Summary ENG2603_STUDY NOTES & GUIDE.

ENG2603_STUDY NOTES & GUIDE. Colonialism and postcolonialism The concepts of colonialism and its aftermath, postcolonialism, arise out of the settlement of any part of a country by people who originate from another country. They are then subject to full or partial control by the invading country. A colony, therefore, is the settlement of a country and it is as old as humanity itself. From the time of the absolute rulers in Japan, for instance, the establishment of overseas colonies was a way by which nascent nation-states established their economies and sustained their citizens. William Shakespeare, for example, wrote The Tempest (the first known printing appeared in 1623) which minutely examines the effects of colonialism on the former inhabitants of an island. Indeed, most of the modern nations arose as a result of being colonised (for example, the United States of America). For this reason, it makes sense to include a text by an African American author, such as Lorraine Hansberry, in a module on colonial and postcolonial African literature. While colonialism is not limited to Africa, most of the texts in this module emerged from Africa, since this is the context in which our university is located. Colonialism is therefore the process of establishing and maintaining colonies and domination through political and/ or military means. And yet postcolonialism should not merely be equated with “after-independence” or “after-colonialism” since all ex-colonies display various senses of overt or covert forms of domination, be it at a cultural, economic, or political level. This is often called neo-colonialism. Postcolonial theory is therefore a complex system of thought that attempts to account for the many different cultural, economic and political ramifications for countries that had once been colonised. Formal political independence from foreign domination has not solved these problems. The writing of postcolonial societies display, in various forms, issues central to those societies’ evolving cultures as an act of defining the national characters that have not been left untouched by the colonial experience. The concepts of “representation” and “stereotype” We encourage you to observe that “representation” itself is a central concept used by all the authors discussed here. But what is representation? People sometimes mistakenly assume that literature “reflects” or “expresses” reality. There is little truth in these views. “To reflect” suggests that literature comes to us as it is experienced in real life. This is the same erroneous thinking that informs the view that literature “expresses” life. The two terms also wrongly suggest that in literature, life is brought to the reader as a unified whole. You will find that in Colonial and Postcolonial African Literatures, we prefer to say literature “represents” reality. This is a view that appreciates that literature is not exactly mirroring life as it is lived. Instead, we want you to think through the idea that authors manipulate words, create certain images and order them in particular ways that exclude other potential ways of representing reality through their art. This is important to remember, because this fact alone explains why authors differ in their depiction of the same event or portrayal of the same people. When an author writes in a way that identifies a group of people as possessing unique values not found in other people, we say that the author is representing life through a stereotype. A stereotype is one way of depicting characters by emphasising singular values and not taking into account that a single character may possess different views or subjectivities that can be revealed in different ways in response to different stimuli. viii Primary sources ● Chapman, M. 2002. The New Century of South African Poetry. Johannesburg & Cape Town: AD. Donker Publishers. ● Dangarembga, Tsitsi. 1988. Nervous Conditions. London: Women’s Press. ● Khumalo, Fred. 2007. Seven Steps to Heaven. Auckland Park: Jacana. ● Hansberry, Lorraine. 1958. A Raisin in the Sun. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ENG2603/1 1 LEARNING UNIT 1 Poetry: A selection from The New Century of South African Poetry by Michael Chapman This unit was compiled by Dr S Maithufi and Dr S Dambe Introduction Welcome to the first learning unit of ENG2603. The title of this module is Colonial and Postcolonial African Literatures. Let us begin by posing the question: What does “colonial” mean? South Africa comprises many cultures that originate from different parts of the world. However, in many respects, the heritage of the English culture has dominated ever since the first arrival of the English people in 1820. There is no doubt that this supremacy results from the fact that Britain once colonised Southern Africa and that, with time, black Africans appropriated the English language in processes of self-reclamation. Therefore, the language that was imported to Africa through the mission of colonial subjugation ultimately defined its overthrow. You are required to familiarise yourselves with all the poems to which this Unit refers. Apart from the poem, “Song of the Wild Bushman”, the relevant excerpt of which we reproduce in this guide, all the poems are contained in the prescribed poetry anthology, Michael Chapman’s The New Century of South African Poetry (2002). Learning unit outcomes This learning unit has four specific outcomes, namely: Outcome 1: Students read a wide range of poems with comprehension and critical engagement at this intermediate level. Outcome 2: Students write well-structured paragraphs and essays that critically discuss the creative choices made by writers of the selected poems. Outcome 3: Students explain how the politics of representation shapes poems and their reception in postcolonial contexts. Outcome 4: Students can employ the key concepts and debates in postcolonial literary theory in their analyses of selected poems. 2 Background How can we differentiate the colonial era from what presumably followed it, that is, “postcolonialism”? It seems easy to define the “colonial era” by stating that it refers to a period when a people from outside presided over and dictated to a local population how it should define itself. However, it is rather peculiar when, after defeating the coloniser, the erstwhile colonised continue to use the language and values imposed on them by the coloniser, such as English, Christianity and Western education. Therefore, irony appears to colour what may be perceived of as the “postcolonial”. We may refer to the colonial encounter as the beginning of modernity, because this is where the coloniser and the colonised began to be entangled in one space with one another. Notice that this is a theme that you will explore when you study your other prescribed texts such as Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel, Nervous Conditions. In your prescribed book, Michael Chapman’s The New Century of South African Poetry (2002), most of the poems by major English colonial writers such as Thomas Pringle and William Plomer express concerns for the plight of humanity; these poems do not appear to support the colonial mission. But we describe these poets as “colonial”, mainly because, as in the case of Pringle and Plomer, they wrote at the turn of the 20th century during the British reign over what later came to be known as the Republic of South Africa. Another reason for using this term to describe these poets may be found in the fact that their poetry registers an attempt at orienting the self within the country, speaking on behalf of its indigenous people, sometimes using stereotype and subtly depicting them as alien and strange. Even some of those who wrote after the formation of the Union of South Africa (1910) and who experimented in the English traditions of poetry, such as Guy Butler, seem to fit the category of the “colonial”. According Homi Bhabha (1994:70), stereotype is used “to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction”. Activity 1 Carefully read the following excerpt from Pringle’s “Song of the Wild Bushman”. Let the proud White Man boast his flocks, And fields of foodful grain; My home is ‘mid the mountain rocks, The Desert my domain. I plant no herbs nor pleasant fruits, I toil not for my cheer; The Desert yields me juicy roots, And herds of bounding deer (Pringle, 1881:89) ENG2603/1 3 Then, in a paragraph of four to six lines, discuss whether the definition of stereotype given above is reflected in this excerpt. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________ Feedback on activity 1 In this stanza, the speaker who introduces him/herself as being different from “the White Man” declares a love for the wilderness. The title of the poem, “The Song of a Wild Bushman”, hints at this speaker’s identity. However, it is strange that the poem presents the speaker valorising what appears to be the simple life of a hunter gatherer. The fact that the title of the poem introduces the speaker in derogatory terms, “Wild” and “Bushman”, makes us even more suspicious of the poet’s motives. This representation recalls colonial and 19th century European mythologies of black Africans. As you will discover when you go through this study guide and the prescribed anthology, the so-called “colonial” poems draw extensively on ideas of humanity without emphasising the racial aspects that violate it. In some instances, black African poets also expand on this celebration of a common humanity, though often overtly attributing its violation to white racism and using other tools that are indigenous to Africa. It is for this reason that, on the whole, this selection of poems in this anthology seems to make the imagined binary opposition between colonial and postcolonial, white and black, appear rather fuzzy. Therefore, the intention is that you take cognisance of how these poems use language and style. Also in this process, try to appreciate how the poetry that we describe as “colonial” and those we describe as “postcolonial” contrast according to other related themes. Taking this into consideration, we attempt to map how South Africa became the multi-racial or cosmopolitan country that it is today. In this module, we would like you to keep the following assertion in mind: By virtue of the colonial encounter, Africa became “contact zones”: “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (Mary Louis Pratt, 1991:34). Activity 2 Let us consider Pratt’s definition of “contact zones” in a reading of Nontsizi Mgqwetho’s poem, “A Red Blanket Addresses Christians” (p. 91). Read the poem, identifying the speaker, the tone and the addressee. 4 Feedback on activity 2 By now, you should be able to establish that the poem presents the speaker who depicts him/herself in terms of the metaphor “red blanket”. The speaker mentions this metaphor in the title, and in the last stanza it is preceded by the first person pronoun in the plural form, “We”. The colour red is used here to refer to those Xhosas who allegedly refuse to embrace Christianity and Western modernity, who prefer to follow Xhosa rituals and customs and to decorate themselves and their couture in red ochre. This colour is dominant in this culture’s practices (Here you may wish to refer to Zakes Mda’s novel, The Heart of Redness, 2000). You will also notice that this speaker addresses “Christians” and further that s/he is unhappy with them. How do we know this? Refer to the use of the second person pronoun, in the form of “you” and “your”, throughout the poem and consider how, through this perspective, the speaker introduces a sense of cold distance from those he calls “Christians”. However, the speaker’s attempt to establish distance from the Christians has just the opposite result. How do we arrive at this assertion? Try this procedure to arrive at the answers: Jot down in point form the commonality between the speaker and the “Christians” that s/he gradually discloses in the poem. Good answers should include the following points: ● The speaker refers to Christians as “your daughters” in line 1. ● You should have identified and evaluated the speaker’s reasons for disapproving of “Christians” in every stanza. ● You should also have commented on the concluding stanza where the speaker remarks that s/he also values the Christian God’s “truth”, noting that this speaker therefore paradoxically discloses his/her sense of entanglement with the Christians. Activity 3 Write a one-page essay in which you discuss the irony in this poem. Use the following subheadings: y Speaker’s cultural or religious identity y Setting y Conflict y Imagery y Tone Complete Activity 3 on a separate page. ENG2603/1 5 Feedback on activity 3 It is worth highlighting at least two advantages of considering representations of Africa in terms of “contact zones”: The colonised appear as active participants, using the very ideological resources based on racist lines of thought that the coloniser monopolises, as opposed to being mere objects who do not contribute to history. Let us consider whether a comparable sense of irony and of “contact zones” informs another poem, Roy Campbell’s “The Zulu Girl”. Be aware that, in contrast to the poem “A Red Blanket Addresses Christians”, the speaker in Campbell’s poem mostly articulates his/her sense of distance from his/her focus, the Zulu girl. Notice that s/he refers to her, for example, in the generic ethnic identity, that s/he calls her a “girl” despite also describing her as a mother. Because of this speaker’s ignorance and tendency to generalise, it may be argued that s/he uses stereotypes (refer to the definition of “stereotype” given above). However, also notice that from the beginning of Stanza 3 to the concluding stanza, the speaker assumes a sense of familiarity with the “girl”, despite opening the poem with a description of her as being physically distant from him and just a “girl”.