Paper no - 14 The African Literature

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Prepared by: Megha Trivedi

Roll No: 17

Paper – 14 The African Literature

M.A: Sem – 4

Enrollment No: 2069108420170030

Batch: 2016 – 18

Email: meghatrivedi666@gmail.com

Submitted to: Smt. S. B. Gardi, Department of English MK Bhavnagar University

Topic : Relation of Colonizer and Colonized with reference to Waiting for Barbarians.

Abstract:- 

This novel tries to presents the harsh reality of the Barbarian people that how they suffered. That’s why the theme of Ambivalence by Homi K Bhabha  is very important to show the relation of colonizer and colonized . Through this study we come to know that how Colonizers exploit Colonizer and make a relation with them as “We” and “Other”.

Key Words:-

Colonizer, Colonized, Ambivalence, Waiting for Barbarians

African literature is the history of slavery. Their literature is totally different from others. Because their literature is not written from any aesthetic purpose or delight, but the African literature written out of Disgeustful life. Through their literature they show their pain and agony. Their literature is known as a “Complain literature”.  When we read their literature at that time we felt the tragic tone of their soul. So to understand them first to understand their ‘African Aesthetic’ is very important. Their culture is known as a ‘Silent Culture’. In African literature we find the problems of colonialism, marginalized, imperialism and slavery etc.

About Writer:-

                           

John Maxwell Coetzee South African writer who is a novelist, essayist, translator and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2003. He focuses on power. The novel ‘Waiting for Barbarian' was published 1980. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940 educated in South Africa and United States. His philosophical depth and stylistic brilliance put him as rival of Kafka and Beckett. (Wikipedia)

About Novel:-

The title of the novel “Waiting For Barbarian” is borrowed from the poem “Waiting For Barbarian” by C.P. Cavafy. In this novel three are major characters like Barbarian girl, Magistrate and Colonel Joll. Narrator of the novel is unnamed and empire is also unnamed which is existed without historical and geographical setting. This novel presents various aspects like concept of ‘We and Other’, conflict between ‘Civilized and Barbarian’ or Colonizer and Colonized, problem of power, different between white and black etc.

Theme of Ambivalence:-

A term first developed in psychoanalysis to describe a continual fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its opposite. It also refers to a simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from an object, person or action (Young 1995: 161). Adapted into colonial discourse theory by Homi Bhabha, it describes the complex mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizers and colonized. The relationship is ambivalent because the colonized subject is never simply and completely opposed to the colonizer. Rather than assuming that some colonized subjects are ‘complicit’ and some ‘resistant’, ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance exist in a fluctuating relation within the colonial subject. Ambivalence also characterizes the way in which colonial discourse relates to the colonized subject, for it may be both exploitative and nurturing, or represent itself as nurturing, at the same time. Most importantly in Bhabha’s theory, however, ambivalence disrupts the clear-cut authority of colonial domination because it disturbs the simple relationship between colonizers and colonized. Ambivalence is therefore an unwelcome aspect of colonial discourse for the colonizer. The problem for colonial discourse is that it wants to produce compliant subjects who reproduce its assumptions, habits and values – that is, ‘mimic ‘the colonizer. But instead it produces ambivalent subjects whose mimicry is never very far from mockery. Ambivalence describes this fluctuating relationship between mimicry and mockery, an ambiva- lence that is fundamentally unsettling to colonial dominance. In this respect, it is not necessarily dis empowering for the colonial subject; but rather can be seen to be ambivalent or ‘two-powered. The effect of this ambivalence (the simultaneous attraction and repulsion) is to produce a profound disturbance of the authority of colonial discourse. Ambivalence therefore gives rise to a controversial proposition in Bhabha’s theory, that because the colonial relationship is always ambivalent- lent, it generates the seeds of its own destruction. This is controversial because it implies that the colonial relationship is going to be disrupted, regardless of any resistance or rebellion on the part of the colonized. Bhabha’s argument is that colonial discourse is compelled to be ambivalent because it never really wants colonial subjects to be exact replicas of the colonizers – this would be too threatening.

Robert Young has suggested that the theory of ambivalence is Bhabha’s way of turning the tables on imperial discourse. The periphery, which is regarded as ‘the borderline, the marginal, the unassailable, the doubtful’ by the center, responds by constituting the centre as an ‘equivocal, indefinite, indeterminate ambivalence’ (1995: 161). But this is not a simple reversal of a binary, for Bhabha shows that both colonizing and colonized subjects are implicated in the ambivalence of colonial discourse. The concept is related to Hybridity because, just as ambivalence ‘decanters’ authority from its position of power, so that authority may also become hybridized when placed in a colonial context in which it finds itself dealing with, and often inflected by, other cultures. The hybridity of Charles Grant’s suggestion above, for instance, can be seen as a feature of its ambivalence. In this respect, the very engagement of colonial discourse with those colonized cultures over which it has domination, inevitably leads to an ambivalence that disables its monolithic dominance. (Ashcroft)  

Relation of Colonizer and Colonized:-

In this paper J. M. Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians is seen as fundamentally disrupting the binary logic that un- deepens colonial discourse. The binary constructs an image of the civilized, rational and good, and the primitive, irrational and evil on the opposite sides of a fixed border. In this novel, as well as in colonial reality, the binary dissolves into ambiva- lence, overlap and often complete inversion of the two op- posed constructed identities. This paper analyses the novel Waiting for the Barbarians identifying as the most important themes – the ambivalence and inversion of colonial identity, which are seen as a reflex of the fear of the indigenous other. Furthermore, the power/knowledge that fixes

the identities of the two opposed entities feeds on stereotypical images of the other, for it is on the image of the dark barbarian other that the Eurocentric cultures have constructed their own fragile sense of civilization and identity.

Bhabha focuses on the ambivalence as central to stereotype: “In the objectification-tion of the scenic drive there is always the threatened return of the look; in the iden tification of the imaginary relations there is always the alienating other (or mirror) which crucially returns the image to the subject, and in that form of substitution and fixation that is fetishism there is always the trace of loss, absence” (Bhabha 1994, 81). The ambivalent effect of stereotype is that instead of securing the binary order of subjection it proliferates fantasmatic images that terrorize the colonizer. (Anicic)

Ambivalent create the fear and some kind of colonial power in indigenous people or we can say the people of village. Through the fear they can ruled over them. And gave the stereotypical image of them like “Barbarian” or “ Nomadic” people not like human being .

No any Barberian come only this type of fear created by the Third Bureau . And that’s why we can say that one border created between them, inside and outside also. So the colonial psyche we find in this people also.

 Barbarian girl and Colonel Joll :-

In both the character one similarity we find that is Blindness. The blindness is present very symbolically in the novel that Colonel’s vision converges into the center of his dark circle while the girl’s eyesight diverges from the round blur. This could be an indication of the Colonel’s nar- black-and-white vision centered at the enemy, juxtaposed to the wide and open one of the barbarian girl’s in which there is no center-periphery, or self-enemy po-larity. So, it’s suggesting the relation of colonizers and colonized. So, through this blindness we notice that who has real vision.

Relation of Barbarian girl and Magistrate:-

The  relation of Barbarian girl and Magistrate is like relation of colonizers and colonized, because Magistrate came in village as a Colonizers and he has all power and authority so he try to torture this girl. This unnamed girl has no power to raise her voice against the power because she has no any authority or power. So here we can say that Magistrate has dual power as a Man and as a Colonizer so the effect of ‘Double Colonialism’ we find in the case of that Barbarian girl. She suffers a lot. This girl considered as a prostitute named ‘Bird like’. Women have no choice. So hear the question is “Can Subaltern Speak?” – Gayatri Spivak.

So, here the Barbarian girl represent as a whole colonized people. How they are Voiceless. Magistrate always ruled over her.  So the objectification of women’s body also can find in the novel. Barbarian girl became victim of that colonial power. 

On the other side the character of Magistrate also have some kind of Post modern characteristics because his personality is absolutely ambiguous. He has some kind of problem of belongingness, his post is very ironical, double consciousness also we can find in the character of Magistrate.

Power, Violence and Torture:-

Throughout the novel these major themes we find that how colonial power ruled over colonizers and they always tortured them. They suffer a lot because of violence because they arrest this Barbarian people and treated very badly. Coetzee represent both type of violence physical as well as mental.  So the power played a very vital role.

Conclusion:-

So, the novel presents the real situation of Africa and the condition of colonized people.

Works Cited

Anicic, Andrijana. "The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse: Waiting for the Barbarians in the Gaze of the Other." 19 5 2015.

Ashcroft, Bill. Key Concept of Post Colonial Studies. n.d.

Wikipedia. 4 4 2018 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee>.