man said, “Give me the proper Welsh word for ‘iwsio,’ “Defynyddio,” was Oewn’s bullet-like reply’. Cabaits’ … ‘Bresych’ ‘Trowsus’ … ‘Llodrau’ ‘Stesion’ … ‘Gorsaf ’. And so Owen went on to the end, correct each time. (Roberts 2012, 26)

Owen’s participation in the chapel language contest is not only a demonstration of his fluency in Welsh but, more importantly, a tool of de-Anglicisation, a turn-back to traditional Welsh values and identity of a country boy. Yet, when he becomes a scholarship boy, he enters a completely different realm of culture through the medium of English and the strong ties with his community and family begin to loosen. The central goal of education at the new schools based on mimicry was the eradication of all traits of the native language. At the beginning this causes Owen’s discouragement with the English language, as he has to get rid of his Welsh accent and acquire the proper English pronunciation: The first few weeks (when [Owen] found difficulty in getting his tongue round the strange English words when talking to his teachers) were unpleasant ones, he found it difficult to understand voices using an English intonation. (2012, 47)

Owen’s reluctance towards English originates from the lack of knowledge of the new language he is obliged to use, and from the fact that while living in Wales he cannot use his native language at school. Yet, as his English language skills are improving, he starts to pay greater attention to education. He understands that English equals success and that working on it is a chance for a better life in the future. Moreover, new school duties alienate him from his home lifestyle: He had no time for those things he used to do at home [earlier] and apart from the few opportunities he would have on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday, he became a stranger to the smells of cowshed and haystack.” (2012, 47)

He weans himself off his Welshness and family, and his Welsh identity slowly disintegrates. As he gains fluency in English, he starts becoming a liminal figure not properly belonging to any of the two cultures. Even though he still perceives himself as Welsh, there are evident signs of his suspension between Welshness and Englishness, as when for instance he feels superior to his parents and does not bother to inform them about his school certificate of progress issued in English: I’ve got the best certificate of all in the exam. That was the first they’d heard about that. They had not understood the official English report…and Owen had not bothered to translate it for them. (2012, 53)

Although Owen becomes a fluent user of English, his Welsh does not deteriorate. He still uses it at home and in more casual situations, while English serves as his tool at the workplace. The boy is permanently suspended between languages, and

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needs to make choices related to the appropriateness of the languages in particular situations. He is not only bilingual, but also engages in translanguaging “in order to maximize communicative potential” (Garcia 2014, 140). Gruff Jones, a character from Angharad Price’s novel, experiences a totally different influence of the English language on his traditional Welsh identity. As the older of the two blind brothers, he was placed by his father at a special school for the blind in England at the age of five and did not have a chance to attend Sunday school, where he would learn Welsh. Therefore the only context for the native language acquisition was his home and family. Yet the imposition of English at school from young age was sufficient to cause perceptible deterioration of fluency in Gruff ’s native Welsh. His sister observes that: Gruff ’s Welsh was formal, his conversation dotted with phrases from William Morgan’s Bible. Indeed, it’s likely that “the great book” was responsible for keeping his Welsh alive. (Price A. 2002, 63)

One of the core markers of Gruff ’s Welshness–the Welsh language and the entire communication culture connected with it–was undermined. Although he was capable of speaking it, he did not use the language like a native of Wales, but rather like a foreigner. The process of his identity transformation was well-advanced when he came back from England and there was little chance of reestablishment of his Welshness: Gruffydd’s journey towards education [was] irreversible, taking [him] away from the Welsh language and its culture to another language and culture; away from Wales to another country. [His family did not] see [him] again until that process was well advanced. (2002, 51)

The English educational system promoted not only the supremacy of the English language over Welsh, but also aimed at influencing the religious lives of the Welsh people by converting students from Nonconformism to Anglicanism. There was no space for religious freedom and choice at school. Students had to conform to the general rules of the school, which often included the change of religion: “[Gruffydd] learned to worship in the Anglican way. [He] learned how to talk with God … in the formal English of the day” (2002, 52). Early imposition of the foreign religion seriously affected Gruffydd, who turned away from the religion of his ancestors, acknowledged the religion he was taught at schools and came back to Wales to become an Anglican vicar in the society where the majority of people were Nonconformists. The new religion he embraced caused the shift in his identity and made him a liminal figure a Welsh convert to Anglicanism.

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Despite this Owen Gruffydd in Feet in Chains chooses to retain his religion, but not without important changes having occurred in his religious attitude. He lacks the genuine spirituality of his ancestors and becomes mainly interested in the intellectual aspects of Nonconformism, wanders away from God and no longer respects the importance of his guidelines. Anglicanism, an external force undermining local Welshness, left its mark on Owen’s identity by detaching him from his traditional forms of worship. The realm of education is one among many spheres which enabled the Welsh authors to reveal the colonial nature of relations between Wales and England, and to show the emergence of a cultural in-between position, Bhabha’s Third Space, leading to the formation of a hybrid Anglo-Welsh identity. Linguistic, religious and social mimicry heightens this cultural cross-fertilisation. The characters from Price’s and Roberts’ novels became liminal figures removed from their native culture, “[challenging their] sense of the historical identity of culture as homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the original past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People” (Bhabha 1995, 2008). There are many more works of Anglo-Welsh literature past and present artistically representing postcolonial entanglements of the Welsh and English cultures in individual experience through the motif of education. One among many is Raymond Williams’ Border Country which illustrates a different approach to the issue of English education imposed on the Welsh nation. This paper offers one of various explorations of the issue of Welsh identity hybridization. Many more of avenues are still needed to be researched to reveal new possibilities in contemporary Anglophone Welsh literature.

References Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2002. The Empire Writes Back. London, New York: Routledge. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2007. Post-colonial studies. The Key Concepts. London, New York: Routledge. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture, London, New York: Routledge. Bhabha, Homi. 1995. “The Commitment to Theory.” In The Postcolonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 208. London: Routledge. Bohata, Kirsti and Daniel Williams, ed. 2004–2015. Writing Wales in English. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Bohata, Kirsti. 2004. Postcolonialism Revisited. Cardiff: Cardiff University Press.

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Buchholtz, Mirosława, ed. 2009. Studia postkolonialne w literaturoznawstwie i kulturoznawstwie anglojęzycznym. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek. Burkett, Jodi. 2013. Constructing post-imperial Britain: Britishness, ‘race’ and the radical left in the 1960s. Houndmills, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Davies R. R. 2000.The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063–1415. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, John. 1995. A History of Wales. London: Penguin Books. Davies, Norman. 2000. The Isles. London: Macmillan. Dobinson, Toni. 2014. “Occupying the ‘Third Space’: Perspectives and Experiences of Asian English Language Teachers.” In Critical Perspectives on Language Education, edited by K. Dunworth, and G. Zhang, 9–28. UK: Springer. Fanon Frantz. 1986. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. Garcia, Ofelia, and Li Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldberg, David Theo and Ato Quayson, ed.2002. Relocating postcolonialism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Huggan, Graham, ed. 2013. The Oxford handbook of postcolonial studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huggan, Graham. 2007. Australian literature: postcolonialism, racism, transnationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelertas, Violetta. 2006. Baltic Postcolonialism. Amsterdam: Rodopi; King, Richard C. 2000. Postcolonial America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Knight, Stephen. 2004. A Hundred Years of Fiction, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, Cardiff. Lazarus, Neil. 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Loomba, Ania. 1998. Colonialism/ Postcolonialism. London, New York: Routledge. McLeod, John. 2000. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Memmi, Albert. 2013. The Coloniser and the Colonised. London, New York: Routledge. Price, Angharad. 2002. The Life of Rebeca Jones, Quercus, London: Maclehose Press. Price, D.T.W. 1990. A History of the Church in Wales in the Twentieth Century. Cardiff: Church in Wales Publications. Roberts, Kate. 2012. Feet in chains. Cardiff: John Jones Cardiff Ltd. Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

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Sharp, Joanne P. 2009. Geographies of Postcolonialism: Spaces of Power and Representation. Los Angeles: SAGE. Shilling, Britta. 2014. Postcolonial Germany: Memories of Empire in a Decolonised Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singh Amritjit, and Peter Schmidt. 2000. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2008. Other Asias. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Oksana Weretiuk

Postcolonial Ireland in McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy Abstract: The following essay examines the way in which McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (1998) by Pete McCarthy might be located in a paradigm of postcolonial studies. It focuses on a postcolonial interpretation of McCarthy’s perception of Ireland, Irishness, and Irish history during the author’s two journeys from the south to the north-west of the Green Isle. Key words: Ireland, Irish history, travel books, British colonies, postcolonial studies.

1.  Ireland in the context of postcolonial studies Before considering Ireland as a post-colonial country it is necessary to perceive it as a colonial country. Ireland did not immediately become a subject of colonial studies. Armin Mohler, a Swiss-born far right political writer and philosopher, in 1989, directly called Ireland “the first British colony”, “the ‘white’ colony”. Based on Ken Livingston’s televised address in Dublin in 1983 he wrote indignantly:  Today it is allowed to believe that the admirable world of English castles and gardens, the opulence of English architecture and magnificent museums is a fruit of the British colonial empire. However, it is still “shocking” to consider the “white” colony of Ireland a part of that empire; a colony which until the nineteenth century was being exploited economically and which, in the twentieth century, achieved independence through gory uprisings. (Mohler 1995)1

A dozen or so years later, identifying Ireland among the British colonies was not astonishing, but more balanced and well-thought-out. As Eoin Flannery, a specialist in Irish cultural criticism, historiography and postcolonial theory at Oxford Brookes University2, pointed out at the beginning of the 21st century: “The depth 1 I used the Polish version of Armin Mohler’s German original Der Nasenring. Im Dickicht der Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Verlag Heitz und Höffkes, Essen 1989. Kółko w nozdrzach. W gąszczu przezwyciężania przeszłości (1995), translation form German by Mariusz Krzyszkowski. Translation from Polish into English is mine. The English tittle is: The Nose Ring: In the Thicket of Mastering the Past. 2 Eoin Flannery is the author of Ireland and Postcolonial Studies: Theory, Discourse, Utopia, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009, a pioneering study of the development of one of the key critical discourses in contemporary Irish studies; this book covers all the

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and protraction of Ireland’s colonial experience, together with the vanguard initiative of its anti-colonial agitation, are judged as both instrumental and informative of subsequent ‘Third-World’ anti-colonial movements” (Flannery 2009, 19). He also confirmed that Irish studies were a peculiar form of continuation of Said’s postcolonial criticism: “Deane’s critiques [Raymond Deane and his adherents] are trained on the politics of representation within a manifestly colonial Irish history. They aim to represent the multifarious historical and literary narratives that have arisen within, and/or sought to represent, Ireland” (Flannery 2009, 22). It is difficult to consider the relations between the British and the Irish as simply those of the colonizer and the colonized, as the situation is complicated by the duration of the conquest, their close geographical positions and their long penetration of each other, along with many other factors. From the first Anglo-Norman Intervention in Ireland, which came in 1167, the English conquest of the neighbouring island had for almost 800 уears been a constant element of the English ruling policy. “The year 1169 is regarded by most Irish people as the nation’s year of destiny ‘when the Normans came’” (Richter 2005). In fact, according to Expugnatio Hibernica (“Conquest of Ireland”, 1189) by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), one of the medieval chroniclers of the English intervention in Ireland, “those who intervened in Ireland from the 1160s onwards will be called English or Anglo-Welsh, not Normans, Anglo-Normans or Cambro-Normans” (Cambrensis 2001). From the first barbaric attacks at the turn of the 7th and 8th centuries and Henry II’s intervention in medieval Ireland (Otway-Ruthven 1968, 35–49) to The Statutes of Kilkenny (1366), aiming to curb the decline of the Hiberno-Norman Lordship of Ireland; the brutal English Parliamentarian reconquest of Ireland by Cromwell during “the Commonwealth” with Irish blood and forced settling of the Irish outside of the Green Isle, including Jamaica (Plantations, Settlements), in 1649–1660) (Ellis 1975, 141–249); to the Great Famine of 1845–1851, which is perceived as genocide of the Irish nation, and late Victorian racism–the permanent colonization of Ireland by the British empire continued. Ireland had to be British–in the face of the empire’s sea rivals, by virtue of the Protestant and Anglican Church, Victorian racism and sword law. Naturally, a “range of internal factors complicates readings of Ireland’s colonial history, in which all notions of language, ethnicity, faith, class, and gender were drastically affected—factors that expand and challenge the mandate of postcolonial studies” (Flannery 2007).

major figures, publications and debates within Irish postcolonial criticism and positions Irish postcolonial criticism within the wider postcolonial field.

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The classic Eastern postcolonial theory often finds the Irish case too strange because of–as Declan Kiberd considers–the “’mixed’ nature of the colonial experience of the Irish people, as both exponents and victims of British imperialism”. In his view, “because the Irish were the first modern people to decolonize in the twentieth century, it has seemed useful to make comparisons with other, subsequent movements”, moreover, the colonial and postcolonial experience of Ireland “will complicate, extend and in some cases expose the limits of current models of postcoloniality” (Kiberd 2002, 5). It seems to me that Pete McCarthy’s McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland is a good example of a confrontation between Ireland’s new colonial history and postcolonial present in the context of general postcolonial criticism.

2. Postcolonial reading of McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland Pete McCarthy (Peter Charles McCarthy Robinson, 1951–2004) was an English comedian, radio and television presenter and travel writer. He was noted for his bestselling travel books: McCarthy’s Bar (1998) in which he explored Ireland, and The Road to McCarthy (2002) in which he explored the Irish diaspora around the world. Born in Warrington, Lancashire, in the north-west of England, to an English father and an Irish mother, McCarthy spent much of his early life in his mother’s homeland, Irish West Cork, developing a love for the country. His education was English and Roman Catholic (McCarthy was educated by the Christian Brothers), he is from a mixed background in several ways, but, as he said in his travelogue, “… inside I feel Irish. I know where I belong” (McCarthy 2000, 5). McCarthy’s Bar is a “wonderfully funny journey” (Express on Sunday) across his mother’s homeland, continually obeying the rule “never pass a bar that has your name on it”, and at the same time, a journey to his Irish roots, searching for his Irish identity, a journey to colonial and postcolonial Ireland. During his journey, the author reconstructs colonial Irish history based on the places of memory, ruins of the past which he observed, and on historical sources as well. In Castletownbere he noticed a large grey Celtic cross in the market square opposite McCarthy’s bar erected in memory of the men of the Berehaven battalion who fought for the Irish Republic (McCarthy 2000, 115); in County Kerry he witnesses “a rugged walled church by a lake” which seemed to him “suffered from nothing but fresh air and Cromwell’s soldiers for 500 years”; in his ironic view it serves as evidence “of an act of English vandalism”. In many places he recognized the memories of the Great Famine. In Leenane, a beautiful village at the end of Killary Harbour, McCarthy looked at the Famine monument

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with a short inscription: “To commemorate the Hungry Poor who walked here in 1849 and walk the Third World today” (272); on his road to Beara he found a place where famine-stricken houses were abandoned in the 1840s. The subject of the most detailed description is the Skibbereen Famine monument (Cork): There’s a white painted wrought-iron monument, all ornate flowers and petals, incorporating a harp and a Celtic cross. It was erected in 1887 to the memory of the victims of the famine. … The significance of the patch of thick grassed lawn begins to dawn on me. It’s a famine pit–an unmarked grave of victims of the potato famine. I find an inscription on stones nearby [on the forth stone]. TO THE NAMELESS DEAD WHO LIE HERE AND IN WAYSIDE GRAVES. Nerve and muscle and heart and brain, Lost to Ireland, lost in vain, Pause and you can almost hear The sounds echo down the ages, The creak of the burial cart. Here in humiliation and sorrow, Not mixed with indignation One is driven to exclaim Oh god, that bread should be so dear And human flesh so cheap (111–112).

The narrator quotes in memoriam a fragment of a popular song The Coffin Ships, by The Pogues, a Celtic punk band from London, formed in 1982 (music from YouTube) and in such a way he unites the colonial past and postcolonial present. His “book is not a shamrocks and fiddles view of Ireland” (Irish News, front cover); the author reconstructs colonial Irish history in a witty and humoristic manner, very often with the help of funny anecdotes and comic situations. It seems Ireland has always had the ability to render incomers harmless by making them Irish. When the English, or Normans as they were at the time, first invaded in 1171, they were clean-shaven and close-cropped, as they liked to fight, and didn’t want nasty tweaks from hair getting caught in chain and helmets. But within a couple of generations those Normans left behind to be in charge had adopted the long hair and wild beards of the native Irish. It wasn’t long before they were speaking the language, singing the songs, and presumably showing a reckless disregard for the licencing laws. … Anyway, by Edward III’s time the situation had got so out of hand that the English introduced the Statutes of Kilkenny, observing that ‘many English of the land of Ireland forsaking the English language, fashion, mode of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves according to the manners, fashion and language of the Irish enemies’. So this new law forbade the English from marrying the Irish or listening to their storytellers and musicians who, long before James Joyce or the Chieftains, already had quite a reputation. They weren’t allowed to sell horses to them, or ride bareback like the locals,

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or speak Irish; and they were told to get a bloody good haircut and generally smarten their ideas up. These statutes remained law for 200 years, and had no effect whatsoever. ‘They were in essence an admission of the failure of the English conquest of Ireland and acknowledgement of the Irish conquest of the English by absorption,’ as Leonard Patrick O’Connor Wibberley has written. (McCarthy2000, 103–104)

The quotation of Leonard Patrick O’Connor Wibberley’s3 dictum becomes a punchline, the final phrase of this postcolonial joke, adding humour to the dramatic historical situation and confirming the complicated relations between the colonizer and the colonized. It also reflects the following perspective of postcolonial criticism: “the idea of colonization significantly shapes the view of reality presented to the reader by imperial writers as well as authors representing subdued nations and communities” (see: Skórczewski, 2006, 101). With the same clever jibe humour, McCarthy recalls the behaviour of the Irish burdened with their colonial experience in the places of his childhood, which he observed once again during his journey. Of course, the colonial experience of the British was different. From Cobh, the Glengariff would head up the River Lee into Cork. I recall fields on either side, and people waving to us as we wiped the carrot from our chins. They always lay on welcome, the Irish, but you can’t help noticing they don’t seem to keep on waving a Union Jack4. A lot of English people still can’t understand that. (McCarthy 2000, 51)

The author did not hide the disadvantages of the Irish, but he sides with the Irish and those English newcomers who had assimilated with Ireland, the integrated Anglo-Irish who remained essentially alien to the English. “To them Ireland was an appendage of England, the Irish themselves slightly inferior Englishmen; comic simpletons or dangerous traitors according to taste and to how they were behaving” (McCarthy 2000, 286).5

3 Patrick O’Connor Wibberley (1915–1983) is a prolific and versatile Ireland-born American author. 4 The national flag of the United Kingdom, formed by combining the red and white crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick and retaining the blue ground of the flag of St Andrew. Also called the Union flag. 5 It seems to me interesting to mention in this place Apes and Angels, an Irishmen in Victorian Caricature (Curtis 1997), where images of the Irish in political cartoons are presented. These images underwent a gradual change between the 1840s and the turn of the century. Depicted at first as harmless, whisky-drinking peasants (p. xxiii, Caption to “Irish Hot”), Irishmen were increasingly represented–especially after the rise of the Fenian movement–as apelike monsters menacing law and order (p. 43,168 and so on).

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Past (colonial) and present (post-colonial) have mixed in McCarthy’s Bar. English hippies, travellers (paves) and builders in the 1980s have come to Ireland and feel at home there (“They are good people, the Irish” (McCarthy 2000, 77)). “The way I see it, we’re repopulating a place that lost its people to famine and emigration” (65), Dominic, Peter McCarthy’s class-mate from West Park Grammar School in St Helens (Merseyside, England) run by the Christian Brothers, explains the situation. He himself, with other English hippies fifteen years ago started renting plots to the new English arrivals and in the 1990s presents a “community within community” (77). Their kids were born in Ireland. “They all seem to have English accents, but when I ask them are they English or Irish, the answer’s always the same. ‘Irish, of course’” (67–68). The narrator paid particular attention to the linguistic question. It is well known that the state of the present post-colonial Irish language in Ireland is the result of durable colonization of the Irish. The imperial English has dominated. Irish, also referred to as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic, was historically spoken by the Irish people. The fate of the language was influenced by the increasing power of the English state in Ireland. Forbidden, persecuted and punished (as being a threat to all things English in Ireland), it was forced out by English (See for more detail: Hindley 1990). By the end of the British rule, the Irish language was spoken by less than 15% of the national population. A paradoxical sociolinguistic situation has come into being: the language which has the function of symbolic identification is not the main means of intergroup communication. “Tír gan teanga tír gan anam” (A country without a language is a country without a soul), the Irish proverb says. “While the Irish language is the official ‘first language’ of the Republic, and an invaluable resource to the nation, it is not the first tongue spoken by the majority of the population. Nor is it the tongue responsible for making Irish writing one of the world’s great modern literatures”, Richard Kearney claims. But “because Ireland had a unique and ancient language it had a natural right to separate political status” (Kearney 1990, 6). McCarthy observed a dual postcolonial relationship and co-existence of Irish and English in Ireland. The constitutional status of Irish as the national and first official language made it possible for him to enjoy watching part of a TV discussion programme, and a weather forecast in Irish. Once he saw “a trendy-looking young woman in trainers” who kept “punctuating her elegant-sounding Irish with ‘like’ and ‘y’ know’” (McCarthy 2000, 70). The narrator noticed with delight how in Connemara the local people spoke beautiful Irish (222) and with pleasure and sadness the next: “Dingle and Dunquin were the first places I ever heard Irish spoken as the first language. … Change was in

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the air, but this still felt like an outpost of the old Ireland” (192). Accidentally in Bunratty’s castle he himself became a participant of the realization of Foras na Gaeilge (Irish Institute) program which was responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island of Ireland. … a severe-looking sixty-year-old teacher is pointing to Irish words, chalked on a board. … He spots me, and is on to me quicker than a Christian Brother’s blackboard duster. ‘You, boy. Where have you been? … What’s your name?’ … ‘McCarthy? A Cork man, is it? The rebel country, eh? We’ll see about that. Well, McCarthy, stand up straight. That’s better. Now, repeat after me…’ He enunciates some Irish words and I do my best to copy him. ‘Cà… bhfuil…an…pub.’ [It means “Where is the pub?”] (215)

With peculiar humour and scepticism McCarthy responds to–effective and ineffective–official attempts at making the Irish an Irish-speaking nation. At the same time with humour and satisfaction he ascertains a fact of great influence of the English-speaking Irish on British culture: “It’s no coincidence that the style of writing known as stream of consciousness was pioneered by Irish authors. … For many Irish people, the avant-garde monologue is the most commonplace form of everyday speech …” (McCarthy 2000, 218). Certainly, “English has proved a very powerful and hegemonic force for the West and on the other, its rapid spread has provided a potential, unifying, force which can give a voice to third world communities allowing them to air their protests in the language of the first world” (Murray 2006). The Irish were the West (historically and geographically) and the East (colonized). They fought for their independence mainly in English. Because the Irish were the first modern people to decolonize in the twentieth century, they became an example for other decolonized nations in their building of a postcolonial reality. Murray gives an example: in the same way that Ireland negotiated the hegemony of English by developing Hiberno-English many other hybrid forms are emerging among peripheral communities, such as the Caribbean Creoles (Murray 2006). McCarthy in Irish present-day post-colonial reality saw the impact of colonialism on the colonized and the colonizer and he advised the latter not to forget about their own fault in the signs of colonization in the post-colonial present of the former: But before sneering at Irish bad taste, smug outsiders who live in twee English villages, like me, should bear in mind that the bungalow blight is simply the logical outcome of Ireland’s history of poverty; a poverty for which English landlords living across the sea in their carefully preserved villages must shoulder their share of the blame. (McCarthy 2000, 116)

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Oksana Weretiuk It’s a very Irish paradox that modern houses and bungalows can speak so eloquently of the nation’s past. (117)

Not passing in silence by the dramatic facts of Irish-British history6, McCarthy tries to present the contemporary postcolonial Irish reality from his twofold (English/Irish) point of view. He addresses the book The Trouble with the Irish (or the English Depending on Your Point of View), the author of which had a similar heritage, was raised both in Ireland and in England, and wrote a light-hearted look at Irish history, told from the point of view of such a man (Wibberley 1956). The English-Irish, or more precisely–Irish-English author is far from believing that all hardships are behind; with his unfailing slight irony and entirely seriously he makes a peace-oriented appeal to the Irish: “So it would seem that the North and South will finally be united. But the Irish must surely have learned that union brought about at the point of a gun is not a union but suppression …” (McCarthy 2000, 105). The postcolonial history had to be mixed, colourful and peaceful. In conclusion I would like to quote once again Armin Mohler: World history consists of many pasts that have not been ‘overcome’. The Germans must live with their victims just as the Americans must live with their exterminated Indians, and the English must live with their ravished Irish, not to mention the Russians, the Turks, the Serbs, the Iranians and the Cambodians. (cited by Mark Weber, 1994)

The postcolonial Irish people must “overcome” their British colonization, McCarthy’s Bar seems to say, and the Irish are good at this overcoming.

References Cambrensis, Giraldus. 2001. The Conquest of Ireland, translated by Thomas Forester. Revised and edited with additional notes by Thomas Wright, Cambridge, Ontario. http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/conquest_ireland.pdf. Curtis, L. Perry. 1997. Apes and Angels, an Irishman in Victorian Caricature, edited by Jenelle Walthour. Revised edition. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. Ellis, Peter Berresford. 1975. Hell or Connaught! The Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland 1652–1660. Hamilton: Blackstaff Press. Express on Sunday quoted on the back cover of McCarthy, Peter, 2000. McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland, London: Scepte Hodder 2 Stoughton.

6 Wibberley, The Trouble with the Irish (or the English Depending on Your Point of View), 1956.

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Flannery, Eoin. 2007. “Irish Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Theory.” Postcolonial Text 3(3) http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewFile/814/482. Flannery, Eoin. 2009. Ireland and Postcolonial Studies: Theory, Discourse, Utopia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hindley, Reg. 1990. The Death of the Irish Language. London and New York: Routledge. Irish News quoted on the back cover of McCarthy, Peter, 2000. McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland, London: Scepte Hodder 2 Stoughton. Kearney, Richard. 1990. Postnationalist Ireland. Politics, Culture, Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge. Kiberd, Declan. 2002. Inventing Ireland. The Literature of the Modern Nation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. McCarthy, Peter. 2000. McCarthy’s Bar. A Journey of Discovery in Ireland. London: Scepte Hodder 2 Stoughton. Mohler, Armin. 1995. Kółko w nozdrzach. W gąszczu przezwyciężania przeszłości. Translation from German by Mariusz Krzyszkowski. Pierwodruk: “Stańczyk. Pismo konserwatystów i liberałów” nr 25. http://www.tomaszgabis.pl/2014/08/10/ armin-mohler-ludobojstwo-na-zielonej-wyspie/. Murray, Brenda. 2006. Ireland – a test case of Post-colonialism / Post colonialism. http://www.educatejournal.org/index.php/educate/article/viewFile/58/54. Otway-Ruthven, Annette Jocelyn. 1968. A History of Medieval Ireland, London: Ernst Benn Limited. Richter, Michael. 2005. Medieval Ireland (New Gill History of Ireland 1): The Enduring Tradition. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. Skórczewski, Dariusz. 2006. “Postkolonialna Polska–projekt (nie)możliwy.” Teksty Drugie 1/2: 101. Weber, Mark. 1994. “Mastering’ Germany’s Difficult Past. Review.” The Journal of Historical Review 14(5): 47–48. Wibberley, Leonard Patrick O’Connor. 1956. The Trouble with the Irish (or the English Depending on Your Point of View). Henry Holt and Company.

Barbara Ludwiczak

The Image of the Other in The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury – A Supplement to Postcolonial Reading of Anthony Trollope’s Travel Works Abstract: The article analyses the image of the Other featured in twelve letters written during Anthony Trollope’s eight-month journey around the world in 1875. The aim of the work is to prove that author’s attitude towards colonialism evolved. The letters are presented as author’s first and only attempt to understand the aboriginal inhabitants. Key words: the Other, travelogue, British colonies, aboriginal peoples, colonialism.

Introduction The article is devoted to the issue of postcolonial reading of Anthony Trollope’s travel books. Anthony Trollope is best known as a novelist, the author of the Barchester Chronicles and the Palliser series, yet in recent years his travel works have gained interest, mainly because of their postcolonial interpretation. This approach is used to present the way colonial messages are presented in travelogues as well as to analyse the influence of Trollope’s travel works on Victorian society. Of all Trollope’s travelogues, The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury remains relatively unknown. It is not as controversial as The West and the Spanish Main or South Africa. It is not as popular as Trollope’s first work on the Antipodes–Australia and New Zealand. The Tireless Traveler consists of twenty letters, written by Trollope for the Liverpool Daily and Weekly Mercury, a provincial yet rather influential newspaper. The Liverpool Mercury was founded in 1811 by Egerton Smith. By 1858 it was published daily with a larger Friday edition. The newspaper was circulated in Liverpool, Lancashire and Cheshire, as well as in Wales, the Isle of Man and in London. What is even more interesting, in the context of this work, the Liverpool Mercury promoted liberal values and supported social reforms (Liverpool Echo

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2011)1. Moreover, as James Pope Hennessy points out, the letters were later reprinted by many provincial newspapers (Hennessy 1971, 336). The correspondence covers Trollope’s eight–month journey around the world, which he undertook in 1875, while visiting his son Frederic, who owned a farm in Australia. This article analyses the image of the Other featured in letters written during Trollope’s stay in Melbourne and Sydney. Many scholars tend to overlook The Tireless Traveler. James Pope Hennessy treats this work as a series of letters and does not even mention its official title (1971, 336). Richard Mullen concentrates on Trollope’s description of Italy and his thoughts on Garibaldi (2014, 702). Victoria Glendinning writes mainly about Trollope’s inability to sell another book on Australia (1992, 437). Anne K. Lyons did a very substantial recap of The Tireless Traveler in the Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope, yet her entry merely summarizes the work (1999, 520– 522). James Buzard was the first scholar to mention and analyse some parts of The Tireless Traveler in his article Trollope and Travel in the Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope. Buzard compared The Tireless Traveler with Trollope’s earlier work, Australia and New Zealand and noted the changed tone of Trollope’s narrative, yet argued that there was “no substantial alteration of perspective” (2011, 171). However, Buzard’s mention of The Tireless Traveler is very brief. Therefore there is a question–what is so specific about this minor work? What makes this work exceptional? I will argue that this travelogue can be treated as a proof of Trollope’s evolving attitude towards colonialism, and his first and only attempt to understand the Other. And though this endeavour proved to be a failure, even this failure provides a valuable insight into the Victorian mentality. The analysed material includes letters concerning the situation of aboriginal peoples of Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and other islands conquered by the British. The status and future of Fiji is discussed by Trollope as well as the figure of Fijian king and warlord Ratu Seru Epenisa Cakobau. Cakobau is one of the few Others, named and characterized in Trollope’s narration, yet even this characterization remains biased by the writer’s Europocentric perspective.

1 In the early 1900s, the Mercury merged with the Liverpool Daily Post. On December 10, 2013, the Liverpool Post announced it was to cease publishing after more than 158 years. The final edition was printed on December 19, 2013. See Liverpool Echo 2011.

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1.  Situation of the Noongar People In Letter VII, Trollope writes about the Noongar People in his description of the Swan River (Derbarl Yerrigan) colony. While he meticulously describes the colony, British colonists, their work and circumstances, the aboriginal inhabitants of the land are only mentioned in the last part of the letter. It seems as if only when writing the conclusion did the author recall that there were other people living in the area: “I ought not to conclude these few words about this little–known colony without saying that the tribes of aboriginals are more numerous here, and stronger, than in other parts of Australia” (Trollope 1978, 88). Never in his works does Trollope use the proper names of the people described; he always calls them “aboriginals”, no matter what groups he is describing. Moreover, his description is imbued with scientific racism: The men and women are, I think, physically superior to their brethren in the east, and certainly seem less inclined to get rid of themselves and to die out of the land … . They are a wretched hideous race, but apparently good-humoured, and on certain occasions ready to work for immediate good results. It may be that their permanence in the land is due rather to the small number of their invaders than to any strength of their own. (1978, 88)

This fragment is an example of Trollope’s typical style and his method of describing people, which Catherine Hall calls “mapping of Empire” or “cartography of peoples” (1998, 186). Trollope categorizes the aboriginal inhabitants of colonies according to their underlying qualities that are useful for the colonists. This is the style of travel–writing that Trollope was famous for. There is also rather ill-suited irony, in which the author writes that these people “are less inclined to get rid of themselves and to die out of the land”. This kind of (cruel) irony is also a characteristic trait in Trollope’s travel writing. And then, for the first time, there is an attempt at a more relativistic perspective, when Trollope calls the British colonists invaders. This theme is further developed, when the author dwells on the period of violent colonization of Western Australia: When the country was first settled they were very troublesome, as we in our power used to consider them, by which we implied that for a time they fought resolutely for what they knew to be their own, and of which we were as resolute to deprive them. Now they are not often pugnacious, at any rate in the immediate neighbourhood of our settlements. As to civilising them, that, I think, all who have watched them know to be hopeless. (Trollope 1978, 88)

Trollope is very euphemistic here–the first period of colonization was marked by many massacres including the Pinjarra Massacre in 1834 (Worthington 2015) and the so-called “pacification” of Avon Valley in the 1840s (Connor 2005, 83). Trollope’s expressions are vague, though he acknowledges the brutality of the conquest.

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2. Macleay’s expedition to Papua New Guinea– deconstruction of imperial myths Letter IX can be treated as an attempt at deconstruction of imperial myths concerning colonization. Trollope describes the Chevert Expedition to New Guinea, funded and organized by British politician and amateur scientist William Macleay, who went to Papua New Guinea in February 1875, to explore and document the island’s natural environment, in particular to collect specimens of plants and animals (Saunders 2012, 135). Though the aim of expedition was purely scientific, it had been universally speculated that Macleay’s voyage would prepare the ground for future colonization of the island. Trollope confirms these expectations, dismissing however, the notion that the Chevert Expedition could lead to colonization of New Guinea. Trollope was correct though the scientific goals of the journey were accomplished, Macleay did not occupy the island, which ran against the wishes of many supporters of colonization. William Macleay was criticized for, what was perceived as a failure to obtain new territory. Trollope is not interested in the details of the expedition. Instead, he makes an attempt to deconstruct the jingoistic myth of glorious adventure, undertaken by the white man: The result of such expeditions has been almost always the same. A white man or two may be “murdered” in their determination to make themselves masters of the new land; but the savage will succumb, and be driven back—will be coaxed with red cloth and beads—will be perplexed beyond the extent of his poor intellect; and may think himself very lucky if he be not at last brought into the pale of civilisation and quickly polished off the face of the earth as beatified subjects of the British Crown. (1978, 123)

Trollope uses the word “savage”, he writes about the supposedly poor intellect of aboriginal inhabitants of colonized land and at the same time he uses irony to stress the hypocrisy of the so-called civilizing mission. He also puts the word “murdered” in inverted comas, suggesting that attacked and oppressed people have the right to defend themselves. Trollope also criticizes the religious motivation for the colonization, which he finds hypocritical: That the teeming populations of old civilised countries should find new fields for their labours in the fertile lands about the world—lands which, when found by them, are populated only in the sparsest manner—seems to be not only expedient but absolutely necessary for carrying on God’s purposes with the earth. (1978, 124)

According to Trollope, British politicians and social activists use the Christian mission to justify conquest. The writer argues that this particular excuse is a lie:

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We have endeavoured to console ourselves by thinking that the peoples would at any rate have become Christians before they had utterly perished. I will not here go into that very vexed question of the possible Christianising of the savage races. But experience seems at any rate to show that the extermination always comes before the Christianity has been realized. (1978, 124)

Extermination. This time Trollope does not make use of euphemisms, does not dwell on the right of the strongest or fittest. Of course, he remains a prejudiced Victorian, writing about anonymous savage races, yet he does not want to justify crimes with religion or morality. During his whole life Anthony Trollope regarded himself as a public servant, loyal to government and empire. He created and popularized many stereotypes. He believed in the hierarchy of classes (in England) and races (in colonies). However, in his letters to the Mercury Trollope decided to warn his readers against the further acquisition of land, putting a spotlight on the disastrous consequences of colonization: The land becomes ours with its fatness—and the people disappear. They cannot endure contact with us—even when, as in New Zealand, we make the most determined struggle to be just. They cannot endure contact with us—even when, as in New Zealand, they are endowed with gifts of intellect and courage much higher than those generally found among savage tribes. It is terrible to think of this extermination. The Maoris are going. The blacks of Tasmania have perished to the last man. The aborigines of Australia are perishing in part, and are partly being driven into the barren interior of their own country. (1978, 125)

The expression “blacks of Tasmania” refers to the Parlevar or Palawa people, the indigenous inhabitants of Tasmania, many of whom were killed in the so-called Black War or Tasmanian War, which lasted from the 1820s to 1832. In the next forty years the Palawas as a result of influenza, other diseases and poor living conditions. There is a dispute among scholars as to whether the actions undertaken by British forces can be regarded as genocide (Reynolds 2001, 50). There is also another dispute, whether the Palawas are extinct–although the last person of solely Tasmanian descent and the last fluent speaker of Tasmanian language, Fanny Cochrane Smith, died in 1905, the descendants of Palawas still live in Australia and Tasmania (Taylor 2008, 140). Though Trollope finds this extermination deplorable, he is nevertheless convinced that it is inevitable. The same message is discernible in Robert Dowling’s painting Group of Natives of Tasmania, depicting Palawa people. The sense of doom is evoked by symbols such as a dying fire, a decaying log and a tree with a withered twig. In The Tireless Traveler Trollope’s attitude towards colonization changes. The former supporter of colonization expresses opinions that the British government

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should not occupy more lands. It seems as if Trollope perceived that imperial politics has a devastating influence on indigenous populations of people: The poor savage, who certainly does not desire our good services, and who looks upon us at first as an intruder, whether we come for good or evil, cannot distinguish the God–like visitor from him who is simply fiendish; hence come mistakes, recriminations, punishments, and revenge, which have too often led to disasters so serious as to make us almost wish that no British ship might ever again be sent by Government to these islands. (1978, 193)

Trollope’s perspective remains Europocentric. Even when he tries to be objective, he compares Europeans to gods. His criticism of the colonialism is based on a pragmatic approach–he regrets that human lives were lost. Moreover, he thinks that there is no need of colonizing more lands.

3.  The Image of the Other–the portrait of King Cakobau Others appear in Trollope’s writing as anonymous masses subjected to generalization–no names are given, not only to individuals but also to peoples and tribes. There is one significant exception to this rule–King Seru Epenisa Cakobau (c. 1815–1883), a leader who first united the Fijian tribes only to cede the islands to the United Kingdom in return for financial help2. Trollope describes Seru Cakobau as a cunning savage, who decided to convert to Christianity only because this gave him protection and advantage over his enemies: Two years after his father’s death he became a Christian—as far as Christianity was possible to him—and renounced cannibalism. He and his wife were baptised, and he seems, at any rate, to have been convinced that there could be neither peace nor prosperity for his people unless they could be made secure, if not by British rule, at any rate by British protection. The other day, when the cession of the country was completed, he sent over, as a present to our Queen, his war–club, which had ever been to him the symbol of his authority. (1978, 185)

The style of this narration is imbued with a paternalistic tone. The words “as far as Christianity was possible to him” indicate that Trollope does not believe the autochthon can fully understand the principles of Christian faith. Unlike many other Victorians, Trollope is disillusioned about the Christianizing mission. 2 Cakobau was indebted to the American government, who made him (unjustly) responsible for an arson attack on the house of John Brown William, the American Consul, in 1849. All this happened before Cakobau was even the Vunivalu (chief) and long before he was king, nevertheless the US demanded $44,000 compensation. The US government clearly wanted to use the debt as casus belli: the reason for annexation of the islands. See Williams (2011, 112).

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The conversion is not only superficial–it is a political act, which Seru Cakobau was forced to do. Modern scholars such as Marshall Sahlins seem to agree with Trollope’s point of view–Sahlins writes that Cakobau’s conversion “came only as a tactics of despair” (Sahlins 1992, 39). On the other hand, the story of the war-club sent to Queen Victoria by Cakobau, can be regarded as the building of colonial legend. This is the story of a king who became a subject of the British Crown, who was pacified and forced into submission. This is the symbol of natives’ subjugation to the power of the white people. It is significant that Trollope gives Seru Cakobau a voice. This is the only time in Trollope’s narration that the Other becomes the speaker for their nation. Trollope retells the words Seru Cakobau supposedly said on ceding his islands to the British government, at the same time characterizing the leader and Fijians: He seems ever to have trusted the honesty and power of the British nation, and to have mingled with that trust a melancholy conviction that his own people could of themselves do nothing; and yet the Englishmen he had seen had not always been good specimens of their nationality. “Of one thing I am certain”, he said to Sir Hercules Robinson, when they were negotiating the cession: “if we do not cede Fiji, the white stalkers on the beach, the cormorants, will open their mouths and swallow us”. And again he said, “Fijians are of unstable character. A white man who wishes to get anything from a Fijian, if he does not succeed to–day, will try again to–morrow, till the Fijian is wearied out and gives in”. (1978, 185–86)

These were the times of battles and slaughters. Stephanie Williams writes that the accession of Fiji was a direct consequence of the depression gripping wool markets in Sydney and Melbourne (2011, 122). When wool prices fell, many young white men from Australia were encouraged to go to Fiji. Yet Fijians did not want to work for white men. They killed settlers and burned their abodes. The settlers also responded with violence, killing Fijians. When Trollope writes about British people who “were not good specimens of their nationality” he alludes to the atrocities committed by white settlers. They often kidnapped natives from other islands and made them work on their plantations. Many thought this was the revival of slavery (Williams 2011, 122). Eventually, there was no choice–Seru Cakobau had to cede his country to the British Empire.

Conclusion In his travelogue Anthony Trollope expresses notions rooted in the 19th-century scientific racism, derived from the works of Charles Darwin and developed by Arthur de Gobineau and Karl Vogt. He shares the belief that there is a natural hierarchy of races, he is also convinced about the inevitable extermination of

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indigenous inhabitants of invaded territories. In fact, there is nothing original in his descriptions of autochthons; he keeps repeating and popularizes the image of the Other that is inferior to the white man in almost every respect. At the same time, Trollope makes an attempt at a more “liberal” approach– trying to shift perspective, introducing the figure of an anonymous “savage”, illiterate and hostile because of the violent actions of white soldiers and settlers. Trollope realizes that colonization is based on injustice. He utterly dismisses the notion of the Christianizing mission, revealing it to be hypocrisy. It seems as if the writer believed that colonization based on the law of the strongest, should not be justified by Evangelization. Moreover, according to the author, autochthons are not able to understand Christian principles and values. As was noted by James Buzard in his article “Trollope and travel”: But for all of the diligent finding of facts, nowhere in Trollope’s travel writings do we come across a substantial alteration of perspective; very nearly nowhere does prejudice falter; repeatedly we encounter expressions of bigotry and narrow–mindedness wholly conventional in Trollope’s culture. It is not too much to say that, in spite of all the places he visited and people he encountered, Trollope hardly ever changed his mind. (2011, 171)

There is another issue related to Trollope’s target audience. Bradford Allen Booth, the editor of The Tireless Traveler, writes about Trollope’s choice of medium: “This time he wrote for a newspaper, the Liverpool Daily and Weekly Mercury. Through the daily press he probably reached the large industrial group who most needed advice and who could not afford the expensive Australia and New Zealand volumes” (1978, 11). Therefore, it can be assumed that Trollope’s letters were at source of knowledge on the colonies for the mass reader. These new readers were often considering moving to the colonies and Trollope’s letters had shaped their minds on the Others even before they left their homeland.

References Biography Base. “Cakobau Ratu Seru Epenisa.” Accessed March 30, 2016, http:// www.biographybase.com/biography/Cakobau_Ratu_Seru_Epenisa.html. Booth, Bradford Allen. 1978. Introduction. In The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury 1875. 1–15. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Buzard, James. 2011. “Trollope and travel”. In The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope, edited by Carolyn Dever and Lisa Niles, 168–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connor, John. 2005. The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

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Glendinning, Victoria. 1992. Anthony Trollope. London: Penguin Books. Hall, Catherine. 1998. “Going a-Trolloping: imperial man travels the Empire.” In Gender and Imperialism, edited by Clare Midgley, 180–199. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Hennessy, James Pope. 1971. Trollope. London: Jonathan Cape. Liverpool Echo. “Liverpool Mercury Born 1811.” Accessed March 29, 2016, http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-mercuryborn-1811–3369215. Lyons, Anne K. 1999. “The Tireless Traveler.” In Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope, edited by R.C. Terry, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mullen, Richard, 2014. Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in his World. London: Thistle Publishing. Reynolds, Henry. 2001. An Indelible Stain?. Sydney: Penguin. Sahlins, Marshall. 1992. Islands of history. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Saunders, Brian. 2012. Discovery of Australia’s Fishes: A History of Australian Ichthyology to 1930. Collingwood: CSIRO PUBLISHING. Taylor, Rebe. 2008. Unearthed: The Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island. Kent Town: Wakefield Press. Trollope, Anthony. 1978. The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury 1875. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Williams, Stephanie. 2011. Running the Show. Governors of the British Empire. London: Penguin. Worthington, Daryl. 2015. “Aboriginals killed at Pinjarra.” New Historian, Accessed July 26, 2016. http://www.newhistorian.com/aboriginals-killed-atpinjarra/5181/.

Małgorzata Warchał

Buddhist Ecocriticism in Selected Works of Aldous Huxley’s and Chris Arthur’s Essays Abstract: The paper presents the subject of Buddhist ecocriticism on the example of selected works of Aldous Huxley and a contemporary Irish essayist, Chris Arthur. Buddhist ecocriticism, as a combination of Buddhist and ecological ethics, links environmental concerns with eastern spirituality and is often combined with criticism of the western capitalist culture. Key words: postcolonial ecocriticism, Buddhism, ecological imperialism, ecological ethics.

Although the field of postcolonial studies is predominantly anthropocentric, it complements and overlaps with ecocriticism. Firstly, ecocriticism highlights the role of humans as colonizers of nature and likens the exploitation of natural resources, land and animals to that of conquered nations. However, it is not only the perception of humans as the colonizer and nature as the colonized which links those two disciplines. Through mutual exchange of concerns, ideas and methods, ecocriticism, interested mostly in environmental devastation, decided to search for its political and colonial sources. Postcolonial studies, on the other hand, gained interest in ecological aspects and consequences of colonization. As a result of this exchange, emerged postcolonial ecocriticism or green postcolonialism described by Ursula K. Heise (2010, 252) as discipline which “asks fundamental questions about conflicts and confluences between concerns over social inequality, uneven development, and environmental deterioration”. As further explained by Heise (2010, 252), Ecocritics have come to emphasize that environmental problems cannot be solved without addressing issues of wealth and poverty, over-consumption, underdevelopment, and resource scarcity, while post-colonial critics have highlighted the ways in which historical struggles over colonial and neo-colonial power structures as well as contemporary conflicts over economic globalization have involved and continue to revolve around fundamental environmental questions.

Postcolonial ecocriticism took primary interest in ecological imperialism characterized by Huggan and Tiffin (2010, 4) as ranging “in implication and intensity from the violent appropriation of indigenous land to the ill-considered introduction of non-domestic livestock and European agricultural practices”. Moreover, as also suggested by Huggan and Tiffin (2010, 2), postcolonial ecocriticism explores the

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differences between the environmentalisms of the rich and environmentalism of the poor. The former, according to Huggan and Tiffin (2010, 2), can be perceived “potentially vainglorious and hypocritical” and the latter as “often genuinely heroic and authentic”. Thus, postcolonial ecocriticism aims at narrowing the ecological gap between the worlds of colonizers and the colonized. Humans’ relationship with the environment and all of its aspects can be investigated from various perspectives, such as scientific, political or economic; this paper focuses on the literary presentation of the connection of environmental issues with spirituality and religion. Buddhist ecocriticism is a combination of certain Buddhist and ecological ethics, which links environmental concerns with eastern spirituality. What emerges from such a combination is a strong criticism of western capitalist culture and inherent comparisons between what are considered as eastern (Buddhist) and western (Judeo-Christian) attitudes towards nature, animals and the environment in general. According to many critics, Buddhist philosophy seems to complement western environmental concerns, as it „does offer rich resources for immediate application in food ethics, animal rights, and consumerism – areas which are developing some solid academic and popular literature” (Kaza 2006, 188). As Stephanie Kaza (2006, 184) comments on the western interest in the ecological aspects of this eastern philosophy: Across this history Buddhist understanding about nature and human-nature relations has been based on a wide range of teachings, texts, and social views. The last half century, as Buddhism has taken root in the West, has been a time of great environmental concern. Global warming, habitat loss, and resource extraction have all taken a significant toll as human populations multiply beyond precedent.

What possibly links the western understanding of Buddhism with environmentalism, especially so-called deep ecology1, is first and foremost the notion of mutual interconnection and interdependence (Pratityasamutpada) of all beings and, as follows, the perception of people as a part of nature illustrated by the metaphor of Indra’s net. Described in The Flower Garland Sutra, Indra’s net is an imaginary vast network which holds a jewel at each juncture. Each jewel represents an individual being or life form and reflects all the others: “wondrous jewels like mountains; /The

1 The term deep ecology, according to Barnhill and Gottlieb (2001, 5), refers to “deep questioning about environmental ethics and the causes of environmental problems”. The authors underline that it is concerned with religion and spirituality, thus the term can also refer to “a platform of basic values that a variety of environmentalists share” (Barnhill and Gottlieb 2001, 5). Furthermore, deep ecology may also refer to philosophies of nature (ecosophies), which arise from deep questioning.

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jewels appearing in each light/are unspeakable many …/One of those mountainlike jewels/manifests untold lands; / all of the mountainlike jewels/manifest lands like this” (The Flower Ornament Scripture, 205). If any jewel becomes cloudy or polluted it reflects all the others less clearly. Therefore, any interference in one part of the net affects the whole structure (Tucher and Williams 1997, 171). Following this metaphor, what inspires deep ecology is the belief that harming one’s environment is, as a matter of fact, synonymous with harming oneself (Henning 2002, 10). Next elements of Buddhist doctrine which link it with ecological thinking are the qualities of loving kindness (metta, the wish for others to be happy) and compassion (karuna, the wish to alleviate suffering), which extend not only to oneself and others, but also to animals, plants, and the earth (Batchelor and Brown 1992, 4). In accordance with those qualities, concern for the welfare of the natural world and respect for nature grow out of the belief that humans are “dependent upon and interconnected with their environment” (Henning 2002, 12). In the teachings of the Buddha, for instance in Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, compassion roots out of wisdom: “A wise person, one of great wisdom, does not intend harm to self, harm to others or harm both self and others. Thinking in this way, such a person intends benefit for self, benefit for others, benefit for both, benefit for the whole world. Thus is one wise and of great wisdom” (quoted in Batchelor and Brown 1992, 6). In many branches of Buddhism, such as Mahayana, those qualities inspire the reflection on how everything one uses in their daily life is derived from other beings and also on the possible effects daily actions have on other beings (Batchelor and Brown 1992, 8). This reflection corresponds with the laws of karmic retribution: for every action one performs one may experience a similar result. The origins of European interest in Buddhist ethics in the context of environmental issues can be traced back to Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay “Religion”, published in 1851. As a persistent advocate of animal rights, Schopenhauer criticized the western (and Judeo-Christian) lack of respect for animals and nature and saw it as “the effects of the first chapter of Genesis”. At the same time, he contrasted it with eastern philosophy and pointed to a connection between the Buddhist ethics and environmental consciousness: I may mention here another fundamental error of Christianity, an error which cannot be explained away, and the mischievous consequences of which are obvious every day: I mean the unnatural distinction Christianity makes between man and the animal world to which he really belongs. It sets up man as all-important, and looks upon animals as merely things. Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other hand, true to the facts, recognize in a positive way that man is related generally to the whole of nature, and specially and principally to animal nature; and in their systems man is always represented by the theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely connected with the animal world. …

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In Schopenhauer’s view, since western religion fails to protect animals, the duty falls to the police and societies. This leads him to a bitter conclusion: “One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of the earth, and the animals the souls they torment” (Schopenhauer 2014). Later on, Schopenhauer draws a clear division between the eastern and western views on the place of humans in nature. The western Judeo-Christian culture places humans in control and paramount over nature. By contrast, as Schopenhauer (2014) puts it: “The standard recognized by the Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya (the great word)—“tat-twam-asi” (this is thyself), which may always be spoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity of his inmost being with ours”. Echoes of the aforementioned ideas can easily be found in modern European literature. In his clearly Buddhist-inspired works, the Irish essayist Chris Arthur points to the de-spiritualisation of everyday life and the acceptance of consumerist greed, which lead to the destruction of non-human ecology, exploitation of natural resources as well as social injustice. In many collections of his essays, Arthur presents Zen Buddhism and haiku as inspirations for his ecocritical essayistic reflections (Howard 2004, 84). In an essay “Last words” (Irish Elegies) Arthur recollects on a series of lectures he gave on religions, including Buddhism, and the strong impression that haiku, its message of interconnectedness and the feel for the beauty of nature, made on his students. In “The Willow is Green, the Flower is Red” (Irish Elegies) he describes the appeal of haiku as “the idea that less is better, utterance emerges from a contemplative silence and every word is measured and meant” (Arthur 2009, 2). In the essay “Tinchel Round My Father” (Irish Willow), Arthur uses the metaphor of Indra’s net to symbolise the interconnectedness of all beings not only in the ecological but also historical context: A powerful and beautiful Buddhist image that can be used to offer a metaphorical picture of the way in which any moment is embedded in the fabric of reality. The image stresses how everything inter-connects, how reality is profoundly inter-related, how events, however independent they may seem, are in fact inter-dependent. (Arthur 2002, 229)

However, the strongest Buddhist-inspired ecocritical message can be found in his 2004 essay, “The Sinfulness of Normality”. In this essay, alluding to both the idea of interconnectedness and interdependence Arthur presents a belief that the lack of consideration in everyday actions, such as spending money, leads humans to a slow devastation of their environment, and potentially themselves:

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Ads urge a minority of our planet’s population to consume a lion’s share of its resources, even though the majority are imprisoned in poverty. … We gorge ourselves while children die of malnutrition, where the rivers, seas and forests on which we all depend are routinely befouled. (Arthur 2004, 107)

Arthur also points to the connection between wisdom, knowledge and compassion. For him, scientific knowledge can by no means protect humans from destruction of the environment (and potential self-destruction) if it is not accompanied by compassion and a sense of responsibility. As Flannery (2015, I) puts it, the essay “launches a scathing polemic against the vulgarities of contemporary Western lifestyles”. Over four decades earlier, Aldous Huxley presented a strikingly similar attitude regarding the connection of Buddhist spirituality and ecology. Questions and warnings presented in his earlier essays led to an application of Buddhist ethics into practice in a utopian society presented in his last novel, Island. Firstly, in an essay “Wordsworth in the tropics” Huxley portrays Westerners as both colonizers and enemies of nature: To us who live beneath a temperate sky and in the age of Henry Ford, the worship of Nature comes almost naturally. It is easy to love a feeble and already conquered enemy. But an enemy with whom one is still at war, an unconquered, unconquerable, ceaselessly active enemy–no; one does not, one should not, love him. One respects him, perhaps; one has a salutary fear of him; and one goes on fighting. In our latitudes the hosts of Nature have mostly been vanquished and enslaved. (Huxley 1964, 8)

The subject of humans as colonizers of nature who, in turn, also heavily depend on the environment returns in other essays, for instance “Desert,” where Huxley remarks: “From the fact that a society has achieved some measure of control over its natural environment it does not follow that the individuals who at any given moment constitute that society enjoy an analogous freedom in regard to their environment” (Huxley 1964, 170). In the 1960s, from theoretical reflections on the role of humans in nature, Huxley moved on to strong political declarations, such as in the essay “Politics of Ecology” (1962). Strongly convinced that twentieth-century man faces problems of both political and ecological character, Huxley propounds the idea of resolving them as a priority over purely political issues: “power politics in the context of nationalism raises problems that, except by war, are practically insoluble. The problems of ecology, on the other hand, “admit of rational solution and can be tackled without the arousal of those violent passions always associated with dogmatic ideology and nationalistic idolatry” (Huxley 1962). The author therefore points out that the chances of survival as well as development of the human race lie in

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ecological consciousness, sustained development and the reduced exploitation of natural resources: How does the human race propose to survive and, if possible, improve the lot and the intrinsic quality of its individual members? Do we propose to live on this planet in symbiotic harmony with our environment? Or, preferring to be wantonly stupid, shall we choose to live like murderous and suicidal parasites that kill their host and so destroy themselves? (Huxley 1962)

Huxley points to human hubris as a source of the western perception of man as the ruler and colonizer of nature: “Committing that sin of overweening bumptiousness …we behave as though we were not members of earth’s ecological community, as though we were privileged and, in some sort, supernatural beings and could throw our weight around like gods. But in fact we are, among other things, animals–emergent parts of the natural order” (Huxley 1962). Similarly to Schopenhauer, Huxley links the usurped privilege and the lack of consideration in the treatment of animals with Judeo-Christian culture. As a reasonable alternative, the notion of interconnectedness is again evoked: Animals have no souls; therefore, according to the most authoritative Christian theologians, they may become treated as though they were things. The truth, as we are now beginning to realize, is that even things ought not to be treated as mere things. They should be treated as though they were parts of a vast living organism. … If we hope to be well treated by nature we must stop talking about “mere things” and start treating our planet with intelligence and consideration. (Huxley 1962).

In his novel, Island, Aldous Huxley presents the utopian, peaceful society of Pala, a secluded island in the Pacific Ocean. Pala’s political, educational and agricultural systems are based on selected principles of Mahayana Buddhism. The reader, through the eyes of an outsider, Englishman Will Farnaby, witnesses the decline and fall of Pala, as eventually the island is invaded by military forces of a neighbouring country, Rendang. Huxley presents not only political but also ecological aspects of the inevitable colonisation of Pala by contrasting the attitudes of the invaders with those of the Palanese. The power-hungry metropolis represents western greed which leads to the exploitation of both people and the environment. In opposition to this, using the example of the Palanese mentality Huxley presents a model of ecological consciousness combined with Buddhist ethics characterised by compassion and humility towards nature. The Palanese take pride in the fact that their society stands in clear opposition to western capitalism and its fierce market competition, as their economy and agriculture are based on “streamlined cooperative techniques for buying and selling and profit-sharing and financing” (Huxley 1973, 150). Over the

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exploitation of the rich natural resources of the island, they value sustained growth and thoughtful, though unprofitable exploration of oil. The Palanese enjoy a stable gold-backed currency; they produce their own money and mine gold. Over-consumption is averted by basing every aspect of life on Buddhist philosophy and the Four Noble Truths, which teach that desire for material possessions is one of the sources of suffering. The island’s economic system supports political stability as it does not allow anybody to gain influence or power due to their wealth. Financial independence initially protects the Palanese from outside interest in their resources. However, Pala has no military forces or hierarchy and does not engage in any wars. In the face of an invasion, the Palanese decide to resort to non-violent resistance. As a contrast to this approach, Huxley presents the neighbouring country of Rendang, ruled by a power-hungry and violent dictator, Colonel Dipa. Together with an oil tycoon, Joe Aldehyde, Dipa plans to turn Pala into a military state, as he perceives Pala as merely a source of natural resources and its inhabitants as a cheap workforce. The invasion of Pala, it is suggested, bring about environmental destruction caused by massive and profit-driven utilization of natural resources, as well as the exploitation of the inhabitants of the island. The Palanese place great emphasis on the ecological education of their children, as they believe that “elementary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism” (Huxley 1973, 220). As Will learns from one of his hosts, the education in ecology is an introduction to the knowledge about universal ethics: ‘Conservation morality gives nobody an excuse for feeling superior or claiming special privileges. ‘Do as you would be done by’ applies to our dealings with all kinds of life in every part of the world. We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence’ (Huxley 1973, 220).

Thus, the Palanese children begin a very early education in ecology, which is perceived as practical acts of compassion towards the environment. The lessons in respect for nature are accompanied with images of man-made environmental destruction, as warnings of the potential tragic consequences of one’s actions: we show them photographs of what has happened in … all the places where greedy, stupid people have tried to take without giving, to exploit without love or understanding. Treat Nature well, and Nature will treat you well. Hurt or destroy Nature, and Nature will soon destroy you (Huxley 1973, 220).

In the course of the novel, Huxley frequently reflects on the differences between the western and eastern human-nature relationships. The most notable example of an ecocritical motif is the confrontation of the main character with the Buddhist

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legend of Muchalinda. During a visit to a Palanese home, Will notices a curious statue of the Buddha who is sheltered by a snake’s hood: Within the niche was a stone Buddha, about half life-size, seated upon a curiously grooved cylindrical pedestal and surmounted by a kind of lead-shaped canopy that tapered down behind him into a broad pillar. … Then, with a shock of surprise, he noticed something strange and even disquieting. What he had taken for an oddly ornamented cylindrical pedestal had suddenly revealed itself as a huge coiled snake. And that downward tapering canopy under which the Buddha was sitting was the expanded hood, with the flattened head at the centre of its leading edge, of a giant cobra. (Huxley 1973, 199–200)

His hostess explains the meaning of this depiction of the Buddha. When, during the time of his enlightenment, the Buddha was meditating under a tree, Muchalinda, the king of snakes, came out to pay his respects. As Huxley (1973, 200) puts it, “the Snake King crawled out of his hole, yards and yards of him, to pay Nature’s homage to Wisdom”. When a sudden storm began, the cobra wrapped itself around the Buddha and spread his hood over his head in order to protect him from the wind and torrential rain (Huxley 1973, 200). Will notices a substantial difference between the portrayal of snakes in western and eastern culture, as his closest association with the statue is a quote from the book of Genesis: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between her seed and thy seed” (Huxley 1973, 200). The difference in how a snake is depicted in Christian and Buddhist scriptures mirrors contrary perceptions of the relationship of people and nature. The Palanese consider themselves as an integral part of nature. What they teach their children is respect and compassion towards nature, which, as they believe, nature can return. For Westerners, here represented by Will, nature seems to be a wild power which has to be tamed and controlled. However, as self-proclaimed rulers of nature, they have a cautious or even hostile attitude towards some animals. Will’s hosts perceive this approach as a source of “pointless cockfights between Man and Nature, between Nature and God, between the Flesh and the Spirit” (Huxley 1973, 200). To sum up, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the inherent connection between certain elements of Buddhist doctrine and western environmental concerns emerges in the form of Buddhist ecocriticism. In the ecocritical reflections Buddhist beliefs of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living beings, combined with the values of compassion, wisdom and kindness are contrasted with the Judeo-Christian belief in the human dominion over their environment, which, as suggested by Schopenhauer, reaches back to Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing

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that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1, 28). Moreover, both Huxley and Arthur view western consumerism as a blinding, destructive power which may lead to irreversible environmental devastation and both suggest that seeing the world in the context of the interconnectedness of all beings can contribute to human ecological consciousness.

References Arthur, Chris. 1999. Irish Nocturnes. Aurora: Davies Group. Arthur, Chris. 2002. Irish Willow. Aurora: Davies Group. Arthur, Chris. 2004. “The Sinfulness of Normality.” Mississippi Review Vol. 32, No. 3 (Fall): 105–109. Arthur, Chris. 2009. Irish Elegies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Barnhill, David B and Roger S. Gottlieb, eds. 2001. Deep ecology and World Religions: New Essays on Sacred Grounds. Albany: State University of New York Press. Batchelor, Martine and Kerry Brown. 1992. Buddhism and ecology. London: Cassell Publishers Limited. Flannery, Eoin. 2015. Ireland and Ecocriticism: Literature, History and Environmental Justice. London: Routledge. Heise, Ursula K. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism and the Question of Literature.” In Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives. ed. Ronnie Roos and Alex Hunt, 251–257. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Henning, Daniel. 2002. Buddhism and Deep Ecology. Bloomington: Author House. Howard, Mairtín. 2004. “The Otherworld and the here and now: An introduction to religious themes in Chris Arthur’s essays.” Studies in Religion 33/1: 71–89. Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. London and New York: Routledge. Huxley, Aldous. 1962. “Politics of Ecology.” www.microdutch.org/guru/HuxleyOnline/politics_of_ecology.html. Huxley, Aldous. 1964. Collected Essays. New York: Bantam Books. Huxley, Aldous. 1973. Island. London: Penguin Books. Kaza, Stephanie. 2006. “The Greening of Buddhism: Promise and Perils”. In Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb, 184–207. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2014. Religion. Tr. T. Bailey Saunders, Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/ arthur/religion/chapter6.html.

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The Book of Genesis. English Standard Version. http://biblehub.com/genesis/1-28. htm. The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra. 1993. tran. Thomas Cleary. Boston: Shambala. Tucher, Mary E. and Duncan R. Williams, eds. 1997. Buddhism and ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Anjali Daimari

Towards a Postcolonial Ecocriticism: A Reading of Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam Abstract: The article is an attempt at reading Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam from a postcolonial ecocritical perspective. Taking into consideration the fact that the natural environment forms an integral part of the backdrop and landscape of the literary works from this region of North India, such a reading seems fully justified. Key words: ecocriticism, literature form Northeast India, environmentalism, postcolonial ecology.

Mamang Dai is one of the leading writers of India’s Northeast. She is from Arunachal Pradesh and it is this place that becomes the setting of her writings; indeed, not just the setting, it is the source from which she draws all her creative resources. Her creative works include a poetry collection River Poems (2004); two short story collections Once Upon a Moontime: From the Magical Story World of Arunachal Pradesh (2005) and The Sky Queen (2005); and three novels Legends of Pensam (2006); Stupid Cupid (2009) and The Black Hill (2014). Her works of non-fiction include Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land (2002) and Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal Pradesh (2005). Mamang Dai’s writings present an attempt by the writer to contextualise herself and to grapple with those issues which confront the present generation. She was the recipient of the Verrier Elwin Award in 2003 from the State government of Arunachal Pradesh and in 2011 she was awarded the Padma Shri1 from the Government of India. She was formerly a member of the Indian Administrative Service. She left the service to pursue a career in journalism and writing. She has been a correspondent for various newspapers, including The Telegraph, Hindustan Times and The Sentinel, and has also written for the television and radio. She is currently the General Secretary of the Arunachal Pradesh Literary Society, a member of the North East Writers’ Forum and a General Council member of the Sahitya and Sangeet Natak Akademi. The rich flora and fauna, the rituals, the tribal customs and traditions, the practices, the way of life, the colonial impact, and the impact of modernity and globalization featuring in her books become an interesting site for research. In this study 1 Padma Shri is the fourth highest civilian award in India and announced every year on India’s Republic Day, 26 January.

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an attempt will be made to read two of her novels from a postcolonial ecocritical perspective. Writing about the relationship between environmentalism and postcolonialism Rob Nixon is of the view that it is “one of reciprocal indifference or mistrust” (Nixon 2012, 233). He reads a ‘silence’ that “characterizes most environmentalists’ stance towards postcolonial literature and theory” and likewise a silence on the part of postcolonial critics “on the subject of environmental literature” (233). In his essay he traces the predominance of American writers in ecocriticism to the neglect of other writers. He discusses “four main schisms between the dominant concerns of postcolonialists and ecocritics” (235). He refers to Literature and the Environment which, according to him, makes an attempt to bridge the divide and “marks a shift away from the American ecocritical obsession with wilderness writing and the literature of Jeffersonian agrarianism” (244). He observes that several of the essays address indigenous land rights, community displacement, and toxicity, often in the context of urban poor or rural experience, concerns that readily connect with the environmental priorities that predominate in postcolonial writing (244). However, he writes that despite its expansive title the book restricts itself to an almost all-American cast. He, therefore, writes that “the urgent need for a more global inclusiveness remains unaddressed. Towards the conclusion of his essay he observes that “the isolation of postcolonial literary studies from environmental concerns has limited the field’s intellectual approach” (247). At the present time literature departments are playing a crucial role in “greening the humanities” but as Rob Nixon observes unlike Jay Parini’s essay “The Greening of the Humanities” readers and critics have to look beyond the American predominance. There is ample body of work by writers from India, Africa and elsewhere that would make one to read literature from ecocritical perspective through their lenses. As mentioned this paper is an attempt to read Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam (2006) from an ecocritical perspective, as so far few books coming from this part of India have been subjected to ecocritical reading. Taking into consideration the fact that the natural environment forms an integral part of the backdrop and landscape of her novels such a reading is fully justified. Many of the concerns which preoccupy postcolonial and ecocritical thinkers find resonance in these texts which provide a site for such an engagement and scrutiny. An ecocritical reading of a postcolonial text offers a fruitful alliance between the two critical/theoretical schools that opens up new aesthetic horizons. The paper begins with the insight that Mamang Dai’s fiction can offer into ecological issues

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and relationships. The first part of the paper will try to place ecocriticism in the postcolonial context and the second part will attempt an eco-critical reading of Mamang Dai’s text in the light of postcolonial ecocritical framework.

I As has been observed by Rob Nixon and others there has been a tendency to see ecocriticism as a concern of the West. Most of the recent scholarship theorizing the development of ecocriticism and environmentalism has positioned Europe and the United States as the epistemological centres, while the rest of the world has, for material or ideological reasons, been thought to have arrived belatedly, or with less focused commitment, to an ecologically sustainable future (DeLoughrey and Handley 2011, 8). However, as Huggan points out referring to the works of Adams and Mulligan; Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin; Nixon; O’Brien; Platz and Sluyter, “a growing body of work exists…to suggest a convergence between the interests of postcolonial and ecologically minded critics” (Huggan 2008, 64–65). According to Huggan postcolonial criticism has effectively renewed its “commitment to the environment, reiterating its insistence on the inseparability of current crises of ecological mismanagement from historical legacies of imperialistic exploitation and authoritarian abuse” (65). A huge body of work now exists authored by non-Western environmental scholars like Gadgil, Ramachandra Guha and Vandana Shiva that explore the intersections between postcolonial and ecological concerns. Ramachandra Guha’s historical account of the Chipko movement in the 1970s, and Vandana Shiva’s analysis of the disastrous consequences of the Green Revolution for subsistence-farming communities in late twentieth-century Punjab are instances that suggest that environmental issues cannot be separated from questions of social justice. Guha’s and Shiva’s works show the impact of colonialist policies in the postcolonial independent Indian state. In her work Vandana Shiva critiques the “centralized management system” in pursuing “a policy of planned destruction of diversity in nature and culture” (Shiva 1998, 12). In the same tone Guha is critical of the government’s attempts to homogenize late-capitalist vision of economic progress that is beneficial only to the nations ruling elite (Guha 2000, 195–196). In their recent book Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment, Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin also point out the fallacious belief that “the postcolonial field is inherently anthropocentric (human-centred)” and this attitude according to them “overlooks a long history of ecological concern in postcolonial criticism” (quoted in DeLoughrey and Handley 2012, 10). The book Postcolonial Ecologies tries to bridge this gap as the writers feel that “an ecological approach

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to literature by definition is not restricted by geopolitical borders, language, and nationality” (DeLoughrey & Handley, 10). By insisting on the vitality and even necessity of a postcolonial ecocritical frame, the writers of this book “foreground[s] literature’s engagement with the globalization of the environment, a process that has been formulated by a long and complex history of empire”. In their book Postcolonial Ecologies the writers observe that “to deny colonial and environmental histories as mutually constitutive misses the central role the exploitation of natural resources plays in any imperial project” (10). Given the ample body of scholarship on nature and empire, they ask, why environmental concerns are often understood as separate from the postcolonial ones. The writers of Postcolonial Ecologies call for a methodological shift in ecocriticism that according to them should address colonial legacies and postcolonial contexts and turn to indigenous and postcolonial ecologies (19). According to them “to separate the history of empire from ecocritical thought dehistoricizes nature and often contributes to a discourse of green orientalism” and therefore the need to align methodologies of postcolonialism and ecocriticism (20).

II If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism, it is the primacy of the geographical in it. Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control. For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss of locality to the outsider; its geographical identity must thereafter be searched for and somehow restored…Because of the presence of the colonizing outsider, the land is recoverable at first only through imagination. (Said 1994, 77)

What Edward Said articulates in these lines is of relevance to my attempt to read Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam from a postcolonial ecocritical perspective. The lived experiences of people as represented in many of the texts written by writers of this region expose the apparent lack within postcolonial studies. In its preoccupation with theory postcolonial studies has failed to look at imaginative literatures elsewhere. A postcolonial ecocritical approach leads one to reorient one’s focus on issues such as land and deforestation which otherwise are not addressed. Legends of Pensam (2006) provide rich settings for a postcolonial ecocritical reading, set as it is in the hills of Arunachal Pradesh. In the author’s note to Legends of Pensam Mamang Dai writes: Arunachal Pradesh in North East India, bordering Bhutan, China and Myanmar, is one of the largest states of the country, and also one of its greenest… . Part of the Eastern

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Himalaya, the land is criss-crossed by rivers and high mountain ranges running northsouth that divide five river valleys. (2006, xi)

It is home to “the Adis” among other tribes, who “practice an animistic faith that is woven around forest ecology and co-existence with the natural world” (xi). The author hints at the remoteness of her place when she writes: “Travel to the distant villages still entails cumbersome river crossings, elephant rides, and long foot marches through dense forest or over high mountain passes” (xi). Immediately the readers are drawn to this part of India which has a different story to tell, a world cut off from mainland India. Dai’s narrative opens with a generalized sense of expectation and closes with a provocative question about nature that is at once “unchanged” and thoroughly imbricated in a system of exploitation. Dai through her narrative exposes the difficulties that people in these remote hills encounter in the name of development and progress with the onset of colonisation. What was once dear to the people– land, forests, traditional institutions, legends, stories–was now in danger of being lost. “Land was being stolen. Forests were being cut and logs floated away down the river. New fences marked old territory and it seemed a curtain had fallen over the old villages” (163). There’s a sense of loss as the narrator says, “What was once sacred, the old sense of joy was being lost” (163). In the face of the changes sweeping the valley we see the urgency of the narrator to save the orality which is rooted in these traditions: “It was important to record our stories. The old rhapsodists were a dying breed, and when they were gone, who would remember?” (176). Rakut’s words, “We are peripheral people. We are not politicians, scientists or builders of empires. Not even the well-known citizen or the outrageous one. Just peripheral people, thinking out our thoughts!” (190) are significant. It appears to be Dai’s positioning as a writer to show how even the voices of people writing from the margins should also be figured in debates on postcolonialism and ecocriticism, because the issues that confront people in these parts rarely form part of discussions2. To Frantz Fanon land was a primary site of postcolonial recuperation, sustainability, and dignity. Edward Said, too, argued that the imagination was vital to liberating land from the restrictions of colonialism. In the introduction to their work Postcolonial Ecologies, DeLoughrey and Handley discuss Fanon and Said

2 Similar questioning has been done by the author of this paper in an article interrogating Postcolonialism in“Interrogating the Postcolonial: Writing/s from India’s North-East” in Phoenix, Sri Lanka Journal of English in the Commonwealth, Volume X & XI, 2013 & 2014.

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as two of the foremost thinkers who framed postcolonial writing ecologically, positioning it as a process of recovery, identification, and historical mythmaking “enabled by the land”. Land figures prominently in Dai’s narrative through a web of stories and images told brilliantly in lyrical prose. It is her attempt through her writing to imaginatively preserve the “beautiful landscape” of Arunachal Pradesh in the face of inevitable changes that rock the otherwise pristine hills. In this world the old villagers walk miles every day and say: “When you look at the land you forget your aches and pains” (Dai 2006, xi). It is the land which ties the people to their place. This is aptly put by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity” (Fanon 2004, 9). As Dai writes “Far from the city it really is a beautiful landscape. So far, isolation has been the best protection for the pristine forests and rich bio-diversity of Arunachal Pradesh” (2006, xii). There have been interruptions in these pristine forests and colonialism and modernity strikes even an isolated place like Arunachal Pradesh as we see towards the end of Legends of Pensam and even Stupid Cupid. Legends of Pensam (2006) opens with references to “river systems”, “line of hills”, “green jungle”, “deepest ravines”, “higher mountains”(3). In the first few chapters Dai shows the relationship of man and nature by mythically narrating the story of Hoxo from his birth. Interestingly the narrative begins: “When Hoxo first opened his eyes to the world, he saw green” (7) …The colour green always soothed him. It was the colour of escape and solitude” (8). Hoxo’s boyhood is summed up thus: Every day the boys found something new. Every day they explored the hills further and further away from the village, and every day, for many years, they climbed to the flat top of their favourite hill and flung themselves down on the open ground just talking and speaking their thoughts to the trees, the cane bushes and the sharp summer light. (8–9)

This is the land where stories of Birbik, the water serpent proliferate in the “collective memory”. In the midst of change people held on to their land: “This was her land. She had chosen it over love. She did not ask her self if she was happy” (Dai 2006, 115). Family, relationships, customs and traditions are important: “… they would raise a family, guard their land and live among their people observing the ancient customs of their clan. Surely, these were enough gifts for one lifetime” (120). What is interesting to note in this narrative, is how far the village people’s livelihood is dependent on what nature provides–“bamboo verandah,” “wood fires,” “dusty village with its one road,” “rice beer” (17). Nigerian author Chinua Achebe emphasized the radical ontological shift in understanding place that occurred through the process of European colonialism and

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Christian missionization in his well-known 1958 novel Things Fall Apart3. Although Achebe’s text is rarely cited as an ecocritical text, his inscription of the transition from Igbo to British colonial rule in West Africa anticipates Said’s description of the need for the imagination in responding to “the loss of locality to the outsider”. Similarly, Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam, too, can be read as a loss of place to the outsider. Dai shows how attachment to the land or localism itself is an inherently ethical or ecological position. Like Achebe we can read Dai’s text as one that shows how deeply the community’s language and being are constituted by the land and how that dynamic relationship shifts radically according to the social, cultural, and linguistic forces of empire (DeLoughrey and Handley 2011, 6). The postcolonial ecology of Legends of Pensam is evident in the way the villagers are attached to their land. The harmony in this place is disturbed, as we are told, “since the arrival of firearms into these hills” (Dai 2006, 10). Hoxo’s father Lutor is mistaken for a prey and becomes a victim of this intrusion in the otherwise calm village life. In fact both the hunter and the hunted become victims as “the distraught man who shot him” had mistaken him for a ‘deer’ or a ‘bear’. The innocent hunter is banished from his village and there is pathos in the last line of the chapter when we read: “And Hoxo’s mother became one more widow in the village where so many young women had lost their men in hunting accidents” (11). In the next chapter the narrator writes about her visit to her mother’s ancestral village Duyang with her friend from the city, Mona. Here she recalls a visit to Hoxo’s house in the hills “always full of people” (12). She describes the journey undertaken by the visitors to Hoxo’s house as “full of stories about the journey: the rutted roads, the boat crossing, the thinning jungle” (12). She writes of the innocence and warmth of village people like Losi, Hoxo’s wife as well as Hoxo’s mother. In “the strange case of Kalen, the hunter” we are given a glimpse of how tragedy unfolds in the otherwise calm village and how people accept such accidents with stoicism and resilience. In all this we are told how it is the gun that leads to these accidents. Such deaths were an almost everyday occurrence in the simple life of these villagers.“The man called Loma stood still with his gun and said that he had just fired at a monkey on the opposite bank” (14). The monkey turns out to be Kalen. The gun in the story stands as a metaphor for development and the deaths caused by the misuse of the gun show the conflict of tradition and development. In “Small Histories Recalled in the Season of Rain” Dai gives a description of the place during the rainy season:

3 DeLoughrey & Handley bring Achebe’s Things Fall Apart into discussion while dwelling on postcolonial ecologies in the Introduction to their book. For more see Postcolnial Ecologies.

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Anjali Daimari Every day I saw clouds dropping lower and lower like ominous waves. The hills were blue, their outline rimmed in black, and the trees were still. Soon, the first fat beads of water would tear the giant leaves of the wild yam. Then fierce, hissing rain would cover the land like the sea. (36)

The onslaught and fury of nature is something that the people of the place have to live with and it speaks of the resilience of the people. It rains during the day, it rains all night. It can rain non-stop for sixty-two days at a time. Not a peep of sunshine. Not a breath of wind. Every summer the tangled undergrowth clinging to the hills is swept away by the downpour, causing landslides that cut off all communication and links. (37)

The natural calamities the people have learnt to live with do not compare with the hardships they have to encounter with the coming of the colonisers. Dai poignantly goes on to narrate the otherwise isolated people’s encounter with the migluns (colonisers): But it wasn’t as if change hadn’t touched our land, or had come only recently. The first white priests, surveyors and soldiers had begun arriving in the region almost two hundred years ago, in the early 1800s. Since then, people from other worlds had come and gone, though the only records of their journeys are the stories that the older men and women remember”. (37–38)

They make roads, penetrate through the thick forests thereby leading to deforestation. The mercilessness and mercenary motives of the colonizers find resonance here: The men recruited from the hills were given rations and bedding but the work was the work of the devil… The migluns were terrifying in their energy and determination. In the lashing rain and the wet earth that buried men up to their waists they drove elephants to cross rivers, remove logs and trample the jungle. The elephants sing and hurtrained and quivered to the shouts of their mahouts, slipped, struggled, knelt, struggled on, and many of the poor animals lost their footing and hurtled off the mountainside bellowing like mythical beasts with their eyes rolled up skywards. It was unimaginable, what the migluns were trying to achieve. (39)

The road metaphor linked with development and at the same time destruction of the forests occurs again and again in Legends of Pensam as also in Stupid Cupid. About the Stillwell road Dai writes: “No other road in the world had taken as high a toll of human lives as this one; it had been dubbed ‘a-man-a-mile road’” (40). The natives would recollect it in this way: They “would talk animatedly of the thunder of cargo trucks and bulldozers, the shouts of men and how the jungle burst into flame as the mountain tops were blown off and the labour force struggled to claw their way through the rubble and drag the wretched road across the mutilated hills” (40). But now the road had become obsolete. Hoxo says: ‘It is a forgotten path.

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There is only jungle and mosquitoes … There are no villages. It is a no man’s land and the only people living there now are the men with guns (41). In “Travel the Road” Mamang Dai records the invasion of this beautiful landscape: “The early decades of the 20th century were times of great upheaval, when even our remote hills were opened up to the world” (47). There is mention of the Abor Expeditionary Field Force (1912) which “hacked its way through the chaos of virgin forest to capture the culprits and send them away to prison in the Andaman Islands” (48). In one instance the writer mentions how when one white man had been killed “the soldiers were trampling the sad, disquieted hills and hunting the killer with all the might of the universe” (51). It made the people wonder: “Why should anybody look at a man with disgust when he was a man of the land and the other was a visitor trying to conquer the villages with lies and bags of gifts?” (51). This finds an echo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart when one character asks, “does the white man understand our custom about land?” and the other retorts, “How can he when he does not even speak our tongue?” (1994, 176). In the Chapter “The Road” we see the first signs of change: “Pigo became the first choice of the British officers in the area, and for a while it was the only town in the region with tarred roads and concrete buildings and electricity and daily bazaars” (147). The construction of the road in the village brings about change as “old certainties and beliefs” give way to the new ones. Duan in the text embodies the epitome of change among the villagers as he is “mesmerized by images of a road, vehicles and long rows of electric poles linked by taut black transmission wires. “Progress”, “new schools” have been promised to the villagers and they await them with hope (149–150). Progress is seen in terms of the material and as stated by Ivan Illich our world-view is embodied in our institutions and we “are now their prisoners. Factories, news media, hospitals, governments and schools produce goods and services packaged to contain our view of the world. We–the rich–conceive of progress as the expansion of these establishments” (Illich 1998, 95). But the hopes of progress and development only bring disillusionment and problems which few villagers would have imagined. In fifty years only ‘one terrible road’ was all they ‘managed’. And what does it bring them? “Outsiders. Thieves. Disease. Will this road bring us good health? A new school? Look at the one we have now. The first school built in the region–but has anyone showed any interest?” (Dai 2006, 156). The expectations of the naive villagers do not fructify as their safe and trusted way of life give way to a sense of insecurity. We observe deterioration in values of young people. This is echoed by Dai as the disillusioned villagers realise: Their houses were not safe anymore, everyone knew that. Why, she had heard that young boys were robbing the supermarkets in town and teenagers were extorting money and

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The narrator regrets that the “old days of war and valour had vanished” (156). Ancestral lands had to be surrendered to the government and the fear was that “the road and the things that came with it seemed to be strangling them and threatening to steal their identity like a thief creeping into their villages and fields” (156–157). Rahnema points out how “development did not prove to be the panacea those elites believed it to be”. Though the new governments of the “Third World” accorded it priority in their official discourse, a great majority of them soon realized that the objectives they had set for themselves were unrealistic and impossible for them to achieve. They had also to admit that not only did development fail to resolve the old problems it was supposed to address, but it brought in new ones of incomparably greater magnitude. Not only did development prove to be simply a myth for the millions it was destined to serve; the very premises and assumptions on which it was founded were misleading. (Rahnema 378)

Rahnema goes on to show how “development was indeed a poisonous gift to the populations it set out to help” (Rahnema 381). This is articulated by the villagers in Dai’s text: “We have sown grain together and we have reaped harvests, and we have survived. Now stop sowing poison!” (Dai 154). For as Rahnema goes on to say, development “introduced a paraphernalia of mirages into their natural environment, and at the same time dispossessed them of most of the things that gave meaning and warmth to their lives” (Rahnema 1998b, 381). The local way of storing grains is beautifully described by Dai which is a testament to the bioethics ruptured by British intervention: In these villages, the granaries were grouped together and built on stilts with a heavy circular piece of wood, like a wheel, attached to every post. This was to keep the rats out. All the grain for the year was stored here. The wealth of a family in the form of old beads, brass bracelets, marriage gifts and huge surns of beaten metal was also stashed away among the mounds of rice, millet and maize. (2006, 147)

This change is well put in the following lines: “The village had moved to its own quiet rhythm for centuries, with old certainties and beliefs, but the road was changing all that. It had been over a year now, and the road was still being built” (148). The ill consequences of colonial rule are best expressed in the following lines: Hoxo then told us that once upon a time there had existed a green and virgin land under a gracious and just rule… Food was sown, harvested, stored and dispensed fairly. Fathers and sons followed in the footsteps of their ancestors.

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But the big trees were brought down. The spirits of our ancestors who dwelt in these high and secret places fell with the trees. They were homeless, and so they went away. And everything had changed since then. The canopy of shelter and tradition had fallen. (42)

In her book Staying Alive (1988), Vandana Shiva argues, “The killing of people by the murder of nature is an invisible form of violence which is today the biggest threat to justice and peace” (36). This violence, one reads in Legends of Pensam, where the old way of life steeped in nature, gives way to the inadaptable new. The old days of war and valour had vanished. They had surrendered ancestral lands to the government and now the road and the things that came with it seemed to be strangling them and threatening to steal their identity like a thief creeping into their villages and fields. (156–157)

This speaks of the rupture that has taken place. A people who once had communion with nature and lived on its subsistence saw unfolding before their eyes crushing of their belief systems and their way of life A striking passage in the text is the reference to a notebook entry by an officer which is of importance in the context of revelation of the mindset of these migluns (colonisers): The forest is like an animal. It breathes all around us and we never know when it will suddenly rise up like a green snake out of the decaying vegetation or descend on us like a mantle of bats reeking of blood and venom. The trees are enormous and sinister. They stand all around us and you can feel them looking down and waiting. One fears to move. The pile of rotting leaves and clumps of fern are hideous traps, and yesterday the stakes that fly out from there injured three of our native men. Their feet have been slashed open and they are screaming that they will die because these fire-hardened bamboo panjees are sharpened like blades and the points are dipped in poison. It is a terrible war and I wish I had never come to record such terror and suffering. (52)

This notebook entry shows the perception of the British towards the natives. This is in contrast to the natives’ perception of their own land: Later, the old headman said to us, “They think we are a village of horror, but it is not true! The leaves of the orange trees glisten. The hills are radiant with the light of the sun. The laughing children tramp to school down the same steps of stony earth that the soldiers marched up…We are not a village of shame”. (55–56)

It is the nature of colonial powers, as DeLoughrey and Handley put it “to suppress the history of their own violence” and therefore “the land and even the ocean become all the more crucial as recuperative sites of postcolonial historiography” (8). In Legends of Pensam we can see an attempt by the writer in subtle ways not only to expose this violence which is so endemic to colonial policy, but also

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through the power of stories and orality to recuperate histories of a people who are often not heard. In trying to apply an ecocritical reading to a text like Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam it is perhaps proper to conclude in the words of Gadgil and Guha, key thinkers of postcolonial ecology that “The loss of forests, the depletion of the soil, the contamination of the rivers, all had profound negative impacts on rural and tribal communities” (2006, xiv). It is this negative impact of the loss of forests that is at the heart of Mamang Dai’s Legends of Pensam, something that started with colonial contact and which continues to the present day. Only the players have changed but the exploitation of land and natural resources continue, and this forms the subject of her novel Stupid Cupid (2009). As Gadgil and Guha write: To meet the needs of the corporate sector and the consuming classes, the Government has encouraged a new scramble for resources in the tribal areas of central India and in North-east. These regions are on their way to becoming our ‘internal colonies’, as wave of mining and hydroelectric schemes undermine local ecologies, and disrupt and displace local communities, creating widespread discontent. (1992, xv)

This discontent has found articulation in imaginative literatures produced from Northeast India. The ecological consequence of British intervention is taken note of by some writers like Mamang Dai because one cannot deny “the essential interdependence of ecological and social changes that came in the wake of colonial rule” (DeLoughrey and Handley 2011, 5).

References Achebe, Chinua. 1994. Things Falls Apart. New York: Anchor. Dai, Mamang.2006. The Legends of Pensam. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. —. 2009. Stupid Cupid. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. Daimari, Anjali. 2013 & 2014. “Interrogating the Postcolonial: Writing/s from India’s North-East.” In Phoenix, Sri Lanka Journal of English in the Commonwealth X & XI. DeLoughrey, Elizabeth and George B. Handley (eds.) 2011. Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. New York: Oxford University Press. —. “Introduction: Toward an Aesthetics of the Earth.” In Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment, 3–41. Fanon, Frantz. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Gadgil, Madhav & Ramachandra Guha. 1992. The Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Guha, Ramachandra. 2000. Environmentalism: A Global History. New York: Longman. Huggan, Graham. 2008. Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the future of Postcolonial Studies. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Illich, Ivan. 1998.“Development as Planned Poverty.” In The Post-Development Reader. London&New Jersey: ZedBooks, (Second Impression), 94–102. Nixon, Rob. 2012. “Environmentalism and Postcolonialism.” In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba et al. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, (Fourth Impression). Rahnema, Majidand Victoria Bawtree (eds.) 1998. The Post-Development Reader. London&New Jersey: Zed Books, (Second Impression). Rahnema, Majid. 1998a. “Introduction.” In The Post-Development Reader. London& New Jersey: ZedBooks, (Second Impression), ix–xix. —. 1998b. “Towards Post-Development: Searching for Signposts, A New Language and New Paradigms.” In The Post-Development Reader. London & New Jersey: ZedBooks, (Second Impression), 377–403. Roy, Arundhati. 1999. The Cost of Living. Toronto: Vintage Canada. Said, Edward W. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage. Shiva, Vandana. 1998. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books.

Patrycja Austin

Liminality as Seen Through the Gardens of Salman Rushdie’s Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty Eight Days Abstract: Following John Thieme’s belief that gardens in postcolonial literature are discursively constructed liminal spaces this article engages with the various forms of border crossing in Salman Rushdie’s novel focusing on the problems of migration and belonging, colonialism and postcoloniality, the intermingling of cultures, ecological crisis and terrorism. Key words: liminal spaces, migration, ecocriticism, nature and civilisation. What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These “in-between” spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood–singular or communal–that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself. Homi Bhabha (1994, 1–2) The real art of gardening is to make a plant that has come from distant lands not only look at home but to feel at home. Lionel de Rothschild (quoted in Brown 2006)

“We live in a world of borders. Territorial, political, juridical and economic borders of all kinds quite literally define every aspect of social life in the twentyfirst century” (Nail 2016, 1). With this statement Thomas Nail opens his 2016 Theory of the Border in which he tones down the euphoria of globalization and maintains that the different parts of our world are, both geographically and socially, more sealed off than ever before. Observing the current events making the headlines of major news sources it is difficult not to agree with Nail that since 9/11 there has been a proliferation of new kinds of borders including: “miles of new razor-wire fences, tons of new concrete security walls, numerous offshore detention centers, biometric passport databases, and security checkpoints of all kinds in schools, airports, and along various roadways across the world” (1). And yet, Salman Rushdie’s new novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Days (2015) begins with borders which are leaking, with slits between worlds across which there is a tumultuous and fecund movement. This, Nail agrees, is one of

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the characteristics of the borders, historically they have always leaked and thus constituted a stimulating liminal zone (Nail 2016, 8), what David Newman calls, the transition zone, within which cultural, linguistic and social hybridity can emerge, resulting in the formation of a subcultural buffer zone within which movement from one side to the other eases up. In some cases it can bring about the formation of transnational, transboundary, spaces with the emergence of new hybrid regional identities. (Newman 2014, 39)

There are numerous such transboundary spaces in Rushdie’s novel yet the major focus in this paper will be on the garden which literally and figuratively is a fertile ground for hybrid forms to emerge. In his Postcolonial Geographies: Out of Place (2016), John Thieme alerts the reader to the extent the representation of plants and gardens in postcolonial texts is discursively constructed and discerns the meanings that have been historically assigned to the concept of the garden. He writes: “Midway between nature and culture, between the undifferentiated space of wilderness and the built environment, gardens are liminal places” (16). Quoting Yi-Fu Tuan he adds that they are “subject to being ‘endow[ed] with value’ in a multiplicity of ways” (Tuan, 1977, 6 quoted in Thieme, 53). The garden in Two Years, called La Incoerenza, situated on the outskirts of present day New York is central for the story not only because some of the most important events take place here: Geronimo, a gardener from Bombay living in New York discovers that his feet do not touch the ground any more, his wife is struck by a lightning, and Dunia, a jinnia from the parallel universe of the jinns, the Peristan, defeats the last of the evil jinns. It is also a complex liminal space where forms and ideas of various kind and origin meet and interact in order to provide a commentary on such issues as migration and belonging, colonialism and postcoloniality, the intermingling of cultures, ecological crisis or terrorism. It is first portrayed at the moment of its destruction after a storm that hit the metropolis: the stone spirals that echoed the Iron Age Celts, the Sunken Garden which put its Floridian cousin in the shade, the analemma sundial, a replica of the one at the Greenwich Meridian, the rhododendron forest, the Minoan labyrinth with the fat stone Minotaur at its heart, the secret hedge-hidden nooks, all of them lost beneath the black mud of history, the tree roots, standing up in the black mud like the arms of the drowning men. (Rushdie 2015, 24)

The first thing that strikes in this image is the hybrid array featuring various time periods and geographical locations, historical as well as mythical, real and fictional. The focus is on the intermingling and intercrossing: the rhododendrons are known for being extensively hybridized in cultivation, the Minotaur is part human, part a bull. The description moreover places emphasis on a copy, an echo,

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a replica. Furthermore, The Minotaur is the title of a surrealist magazine whose covers were designed by such artists as Picasso, Dali or Magritte. Finally, gardening itself can be recognized as a form of art. The garden is a liminal space first and foremost because it is a hybrid between nature and civilization or civilized nature as the story’s gardener “adds his own small sense of beauty to the natural beauty of the earth” (Rushdie 2015, 101). Geronimo decides to become a gardener while training to become an architect. On visiting a house in Gujarat he is struck by the plants that creep into the building, overcoming the boundary between the natural and the man-made: “it was the garden that spoke to Geronimo. It seemed to be clawing at the house, snaking its way inside, trying to destroy the barriers that separated exterior space from interior … flowers and grass successfully surmounted its walls, and the floor became a lawn. He left the place knowing he no longer wanted to be an architect” (35). This dichotomy between nature and civilization is already present in Eden, the earliest garden in Judaeo-Christian world which, John Thieme argues, is ambivalent for two reasons, both because it involves two chronotopes–prelapsarian innocence is quickly supplanted by postlapsarian guilt–and because it is characteristically invoked as part of a mythopoesis that privileges nature over culture, while sidestepping the issue of how far the very notion of a primal paradise is itself a cultural construct. (Thieme 2016, 54)

Nevertheless, Geronimo is summoned into La Incoerenza by the godlike figure of the estate supervisor, Oliver Oldcastle and, like Adam, charged with “the task of bringing horticultural coherence to the place” (Rushdie 2015, 42). The garden on his first arrival “resisted order”, being in such state of disarray that “[i]f Mr Geronimo had run into a snake coiled around a branch of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he wouldn’t have been surprised” (42). The place clearly fits the conventional image of prelapsarian Eden as an uncivilized place. Looking from the historical perspective, however, there takes place an interesting reversal. During the colonial period taking over a new land and the imposition of one’s culture were explained by the civilizing mission, in which the West was the carrier of order and advancement to the barbarian East. Mr Geronimo, born in India and therefore placed in the position of the receiver of western goods, paradoxically embodies the opposite of the passive subaltern figure. Like Ormus in The Ground beneath her Feet (Rushdie 1999), he instead brings his own art to the US. He also has his own philosophy on gardening: while Miss Farina Bliss, the owner of La Incoerenza, urges him to “kill and kill and kill, one must destroy and destroy. … This is the meaning of civilization” (Rushdie 2016, 43), Mr Geronimo “dug and planted and watered and pruned. He gave life and saved it” (45). His

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horticultural practice is a lot more sustaining and as such has won him recognition in New York. Then, Geronimo internalizes the hybrid mixture of the natural and the human worlds by placing himself on the border between them: He “preferred to think of himself as a plant, perhaps even as one of those man-plants born of sexual congress between a human being and the earth; and consequently, as the gardened and not the gardener” (Rushdie 2016, 39). In these imaginings he cast himself always among the rootless plants–the epiphytes, the plants which grow harmlessly upon other plants but only for physical support, therefore the host is not weakened by them; and bryophytes which are believed to have played a crucial role in the migration of plants from aquatic environments onto land, therefore helping cross another boundary. Not only do these plants help maintain earth’s biodiversity and support local ecosystems but they can also be found throughout the world, signifying a positive model of adaptation to the new environment. “So”, Geronimo concludes, “he was, in his own fancy, a sort of moss or lichen or creeping orchid” (39). By placing himself among the plants Geronimo mirrors also the ontological shift in the contemporary environmental studies which, having acknowledged human impact on the climate change and the deterioration of Earth’s ecosystem by adopting the term “the age of the Anthropocene”, have removed the human from the position of supremacy over nature typical for western Christianity. What is more, Huggan and Tiffin argue that there is a connection between the ideology of colonization, anthropocentrism and Eurocentrism against which they propose “a genuinely post-imperial, environmentally based conception of community” (Huggan and Tiffin 2010, 6). They argue that: a re-imagining and reconfiguration of the human place in nature necessitates an interrogation of the category of the human itself and of the ways in which the construction of ourselves against nature–with the hierarchisation of life forms that construction implies–has been and remains complicit in colonialist and a racist exploitation from the time of imperial conquest to the present day. (6)

Rushdie draws attention to the man-made ecological crisis time and again, most notably the very storm that begins the time of the strangenesses around which the action revolves is a product of global warming; there are also references to superstorms devastating Fiji and Malaysia, giant fires raging in Australia and California, melting snows and rising oceans. One of Dunia’s offspring, Hugo Casterbridge, notices the connection between the ecological crisis and the western Christian interpretation of man’s place in the universe, the way God established man’s dominance over the rest of his creation. His observation echoes Lynn White’s explanation

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whereby: “[w]hat people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (White 1996, 9). Christianity, White maintains is “the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” (9). However, unlike in the Christian mythology where it is God who created the man and has given him the earth to use at his disposal, Hugo offers an alternative version in which it is Adam and Eve who, having consumed the fruit from the forbidden tree “simultaneously came up with the idea of the creator-god, … a gardener-god who made the garden, otherwise where would the garden come from, and then planted them in it like rootless plants” (83). Rushdie questions the very reason for man’s superiority over nature by making God himself one of man’s creations and in this way undermining the ideological basis for man’s superiority. What is more, the subsequent abandoning of Eden in this interpretation becomes the result of the lack of strong roots and is purged of the original guilt. Geronimo has a long story of migration–he left Bombay and moved to New York choosing the life of alienation and non-belonging. His ancestors had likewise been migrant people–they were among the Jews expelled from Spain in the 14th and 15th century who scattered around the world, “found shelter and safety wherever they could, and … became a family without a place but with family in every place, a village without a location but winding in and out of every location on the globe like rootless plants” (Rushdie 2015, 35), hybrid and unable to stand alone. Upon hearing the family story from his father Geronimo comments: “we are a little bit of everything, right? Jewslim Christians. Patchwork types” (35). It is not accidental, then, that Geronimo identifies himself with the orchids growing in his garden. These hybrid plants share the history of exile and migration with Dunia’s children. Indeed, the rhododendron family whose natural habitat extends from East Asia to the Eastern United States and which first arrived in Western gardens most likely in the seventeenth century are considered to be “a deracinated tribe of ‘glorious and scented strangers’” (Goodyear 2006). In their detailed genealogy A Tale of the Rose Tree Jane Brown uses exodus and migration as central metaphors to describe these plants whose taxonomy exceeds 1000 species. As such they elide smooth classification, “they are too complex a genus for single truths” (Brown 2006) thus the conclusion can be drawn that “the question of what makes a native is contentious not only when it comes to human beings” (Goodyear 2006). Choosing the path of migration is not the only reason for the lack of belonging, though. Geronimo’s father, a Christian preacher in Bombay, becomes the city’s other, as a non-Hindu, when it is taken over by the fundamentalist government and turned into Mumbay: now “[t]he narrow mind replaces the wide skirt.

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Majority rules and minority, look out. So we have become outsiders in our own place” (Rushdie 2015, 34). The wide skirt is a reference to Walter Benjamin’s essay on translation quoted by Bhabha in the chapter in Location of Culture (1994) entitled “How Newness Enters the World”. According to Bhabha the answer lies in the untranslatability of cultures. It is amidst the “textile superfluity of folds and wrinkles” that new cultural forms, new subjectivities may emerge in the continuous act of translation in which neither the original nor the final product of translation are fixed entities but remain in the constant flux and development. Bhabha rejects thus the concept of originary, authentic subjectivities and embraces the potential plurality of the “in-between” spaces (Bhabha 1994, 227). Its opposite leads to social exclusion, like in the case of the new Mumbai government policy which, as described in the novel, relies instead on the narrow idea of the Indian purity. However, Geronimo learns from his father that there is yet another foreign element in him–not only is he a bastard son of a Christian preacher in Bombay living in NY, but also a descendant of the bastard children of Ibn Rushd and Dunia, the jinnia–that is he is partly a jinn himself. Dunia seeks him and the other half-jinnies to help her wage the war with the evil jinns who want to destroy the earthly world during the time of strangenesses that lasts the eponymous 2 years 8 months and 28 days. To them the discovery of this fantastic origin comes as a surprise. For example, Jimmy Kapoor, a graphic novelist, on hearing the truth replies: “It isn’t bad enough being a brown dude in America, you’re telling me I’m a fucking goblin as well” (Rushdie 2015, 75). Slowly, they come to accept the foreign element and discover its potential, and this helps them grow and develop powers necessary to fight the evil jinns. Dunia herself also crosses the dividing line between humans and jinns by learning to love like a human being. In Geronimo she finds a copy of her long dead philosopher, Ibn Rushd and takes the form of Geronimo’s dead wife– Ella, so that he would also fall in love with her. Like the sundial or the Sunken gardens in La Incoerenza they become copies, echoes and replicas of other times and places. Their relationship can be best explained in Homi Bhabha’s terms of ambivalence and mimicry–Geronimo is both attracted to Dunia as she reminds him of his wife but he is also fully aware that she is a distinct being. Likewise the jinnia finds in the gardener an improved body of the philosopher, however the mind does not equal the original. They are thus “almost the same, but not quite” (Rushdie 2015, 157), drawn towards one another, but repulsed at the same time. As their relation grows and develops “their mimic love, their love born of the memory of others, their post-love that came after, became true, authentic, a thing in and of itself, in which she almost stopped thinking about the dead philosopher, and Mr Geronimo’s dead

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wife whose copy she had allowed herself to be was slowly replaced in his fantasy by this unknown magical creature” (157). Very quickly though Dunia abandons Geronimo in order to lead the war and Geronimo moves on to a new relationship–thus ending their “post-love”. As postcoloniality presented in this relationship seems to have run its course, a new form of colonialization emerges in its place–terrorist activity presided over by the evil jinns. One of them Zummurud the Great, becomes the disciple of a medieval Persian thinker, Al Ghazali, under whose influence the sceptical jinn becomes “a soldier of the higher power”. Having learnt from Ghazali that fear drives men into the arms of God, the dark jinns set out “to colonise, even to enslave the peoples of the earth” (Rushdie 2015, 209). “Their war of conquest sprung up like black flowers all over the globe” (209) ran by men controlled by jinns who themselves “sat indolent on their clouds wrapped in fogs of invisibility … watching their puppets kill and die” (244). However, “conquest was something entirely new for the jinns, to whom empire does not come naturally”–they lack management skills and it becomes obvious that “the reign of terror cannot be effective through terror alone” (209). They are eventually defeated by Dunia and her tribe and the boundary between the two worlds is sealed for good, travel between the earth and Peristan ends and the time of strangenesses draws to an end. Likewise resolved is the battle between Al Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, a medieval commentator on Aristotle, who made an attempt to explain the divine being by means of logic and science in his book entitled The Incoherence of Incoherence. The book was a reply to Al Ghazali’s treatise written about a hundred years earlier called The Incoherence of the Philosophers in which he argued that any scientific explanation of the world and the divine deity is misplaced as only God himself is in charge and can alter the rules if he so pleases. Their battle carries throughout the centuries to the modern times in which Al Ghazali’s philosophy of terror proves inefficient and Ibn Rushd learns that reason alone is not sufficient to fight irrationality. Rather, as the graphic cartoonist, Jimmy Kapoor, realizes, evil can be defeated by art, by the intermingling of the real and imagination. In his art he had daily confronted “the unimaginable, the unconscionable, the unprecedented” (Rushdie 2015, 75) which prepared him to meet Dunia and later to turn the terrorists into works of art through his newly discovered jinni powers of metamorphosis. This is why art is compared by the evil jinni to a plague with many roots such as books, films, dances, paintings, and music which “he feared and hated most, because music slid beneath the thinking mind to seize the heart” (166).

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If we follow Kantian thought in Critique of the Power of Judgement (2000, 255), landscape gardening can be considered to be one of the forms of art as it is a combination of the wild and the trimmed. Likewise, Geronimo makes a connection between horticulture and writing believing that his shears and glove speak “the language of living things as eloquently as any writer’s pen” (Rushdie 2015, 39). Unlike Jamaica Kincaid, however, who linked the activity of the gardener and the writer in My Garden(Book) (Thieme 2016, 43) with the prime motivation to underline the discursive construction of botanical tropes in both speech and writing (43), Rushdie focuses on the creative aspect of gardening and its temporality. In Japan, Geronimo learns from the great horticulturalist Ryonosuke Shimura that “the garden was the outward expression of inner truth, the place where the dreams of our childhoods collided with the archetypes of our cultures, and created beauty. The land might belong to the landowner but the garden belonged to the gardener. This was the power of the horticultural art” (Rushdie 2015, 35). This specific type of art is predominantly temporal, it changes constantly due to growth patterns, weather conditions, the cycle of seasons, and the human intervention being thus a perfect embodiment of postcolonial and postmodern condition of fluidity and focus on the process rather than the permanence of the end result. Even the destruction of La Incoerenza, what Geronimo feels to be “the death of his imagination” (23) is not permanent and its beauty is once again recovered by Geronimo with his newly discovered jinni powers. The novel’s apparently happy ending, the reconstruction of the garden and the defeat of the evil jinns and unreason is best reflected in one of the characters’, Pantokrator’s, interpretation of Rene Magritte’s anti-gravity painting Golconda, which, Rushdie uses to highlight the conflict between pessimism and optimism but also to make a connection with Geronimo’s levitation: men in overcoats, wearing bowler hats, hang in the air against a background of low buildings and cloudless sky. It had always been believed that the men in the picture were slowly falling, like well-dressed rain. But Pantokrator perceived that Magritte had not painted human raindrops. “They’re human balloons”, he cried. “They rise! They rise!” (Rushdie 2015, 162)

This interpretation resembles the conversion of the book’s biggest pessimist, Miss Alexandra Farina Bliss, into an optimist who, together with Geronimo, authors a book that remains the most admired text a thousand years later entitled: In Coherence, which is a plea for a peaceful, civilized world, of hard work and respect for the land. A gardener’s world in which we all must cultivate our garden, understanding that to do so is not a

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defeat, as it was for Voltaire’s poor Candide, but the victory of our better natures over the darkness within. (283)

After the borders between Peristan and the human world have been securely sealed off, the world became ruled by reason, tolerance, magnanimity, knowledge and restraint. In this world everyone lives in harmony notwithstanding the differences such as race, place, language or culture. The only price for this peaceful state is men’s inability to dream; the narrators admit that, perversely, they sometimes long for nightmares. Such need is already present in Immanuel Kant’s vision of cosmopolitanism according to which, “only through the ‘unsociable sociability’ of people, that is, through the multiplicity and fission, through ‘antagonism,’ can people escape from the Arcadian idyll, in which ‘in a condition of absolute harmony, frugality and mutual love, all talent would forever wither in the bud.’” (Ash, Dahrendorf 2005, 142 quoted in Schoene 2009, 15). However, given the novel’s stress on temporality and fluidity one might expect that the borders will not remain permanently closed. To conclude, the literary depiction of a garden is strongly infused with significances which can range from being a symbolic representation of, as John Thieme explains, a sense of imperial ascendancy (Theme 2016, 4) to, as in Rushdie’s case, a focus on its liberating protean nature. Indeed, in that hybrid heap the centre can become a margin, like the Greenwich Meridian situated next to a rhododendron forest on the outskirts of New York. In a similar way, the anthropomorphism which sees humans as the center of the ecosystem can be challenged along the validity of other kinds of borders. Undoubtedly, the most interesting story happens when the boundary begins to leak, when the movement between its opposite sides unfolds.

References Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Brown, Jane. 2006. “Tales of the Rose Tree.” The New York Times. Accessed August 16, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/books/chapters/0709–1stbrown.html?_r=0. Goodyear, Dana. 2006. “Power Flower.” The New York Times. Accessed August 16, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/books/review/09goodyear. html?_r=2. Huggan, Graham, Tiffin, Helen. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism. Nature, Animals, Environment. London: Routledge. Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nail, Thomas. 2016. Theory of the Border. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newman, David. 2007 “The Lines that Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our ‘Borderless’ World.” Border Poetics De-Limited, edited by Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe, 27–57. Hannover: Wehrhahn. Rushdie, Salman. 1999. The Ground beneath her Feet. London: Vintage. Rushdie, Salman. 2015. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights. London: Jonathan Cape. Schoene, Berthold. 2009. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Thieme, John. 2016. Postcolonial Literary Geographies. Out of Place. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tuan, Yi Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. White, Lynn, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” In The Ecocriticism Reader: landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, 3–14. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

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When Hybrids Collide – Co-Hybridisation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane Abstract: The article is an attempt at identifying the mutual influence of social hybrids onto one another as depicted by Monica Ali in her novel Brick Lane. The presented analysis proves that immigrants of different generations residing within a common, yet fairly isolated area within the host society undergo a specific type of assimilation. Key words: hybridisation, immigration, identity, British Bangladeshi, assimilation.

Postcolonialism is frequently described as an era of various social movements, which provided numerous countries with an opportunity to gain national independence, thus bringing about certain changes. Nevertheless, Childs and Williams (2014, 1) are of the opinion that this definition is nothing more than an imprecisely simplified description of the complex modifications that have been influencing national politics, economy, public life as well as academic studies since the 1950s. In literary criticism Edward Said (1994), Homi Bhabha (1994) and Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak (1988) presented a few fundamental procedures which have played a crucial part in the process of deconstructing the general social standpoint towards the colonised, thus re-writing the historically and culturally inscribed visions of the oppressed nations. What is important, however, is that the mentioned theories highlight the significance of the migrant as a new world citizen, for the relocating being is a collection of numerous Selves, who, through accommodation, acquires a particular kind of identity: one which transcends all human borders, simultaneously forcing the communities of the world to revise the prevailing orders in the quest for a homogenous and globalised society. On the basis of the characters as well as the portrayal of the Bengali community presented by Monica Ali in the novel Brick Lane, I shall attempt to prove that by freeing the Self from the stagnant societal ties, representatives of minority groups residing within a certain host society initiate the creation of a truly unified postcolonial community where cultural gaps are gradually eliminated. The paper shall centre, therefore, on the analysis of the processes of assimilation and acculturation observed within the cultural mentality of the characters as well as the influence of every individual on the identity formation process of the remaining members of the enclosed societal group. According to Sinha:

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Brick Lane is a stoutly simple tale, chronicling the fortunes of a Bangladeshi woman named Nazneen, who immigrates to England to consummate the marriage her father has arranged with a middle-aged civil servant she has never met named Chanu. (2008, 232)

This is, however, only a superficial outline of the plot, a rough framework which enshrouds a multiplicity of themes, including both the search for one’s identity and the social situation of immigrants enclosed in the Bangladeshi neighbourhood in a specifically selected part of “East London famous for its South-East Asian (and particularly Sylheti) community”(Bentley 2010, 83). Undoubtedly, Nazneen is a significant figure within the book, not only due to her role as the protagonist and narrator, but also, as Bentley (2010, 86) states, as the eyes through which the white mainstream readership gains insight into the problems of numerous other representatives of the enclosed area. In the first half of the novel the woman is depicted as a traditionally submissive and obedient Bengali wife, whose existence is constrained to her small and cramped flat in an area where everything, including the buildings, the residents and even the language is unfamiliar and seemingly unnatural when compared to her village life in Bangladesh. The difference refers both to the previously unseen architectural surrounding and to the societal structure of the diaspora, which the character observes from a distance through the limited view of the window. The window’s function is comparable to the frames of a picture which are the means of enclosing the situation depicted inside set borders as if precluding the possibility of the figures leaving the created space. It is a symbol of Nazneen’s agreement to be imprisoned within the walls of her new home, isolating herself from the unknown territory of the outside where “not many people were enough to call or be called upon” (Ali 2008, 15) in her husband’s opinion. Within the safety of the flat Nazneen adjusts her life to the rhythm of the repeated daily housework, only occasionally interrupted by a requested visit of Chanu’s acquaintance, doctor Azad. She cooks authentic dishes served in her homeland, indulges in the romanticised memories of her childhood and seeks tranquillity in the deterministic nature of her fate, which, just like the letters she receives from her sister Hasina, serves as a stable point of reference connecting her to the past and her homeland. Nayar (2008, 208) refers to this attitude as the reassertion of one’s own ‘native’ culture by the immigrant who has just arrived in a new country. It is important to point out that the mentioned reassertion is by no means conducted on the part of the narrator, but is rather a result of her partner Chanu’s attempt to retain the unspoilt image of the dependant Asian girl.

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The situation begins to alter after Nazneen becomes mesmerised by the figure of an ice-skater seen on TV. The scantily dressed woman performing with her partner on the rink rushed around the oval iced surface with grace and stopped dead and flung her arms above her head with a look so triumphant that you knew she had conquered everything: her body, the laws of nature, and the heart of the tightsuited man who slid over on his knees, vowing to lay down his life for her. (Ali 2008, 36)

The ice-skater becomes a romantic personification of freedom to the protagonist. It is precisely this liberty that Nazneen comes to desire the most, but which she initially fails to attain by virtue of her powerlessness in the face of the overwhelming unfamiliarity of London. In the course of events the immigrant gradually alters as she comes into contact with other members of the community. Islam (2013, 205) points out that in the second part of the novel, which is set seventeen years later than the initial chapters, Nazneen strengthens her bonds with her daughters Shahana and Bibi, her friend Razia and her lover Karim, hence moulding a number of distinctively altering Selves. Shahana and Bibi provide Nazneen with an opportunity to learn the English language, hence enabling her to establish a distinct type of communication system which Bentley refers to as a “double vision, whereby the semantic system of Nazneen’s old world is superimposed onto Tower Hamlets” (2010, 238). That is to say, while describing the surroundings the main character employs the use of informal English as well as common village images from Bangladesh to create similes and metaphors relating to the objects seen. As a result, Nazneen is no longer cursed with living in an entirely incomprehensible environment, but gains a possibility of becoming at least basically familiar with her new place of residence. Moreover, the enclosed migrant woman gains the opportunity to learn about the customs of the unfamiliar British society without the need to seek the assistance of other people, for instance her unenthusiastic husband. In this respect language, or more specifically the mixture of the English and Bengali semantical and syntactic structures, becomes the main character’s threshold to the third space defined by Bhabha (1994, 85–94). The significance of the delineated linguistic structure is further highlighted by taking into consideration the influence of language on the cognitive processes of the human mind. By expanding the most basic cognitive tool Nazneen widens her scope of knowledge and general understanding, thus attaining freedom from her rural mind-set, a situation that occurs when the submissive and obedient Nazneen decides to lead an independent life. Obviously, the subtly presented process of self-development is accompanied by the emergence of a vast array of social problems with internal confusion, disavowal

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of the native culture, lack of acknowledgment, desire for personal liberation and fear of being unable to fulfil oneself among them. Upon such occasions the heroine consults her lover Karim, who as a second-generation immigrant is engulfed in various cultural and social dilemmas, particularly drug addiction, poverty and general intolerance on the part of the dominant English group. However, the presence of the idealistic entrepreneur is a necessary requirement for creating a connection between the narrator and the actual reality, for “Karim’s impassionate speeches about the distant war-torn territories of Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan expand her knowledge of the world beyond the flat and the estate” (Islam 2013, 251). It may be stated that during her work as a seamstress, Nazneen broadens her knowledge and becomes more aware of her standing within the world. The woman becomes conscious of the internal problems of the Bengali community. Additionally, the liaison between the two personages allows the young woman to experience her own sexuality as well as awaken her latent womanhood, thus liberating the main character in the bodily sense. Nonetheless, the listed modifications would not be possible if not for Razia, the unusual model of a single mother present within the Bengali community, who constitutes an inspiration for Nazneen. Despite her Asian cultural heritage, Razia exerts a particular type of practicality expressed in her detachment from the native culture. Stonehewer Southmayd (2015, 94) notices that with the acquisition of a British passport the female migrant transubstantiates into a patriarchal advocate of Englishness, especially in relation to the economic aspects of life which she is forced to secure for her family after the unexpected death of her husband. Unlike most dependant Bangladeshi wives, Razia does not shudder at the thought of gaining responsibilities or working. The woman values her independence and the social freedom symbolised by the English lifestyle. It is she that claims at the end that “This is England … you can do whatever you like” (Ali 2008, 492). This conviction is strongly echoed in her westernised conduct which is deemed improper by Chanu or even the most respectable Mrs Islam. Razia externally demonstrates her Englishness by mostly wearing shapeless trousers, keeping her hair short and donning a Union Jack sweatshirt even in spite of the hot weather. In Bentley’s opinion this attitude is meant to “represent her acceptance of British culture” (2010, 89). Never does the woman openly disregard the British state of affairs; her awe is the rationale behind the determination to remain secretive about the drawbacks of the chosen way of life, a situation mostly visible when she attempts to aid her drug-addicted son by forcibly locking him in his room, rather than allow outsiders, including English therapists, to assist them. Such actions

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would equate with revealing the damaging effects of British liberation, thus exposing herself to the hostility of the British and Bangladeshi cultural segments. With the situation being as it is, it seems implausible to name Razia an immigrant or hybrid. However, it is worth noticing that the woman’s physique cannot be entirely modified in regards to the distinctive racial traits, mainly skin colour, typical Asian build, etc. Furthermore, even though Razia willingly rebuffs her original culture in order to acquire the socially dominating paradigm, she does not depart from Brick Lane or turn her back on other immigrant women. It may be stated that apart from her conduct, Razia has no intention of completely abandoning the Asian within her. It is precisely for this reason that Nazneen’s friend is treated as an outsider after the occurrences following the 9/11 attacks, when she is spat on. In Nayar’s (2008, 201–204) view Razia would be described as an Englished immigrant in whom the adopted and foreign cultural strains are tangibly distinguishable. Razia indeed becomes a nearly completely ideal hybrid: a being that inhabits the space between the cultures which is fully accepted neither by the larger cultural group nor her original culture. The financially independent woman poses as an exemplar of authentic female strength to Nazneen. The confidante of the young Bangladeshi woman becomes a source of support: both mental as well as financial. It is only due to the impact of Razia’s self-confidence and self-sufficiency that the main character decides to support her family by becoming a seamstress when Chanu cannot entirely cope with the socially assigned task, and then later in the novel to start a garment company with other women from Brick Lane. Consequently, thanks to Razia’s unceasing presence, Nazneen’s position in the family shifts from the powerless wife to the main decision-maker and head of the household. The woman acquires her own voice which she uses to free herself from her husband’s male influence by deciding to remain in England as well as rebel against the social order when she stands up to Mrs Islam: ‘Do you think, before God, that I would charge interest? Am I a moneylender? A usurer? Is this how I am repaid for helping a friend in need?’ ‘No?’ said Nazneen. She thought she might be shouting, but she really could not help it. ‘Not interest? Not a usurer? Let’s see then. Swear it.’ She ran across to where the Book was kept. Glass crunched beneath her sandals. ‘Swear on the Qur’an. And I’ll give you the two hundred.’ Mrs Islam was perfectly still. Nazneen listened for her breath, but all she could hear was her own. Son Number One stirred. ‘I’m going to break …’ ‘My arm,’ shouted Nazneen. ‘Break my arm. Break them both.’ She held her arms out, until she began to feel foolish.… Mrs Islam stood up.

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‘There are some things a wife does not want a husband to know.’ Nazneen burned. She did not look away. ‘Fresh start,’ said Mrs Islam. ‘New life, back home. You don’t want anything to spoil it.’ ‘My husband,’ said Nazneen slowly, ‘knows everything. He’ll come soon. Why don’t you ask him?’ (Ali 2008, 375)

The quoted fragment highlights the results of the seventeen-year-long transformation of the first-generation immigrant who has been accumulating within her consciousness a great number of Selves. It would be more accurate to say that Nazneen, inhabiting the third space, inscribes within herself multiple Others, from the half-literate, submissive and dependent wife, through an understanding and caring mother, to an independent, passionate as well as emancipated woman. It may be said after Said (1994, 336) that Nazneen calmly and with grace accepts all the labels that are assigned to her Self in the course of her personal experiences, hence moulding what Nayar (2008, 208) refers to as a multi-layered identity. So great is the modification that the heroine is liberated from the geographical constraints of the window which no longer entraps her within a set framework. Bentley’s (2010, 83–93) analysis of the entire process of accommodation carried out in accordance with Chakravorty Spivak’s theory emphasises the role of the immigrant woman as a voice speaking on behalf of the marginalised female group of the Bangladeshi diaspora that undergoes a particular social alienation on the part of the British society as well as the male members of the Brick Lane neighbourhood. What is more, the theory may be applied even further, for the silent voice of the Bangladeshi women parallels and expands into the voice of the hybrids. Bentley (2010, 90) and Islam (2013, 254) agree that the final scene where Nazneen skates in a sari on the rink is a manifestation of her hybridity. The mentioned cultural mixture is symbolised by the external conflation of the traditional Bangladeshi dress and the modern Western footwear that confirm her cultural freedom, hence allowing the narrator to overcome the borders set by the two distinct societies. It is crucial to notice that in this last event the protagonist is accompanied by her friend Razia and her daughters. Presumably, this combination is of upmost significance for it indicates the hybridity of the illustrated personages, simultaneously implying an overlap between the second-generation immigrants’ duality. Shahana and Bibi, Nazneen’s children born and raised in England, represent all the youth of the diaspora who are forced by their life circumstances to primarily inhabit the third space between disavowal and mimicry, for as Parker claims they are “stranded between two cultures, in conflict with their parents, facing difficulty in negotiating two incommensurable value systems” (quoted in Tagore 2013, 563). Although the children have no actual connection to their parents’ homeland, they

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are compelled by their father Chanu to learn the Bangladeshi language, literature as well as traditions. Such a mandatory obligation placed upon them by the expectations of the patriarch of the household meets with resistance on the part of the young offspring yearning for the acceptance of the mainstream society. Shahana in particular manifests her discontentment in relation to the Bangladeshi culture. The teenager, being constantly exposed to the British lifestyle, resembles her English peers in terms of their manners, preferred spoken language, education, taste, clothes, etc. With the schooling received in England, Shahana exerts a certain form of criticism towards her parents and their culture, which she considers to be a product of a backward and degraded country where women are deprived of their freedom and basic rights. In fact, she perceives both her parents and their Bangladeshi traits as obstacles in her own process of accommodating to the dominant society. Apparently, the desire to become accepted as purely British stems from the want of sameness, of finding a place within the geographically accessible culture at hand, which naturally becomes her own. In spite of their parents’ wishes and efforts Britain becomes Shahana and Bibi’s homeland, their country of origin and upmost importance, where they strive for general acknowledgement. At the same time the girls regard Bangladesh as foreign and unfamiliar, just like Nazneen and Chanu treat England. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Shahana refuses to abandon England even resorting to physical attacks on her close relations and considering the different forms of self-mutilation that she hopes will make her father give up on the idea. With the eminent failure of her desperate attempts, Shahana runs away from home together with her friend. The familial event collides with a march initiated by the Bengali Tigers, a group of young second-generation immigrants who Nazneen observes during a few meetings. Karim, the leader and the personification of the group’s wants, is another exemplar of a migrant hybrid. Nazneen meets the young man after beginning her sewing job and immediately notices that although Karim was raised in a Bangladeshi family and was even taught his predecessors’ native language his behaviour is more typical of an Englishman. Karim speaks incomparably better English than Bangladeshi on which he stutters as if unaccustomed to the action of uttering the known words. English becomes, therefore, the main means of communication for the youth living in Britain. Similarly to most male Westerners, he does not nurture the custom of female inferiority, on the contrary Karim not only encourages but also expects Nazneen to voice her opinions openly. It is precisely this man who invites the protagonist to a meeting for all Muslims where her single vote brings him victory, hence enabling Nazneen to actively participate in the communal life.

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Furthermore, Al Mamun points to “a discrepancy between the strict religious rules and the secular western society” (2014, 512) observed in Karim’s and Nazneen’s interpretations of the Koran. During their affair the heroine feels contentment and remorse at the same time, as adultery is regarded in Islam as a mortal sin. On the other hand, in the second-generation immigrant’s eyes the intimate relationship bears no signs of inappropriateness due to the fact that, from Karim’s point of view, it has no connection to their deeds. The male personage’s cultural duality nearly completely corresponds to Nayar’s (2008, 198–201) model of double consciousness, derived from Bhabha’s (1994, 121–132) third space theory, where the individual remains on the margins of the two distinct cultures fully belonging to neither of them. It is precisely this differentiation which Ali wants to convey to the reader through the depiction of Nazneen’s children and her younger lover. The dominant cultural segment rejects the immigrants, while the Brick Lane community places upon them foreign expectations rooted in the Bangladeshi culture, which they are unable to comprehend because of their detachment from the ‘native’ country. However, like most youths in the in-between position Karim seeks his own place within the society where he can function without inhibitions. In order to achieve this aim, the man engages himself in the communal life of a group of Muslims: the Bengali Tigers. According to Tongure (2013, 565) at first the group is a gathering of young representatives of the diaspora who create a space exclusively for themselves where even women are allowed to enter and discuss the issues of injustice and intolerance as well as ways of managing the situation. These young people are Muslims born in Britain and in numerous respects they find their reflection in the figures of Karim and Shahana. Nonetheless, after the backlash following the 9/11 attacks the initially democratised organization begins to alter. The youth following Karim’s call: “Insh’ Allah, we all stand together” (Ali 2008, 399) unite under the banner of religion, standing up to the racist conduct of other citizens of their country of origin. In the moment of difficulty the second-generation immigrants turn to Islam which provides them with a sense of identity and a noble reason to act in unison with the Muslims of the world. The anger and frustration felt due to the denial of the white members of the British society transubstantiates into apprehension and fury conveyed by “tougher actions, angrier words, stronger determination and radicalization on part of the young Bangladeshi” (Tongure 2013, 566). Karim himself undergoes a cultural alternation expressed by wearing traditional Bangladeshi clothes and whole-heartedly devoting himself to the cause. The group becomes occupied by men exerting their influence on the women who are now, by Muslim

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law, prohibited from taking part in the meetings. It is evident that the group is subject to internal frictions resulting from the contradictory stances of its individual members who oppose the violence towards the inhabitants of Brick Lane. The Bengali Tigers set out on a march against the Anti-Muslim demonstrations, which under the impact of the foregathered apprehensions turns into a violent riot, that, just like in the case of Shahana, releases the oppressed emotions of the hybrids. Nazneen, Shahana, Karim and all the second-generation immigrants are caught up in the social turmoil, incapable of changing the outside, their families, the diaspora or the English community as a whole. The youths are denied their Britishness, feeling pressured to retain the traditional strains of their parents’ homeland which is unfamiliar to them. The constantly exerted suppression as well as powerlessness felt by the second-generation immigrants culminates in an uncontrollable exhibition of anger. The riot becomes the voice of the subaltern hybrids, the people trapped between the two cultures, simultaneously mimicking and rejecting the dominant society and their Bangladeshi cultural heritage, while sweeping out whatever comes their way. The damaging commotion resembles a storm, an element of destructive nature that through sheer strength cleanses the soil of dirt, enlivening it. In the same manner the disorder cleanses the hybrids’ souls allowing individuals to look deeper into their Selves in search of the determination to change from within, to transform on two parallel grounds. At first glance, the riot ends leaving the community in the same state as it was before. Even though the British authorities have declared a desire to help, nothing has changed. The expectations of the rioters have been trampled as they realise that neither attaining the status of an Englishperson nor turning to the culture of their parents can secure for them a place of their own. They are too different to belong to either of the two. In the aftermath of these events Nazneen has decided to remain with her daughters in England and begin a new independent life by embracing all the labels attached to her; Shahana has gained peace of mind and further opportunities to search for her own place in the British society; while Karim with his undeveloped personality becomes cognizant of the need for personal improvement. All the characters embark on a different quest, a voyage to the inner-world of the Ego fully comprehending the necessity of rising above the choice between the two cultures, which entails massive destruction, but rather concentrating their efforts on combining them into one. Therefore, in the final pages of the book Nazneen, the hybrid, prepares her own ice-skating performance in the sari. The narrator stands up to the world with the intention not of fighting but of incorporating all that occurred within her to live in harmony with her Selves.

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In conclusion, it is tempting to say that rootlessness brings with it social frustration expressed in the emergence of a vast array of identities. When placed in the same environment the individuals collide with one another either absorbing particular characteristics from others or openly rejecting them. Under the circumstances, immigrants remaining within this group also step into the third space, thus acquiring a certain cultural duality or, to be more exact, becoming hybrids searching not so much for traits that may grant them the possibility of collecting universal characteristics, but rather a manner of assimilation that entails the categorisation and assessment of the fundamental traits which may be useful in the process of moulding of one’s personality. This solution allows hybrids to break away from the social constraints, thus adapting to any given community in the world. In this respect Nazneen’s assimilation with its piecemeal trajectory aimed at self-fulfilment and independence serves as the perfect model of accustoming that crosses borders, breaks ties and bridges worlds in the post-colonial era.

References Al Mamun, Hossain. 2014. “Brick Lane: Mirroring Nazneen’s Metamorphosis.” European Scientific Journal Special Edition (August): 509–517. Accessed March 28, 2016. http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/viewFile/4056/3895. Ali, Monica. 2008. Brick Lane. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bentley, Nick. 2010. Contemporary British Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatari. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and The Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–314. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Childs, Peter and Williams, Patrick. 2014. “Introduction: Points of Departure.” Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory. 2–23. New York: Routledge. Islam, Sanchita. 2013. “Monica Ali ‘Brick Lane.” London Fictions, edited by Andrew Whitehead and Jerry White, Nottingham: Five Leaves. Nayar, Pramod K. 2008. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction. New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley. Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Sinha, Sunita. 2008. Post-Women Writers: New Perspectives. New Delhi: Atlantic. Stonehewer Southmayd, Stephanie. 2015. “Diasporic Mobility and Identity in Flux in V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane.” Exploring Gender

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in the Literature of the Indian Diaspora, edited by Sandhya Rao Mehta, 89–103. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. Tongure, A. Nejat. 2013. “Rebellion: Second Generation Bangladeshi Immigrants in Brick Lane by Monica Ali.” The Journal of International Social Research 6: 561–67. Accessed March 28, 2016, http://www.sosyalarastirmalar. com/cilt6/cilt6sayi26_pdf/tongur_nejat.pdf.

Dolikajyoti Sharma

Cracked Within: Reading the Sri Lankan Civil War in Jean Arasanayagam’s The Dividing Line Abstract: The article looks at The Dividing Line by Jean Arasanayagam, a Sri Lankan writer of Dutch-Burgher descent, who uses the themes of displacement and exile to question, through her fiction, the postcolonial nation-state of Sri Lanka and the identities imposed on those forced to flee from their homes during the civil war in the 1980s. Key words: Sri Lankan literature, Sri Lankan history, displacement, exile, borderland identity.

On being asked in an interview about the reasons for which she chose to stay in Sri Lanka, when most of her community had settled abroad, Jean Arasanayagam says: As for me, this is the country in which I feel my identity can be explored, especially in the present context. It is an identity with perspectives. In the past I took things for granted. I was a Burgher. We were descended from the Dutch. We were Westernized. We more or less intermarried and mixed within this group. Now I am aware of many other factors, especially that I have not only Dutch blood in my veins. Being Burgher enables me to be fair-minded, impartial. I do not see the current ethnic issue from one point of view. I am removed from this restrictiveness. My identity is found in my work, my writing. I question critically the aggrandisement and exploitation of Colonialism. (Arasanayagam 1988, 115)

These comments by Arasanayagam underline the central preoccupation of the writer with “with the difficulties of occupying a borderland identity”, which become very personal with the political violence of 1983 when she was forced into refugee camps due to her marriage to a Tamil (Salgado 2007, 74). Born Jean Solomons in Kandy, Sri Lanka, of Dutch-Burgher descent, Arasanayagam spent her childhood in a small provincial town called Kadugannawa (The Burghers in Sri Lanka are the result of intermingling between the Portuguese, Dutch, English, Sinhalese and Tamils. They are usually identifiable by their names and, sometimes, fairer skin colour. They are also mostly Catholic or Protestant Christian in religion). In 1961 the writer married Thiagarajah Arasanayagam, a Tamil writer and painter. Until the events of 1983, Arasanayagam’s works were relatively apolitical; however, from that point onwards, as she, despite being a Burgher herself, was imposed with a Tamil identity on account of her marriage and evicted during

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the ethnic tensions in 1983, Arasanayagam developed a self-consciously political outlook (Kanaganayakam 2003, 17). This manifested itself not only with reference to the evolution of colonial Ceylon to a postcolonial Sri Lanka but, also, with the plurality of identities and a consequent hybrid status that this process of evolution bestowed on her. Thus, Arasanayagam’s writings emerge from an awareness of her own alienation amidst the racial and religious discrimination welling up in Sri Lanka during the 1970s and 80s. More importantly, after 1983, an “awareness of her own marginality as a representative of an ethnic minority as well as her willingness to be accommodated to the ‘homeland’ by resisting the Sinhalese Buddhist hegemony” has become more forceful in her work (Abayasekera 2013, 2). Arasanayagam’s writing records the seepage of violence and displacement into the everyday lives of the people regardless of their belonging to the majority Singhala or the minority Tamil and/or Burgher communities. This violence is the result of contesting versions of the ‘imagined community’ of Sri Lanka by the Singhalas and by the Tamils after the nation gained its independence from British colonial rule in 1948. The Burgher community to which Arasanayagam belongs had, during the colonial era, been loyal to the British crown and looked at both the Singhala and the Tamils as inferior races. However, the increasing stridency and violence of the national and counternational rhetoric of these two ethnic groups, as well as the imposition of Singhala as the single state and official language in 1956, led to the Burghers feeling estranged in the very country they had earlier regarded as their home. Most Burgher families emigrated to the West as a result of this. However, Arasanayagam chooses to stay and critique such essentialist conceptions of the postcolonial nation state as well as the questions of cultural authenticity and legitimacy through her poetry and fiction. This is rendered all the more poignantly by her, given that she experiences her identity as a Sri Lankan from the margins: “at the crossroads of two minority identities–Burgher and Tamil–in the country” (Ho and Rambukwella 2006, 2). This is an experience that is made more acute by her diverging from the Burgher tradition of marrying, and thereby remaining, within the community on the one hand, and her outsider status within the Tamil community on the other, represented by her mother-inlaw’s hostility and resentment towards her and her refusal to acknowledge Jean as her daughter-in-law. For Arasanayagam, the violence incited by such nationalist rhetoric is self-defeating in its attempts at the erasure of other ethnicities, and it is the State itself that is particularly singled out as being guilty of an attempt to suppress the minority voices. As Naomi Abayasekera argues, “[h]er narrative stances of an eye witness, a victim and / or a refugee encompass the voices that are by and large silenced in the mainstream narratives of the event which in turn become

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history through her poetic expression” (Abayasekera 2013, 11). This paper seeks to explore these aspects of Arasanayagam’s writing through a reading of three stories from her collection of short fiction, The Dividing Line (2002).

I While the year 1983 marks the beginning of the Civil War in Sri Lanka, the continual tussle between Singhala and Tamil nationalisms goes far back in time, being a product of the colonial rule in Sri Lanka. Patrick Peebles in his history of Sri Lanka traces the beginnings of a Lankan nationalist movement in the formation of the Ceylon National Congress (CNC) in 1919 (Peebles 2006, 83). However, the CNC leadership became greatly fractured over time and “became an organization dominated by conservative Low Country Sinhalese elites” in spite of the constitutional reforms brought in by the British through the Donoughmore Constitution of 1931 (83). The Burghers were another powerful presence in this scene. As Michael Roberts points out, Colombo was at the center of “[t]he economic and political domination of [Sri Lanka]” and became “the symbolic center of cultural fashion (e.g. in the style of architecture for mansions) and the island’s ideological command post, both facets that were exercised in part through the considerable influence of English-media newspapers” (Roberts 5). The Burghers comprised seven per cent of Colombo’s population by the early 20th century and became a powerful component of the middle classes in the decades leading up to that point (5). After the British occupation of Sri Lanka in the late 18th century, a significant number of Burghers “were employed in administrative positions because their knowledge of the island and the customs of its people made them good mediators in the changeover to British rule” (Henry 2008, 214). They were thereby employed in the judiciary as well as other government services where special posts were created for them to accommodate them without letting them enter into the Civil Services which was an exclusively British territory at the time (214). Rosita Henry in her essay on “History and Agency in Colonial Sri Lanka” argues that just as there were racist discourses among the Tamils and the Sinhalas, the Burghers were also engaged in creating similar discourses. For example, the Dutch Burghers “chose to emphasize their European descent or, more specifically, their Dutch-ness… to appropriate a share of the symbols of British power, European blood and Western civilization” (214). Such a self-image of the Burghers made the other races, especially the Sinhalas (many of whom also enjoyed privileges under the British) hostile to their presence, even as there was a social hierarchy even among the Burghers themselves, since the Dutch Burghers considered themselves more legitimate than other Eurasian groups in Ceylon. Furthermore, as Michael

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Roberts points out about 19th-century Sri Lanka, “[a]ble to pick up English quickly and located in key urban centers, the small Burgher population profited from the channels of educational advancement that opened up in the 19th century and filled intermediary roles in the administration, while also providing a significant number of schoolteachers in towns” (Roberts 5–6). These dynamics of Sri Lankan society continued in post-independence Sri Lanka well into the 20th century. “The Garden Party” in Arasanayagam’s The Dividing Line registers a note of dissent against such narratives of identity formation that have become reified in colonial Sri Lanka. The protagonist, Marian Laing, is of mixed heritage with an English tea planter for a father and a rural Sinhala mother, and had had an education and worked as a teacher in England for a few years before the Second World War. The story comprises the recollections of the now aged Marian in Sri Lanka in 1988, living in a Roman Catholic convent with her sister, their only refuge now. From this dire present Marian looks back on those “momentous” years, with the Garden Party at the Buckingham Palace in 1938 serving as the high point of her experience there (where she along with her would-be sister-in-law Sophy, a Dutch Burgher, has been invited). While Marian does acknowledge her need to be socially accepted on her own terms as an individual and acts accordingly with conformity to the demands of “fit[ting] into colonial society” (Arasanayagam 2002, 12), she carries a sense of guilt throughout her life at the erasure of her mother and, thereby, the Sinhala part of her identity: At the back of my mind I always felt a sense of guilt…We concealed our mother’s existence in our lives. Shut her out. Together with her people. We hid our birthright. It is now too late, too late to make amends. When I look back on the past I perceive that it was that historical epoch that molded our very lives. We were ashamed of that divided inheritance. (11–12)

The identity thrust upon her by the Empire is seen by Marian as a violent disruption of her sense of belonging that her memories of her mother have given her: “It was in the Home [the Badulla Girls’ Home] that our mother began gradually to move out of our lives, not because she wanted to, she had clung to us until the last, but because separation from her way of life was thought necessary to nurture and civilize us” (16); “Why did the true mother have to be taken away from us before our identity had been legitimized?” (17). It is also a violent subjugation of colonized women like Marian’s mother as “their bodies …become once more the colonized territory, the acquired territory” (17). At the same time, Marian and her sister are treated as outsiders not merely by the Empire in general but by their own father as its representative. This gives her a lesser cultural legitimacy than her sister-in-law Sophy who enjoys a greater stamp of authenticity in her lineage

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as a Dutch Burgher, given that her people were given recognition by the Dutch Empire. Though Marian uses this very identity as a Eurasian to acquire the power and authority invested in it, a sense of loss defines her conception of herself in the violent removal of the mother from their lives. Marian’s decision not to wear a sari and look overly exotic is one of the ways through which she attempts to divest herself of the stereotype of the exotic oriental and to dress herself “in clothes that I thought suitable to the role I would play in the future” (13), i.e., the role of a colonial subject who has assimilated herself totally into the imperial centre of London (14). But ironically, while her borderline identity and her hybrid presence make her a natural entrant to the royal premises in London, it is the oppressor in his most visible form, her father, who becomes an outsider this time: Unable to allow himself to be assimilated in this polyglot crowd. He had always stood out among those over whom he had power on those plantations. He had been away too long from his own kind to find an easy acceptability. (24) Marian’s strategy is to use both her lineages in order to arrive at an emancipatory and autonomous self: Perhaps what I really wanted was not a partnership but an individual identity forged out of those two opposite and opposing roles. Mother. Father. And in-between? Child. I wanted to be a separate entity. I would not allow myself to be pushed into a corner, to be forgotten. (23)

Identity is thus “established as a site of exclusion, of policed boundaries” (Salgado 2007, 74), and emerges for Marian through her recognition of and rebellion against “the violence of enforced difference” (74). At the same time the colonial experience of Marian is uncannily reprised during the civil war in postcolonial Sri Lanka as she finds herself once more at the margins in the Roman Catholic convent at Kundasale in 1988 even though it is only in this land that she “truly belong[s]” (Arasanayagam 2002, 12). In spite of the fact that people like her are, in a way, history’s leftovers who are “left alone when the trophies of the Empire were no longer important” (12), Marian finally finds an autonomy in her return to the island nation as an individual who is no longer dependent on either of her parents in the formation of her consciousness as well as one who has transcended, in some manner, the conflicting identities and the enforced difference they imposed on her earlier. “The Garden Party” is thus an example of how Arasanayagam traces continuities (through the framing of the events of 1938 within the conditions prevailing in Sri Lanka after 1983 in 1988) between Ceylon in the colonial past of the nation and Sri Lanka in the postcolonial present in terms of how the imagined territory of Ceylon/Sri Lanka conforms to a similar rhetoric of nationbuilding and raises ethical questions about such rhetoric of the nation. The past, as

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seen from the perspective of the turbulent present in this story, becomes a site of contested national identities which the protagonist due to her alien status is able to discern as a tool through which communities such as the Sinhalas, Tamils and even the Burghers, seek to establish an authentic sense of belonging. Marian, due to her hybrid position, is neither able nor willing to belong to such versions of the past; rather, she uses it also as a way of getting back at her society by challenging these attempts at social legitimation of an individual’s identity.

II Sankaran Krishna, in Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood, looks at the transformation of Sri Lanka “from a peaceful, indeed idyllic Ceylon to a synonym for macabre ethnic violence” as “the story of a majority community’s attempt to fashion a nation in its own image through monopolization of the state and of the consequent emergence of a secessionist ethnonational movement” (1999, 31). He sees this “effort to produce an abstract, homogenous national space out of various forms of pre- and non-national place” in the modern construction of Sri Lanka as characteristic of modernity and of the modern nation-state (32). However, this figuration of the island nation in terms of rigidly defined ethnic categories and the exclusion of all but one such category goes back to the colonial past of the nation and the manner in which modernity entered into the political, social and cultural psyche of the colony, “mediated by a colonial state, and the ways in which it has interacted in the postcolonial period with the exigencies of winning elections and acquiring one’s rightful share of the national pie” (50). It was through “colonial enumerative practices” such as “censuses, national agricultural yield and land-revenue data collection, trigonometric surveys of territory, fixed and demarcated political boundaries, and, increasingly, the classification of the population into definable groups such as castes, races, languages, religions, and the like” that “the idea of exotic, eternally differentiated and fragmented caste, tribe, communal, and other group-oriented identities” was instilled in the minds of the colonized even as it worked in the opposite manner for the colonizer, for whom, it served to “unify and produce an imagination of putatively equal citizens” (50). This led to an extremely anomalous picture of ethnic representation in positions of power for the colonized since, while these statistics proved that the Sinhalas enjoyed a demographic majority, the Tamil minority was “overrepresented” in the professional, administrative, commercial and educational fields (51). From this followed the rhetoric of the Sinhalas as victims deprived of their privileges and rights by the minority of upstart and opportunistic Tamils.

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In “A Question of Belonging: Reading Jean Arasanayagam through Nationalist Discourse” Elaine Ho and Harshana Rambukwella agree with Krishna that “the culture of ethnic intolerance…is something written into the very fabric of the processes by which the colonial state was transformed into the ‘imagined community’ of the postcolonial nation-state” (Ho and Rambukwella 2006, 1). However they also argue that this was not merely due to a passive reception of the “enumerative practices” of the colonizers. They invoke Partha Chatterjee (The Nation and its Fragments) to point out another way in which the colony reimagined itself into an essentialized nation through a “process of constructing [a] cultural domain [where] certain traditions and groups associated with them become marked as authentic whilst marginalizing and suppressing many other traditions and communities” (2). In the case of Sri Lanka the binary of the public sphere (which was undeniably influenced by Western ideas and which was sought aggressively by Sri Lankan nationalism) and the private or spiritual sphere (which was imagined as a unique and an essentially indigenous traditional and conservative realm to be kept religiously away from the pollution of colonial contact) continues into its postcolonial history with the inner/private realm defined in terms of the authenticity of “an exclusive ethnic group [the Sinhalas] while others are condemned to play the role of permanent guests on the peripheries of the nation” (3). They further argue that Arasanayagam’s works inhabit that “zone of autonomy” created by the dominated against the hegemony of the dominant, despite being “overdetermined by structures of suppression” by the dominant (3). The two minority identities– Burgher and Tamil–enable her to question the exclusionary politics of nationalism by “rewriting her own alien-ness” but there is a paradoxical desire to belong (8). This is brought powerfully to light in the title story of The Dividing Line. The autobiographical story poignantly captures the ambivalence of the protagonist as she plans to return once more to her homeland but with an accompanying guilt that she was somehow to blame “for my impulsive marriage into this ethnic community [Tamil] and the violence in which I was now embroiled. My children the victims” (Arasanayagam 2002, 162). As she faces opposition to her desire to go home to her nation, particularly by one of her daughters now settled in the USA, she revisits her life during the onset of the Civil War in 1983, when she and her family were suddenly rendered homeless, forced to flee for their lives, and accommodate themselves in one refugee camp after another. It was the events of that year that forced her and her daughters into exile for life both outside the country (in the case of her daughter Devy), as well as within the country (she, her husband, and her other daughter). And as an exile within her own country, the protagonist feels that her identity has changed irrevocably, requiring now more than ever, the

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adoption of “new personae” and new “disguises” (168). Even the refugee camp appears like a new territory to which the family has migrated: For me it was like crossing a frontier from one country to another. A form of migration… We stepped into unfamiliar territory without a passport. Anonymous identities with our lost identities, stepping into a country which as yet we cannot name…The rags of our identities can barely cover our nakedness. The ultimate victory is to emerge out of the pit of horror without a sense of self-pity. In that way we will save our souls…We rename ourselves from the tattered remains of our identities. (170–71)

The refugee camp forces its residents into an awareness of “dividing lines” both literally (in the rigid marking of personal spaces within the minimal space available) as well (and more importantly) as figuratively as the nation becomes fractured along invisible lines segregating ethnic, religious and linguistic groups. However, as the writer reflects on the consequences of difference enforced by state-sponsored nationalism onto groups perceived as minorities existing outside or at the margins of the ‘authentic’ nation and therefore requiring strict surveillance and policing, she concludes that this is a situation that seems to characterize the contemporary perception of the entire world and is, therefore, global and inescapable regardless of one’s location (181). In another story, “The Sack,” Arasanayagam draws upon an account in a local newspaper of a massacre in a border village in a remote part of the island (Ondaatje 2009), where the Sinhala villagers bore the brunt of counter-reprisals by the Tamil militants. This story had first developed as a poem titled “The Disasters of War”, and the writer subsequently expanded the short story into a play (Ondaatje 2009). The milieu is the border villages of north-central and eastern Sri Lanka which “belong to the grey area between LTTE–held areas and the Sri Lanka government-controlled areas,” often bearing the brunt of terror and violence by both the LTTE and government troops (Jayatilaka 2008). Though Arasanayagam’s poem is itself “derived partly from the etchings by Goya and the painting of Delacroix–tragic scenes of European battlefields” (Ondaatje 2009), in the story, however, the protagonist takes her severely wounded son in an empty sack, after the massacre in the village, through a dangerous path amid the thick forest. The female protagonist narrates her story through a monologue addressed as much to herself as to her son. The utter desperation of the mother forced to carry her near-dead son in a sack for want of any resources and manpower after the killings to a distant hospital captures poignantly the trauma suffered by the soft targets of any such violence: innocent civilians, especially women who have survived such episodes only to relive them over and over again. By foregrounding the effects of state-sponsored violence and counter-violence by the Tamils on Sinhalas, Arasanayagam questions the very rationale of the nation-building project on the

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part of both Sinhalas and Tamils. The events recorded in the story take place in the Sinhalese New Year and therefore are powerful pointers towards the complete annihilation of peace and regeneration that the season and the celebrations surrounding it suggest. As the protagonist surmises, though, this is a violence that has touched everyone’s lives on both sides: Perhaps their own too have died, met death in the same manner. There’s no one left now in all this world who has not lost some kith and kin through the bullet and steel blade and fire. (Arasanayagam 2002, 62–63)

As the mother drags her son in the sack through unfamiliar territory in the jungle in order to escape possible attacks from more assailants, she carries on a onesided dialogue with her semi-conscious son who can only respond with groans. Like the sack which is likened to a womb wherein her son will be safe and secure, the jungle also transforms into a womb-like place where the mother will bear the weight of her son and deliver him to a safe world out of the literal night and metaphorical darkness: You and I, alone in the dark. Alone. But I’ll take you out of the forest–I will, I will. My arms are not weak. I’ve lifted many heavy burdens in my lifetime. I’ll take you through, I will. I will bring you out of the darkness…Whether your eyes will ever open to the light I am not certain but I know this is the only way out for us both. Through the forest. To seek a cleared footpath. To emerge out of the darkness. (67)

The passage thus follows the trope of childbirth in order to propose a regenerative role of the women who are usually the primary targets and sufferers in sectarian violence as they are perceived as bodies on which the nationalist rhetoric is embodied and therefore a violation of which signals an effective attack on that particular rhetoric. However, by making a Sinhala woman as the focalizer, Arasanayagam seems to be contesting the ethical grounds of such figurations based on gender, as well as questioning the very grounds on which the dominant national ideology of postcolonial Sri Lanka is constructed. This enables her to powerfully deconstruct the official state versions of the Civil War through the appropriation of a self-conscious marginal identity. Arasanayagam thus uses the themes of displacement (both literal and figurative) and exile to question, through her fiction, the identity/ies imposed on those who are forced to flee their homes during such violent times as the ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. Her characters as is evident in this volume of short stories attempt to negotiate their existence in the margins and struggle to survive in a war that has torn the country apart. Their struggles however powerfully critique essentialized versions of the nation in Sri Lanka in the twentieth century. It is precisely the in-between position of Arasanayagam herself that facilitates this

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question of the very foundations of the postcolonial nation-state of Sri Lanka. The everyday occurrence of violence and its seepage into the lives of ordinary citizens work against the grand narratives of the alternate Sinhala and Tamil states that in theory ensure safety and protection of their respective ethnic groups while excluding the other groups as well as the very indeterminacy of the borders of such categories. Set in both pre- and post-Independence milieus, this anthology seems to imply that the relative positions of the Sinhalas, Tamils and Burghers in the 1980s are a perpetuation of the colonial hierarchies that characterized colonial Sri Lanka. While conceding the fact that hybridity becomes a powerful tool both literary and theoretical through which to explore the gaps in this colonial structure, Arasanayagam uniquely sees it also in terms of a violent imposition on the individual, perpetually reminding her of the historical burden that the term entails. From this perspective, the stories in The Dividing Line attest to the constant negotiation taking place in the works of Arasanayagam between the theoretical and cultural aspect of hybridity (that is, the cultural hybridity envisaged by Bhabha) and its socio-historical, lived aspect.

References Abayasekera, Nayomi. 2013. “Victimization, Historicizing and Memorialization: Jean Arasanayagam’s poetry as a political statement” Paper presented at “Ethical Futures: Dialogues on state, society and ethical existence,” 30 May – 1 June 2013. International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Accessed March 28, 2016. http://www.ices.lk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ Jean-Arasanayagam%E2%80%99s-poetry-as-a-political-statement-NayomiAbayasekera.pdf. Arasanayagam, Jean. 1988. “An Interview with Jean Arasanayagam on Aspects of Culture in Sri Lanka.” by Le Roy Robinson. Accessed March 28, 2016. naosite. lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10069/28348/1/keieikeizai67_04_06.pdf. —. 1995. All is Burning. New Delhi: Penguin. —. 2002. The Dividing Line. New Delhi: Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Henry, Rosita. 2008. “‘A Tulip in Lotus Land’: History and Agency in Colonial Sri Lanka.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 9(3): 210–218. doi: 10.1080/14442210802251654. Ho, Elaine Y.L. and Rambukwella, H. 2006. “A question of belonging: Reading Jean Arasanayagam through nationalist discourse.” Journal Of Commonwealth Literature 41(2): 61–81. Accessed March 22, 2016. http://hdl.handle. net/10722/48379.

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Jayatilaka, Tissa. 2008. “Comments on Jean Arasanayagam’s The Fire Sermon and The Sack.” The Island. 25 June 2008. Accessed March 28, 2016. http://www. island.lk/2008/06/25/midweek4.html. Kanaganayakam, Chelva. 2003. “Jean Arasanayagam.” In South Asian Novelists in English: An A–Z Guide edited by Jaina C. Sanga, 16–19. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Krishna, Sankaran. 1999. Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ondaatje, Christopher. 2009. Review of Fault Lines: Three Plays by Jean Arasanayagam. The Nation. 5 April 2009. Accessed March 28, 2016. http://www.nation. lk/2009/04/05/eye11.html. Peebles, Patrick. 2006. The History of Sri Lanka. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Roberts, Michael. “People Inbetween: Ethnic & Class Prejudices in British Ceylon.” Accessed March 28, 2016. http://www.thenationaltrust.lk/activities/PEOPLEINBETWEEN-Ethnic-and-Class-Prejudices-in-the-British-Period.pdf. Salgado, Minoli. 2007. Writing Sri Lanka, Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place. London: Routledge.

Rachael Sumner

Orality, Textuality and Literary Legacy in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen Abstract: The article focuses on Chigozie Obioma’s 2015 novel The Fishermen, which is characterised by intertextuality, linguistic code switching and the raising of local events to the level of national myth. Such techniques position Obioma’s narrative firmly within Nigerian literary and oral traditions, while also infusing the text with postcolonial political agency. Key words: intertextuality, code switching, colonisation, identity, Nigerian literature.

Chigozie Obioma’s debut novel The Fishermen was published to considerable critical acclaim in 2015. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Fishermen is a deeply personal narrative of tragedy, revenge and redemption. The novel’s appeal cannot, however, be explained purely on the basis of its emotive power. For, as Obioma has asserted, the central drama of his tale–the destruction of fraternal bonds–functions as a metaphor for the insidious effects of colonisation, in terms of its gradual erosion of values, beliefs and identity. “The idea of Nigeria did not come from us, the people,” states Obioma in his Man Booker interview.“We were on our own…we were many tribes and nations…then the foreigner comes and tells us, ‘look, this is how you ought to be.’ And sadly, we continue to believe and accept it” (Obioma, 2015). The representation of an external force wreaking havoc amongst closely knit communities is a key trope in the literature of Obioma’s literary predecessors: Nigerian writers such as Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka. However, in Obioma’s text, that catalyst for change has become absorbed within Nigerian culture itself, embodied in the figure of Abulu–a deranged outcast who sows suspicion and hatred amongst four brothers when he delivers his prophecy of fratricide. This is 1990s Nigeria, a country tearing itself apart: still reeling from the fallout of the Biafran war (1967–1970) and the political coups of the 1980s, only to reawaken to the horrors of the Abacha regime1. Civil war frames the representation of

1 On the failure of Commonwealth leaders to recognise the threat to democracy posed by the Abacha regime, dramatist Wole Soyinka observed: “Let the Commonwealth leaders, the international community, and most crucially, the nation’s own internal collaborators, think again and save the nation from the spiral of murder, torture, and leadership dementia that is surely leading to the disintegration of a once proud nation” (Soyinka 1997, 153).

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postcolonial Nigeria in The Fishermen, with its attendant break down of colonial structures. That new shattered reality finds its analogy in Abulu–the capacity for self-destruction now personified in the marginalised figure of a madman, both revered as a prophet and despised as a derelict–the living embodiment of a colonised community’s fractured sense of self-worth. If the oracle of Igbo communities in Things Fall Apart drives a shared sense of purpose, Abulu divides and terrorises with his enraged outbursts, foreseeing the doom of fourteen year old Ikenna at the hands of his own brothers. Yet a more overtly politicised reading of the character’s manic, garbled curses might also reveal their potential for destabilising the linguistic and textual surface of the novel itself. For, while written in English, The Fishermen is constantly subjected to interruptions from other languages or dialects–Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin–and from songs, curses, proverbs and prophecies, ensuring that it functions as a hybridised and generically porous text. Abulu’s prophecy is thus rendered as part song, part curse, part stage performance in a delivery which is itself punctured and distorted by the competing sounds of a passing plane and the shouts of children: The last statement we heard him make, ‘Ikena, you will swim in a river of red but shall never rise from it again. Your life-’ was barely audible. The din and the voices of children cheering at the plane from around the neighbourhood threw the evening into a cacophonous haze. Abulu cast a frenzied gaze upwards in confusion. Then, as if in a fury, he continued in a louder voice that was shipped into faint whispers by the sound of the aircraft. As the noise tapered off, we all heard him say ‘Ikena, you shall die like a cock dies.” (Obioma 2015, 122)

Abulu’s fragmented speech is traumatised, delirious–neither wholly oracular nor oratorial. It is a language in flux, taking on first the properties of chant and then of curse–shouted, whispered and at times silenced altogether. Yet, as Edouard Glissant writes of Creole, “we know that delirious speech can be a survival technique” (Glissant 1989, 129). In this case, Abulu becomes less of a marginalised figure, more ambivalent, his mutterings and shouts a challenge to English as the language of the coloniser and that of the novel itself. It is therefore English and not Abulu’s language which becomes the real alien force at work amongst the community– a force to be dismantled, scorned and sabotaged. “English”, says Benjamin, narrator of The Fishermen, “although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one switched to using it. So, our parents hardly spoke English, except…when the words were intended to pull the ground from beneath our feet” (Obioma 2015, 40).

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In the postcolonial Nigeria of the 1990s, English has acquired a very specific role as the signifier of authority, and consequently of a divisive colonial past, a language imbued with the power to drive a wedge between members of a single family. Benjamin’s father Eme, distanced from his sons by virtue of his work for the Central Bank of Nigeria, bemoans the fact that they speak Yoruba and not English, “the language of Western education”, as he terms it (Obioma 2015, 59). Code switching, a characteristic of the text, reinforces the weight of cultural signification carried by language. Ben’s mother Adaku speaks Igbo to her sons, affirming their ties with her former tribe, but the boys speak Yoruba to their friends–the language of Akure, the city in which they live, and of Nigerian soap operas and popular politicians such as MKO Abiola. Adding a further level of complexity to the polyglossic texture of Akuren life, Ben’s mother also speaks Nigerian Pidgin with some of her neighbours, throwing a hybridised and potentially destabilising challenge to formal English into the linguistic mix. Fifty years after the publication of Chinua Achebe’s interrogation of English as a medium of expression in his article “The African writer and the English language” (1965), the issue of language usage still haunts the texts of Nigerian writers. It can be assumed that Obioma’s decision to write in English mirrors that of fellow Nigerians such as Achebe, Ben Okri or Wole Soyinka who, in Achebe’s own words, “fashion an English which is at once universal and able to carry his [the writer’s] experience…the price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use” (Achebe 383, 1965). Achebe’s ground-breaking defence of English as a politically charged yet valid medium of expression echoes the sentiments of other postcolonial authors who have chosen to write in English. “To conquer English”, writes Salman Rushdie, “may be to complete the process of making ourselves free” (Rushdie 1982, 17). If our expectations of postcolonial literature include the de-anglicisation of the English language itself, The Fishermen proves exemplary. As previously mentioned, the code-switching which occurs within the text already stakes this narrative terrain out as linguistically fluid, hybrid and polyglossic. Obioma makes skilful use of a range of techniques which undermine the privileged role of English in literary expression. Largely eschewing the practice of in-text glossing, he opts for the insertion of entire translations of songs or chants, such as the fishermen’s own song: Bi otiwu o ki o Jo, ki o ja, Ati mu o, o male lo mo.

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She bi ati mu o? O male le lo mo o. Awa, Apeja, ti muo. Awa, Apeja, ti mu o, o ma le lo mo o Dance all you want, fight all you will, We’ve caught you you cannot escape. Haven’t we caught you? You certainly can’t escape. We, the fishermen, have caught you. We, the fishermen, have caught you, you can’t escape! (Obioma 2015, 29)

The insertion within the text of a song and its translation has a particularly destabilising effect upon the language within which the novel is framed. Fundamentally it serves as a form of textual disruption, forcing the reader to engage with two cultures simultaneously. For Obioma’s non-Nigerian readership, this requires further acknowledgement of English as something alien or ‘other’ to Akure and its community–at once conveying the meaning of the song, but simultaneously distancing us from the boys’ self-awareness. The non-Nigerian reader is thus rendered ‘other’, gazing at a reality always one step removed from their own experience, unable to fully absorb the narrative and its cultural reference points in the way that a Nigerian reader might do. Indeed, Obioma rarely makes the process of engaging with The Fishermen an easy one for his foreign readership, frequently inserting terms without any gloss or translation in order to reinforce the idea of cultural difference. Bill Ashcroft has defined such a technique as ‘metonymic gap’, a process whereby unglossed terms from a subaltern language are made to stand for an entire linguistic system, therefore becoming “synechdochic of the writer’s culture” (Ashcroft 2001, 75). Metonymic gap continually disrupts the narrative thrust of The Fishermen, ensuring that English never gains precedence as a medium of expression or representation. Adaku’s conversation in Pidgin with her neighbour Iya Iyabo concerning a local murder offers a case in point:

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“Aderonke vex say im dey beat the sick pikin, and fear say because of im alcohol, say im go kill am, so she hit im husband with a chair.” “Eh, eh,” Mother stammered. “The man die,” Iya Iyabo said. “Im die just like that”. (Obioma 2015, 153)

The insertion of Pidgin here carries a range of implications for Obioma’s foreign readership. Fundamentally, given what Ashcroft has suggested about the function of metonymic gap, it opens a window onto Akuren life, representing a degree of cultural and linguistic diversity which may serve to shake apart a reader’s preconceptions. However, as previously indicated, Edouard Glissant has pointed to the potential of communicative strategies and systems such as Pidgin or Creole for destabilising colonial languages such as French or English. “The Creole language is the first area of diversion,” writes Glissant, identifying diversion as a strategy for tricking, mocking or mimicking the Other – the coloniser. “You wish to reduce me to a childish babble”, he continues. “I will make this babble systematic, we shall see if you can make sense of it” (Glissant 1989, 20). It is this very challenge to the predominance of English, Eme’s “language of Western education”, that Obioma presents in Iya Iyabo’s dialogue. This is a linguistic system determined by locale and community: a fusion of English and Nigerian languages and syntax. Yet, if Glissant is right, there should be a clear parallel between the use of Pidgin amongst the women of Akure and the phenomenon of Creole amongst, for example, Caribbean communities. “The Creole language appears to be organically linked to the cross-cultural phenomenon worldwide”, writes Glissant. “It is literally the result of contact between different cultures and did not pre-exist this contact. It is not a language of a single origin, it is a crosscultural language” (Glissant 1989, 127). Thus, Obioma’s usage of Pidgin can be compared with that of other Nigerian writers such as Achebe, Ken Saro-Wiwa or Wole Soyinka who have embraced its destabilising potential2. However, it also offers a parallel with postcolonial literatures on a broader scale–with, for example, Caribbean writers and poets such as Derek Walcott or Kamau Brathwaite, who use Creole to illustrate the hybridity of postcolonial reality and to destabilise the narratives and language of the coloniser. 2 Writing on Ken Saro-Wiwa’s novel Sozaboy (1985), Chantal Zabus observes: “Given the postcolonial stale-mate between mother tongue and other tongue, it would appear that the pidgin medium somehow has the potential of mending the ‘schizo-text’ of English language narratives by dissolving the infernal binary between target and source language” (Zabus 2007, 193). Achebe also makes prominent use of Pidgin in The African Trilogy as does Wole Soyinka in plays such as The Trials of Brother Jero (1964).

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This is why Obioma’s use of oral traditions may also prove at once provocative and political. To refer once more to Glissant, “the written is the universalizing influence of Sameness, whereas the oral would be the organised manifestation of Diversity” (Glissant 1989, 100). To attempt a fusion of these two seemingly incompatible modes of communication is to create a genuinely postcolonial literature which embraces the nation’s historical and cultural diversity. It is precisely this marriage of written text with proverbs, song and wayward narrative structures which acknowledges Obioma’s debt to his literary forebears while extending their aesthetic legacy. Fundamentally, orality connects with community, just as the use of Igbo, Yoruba or pidgin serve as metonyms for cultural diversity. It is Ben’s mother who is described as “a patient story teller” (Obioma 2015, 44), her speech peppered with folktales, maxims and relations of local events, rooting Obioma’s narrative within systems of representation resistant to the inflexible medium of the written word. Adaku’s tale of the immolation of a local thief, Ben claims, is told with “so much vivid detail that the image of a man on fire stayed in my memory” (Obioma 2015, 45). In this respect, oral narratives bear the capacity to mythologise the community itself: to transform the everyday into a shared event which may be altered or retold depending on the wit or skills of the storyteller. Orality resists the tendency of the written word to archive–to stake out a single version of reality as genuine, and to dismiss all others as inferior or false. “Writing”, as Chantal Zabus writes in The African Palimpsest, “is closely associated with death”, a version of events which seals off all other possibilities (Zabus 2007, 162). Furthermore, written literature serves to isolate the reader from a community as the South African poet Mazisi Kunene (whose poetry prefaces The Fishermen) explains: “To Africans, written literature violated one of the most important literary tenets by privatizing literature” (Kunene 1996, 16). In Obioma’s work, orality both undermines and interrogates the assumed authority of the written word. It is a book written as much for the ear as for the eye, Obioma himself asserting in an interview that “a work of fiction… should be constructed in an effective plot that has an arc, a beginning and an end that can be told orally” (Go, 2015). Thus, a considerable degree of textual space is reserved for the description of sound, the act of pronunciation itself carrying culturally charged connotations as indicated in the following fragment, when the boys’ teacher, a Yoruba, is unable to pronounce the Igbo name of Ben’s brother, Boja:

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Boja had become used to his employment of approximate homophones, which depending on his mood, ranged from the utterly jarring–“Bojanonokwu”–to the utterly funny– “Bojanalooku”–which Boja himself often recalled, and even sometimes boasted that he was such a menacing figure that his name could not be pronounced by just anybody–like the name of a god. (Obioma 2015, 94)

A comic, but salient parallel is drawn here between the act of speech and the divine–a subtle reminder of the role that oral distinctions play in defining the boys’ relationship with their understanding of their own culture and community. In fact the written word appears at constant threat from the latent power of orality as it simmers beneath the surface of The Fishermen. The passage below, for example, reveals the extent to which oral traditions may be suppressed or corrupted but never truly annihilated. Ben describes the river, the Omi-Ala, where he and his brothers fish: Like many rivers in Africa, Omi-Ala was once believed to be a god; people worshipped it. They erected shrines in its name, and courted the intercession and guidance of Iyemoja, Osha, mermaids and other spirits and gods that dwelt in waterbodies. This changed when the colonialists came from Europe, and introduced the Bible, which then prized Omi-Ala’s adherents from it, and the people, now largely Christians, began to see it as an evil place. A cradle besmeared. (Obioma 2015, 27)

The introduction of a written text–the Bible–re-inscribes the river, exiling its gods and spirits and prizing a community from its cultural moorings. However, in Obioma’s narrative the Omi-Ala is further re-inscribed as a locus for events, transforming the narrative into postcolonial palimpsest: a revolutionary space for the forging of new forms of representation. Oral tradition now functions alongside or within written text to create an holistic representation of the community’s historico-cultural coordinates. Chantal Zabus insists that the concept of the re-inscription of oral traditions– of the novel as palimpsest–is one that inflects certain West African novels: Being a writing material, the original writing of which has been effaced to make room for a second, the palimpsest best describes what is at work…They are indeed palimpsests, in that, behind the scriptural authority of the European language, the earlier, perfectly erased remnants of the African language can still be perceived. (Zabus 2007, 2)

Thus, the notion of literature bearing political agency through the act of textual and linguistic re-inscription is one that has gained wide currency over recent years. Furthermore, there is much to be said for a reinforcement or revision of the hybridised text in African literature which also throws conduits of modern media into the heady postcolonial mix. The Fishermen abounds with references to Yoruba soap operas, Australian TV dramas and international sporting events,

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acknowledging the entrenched position of a globalised mass media in 1990s Nigeria. This adds a further layer to the already polyglossic texture of The Fishermen– a sense that yet more forms of cultural signification have staked a claim to the boys and their identity. Ultimately, however, it is Obioma’s raising of a local event to the level of national myth which maps out this textual terrain as postcolonial. Oral traditions feed The Fishermen, and the novel in turn feeds new myths and new traditions. In fact, Ben leaves the reader in no doubt that his brothers’ story is to be understood in terms of this cyclical dynamic, claiming: “I’ve heard someone say that the end of many things often bears a resemblance–even if faint–to their beginning. That was true of us” (Obioma 2015, 335). However, this trope of departure and return is just one way in which the The Fishermen bears resemblance to the narrative of myth. It also transforms its characters into archetypes so that, far from rooting them in a specific time or place, they transcend such limitations. The boys, after all, are fishermen–no longer merely adolescents pushing at the rules and restrictions of their family home. Ultimately, in mastering their own destiny, Ben and his older brother Obembe literally become fishers of men, ensnaring Abulu with fish hooks in a violent bid for vengeance: We kept hitting, pulling, striking, screaming, crying, and sobbing until weakened, covered in blood, and wailing like a child, Abulu fell backwards into the water with a wild splash. I’d once been told that if a man wanted something he did not have, no matter how elusive that thing was, if his feet do not restrain him from chasing it, he would eventually grab it. That was our case. (Obioma 2015, 348)

Having committed what is effectively a cleansing blood rite, the boys are then left to face punitive consequences for their actions. The idea of being a fisherman has, however, travelled so far from its initial associations with youthful innocence and freedom that it serves as a trope for their journey into manhood. Ben’s habit of associating characters with animals serves a similar purpose—to raise them to the level of archetype. His younger brother and sister, David and Nkem, become egrets, “the wool-white birds that appear in flocks after a storm, their wings unspotted, their lives unscathed” (Obioma 2015, 394), while he describes himself as a moth, “the fragile thing with wings, who basks in light, but who soon loses its wings and falls to the ground” (380). It is this tendency to transform the local and specific into trope, archetype or myth which locates The Fishermen firmly within a postcolonial novelistic framework. Obioma has acknowledged his debt, for example, to Amos Tutuila, whose novel The Palm-Wine Drunkard (1952) is noted for its myth-like opacity;

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its nameless protagonist voyaging through a wilderness imbued with magic. That dreamscape and the merger of archetype with real life re-emerges once more in Ben Okra’s 1991 novel The Famished Road, while Keith M. Booker alludes to the “parallels between Achebe’s story of Okonkwo” in Things Fall Apart, “and ancient Greek tragedy” (Booker 2003, 251), Okonkwo defining himself in terms of his own legendary feats and therefore self-mythologising. The polyglossic texture of The Fishermen, the employment of code switching and metonymic gap, the hybridisation of written text with oral tradition and the reinscription of the mundane or local as national myth: all are strategies, techniques or cultural standpoints which serve to define The Fishermen as a postcolonial novel. They also serve, however, to reinforce and in fact to supplement the literacy legacy to which Obioma is heir–a legacy which he inherits not just from his immediate cultural surroundings, but from an awareness of the role postcolonial texts continue to play in navigating our understanding of contemporary geopolitical realities.

References Achebe, Chinua. 1965. “The African Writer and the English Language.” In African Intellectual Heritage – A Book of Sources, edited by Molefi K. Assante and Abu S. Abarry, 379–384. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ashcroft, Bill. 2001. Postcolonial Transformation. London: Routledge. Booker, M. Keith. 2003. The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Glissant, Edouard. 1989. Caribbean Discourse. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Go, Nathan. 2015. “Of Animal Metaphors and the British Legacy: An Interview with Chigozie Obioma.” Michigan Quarterly Review. Accessed January 29, 2016. http://www.michiganquarterlyreview.com/2015/04/of-animal-metaphorsand-the-british-legacy-an-interview-with-chigozie-obioma/. Kunene, Mazisi. 1996. “Some Aspects of South African Literature.” In World Literature Today, Vol. 70, Issue 1: 13–16. Accessed January 29, 2016. doi: 10.2307/40151845. Obioma, Chigozie. 2015. “Chigozie Obioma-Longlist Author Interview.” Man Booker. Accessed January 18, 2016. http://themanbookerprize.com/ news/2015/09/09/chigozie-obioma-longlist-author-interview. Obioma, Chigozie. 2015. The Fishermen. New York & Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

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Rushdie, Salman. 1982. “Imaginary Homelands.” In Imaginary Homelands-Essays and Criticism, edited by Salman Rushdie, 9–21. London: Vintage. Soyinka, Wole. 1997. The Open Sore of a Continent-A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zabus, Chantal. 2007. The African Palimpsest. Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Part II Postcolonial States, Hybrid Identites, Disregarded Territories

Fabrício Dias da Rocha

Stimuli and Challenges of “Mozambican Identity” in Africa. A Brief Analysis of the Processes of the Construction of National and Cultural Identity in Mozambique: A Postcolonial Approach Abstract: The article discusses the process of the formation of Mozambican national and cultural identity as influenced by numerous historical and social processes, with special attention drawn to impact of the Portuguese colonization of the country. Key words: heterogeneous groups, identity, colonization, ethnicity, hybridization, Mozambique.

Introduction In the first instance, I would like to point out that researching the constitution of identities or identity processes, whether of countries or heterogeneous cultural groups, is always a field marred by uncertainty, as social identity—national and/ or cultural—is not derived from a specific event in history, and less a direct result of some existential paradigm, but rather is composed by intersections of numerous disparate and interconnected episodes. Furthermore, compilations of factual records often are not coeval, thus contributing to the elucidation of an accurate identity analysis and its composition. Through the study of historical and social processes, and through analysing the participation of “non-black” minorities in the events that culminated in the formation of the Mozambican national state, I seek not just to reflect on how such events were determinant in the composition processes of Mozambican national identity, but how power relations in the modern colonial period—framed by a maintenance and also by discontinuities of cultural exchanges contained in this time interval—also played an important role in the development of acquiesces of identity configurations in the postcolonial period.1 1 An earlier version of this text was presented at the International Conference—Postcolonial theory and practice in the twenty-first century: Crossing boundaries, breaking

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Therefore, Mozambicanity, as any other form of local or national identity expression based on macro-narratives, should be subject to investigative scrutiny allowing a critical analysis of the historical processes and the observation and understanding of their underlying micro-narratives. Hence, being narratives derived from an attempted political project of nation, or the result of “long-term” cultural intersections, the important thing in this analysis is not the deconstruction of identity narrative per se, but an opportunity to understand other social experiences that aspire to become an integral part of an identitary whole. In conceptual terms as social identity is a “probability” dependent on external variables and random eventualities to “become”—which above all relies on the so called “other” that represents the otherness—likewise, it can be said that national identity flourishes when conditions relating to the possibility of a real or symbolic threat from an “other” puts into question the representative status of place of the subject, in this case the nation. To Stuart Hall (1992) and Anthony Smith (1991) a given population that shares an historical territory, common myths and memories and a mass public culture, constitutes a major source of cultural and national identity placed ambiguously between the past and the future. In the view of Hall, in order to conceive meaning about the nation, national public cultures are subject to identification and identity construction (Hall 1992, 293). According to Smith (1991, 14) the nation carries principles of other models of collective identity, explaining why national identity is associated with other types of identity (class, ethnic, religious) and ideologies (liberalism, fascism, etc.). Ethnicity, assuming itself as a wider social identity is relational, and similarly, constructed through the comparison and differentiation in relation to the “other”. Usually this comparison (or confrontation) is related to a game of domination and submission, where a social group, according to their cultural and political characteristics, intended to subdue the other. However, it is valid to remember that historically the foundation of the concept of ethnicity was constituted under a colonial normativity, racialized and pejorative. In other words, according to Carlos Serra, this concept still implies that “they” are not only different, but inferior (Serra 2003, 64). Therefore, in accordance to some theorists reflecting on the concept of identity in Mozambique in the colonial and postcolonial periods (Meneses 2013; Santos

ties, bridging worlds—held on April 7, 2016, at the University of Rzeszów, Poland. Work carried out with support from the Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal (SFRH/BD/91333/2012).

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2002; Serra 1998), I reaffirm the principle that identity, and in this case the national identity, is not a given thing, but a process of construction and reconstruction of a self in the group (Hall 1992). Social identity does not pre-exist the relationship, but is built on the relationship; it is relational and contextual (Serra 1998, 10).

1. The identity as a nation project: some notions about the Mozambican case A process of cultural hybridization results from the complex and ambivalent relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, and from the discriminatory effects of identity that this colonial encounter produces (Bhabha 1994, 110–12). Therefore, one may say that national identity, besides other types of identities, is also the result of the imperialistic project of nation that, put into practice by the unequal balance of forces and interests in a given population, could be a traumatic situation for those, who by the misfortune of precarious regeneration conditions of socio-cultural ties, suffered the consequences of a process of cultural and identity mischaracterization recurring in most colonial and neocolonial paradigms. Hence, it is imperative to emphasize that the national project proposed by Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique in the twentieth century had as its main objective the establishment of the great Lusitanian project, where narratives of belonging were built and echoed by the colonizer and settlers, with the latter helping to support the ideological-imperial project of Portugueseness. For this reason, it is important to point out that Portugal sought to limit and control the former trade relations of its colonies with the “other worlds” (especially the Indian world) and with other perspectives about the cosmos, which meant that commercial and cultural trades were not of interest anymore as a unit of autonomous and reciprocal events. This attitude meant for the colonies, especially for Mozambique, that the Cartesian logic of European civilizational development was the only way to achieve a concept so uncertain and inaccurate as so-called “development”. This kind of doctrinaire thinking was expressed not only in political actions at the time, but in colonial literary texts which, as stated by Francisco Noa (2002, 63), sought to exalt the principles and ideals of the colonizer “for a type of message that expressly boasts the individual action of a people who believed in the right to ‘save’ the other”—the colonized. The colonial concept of evolution combined with the actions of an imperialist economic-productive (in)efficiency deteriorated the conviviality relations within the racially discriminatory the Mozambican society. Teresa Cruz e Silva asserts that while this intention sought to contradictorily “build” the great “multiracial” and “pluricontinental” Portuguese nation, this ideal led to the a progressive increase

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in social inequality “creating artificial boundaries between in the native population through a division between indigenous and assimilated and the legalization of a separate education among citizens and indigenous” (Cruz e Silva 2013, 89). Herein lies the ambivalent reproduction of dominant group identity, based in a total negation of the “other” through a production of the other´s nonexistence, which to Boaventura Sousa Santos, “implies the desire of the other experienced as an abysmal absence or insatiable lack” (Santos 2002, 20). In this regard, by denying and wasting those experiences and other possibilities, rejecting a history of multiple exchanges, former existent relations between a European State and different states and peoples of Africa and of the Indian ocean—on behalf of a rationality based on a grammar of an alleged cognitive and racial supremacy (Boaventura 2002)—the Portuguese colonial administration, driven by a dictatorial regime (1933–1974), precipitated the social upheavals that marked the first half of the twentieth century in Mozambique generating insurrections of all sorts, especially those with nativist and nationalist dispositions. The nativist period had an intense political activity in the colony where several work organizations and cultural associations were created. In these associations whites and mestizos formed the overwhelming majority of workers. As an affluent group they represented and defended the interests of white workers, absorbing a type of nationalism with Eurocentric standards (Rocha 2006). Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with the colonial policies was crucial to the creation of important associations in Mozambique such as the Grêmio Africano of Lourenço Marques (a social clique and political lobby) in 1908,2 the African League in 1910,3 the Nativist Party in 1920,4 etc., giving voice to the dissatisfactions, and valorizing the colony’s regional aspects.

2 The Grêmio Africano of Lourenço Marques defended the interests of a group, but sought to speak for all. Olga Neves (1989, 110) explains that it had as the key slogan the promotion of the indigenous education inserted in a larger intention that associates called the “African cause”. 3 In 1923 the Grêmio sponsored the 2nd part of the Pan-African Congress held in Lisbon, where its delegates were present, as well as its president at the time, João Albasini. In 1920 this association changed its name to African Association of Mozambique Colony (Moreira 2000, 443). 4 Established in the capital of the colony, Lourenço Marques, it became active during the legislative elections occurred in 1920/21 and “was the political face of the Grêmio Africano of Lourenço Marques running the elections with own candidates” (Rocha 2006, 91).

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Protests against the colonial administration were organized by a segment of the population derived from different ethnic-cultural backgrounds, born in Mozambique, and recognized as “sons of the land,”5 i.e. the nativist group. However, it is important to emphasize that this movement first meant a reaction to the attacks suffered by their cultural communities and to the loss of privileges that this small Mozambican bourgeoisie, including a small black elite, had conquered in the previous century through the trade with the Portuguese and merchants from other countries. Thus, despite the fact the Grêmio, as an elite, outlined their challenge in terms of mutual values enabling them to partake in the colonial social economy on an equal basis with any other Portuguese, they faced enormous contradictions based on gender, class and ethnicity. To Jeanne Penvenne, neither the elite was capable of mounting an intellectually impressive argument for unfettered citizenship—which it was—nor that the elite had so internalized the meanings and identities of the hegemonic Portuguese middle class culture and ideology that, despite its often brilliant manipulation of meanings and identities, it could not convincingly challenge colonial domination. (Penvenne 1989, 257)

Having the nativist and proto-nationalist period in Mozambique covered the first decades of the twentieth century, the unfolding of their political actions would find a noisy echo in the early 1950s, regarding the establishment of the first student organizations of nationalist character such as the Núcleo de Estudantes Secundários Africanos de Moçambique (NESAM)6. From these associations emerged some of the leaders of the main movements of the anti-colonial struggle in the 1960s. In the sixties, Eduardo Mondlane7 said that Mozambique as a country was a Portuguese creation, but that similar experience of oppression and domination suffered by the Africans would lead to the awakening of a Mozambican national identity (Macamo 1998, 36). Mondlane himself declared that the Mozambican nationalism like all African nationalism was born of the experience of European colonialism, and the Mozambican territorial community arose as a direct 5 According to Alexandre Lobato (1970) the “sons of the land” were generally the mestizo elites that until 1890 were registered as the “whites” from Mozambique, calling themselves as such in opposition to the new settlers who were arriving. 6 The NESAM corresponded to an important student society founded in 1949 by Eduardo Mondlane in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) from which emerged relevant political figures who contributed to expansion of a nationalist consciousness in the country, and fundamental to the creation of Mozambique´s first independence movements (Casimiro 1979; Neves 2008). 7 First president of the Frente para Libertação de Moçambique—FRELIMO: the guerrilla movement that led to Mozambican independence.

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consequence of colonial domination established through the experience of discrimination, forced labour and other aspects of colonial exploitation (Mondlane 1969, 101). Severino Ngoenha explains that historically the political project of the Mozambican identity is singular, because as Portugal was born of a rejection of being a Spanish province, the Mozambican political project was born as the denial of their citizens to remain a province of Portugal (Ngoenha 1998, 20). This means that not only social facts deserve prominence in the analysis, but also agents of social change. Therefore, when Ngoenha says that the “Mozambican identity is a heritage we have received through the courage of men and women who fought…for our sovereignty and freedom” (Ngoenha 1998, 17), it is possible to question who exactly these people are, and what their forms of resistance and collapse were.

2. From colonial population cultural diversity to the conformation of postcolonial identities Although the presence of a European population during the colonial period in Mozambique was reduced, what basically established the colonialism of settlement, according to Maria Paula Meneses, was a combination of the colonial authorities that incorporated the administrative apparatus—military cadres and some missionaries among them—and native populations, European settlers or their descendants, and other Asians, such as Indians and Chinese (Meneses 2010, 80). Thus far, I assume I have made it clear that many individuals of other ethnic origins than African black matrix are among those people who in one way or another were fundamental for the liberation movements and to the advent of Mozambican independence. Therefore, many of the subjects in this study are direct descendants of the Portuguese, Indians from Goa, the Chinese, Greeks, Jews and, not infrequently, mestizos of each of these ethnic backgrounds with black African, or even between each other. These individuals and their descendants can be called a minority, but a minority that is computable, since most of them were born in Mozambique and for personal reasons, identified themselves with the independence process8. In fact, the total collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1975 meant the political and social reformulation of Mozambique. The revolutionary process headed by the FRELIMO favoured the implementation of the Mozambican national plan proposed by this movement. Therefore, it is not possible to consider 8 The term minority is used here only as numeric/demographic data and not as a sociological category which entails a group that undergoes processes of social exclusion.

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a national project based on the Mozambican identity (Mozambicanity), disassociated from the FRELIMO’s political effort itself, which had the biggest goal in reversing the degree of exploitation and social inequality so characteristic in the colonial period. However, as explained by Maria Paula Meneses, the FRELIMO’s nationalist project, in order to invoke equality, urged the elimination of differences that formed the social tissue of the country, conceiving serious contradictions, synonymous of inequality with use of modern mechanisms of domination that continues dictating its action (Meneses 2013, 187). Though reflecting on Augusto Nascimento’s statement that “nationalism, given its political and social force, is among the items that induce to mix affectivities and political allegiances” (2013, 14) José Magode (1996) also suggests that the question of national identity in the post-colonial regime in Mozambique is intrinsically related to the role of Mozambican political elites in trying to establish an ideological cohesion, despite the existence of multiple social groups, and through a national integration discourse. Magode also advocates that despite the adoption of political pluralism in Africa, in this case in Mozambique, “political transition from authoritarian regimes to democracy…translates into a social confrontation to the centralized nature of the post-colonial state” (Magode 1996, 12). Michel Cahen (1996) asserts that in the Mozambican nationalism there was no desire to reform the state (mass nationalism), being in fact a nationalism established through the state, by the ideal of a particular socio-cultural group (elitist nationalism) which assumes itself as the hegemonic political power that creates the nation, establishing its features to other groups with own identities (Cahen 1996, 25–6). On the other hand, Elísio Macamo explains that this fact derives from the problem of normativity, which is the confusion between the feelings and desires of the observer over the observed reality. He explains that Frelimo defined Mozambique in the years after independence in terms derived from the Marxist analysis, mainly influenced by the Leninist analysis of the imperialism as an advanced stage of capitalism, adopting the normative way, privileging the nationalists’ experience and generalizing it (Macamo 1998, 36–7). Moreover, according to Ngoenha (1998), the universal character of the Mozambicanity political project and the singularities of proto-nationalism explain the constitutive difficulty of the Mozambican identity—which he says can present (1) a healthy and productive tension “if the distinctions are oriented in a way to collaborate solely to the common good of the global nation”; or (2) a harmful and risky tension “if the social actors are taken to enclosure themselves in

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their particularities (ethnocentrism) and even combat the difference (tribalism)” (Ngoenha 1998, 24). Beyond the strictly political point of view of the constitution of the Mozambican identity as a nation project in postcoloniality, the contribution of different cultural genealogies, exposed here based on the study of minorities that are representative of the ethnic-cultural variation in Mozambique and determined mainly by a long tradition of trade and cultural exchanges and mutations between Africa, Europe and especially over the Indian ocean (Rita-Ferreira, 1982), demonstrates that the different socio-cultural backgrounds are also critical for the development of national identities.

3.  Final considerations The studies on the identity reconstruction processes in countries emerging from colonial regimes in Africa have challenged the experts in the field in terms of their scientific complexity. In the Mozambican case, such epistemological difficulty is particularly evident due to internal migration and by the intense old trade between that territorial space and the people from the “Near East” that, even before the arrival of Europeans, were (and still are) organically connected by the Indian Ocean. In this sense, as indicated by José Capela, until the mid-eighteenth century, trade on the coast of that territory belonged exclusively to the baneanes, mujojos and other cultural groups of Indian origin (Capela 2010, 125). The advent of modern colonialism in the twentieth century and the exponential influx of settlers came not only to add to the diverse ecological and cultural landscape of Mozambique, but, likewise, sought to force identity disruptions through the nation’s colonial project. The consequence of this intent and the contradictions of the regime nurtured the nationalist struggles that culminated to the proclamation of Mozambique’s independence from Portugal. As a corollary, disruptions and identity reconfigurations were in progress again and the results of this process after 40 years are being analysed. Lastly, to conclude, I must say that a more sophisticated study of the terms that underlie the Mozambican identity or the Mozambicanity genealogy is a multifocal and multi-sited work, which is not possible and liable to be carried out based only on an analysis of political quadrants, sociolinguistic characteristics and/ or historical-cultural aspects separately and grounded on dated events. On the contrary, only an extensive study of this chain of procedures, cosmologies and centrisms, understood as an amalgam of processes and long-term assumptions, may provide us with clues and suggest illations that may come close to a definition of Mozambicanity.

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References Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The location of culture. London: Routledge. Cahen, Michel. 1996. “O Estado, etnicidades e a transição política. Unicidade, unidade ou o pluralismo do Estado?” In Moçambique: etnicidades, nacionalismo e o Estado. Transição inacabada, edited by José Magode, 18–39. Maputo: Centro de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais. Capela, José. 2010. Moçambique pela sua história. Porto: Centro de Estudos Africanos da Universidade do Porto. E-books collection. Casimiro, Isabel Maria. 1979. “O Movimento Associativo como Foco do Nacionalismo. Movimento Estudantil. NESAM e AAM”, Maputo, Departamento de História, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. Cruz e Silva, Teresa. 2013. “O nacionalismo em Moçambique e o papel da igreja: o caso das igrejas protestantes no sul de Moçambique.” In Em torno dos Nacionalismos em África, edited by Augusto Nascimento e Aurélio Rocha, 86–102. Maputo: Alcance Editores. Hall, Stuart. 1992. “The question of cultural identity.” In Modernity and its futures, edited by Stuart Hall, David Held & Tony McGrew, Cambridge: Polity Press. Leite, Joana Pereira and Nicole Khouri. 2012. Os ismailis de Moçambique. Vida económica no tempo colonial. Lisboa: Edições Colibri. Lobato, Alexandre. 1970. Lourenço Marques, Xilunguíne: biografia de uma cidade. Lisboa: Agência Geral do Ultramar. Macamo, Elísio. 1998. “A influência da religião na formação de identidades sociais no sul de Moçambique.” In Identidade, moçambicanidade, moçambicanização, edited by Carlos Serra, 35–69. Maputo: Livraria Universitária/UEM. Magode, José. 1996. Moçambique: etnicidades, nacionalismo e o Estado. Transição inacabada. Maputo: Centro de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais. Meneses, Maria Paula. 2010. “O ‘indígena’ africano e o colono ‘europeu’: a construção da diferença por processos legais.” Cadernos dos CES 7: 68–93. Coimbra: Centro de Estudos Sociais. Meneses, Maria Paula. 2011. “Images Outside the Mirror? Mozambique and Portugal in World History.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of SelfKnowledge 9: 121–137. Meneses, Maria Paula. 2013. “Desafios a Moçambique: nação e narrativas póscoloniais” Cadernos de Estudos Culturais: Pós-colonialidade 9: 183–202. Mondlane, Eduardo. 1969. The struggle for Mozambique. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

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Moreira, José et al. 2000. “As primeiras formulações nacionalistas.” In História de Moçambique. Volume I, Edited by Carlos Serra, 432–456. Maputo: Edição do Departamento de História/UEM. Neves, Olga Maria L.S.I. 1989. Em defesa da causa africana. Intervenção do Grémio Africano na sociedade de Lourenço Marques, 1908–1938. Lisboa: Universidade de Lisboa, Masters dissertation. Neves, Olga Maria L.S.I. 2008. O movimento associativo em Moçambique: tradição e luta (1926–1962). PhD thesis. Ngoenha, Severino E. “Identidade moçambicana: já e ainda não.” In Identidade, moçambicanidade, moçambicanização, edited by Carlos Serra, 17–34. Maputo: Livraria Universitária/UEM, 1998. Noa, Francisco. 2002. Império, mito e miopia. Moçambique como invenção literária. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho S.A. Penvenne, Jeanne. 1989. “‘We are all Portuguese!’ Challenging the political economy of assimilation: Lourenço Marques, 1870–1933.” In The creation of tribalismo in Southern Africa, edited by Leroy Vail. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rita-Ferreira, António. 1982. Presença Luso-Asiática e mutações culturais no sul de Moçambique (Até c.1900). Lisboa: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical. Rocha, Aurélio. 2006. Associativismo e nativismo em Moçambique: Contribuição para o estudo das origens do nacionalismo moçambicano. Maputo: Texto Editores. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2002. “Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Inter-identity.” Luso Brazilian Review, 39(2): 9–43. Serra, Carlos. 1998. Identidade, moçambicanidade, moçambicanização. Maputo: Livraria Universitária/UEM. Serra, Carlos. 2003. Combates pela mentalidade sociológica. Maputo: Imprensa Universitária/UEM. Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National identity. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Małgorzata Martynuska

Cooking up Cubanidad: Cultural Hybridity in the Case of Cuban American Cuisine Abstract: The aim of the article is to examine the re-creation of food practices after the migratory experience of Cuban Americans. The analysis points out how Cuban-style dishes were restored in the American context creating culturally hybrid cuisine, known as Nuevo Cubano, which is also called Floribbean Cuisine in Florida. Key words: ethnic revival, hybridity, culinary fusion, Floribbean cuisine, transnational recipes.

The history of ethnic cuisines in the USA is closely connected to the history of immigration. During the 19th century period of mass migration, Chinese, Japanese, Italians and Mexicans influenced eating patterns in the USA, creating the most popular ethnic cuisines in the United States (Lee et al. 2014, 4). The American cuisine preferred by the US white middle classes in the 19th century was largely based on English-inspired cuisine which was perceived as civilized but bland. This type of cuisine, firstly, functioned as part of the project of consolidating colonizing power against the culinary passions of the barbarian or savage ethnic cuisine, but later it became distinguished for its Otherness and its scarcity. Nowadays, America’s multiculturalism, with its ethnic cuisine, is valued for supplementing American cooking with its flavours and spicing (Chez 2011, 243). During the ethnic revival that occurred in the USA in the 1960s racial minorities distinguished themselves from the American mainstream. Emphasis on ethnic food became part of a larger social trend. Caribbean immigrants in the USA implement their distinctive ethnic food which results in the transformation of American foodways. Changes in culinary habits vary from region to region, shaping American regional cuisines. The greatest transformations have been taking place in urban centres with the largest influx of new immigrants, e.g. Miami, Los Angeles, New York City (Gabaccia 1998, 202–203). American cities are not homogenous in the national, ethnic or class sense: Los Angeles is not purely Mexican, New York–Puerto Rican or Miami–Cuban. Mass production expanded markets linking producers and consumers of diverse backgrounds, offering new taste blends and creating hybrid dishes. Hybridity defines new transcultural forms that arise from cross-cultural exchange. It is manifested in many areas of life in which identity is constantly negotiated across

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the cultural boundaries. Hybridity involves the fusion of two relatively distinct forms or identities and cross-cultural contact which often occurs across national borders (Kraidy 2005, 5). Cultural hybridity can be found in syncretic religions, mixed languages, cuisines, styles in architecture, literature or music (Burke 2009, 8). Hybridity is the recognition that purity is untenable whether scientifically at the level of DNA or culturally in terms of cultural form. Whereas some may dismiss hybridity as yet another neoliberal category that erases all difference, the study of hybridity does not necessarily imply that it is a tension-free process. Indeed, the mixture of two or more cultures is neither on equal terms, nor does it avoid tension and pain. (Valdivia 2005, 63–64)

The article discusses cultural hybridity in the case of Cuban American cuisine. The first part of the paper deals with the evolution of Caribbean fusion cuisine in which native dishes underwent transformations due to new ingredients brought by Spanish colonists and the cooking techniques of African slaves. The following section describes the culinary traditions of Cuba with its rich multicultural heritage and changes concerning food shortages during the Revolution. The next part of analysis points out how Cuban-style dishes were restored in the American context creating the culturally hybrid cuisine known as Nuevo Cubano which is also called Floribbean Cuisine in Florida.

1.  The Caribbean fusion cuisine Fusion cuisine concerns a mix of ingredients and cooking techniques from different traditions. The Caribbean has had a fusion cuisine ever since the sixteenth century and it continues developing in the places where Caribbean migrants reside. “The culinary fusion has been a process of transculturation, defined as a process that includes the partial loss of a culture, the partial acquisition of another culture, and the eventual creation of a new one” (Janer 2007, 397). The Caribbean played an important role in the early stages of globalization as national cuisines emerged “not from the rejection of the global in favour of the local but rather through blending of the two in a culinary sensibility that combined patriotism and cosmopolitanism in pursuit of social distinction” (Pilcher 2012, 2). The Caribbean aboriginal diet used to be based on fish, shellfish, small game, tropical fruits, yucca, corn, sweet potatoes, peppers, beans, avocado and squashes. Then, the Spanish colonists arrived and introduced hogs. When the native population was exterminated, the cultivation plots either disappeared or were destroyed by wild hogs. Colonists started to use ingredients from the Americas (tomatoes, potatoes, cacao, vanilla), Europe (cabbage, aromatic herbs) and Africa (okra). The colonists also brought ingredients from Europe that originally came from Asia (rice, garlic, onions, apples,

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peaches, lettuce, carrots, citrus fruits) and ingredients from Africa that originally came from Asia (sugarcane, bananas, coconuts). The base of traditional Caribbean cuisine, then, combines ingredients from all over the world (Janer 2007, 397–398). The African slaves who worked as cooks carried taste memories of dishes that they had eaten at home, but they faced serious limitations as not all of the ingredients were available in the new environment, so they had to invent new recipes. Thus, the Caribbean cuisine was invented primarily by African cooks who created dishes based on available ingredients and remembered cooking traditions. There are a few cooking techniques common to Caribbean cuisines. Firstly, this type of cuisine uses a paste of ground seasoning like sofrito in the Spanish speaking islands and the marinades in the English speaking regions. Secondly, the African grinding stone is used to make dough from root vegetables. Thirdly, a Caribbean curry powder is used in the regions with numerous Indian immigrants. These cooking techniques are used in preparation of pasta and processed meats to give the dishes a Caribbean character. Generally, Caribbean cuisine allows for considerable creativity and improvisation, and attempts at repeating dishes in exactly the same way are not appreciated (Janer 2007, 399–400). Caribbean immigrants from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic constitute the second largest Latino group (after Mexicans) in the United States. Although the inhabitants of the Caribbean island have a common early history, their cuisines developed differently in the USA due to various migration patterns. Moreover, this type of cuisine varies greatly from Mexican cooking culture, which is based on maize and hot chillies. Caribbean cuisine uses fewer spices and a lot of plantains1, yucca (cassava)2, pork, rice and beans (Janer 2008, 12). Latin American cuisines are the result of centuries of fusion of many cuisines of the world so they should not be conceived as a single, static, pure or authentic cuisine against which Latino cuisine can be measured. Latino cooking in the United States is not only as diverse as the different Latin American countries and regions, but also as diverse as their migration histories. (Janer 2008, 51)

2.  In Cuba The culinary traditions of Cuba, influenced by the original native inhabitants, Spanish colonists and African slaves, blended in a cuisine that is diverse and delicious. The inhabitants of Cuba present a very diverse population. Many of the native islanders intermarried with Spanish colonists. The descendants of these 1 Plantain–a starchy fruit that resembles a banana but must be cooked before it is eaten. 2 Yucca–a starchy root vegetable.

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marriages were called mestizo. Islanders who were born in Cuba but had fully Spanish heritage were called criollos3. Then criollos and mestizos intermarried with freed African slaves, further adding to the island’s ethnic mix. The resulting rich multicultural heritage can be seen in all aspects of Cuban life, including Cuban meals. The important agricultural goods of the Cuban island are: corn, beans, yucca, squash, peanuts, sugarcane, coffee, tobacco, citrus fruit, rice and potatoes. The basic ingredients of Cuban meals are: white rice, black beans, tomato, onion, garlic, oregano and cumin (Behnke 2012, 7–9). Cuban cuisine has been shaped by many influences. The traditional dish– frijoles negros, was created by the island’s native inhabitants. Many other Cuban foods have European origins. When Spanish colonists arrived on the island in the 1500s they continued to cook the dishes of their homeland, such as paella, a saffron-flavoured rice and seafood dish. Those dishes reflect the island’s Spanish heritage, but many other Spanish recipes changed in Cuba as colonial cooks adopted some of the native fruits and vegetables, e.g. buñuelos–the classic New Year’s fritters–were made with wheat flour in Spain but in Cuba they are prepared with cassava flour made from yucca. The African slaves, brought to Cuba in the 1700s, also introduced their own dishes to the local cuisine, e.g. tostones–crispy fried plantains consumed as snacks or side dishes. In the 1800s labourers from China and other countries came to work in Cuba’s sugarcane and tobacco fields, bringing their recipes with them (Behnke 2012, 13). Cuba has been seen as “a prototype of tropical plantation agriculture founded on slave labour” (Pilcher 2012, 3). The first cookbooks were published in Cuba in the 19th century. They contained both Spanish dishes and Criollo ones of Caribbean origin (Janer 2008, 14). The most important cookbook of the pre-revolutionary period was Nitza Villapol and Martha Martinez’s Cocina al minuto (1956). This cookbook, intended for the Cuban middle classes, was carried into the USA after 1960 by families escaping Castro’s rule. The new, revised edition of the book, published in 1980, intended to build a new revolutionary society and emphasised the African roots of the national identity. The new edition of the cookbook eliminated Spanish dishes from the colonial period and presented dishes based on grains and root vegetables. It also declared ajiaco to be the national Cuban dish (Pilcher 2012, 11). The distinguished Cuban social theorist, Fernando Ortiz, emphasized the African contributions by comparing Cuban national identity to the criollo dish ajiaco (Pilcher 2012, 11). It was originally a native dish which was adopted by Spanish settlers and later by African slaves, who also contributed their own ingredients. 3 Criollos–Creoles.

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Ajiaco is uniquely Cuban and at the same time transcultural. It can serve as a metaphor of the history of Cuba and the role that the Spanish, African, and Chinese cultures had played in developing national identity (Alfonso 2012, 174). The traditional Cuban cuisine has been limited to a number of essential ingredients. The most popular elements include: rice, black beans, pork, yucca con mojo (boiled cassava with a garlic dressing), tostones or tachinos (fried mashed plantain chunks). Among other typically Cuban dishes there are also: congri (rice and beans), tomato and lettuce salad, chicken, fish, lobster, bananas, avocado, pork cracklings, arroz amarillo (yellow rice) and arroz moro (rice with red beans) (Alfonso 2012, 175). The foundation of many Cuban dishes is a mixture called sofrito–consisting of garlic, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes and a variety of spices, e.g. sofrito is the basis of carne con papa–a meat and potato stew and picadillo–ground-beef hash. Another basis of many meals is adobo–a marinade of garlic, lime juice and cumin. Adobo is used to flavour meat and seafood before cooking (Behnke 2012, 14). Prior to the Cuban Revolution in 1959 an accepted version of Cuban cuisine existed. The sense of Cuban cuisine was transformed after 1959 when food became scarce due to the higher purchasing power of the population and low productivity resulting from changes in land ownership and agriculture. As a consequence, in 1962 the new government introduced food rationing and the distribution of a quotas booklet (libreta). This new system was supposed to provide regular supplies of adequate caloric and protein intake to the households. Cuban cuisine began to focus more on calories and nutrition than taste preferences (Alfonso 2012, 174). Although after 1959 women in Cuba were encouraged to look for paid jobs, kitchens remained women’s domain. Cuban men were no longer the only providers of the family income. However, the traditional division of domestic labour did not change. The duty to take care of meal preparation was especially challenging when the ingredients were limited to the subsidized quota, which led to the deterioration of food practices. Women had to be very creative to sustain some cooking standards. Such circumstances prompted the development of an underground market for food and made families enjoy their meals behind the closed doors of the family kitchen. When in the 1990s the Cuban government legalized the US dollar and allowed the creation of small enterprises, Cubans who owned hard currency could access special food markets and open restaurants known as paladares. Although many such restaurants catered mainly to international tourists, it was possible to rediscover the traditional Cuban cuisine there (Alfonso 2012, 179–180).

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3.  In the USA In the mid-19th century, Cuban merchants began to develop business connections with the USA. They were trading with American partners in New Orleans and New York and then started to send their children for education in the USA. In this way the first Cuban American communities were created and the first stores and restaurants with Antillean food were established (Pilcher 2012, 7). Cubans started to migrate to the USA on a mass scale in the 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s there were many small Cuban restaurants and shops in New York City. In the 1960s hundreds of thousands of Cubans arrived with refugee status. They stood out among other Latino groups as they had permanent residence status granted automatically after their arrival. Most of them settled in the Miami Dade County of Florida where they started to reproduce their culinary traditions. Their ethnic ghetto, known as ‘Little Havana’ has numerous shops and restaurants with Cuban and Latin American brands, e.g. Café Estrella, Malta Hatuey, Frijoles Kirby (Janer 2008, 16). The history of human migrations and changes in the production of food help us to understand “why and how American eating habits, and identities, have evolved over time. The migrations sparked by the European empires mixed the foodways of Spanish and indigenous Americans in today’s Southwest and Florida” (Gabaccia 1998, 7). The process of globalization and the marketing of ethnic food brought collections of recipes from various countries, including Cuba, to people living in diasporas. Many Cuban immigrants were unfamiliar with the recipes for so-called Cuban dishes in the books. Some of them were careful with introducing those dishes into their everyday menu, but others were more willing to experiment with the new versions of Cuban cuisine. This experimentation contributed to the process of a new identity construction. Many Cubans living abroad realized that their memories about national food on the island did not concern the “authentic” cuisine due to the constraints on food after the Revolution. In the host country, Cubans were given the traditional recipes, access to necessary ingredients and a chance to restore their Cuban culinary heritage (Alfonso 2012, 192). Cubans living in the diaspora use food to recreate their traditional homeland celebrations. Ethnic restaurants, such as Versalles in Miami, serve as a public display of immigrants’ identities, socializing and community building. However, many of the so-called Cuban restaurants are adapted to cosmopolitan tastes and serve dishes which are considered too exotic for Cuban immigrants. In their homes Cuban Americans also use food to present their guests with the flavours of Cuba and display their Cubanness. Food is used as a means to reunite with friends and a chance to communicate with them in their first language over a Cuban meal.

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Moreover, Cubans not only keep their homeland recipes but also transmit them to the newly arrived. In addition, many Latin Americans in the USA purchase ethnic goods via the websites of supermarkets based in their homeland to reassert their cultural identity through the consumption of authentic foodstuffs. However, this option is not yet available in the case of Cuban food (Alfonso 2012, 193–194). During the Revolution and post-revolution period the scarcity of cooking ingredients influenced the ability of Cubans living on the island to prepare their traditional dishes, which was not an issue in the case of Cuban Americans. Immigrants, generally, try to maintain their ethnic cooking for as long as possible. Cubans abroad use food to re-create the national taste, which also influences their sense of identity. The Cuban Cuisine in the USA gradually mixed American, Latin American and Caribbean ingredients, creating a New Cuban Cuisine. (Alfonso 2012, 175–176). Moreover, farmers in Florida harvest vegetables and fruits used in preparing Cuban dishes, e.g. yucca, cabaza (Caribbean pumpkin) and malanga boniato (sweet potato) (Janer 2008, 17). The Latino cuisine that is popular in the USA represents mostly its workingclass version, serving economic, home-style dishes. Cuban cuisine is recognized as the most upscale version of Latino cooking because the Cubans in Florida represent higher social status than other Latino groups, thus, they were able to create more sophisticated cooking styles based on their Caribbean traditions and techniques used by other immigrants in the USA. According to its detractors, Nuevo Latino is the appropriation of the emerging pan-Latino cuisine to cater to the current taste paradigms of fine dining in the United States, just like Tex-Mex cuisine was the result of the appropriation of Mexican cuisine to cater to mainstream U.S. taste. (Janer 2008, 58)

Throughout the USA, a few trends can be observed: firstly, the Cuban Cusine is influencing the cooking styles of different ethnic groups; secondly, other ethnic cuisines are influencing Cuban cooking styles; thirdly, restaurants begin to serve a variety of dishes typical for different ethnic cuisines. The Wall Street Journal describes the dishes prepared by Paul O’Connell, the chief of Chez Henri in Cambridge Massachusetts. O’Connell is recognized as a pioneer in combining Latin flavours with French cooking techniques (Kaiser Weinberg 2007, 5). St. Louis Post-Dispatch recommends a restaurant serving Latin food in St. Louis– La Tropicana Market and Deli–which specializes in both Mexican and Cuban cuisine. Originally from Cuba, the Trabanco family have owned and operated the market since 1981 and at first offered authentic Cuban dishes; then, in response to the customers’ preferences, they broadened their menu by including Mexican dishes as well. Thus, in one restaurant the customers can select Mexican enchiladas

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and Cuban sandwiches (Thomas 2002, 11). Another restaurant in St Louis–Boogaloo–blends Cajun, Creole, Cuban and other Southern influences in the dishes it offers (Billings 2010, L2). The Palm Beach Post informs about the menu offer of Zeida’s Cuban restaurant in Palm Springs which mixes typical Cuban dishes with American favourites, such as hamburgers, cheeseburgers and French fries (The Palm Beach Post 2001, May 2, 10). According to Nation’s Restaurant News, many American restaurants turn to Latin America for culinary inspiration which results in a fusion cuisine. The chef of Cuban Libre restaurant in Philadelphia–Guillermo Veloso–describes the current cooking style as ‘Latin Bistro’. Latin Cuisine, according to Veloso, “hasn’t hit its complete stride yet. It has been steadily climbing. It’s not just high end or cafeteria. And now that the mainstream population knows about it, it is going to be like Italian or Chinese in the sense that people will say, ‘Let’s eat Cuban’” (Parseghian 2002, 4.31). According to the New York Times, South Florida is discovering its Cuban culinary heritage. Traditional Cuban food is filling, with roast pork, black beans, plenty of vegetables as key ingredients, and its principal cooking fat–the infamous lard–which in most restaurants has been largely replaced by vegetable oil. Two of the Miami’s restaurants–Yuca and Victor’s Café–have revitalized the local Cuban culinary perspective by adding new spices and fragrance to traditional dishes, e.g. fresh chopped mint. Yuca is named after the starchy cassava but it is also an acronym for Young Urban Cuban American and that is exactly the clientele of the restaurant. Victor’s Café is an elegant offshoot of a well-known Manhattan restaurant and is more traditional than Yuca. Miami’s non-Cuban restaurateurs are also discovering the charm of Cuban ingredients and adding them to thoroughly ‘American’ menus, e.g. Stars & Stripes Café serves fritters made of refreshed salt cod and potatoes, a Cuban appetizer. Another restaurant in Miami–Chef Allen’s– combines Cuban plantains with blackened red snapper and a bitter-orange juice (Jenkins 1991, XX9). A group of chefs, nicknamed the “Mango Gang”, use Latino ingredients and French ways of preparing dishes to create a cuisine known as Nuevo Cubano or Floribbean Cuisine (Janer 2008, 58). The cuisine of Florida known as Floribbean Cuisine presents a combination of foods indigenous to Florida and the Caribbean Islands. Many immigrants combine local ingredients with others sent by relatives from Cuba, and in this way create transnational recipes. The contemporary cooking techniques used in Florida are influenced by those in Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas. Generally, Cuban Americans use the available ingredients and prepare dishes in different ways than it used to be done on Cuba, e.g. using less oil and frying (Nemes 2007, 137, Gabaccia 1998, 207).

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Maria Elena Cardenas, a food writer in Miami, described South Florida cuisine as “a fusion of Latin peasant dishes with local ingredients”. She traced the cuisine’s restaurant origins to Puerto Rico. According to Marina Polvay, food editor and restaurant consultant, “South Florida always had a diversified cuisine because of a cosmopolitan group of immigrants. … Since the 1960s, when the Cubans came, the Cuban influence has been especially strong” (Walkup 1996, 136). Unlike other American regional cuisines, like New England, Cajun, and Southern, the Floribbean Cuisine did not evolve from a long-established style of home cooking that existed in the area. “It is closer to the contemporary cooking of the Pacific Northwest in that it is ingredient-driven, characterised by the raw materials than by cooking method. Like California cuisine, another relatively new ingredient-based style, it also represents a blending of ethnicities” (Fabricant 1992, 11). Chefs of American restaurants take old Cuban recipes and mix things up in terms of preparation method, ingredients and presentation, creating new versions of dishes. Ropa Vieja, meaning “old clothes” in Spanish, is a popular dish in Cuba and around the Caribbean. It is traditionally made with shredded beef cloaked in a bright red sauce of tomatoes, onions, chillies, peppers, garlic, tomato and cilantro. This sauce is sometimes referred to as sofrito. The dish includes a mix of seasoning that is the evidence of Spanish elements that crossed the Atlantic and found a place in the Caribbean. While Ropa Vieja is traditionally a stand-alone kind of dish in Cuba, in Florida it is on the menu together with roasted steak and the red sauce served over rice. Another version of this old Cuban recipe includes a different kind of protein in the form of a house-smoked haddock that has been soaked in milk and then served with mashed potatoes, sweet onions and a salad mixture. The collection of Cuban dishes eaten in the USA includes Mojo Pork. Mojo sauce is a Caribbean condiment that is usually made with olive oil, garlic, paprika and cumin. The American version of this sauce includes: sour orange juice, vinegar or lime juice, cilantro and other herbs. This sauce is very popular for barbecues in the American South, especially in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. Rice is a cornerstone of Cuban cooking which creates many opportunities for customization. While rice came from Asia, Cubans were introduced to it by the Spanish. People in Cuba prefer white rice, but it is also served with the whole grain or tinted with saffron, tomato and annatto. In Miami customers can order “Yellow Rice with Seasoned Chicken”. The cook who prepares this dish boils the chicken first and then uses that water to cook the rice, imparting chicken flavour into the dish (Fitzpatrick, 2013). Examples of other Cuban-style dishes served in American restaurants include alcaporado–beef stew cooked with raisins and

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olives, and picadillo–spicy beef hash which is typically served with black beans, rice and fried plantains (Nemes 2007, 142). Street vendors in Florida sell Cuban-style products such as quarapo (sugarcane juice), granizados (snow cones), puros (cigars) (Janer 2008, 16). The variety of snack dishes sold in the USA includes empanadas, which are turnovers stuffed with different meats and seasonings, and stuffed potato balls known as Papas Rellenas. The symbol of South Florida’s regional cuisine has become Miami’s Cuban Sandwich, which consists of sweet ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese and pickles. These dishes are offered with Mexican Coca-Cola, tropical juices, Latin sodas, Orangina, coconut water and other refreshments. Among Cuban desserts customers may choose, for example, Tres Leches, flan or Guava pastries (Gutierrez 2014). The Cuban-style preparation of flan flavours the traditional French custard with almonds, coconut, or rum (Nemes 2007, 142). Variations on the classic Cuban sandwich are served in Tampa, Fla., especially in the Ybor City neighbourhood which was settled by Cubans, Spaniards and Italians. According to Florida food historian Andy Huse, although the Cuban sandwich has roots in Cuba “it has evolved into a mostly U.S. creation”. When a wave of Cuban immigrants came to work in Tampa’s cigar factories, the ingredients for preparing the sandwich evolved and the method of preparation was solidified. The Cuban sandwich gained popularity in the USA and moved into the realm of popular culture with the movie “Chef ”, about a man who starts a Cuban sandwich food truck. Despite all the so-called rules for making a Cuban sandwich, in Tampa they break from convention by adding Genoa salami on top of the cheese and the fat from salami drips onto the rest of ingredients. This additional ingredient–Genoa salami–is the result of Italian influence. Tampa claims to be the birthplace of the Cuban sandwich and Huse confirms this theory saying that “the sandwich embodies all the cultures that make up the city’s history: From the Spanish came ham, the Cubans contributed pork, Germans gave pickles, Jews brought mustard and Italians offered salami. … It’s hard to know where one culture begins and the other one ends” (Stephenson 2015). Chefs of many nationalities are adding their own ingredients and often use different breads. No matter whether the sandwich is traditional or innovative, its makers report that it sells incredibly well. (Walkup 2002, 1.43). There is a great variety of Cuban restaurants in the USA. Apart from cafeterias, cantinas and Nuevo Cubano restaurants, there are also Chinese Cuban restaurants which present the impact of Chinese migration on Cuba and Cuban cuisine. Those restaurants serve not only traditional Cuban dishes but also Chinese dishes prepared the Cuban way, e.g. Cuban Chinese fried rice (Janer 2008, 17). Restaurants

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serving Latin food must compete with large restaurant chains such as the Chipotle or Taco Bell. Moreover, American restaurants specialising in Cuban food face severe competition from Mexican cuisine, which is becoming more and more popular. McClatchy-Tribune Business News published an article describing the case of the family-owned restaurant Cuban Flavor in Los Angeles which converted to a Mexican restaurant, El Taco Fresco. The owners had to make this change as customers were looking for tacos and burritos and when they could not find any on the menu, they were just leaving without ordering (Edelhart 2008).

Conclusion Cuban cuisine has emerged through a complex interaction between local and global discourses and ingredients, including indigenous and African foods. It is difficult to recreate authentic cuisine in an immigrant community. A claim to authenticity is always problematic in the context of diaspora, but the growing Cuban American community tried to preserve their culinary traditions with the help of similar ingredients found in the host country. In fact, it was easier to do this in the USA than in Cuba after the Revolution. Cuban food in the USA has contributed greatly to the restoration of ethnic Cuban heritage. American regional cuisine presents a diverse mixture of multiple ethnic, local and mainstream foods which reflect the multicultural character of the whole country. There is no single American cuisine but a multitude of hybrid foods, such as Tex Mex or Nuevo Cubano. Moreover, there are transformations of dietary tastes which result from the trend of nutritionally minded Americans to lead a healthy lifestyle. Generally, ethnic cuisines are considered to be nutritious and healthy, which makes them even more popular. Americans like to eat a mix of multi-ethnic foods and this blending of dietary traditions from many regions creates “the culinary melting pot” (Gabaccia 1998, 228). Ethnic food that has become popular in the USA is often associated with the working classes of the countries where it originates. Americans are a nation of multi-ethnics who are ready to cross both national and cultural borders. Ethnic restaurants and street vendors provide an opportunity for the urban middle classes to cross ethnic and class boundaries. Cuban-style cuisine is recognized as the most upscale version of Latino cooking because the Cubans in Florida represent higher social status than other Latino groups, thus, they were able to create more sophisticated cooking styles based on their Caribbean traditions and techniques used by other immigrants in the USA. Concluding, ethnic cuisine in the USA is hybrid in its character. Secondly, it continually undergoes changes connected with social transformations such as

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the influx of new immigrants from the Caribbean. Thirdly, ethnic food is generally considered healthy, which responds to the trend towards a healthy lifestyle. Fourthly, Americans like to eat both food they are familiar with and experience new tastes, so they are eager to cross cultural boundaries and incorporate ethnic culinary traditions into their eating patterns. Finally, the popularity of ethnic foods is the result of an ethnic revival, longing for differentiation from the American mainstream and a quest for identity, e.g. Cuban Americans display their Cubanness by recreating their traditional cuisine with locally sourced ingredients. Food is used as a marker of their identity and a symbol of Cuban culture. However, if you cook up Cubanidad in Florida, the dishes you prepare are not purely Cuban but Cuban American hybrids.

References Alfonso, Iván Darias. 2012. “We are What We Now Eat: Food and Identity in the Cuban Diaspora.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 37(74): 173–206. Anonymous. 2001. “Zeida’s Offers Big Portions of Delicious Cuban Food.” The Palm Beach Post, May 2: 10. Behnke, Alison. 2004. Cooking the Cuban Way: Culturally Authentic Foods, Including Low-Fat and Vegetarian Recipes. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company. Billings, Mary. 2010. “Going gaga over jambalaya Special Request. Boogaloo’s food combines Cajun, Creole and Cuban influences.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5: L2. Burke, Peter. 2009. Cultural Hybridity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Chez, Keridiana. 2011. “Popular Ethnic Food Guides as Auto/Ethnographic Project: The Multicultural and Gender Politics of Urban Culinary Tourism.” The Journal of American Culture 34(3): 234–246. Edelhart, Courtenay. 2008. “Authentic Cuban Restaurant Switches to Mexican Food.” McClatchy – Tribune Business News, October 10. Accessed August 19, 2015. http://search.proquest.com/docview/455435409?accountid=9851. Fabricant, Florence. 1992. “South Florida Spawns Unique Floribbean Cuisine. (Currents in Cuisine).” Nation’s Restaurant News, May 25: 11. Fitzpatrick, Tara. 2013. “Customized Cuban.” Food Management, May 13. Accessed August 19, 2015. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1365624601?account id=9851. Gabaccia, Donna R. 1998. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

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Gutierrez, Maria Paz. 2014. “Finally, Real Cuban Food.” University Wire, March 13. Accessed August 19, 2015. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1506916 848?accountid=9851. Janer, Zilkia. 2007. “(In)Edible Nature.” Cultural Studies 21(2–3): 385–405. —. 2008. Latino Food Culture. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Jenkins, Nancy Harmon. 1991. “Putting New Zing Into Cuban Food. Two Miami restaurants of high caliber are bringing fresh tastes to some traditional fare.” The New York Times, February 24: XX9. Kaiser Weinberg, Charlotte. 2007. “Pursuits; Food & Drink–Chefs at Home: One Roasts, Two Cuban Meals; A chef who blends French and Latin influences makes glazed pork for both dinner and sandwiches.” The Wall Street Journal, June 16: 5. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2005. Hybridity or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. India: Pearson Education. Lee, Jee Hye, Johye Hwang, and Azlin Mustapha. 2014. “Popular Ethnic Foods in the United States: A Historical and Safety Perspective.” Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety 13: 2–16. Nenes, Michael F. 2007. American Regional Cuisine. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Inc. Parseghian, Pamela. 2002. “Turning up the heat: Latin cuisine is hot.” Nation’s Restaurant News, March 25: 4.31. Pilcher, Jeffrey M. 2006. Food in World History. New York: Routledge. —. 2012. “Eating á la Criolla: Global and Local Foods in Argentina, Cuba and Mexico.” IdeAs 3: 1–16. Stephenson, Kathy. 2015. “How to make the perfect Cuban sandwich.” The Salt Lake Tribune, October 2. Thomas, Dru. 2002. “Their Chilies Are to Cheer; La Tropicana Market and Deli Offers Authentic and Delicious Mexican and Cuban Food in a Uniquely Latin Atmosphere.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11: 11. Valdivia, Angharad N. 2005. “The Location of the Spanish in Latinidad: Examples from Contemporary U.S. Popular Culture.” Letras Femeninas. Número especial Encuentros Transatlánticos: La identidad femenina en voces españolas y Latinas actuales 31(1): 60–78. Walkup, Carolyn. 1996. “Chefs, culinary experts seek to define South Florida “Nuevo American” cuisine.” Nation Restaurant News, April 29: 136. —. 2002. “Pressing on: Cuban sandwich features variety of influences, draws raves.” Nation Restaurant News, March 18: 1.43.

Johanna Grabow

The Long Road to the South Pole: Post-colonial Antarctica Abstract: The article aims to integrate Antarctica into the post-colonial discourse. It examines various engagements, such as Richard E. Byrd’s exploration work. The strategic placement of research stations, the Antarctic Treaty and the ubiquitous role of science on the continent is furthermore evaluated with regard to postcolonial perspectives. Key words: geopolitics, exploration, Antarctica, expeditions, research stations.

1.  Antarctica and Its Disregard by Post-colonial Scholars Antarctica is the coldest, the windiest, the driest, and the highest continent on earth. It is a continent of scale and superlatives, one of the last large-scale ecosystems of our planet. Antarctica is, in contrast to its counterpart on the other pole, also the only continent without an indigenous population and their corresponding creation myths. It is therefore a place with no own language, no own culture, legends or history; a blank canvas that can be filled with our ideas, dreams and stories. Instead, sounds become muffled, smells are deep-frozen and colours disappear. The enormous icy wastes are an inhospitable place, still difficult to access and whoever manages to set a foot on the frozen south, will have a temporary stay. In European and Western imagination, Antarctica has always been a strange and beautiful place, a land that is actually frozen water. The continent is located just off the edge of our maps, but “a space at whose heart there is one six month day and one six month night cannot quite seem like part of humanity’s planet” (Moss 2006, 1). As the last continent to be discovered in the beginning of the 19th century, the history of mankind on the continent is extremely brief. Ever since 1908, however, a range of states–Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, the UK–have claimed parts of the continent and its surrounding oceans. Nonetheless, the icy wastes have, thus, far not attracted a great deal of attention from post-colonial scholars. Antarctica poses a challenge: Unlike the Falkland Islands or Gibraltar, the postcolonial imprint on the continent is rarely studied. Despite covering an immense geographical space, one and a half times the size of Europe, the lack of an indigenous human population as well as its remote location and harsh climate kept the seventh continent from the discourse so far (Dodds 2006, 60).

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Post-colonial studies frequently concentrate on periods and places where “a legacy of imperialism and colonialism created artificial borders and displaced peoples” (Dodds 2006, 60), yet the “polar wasteland” of Antarctica offers no such objects of study. Anti-colonial resistance of the colonised population, as witnessed in North Africa, the Caribbean or India, is unheard of on the ice. One of the few researchers devoting their studies to geopolitics and post-colonial engagements in Antarctica is Klaus Dodd, who published several articles on the topic. This paper aims to expand the field by examining the various (post-) colonial engagements, such as the exploration work under Richard E. Byrd, the construction of the South Pole Traverse and the creation of the Antarctic Treaty with its ubiquitous role of science, that have taken place ever since the discovery of the continent.

2.  Planes, Roads and Cows: The United States and Antarctica Mankind’s first real interaction with the continent started in the late 18th century, when sailors gradually explored more and more parts of the world. Following a series of sometimes successful–more often failed–explorations, the beginning of the 20th century saw the initiation of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. At a time when terra firma Antarctica was gradually probed by foot, ski and dog sledge, notable figures such as the Irish Ernest Shackleton, the British Robert Falcon Scott, and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen explored the frozen wastes bit by bit. Interestingly, right from the beginning Britain asserted a claim to the continent and especially the South Pole due to its previous exploration work on the ground. British sentiments were accordingly highly offended, when Roald Amundsen forestalled Robert Falcon Scott and hoisted the Norwegian flag at the South Pole in 1911. After these highly emotional and often destructive expeditions, the American naval officer Richard Evelyn Byrd went on the so called First Antarctic Expedition from 1928–1930. Unlike his rugged counterparts who mainly struggled against the ice for glory, endurance and their nation’s sake, Byrd envisioned to create a new civilization in Antarctica. Imagining a society that was both a model and an inspiration, Byrd was the first man to consider Antarctica for a quasi-permanent settlement. Forming an antidote and juxtaposition to the usual colonial behaviour, the naval officer mused that we are trying to get away from the false standards by which men live under more civilized conditions. The Antarctic is a new world for all of us which requires its own standards, and these are materially different from those set up in civilization, whereby we venerate

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prestige, influence and associated characteristics and ignore the inconspicuous, but equally valid properties. (Byrd 2015, 193)

Thus far, visitors–most often in the form of explorers, scientists and later tourists–rarely spent more than a year, often not even more than one Antarctic season, on the continent. In January 1929, Byrd established his research station “Little America” on the Ross Ice Shelf and henceforth used it as the basis for his expeditions. Yet, “Little America” became “Little Americas” when the first station had to be abandoned a mere year later. Five Little Americas exist in the history of Antarctica now; the last one went to sea on the fateful iceberg B-9 in 1987. Although Byrd’s dream of creating a new society in Antarctica only became partially true, his journeys were remarkable. Amongst other achievements, Byrd and his crew transmitted the first successful radio broadcasting from Antarctica as well as the first flight to the South Pole and back. A rather unusual means, however, was deemed fit by Byrd to lay claims to the continent and guarantee him attention from post-colonial scholars. Three prize-winning Guernsey cows accompanied Byrd and his men on his Second Antarctic Expedition in 1933. Officially, these ruminants were supposed to solve the “milk problem” for his crew. The drink that was associated with purity, health and simple goodness in the United States, was to strengthen the men for the hardships to come in the frozen south (Nielsen 2016). At a closer glance, this simple reason does not suffice. The process of pasteurization had been solved in the late 19th century and dry milk was readily available for the men venturing to Antarctica, so why did they choose to transport three cows to the very bottom of the world? Next to guaranteeing the naval officer significant sponsorship and media coverage before, during and after his expedition, Byrd’s unusual companions have to be evaluated in the broader context of colonisation. When Foremost Southern Girl, Deerfoot Guernsey Maid and the pregnant Klondike Gay Nira were pampered and fed in their Antarctic stables, the United States indirectly laid a claim to the continent (Nielsen 2016). Milk, not only a drink, but the embodiment of American politics and identity, nurtured the 56 men on site and told an important historical narrative to the people who stayed behind. Livestock and farming have long been seen as a way of domesticating land, especially so in the history of the US, where cows were brought as a symbol of English civilized life to Jamestown, Indiana, in 1607 (Wolfe 2014, par. 1). In the mechanical age of exploration, Byrd ventured on numerous flights and named the newfound Marie Byrd Land after his wife. The explorer was also one of

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the initiators of the creation of the highly symbolic Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in the midst of the International Geophysical Year in 1957. A symbolic American presence in the very heart of Antarctica was established; a presence, however, that was quickly counteracted when a rival research station was almost immediately created by the Soviet Union. Byrd’s ruminating settlement and exploration work eventually caused him to urge officials to claim the discovered and mapped areas east of the 150th meridian for his country. With a network of scattered bases and sufficient media coverage, the US was well-placed to even consider a continental-wide claim to Antarctica in the 1950s. The Antarctic Treaty, as will be shown later, forestalled this endeavour. The presence of the United States is still considerable nowadays. With around 1,000 people living and working from the American McMurdo Station in the Ross Sea, the US hosts the largest base on the continent. Yet, most controversial was a plan of the National Science Foundation to build a road to the South Pole in 2001. Intended to facilitate the movement of people and objects from McMurdo Station to the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, the project was nonetheless accused “as indicative of the US’ imperious manner” (Dodds 2006, 64). Furthermore, Antarctica’s status as a wilderness would be undermined. Despite these protests, the construction of the South Pole Traverse was finished four years later. A 1,600 km long compacted snow road for specialised sleds to deliver fuel and cargo within 40 days from McMurdo to the South Pole and vice versa leads through the icy continent nowadays. The South Pole Traverse draws heavily on the myth of the road, an important element of the construction of post-revolutionary US. Dodds argues that the road, whether populated by stagecoaches or motorbikes, has had a powerful role in shaping the cultural attitudes towards landscape, the ‘American Dream,’ and a sense of national importance. The road has also been linked to a sense of space, ease of movement, and the closing of the American frontier. (2006, 65)

Although ploughing through snow in a heavy equipment sled for 40 days in a row is a relative notion for ease of movement, the traverse certainly goes back to an asphalted tradition. All in all, the United States resorted to actively tackling the question of (post-) colonial engagement in Antarctica, whether it be through the resettling of grazing animals, the establishment of research facilities–albeit as a means of getting away from the false standard of western society–or through a highway to the South Pole.

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3.  Argentine Infants and the Antarctic Treaty In December 1946, the Argentinean president Juan Peron initiated the conquest and occupation of the Argentine Antarctic Territory (Joyner 2007, 444). Argentina emerged as a consequence of anti-Spanish resistance in the 19th century and employed military men armed with surveys, maps and flags to henceforth colonise Antarctica. The country then resorted to expand its work through a rather unusual, yet obvious means: by giving birth. Emilio Marcos Palma was thus the first human born in Antarctica in 1978. His seven month pregnant mother was airlifted to the Esperanza base near the tip of the Antarctica peninsula to complete her gestation on the continent. Illustrating the dispute over sovereignty in Antarctica, Palma was born in a part of the continent claimed as Argentine Antarctica–a title that is not internationally recognized (Walker 2013, 271). Twelve years later, his step-brother was also born in Antarctica and a further ten more people have been born on the continent and the surrounding latitudes ever since. A claim, however, that would prove futile. Before Emilio Marcos Palma and his eleven fellow Antarcticans were born, the absence of an indigenous population was an important political factor in the 1950s. The lack of human population caused claimant states to contest proposals to declare Antarctica an international trust territory, because “the only possible beneficiaries were the resident penguins” (Dodds 1997, 65). Then came the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58 and provided an international impulse for station building. Over 50 research stations and numerous scientific findings was the result of twelve nations devoting 18 month of intensive research in this polar region. “The construction of research stations in Antarctica replicated earlier episodes of colonisation. [Antarctica] experienced intense investment in mapping and surveying as part of claim consolidation”, Dodds (2006, 62) mused about the frenzy of activity following the initiation of the IGY. The twelve original countries during the Geophysical Year were also the signatories of a major agreement that would regulate the international relations with respect to Antarctica henceforth: The Antarctica Treaty. When the Treaty entered force in June 1961, it was not only an attempt to manage the political relation between the interested parties, but also an extraordinary suspension of territorial assertions. The territorial claims of Britain and six other parties were considered irrelevant for the purpose of scientific cooperation. The colonial map built by Scott, Byrd and other explorers was effectively frozen for the duration of the Treaty and its notable Article IV: No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica

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or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim, to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force. (ATS IV, 2)

Antarctica was effectively declared a zone of peace, a place for scientific investigation and international co-operation. The role of science and the production of scientific knowledge thus superseded planting a nation’s flag in a block of ice or populating the continent with new-borns. Research stations are an important place of creating scientific knowledge, yet, as Dodds argues, the scientific endeavour has enabled states such as the United States and English-speaking allies–Britain, Australia and New Zealand—to shape political agendas and crucially to disadvantage states such as India, which do not have the capacity to mobilise comparable levels of scientific/logistical investment and expertise. (Dodds 2006, 62)

New applications to the treaty have to fulfil the condition that “substantial scientific activity” (ATS IX: 2) has to be conducted. Full membership is thus dependant on a considerable investment in science and research stations. As of 2016, the Antarctic Treaty consists of 53 of these parties. Notwithstanding the financial burden laid on the member states, the Antarctic Treaty effectively created an entire continent devoted to scientific progress and nations working peacefully together. To sum up, the Antarctic Treaty and its “rationalisation of a particular spatial experience” (Dodds 2006, 65) most certainly forms the biggest post-colonial engagement in the frozen south so far. Yet, Antarctica is not merely a white stage on which mankind and their nations carve out claims to a piece of land or initiate scientific programmes. The hostile physicality of Antarctica calls into questions attempts to settle and colonise. Antarctica witnessed various colonial and reversed post-colonial engagements, such as the first explorers, settler cows, the Antarctic Treaty, infants from Argentina and a road to the South Pole. However, with increased regularity mankind is faced with the destructive effect it has on such a fragile ecosystem. Human’s role and responsibility when going to the ice is therefore raised into question–as well as the concern whether it is right to carry disputes, conflicts and claims to such a pristine wilderness. Ultimately, mankind’s engagement with Antarctica is not about planting a flag in the ice or incorporating a particular piece of land into a state, it is about coping with a place where humans have to re-define themselves in relation to their natural surroundings.

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References Byrd, Richard Evelyn. [1930] 2015. Little America. Aerial Exploration in the Antarctic, the Flight to the South Pole. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Dodds, Klaus. 1997. Geopolitics in Antarctica. Chichester: John Wiley. Dodds, Klaus. 2006. “Post-colonial Antarctica: An Emerging Engagement.” Polar Record 42(220): 59–70. Joyner, Christopher C. 2007. “Geopolitics of the Antarctic.” In Encyclopedia of the Antarctic. Volume 1 A-K, edited by Beau Riffenburgh, 441–48. New York: Routledge. Moss, Sarah. 2006. Scott’s Last Biscuit: A Literature of Polar Travel. Oxford: Signal. Nielsen, Hanne. 2016. “Antarctic Cows: Sponsorship, Celebrity, and Colonisation.” Paper presented at Polar Science: Through New Eyes, APECS Online Conference, May 18, 2016. “Iceberg, The Well-Traveled Guernsey Cow.” New England Historical Society. Accessed August 2, 2016. http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/icebergwell-traveled-guernsey-cow-france-antarctica-via-cow-island-nh/. “The Antarctic Treaty”. The Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty. Last modified 2011, accessed August 2, 2016. http://www.ats.aq/documents/keydocs/vol_1/vol1_2_ AT_Antarctic_Treaty_e.pdf. Walker, Gabrielle. 2013. Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Wolfe, Brendan. “Early Jamestown Settlement.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Last modified May 30, 2014. Accessed August 1, 2016. http://www.encyclopediavirginia. org/Jamestown_Settlement_Early.

Part III Postcolonial (?) Poland

Gregory Allen

Square Pegs into Round Holes: The Contemporary (Mis)Use of Postcolonial Theory in Poland and an Alternative Abstract: With the spread of postcolonial theory beyond its geographic origins, this paper explores the contemporary use of the theory as a framework for Western interactions with Central and Eastern Europe. It is argued that while it provides a valid critical perspective, postcolonial theory is being stretched beyond its limits and a new approach is needed. Key words: colonialism, imperialism, neoliberal hegemony, post-socialist transition, socioeconomic transformation.

Introduction Marlow, the narrator in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (also known as Polish novelist Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), begins the tale of the novel’s anti-hero Kurtz whilst sat aboard the Nellie anchored in the Thames awaiting the turn of the tide. “And this also”, states Marlow, reflecting on the Roman occupation nineteen hundred years earlier, “has been one of the dark places on earth”. Before going on to contrast the occupation of Britain with his experiences of the Belgian colonisation of the Congo, he says of the Romans “They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force – nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others” (Conrad 1995). Empire, colony and occupation have impacted, to varying degrees, on every European nation throughout their vast and varied histories. Postcolonial theory (PCT) has become, since the mid-twentieth century, a theoretical framework with utility in providing a critical perspective on colonialism and imperialism as well as their neo-colonial aftermath. PCT scholars’ attempts to “contest the unquestioned sovereignty of Western epistemological, economic and political categories” (Prasad 2003, 91) have, until recently, focused almost exclusively on First-Third World traditional, formal colonial and neo-colonial interaction. Amongst the many emerging threads of contemporary PCT however is one which explores the theory as a framework for the Central and Eastern Europe Second World. The notion of a postcolonial Poland has acquired a growing following amongst populist

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Polish politicians and academics as a vehicle through which the country’s history of occupation and dominance at the hands of its neighbours can be positioned. PCT has also been explored as having further utility as an analytical framework for contemporary Western representations of the country (Allen 2016). There should be limits however as to how far such an interpretation can be stretched from the origins of PCT. Can Poland, therefore, be considered postcolonial? Said, Sartre, Fanon and Camus would be unlikely to recognise it as such. This paper argues that to do so is to stretch postcoloniality too far. Poland has also, to paraphrase Conrad’s Marlow, been one of the dark places on Earth. But the country’s occupiers were, like the Romans Marlow refers to in his story, no colonists. Just as feminist theory has theoretical value far beyond gender-related issues, a PCT perspective has utility beyond the constraints of a traditional, historical coloniser/colonised scenario. It has the potential to offer an insightful perspective on the hegemonic representation of Poland by former occupiers as well as on the contemporary Western representation of the country. There exists a Western Orientalising of Eastern Europe in which the East-West ontological and epistemological dichotomy mirrors Said’s Oriental-Occidental distinction. The value of the perspective does not, however, make Poland postcolonial. This paper argues that despite the merit of some aspects of a PCT approach, the model has shortcomings as a theoretical framework for so-called Polish postcoloniality. Quite simply, a new framework is required; one which takes from PCT a critical perspective on the representation of the Central and Eastern European Second World by the Western neoliberal hegemony but is not constrained by the aspects of PCT into which Poland, as with a square peg into a round hole, does not fit. This paper proposes the potential foundations for such an approach.

The Problem with a Postcolonial Poland Poland, to summarise rather simplistically, has endured a history of being bordered by, and often sandwiched between, dominant empires. Imperialism does not, however, necessarily imply colonialism and PCT is not necessarily a suitable framework for every occurrence of what may be referred to, legitimately or otherwise, as colonialism. Indeed, the very notion of a postcolonial Poland is a relatively new one. There is a definite distinction between the ‘postcolonial’ in postcolonial theory as a theoretical framework and the ‘post-colonial’ as used in reference to countries with formal historical colonial ties (Banarjee and Prasad 2008). At its outset, proponents of the postcolonial Poland argument focused on Russian/ Soviet hegemony with Ewa Thompson proposing the Russian Orientalising of

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Poland in her study of the Othering of Poland and Poles in Russian literature, Trubadurzy Imperium (Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism, Thompson 2000). And Thompson is not alone amongst Polish academics arguing for a PCT perspective on Poland during the partitions and the subsequent period of Soviet influence. Cavanagh boldly claims that Czesław Miłosz’s The Captive Mind, is based on the author’s “own experience as a colonised subject in a part of the world that scarcely exists for the purposes of postcolonial criticism: the old Second World–Russia and its former satellites” (Cavanagh 2003, 83). Thompson’s troubadours of postcolonial Poland have extended their postcolonial Poland argument to present day with the West inheriting the role of coloniser from the Russians. Thompson (2014) proposes the idea of a “surrogate hegemon” in an attempt to force the square peg of Polish history into the round hole of postcolonial theory. In Thompson’s interpretation, the “typical attitude of the defeated” was transferred by the Polish intelligentsia from the “real hegemon” (the USSR) to the “surrogate hegemon” (the West) thus resulting in the country’s unquestioned acceptance of and self-confessed inferiority complex towards the West. If such a unique set of initial conditions is necessary to aspire to all things Western, one wonders how it is that most of the world has ended up with exactly the same outcome. So offended does Thompson seem to be with the critique aimed at her surrogate hegemon hypothesis, that she felt it necessary to respond with the interestingly titled “It is Colonialism After All: Some Epistemological Remarks” (2014). Thompson’s hypothesis however enjoys growing support amongst right wing, anti-intelligentsia, nationalist Polish academics and politicians (SnochowskaGonzalez) despite the issues which arise when one engages with her work from a critical perspective. Bill (2014) also identifies the eminent Polish poet Marek Rymkiewicz as a leading figure of Polish postcolonialism while Snochowska-Gonzalez notes the “uncanny rise of the word post-colonial” by Jarosław Kaczyński, the former Polish Prime Minister and current Chairman of the right-wing ruling Law & Justice party (2012, 708). Although a postcolonial interpretation of Poland’s history of foreign occupation and influence is clearly contested, it is not that distinction alone which this paper questions. It is specifically that PCT as a theoretical framework for Western representation of modern day Poland is not sufficient. PCT is based upon, and has at its core, the dominance and perceived superiority of the Western European capitalist hegemon over third world lands and native populations they colonised “just as though (they) had got a heavenly mission to civilize” (Conrad 1995, 16). Contemporary Western, First World discourse towards Poland, and the Polish

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‘Creole’ acceptance of it, can be better understood as a result of global neoliberal convergence rather than a generic Western colonisation.

A Contemporary Perspective The critique of the misuse of PCT by Thompson et al. is not meant to be a critique of PCT. There are elements of a PCT approach that can be incorporated into a framework to analyse the Western, neoliberal discourse towards Poland (and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe) without the ill fit of many other facets of the theory. The use of the “contemporary perspective” of PCT in this paper refers to the notion of a neo-colonial hegemony which “can be understood as a continuation of direct western colonialism without the traditional elements of political, economic and cultural control” (Banerjee and Prasad 2008, 90). The contemporary perspective can be thought of as a lens through which the legacy of historic colonialism can be viewed. This involves the (former) colonisers “ability to go on extracting profit from formerly colonized areas” in what Marx and Engels referred to as capitalism’s “need for a constantly expanding market for its goods” that “chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe” (Childs 2014, 5). But there is another aspect to the contemporary perspective. An aspect that retains the capitalist need for ever expanding markets yet without the formal constraints of PCT’s historical perspective. Jack utilises the contemporary perspective in his analysis of international and cross cultural management studies’ failure to engage critically with the field’s contemporary resonances with what we might call ‘the colonial project’” (Jack 2009, 3). In an earlier paper (Allen 2016) I explored the use of PCT as a theoretical framework in the representation of Poles by Western expatriate managers working in the country. It was suggested that much of the discourse about Poland had similarities to historical colonial discourse. This included the representation of Poles as managerially and culturally inferior and a strong sense of Orientalising the Polish Other. Such representation was found to be pervasive in both data collected through interviews and in much of the textual material produced for and by Western managers operating in Central and Eastern Europe. While there is merit in borrowing from certain aspects of PCT however, such analyses move us further from the theory’s origins and intended use as a theoretical framework. Childs and Williams’ attempts to set such boundaries within PCT are well grounded in the literature. They note that there “are certainly problems with broadening the historical or conceptual frame too far”. The authors reference Aijaz Ahmad’s reductio ad absurdum argument that the term postcolonial has been inflated to such an extent that “all territorial aggressions ever undertaken in human history are included

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under the same heading, which, if true, would render the term analytically useless” (Childs 1997, 21). The nationalist proponents of Poland’s supposed postcoloniality not only place Prussia, Austria/Hungary, the USSR (and subsequently post-1991 Russia) in the role of coloniser but also adopt this contemporary perspective. They use, as a starting point, the “trauma” of Prussian and Soviet influence which leads them, inexplicably, to a critique of Western colonialism in the region. By what path they have reached this point is, however, not evident. Thompson goes out of her way however to impress upon us that Poland is and has always been the West” yet, as Lazarus rightly points out, Said’s Unthinking Eurocentrism project “is certainly central to postcolonial studies” and is “arguably the only project that all scholars active in the field would agree that they hold as a common aspiration” (Lazarus 2011, 7). Postcolonial studies deconstruct the Western perceptions and representations of the non-West. This deconstructed perspective provides insight into the “new, imperialist stage of capitalist development where imperialism is defined by its economic essence: the economic exploitation of southern living labour by northern capitalists” (Smith 2015, 82–83). The need exists for a critical approach to Western discourse on Eastern Europe and, in this aspect at least, Thompson’s argument has merit. Žižek observes, for example, that “the Slovene attitude of cultural superiority finds its counterpart in the patronising Western cliché which characterises the East European post-communist countries as retarded poor cousins who will be admitted back into the family if they can behave properly” (Žižek in Žižek and Horvat 2013, 52). This First World, neoliberal discourse towards the European “migrant” economies they represent as culturally inferior can be better understood through a critical analytical framework which borrows from PCT than through traditional PCT itself.

Racism of the Developed Thompson’s surrogate hegemon of contemporary postcolonialism can also be viewed as a product of contemporary neoliberalism. The highly politicised period of colonialism and anti-colonialism described by Said, Sartre, Fanon and Camus differs significantly from the depoliticised space of contemporary, neoliberal, Western cultural and economic influence. Neoliberal convergence has influenced the economic, cultural and political paths of the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Throughout the region, this path of convergence to the Western neoliberal norm cannot be “fully comprehended without an initial examination of the 22-year-old experiment in political, social and economic engineering known as the transition” which “allows us to question the whole teleological

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narrative of the post-socialist transition, and its underlying political and economic ideology” (Horvat and Štiks 2015, 4–5). While his perspective and evaluation of the phenomenon remain questionable to say the least, Fukuyama’s End of History hypothesis proves surprisingly more insightful in understanding contemporary Western attitudes to Central Eastern Europe than does postcolonial theory. Fukuyama’s hypothesis has merit as Poland has adopted, with arms wide open, the neoliberal model. Although critique of the “End of History” thesis may have long since become the academic equivalent of flogging a dead horse, “we still silently presume the liberal-democratic capitalist global order is somehow the finally-found ‘natural’ social regime” (Žižek 2001). But this neoliberal space is more reminiscent of the dark, Nietzschean teleology leading to the “Last Man” than the victory of neoliberalism. Žižek (2016) sees the Western First World as “the Nietzschean Last Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures”. It is these Nietzschean/Fukuyamean last men who represent the Central/Eastern European Second World as culturally inferior based not on their nationality per se, but their perceived superior level of economic development. PCT is not suited as a framework through which this neoliberal discourse can be analysed. In Said a tangible link exists to a feasible perspective. Representation holds the key as does power, which is inexorably linked to representation and discourse. What is needed is a new framework, based on a Saidean approach but relevant to the current neoliberal discourse towards Eastern Europe. Žižek’s dialectic materialist perspective of a Racism of the Developed provides the foundation for such a model. One is tempted to resuscitate here the old Marxist ‘humanist’ opposition of relations between ‘things’ and ‘relations between persons’: stakes in the much-celebrated free circulation opened up by global capitalism, it is ‘things’ (commodities) which freely circulate, while the circulation of ‘persons’ is more and more controlled. This new Racism of the Developed is in a way much more brutal than the racism of the past: its implicit legitimisation is neither naturalist (the natural superiority of the developed West) nor any longer culturalist (we in the West also want to preserve our cultural identity), but unabashed economic egotism—the fundamental divide is between those included in the sphere of (relative) economic prosperity and those excluded from it. (Žižek in Žižek and Horvat 2013, 58)

Such a framework would allow for the deconstruction of the Western discourse towards and regarding the perceived less economically developed transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe—the European Second World. Through this lens, representation of events such as East to West economic migration can be viewed from a fresh perspective. Racism of the Developed has no need for colonial administrators; it has expatriates. This word in itself perfectly exemplifies

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the concept. The European Union holds freedom of movement as one of its core values yet it is a union in which the predominant discourse represents a fully qualified academic from Poland working in the UK as an immigrant while a retired English plumber living in Benidorm is represented as an expatriate. Furthermore, the discourse based on such assumptions is rarely questioned by those from East or West. This Hegelian struggle for recognition may be mutual, but it is not equal. Racism of the Developed can be thought of as a form of economic Othering which allows the “developed” to dominate the discourse. This form of Othering can be found amongst representations of Central and Eastern Europe in Western media or publishing. Prime examples are the popular press, tourism oriented publications and websites as well as, surprisingly perhaps, the “somewhat intellectually staid field of business management” studies (Banerjee and Prasad 2008, 90) from which one might expect a more critically engaged academic approach. The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have not been “colonised” by the West, but have been promised, by the neoliberal Western hegemon, a place amongst the last men of history. Yet Fukuyamean convergence has occurred in the Western First World while the rest have been excluded from Fukuyama’s End of History (Žižek in Horvat and Štiks 2015, 113). The West is not a surrogate hegemon as the Thompson hypothesis proposes; it is the multinational cultural and economic hegemon which, with a very small number of exceptions, the rest of the world is queueing up to be part of. It is the “glittering Euramerican MTVand-Coca-Cola beast” which broke the Soviet hegemon (Moore in SnochowskaGonzalez 2012, 718) and which the Second World attempts to converge with. It is the First World’s last men who represent Poland as inferior because Poland cannot, in their opinion, afford the end of history.

In Conclusion Echoing Fukuyama’s end of history hypothesis, it can be argued that Western neoliberalism has become a new form of postcolonial domination which dictates the rules of the game to those countries which Western neoliberal capitalism expands into. This depoliticised neoliberal space has resulted in a Western representation of the Central and Eastern European Other more reminiscent of Saidean Orientalism than postcolonialism. The depoliticization of the Western European-Polish discourse (in both directions) and the related, largely internally driven convergence towards the Western neoliberal model are the reasons why postcolonial theory fails in the context of Western discourse towards Central and Eastern Europe.

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The Polish right-wing adoption of postcoloniality is not restricted to the country’s representation by the “Soviet hegemon” and the “creole Polish intellectual elite”. Thompson’s surrogate hegemon thesis posits that the West has become the de facto Other. Is it not the case that if Thompson’s thesis is accurate, it is reminiscent of Marx’s remark on Hegel’s Eighteenth Brumaire, so appropriately utilised in Žižek’s First as Tragedy, then as Farce? “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. Rather than a farcical repeat of history however, the First World Othering of Poland is a typical, contemporary First World neoliberal representation of a perceived economically less developed country. The dominant depoliticised, neoliberal space in the West and the Western aspiration of Poles both contribute to this superior/inferior discourse. Whilst the related Othering bears similarities to postcolonial discourses, the use of PCT as a theoretical framework stretches the theory too far from its origins. The proposed approach is to borrow from PCT its critical perspective on power, representation and Orientalist discourse whilst developing a new framework more suited to the contemporary geographic and economic reality. Žižek, Horvat and Štiks, in various works, have all applied a similar approach to Central and Eastern Europe and these works can form the basis of the proposed framework through which “the existing scholarship and its failure to take into account the disastrous consequences of the introduction of neoliberal capitalism and the deep socio-economic transformation this entailed” (Štiks and Horvat 2015, 7) can be challenged. A framework based on Žižek’s notion of a Racism of the Developed provides the opportunity to “question the whole teleological narrative of the post-socialist transition, and its underlying political and economic ideology” (7). The West’s supposed superiority is after all, to return to Conrad, “just an accident arising from the weakness of others”.

References Allen, Gregory. 2016. “Post Colonialism in Poland: New Markets, New Opportunities and New Cultural Imperialism.” Journal of Management and Financial Sciences 9 (23): 55–77. Banerjee, S. and A. Prasad. 2008. “Critical Reflections on Management and Organizations: A Postcolonial Perspective.” Critical Perspectives on International Business 4, Issue 2/3: 90–98. Bartolovich, Crystal and Neil Lazarus (eds.) 2002. Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies. Cultural Margins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bill, Stanley. 2014. “Seeking the Authentic: Polish Culture and the Nature of Postcolonial Theory.” Nonsite.Org (12). Camus, Albert., 2011. The Outsider. London: Folio Society. Cavanagh, Clare. 2004. “Postcolonial Poland.” Common Knowledge 10 (1): 82–92. Childs, Peter. 1997. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory, edited by W. London: Prentice Hall Harvester Wheatsheaf. Conrad, Joseph. 1995. Heart of Darkness; with the Congo Diary. Penguin Classics, edited by Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad. London: Penguin. Fanon, Franz., 1967. The wretched of the earth. Penguin. Horvat, Srećko and Igor Štiks (eds.) 2015. Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia. London: Verso. Jack, Gavin., 2009. International and cross-cultural management studies : a postcolonial reading. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lazarus, Neil. 2011. “What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say.” Race & Class 53 (1): 3–27. Miłosz, Czesław. 1953. The Captive Mind. London: Secker & Warburg. Parry, Benita. 1983. Conrad and Imperialism: Ideological Boundaries and Visionary Frontiers. London: Macmillan. Prasad, Anshuman (ed.) 2003. Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Said, Edward W. 1985. Orientalism. A Peregrine Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sartre, Jean-Paul., 2006. Colonialism and neocolonialism. London: Routledge. Sienkiewicz, Henryk. 1991. With Fire and Sword. Fort Washington, Pa.; New York: Copernicus Society of America; Hippocrene Books distributor. Smith, John. 2015. “Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century.” Monthly Review 67 (3): 82–97. Snochowska-Gonzalez, Claudia. 2012. “Post-Colonial Poland– on an Unavoidable Misuse.” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 26 (4): 708–723. Thompson, Ewa. 2014. “It is Colonialism After all: Some Epistemological Remarks.” Teksty Drugie 1 (Special Issue): 67–81. Thompson, Ewa. 2008. “Postkolonialne refleksje: Na marginesie pracy zbiorowej ‘From Sovietology to Postcoloniality: Poland and Ukraine from a Postcolonial Perspective’ pod redakcją Janusza Korka,” Porównania 5: 113–125. Thompson, Ewa M. 2000. Trubadurzy Imperium: Literatura rosyjska i kolonializm. Horyzonty Nowoczesności. Kraków: Universitas.

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Westwood, R. and G. Jack. 2007. “Manifesto for a Post-Colonial International Business and Management Studies.” Critical Perspectives on International Business 3, Issue 3: 246–265. Žižek, Slavoj. 2009. First as tragedy, then as farce. London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj and Srećko Horvat. 2015. What does Europe Want?: The Union and its Discontents. New York: Columbia University Press. Žižek, Slavoj. 2015. “Are the worst really full of passionate intensity?” The New Statesman, January 10: 12–17. Zarycki, Tomasz. Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe. BASEES/ Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies 96.

Mira Malczyńska-Biały

Neocolonialism in Polish Consumer Society Abstract: The article discusses the development of consumer society in Poland after 1989 as resulting partly from the process of neo-colonisation. The study shows that the modern model of a consumer goes beyond the scope of purchase as well as consumption and is related to the mass globalization of the consumption and generating a “consumer subculture”. Key words: political transformation, globalisation, consumer society, international monopolies, neocolonialism.

Introduction Contemporary neocolonialism, in the context of politics and economics, stands for a modern form of colonialism connected with the idea that some of the states which regained independence after World War II and escaped from the formal political domination of foreign governments, are still unofficially dependent upon economic and political domination of well-developed countries and international monopolies (Olchnicki and Załęcki 1999, 138). That is why neocolonialism does not mean the formal liquidation of independent developing nations; it rather consists in economic exploitation by welldeveloped countries. It slows down the growth of processing industry and goods production allocated to internal market sale (Montusiewicz 2002, 231). The main purpose of the article is to investigate selected aspects of the determinants and the essence of neocolonial consumption in Poland. The article is an attempt to analyse if selected behaviour of Polish consumers is connected with neocolonial processes or globalised consumption. The chronological scope of the research covers the period after 1989. At that time the transformation of political system in Poland took place, which enabled the growth of a free market economy. The motivating factor is the development of a consumer society. It developed in the middle of the 18th century in those countries where consumption, in comparison to different sectors, played a dominant role (Alvi et al. 2009, 104). These included Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and some parts of Germany and Italy. The traits of the consumer society can be found in the British colonies as well as North America. The characteristic feature of the consumer societies is the economisation of life and the full development of mass production (Spierings 2008, 900). Societies acquired the goods that in fact were not essential for them to

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survive. Gaining possessions was not an objective in itself. The process of acquisition was crucial, or “the desire to act to acquire more”, which partly constructs one’s life goals (Stearns 2001, 15). The culture of consumption was built upon the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, when products started to be sold even though they were not necessary to buy. They were rather some decorative elements. The next step in the process was the opening of department stores, the purpose of which was to remould shopping into a pleasant social activity in the second half of the 19th century (Gabriel and Lang 1995, 7). During that century, the term Homo faber was coined in the capitalistic countries of Western Europe. It was used to refer to one for whom work was the most important priority, and that formed their system of values. Everyone had a moral duty to work, which guaranteed social advancement. The ascetic way of life became the most popular. Everything changed in the 20th century, when we could notice such aspects as the growth of consumer needs, mass production, and the switch from saving to the ownership of consumer goods. From that time we can say that virtually everything is for sale and available to buy. The concept of the consumer society was about the expansion of consumption of new aspects of life, such as culture, religion and a system of values (Hoffmeyer 2010, 272). Homo consumens is the 20th century consumer. This refers to one for whom owning and collecting material goods is the most important thing in life. What is more, owning material goods determines social position. Such a person feels the need to purchase things constantly, and is susceptible to advertising and media propaganda in the scope of the consumer behaviour model (Bylok 2013, 9). The development of consumer society in Central and Eastern European countries in the 20th century was an interesting phenomenon. Essentially, the growth of the consumer society could be observed from 1989, so much later when compared to the capitalistic countries of Western Europe. It was linked to the socio-economic situation in Poland and the adoption of new purchasing models, patterns of consumer behaviour, and practices of entrepreneurs specific to well-developed, western countries. It helped to create certain standards and ways to acquire goods and services as well as purchase trends previously unknown in developing Poland.

1.  Conditioning of consumer neocolonialism in Poland We can speak about the development of the consumer society only after 1989, when the socio-economic system changed. The Polish consumer in the centrally planned economy could buy only a limited number of goods and services. It was the state authorities rather than the consumers who decided about their needs

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and the ways and levels to satisfy them. At that time, the consumers could not satisfy their quantitative and qualitative needs in the scope of goods and services. Additionally, they faced the indifferent and arrogant attitude of vendors. It was triggered by the lack of material interest of the sellers, the results of their activity, and the poor propriety and business culture of the personnel. The consumer did not resign from purchasing the goods or services since they were already scarce (Żuławska 1985, 104). The situation changed entirely with the alteration of the socio-economic system. The changes which took place in the early 1990s influenced the overall metamorphosis of the consumer situation. In the earlier system of deficiencies and controlled prices, the problem of demand for particular products was solved by the least well-off consumers devoting a lot of time to standing in a queue. Another way to get around the lack of supply was the payment of additional, informal fees by the more affluent customers (Rosati 1998, 322). The political transformation in the Polish economy put a different complexion on the issue of consumer protection. Their economic interests at stake did not decrease but changed in both direction and scope. The free market eliminated unprofitable phenomena connected with the previous system, replacing them with some new consumer problems (Wilk 2000, 230). The potential pitfalls for consumers appeared together with the private equity, the dissipation of business entities as well as the opening of the borders. These pitfalls included previously unknown, aggressive and misleading market offers, trade beyond the permanent market place, and the increase in importance of popular marketing techniques already widely known in capitalistic countries (Ozimek 1999, 282). The hostile marketing activities of overseas entrepreneurs were linked to the use of unfair practices when signing agreements, surprising and dishonest market offers, a lack of transparency in the terms of transactions, the concealment of information pertaining to the provision, objectives and the terms of a contract. Some novel, previously unknown “anonymous” commodities without a clearly stated producer or importer, with a foreign language label, appeared on the market. The goods were very often dangerous and launched without any crucial information or warnings (Łętowska 2002, 6–8). After 1989, in the new market situation the consumer had the opportunity to opt for some goods and services from diverse qualitative and quantitative market offers. While making a choice, the Polish consumer was delighted with the wide variety of products. The consumer was presented with the dilemma of making the right choice. The Polish market absorbed all the products which earlier were in low supply. It was an unlimited sale market for western countries. Such a situation

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was favourable for the development of economic neocolonialism. The dissemination of the idea of the consumer society in Poland was equally beneficial for the growth of consumer neocolonialism.

2.  The essence of neocolonialism in Polish consumer society Many factors had an influence on the full portrait of the contemporary Polish consumer. These include the conditionings of the socio-economic system and its alteration, globalization in the scope of consumption, as well as the acquisition of some trends and consumer attitudes from capitalistic, western countries. At this stage of the analysis it is worth asking if the change of behaviour and purchasing patterns of consumers in Poland after 1989, in connection with the change of the socio-economic system from a centrally-planned to free-market economy, constitute a natural process of transformation. Did the insistence of well-developed, capitalistic countries have an effect on these changes? In the investigation into the nature of neocolonialism in the Polish consumer society, two crucial sociological aspects were mainly taken into consideration. First was the adoption of certain behaviours by the Polish consumer which were already prevalent in well-developed European countries. Second, the changes of purchasing patterns that constituted the mainstream in the life of consumers in capitalistic countries. After 1989 in Poland, it is possible to identify the progressive development of the neocolonial consumer. Their previous lives and daily routine were enriched by new shopping experiences, that had previously been unavailable (Stanciu and Puiu 2009, 61). The overseas entrepreneurs started their business activities in Poland. The acquisition of the new purchasing models by Polish consumers was in their own interests. One of the attitudes, promoted by the media and advertisements, was the creation of some specific forms of behaviour while buying certain goods and services. The Polish consumer after 1989 started to adopt consumption patterns and models of consumer behaviour typical for well-developed countries. Shopping started to be a way of spending free time. The consumer urban planning has entirely changed. In the previous economic system the shops were located in the centres of cities and consisted of particular units with specific products. The development of construction in the form of huge shopping malls was a new phenomenon for Polish buyers. They created a closed architectonic system organized around the central unit, which was a huge department store. The characteristic feature was its multifunctionality. There was a wide range of goods and services,

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from boutiques with brand-name clothes, shoe shops, electrical stores, as well as fast food restaurants, coffee shops, café, to pubs and clubs. Some play-areas, small gardens for children, art galleries, auditoriums, cinemas, swimming pools, health clubs, beauty parlours, hairdressing salons, office and chapels also appeared. Such shopping plazas became objects of social identity. For Polish consumers the luxury, exclusiveness and diversity were a great dream which, thanks to shopping, could be fulfilled (Bylok 2011, 75). Since that time, not only has shopping started to become a perfect way to purchase goods, but also to spend one’s leisure time. Consumers began to buy particular products to indicate their social rank. Consumer goods and shopping environments were consumed to create entirely new identities for the buyer as well as allowing the selection of those already present on the market (Spierings 2008, 901). After 1989, under the influence of the opening of the market westwards, the consumer subcultures existing in well-developed countries were gradually absorbed. Possessing goods generated a sense of belonging to a specific group. For example, “jeep owners”, “sportsmen”, “motorbike owners”, “perfect moms”, “perfect housewives” (Quinteros 2014, 265). The group known commonly as “mall girls” first appeared in the society. Those were the girls who go to the shopping centres only to show up or meet someone, not for actual purchasing. The modern lifestyle in capitalistic countries was linked to the promotion by international corporations of some specific patterns of consumer behaviour, for example, life in a rush with coffee in the hand, fast food, healthy food etc. The Polish socio-cultural model formed throughout centuries showed that the consumption of a meal was an internal activity conducted at home. It required some time and suitable preparation. Eating out in a rush was considered rather uncivil and socially unacceptable. The media and marketing contributed to the acquisition of previously unknown modes of behaviour. The Polish consumers were formed by the need to satisfy their needs and, what is more, by the sense of belonging to economic, social, technological, even geographic and spiritual structures in which they lived (Restand 2014, 770). The purchasers were affected by the activity of foreign entrepreneurs, who began to use different market practices, unknown before 1989. An example of such practices would be the encouragement of the customers to buy the product at all costs. It was connected to the theoretical lowering of prices on particular days of the year. Apart from this, the fiction of the deficit of the products appeared, which awoke asocial behaviours in consumers, such as violence. A widely known example of such a practice is Black Friday in the USA, used nowadays in Western Europe enterprises. Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day

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(the fourth Thursday of November). It has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and most major retailers open very early and offer promotional sales (McLinden 2015, 45).

3.  Neocolonialism or globalisation in Polish consumer society The neocolonialism of Polish consumer society in macroeconomic perspective may be also analysed as far as the influence of well-developed, capitalistic countries on the Polish economy and market is concerned. In this context, we may speak about the globalization of the Polish market. Globalization is considered the third stage of colonization. It is a process that encourages the development of neocolonialism. From this perspective, some western countries employ globalization to extend and strengthen the fundamentally exploitative relations established between colonial entities. Industrialized countries are essentially entrenching a global capitalist system and consumer culture by establishing a global market controlled by the most dominant interests, especially the interests of the largest transnational corporations (Kelbessa 2014, 237). The end of formal colonial structures does not signify the end of colonial intellectual attitudes. The strong, capitalistic countries fulfilling the “manifest destiny” of the missionaries tried to form the globe in their own image. At the beginning of the 21st century, neocolonialist attitudes were often intertwined with arguments about the processes of globalization, combining both economic and intellectual claims. There are no independent places or people who have not been touched by global capitalism in any way. The “other” has been reshaped, at least to a certain degree, in our own mirror image (Rieger 2004, 209, 219). The development of a global capitalistic market was considered to be a new form of colonial imperialism that prefers economic neocolonialism to the formal imperial fact. In addition, global hegemony allows neoliberal capitalism to take its practice of profit-making to unprecedented heights of neocolonialism of a vertiginous divide between a tiny global elite and the heterogeneous masses (Reber 2012, 79, 82). Nowadays, there are about 46,041 companies with foreign participation legally registered in Poland. In 2014, 4,390 new companies with foreign participation were registered. The most interesting area for overseas investor is Mazovian voivodship 42.51%, Lower Silesia 8.46%, Greater Poland 7.98%1. Bartłomiej Radziejewski, the executive editor of a monthly online magazine, characterized, in an easy way, the

1 http://www.coig.com.pl/inwestorzy-zagraniczni-w-polsce.php.

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globalisation of the Polish market in the context of economic neocolonialism. He indicated that the globalization of the Polish market emerges in the situation when You get up in the morning and go to Biedronka, which is Portuguese, for some rolls. In the afternoon you take your American Opel and go to the French Carrefour to do the shopping, because in the evening you meet your friends at home for a party. After midnight you get hungry so you go out to have a hot dog. Meanwhile, you notice that you don’t have any money so you withdraw it from the cash machine of your Spanish bank2.

Conclusions The concept of neocolonialism in Polish consumer society can be considered controversial. On the one hand, it indicates that the development of some new consumer behaviours after 1989 is linked to the inevitable process of the globalization of the market, the media and society. The population has unrestricted access to the Internet and international media, thus the unification of the living standards and creation of a global consumer can be observed. On the other hand, the Polish market after 1989 was an ideal source of commercial outlet. The change of shopping habits in terms of culture and awareness among the conservative Polish consumers was in the interest of the corporations. At present the total submission to the western consumer trends, especially among the younger Polish generation born in the new socioeconomic system, can be noticed. It is in vogue to buy western food and other products, the way in which one spends one’s free time, or the need to purchase specific brand goods. Furthermore, the conquest of the Polish market by foreign entrepreneurs, visible in all the branches of the economy, seems to be of a key importance. Following accession to the European Union in 2004, Poland has become the part of the European Economic Community. Our market is competitive on a European scale, and the consumers can buy things beyond the borders of our country. It all influences the unification of behaviours and buying standards. Undoubtedly, it is worth mentioning that every country, and Poland is not an exception, ought to promote its socio-cultural heritage in the context of acquisition and should not indulge in the main consumer trends.

2 http://jagiellonski24.pl/2015/05/07/radziejewski-jestesmy-gospodarcza-kolonia/.

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References Alvi, Fauzia Saleem, Muhammad Hafeez, and Riffat Munawar. 2009. “Consumer Culture: An Analysis in a Socio – Cultural and Political Frame.” Research Journal of South Asian Studies 29: 99–112. Bylok, Felicjan. 2013. Konsumpcja, konsument i społeczeństwo konsumpcyjne we współczesnym świecie. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Śląsk. Bylok, Felicjan. 2011. “Konsumeryzm jako ideologia współczesnych konsumentów.” Studia i Materiały 51: 67–78. Gabriel, Yiannis and Tim Lang. 1995. The unmanageable consumer. Cotemporary consumption and its fragmentation. London: Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publication. Hoffmeyer, John F. 2010. “Thinking Theologically about Consumer Society.” Journal of Theology 49: 272–274. Inwestorzy Zagraniczni w Polsce. Accessed May 3, 2016. http://www.coig.com.pl/ inwestorzy-zagraniczni-w-polsce.php. Iwiński, Tadeusz. 1979. Współczesny neokolonializm. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej. Jesteśmy Gospodarczą Kolonią. Accessed May 14, 2016. http://jagiellonski24. pl/2015/05/07/radziejewski-jestesmy-gospodarcza-kolonia/. Kelbessa, W. 2014. “Globalization and Localization.” In Global Studies Encyclopedic Dictionary, edited by Alexander N. Chumakov et al., 237. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. Łętowska, Ewa. 2002. Prawo umów konsumenckich. Warszawa: C.H. Beck. McLinden, Steve. 2016. “Global shopping day.” SCT January: 45. Montusiewicz P. 2002. “Neokolonializm.” In Encyklopedia politologii. Stosunki międzynarodowe, edited by Teresa Łoś-Nowak, 231. Zakamycze. Olchnicki, Krzysztof and Paweł Załęcki. 1999. “Neokolonializm.” In Słownik Socjlogiczny, edited by Violetta Sygua-Gregowicz, 138. Toruń: Graffiti BC. Ozimek, Irena. 1999. “Stan świadomości polskich konsumentów w zakresie ochrony konsumenta w Polsce w perspektywie integracji z UE.” In Konsument i przedsiębiorstwo w przestrzeni europejskiej – etnocentryzm czy globalizacja? edited by Kornelia Karcz, 282. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Akademii Ekonomicznej w Katowicach. Quinteros, AlejAndro. 2014. “Consciousness displaced: Art and technology education/ collaboration for an aesthetic of liberation.” Journal of Speculative Research 12: 263–271.

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Reber, Dierdra. 2012. “Headless Capitalism: Affect as Free-Market Episteme.” Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 23: 62–100. Restand, Penne. 2014. “The Third Sex: Historians, Consumer Society, and the Idea of the American Consumer.” Journal of Social History 47: 769–786. Rieger, Joerg. 2004. “Theology and Mission Between Neocolonialism and Postcolonialism.” Mission Studies 21(2): 201–228. Rosati, Dariusz. 1988. Polska droga do rynku. Warszawa: Polskie Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne. Spierings, Bas, and Henk Houtum. 2008. “The Brave, New World of the Postsociety: The Mass-production of the Individual Consumer and the Emergence of Template Cities.” European Planning Studies 16: 899–909. Stanciu, Marieta, and Carmen Puiu. 2009. “Consumer and his behaviour in the post-modern era.” Buletin Stiintific 27: 60–64. Stearns, Peter N. 2001. Consumerism in world history: The global transformation of desire. London–New York: Rutledge. Wilk, Krystyna. 2000. “Interes konsumenta w gospodarce rynkowej i jego ochrona.” In Rynkowe zachowania konsumentów, edited by Ewa Kieżel, 221–242. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Akademii Ekonomicznej w Katowicach. Żuławska, Czesława. 1985. “Ochrona konsumenta w reformowanej gospodarce.” Spółdzielczy Kwartalnik Naukowy 3: 104.

Anna Jamrozek-Sowa

Russian Invaders and Their Polish Subjects from the Perspective of Władysław Lech Terlecki Abstract: After discussing the complex relations between postcolonial studies and Polish post-dependence studies the author of the article analyses Władysław Lech Terlecki’s Dwie głowy ptaka (1970), Wyspa kata (1999) and Czarny romans (1974), focusing, among others, on the use of the language by the colonisers, on imposing the dominant discourse upon the oppressed. Key words: Polish literature, sovereignty, imperialism, post-dependence studies, identity.

The Polish post-dependence discourse is focused particularly on the study of Polish literature created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is due to the fact that at the end of the eighteenth century, the lands of the former, dominant, territorially and economically powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was finally partitioned and fell to the status of provinces of the three powers: Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia. Some Polish researchers consider these countries as colonial powers and understand the situation of Poles in terms of colonial dependency. After a period of sovereignty in the years 1918–1939 Poland again became strongly dependent upon its powerful eastern neighbour–the Soviet Union. Post-dependence studies, popular in Poland, remain in complex relations with postcolonial studies. Drawing from the mainstream methodological inspirations and conceptual instruments of the latter, it tries to designate an independent area of research and develop a method of description dissimilar to that adopted in the area of Anglo-Saxon research (Gosk and Kraskowska 2013, 10). The validity of referring to the Polish reality in postcolonial terms remains a disputed issue. Discussions over it remain among the most important with reference to Polish literature. Their nature is frequently that of an ideological dispute. At its basis there are two different interpretations of the past and the present—either as “colonial” or “dependency” (10–11). The dispute has been complicated by the lack of precision (as some scholars suggest) as well as of historical and material specificity of the postcolonial critique (Wawrzyczek, 2008, 17). Eva Thompson, the author of the pioneering work titled Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (2000), recognizes the Polish situation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as that of subordination, in the political and economic

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spheres, analogous to the situation in which the overseas territories of the European powers were. Also a number of other scholars (e.g. John Sowa, Dariusz Skórczewski, Clare Cavanagh, Vladimir Bolecki) convinced about the “applicability of the postcolonial theories to the Polish cultural-economic reality”, see various aspects of “recognition of Polish experiences in terms of colonization”1 (Gosk and Kraskowska 2013, 10). Another group represented by, for example, Grażyna Borkowska, Hanna Gosk, Dorota Kołodziejczyk or Leszek Koczanowski, claims that “European histories of enslaving some nations by others (by Russia and the Soviet Union, in particular) are characterized by different cultural specificity and the position of Poland as that of a subaltern has always been more problematic than it is in the case of model colonial countries”2 (Gosk and Kraskowska 2013, 10). Katarzyna Chmielewska notes that: ”In the Polish reception of postcolonialism there is a note of grudge and resentment towards the West that neither described, nor appreciated, nor paid attention to Polish history, achievements and symbols”3 (Chmielewska 2013, 564). Some scholars, referring to the abovementioned research, claim that when we adjust methodological instruments of postcolonialism to the Polish reality, to “the complicated cultural, historical and social relations in our part of the world”4 (Chmielewska 2013, 564), new questions leading to new diagnoses and new approaches to the researched issues may appear. Researches such as those of Aleksander Fiut, Bronisław Bakuła, Krzysztof Kowalczyk-Twarowski, Grażyna Borkowska, Krystyna Kardyni-Pelikanowa, Mieczysław Dąbrowski, Tadeusz Bujnicki, German Ritz, Dirk Uffelmann and others have suggested using such instruments to analyse the myth of the mission of the Polish nobility in the territory of so called Kresy (Borderlands) of the Polish Republic or of the absolute domination of the genteel culture over that of the local peasants. A number of distinguished scholars revealed sensitivity of a postcolonial nature while studying Polish culture:

1 “aplikowalności teorii postkolonialnej do badania kulturowo-ekonomicznych realiów polskich…ujmowania doświadczeń polskich w kategoriach (s)kolonializowania”. All the translations in the article have been made by the author. 2 “wewnątrzeuropejskie dzieje zniewalania jednych narodów przez inne (zwłaszcza przez Rosję i Związek Radziecki) charakteryzują się inną specyfiką kulturową, a pozycja Polski jako subalterna była i jest znacznie bardziej problematyczna, niż ma to miejsce w przypadku modelowych krajów kolonialnych”. 3 “W polskiej recepcji postkolonializmu pobrzmiewa niekiedy nuta pretensji i resentymentowego oburzenia wobec Zachodu, który nie opisał, nie docenił i nie pochylił się nad polską historią, osiągnięciami i symbolicznymi”. 4 “skomplikowanych relacji kulturowych, historycznych i społecznych w naszej części świata”.

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Maria Janion (2007), Ewa Domańska (2008), Maria Delaperrière (2008), or Clare Cavanagh (2003). Among the varied, inspiring texts there are those authored by Zdzisław Najder (2005), Aleksandra Chomiuk (2006), Paweł Zajas (2008), Marcin Moskalewicz (2005) or Dariusz Trześniowski (2010). The applicability of the instruments of postcolonial studies to an analysis of the phenomena and ideas remaining in the sphere of the unspeakable has been recognised by as many as seven scholars, whose essays were published in 2008 in the volume titled (Nie) obecność, pominięcia i przemilczenia w narracjach XX wieku (Absence, Exclusions and Concealments in 20th-century Narratives), edited by Hanna Gosk and Ewa Kraskowska. In 2010 Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej in Lublin, Poland) published an extensive volume titled Studia postkolonialne nad kulturą i cywilizacją polską (Polish Culture and Civilisation in the Postcolonial Perspective) devoted entirely to questions of the applicability and adjustability of critical instruments offered by postcolonial studies originating from Western European circles to the research into Polish culture. The same year another important publication appeared, namely Opowieści skolonializowanego/ kolonizatora. W kręgu studiów postzależnościowych nad literaturą polską XX i XXI wieku (Narratives of the Colonised/Coloniser. A Post-dependence Approach to Polish Literature of the 20th and 21st centuries) authored by Hanna Gosk, quoted here extensively. Gosk has used as the motto a quotation from Linda Hutcheon’s 1989 article “’Circling the Downspout of Empires’: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism,” modifying it slightly to fit the Polish context: “Canadians [Poles as well–HG] are not marginal ‘because of the quirkiness of our ideas or the inadequacy of our arguments, but because of the power of those who define the center’”5 (quoted in the Polish translation in Gosk 2010, 7). Articles inspired by postcolonial studies appeared also in each of the five monographs prepared so far by Centrum Badań Dyskursów Postzależnościowych (Centre for the Study of Post-dependence Discourses)6.

5 The quotation from Linda Hutcheon includes a quotation from Rick Salutin’s Marginal Notes. Challenges to the Mainstream, Toronto, 1984, page 6. 6 The series has so far included Kultura po przejściach, osoby z przeszłością. Polski dyskurs postzależnościowy – konteksty i perspektywy badawcze. 2011, edited by Ryszard Nycz. Kraków: Universitas; Narracje migracyjne w literaturze polskiej XX i XXI wieku. 2012, edited by Hanna Gosk. Kraków: Universitas ; (P)o zaborach, (p)o wojnie, (p)o PRL. Polski dyskurs postzależnościowy dawniej i dziś. 2013, edited by Hanna Gosk and Ewa Kraskowska. Kraków: Universitas; Historie, społeczeństwa, przestrzenie dialogu. Studia postzależnościowe w perspektywie porównawczej. 2014, edited by Hanna Gosk and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. Kraków: Uniwersitas; and Białe maski/szare twarze.

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Another publication which is of special relevance in this context is Dariusz Skórczewski’s 2013 Teoria–literatura–dyskurs (Theory–literature–discourse), as it is solely devoted to selected issues connected with the postcolonial thought developing on the Polish soil. Skórczewski’s book is essential for all scholars studying Polish literature through the prism of postcolonial sensitivity. Dirk Uffelmann, a Slavist, while trying to sum up the state of the postcolonial critique in Poland, came to the conclusion that Polish postcolonial discourse at its early stage was characterised by “cognitive privilege of the oppressed”7, and also put into practice the assumption of the unambiguous identification of Poles with the position of victims. In the later period the debate resulted in the polarisation of positions concerning the memory of the role that Poles played in the former Kresy (Uffelmann 2014, 120). As Uffelmann claims: The figure of Poland as a victim of foreign violence becomes commonly accepted, because it resonates with the widely popular traditionally anti-imperial memory of the past. The hegemonic role of Poland in its relations with Ukraine, Byelorussia and Lithuania is an issue of constant dispute, although since 2006 significant moments of autoreflection could be observed in the discussion, which have weakened the mechanisms of auto-censorship…It seems that a similar double perspective may significantly enrich the classic postcolonial studies, which is frequently accused of binary thinking. A diversified discourse about the problematic nature of Arcadian memory of Kresy can lead to a novel conceptualisation of the hybridity of “the oppressor and the oppressed” in one8. (Uffelmann 2014, 120–121)

In the article included in the volume Historie, społeczeństwa, przestrzenie dialogu. Studia postzależnościowe w perspektywie porównawczej (Histories, Societies, Dialogue Spaces. Post-dependence Studies in a Comparative Perspective, the volume including Uffelmann’s article quoted above) Dorota Kołodziejczyk considers as Ciało, pamięć, performatywność w perspektywie postzależnościowej. 2015, edited by Ewa Graczyk, Monika Graban-Pomirska, Magdalena Horodecka i Monika Żółkoś. Kraków: Universitas. 7 “poznawczym uprzywilejowaniem opresjonowanych”. 8 “Figura Polski jako ofiary obcej przemocy zostaje powszechnie zaakceptowana, gdyż zgadza się z szeroko rozpowszechnioną tradycyjnie anty-imperialną pamięcią o przeszłości. Zaś hegemoniczna rola Polski w jej stosunkach z Ukrainą, Białorusią i Litwą ciągle jeszcze stanowi źródło wielu sporów, aczkolwiek od 2006 roku w dyskusji pojawiły się istotne momenty autorefleksyjne, osłabiające mechanizmy autocenzury… . Wydaje się, że podobna podwójna perspektywa może znacznie wzbogacić klasyczne studia postkolonialne, którym często było zarzucane myślenie binarne. Zróżnicowany dyskurs o problematyczności arkadyjskiej pamięci o kresach może doprowadzić do nowatorskiego ujęcia hybrydyczności ‘ciemiężyciela i ciemiężonego’ w jednej osobie”.

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right the understanding of the postcolonial condition not as an ontological category, but as “a feature of a theoretical debate over the language and the methods of critical description, and over the range of the discursive horizon marked by colonisation, or by imperialistic, in a broader sense, aspirations of modernity”9 (Kołodziejczyk 2014, 208). Although the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the first Rzeczpospolita, was influenced by three dominations (Austrian, Prussian and Russian), in social conviction it was mainly the relations with the eastern neighbour that resulted in the appearance in Polish identity of the elements specific for the state of mind for both the colonizer and the colonized (Gosk 2010, 235). Hanna Gosk states that the attitude of Poles towards Russia, the Soviet Union and Western Europe is typical for a former colonized entity and results from the long-lasting dependence, taking various forms (235). The article presented here is an attempt at analysing selected literary works of Władysław Lech Terlecki with the application of the instruments provided by postcolonial theories. In my opinion, the writer by presenting the process of functioning in the subjugated reality stressed the mutual, impassable strangeness of the Russian invaders and the Polish subjects. He focused also on the stigmatising role of the language of the colonising, imposing the dominant discourse upon the oppressed, on the effective attempts of the oppressor at seizing the discourse of the occupied. It is important that by giving voice to the oppressor, he showed from the perspective of an officer of the imperial power the ridiculousness of the attempts Poles made to remain in the sphere of interest of Western Europe, to gain the sympathy of those countries for endeavours towards Polish independence. Władysław Lech Terlecki, who died in 1999, was one of the most respected and most frequently published Polish writers of the twentieth century. He lived in Warsaw and worked as a journalist, an editor of literary radio broadcasts and a publicist. His historical novels were most appreciated by readers and critics alike. They can be classified as psychological novels with a strongly marked criminal intrigue. He described in details the situation of Poland dependent on the Russians in the second half of the nineteenth century and at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was the time when Poland was divided between the three neighbouring great powers, including Russia. He created the works during the period in which Poland remained dependent on the communist Soviet Union. The

9 “cechę teoretycznej debaty nad językiem i metodami krytycznego opisu oraz nad zakresem dyskursywnego horyzontu wyznaczanego przez kolonizację, czy też imperialistyczne w szerszym znaczeniu, aspiracje nowoczesności”.

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existence of political censorship made it impossible for Terlecki, the writer with a clear political instinct, to analyse the situation of dependence with reference to the reality which was contemporary to him. Critics, researchers, and some of common readers, regarded the historical themes of Terlecki’s works as a mask which made speaking about the nature of the dependence upon the powerful eastern neighbour–the USSR–possible. In the 1950s, as a student, he carried out archival research, studying history through the preserved documents from the 19th century. He read, with particular attention, the investigatory testimonies of the Polish insurgents, revolutionaries and terrorists imprisoned by Russians. Later his library research visits included the Main State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow and department of manuscripts of the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Almost all Terlecki’s historical texts were related to the Polish-Russian conflict lasting from the second half of the eighteenth century until 1920. As fundamentally the relation between Poland and the Soviet Union in the years 1944 to 1989 can be described by the same paradigm, the novels written by Terlecki, being historical, in the opinion of the readers sounded contemporary. The staging of Terlecki’s drama Dwie głowy ptaka (Two Heads of a Bird) in December 1982 at the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw provided an opportunity for a public manifestation of patriotic feelings. The text, telling the story about tsarist violence, was received by the gathered audience as a commentary upon the then-imposed martial law. It is worth noting that Terlecki, who consistently made reading his novels difficult by providing no specific setting and depriving his protagonists of surnames or sometimes of forenames as well, in interviews and prefaces to his books kept repeating information about his passion for constructing his narratives on the basis of authentic events and archival materials confirming their genuineness. The potential applicability of postcolonial studies to the material of the novels and plays by Terlecki has been indicated by the previously quoted Hanna Gosk (Gosk 2010, 25–40, 182–190), Agnieszka Izdebska (Izdebska 2010, 174–235) and Agnieszka Czarkowska (2010, 323–334). Hanna Gosk analysed representation of the influence of the Empire over private life (Czarny romans) and took up the subject of the attitude of the authorities to the subalterns. Agnieszka Izdebska, providing examples of texts of her selection, has classified the model situations of mutual strangeness of Poles and the invaders, indicating possible patterns of relations (they at ours–the Others’–at a foreign place; we at theirs–the Others’; they and others about us at ours/at theirs; they and we at ours; we not at ours/ nowhere–by them; they about us, they about themselves; others about them; they against what others say about them; we and they against others). Agnieszka

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Czarkowska found it well-grounded and inspiring to apply postcolonial critique to the reading of another of Terlecki’s novels–Odpocznij po biegu (Rest after Your Run). The novel depicts an investigation carried out by a Russian judge, who comes from Warsaw to work on the case of a murder committed by a Polish monk in the small, provincial town which Częstochowa was at that time. I would like to refer to two situations, representative for the world of Terlecki’s novels taking up a historical theme. My interest lies in the way Terlecki constructs the narrative of love forbidden for nationality reasons and how in a few of his novels he renders the procedure of effective imposition of the colonial discourse upon the society of the Kingdom of Poland, leading to apostasy of some and silencing of others. Irmina Wawrzyczek reminds us that colonial discourses…participate in the process of “colonisation of the mind”, i.e. adopting as one’s own the “hegemon’s” systems of values and considering his way of perceiving and understanding the world as natural. The traumatic effect of psychointelectual colonial discourses in the case of the colonised consists in consolidating the negative thinking about one’s own political and economic system, about native artistic creations, about the type of human relations, or of behaviour towards natural environment10. (Wawrzyczek 2010, 16)

Terlecki in his works uses historical knowledge and his own observations as those of a citizen of a country dominated by the Soviet Union, to build, consistently, the picture of the Kingdom of Poland as a gubernya, whose inhabitants are subdued to political pressure from the Romanov Empire, constantly invigilated and consistently deprived of the right to self-determination. In his books (particularly in Spisek (Conspiracy) from 1966, Dwie głowy ptaka (Two Heads of a Bird) from 1970 and the play of the same title published in 1981, Lament from 1984, Zabij cara (Kill the Tsar) from 1992 and Wyspa kata (Hangman’s Island) from 1999) the basic accusation posed by imperial officers towards the citizens of the former Poland is their lack of respect for the autocratic power of the tsars. The suggested infantilism of Poles revealed itself, according to the tsarist officers, in the most conspicuous way in the taking up of the destined-to-fail conspiratorial actions aimed at the lawful authorities. The most effective method of psychological war with the imprisoned, most ideologically involved conspirators and terrorists, prepared by 10 “dyskursy kolonialne…uczestniczą w procesie ‘kolonizacji umysłu’, czyli przyswajania sobie jako własnych systemów wartości ‘hegemona’ i uznania jego sposobu postrzegania i rozumienia świata za naturalny. Traumatyczny efekt psychointelektualny dyskursów kolonialnych u skolonizowanych polega na utrwalaniu negatywnego myślenia o własnym systemie politycznym, gospodarczym, o rodzimej twórczości artystycznej, o typie relacji międzyludzkich, zachowaniach w stosunku do środowiska naturalnego”.

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the modern and complex structure of the tsar’s secret police, was ridiculing and discrediting the values in which members of the national independence groups believed. Their convictions and actions were presented as deprived of rationality and sense, and the rebellion as harmful for the “Polish” social and national fabric. Actions of tsarist officers lead eventually to the loss of faith in the ideals the invigilated had believed in, and to their ultimate apostasy (Dwie głowy ptaka) or complete silencing (Wyspa kata). The Polish “uprising discourse” (referring to the January Uprising, which started in the Kingdom of Poland and in Lithuania in January 1863 and lasted until the autumn of 1864, directed against the authority of the tsars and brutally suppressed by the tsar’s army) took up the subject of apostasy–national betrayal–as early as in the 19th century. The country remaining in subjugation, condemned to political nonexistence as a sovereign community, facing the possibility of complete loss of identity, made the countrymen think alike. When the national existence was endangered, the control over the level of identification with the community in Polish society increased automatically. Faithfulness to the unifying idea became the basic criterion of assessment of community members. A traitor broke the structure of the group. Apostasy led to exclusion and further existence in infamy. In the Polish cultural transfer the figures of traitors were presented as tragic, because a traitor automatically become a victim of his own betrayal. Absolute condemnation of apostasies was to discourage Poles from possible yielding to the temptation of taking up “an easier way”. Janusz Tazbir, a historian, claimed that in the Polish national discourse “a German or a Russian turning Polish simply gets assimilated, while a Pole accepting German or Russian identity denationalizes himself, commits national apostasy”(Tazbir 1997, 331)11. It is worth noting that in the common perception all achievements of the apostates were depreciated, with their former life entirely excluded from consideration (Jamrozek-Sowa 2013, 97). In the world created by Terlecki, Russian officials and Polish subjects rarely communicate. The strong conviction of an impossibility to reach a compromise, shared by both parties of the conflict, makes all negotiations impossible. Terlecki never shows an average Polish citizen relatively satisfied with his living conditions, or lower-rank Russian officials or members of the military staying in the western province as exiles or for an opportunity to enrich themselves in the colony. He always

11 “przechodzący na polskość Niemiec czy Rosjanin, po prostu się asymiluje. Tymczasem Polak, przejmujący niemieckość czy rosyjskość, wynaradawia się, czyli dokonuje narodowej apostazji”.

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chooses significant characters for his protagonists, established by virtue of their office for being representatives of the mutually exclusive national and imperial values. In Terlecki’s world, in direct contrast to the Russians, the Poles almost never speak. Russian officials deprive them of their right of expression. Exchanging of ideas is not relevant to the situation, time and place in which the meeting between the adversaries takes place. This is either detention or prison. Captured insurgents, anarchists, and those responsible for terrorist attacks can only answer specific, targeted questions during the investigation; follow the path of reasoning marked out by the officers. They fall into a mental trap. The arrest and confusion caused by a radical change in the existential situation render the rebels defenceless against manipulation from the officers of the efficient, modern, tsarist political police. The protagonist of Dwie głowy ptaka, Aleksander Waszkowski, was the last president of Polish National Government during the January Uprising. Terlecki tells the story of his captivity and spiritual capitulation. As historical sources claim, Waszkowski had been avoiding detention for a long time in the face of approaching defeat of the uprising, despite numerous repressions, increasing police control, activation of secret agents. The tsar’s police got to know the name of the president only at the beginning of December 1864, when he was accidentally arrested. Waszkowski–ill, feverish, disorientated, voluntarily revealed his name and the function he had in the structure of the underground state. The police reacted immediately. Waszkowski’s case, as that of a person of particular significance for the symbolic lasting of the uprising, was sent to the highest officials. The interrogations Waszkowski went through took place at Pawia Street, at the so called “House of Investigation”. It was a place of torture, modern in its spirit in the sense in which Michel Foucault was writing about places like that (Foucault 1989). In such a prison the suspect’s own psyche was the cruellest of the tormentors. Waszkowski, placed in prison, was neither beaten nor tortured. Just the opposite–he was treated with attention due to the person of such importance. It flattered the 24-year-old inmate and weakened his defence instinct. His case was taken over by Teodor Lwowicz Tuchołko, an experienced colonel of the military police. Two strong personalities came into confrontation–that of the heroic, but also very young, vain and somewhat naïve Pole, and that of the experienced police investigator. Terlecki in Dwie głowy ptaka reconstructs the two-month investigation to which Waszkowski was subjected. Since the police possessed sufficient knowledge about everything that concerned the failing uprising, the aim of their “work” was to make the president transfer to the Russian authorities the underground government’s treasure deposited in a bank in England. The investigation was carried out according to the binding procedures. It started in a typical manner, from a seemingly friendly

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conversation, a free exchange of ideas, which was aimed at lulling the detained into a false sense of security, and to quieten his emotions as well. At the second stage, the substantive one, the inmate was allowed to speak freely about “the case”, which let the interrogator find out the prisoner’s line of defence. The phase of spontaneous testimonies served psychological observation as well. Later on came the moment in which Waszkowski got involved in a dialogue with another investigator, Oficerek, who had come from St. Petersburg. Whether the investigators were going to win depended largely on that particular stage, on the ability to ask appropriate questions. The phase of insistent persuasion signified the beginning of the end of the heroic story of Waszkowski. Exhausted with the lasting for months work in the organisational structures of the uprising, sensing the failure, being weary of the fights between fractions, of hiding, frequent and necessary changing of the hiding places, his disease, bitter cold in the last dwelling, isolated and at the same time constantly controlled, constantly emotionally agitated, he became vulnerable to sympathy shown to him, to the apparent empathy of the Russians. Subjective evaluation of the uprising expressed by Oficerek and Tuchołko in his perception got transformed into absolutely true objective opinions. Waszkowski, defenceless at that moment, had to accept the fact that participation in the uprising was reproachful, since the uprising as such was a reckless act itself, of little significance, “tenuous”, although bearing so many painful losses of the rebels. It was an argumentation negating the actual condition, which additionally disturbed the already strained psyche of the inmate. Waszkowski knew and felt that the January Uprising had started because in the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine there had been tension impossible to release in any other way. There was no other form, available to the society, of channelling the powerful, turbulent feelings of rebellion against the multilayer violence of Russia. That contradiction he felt between the reality and the way it was talked about deepened even more the process of disintegration of his personality. The only protection against the overwhelming psychic suffering was the ultimate subjection to the will of the oppressor. In Dwie głowy ptaka the descriptive phrases referring to the January Uprising, which Russian officers use when talking to the commander of the uprising take the form of periphrases. Besides those simple terms suggesting a sudden incident taking place, such as “rebellion”, “storm” or “fall”, more elaborate descriptions appear, such as: “a storm that will destroy the nation”, “fire recklessly started”; “careless action”; “a dream you have once dreamt”; “insurgents–scum, troublemakers”; “you wanted to start a great fire, all that is left is a little smoke”; “the last governor of the city–so he called himself ” (Terlecki, 1981, 8, 12, 13, 19, 20, 25). All these are pejorative terms, degrading the dramatism of the grand event. They lead to the

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transposition of the event of great significance into the sphere of “insignificance”. They suggest irresponsibility of the people engaging themselves in the liberation activity. They diminish the significance of life sacrifice; expose the brevity of the rebellion taking place in the western province of little significance to the Romanov Empire. It remains in contradiction with the historical truth. The Russian authorities feared riots in the Kingdom of Poland, international infamy, and amplification of rebellious moods in St. Petersburg, although officially it was denied. The interrogated were incidentally informed that the tsarist authorities treated the Kingdom as a test site where they experimented with various methods of fighting against the revolutionary “element”. Depreciation of the dramatic event the January Uprising was, stripping it of the features of the sublime, was intended to destroy the conspirators’ system of values. It suggested inadequacy, senselessness of the rebellion confronted with the omnipotent, well-functioning police and military machine. The suspect, psychologically broken, started to believe the interrogator and denied himself, mechanically nullifying the system of values he identified himself with. The breach resulted in the deconstruction of personality and despair, in distorted functioning, and eventually in losing himself, in an ultimate failure. What, if not mental degradation of the leaders of the uprising, could have satisfied the tsarist machine of violence more? When the spirit of rebellion was broken, the society fell into mimicry, into a sleep and deeply hid its discontent. Andrzej Waszkowski, as has been already stated above, after a few weeks of intense investigation, renounced his testimonies made during the first, “heroic” period of his imprisonment. He changed their content to his and the “national cause’s” disadvantage. As to make his “brothers” discontinue further fights–in his present opinion senseless, only prolonging the nation’s suffering (as Tuchołko and Oficerek claimed)–by signing an appropriate document he transferred to the Russians the money gained during the bravado robbery of the Kingdom Treasury and deposited in England. “The story cannot be continued”–Waszkowski said at the end of the investigation (Terlecki 1981, 24). After the act of repentance he simply waited for the execution–the hanging which was performed in a spectacular way, since the decision-makers enjoyed such ceremonies. His death was the last public execution of the captured insurgents in Warsaw. In that way the history of the organization and of the National Government ended (Jamrozek-Sowa 2013, 102–104). Terlecki presents another model reaction to the abusive language of the oppressor in his last novel, Wyspa kata (Hangman’s Island). The protagonist, Walerian Łukasiński, a historical figure, did not internalise the oppressor’s stand and was condemned to eternal silence. Łukasiński was the leader of a conspiracy, the man

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imprisoned in Shlisselburg fortress, a place where those rebels most dangerous for the Empire were sent, e.g. terrorists who attempted to kill the emperor. Łukasiński lived for thirty years in complete isolation, in a dungeon, in total darkness, in a cell without the floor. The prison officers were not allowed to make any, including verbal, contact with him. For thirty years Łukasiński did not receive any messages from the outside world, did not change his clothes, because he was not given any help from the state. The family did not know the place of his imprisonment. They also were not even informed about the death of the convict. Personal data of the mysterious prisoner was known only to a few people, including the Emperor himself. From the point of view of the inhabitants of the Kingdom the absolute efficiency and “omnipotence” made Russians “demonic”. Polish people created in Terlecki’s texts wanted to see Russians as gifted with supernatural, “devilish” power. In a fragment of the last, incomplete novel Dom Księcia (The House of a Prince) we can find a dialogue between two Russians: – Why do Poles in all failed undertakings usually seek some devilish interference? In my opinion it does not result from their exceptional religiousness at all. – Haven’t you thought that they seek his presence around them, because they have no other option? Blaming God for all misery leads them straight to the mortal sin. The devil makes it all easier. What is more important, he probably justifies constant rebellion and everlasting dissatisfaction. You can eventually take up the fight with the devil. And we most frequently just personify his power for them12. (Terlecki 2000, 73)

The suggested demonism was to justify one’s own impotence. Terlecki asks, ironically, if it is at all possible to win with a rival who represents such a power. The postcolonial perspective seems appropriate for reading that of Terlecki’s novels, in which he takes up the subject of the tragic love between a Polish actress and a Russian officer; the love impossible in the political reality of Warsaw at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the literary world created by Terlecki, Poles living in the westernmost province remain remote from the officials of the imposed order. Russians are ostracised—they are not accepted in Polish homes, they do not go for common walks and trips. They are treated as a necessary evil. 12 “-Dlaczego Polacy we wszystkich niepomyślnych zdarzeniach upatrują zwykle ingerencji diabelskiej. Mnie się zdaje, że nie wynika to wcale z ich nadzwyczajnej religijności. -Nie pomyślałeś, że może tak wietrzą jego obecności wokół siebie, bo nie pozostaje im nic innego? Obciążanie Boga za wszystkie nieszczęścia prowadzi do ich wprost do grzechu śmiertelnego. Diabeł natomiast wiele w tym wszystkim ułatwia. A co ważniejsze, być może usprawiedliwia bunt i wieczne niezadowolenie. Z diabłem można ostatecznie podjąć walkę. A my najczęściej właśnie uosabiamy dla nich jego potęgę”.

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The odium of national treason falls onto each Pole who attempts to have personal, including intimate, contacts with the oppressor. The model example of such an impossible relationship is the love story described by Terlecki in the 1974 novel Czarny romans (The Black Affair) and in the 1999 play Dragon (The Dragoon). The two texts are based on the true story of Maria Wisnowska and Alexander Barteniev. A Russian soldier in his twenties, nobly born, the future heir to a great estate, sent for military service to Warsaw, was enthusiastic to learn about the unknown territory and the people who lived there—not Orthodox. But he quickly learnt that otherness in Warsaw was categorized as strangeness. Subordinated people tended to be neither honest nor nice to the representatives of strangeness. Erotic fascination with an actress adored by the local audience brought tragedy onto him. In addition, the situation became more complicated by the fact that Warsaw theatres enjoyed complete autonomy during the occupation, and became places where the manifestation of patriotic feelings took place. The actress, on whose shoulders the nation rested the duty to expose patriotic values in front of the invaders being the theatre audience, was betraying that nation by getting involved in a relationship with a representative of the enemy. Excessive emotions caused by the growing desire, awareness of the rejection by both the Polish artistic class from Warsaw and by his own Russian family, made the love between the actress and the soldier impossible. The dragoon shot the actress with the pistol and then yielded himself to justice. He found himself guilty of murder and also regarded himself and his beloved as victims of the hatred of both the colonisers and the colonised. Terlecki shows the love affair of a heroine modelled on Wisnowska and a dragoon modelled on Barteniev as a complicated one, full of ecstasy and violence, destructive for the partners. He creates a story of impossible love between representatives of two feuding communities. Warsaw is not “our city” for the Russian, to whom Terlecki gives the right to speak (it is the Russian, who tells the story of the affair in the novel). National origins and the fact that the lover of the Polish actress belongs to the army of the invader decide about the failure of the love affair of Maria and Fiodor. For the oversensitive, emotionally unstable woman going through periods of ecstasy and depression, remaining in a relationship socially forbidden became an additional burden. It was that situation of strangeness imposed by the Empire, colonial in its nature, which made the love of the representative of Polishness and a tsar’s officer impossible. As I have been trying to prove, reading Terlecki’s novels through the prism of postcolonial sensitivity makes it possible to reveal some of the contents that have not been entirely recognised or described so far. The postcolonial approach brings

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to the surface the manifestations of the asymmetric relations between the representatives of the imperial center (St. Petersburg), i.e. high rank officials, officers, investigating magistrate and the marginalised inhabitants of the most westward gubernya of Russia (Poles in those novels are lower rank officials, actors, conspirators, terrorists, confidants). We can feel and understand the intensity of the strangeness prevailing between the representatives of the invaders and the Poles, and observe the mechanisms of manipulation the inhabitants of the 19th- and early 20th-century Poland remaining under the Russian occupation. Postcolonial reading leads to taking into account the significance of the preventive censorship that all artistic creations were subjected to in the socialist Poland, “mutilating” the work as well as its creator. Terlecki as a writer of political temper was frequently forced to use history as a mask, thanks to which he could express his views about the current problems. Hence, his books telling stories about Poles struggling against the tsarist Russia can be read as metaphorical narratives about the 20th-century man fighting against the oppressive power of the totalitarian and imperial Soviet Union. After Poland regained sovereignty in 1989 Terlecki lost his privileged position, as did almost all the writers working during the communist times. Political changes and economic and social transformations resulted in the citizens’ focus on everyday life. Terlecki, less published, less present on television and on the theatre stage, returned to his journalistic activities. First of all, he appealed to the citizens, now of a free country, not to stop thinking in historical categories. He paid attention to the fundamental for the Polish reason of state necessity of extended, deep and careful study of the relations with Russia and working on the conceptual instrument common for both nations: a language that would help to start a dialogue.

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Borkowska, Grażyna. 2007. “Polskie doświadczenie kolonialne”. Teksty Drugie 4: 15–24. Borkowska, Grażyna. 2011. “Perspektywa kolonialna na gruncie polskim– pytania sceptyka”. In Kultura po przejściach, osoby z przeszością. Polski dyskurs postzależnościowy – konteksty i perspektywy badawcze, edited by Ryszard Nycz,167–180. Kraków: Universitas. Bujnicki, Tadeusz. 2010. “Cywilizacyjny mit kresowy w literaturze o Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim. Wiek XIX”. In Studia postkolonialne nad kulturą i cywilizacją polską. 2010, edited by: Krzysztof Stępnik, Dariusz Trześniowski, 81–98. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS. Cavanagh, Clare. 2003. “Postkolonialna Polska. Biała plama na mapie współczesnej teorii”, trans. Tomasz Kunz. Teksty Drugie 2–3: 60–71. Chmielewska, Katarzyna. 2013. “Tak i nie. Meandry polskiego dyskursu postkolonialnego i postzależnościowego.” In (P)o zaborach, (p)o wojnie, (p)o PRL. Polski dyskurs postzależnościowy dawniej i dziś, edited by Hanna Gosk, Ewa Kraskowska, 559–574. Kraków: Universitas. Chomiuk, Aleksandra. 2006. “Nowy Markiz de Custine albo o pewnej manipulacji”. Teksty Drugie 1–2: 310–319. Czarkowska, Agnieszka. 2010. “Władysława Lecha Terleckiego dyskurs postkolonialny w powieści Odpocznij po biegu”. Ruch Literacki 3 (300): 323–334. Dąbrowski, Mieczysław. 2008. “Kresy w perspektywie krytyki postkolonialnej”. Pracownia 5: 93–111. Delaperrière, Maria. 2008. “Gdzie są moje granice? O postkolonializmie w literaturze””. Teksty Drugie 6: 9–19. Domańska, Ewa. 2008. “Obrazy PRL-u w perspektywie postkolonialnej”. In Obrazy PRL-u, edited by Krzysztof Brzechczyn, 167–185. Poznań: IPN. Fiut, Aleksander. 2003. “Polonizacja? Kolonizacja?”. Teksty Drugie 6: 150–156. Fiut, Aleksander. 2006. Spotkanie z Innym. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. Foucault, Michel, 1989. Nadzorować i karać. Narodziny więzienia, trans. Tadeusz Komendant. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Fundacja Aletheia. Gosk, Hanna. 2010. Opowieści “skolonializowanego/kolonizatora”. W kręgu studiów postzależniościowych nad literatura polską XX i XXI wieku. Kraków: Universitas. Gosk, Hanna and Ewa Kraskowska. 2013. “Wprowadzenie”. In (P)o zaborach, (p)o wojnie, (p)o PRL. Polski dyskurs postzależnościowy dawniej i dziś, edited by Hanna Gosk, Ewa Kraskowska, 9–16. Kraków: Universitas. Historie, społeczeństwa, przestrzenie dialogu. Studia postzależnościowe w perspektywie porównawczej. 2014, edited by Hanna Gosk i Dorota Kołodziejczyk. Kraków: Universitas.

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Part IV Postcolonial Literature in Translation

Łukasz Barciński

Colonisation of Mind in Translation as Illustrated Through the Polish Rendition of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie Abstract: The article examines to what extent poststructural theory can be useful in the definition of the complicated phenomenon of postcolonial literature and the process of its translation. It shows the similarity between the process of translation and the creation of postcolonial literature both with respect to the linguistic aspect and the psychological state of the author/translator. Key words: poststructuralism, translation, defamiliarisation, lexical anomalies, linguistic novelty.

Introduction The aim of the article is to examine the possible similarities between the process of translation and the process of writing postcolonial fiction as well as the products of such processes i.e. the translation products (the target texts) and postcolonial texts, which will be illustrated by examples from Midnight’s Children, a postcolonial novel by Salman Rushdie. The glaring similarity between translated texts and postcolonial literature was noticed by many translation scholars, Maria Tymoczko being one of the most prominent examples. When juxtaposing translation and postcolonial writing, she sees translation as “a metaphor for post-colonial writing”, imagines postcolonial writing as a form of translation and, finally, considers interlingual literary translation to be “an analogue for postcolonial writing”, with the two types of intercultural connections being “essentially distinct”, but possessing “enough points of contact” to provide sufficient insight for both of them (Tymoczko in Bassnett and Trivedi 1999, 19–20). While highlighting the obvious differences (e.g. postcolonial writers do not transpose a text, but a culture), she notices considerable similarity especially in the lexical anomalies and the level of defamiliarisation. She compares the situation of a translator and a postcolonial writer in their approach to cultural items and linguistic features: both can choose “a fairly aggressive presentation of unfamiliar cultural elements” and “unfamiliar lexical items” or an “assimilative” one. What distinguishes a translator from a postcolonial writer is “parameters of constraint” as a translator deals with a “fixed

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text” i.e. the source text while an author has more flexibility in writing his/her own book (Tymoczko in Bassnett and Trivedi 1999, 21–27). From the above considerations it may be inferred that the juxtaposition of the two types of texts might contribute considerably to their in-depth analysis. However, it seems necessary to utilise a more comprehensive approach e.g. like the interdisciplinary spirit of Mary Snell-Hornby’s integrated approach to Translation Studies (1988), which attempts to integrate a variety of concepts in translation analysis. The present study will apply such an interdisciplinary approach and, in the analysis of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, an example of a postcolonial novel of high linguistic hybridity, will also utilize concepts developed by selected poststructural thinkers.

1. Poststructural theory as applied to Translation Studies and post-colonial literature Although poststructuralism as a uniform intellectual movement escapes simple definition, it may be defined as a theory or a group of theories which “doubt[s] the adequacy of structuralism and, as far as literature is concerned, tends to reveals that the meaning of any text is, of its nature, unstable. It reveals that signification is, of its nature, unstable” (Cuddon 1976, 691). The concept of poststructuralism is related to the names of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, whose theoretical notions will be utilized in the present study for the purpose of gaining insight into the analogies between translation and postcolonial literature. The philosopher, Jacques Derrida applies the concept of double bind to the decision-making process of a translator. Double bind (a psychological impasse or an emotionally distressing dilemma in the face of a decision where any choice leads to disaster) seems to adequately describe the hardships of a translator who knows that translation is both a necessity and an impossibility but s/he has to perform the act in spite of the vexatious innervations caused by the paradoxical nature of the process (Markowski 2003, 313–319). The psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan differentiates between three basic orders of human mental reality: the Symbolic (the world of linguistic communication, the rules of the law and conventions), the Imaginary (the realm where fantasy images of an individual person and his/her objects of desire are created) and the Real (Evans 1996, 203). The Imaginary order is related to the mental mechanism of imaginary projection where Ideal Ego (the desired ideal which an individual person would like to attain in reality) is formed. The Symbolic order is connected with the mental mechanism of symbolic introjection (a type of internalisation) which always involves “the introjection of the speech of the other” or the introjection of a signifier to obtain Ego Ideal (the ideal actualised in the linguistic

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code) (Evans 1996, 91)1. The philosopher, Gilles Deleuze also differentiates between three realms: the virtual, the actual and the real. For Deleuze both the virtual and the actual, being different in that the latter has concrete existence, are “two mutually exclusive, yet jointly sufficient, characterisations of the real”. According to Deleuze the virtual plane is not unreal or potential, but is just another sphere of the real which has not been actualised yet (Parr 2005, 300). The juxtaposition of the above mentioned theoretical considerations for the purpose of Translation Studies and postcolonial literature might provide an indepth insight into the intricacies of the process of their creation. The initial difference between the situation of a translator and a postcolonial author is the fact that the translator has to render a specific source text into the target language, while the author is only constrained by the creative impulse in his/her mind. However, in the subsequent stages of the creative process, the situation of both the translator and the post-colonial author becomes more and more analogical, which may be illustrated by the concept of double bind as stipulated by Derrida. The translator faces the inevitable dilemma of the necessity and impossibility of transposing one linguistic code into another one (the source language into the target language), while the author faces the dilemma of expressing the native through the colonial (in case of postcolonial novels of high hybridity–the dilemma related to the intensity of the mixture of two or more linguistic codes). The translator like the postcolonial author becomes engrossed in the realm of the virtual linguistic choices (in the realm of the virtual as stipulated by Deleuze) and into the Imaginary Order (as stipulated by Lacan) by projecting the virtual choices in his/her creative fantasy. Then, both the translator and the postcolonial author enter the stage of finalisation of their creative virtuality by entering the realm of actuality (in Deleuze’s terms) or the Symbolic Order (in Lacan’s terms) i.e. the multitude of their virtual choices become verified by the final choice in the target text of translation or the final postcolonial text. The translator introjects the signifier of the source text into the linguistic conventions of the target language, while the postcolonial author introjects his/her creative impulse related to the 1 It has to be mentioned that the concept of the Symbolic, signifying the necessity of compliance with linguistic rules and laws, has been frequently used or referred to in general literary theory or within the psychoanalytic literary criticism (e.g. by scholars such as Julia Kristeva). However, it seems that its application for the purpose of Translation Studies has been limited. Therefore, one of the aims of this article is to utilise this concept for the purpose of translation analysis especially in the apt context of postcolonial literature of high linguistic hybridity where the matter of resistance against imposed linguistic norms and conventions comes to the fore.

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native culture/linguistic code into the code of the colonial language. The process of translation is shown in Fig. 1, while the process of writing postcolonial literature in Fig. 2. (both described with the use of poststructural theory). Fig. 1. The process of translation illustrated by the juxtaposition of poststructural theories.

Fig. 2. The process of writing postcolonial literature of high linguistic hybridity illustrated by the juxtaposition of poststructural theories.

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It has to be stated that the above considerations and figures are of prototypical nature and cannot encompass all the multiple cases of translation acts or acts of writing postcolonial literature. The proposition is by no means of rigid and final character and has to be modified to suit a particular geopolitical, social or linguistic reality. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 also present the relation of the translator and the postcolonial author to the Symbolic order, which, according to Lacan, stands for the repressive force through which language oppresses individual expression (Evans 1996, 203). In other words, if a translator or an author rebels against the Symbolic in his/her artistic vision, the final product of artistic activity becomes more defamiliarised and contains more linguistic novelty. Accordingly, resistance to the Symbolic, manifested in the departure from prototypical linguistic forms might be seen as a valid indicator of the preservation of the exotic trace in the process of translation, and as such will be utilised in the analysis in section No. 3 below. Depending on the degree of the resistance against the Symbolic, the outcome of the process of translation might be as follows: – in the case of any translation–if the translator shows no resistance: the outcome of the translation is a fully domesticated text/transparent text (in extreme cases the translation product might create an illusion that it is not a translation at all), – in the case of translation of postcolonial literature of high linguistic hybridity and high culture-bound item content–if the translator shows no resistance: the outcome is a postcolonial text but with no exotic trace (in extreme cases the text becomes fully adjusted to the target linguistic code and loses its linguistic novelty), – in the case of any translation–if the translator shows high resistance: the outcome is a highly defamiliarised text/foreignised text (not transparent translation with calques, borrowings and exoticisms), – in the case of translation of postcolonial literature of high linguistic hybridity and high culture-bound item content–if the translator shows high resistance: the outcome is the final postcolonial text containing considerable exotic trace (a text of high hybridity and defamiliarisation). As a result, the following conclusions about the affinity of postcolonial literature and translation may be drawn: 1.) the psychological process of creation of translated texts and postcolonial literature bears considerable similarity (except for the stimulus for the inception of the process),

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2.) a postcolonial text of high hybridity may be seen as a highly defamiliarised text. Therefore, the translation of a hybridised postcolonial text proceeds in a similar way to a heavily defamiliarised source text (recommended translation strategy for both: high level of foreignisation), 3.) translation of a postcolonial text of high linguistic hybridity may be seen as double translation: first from the native creative impulse through the colonial into the postcolonial text and then from the hybrid postcolonial source text into the target text/translation product.

2.  Chutnification in Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie The winner of Booker Prize in 1981 (and the special Booker of Bookers prize in 1993), Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie is a novel which might be described as postcolonial as it deals with India’s transition from British colonialism to independence. It also constitutes a linguistic hybrid, which might be described by means of the metaphorical concept created by Rushdie in the novel i.e. chutnification. Rushdie’s neologism (chutney, a thick sauce that is made from fruits, vinegar and spices+affixation–fication) describes making history through a narrative which is similar to the process of chutney preparation by careful selection of ingredients. It may also serve to metaphorically depict the hybridisation of the language in Midnight’s Children i.e. Rushdie’s predilection to transform the style of his book so that it creates a thrilling mix of intensified flavour. The special linguistic mixture found many a description among literary scholars: Khair (2005, 110) considers it to be “a stylized version of the English grapholect”; for Gorra (1997, 133) it is “omnium gatherum of whatever seems to work, sprinkled with bits of Hindi, eclectic enough to accommodate cliché, unbound by any grammatical strait jacket”; Blaise comments that the novel “reads like hip vulgarity of the Hindi film magazine” (1981) and Mukherjee (2003, 9) concludes that it is the “paradigmatic post-colonial text subverting the notions of received historiography and indigenising both the language and the narrative mode of the colonising culture or the quintessential fictional embodiment of the postmodern celebration of de-centring and hybridity”.

3.  Linguistic novelty/hybridity in translation The following analysis focuses on the rendition of elements of linguistic hybridity of Rushdie’s chutnified style in the source text (the original novel) and how they are rendered in the target text (the translation by Anna Kołyszko). The aim of the analysis is to establish to what extent the linguistic novelty abundant in Rushdie’s book is recreated in the translation product i.e. in the Polish translation. According

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to the poststructural premises mentioned in section no. 1, the recreation of the source text novelty means the preservation of the resistance against the Symbolic and, as a result, the preservation of unfamiliar linguistic elements in the target text. However, if the target text contains no or little attempt at linguistic experimentalism and offers only standardised and conventionalised equivalents, the resistance to the Symbolic is low or non-existent, which means that the source text defamiliarisation is lost or seriously reduced, resulting in a low level of hybridity. a) the English plural: the source text contains Indian words which are given English affixation. In translation they are rendered into their Polish equivalents: pajamas as piżamy or as borrowings: pajamas as padźamy, goondas as gundy. In this case resistance to the Symbolic is at a relatively high level, as the majority of culture-bound items are recreated by means of exotic equivalents. b) –ism: the source text contains a neologism with the suffix-ism: what-happended-nextism. The neologism is not recreated and the target text preserves only denotation in brackets (“i-co-dalej”). In this case resistance to the Symbolic is low as the neologism is not recreated in the target text. Enough confessions. Bowing to the ineluctable Padma-pressures of what-happenednextism, and remembering the finite quantity of time at my disposal, I leap forwards from Mercurochrome and land in 1942. (Rushdie 1981, 39) Dość tych wynurzeń. Robiąc ukłon w stronę nieustępliwych nacisków Padmy z serii “i-co-dalej”, a także pomny na nieskończoną ilość czasu, jaki mam do dyspozycji, przeskakuję do merkurochromu i lądują w roku 1942. (Rushdie 2008, 48)

c) Indian suffixes: the source text contains English words with the Indian suffixji, a sign of respect or a honorific. In translation the suffix is preserved by means of phonetic transcription into Polish (-dźi): cousinji–kuzyndźi; sister– siostradźi. Resistance to the Symbolic is high in this example, as the exotic suffix is preserved in the target text. d) Hindi/Urdu-English compounds: the source text contains many Hindi/UrduEnglish compounds. In translation they are rendered as borrowings: channa vendors–sprzedawcy ćany; hot-channa–ćana-gorąca; chapathilike–ciemne placki podobne do ćapati; lathi stick–lathi; Indian fauj—indyjski faudź; dia lamp–lampka dija or diwa; sometimes they are omitted or translated with a Polish nearequivalent: green medicine wallah–łapserdak od leczenia zielskiem; rickshaw wallah–rykszarz, or rendered with an invented Polish slang (pan-rakieta) for the psychoactive mixture of betel and tobacco (paan) used in India: paan shop– kramik z pan-rakietami. In this case resistance to the Symbolic is at a medium

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level as only some culture-bound items are recreated by means of exotic borrowings. e) the suffix–y: the source text contains many word formations using the suffix–y, which do not exist in standard English. In translation linguistic novelty is not preserved, just the denotation of the expressions, which means that resistance to the Symbolic does not occur in this example. vinegary–silna jak ocet; kwaśne glasscloudy–przydymiony jak szkło squashy belly–pulchny brzuch house wifery–gorliwość pani domu down to earthery–przyziemność

f) the suffix–ed: the source text contains a number of non-standard past participles, not rendered as linguistic novelty in the target text, which means that there is no resistance against the Symbolic. He also felt–inexplicably–as though the old place resented his educated, stethoscoped return. (Rushdie 1981, 39) Doznał też niewysłowionego uczucia, jak gdyby stare kąty miały mu za złe, że wraca wykształcony, uzbrojony w stetoskop. (Rushdie 2008, 48)

g) affixation: the source text contains many non-standard examples of affixation, some of which are rendered as linguistic novelty (Padmaless nights–bezpadmowe noce), but mostly not (dislikeable–nieprzyjemny; unbeautiful–nieurodziwy), while some are translated as borrowings (doctori–daktari). Therefore, the overall resistance to the Symbolic seems to be at a relatively medium level. h) the suffix–ing: the original contains many novel expressions with the suffix–ing, which are mostly not rendered as linguistic novelty (e.g. lip jutting fathe–ojciec ze sterczącą wargą). This contributes to the conventionalisation of the target text as in: the whole sister-sleeping world–ten zakichany świat and in mother sleeping wind–zafajdana blaga. As a result of glaring conventionalisation resistance to the Symbolic can be described as low. ‘Rich kid,’ Shiva yelled, ‘you don’t know one damn thing! What purpose, man? What thing in the whole sister-sleeping world got reason, yara?…That’s reason, rich boy. Everything else is only mother-sleeping wind!’ (Rushdie 1981, 220) –Zamożniaczku–rozdarł się Śiwa–co ty, do cholery, wiesz! Człowieku, jaki znowu cel? Co na tym zakichanym świecie ma jakąkolwiek przyczynę?…Ot, i cała przyczyna zamożniaczku. A wszystko inne to tylko zafajdana blaga! (Rushdie 2008, 284)

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i) unusual compounds: the original contains many innovative compounds which are frequently rendered by means of hyphenation. In this case resistance to the Symbolic can be described as high as the original punctuation is preserved. Had I not inflicted upon myself one more deformity to add to bandylegs cucumbernose horn-temples staincheeks? (Rushdie 1981, 240) Czyż nie ściągnąłem na siebie kolejnej deformacji, na domiar kabłąkowatych-nóg nosajak-ogóras rogów-na-skroniach plam-na-policzkach? (Rushdie 2008, 309)

j) unusual idioms: some idioms in the source text seem to have non-standard meanings, which is rendered in the target text (the standard meaning of to go to pot is to deteriorate and not the literal meaning of the idiom as used in the novel i.e. to defecate, which is preserved in translation: się z name załatwił). Resistance to the Symbolic seems to be preserved by recreating the denotation of the source text. …he had stomped off, leaving me with a clear understanding of what people meant when they said the country was going to pot. (Rushdie 1981, 201) …on już wygarnął swoje, i tylko wyrobił we mnie silne przeświadczenie, co ludzie mają na myśli, kiedy mówią, że kraj się z nami załatwił. (Rushdie 2008, 260)

k) borrowings/exoticisms: multiple references to the Indian culture and reality are rendered as borrowings/exoticisms in the target text with some transliteration (e.g. names of Indian dishes: lassi–lassi; khichri–khićri; laddoo–laddu; chutney–ćatni). The exotic and defamiliarised character of the source text items is preserved in the target text, which prevents the translation from being conventionalised in terms of imagery e.g. the fish salans of stubbornness–salany rybne uporu or the birianis of determination–birjani stanowczości. It may be stated that resistance to the Symbolic is relatively high as the exotic culturebound items are recreated in the target text. Amina ate the fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination… (Rushdie 1981, 139) Amina zajadała salany rybne uporu i birjani stanowczości… (Rushdie 2008, 179) The borrowings also include Hindi/Urdu words (which are preserved with some transliteration: khansama–chansama) and the names of Hindu gods (Ganesh– Ganaśa; Hanuman–Hanumant; Shiva lingam–Śiwalinga and lingam). l) Indianisms: the source text contains a number of Indianisms which add local colour to the polyglottic mix of Rushdie’s fiction e.g. FUNTABULOUS where linguistic novelty is rendered with a spelling mistake FSPANIAŁA or

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filmi which is imprecisely rendered only descriptively (srebrnyekran) with no specific reference to the Indian cinematography and the unique musical style found in Bollywood movies. In this case resistance to the Symbolic is relatively low as the local colouring of the source text expressions is replaced by spelling errors or imprecise explicitations. …a real rutputty joint, with painted boards proclaiming LOVELY LASSI AND FUNTABULOUS FALOODA AND BHEL-PURIBOMBAY FASHION, with filmi playback music blaring out from a cheap radio by the cash-till. (Rushdie 1981, 215) …dosłownie ohydna speluna, oblepiona tabliczkami PYSZNE LASSI, FSPANIAŁA FALUDA i BHEL-PURI PO BOMBAJSKU, z lichego odbiornika radiowego za kasą ryczały melodie srebrnego ekranu. (Rushdie 2008, 277–278)

m) transcription of vernacular: the source text contains transcription of vernacular to add local colour to the characters’ speech, which is not preserved in the target text: gib the car poliss–chce pani mycie auta. The source text substandard English in some cases is translated by means of substandard Polish (I watch car–dopilnować auto), while in other cases is rendered by means of colloquial idioms (I very fine watchman–a pilnowacz ze mnie, że mucha nie siada). At the same time some exotic elements are rendered with transliteration (begum–begam). Resistance to the Symbolic seems to be low here as the heavily marked expressions in the source text are replaced with expressions only slightly indicative of the local colour of the original. …there was a boy pleading, ‘Gib the car poliss, Begum? Number one A-class poliss, Begum? I watch car until you come, Begum? I very fine watchman, ask anyone!’… (Rushdie 1981, 215) Jakiś chłopak zaczął się napraszać: –Begam, chce pani mycie auta? Super hiper, pierwsza klasa, dopilnować auto do pani powrotu? A pilnowacz ze mnie, że mucha nie siada, proszę się rozpytać! (Rushdie 2008, 277–278)

n) misspellings/grammatical incorrectness: the source text contains many misspellings to mark the uniqueness of the narrative voice and characters’ speech. In all cases this type of linguistic non-standard expressions are not preserved (unquestionable–niezaprzeczalny; existence–istnienie; mens–mężczyźni; informations–nasze dane) and, as a consequence, resistance to the Symbolic does not occur. o) other languages: the source text contains also a number of other languages which are preserved in translation in some cases with transliteration (Punjabi: yaar–yaar; Gujerathi: Sooche? Saruche! Danda le kemaruche! –Suće? Saruće!

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Danda le kemaruće!; Latin: feronia elephantum–feronia elephantum), which means that resistance to the Symbolic is at a high level.

Conclusion: colonisation of the translator’s mind It has to be stated that the above analysis which applies poststructural theory to the process of translation and creation of postcolonial literature is only of prototypical and tentative character and, by no means, constitutes an ultimate model which cannot be subsequently modified. It seems impossible to describe the diversified nature of postcolonial realities with one uniform paradigm as the linguistic and geopolitical environments in which postcolonial literature has originated might differ considerably. In case of India, the decolonization of which is depicted in Midnight’s Children, the picture is also complicated: the linguistic chronologicality of the primary “native” vs. the subsequent “colonial” seems to have already been distorted or abolished as in this country the English language has been unequivocally considered to be one of the Indian languages (losing its colonial and oppressive status) next to the diversified plethora of the “native” languages (currently, Hindi and English are the official languages; there are 22 recognised languages in the country according to the Indian Constitution and no language has been granted the status of national language). As a result of the above translation analysis, it may be concluded that a considerable number of linguistically hybrid elements are rendered in the Polish translation: many borrowings/exoticisms are preserved (most of them are explained in the comprehensive peritextual dictionary at the end of the book, consisting of 48 pages out of the total 643 pages of the book in Polish translation). Surface level effects are also preserved in the form of recreation of the original punctuation, hyphenation and conjoined words. However, it has to be concluded that lexical novelty is preserved only to some extent with a very limited preservation of the syntactic or (un)grammatical trace of the source text. In other words, it may be stated that the overall resistance to the Symbolic, indicative of the preservation of the exotic trace or the hybridity of the source text is relatively high at the semantic level (a wide spectrum of exoticisms retained in the target text) and the graphic level (precise rendition of punctuation); however, resistance to the Symbolic is considerably less intensive at the syntactic level, which is barely preserved, mostly conventionalised and subjected to the standards of the target language.

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In view of the above findings, translation seems to be not only a metaphor for postcolonial writing (Tymoczko in Bassnett and Trivedi 1999, 19) but also the process of colonisation itself may be seen as a figure of translation where the translator who does not acknowledge the hybrid nature of a text (e.g. a postcolonial novel of high hybridity), forces it during the translation process into the straitjacket of the norms of the target language without proper acknowledgement of the nuances and intricacies of the original. Accordingly, it seems that the proper approach in the translation of postcolonial texts of high hybridity is to ‘decolonise’ the translator’s mindset i.e. to free it from servility to the conventionality of the target linguistic code to embrace the possibility of linguistic novelty in order to prepare delicious reading chutneys thanks to translations which recognise their chutnified nature. Ideally, a discerning and well-intentioned translator, shunning the tyrannical imposition of target language norms, might create a symbiotic hybrid, bridging the gap between languages and cultures (also thanks to the acumen obtained from the interdisciplinary application of poststructural theory for the purpose of Translation Studies). In poststructural terms: in the double bind of the translation process only by careful consideration of the translator’s virtual choices (by acknowledging their virtual multiplicity in its entirety) and resistance to the Symbolic can the translation product render the multifacetedness of postcolonial literature of high linguistic hybridity and its defamiliarisation.

References Bassnett, Susan and Trivedi, Harish, (eds.) 1999. Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London/New York: Pinter. Blaise, Clark. 1981. “A Novel of India’s coming of Age.” New York Times Book Review 1: 18–19. Cuddon, John. 1976. Dictionary of Literary Terms and Theory. London: Penguin Books. Evans, Dylan. 1996. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London/ New York: Routledge. Gorra, Michael. 1997. After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Khair, Tabish. 2005. Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels. New Delhi: O.U.P. Markowski, Michał Paweł. 2003. Efekt inskrypcji. Jacques Derrida i literatura. Kraków: Homini.

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Mukherjee, Meenakshi. 2003. “Introduction.” In Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: A Book of Readings, edited by Meenakshi Mukherjee. New Delhi: Pencraft International. Parr, Adrian. 2005. The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rushdie, Salman. 1981. Midnight’s Children. Pan Books: London. Rushdie, Salman. 2008. Dzieci północy. Translated by Anna Kołyszko. Dom Wydawniczy Rebis: Poznań. Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1988. Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Marta Mamet-Michalkiewicz

Postcolonial Literature in Translation: Polish Translations of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses Abstract: The article, being a comparative analysis of the two Polish translations of The Satanic Verses, focuses on such aspects as untranslatability of postcolonial Otherness, hybridity, polyphony and intertextuality. The Polish translations serve as a starting point for discussion on translation of Otherness of the text/in the text. Key words: untranslatability, Otherness, hybridity, polyphony, intertextuality.

Introduction The aim of this article is examining the postcolonial Other in translation on the basis of the Polish translations of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. We will discuss the relationship between postcolonialism and translation by means of a comparative analysis of the two translations. This article seeks to find answers to the following questions: whether and in what way the postcolonial Otherness is rendered in the translations?; to what degree the Otherness of postcolonial text is reflected in the translations?; whether the process of orientalization/mythologization of the Other culture takes place during an act of translation?; and whether the postcolonial Other who emerges in the translations is at the same time alien? The author of Shame, the translated man, as Rushdie perceives himself, (Rushdie 2010, 15) is the master of foreignization and exotization. Foreignization (next to domestication) is the strategy in translation studies favoured by such prominent thinkers as Lawrence Venuti or Antoine Berman. Rushdie’s writing serves as an example that popular translation strategies are also used by postcolonial writers. A strategy of foreignization and exotization is used with relish by Rushdie. In one of the interviews the author of Midnight’s Children explains that he uses unfamiliar words, or phrases from Hindi, Arabic or Urdu, “as flavoring” (Brians 2004, 4). In other words, Rushdie, using the strategy of foreignization and exotization, tries to give taste to his work. If we were to define Rushdie’s language through the prism of culinary metaphors, we would definitely coin his writing as fusion cuisine which is defined as: “cuisine that combines elements of different culinary traditions. Cuisines of this type are not categorized according to any one particular style” (Lindsey 1985). Rushdie’s cuisine is a chutnification of different cultural traditions

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and in result is an example of writing which is sui generis, that is a writing which creates a cultural and literary tradition of his own. Rushdie creates his own writing/translation zones, to refer to Apter’s idea of a translation zone as a “space that does not belong to any one nation, but it is a zone of critical engagement ‘that connects the “l” and “n” of transLation and transNation” (Bassnett 2014, 57). In this light postcolonialism–similarly to translation–constitutes an encounter with the Other and at the same time is an example of experiencing the Other due to its transnational and transcultural character. Referring to Friedrich Hölderlin, Antoine Berman, in his article “Translation and the trials of the foreign”, writes that translating means “first and foremost liberating the violence repressed in the work through a series of intensifications in the translating language–in other words, accentuating its strangeness” (Berman 2012, 240–41). In an analogous way, in the language of Rushdie’s novel Otherness is revealed. Postcolonial writers are conscious–just like literary translators–that they write/translate for readers who (in most cases) share different cultural backgrounds, and this awareness influences the strategies they apply during the process of writing/translating. Since we look at postcolonial writing as at “translated” literature, it seems interesting to study the actual interlingual translations of such literature. The questions of strategies used by the translators in order to render postcolonial “Otherness”, polyphony of languages and its intertextuality will be discussed in this part of our analysis. The comparative analysis of the Polish translations of The Satanic Verses will be focused firstly on the cultural and secondly on the linguistic aspects of the novel. This paper focuses on such aspects as untranslatability of postcolonial Otherness, hybridity, polyphony and intertextuality. The Polish translations serve as a starting point for discussion on translation of Otherness and Otherness in translation. The aim of this article is also to demonstrate differences between the translations in the approach to and translation of postcolonial Otherness, hybrid identity and the shape of the “Other” that appears in the translations. The most controversial and acclaimed novel–apart from Midnight’s Children– by Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses was translated twice into Polish: the first (anonymous) edition from 1992 and the second translation by Jerzy Kozłowski was published in 2013 by Dom Wydawniczy Rebis. Even a cursory reading of the two texts shows significant differences in terms of cultural equivalence and intertextual references. Both translations are about 570 pages long, include about a 20 pages long Glossaries, but the most detailed glossary (containing about 100 pages) was written by Paul Brians titled “Notes for Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses” (Brians 2004). Such a commentary in Polish translation would be valuable for Polish readers as it would give a broader insight into this hybrid and intertextual text.

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Polish translations of The Satanic Verses: A comparative analysis Names Exotization strategy used by Rushdie is also visible in both Polish translations. Multicultural and polyphonic world of Rushdie’s novel is also retained in the translations as the translators remained foreign words (meaning here other than of English origin), adjusting only the transcription of these words to the Polish language norms. Additionally, the anonymous translator uses italics to some of the foreign words which intensifies Otherness of the text. Adapted by both translators foreignization strategy brings the reader closer to the text, to paraphrase Schleiermacher’s words. Both translators remain almost the same names of the protagonists, as Tomasz Markiewka points out in his analysis of the first translation of The Satanic Verses: “adaptation refers only to the level of spelling … and is an attempt to portray a loan word in English spelling” (Markiewka 2013). On the other hand, most of the names carry symbolic meaning, which is lost in translations especially in the case of non-English names, for instance the name Gibreel Farishta–which is translated as “Gibril Fariszta” (1992) and “Dżibril Fariśta” (2013)–is an allusion to Angel Gabriel in a twofold way, by the use of the name Gibreel, and by the last name Farishta, as firishte means angel, which we can read in the glossary of both translations. The name of the second protagonist, “Saladin Chamcha” is translated as “Saladyn Czamcza” (1992) and “Saladyn Ćamća” (2013). The name Saladin is an allusion to the great Muslim hero of the Crusades and the last name ćamća–in Hindi means a spoon, but figuratively means ‘a toady’. Dżibril often calls Saladin “Spoono” which is a reference to the word “ćamća”. Saladin is fascinated with Englishness and being English, hence his ironic nickname signifies that the protagonist resembles a mimic man in Bhabha’s understanding. In this context Kozłowski’s translation of the word into “Cmokierek” seems to be a better equivalent than unchanged word “Spoono” which appears in the translation from the 1992.

Foreign words The significant differences between the Polish translations appear when we compare fragments of the texts containing foreign words. The word “namaqool” which comes from Urdu and means “ridiculous” or “unreasonable” is explained in neither of the Polish glossaries. Both translators employed here a strategy of exotization. In the first translation the phrase “you namaqool, you piece of pig excrement, my love” is left unchanged: “ty namaqool, ty kawałku świńskiego łajna, mój ty ukochany” (1992). In the translation the unknown word “namaqool” is

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written in italics–which leaves a lasting impression of foreignness of the text and makes it difficult to understand. Yet in the second translation Kozłowski Wites: “ty namakulu jeden, ty kawałku świńskiego gówna, ukochany mój” (2013). Thus, the foreign and unknown word becomes domesticated by means of adding to it the Polish inflection, and in the result, the sentence becomes more understandable and also funny, although it is not explained in the text. In the next analysed example both translators translate the word “coon” as “czarnuch”, but when the first translator renders “ooga booga” into “czary mary”, the second renders it as “uga buga” which is a far better equivalent. The pharse “Czary mary” brings about fairy tale-like connotations and does not fit semantically in this translation. “scare the coons with their own ooga booga” “przerazić czarnuchów wykorzystując ich własne czary mary” (1992) “nastraszyć czarnuchów ich własnymi uga buga” (2013)

The term “Uga buga” is not only more proper phonetically here, but also in Polish culture it is associated with African culture, and also is often used in stereotypical jokes about people of African descent. The last foreign word we would like to discuss is “Yahundan” –which in the anonymous translation is rendered as “Żydówka” and in the second is remained unchanged but for the Polish spelling. Such a decision seems strange, especially because the word is not explained in the glossary, hence in this case domestication would be a better strategy for the Polish reader.

Puns The analysis of puns in the translations of The Satanic Verses reveals different translation strategies and indicates different understanding of Rushdie’s polyphonic writing, and what is also important, the further we go in our study, the better we see Kozłowski’s easiness at translating postcolonial Otherness and its hybrid nature. There appears in the original “Moaner Lisa” which is a pun on “Mona Lisa”. The first translator rendered it as “jęczydusza”, thus remaining the sense of the pun, but has lost the pun itself on Mona Lisa. “Moaner Lisa” “Jęczydusza” (1992) “Mumia Liza” (2013)

Yet Kozłowski has translated it as “Mumia Liza” which is maybe not the translation of the sense of the word to “moan”, but is equally comical as Rushdie’s pun it still preserves the pun. Another pun invented by Rushdie is “homosap”, which is

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obviously a pun on “homo sapiens”, where the word “sap” means “dureń”. In the first translation both the pun and its humor is lost, as it is rendered as “homo sapiens.” “homosap” “homo sapiens” (1992) “homocepiens” (2013)

Whereas the second translation remains both the pun and its comical character, as “homosap” is translated as “homocepiens.” Kozłowski’s pun is even better than the original one, as phonetically the word “cepiens” is closer to sapiens, and “cep” is a good equivalence of English “sap”. The last pun we would like to discuss is an example of cockney dialect, the words: “wearing Fancy a Donald’s T-shirts” were translated by the first translator as “ubrani w koszulki z Kaczorem Donaldem”. In the first translation the pun is lost, as the translator did not notice that it is a word-play between the rhyming phrases: “Fancy a fuck?” and “Donald Duck”, which actually means “Fancy a Fuck?” The second translator not only did recognize the word-play, rendering the word into “Fancy a Donald?”, but also added a footnote explaining the origin of the saying (Kozłowski 2013, 583).

Slang Slang expressions always constitute a challenge for translators, yet in both translations there are many examples of interesting and proper equivalents of slang expressions. Yet, we would like to discuss three examples of slang expressions which are rendered in a different way. The phrase “I’ve had my bloody chips” means, as Paul Brians explains: “in British slang it means to be finished, done for” (Brians 2004, 32). In the light of this definition, both translators rendered the words in a different but also improper way, as neither “Miałem już swoją ostatnią szansę”, nor “No to mam przesrane” do not get even close to the sense of Rushdie’s words. “I’ve had my bloody chips” “Miałem już swoją ostatnią szansę” (1992) “No to mam przesrane” (2013)

Another slang word we would like to comment on is the word “wog” which is a contemptuous and insulting word to identify those who are not white. Although the word is similarly translated by both translators, yet Kozłowski in his Glossary additionally explains that etymology of the word which is an abbreviation from English “white oriental gentleman”, which is a sarcastic allusion to mimicking and pretending to be a white man (Kozłowski 2013, 605). Kozłowski’s remark is significant, as for Rushdie mimicry becomes an integral part of migrants’ identity,

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a disguised/assumed identity, to be more precise. Bhabha discusses such identities in Location of Culture, situating colonial imitation “between mimicry and sneer” (Bhabha 2010, 81). Saladin Czamcza is a perfect example of such a colonial imitation of a white oriental gentleman. “wogs” “kolorowi” (1992) “kolorowi, brudasy” (2013)

The last slang expression we would like to refer to is “lower thumb” which denotes “penis”. The first translator rendered the expression literally as “kciuk”, whereas the second one substituted it with an equivalent, which both preserves the word “kciuk” but also denotes a male sexual organ. “lower thumb” “wzdłuż jego kciuka” (1992) “wzdłuż owego kciuka na dole” (2013)

Slang expressions and puns appearing in Rushdie’s novel refer in most cases to the British culture, constituting English words and phrases of various etymology. The analysis of the afore-mentioned phrases indicates that hybridity of the novel is a challenge for translators not only in the case of translations of foreign words from languages such as Hindi or Persian, but also in the case of translation of English words, as for instance the cockney dialect.

Intertextuality: Songs Intertextuality of Rushdie’s novel is its hallmark. It is intertextuality, apart from polyphony and hybridity that makes Rushdie’s writing, as Dorota Kołodziejczyk writes: “full of postmodernist fireworks” (Kołodziejczyk 2008, 255), and the more fireworks in the text, the more carefully one needs to approach it in the process of translation. Comparative analysis of the Polish translations of The Satanic Verses shows that intertextuality seems to have been most problematic for both translators. The strategies used by the translators encompass either foreignization/exotization strategies or generalization, explication and addition. In result in both translations, yet to a varying degree, a network of intertextual relations and allusions is lost. The first example is a fragment of a popular American childhood rhyme by Eugene Field “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” which are the names of the three characters–fisherman sailing in a boat among the stars. Their names refer to the movements of children’s eyes when falling asleep. In the first translation the three verbs have

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been substituted by one “mrugał”, and what is more, the translator added the word “światlami” which does not appear on the original. “Proper London, capital of Vilayet, winked, blinked, nodded in the night.” “Ten właśnie Londyn, stolica Wilajatu, mrugał światłami w ciemności nocy.” (1992) “Londyn właściwy, stolica Wilajetu świeci i migocze nocą.” (2013)

In the second translation there are two verbs instead of three: “świeci i migocze”, the verb “nod” is again omitted and although it is a better translation, it also an example of disappearance of implicit textual links and references. Another example is the fragment from the first page of the novel: “I tell you, you must die, I tell you, I tell you.” “Mówię ci, musisz umrzeć, mówię ci, mówię.” (1992) “Ja ci mówię, umrzeć trzeba, mówię ci, mówię.” (2013)

Here both translators rendered the words similarly and both overlooked the fact that it is a fragment, a refrain from the “Whisky song” by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill The Decline and the Fall of the City of Mahagonny from 1930. This example once again indicates that implicit intertextual references are lost in the translations. The last example of Rushdie’s intertextual allusions to songs is the song “Sympathy for the Devil” which is a well-known song by the Rolling Stones. “Sympathy for the Devil: a new lease of life for an old tune” “Sympatia dla Diabła: nowe życie dla starej śpiewki” (1992) “Sympathy for the Devil: ten stary kawałek przeżywał drugą młodość” (2013)

In the first translation the title of the song is literally translated into Polish, hence intertextual reference is lost. Yet Kozłowski in his translation managed to remain Rushdie’s allusion by leaving the song’s title in the original and using more adequate words “stary kawałek” instead of “stara śpiewka” which does not connote the word “song”.

Intertextuality: literature The Satanic Verses is encrusted with implicit and explicit intertextual allusions of all kinds; Rushdie makes references to the Quran and the Bible, to English writers including James Joyce, John Milton, Aldous Huxley, but also Gabriel Garcia Marques and many others. Apart from songs and rhymes, the author of East, West often draws on popular fairy tales and last but not least, one of the biggest inspirations in his writing is The Thousand and One Nights which permeates The Satanic Verses and also most of his previous novels. Even the

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newest novel is an inspiration of Scheherazade’s tales, which is indicated by the novel’s significant title: Two years eight months and twenty eight nights. There are many allusions to The Thousand and One Nights in The Satanic Verses, such as that the character who was The Man of a Thousand Voices and a Voice. A significant reference to The Arabian Nights is also “the magic lamp” which is an allusion to Scheherazade’s story of “Aladdin and the magic lamp”. Not focusing on prolific allusions to Scheherazade’s stories, in this analysis we will discuss only the question of the Polish titles of the book. In the English language there are three titles of this work, namely: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (translators: Richard Francis Burton, John Payne), Thousand and One Nights (translator: Edward William Lane) and The Arabian Nights—an expurgated edition (translator: Richard Francis Burton). Rushdie uses the title The Arabian Nights which is translated into Polish by the first translation as “Tysiąc i jedna noc”, yet Kozłowski translated the title into Baśnie tysiąca i jednej nocy1. The second title has undeservedly functioned in Polish readership (taking into account readers, some translators and academics) as an equivalent of the original title, bringing the story of Scheherazade to the collection of fairy tales, which book is definitely not. Thousand and One Nights is a collection of tales characterized by different literary genres: prose, rhymed prose, myths, legends, folk and fairy tales as well as poetry, it has been labelled as a collection of fairy tales. Kozłowski, translating The Arabian Nights into Baśnie tysiąca i jednej nocy, has contributed to fairytalization of Oriental culture. Scheherazade’s tales have been one of the most popular and most often translated literary work since its first European translation which appeared in 1704. The image of the Orient in Polish culture is to some extent identified with the world of The Arabian Nights, which has been reduced to several attributes: the flying carpet, Sindbad’s journeys, the magic lamp, Ali Baba, and of course Scheherazade. What we have intended to explain here is that a seemingly minor mistake, which is fairytalization of The Thousand and One Nights to a certain degree translates into mythologization of the Oriental culture itself, which still functions in Polish readership as an exotic and fairy tale-like space.

1 Until the 1990s the book was published as Księga tysiąca i jednej nocy. In 1959 it was translated by Władysław Kubiak (Warszawa: Biblioteka Narodowa) and in 1974 by Andrzej Czapkiewicz (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy). Since 1986 the book has been published as Baśnie tysiąca i jednej nocy in the translation of Krzysztof Radziwiłł and Janina Zeltzer (Poznań: Nasza Księgarnia). See: Salman Rushdie Harun i morze opowieści, transl. Michał Kłobukowski (Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2010).

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Summary: The Other who is not Alien? The aim of this article was to indicate affinities between postcolonial writing and literary translation, signifying that the fundamental strategies of translation, such as foreignization and exotization are also used by postcolonial writers. The study on Polish translations of The Satanic Verses has revealed that translation of postcolonial Otherness seems to be the most difficult challenge for the translators, yet hybridity and polyphony of the novel has been rendered in the translations, but to a varying degree. Intertextuality of The Satanic Verses was the most problematic aspect for the translators, although Rushdie’s writing per se is a significant challenge for translators. The analysis of Polish translations of The Satanic Verses indicates many drawbacks of the first translation, and mostly signalizes the merits of the second translation, even though it is also not devoid of mistakes. The scope of interest in this article is not limited to tracing linguistic and cultural equivalence in the translations, though. Instead–signifying the changes that took place in the last two decades in Poland, concerning understanding and perception of the postcolonial Other and postcolonial writing as such–was its main focus. The anonymous translation of The Satanic Verses was published in 1992, which was only years after Poland gained independence from a communist regime and short after Rushdie fatwa was imposed on Rushdie. That is why we may assume that on the one hand, for the translator of then Poland postcolonialism and its writing were as alien as abstract concepts, hence its translation was problematic, and on the other hand, Rushdie’s and his translators lives were in danger which obviously had to have influence on their work. In the result the anonymous translation of The Satanic Verses is a text which bears a certain degree unreadability. The Satanic Verses in Kozłowski’s translation is his fourth translation of Salman Rushdie’s novels. Next to autobiography Joseph Anton, Kozłowski also translated Śalimar Klaun and Enchantress of Florence. His translations have played an important in a significant role at familiarizing the Polish readers with foreignness of hybrid postcolonial identity. The Satanic Verses in Kozłowski’s translation are an example of the Other who is not Alien any more. The first translation of The Satanic Verses constitutes in a sense an example of untranslatability of postcolonial Otherness, which to some degree results in unreadability of the text. Kozłowski’s translation is an example of ability to “grasp” the author’s voice, as his translation renders Rushdie’s elaborate, complex and polyphonic language. Kozłowski’s translation is characterized by language which is elaborate, fresh, and tasty. Coming back to culinary metaphorics again, we may conclude that fusion cuisine by Kozłowski is almost as flavoured as Salman Rushdie’s cuisine.

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References Apter, Emily. 2006. The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Bhabha, Homi. 2010. The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge. Bassnett, Susan. 2014. Translation, London & New York: Routledge. Berman, Antoine. 2012. “Translation and the trials of the foreign.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, London and New York: Routledge. Brians Paul. 2004. Notes for Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses. Accessed March 12, 2016. http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/intro.html). Kołodziejczyk, Dorota. 2008. “Postkolonialny zamach stanu w literaturze.” In Literatura na świecie, nr 1–2: 241–57. Kozłowski, Jerzy. 2013. “Przypisy tłumacza.” In Salman Rushdie, Szatańskie wersety, translated by Jerzy Kozłowski, Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis. Kozłowski, Jerzy. 2013. “Słownik.” In Salman Rushdie, Szatańskie wersety, translated by Jerzy Kozłowski, Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis. Markiewka, Tomasz. 2013. “Pomiędzy wersetami. Przekład prozy Salmana Rushdiego w kontekście postkolonialnej teorii translacji.” In Przekładaniec: A Journal of Literały Translation, edited by Magda Heydel, 27, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Lindsey Robert. 1985. “California grows her own cuisine.” In New York Times. Accessed March 12, 2016. www.nytimes.com/1985/08/18/travel/californiagrows-her-own-cuisine.html. Rushdie, Salman. 2010. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. London: Granta Books. Rushdie, Salman. 1992. Szatańskie wersety, Gdańsk: Phantom Press International. Rushdie, Salman. 2013. Szatańskie wersety, translated by Jerzy Kozłowski, Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis. Rushdie, Salman. 2006. The Satanic Verses, London: Vintage Books.

List of Contributors Gregory Allen (University of Bolton, UK) Patrycja Austin (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Aldona Bakiera (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland) Łukasz Barciński (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Izabela Bierowiec (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Anna Branach-Kallas (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland) Anjali Daimari (Gauhati University, Assam, India) Fabrício Dias da Rocha (Coimbra University, Portugal) Johanna Grabow (Leipzig University, Germany) Anna Jamrozek-Sowa (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Barbara Ludwiczak (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Mira Malczyńska-Biały (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Marta Mamet-Michalkiewicz (University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland) Małgorzata Martynuska (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Dolikajyoti Sharma (Gauhati University, Assam, India) Rachael Sumner (State Higher Vocational School in Racibórz, Poland) Małgorzata Warchał (University of Rzeszów, Poland) Oksana Weretiuk (University of Rzeszów, Poland)

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