letteratura inglese III, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica letteratura inglese III e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! LETTERATURA INGLESE III The term postcolonialism leads us to consider two fundamental contexts: the historical process of decolonization of the 20th century; the relevant intellectual developments of the later century. POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES IN ENGLISH What’s postcolonial literature? It concerns a wide range of literatures of large zones of Africa, Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the new World (Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Canada) so other former countries of the British Empire. The term “British Empire” is nowadays used to refer to that historical period in which a vast area of the world was subjected to the control of the British crown. The context in which these literatures are produced are quite different one from the other: South Africa has its own history of colonization and decolonization respect to Australia or New Zealand. The context defines the literature work itself, the way things are expressed, the touched topics and so on. We can still speak about common characteristics among all those literatures. This global field of writing in English concerns works that are produced in English indeed but have some non-English cultural influence, since writers come from a different world and reality that keeps its own language and culture. The editorial of the first edition of the “journal of Commonwealth literature”, September 1965, saw the need to recognise the important national and cultural differences between writers from divergent locations. Common elements: - They critically analyze colonial relationships from different point of views and resist colonialist perspective, trying to dismount the colonial point of view and mentality. - From the 50’s these works are referred to as “Commonwealth Literatures”.  What is Commonwealth? At first the term was used to refer to the special status of the dominions within the Empire, but later the meaning of Commonwealth changed, used mainly to include, and involve all the former British colonies. The British Empire organized “colonial conferences”, joint by the governors of the colonies and the heads of the dominions. From 1907 conferences were renamed as imperial conferences. Today the Commonwealth of Nations as a body exists without any legal authority, with the main aims to apparently promote democracy and world peace, even though we must not fully subscribe to this pacific idea of equality among the countries and former colonies. In many ways the Commonwealth masks the reality of facts, the brutality of British exploitation and of the colonialize past. Indeed Commonwealth, as well as the term Commonwealth literatures seem to in a way reinforce the primacy of Britain among all the commonwealth countries. It suggests the idea that literature produced by non – western authors was not considered worth of study and attention, but considered minor literature that occupied a subtle position respect to the English literature, and that belonged to the wide field of English literature. Commonwealth literature Incorporated writers belonging to European settler communities as well as to those countries that at time were trying to gain independence from the British crown. This fast-growing body of literature included the works of R.K Narayan, Naipaul, Janet Frame, Chinua Achebe -> these kinds of literatures lacked identity and were seen as a subtle and minor part of the English literature. The Commonwealth literature was indeed a subset of canonical English literature, who's evaluation based on conventional terms of the study of English, such as values of universality. “I refuse to use the term Commonwealth because it meant segregation.” It is very crucial at this point to consider the point of view of critics like Walsh, who recognises that Commonwealth literatures’ values didn't deal directly with the local preoccupations and issues of, for instance, the African world, but rather with general preoccupations of the human condition, as well as Jane Austen or George Eliot could do, bonding these texts with the aesthetic criteria of the West. In conclusion we can consider what Shirley Chew said: “a paradox sits at the heart of the Commonwealth: described as a free association of equal and mutually cooperating nations, it is nevertheless drawn together by a shared history of colonial exploitation”? - Starting from the 70’s/80’s these literatures gained importance and were rather known as “New literatures English.” It still is a non-correct definition as literatures from these countries are even older than the English one. - From the 80’s the term “postcolonial” starts to emerge. Some writers are proud to be called “postcolonial” since it’s a challenging definition, but some others disagree. Postcolonial contributes to: - reverse common view - reposition the focus and perspective, stimulating our critical point of view. They ask readers to take part, to not simply enjoy the pleasure of reading but also to reason about these topics. - they revise established notions and redraw divisions between outsiders and insiders -> the idea of borders and boundaries, considering them not as fences that divide, but rather as frontiers to cross = places of encounters (It’s important to remember that postcolonial studies and postcolonial literatures are not the same thing) POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES (founded in the late 80’s) - concern the study of texts arising from the social consequences and historical effects of colonialism (mostly the encounter between English and other cultures) - shift in critical perspective, resulting in decentered and displaced views of familiar texts and books. Texts of postcolonial studies also concern the critical exploration of historical English works, such as those of Dickens. Three Australian Writers: Bill Ashcroft; Gareth Griffiths; Helen Tiffin are the first three to use the term postcolonial referring to literature. They agree that all the postcolonial texts are different one from the other but are put all under the same umbrella term (postcolonial) as they share common elements -> they are marked by common experience, colonization. This text starts the history of postcolonial studies. These three writers aim to underline that all these literal works are produced by writers coming by forming colonies, but still each writer focuses on his own social and cultural background. “The Empire Writes Back” (1989), is the greatest result of their studies. In this work the three intellectuals consider an important point, that, increasingly literature from the once colonised countries challenges language of colonial power, unlearning its point of view of the world and producing new models of representation. They note how writers start to express their own sense of identity by using the English language differently, so that they could be able to speak through it also of a word that completely differs from the British one. How did they do so? Trough postcolonial literature the so called “englishes” emerged by the introduction of untranslatable words or using a different syntax respect to the standard English one. The empire writes back play a key role in the field of postcolonial literary studies, changing the approach to these literatures, focusing no longer on a universe and timeless view of this works’ values, but rather on the historical and geographical contexts they refer to. Three limits that the definition of “postcolonial” has faced: - lacks precise attention on the gender differences, as men and women experienced the same phenomenon differently. - Through the work emerges the assumption that every text realised in once colonised countries is considered as post-colonial, beside its themes. - Colonies of occupation: here the colonizers arrived, exploited the country but most of the population was made of indigenous peoples, administrated by a with minority of foreign power -> India, Nigeria etc., where English emerges aside the indigenous languages. The question of language is particularly essential. The Nigerian writer Chin Achebe (?), that speaks Igbo, as well as many other writers, can decide to writer in English or in his own original language, choosing also in political terms. Many postcolonial writers and intellectuals discuss the use of the English language: - Settler colonies -> English is the mother language. - Invaded colonies -> English (contaminated language) is a second language, standing side by side with local languages, so writers from these countries choose which language to use. It also is a political choice, that also reflects the kind of audience he wants to refer to. Also, the process of the decolonization is very different between the two kinds of colonies, as the settler colonies were considered branches of the mother country Britain, achieving independence in a faster and more pacific way. Australia, 1901/ India, 1947 -> first invaded country to obtain independence, achieved through violent and bloody movements and events. This clearly leads to a big difference in terms of themes, preoccupations etc. expressed through literary works. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM Often are interchangeable terms, but colonialism is rather the actualization and realization of the imperialism. Before analyzing both, the intellectual and writer Denis Judd, in his work “Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present” argues that “the desire for profitable trade was the primary force that led to the establishment of the imperial structure.” COLONIALISM -> concerns a body of people that move and settle in a new location (definition by Oxford Academy), implying a relationship with the local inhabitants. It geographically takes place in colonized countries. In relationship with imperialism, colonialism can be rather considered as the concrete practise of the ideology of imperialism. The settlement of a group of people in a new county determines an alteration of the balance of the life of people living there -> these people are force into traumatic relationship with colonizers. Colonialism is the conquest and control of people’s lands and goods. Colonialism is something not new, but linked with a remote past, as the conquests of the Romans, but starting from the modern era, there’s a different way to see and read these forms of conquests. Starting from the end of the 15th century, modern colonialism is established alongside forms of economical capitalism, not simply exploring, and exploiting the lands, but involving colonizers in very strict relationships of economical exploitation, restructuring the economy of colonized lands. Capitalism depended on colonialism -> without the exploitation of colonized lands, peoples, and goods the European countries would have not grown in an economical and so capitalistic way. Many people claim indeed that colonialism has its roots in the European voyages and discoveries of the 15 and 16 centuries, as those of Christopher Columbus. Colonialism was so the very base of the European wealth and business, since the construction of industries in colonised countries, where African people were enslaved meant that the British business could produce products at minimal cost shipping them then to Europe. In conclusion we can say that colonialism and capitalist share a mutually supportive relationship with each other. IMPERIALISM -> a global system that implies a political, economic, cultural, and ideological control. it can exist and keep on existing even though colonials have already achieved their independence, as even nowadays Western nations are still involved in the imperial acts, gaining power and wealth by exploiting other countries. It geographically takes place in the mother country. Peter Childs and Patrick Williams claim that imperialism is an ideological project that legitimates the economic and military control of one nation on another. British imperialism -> associated with the Europeanization of the globe. Three waves: - Age of discovery (XV – XVI) - Age of mercantilism (Cromwell’s navigation, Act 1651, XVII – XVIII) - Age of imperialism (XIX – early XX) The earlier British empire is crucial for the industrial transformation of 1750-1850 that gave rise to the secondo British Empire. The highest period of expansion and flourishment of the British Empire is the 19th century, during Queen Victoria’s reign. The exploitation of other people’s lands and good is necessary and essential for the British industrial revolution, that else would have not existed. The age of Imperialism has two moments: - 1815-1880: informal imperialism - 1880-1910: classical imperialism -> the period in which an imperialist ideology developed alongside the political and economic imperialism, shaping the ideology of superiority of the white race that “justified” the process of exploitation. The British Empire’s imperialism has faced three major waves of decolonization: - Late 18th century -> the decolonization of America and its colonies, so the American independence. - End of 19th century- early 20th century -> creation of the “dominions” in the settler colonies (political independence of the white colonies). Dominions is a term used indeed to refer to the nations of Canada, New Zealand, Australia that eventually gained independence and are now the so called “settler colonies”, even though they still recognize allegiance to the British authority. These territories were mainly colonized by white European people that arrived and destroyed the previous indigenous realities (Aboriginal-Australia; Māori-New Zealand). Dates of independence: Canada (1867); Australia (1901); New Zealand (1907); South Africa (1910). Considering the independence movements of these so-called settler colonies, many have argued the lack of taking into account the interests of indigenous inhabitants, such as Aboriginal peoples in Australia, acting in a way not too remote from colonialist discourses. - After the II World War -> unlike the dominions, many territories in Asia Africa and even in the Caribbean didn't experience the arrival of many white European people, so they were mainly inhabited by indigenous people dispossessed and controlled by small British colonial elites. Indigenous peoples could reach independence only through the growing anti-colonial nationalism, military struggles in colonies of occupation and unpacific events. One other cause of decolonization was the loss of power by the British Empire itself after the Second World War, that saw growth of the United States and Soviet Union. India and Pakistan reached independence in 1947, Sri Lanka in 1948, Ghana in 1957, Nigeria in 1960. So, decades of the 60s and 70s saw busy decolonization throughout declining empire. Anti-colonialist movements often accepted and worked with the national territorial borders that not necessarily existed before the advent of European colonialism and were so invented by colonizers’ nations. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 the Western powers spitted up many African lands between them drawing imaginary borders around various part of the continent, often dividing indigenous tribal lands, or putting together different tribes with their own language, culture, and system. For example, the Nigerian borders established in 1914 englobed lands of peoples belonging to the Igbo, Kanuri, or Yoruba tribe. So, in calling for National Liberation from colonialism, many anti- colonials’ nationalisms were working with a map of the world drawn by the colonisers. Dismasting and deleting the colonialist power in all his forms was not a smooth process, including the hidden aspects of those institutional and cultural forces that still today maintain a colonialist power -> decolonization concerns a political but also cultural process, and in former invaded colonies we can’t really speak about complete decolonization due to the persistent mentality. Gurnah He was born in Zanzibar in 1948. Zanzibar went through a civil war that broke out in 1964, and he was only 18. There was a persecution of Arabic people, so that citizens with Arab origins were persecuted. Gurnah’s family was quite wealthy, so he could leave Zanzibar and move to England to study. He arrived there not as a refugee, but still was forced to leave his home country never forgetting his past, childhood that keeps alive in his works. At the age of 21 he starts writing novels, fascinated by the possibility to create alternative and imaginary worlds. In England he’s not fully accepted due to his origins, but still became professor of postcolonial literature in the university of Kent. His mother togue was Swahili, but he decides to write in English to reach a greater public. At time migrants were considered illegal in England, and in an important article of his, he describes the general racist atmosphere of the British society back then. Gurnah underlines that migrants moving to England did it because they needed to escape their own country and reality, fearing the risks of leaving, but even there they were mistreated. He lives the racism experience on his own skin in common everyday life. Dislocation is a key feeling that Gurnah underlines in his experience, and that mainly concerns the whole sense of his works. Dislocation leads to suffer and pain but also makes you work on how suffering can recover into rebirth -> you must die to reborn and live again. Incontro con l’ospite (?) Per parlare di letteratura coloniale bisogna cominciare dalle prime opere del Sudafrica, 1652 prime colonie inglesi nel territorio. Per lungo tempo questi luoghi sono stati detti vuoti a scapito delle popolazioni bantu e non bantu che in realtà abitavano la zona prima dell’arrivo degli stessi coloni. Gran parte delle popolazioni erano bantu, con lingue bantu, ma ve ne erano altre anche, come i boscimani e gli ottentotti, diverse dal punto di vista non solo linguistico ma anche economico. Erano situati nella zona dove si stabiliranno gli olandesi coloni, che incentivano un afflusso notevole di europei e soprattutto olandesi, facendo si che popolazione locale venisse pian piano marginata da quella europea. Gli olandesi chiamati in questi territori erano lavoratori, contadini che gradualmente tolsero lavoro e campi alla gente locale. Dal 1652 gli olandesi si allargarono territorialmente sempre più fino a dar vita a un territorio enorme, costringendo a posizioni subalterne, quindi alla servitù, le popolazioni sudafricane (almeno 20 gruppi etnici). Oggi il Sudafrica è un paese ricco dal punto di vista minerario, grazie ai ricchi giacimenti di diamanti e oro. L’amministrazione olandese, ormai indipendente si trova in grande conflitto con gli inglesi quando la zona si rivelò essere ricchissima -> guerra tra fine 700 e inizio 800 -> tutto il territorio diventa colonia inglese. Tutta l’africa ha quindi uno sfondo coloniale complesso, mosso da cause economiche ma anche missionarie, come la cristianizzazione degli indigeni. Tutti i missionari attivi nell’attuale Sudafrica provenivano da chiese riformate, non cattoliche, quindi presbiteriani/calvinisti, luterani svedesi e tedeschi, ma soprattutto la London Missionary Society. La riforma che iniziò con Lutero e Zwingli (rifiuto principi cattolici) si faceva portavoce di un’idea: l’uomo a tu per tu con Dio senza la mediazione delle istituzioni, unico tramite doveva essere la Bibbia. Uomini e donne locali erano obbligate alla lettura della Bibbia, concitando evangelizzazione ma anche alfabetizzazione -> conseguenze: - Rapida colonizzazione culturale (la gente si adeguava a quanto letto, alle credenze diffuse dall’antico testamento, unica fonte di conoscenza accessibile) - Ingresso nella “civiltà” introdotta dal colonialismo  1970 Bantu Homelands Citizens Act -> black people were not considered Africans. Most anti-apartheid movements started to be considered against law: 1950 -> Communism was suppressed, believed to be involved with the defense of black rights 1967 -> Terrorism Act, people suspected of involvement could be detained for an indefinite period without trial Violent repressions: - The Sharpeville Massacre (1960) -> it occurred on March 21, 1960, when South African police began shooting on a crowd of black protestants. - The Soweto Uprising (1976) -> on the morning of June 16, 1976, thousands of black students walked from their schools to protest having to learn through Afrikaans in school. 23 people, including two whites, died on the first day in Soweto. Negotiations towards a new South Africa The Apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993. The case of the Hottentot Venus -> Saartjie Baartman was taken from South Africa in 1810 and exhibited under anatomical scrutiny even after her death. She was buried in South Africa only in 2002, after Mandela’s request to France in 1994 for her remains to be handed back. DECOLONIZATION OF THE MIND Many postcolonial critics and writers speak about a “decolonization of the mind” since political decolonization does not always mean cultural decolonization. -> political independence is not enough since people also need an ideological independence. Indeed, colonialism establish not only a political control on the exploited peoples, but also an ideological world, dominating the ways of thinking and persuading people to internalise the logic, the language, the values, and points of views of the colonisers. A great example of how so internalised colonial discourses are is given by the author Sam Selvon and an important anecdote of his childhood: he remembers these fishermen that used to visit the author's childhood street in Trinidad, Sammy, and how furious and confused effect when he saw him, an Indian man, helped by a white assistant. This leads to consider how even local people, even children, internalised that complex of inferiority we spoke about before, and the belief that non white people belong to submissive roles. The process of decolonizing the mind: - Be aware of the what the colonial past was, and read it from a new and decolonized prospective, deleting the dominant white narration of that past (scrutinize colonial relationships, resist colonial perspective, and dismantle colonial discourses) From the 50s many intellectuals and psychiatrists starting to recognise the importance to work on an attempt to record and understand the psychological damage suffered by colonised people that internalised these colonial discourses. Intellectuals implied in this process: AIME CESAIRE, he was born in the French Caribbean colony of Martinique, and then moved to Paris in the 1930s to study. Here he could meet an important figure, Leopold Senghor, who experienced the same French-racism as Cesaire. Both started to work on the so called “Negritude Movement”. “Discourses on Colonialism”. He wrote a very powerful text, originally written and published in French, but its success made sure it was translated in English as well as in other languages. In this text he shows how colonialism does not only exploit colonizers, but how it dehumanizes people, depriving them of their own human essence. The writer points out the real essence of colonization: the transformation of the human being into an object of slavery. Cesaire was the founder of the “Negritude Movement”, founded in Paris after WWII and joint by Diop, Senghor, who developed a theory of negritude: distinctiveness and unicity of African personality and culture -> their blackness is a sign of distinctiveness. What they try to do is not to erase differences between black and white people, but rather celebrate it and recognize it as sign of unique identity. The intellectuals that founded this movement emphases the opposition between black and white. The necessity of the Negritude Movement comes from the European racist tendencies to point out the “blackness” of people as a sign of inferiority and savageness. Whereas white people described black ones as primitive and degenerated only basing on skin color, the point of Cesaire and others was to contradict this negative image of blackness not by eliminating any difference between black and white people, but rather to highlight the values, qualities, and capacities of black people, picturing their skin color as a high value rather than denigratory element. The Negritude movement was clearly not simply about skin color, as its true goal was to return a sense of dignity and value to black people’s cultures, beliefs, and general approach to the external world in terms of art, music, studies etc., that surely differs from the European one, but this does not make it inferior. Cesaire also insists on a great difference between Africa and Europe: Europe is decadent morally, spiritually; the non-European world was communal, anti-capitalist and democratic before the colonialism introduced capitalism and imperialism also there. FRANZ FANON He he was born in 1925 in Martinique as Cesaire, and he also shares many of his ideas but adds something more to Cesaire’s ideas. Starting from Cesaire’s theory he investigates on physiological consequences hat colonialism had on the mind of the colonized communities. He says that they are not simply exploited and dehumanized, but also convinced of their inferiority by the colonial itself. Fanon recognizes a complex of inferiority, a sense of debasement in the ideology of colonized people generated and caused by colonizers. He speaks about: “people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality.” That’s why the system of education played a key role during the colonization period, as many colonized people were convinced by what they learnt or the way they were treated in school of their own inferiority. Here’s why black people relay never reacted against colonization, since they thought they needed to be “civilized”. Fanon’s personal life widely influence him has he experienced racism in France in first person, and in 1956 he stopped working as the head of the psychiatric department in a French hospital to join the Algerian rebels who are fighting against French occupation of the country, starting to take in exam mental diseases of Algerian people, that all came from colonialism consequences. He died at 36 but he did a lot, became a doctor and psychiatry. Among his many works we remember two polemical texts: - « The Wretched of Earth” -> dealt whit colonial mechanism and the dynamics of national consciousness, advocating a vacillating relationship between African past and present. - “Black Skin, White Mask” –> through this work he points out an important question linked with the process of colonisation of mind. In a both inspiring and distressing narrative fanon highlights the issues of an individual living in a world where due to the colour of his or his skin is considered as an object of derision and is deprived of their own entity and subjectivity. In a very important passage of his work, Fanon recalls his personal experience and how he felt about it, pointing out a contrast between seeing himself as a human object rather than human subject, with his own wants and needs. The racist behaviour of French people reflects the way in which black people were forced to internalise a negative view of themselves, as an imprisonment against their own will, as white people were deciding for them. As the simple colour of the skin is enough to define someone as superior or inferior, rational, or irrational, civilised or uncivilised. “A man is expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man”. Intellectuals and writers did not fight only during colonial time, but also after the achievement of political independence. What are colonial discourses? Black people’s identity is built by a white and dominant narration. Fanon stated that colonialism creates in the mind of colonized people an inferiority complex, since it deprives colonized of their own identity. Identity = history, culture, past -> what colonialism does is to delete the past black history, focusing it only on colonialism. How did colonizers do that? For example, many lands and places were renamed by adding the word “New”, losing their original indigenous name. (Means of control for the British Empire: education, literature, religion, language -> colonization of the mind) EDWARD SAID One of the most important critics, as well as the founding father of postcolonial studies, he is part of what critics call the “Holy Trinity”, formed by him, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. The three of them settled the bases for that so called “post-colonial studies”, that must not be considered the same as postcolonial literature. Focusing on Said, he was born in Jerusalem (once part of Palestine) in 1935 and died in New York in 2003. He was an American academic, political activist, and literary critic who examinates literature considering cultural and social politics, so linking literal and political contexts. He fought for Palestinian freedom and published numerous critical works such as: - Orientalism, 1978. It is considered a point of departure for the development of postcolonial studies. - The World, The Text, and the Critic (1983) - The Question of Palestine (1992) - Culture and Imperialism (1993) - Out of Place (1999), an autobiography - Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) His works are based on his own experience, he moved first from Palestine to Egypt with his family and only after in the U.S. Edward was for him a conflictual name since it crashed with his surname Said, and considered it related to the conflict between the two realities, colonizers and colonized. Said was considered as a public intellectual, since he didn’t not work out of the public space, he talks to other, he makes his works reachable and understandable for everyone. He didn’t limit his literature to his own personal activity, but made it public, he tries to share opinions whit a vast audience trough literature itself. He also very aware of the inexplicable link between knowledge and power, an idea already introduced by Michelle Foucault -> the more power I own the more I know, and if I know I can control. said recognizes the importance of intellectuals, since he knows the intellectual has a great responsibility as he can influence knowledge, and knowledge is never pure and innocence, but rather connected to operations of power. “Orientalism”, 1978 -> That’s why he writes “Orientalism”, since he knows that the knowledge of oriental world spread by the western world is a form of control. He says: “Knowledge about the Orient as it was produced and circulated in Europe was an ideological accompaniment of colonial power”, so the western power did not spread an objective form of knowledge, but a fictional one. Before diving deep into Said’s work, it's crucial to underline that when we speak about orientalism, we are simply considering one particular manifestation of how colonial discourses might operate, as these discourses are way more complex and various. Said points out how western people, instead of learning from new It is one of the most elusive and complex terms in social thought. Ideology is a mental system that included mental frameworks, ideas and believes, as well as the way each person relates with the world, so it does not simply concern politics. Usually, ideologies tend to reflect and reproduce the interests of the dominant social classes, so they play a key role in the process of domination and control. How does ideology come to be believed in? The intellectual Louis Althusser shares the same doubts. He asks himself how ideologies are internalized, how human beings make dominant idea their own. Althusser speaks about a complex system through which ideologies are internalized -> subjects and their deepest selves are positioned and shaped by what lies around them, so each of us is not independent respect to external influences, instead, each person can be easily shaped by the external world. Subjectivity is indeed formed in and through ideology. He distinguishes between:  Repressive state apparatuses: religion, military forces  Ideological state apparatuses: mass media, education Michael Foucault claims that the huma subjectivity is not free but is determinate and shaped by the society we live in, the ideological apparatuses, the messages that mass medias launch etc. Saussure’s ideas show how language is system of signs whose meaning is relational. Language is ideological rather than objective, so it builds the subject. He introduces the idea of discourse. WHAT ARE DISCOURSES? Even though colonialism depended on the use of military force and physical coercion, as we have explained already, it could never work without a set of beliefs that justified process of colonialism itself. Colonialism is then an operation of discourse. Significant role is played by the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s ideology: all ideas are ordered through some material medium. This ordering imposes a pattern upon them which he calls discourse. This notion was born from his work on madness (he wanted to recover the voce of insane people) -> he studies that madness as a category of human identity is produced and reproduced by various rules, what may be considered madness in one culture could be seen as normal in another. So, these dominant discourses also culturally shape the individual mind. Foucault points out an important aspect of colonialism process, arguing that colonialist power affirmed so much also trough gratification -> colonial discourses have been successful since they are productive, they make colonisers feel important and superior, also gaining the complicity of the colonised by enabling some people to grow a sense of self-worth and material benefits through their participation in the business of the Empire. In general, we can say that colonial discourses explore the ways in which representations and perceptions are used as weapons by the colonial power to keep former colonised peoples subservient to the colonial rule and ideology -> Colonial discourses are the means through which the colonisation of the mind occurred. It is important to speak in plural since these discourses are various and operate in different times and spaces. They represent the point language and power meet, as language is the first tool and mean used by colonisers. Here's why through the notion of discourse shaped by Foucault we can get to the conclusion that these discourses do not reflect a pre given reality but constitute and produce our sense of reality and knowledge of the external world. THE QUESTION OF THE LANGUAGE A question that keeps playing a crucial role in the difference between settler and invaded colonies. The first ones use and speak English since it’s their first language, while writers from invaded colonies can choose whether use it or not. Chin Achebe, a Nigerian writer, could use his native language as well as the English language. His choices depend on the audience he wants to reach: English language clearly guarantees the work to reach a wider public of readers. Some writers believe that it’s important to use English, but others recognize English as the language of the colonizers, so as the language of oppression that must be replaced by native languages. Which English do writers from settler colonies use? It clearly isn’t standard or norm English, spoke in the South-Est England, but we speak about “englishes”: hybrid forms of English that are results of the process of cross-pollination, of the contact and contamination between the English language and others. -> the writer Chinua Achebe expresses for example the lack of useful words and expressions in the standard English language to speak about his own world, far different from the Britain’s one. To understand how powerful words are, we can consider an important affirmation of the writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: “language carries culture and culture carries the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world”. Why is the question of the language so important? After independence many former colonies inherited economic, governmental, and educational institutions, many still administrated in English. The English language is then part of this big inheritance, but its existence as the language of colonial power has complicated a lot its status as the language used in now independent countries. English clearly is just one of the many European languages (Portuguese, French, Spanish…) spoken as national language in once colonized countries, but many writers and intellectuals have cared a lot to distinguish their usage of the English language from the standard form. This led to the birth of the so called “englishes” that although still can be understood by standard English speakers it contains elements of distance between the once-colonized countries and Britain’s use of the language. CHINUA ACHEBE He was born in Nigeria in 1930 in the village of Ogidi, one of the first places in which the Anglican missionaries arrived in the east part of Nigeria. Achebe’s father converted to Christianity. He wrote more than 20 books including some novels, poetry, and the work “Things Fall Apart” (1958), a bestseller that sold more than 10milion copies worldwide and was translated in 50 languages. He was acclaimed for his unsentimental representation of the African world and society before it was occupied by colonizers. What makes Achebe’s work so important is his ability to describe in a delicate but not pathetical way the Nigerian culture, world, and society before it was invaded and exploited by European colonizers. Achebe himself offers reasons why he chooses the English language over the indigenous one, as his main goal is to make sure his works reach a larger public out of the Nigerian one, so that the Nigerian world could be explored and learnt by European and non-African people as well. Achebe considers the differences between ethical and national; he doesn’t use standard English but an englishes. To better understand Achebe’s point it is crucial to consider an important work of his, entitled “The African writer and the English Language”: June 1962 a writer’s gathering took place at Makerere about the relationship between African writers and the English language. What writers could not agree to define was the “African Literature”, as many questions and doubt emerged about subjects and themes, and most of all language -> Should it be in indigenous African languages, or should it include others? Reflecting on current and previous African literature, Achebe seems to get to the conclusion that “African Literature” cannot be crammed into a neat and small definition, but rather seen as a group of associated units, the sum total of all the national and ethnic literatures of Africa. What’s the difference then between national and ethnic literature? The first one the is written in the national language, that is, for example in Nigeria, the English one; the second one is written in an ethnic language, available and understandable only to one specific ethnic group within the nation, as for example Hausa or Ibo in Nigeria. Why is English the national language of Nigeria? Achebe argues that Nigeria as one unit nation was founded by the British themselves, creating unity in a split, scattered political reality. “What I do see is a new voice coming out of Africa Speaking of African experience in a worldwide language. So, my answer to the question ‘can an African ever learn English well enough to be able to use it effectively in creative writing?’ is certainly yes. If on the other hand you ask, ‘Can he ever learn to use it like a native speaker?’ I should say, I hope not. (…) The African writer should aim at fashioning an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.” Considering this important quotation from Achebe, in his work he also explores another important question, about whether Africans ought to write in English, if it is right for a man to abandon his mother tongue. But, speaking for himself, Achebe affirms that he had no other choice, saying that he has been given this language and he intends to use it, but still hopes that will be men who will prefer the mother tongue ensuring the flourish of ethnic literature side by side with the national one. THINGS FALL APART The novel briefly: - Set at the end of the end of the 19th century in Iboland, when and where European were just beginning to penetrate inland in west Africa. - It describes the change that comes over an old and firmly established society under the impact of new, different ideas from outside brought about by the culture and social organization of the colonizers. - In the first part it shows the community of Umuofia, formed by 9 related villages, just before the arrival of white man. It offers the reader a detailed pictured of the way of life of these peoples. We learn about elaborate social rituals and ceremonies and of how everyday life are interpenetrated with the otherworld of magic and mystery. Okonkwo, the protagonist, is a man of this old order, fearless fighter, hard worker, he is highly respected in his clan. - In the second part of the novel Okonkwo is in exile and his village has changed dramatically as a consequence of the arrival of the white colonizers. - The third part brings the final, tragic phase of Okonkwo’s story. He returns to Umuofia and finds that things have indeed changes. Great crisis and conflicts within the community. - In the end, when the Commissioner’s men arrive to arrest him, they find that he has hanged himself, preferring a shameful death to the white man’s justice. - The commissioner does not understand the people and its custom but plans to include the “Incident” in a paragraph of the book he is writing. - Achebe challenges the “white man’s official History” with his novel which gives back Okonkwo his deserved status and which explores his tragic predicament. Not just a paragraph, but a whole book to tell his story. Genesis of the novel: Achebe grew up in a missionary school; his father was one of the first of the village who converted to Christianity. He followed the same curriculum as any other child in England at that time and started to read, first at school and later at university, Joseph Conrad, who published his works at the end of the 19th century. Reading his novels, he was shocked by the representation that Conrad made of African people, as Achebe noticed how false, not reliable, it was, characterized by a profound form of racism that led him to claim that his novels should not be taught at school or university. This is the reason why he decided to respond to Conrad with the novel “Things Fall Apart” (1958), re-writing the African image that Conrad’s novel spread in a more authentic and less European view. The social and historical background of “Things fall apart” is given by the Igbo community. It was a population formed by many villages and laws that coordinate the community. In the traditional Igbo community, the single individual was valued for his results and how he contributed to the development of his own society. Their religious tradition was quite complex as they prayed many gods (polytheist religion). The reasons of a title: it refers to the idea of shattering, of destruction of an order. The shatter and destructive moment figures in the African community with the arrival of white colonizers that destroyed the traditional order of the Igbo community. The title comes from the poem of William “il crollo” = the old order of Igbo people was completely disrupted by the arrival of the white colonizers.  Achebe describes the previous order and the destruction of it, the description of Igbo people before and after the arrival. NGUGI WA THIONG’O He was born in Kenya in 1938 and is an East African’s leading novelist with his famous and popular work “Weep Not, Child”, written in English. As he became more sensible to the effects of colonialism in Africa, he started to use his traditional name and writing in the Bantu language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people. He presented his idea on literature, culture and politics in numerous essays and lectures. He performed a play of which he was the co-author but was detained in prison for a year without a real trial by the Kenyan government as the play attacked politics and religious corruption, and capitalism so it was considered as “dangerous. His important work “Decolonizing the Mind: The politics of Language in African Language” (1986). In his work he argued for African-Languages literature as the only authentic voice for Africans and stated his own intentions of writing only in Kikuyu or Kiswahili from that point on. Such works earned him a reputation as one of Africa’s most articulate social critics. After a long exile from Kenya, Ngugi returned in 2004 with his wife to promote a book. Several weeks later they were brutally assaulted for political reasons probably. After the event the couple kept on publicizing the book abroad, and nowadays he is Professor of English and Comparative literature at the University of California. Respect to Achebe, Wa Thiong’o is against the use of the English language as it enriches the colonizers’ culture and defends the use of native languages also seen as a mean to fight colonialism’s ideology. Wa Thiong’o ‘s attitude deepens its roots in a more personal sphere. As he was a child Gikuyu was the language spoken in his own homeland, but when the State of Emergency was declared in 1952, Gikuyu was replaced also in school by English, an event the Thiong’o has always seen as a violent and destructive act of colonialism. To write in English means for him to see the world through the lenses of the oppressors and not through inherited “spiritual eyeglasses”, so he declares his determination to restore his true mother-language and to refuse the English one. A closer look to his work “Decolonizing the mind” and a brief summary of his ideology: One first and crucial point he considers it’s the use of the language. Thiong’o is perfectly aware of the presence of imperialism nowadays in the culture, politics, and economy of former colonies, as well as of the struggles of African people to change the situation. He argues indeed that the use of the language plays a central role in people's definition of themselves, as for many years, but even now, African countries have been defined as English, Portuguese, or French speaking. Thiong’o narrates that when he was just a student attended, along many Important African authors of that period, the famous conference at Makerere, “a conference of African writers of English expression” that automatically excluded those roots in African languages. The discussions on literature held during the conference excluded the main body of works in Zulu, Swahili, Arabic and so on, but ironically wondered what African literature may truly be. What emerges from this experience is that English French Portuguese were assumed to be natural languages of literary and political meditation between African people and African nations, as if only European languages could bring you need and organisation among the multiplicity of African languages. Wa Thiong’o considers Achebe’s speech in 1964 in “the African writer and the English language” in which is a paradox: the possibility to use the mother tongue create a sense of guiltless, but still the use of European languages produces a positive embrace. “Why should an African writer become so obsessed by taking from his mother tongue can reach other tongues (…). We never asked ourselves: how can we enrich our languages? (…) and why not create literary monuments in our languages”. Wa Thiong’o believes that African writers are too worried to enrich the English language with African terms, creating the so called englishes, asking themselves if their works would still be considered written in good English. Achebe, as he affirms, believes that the English language is able to carry the weight of the African experience, it is only necessary two give life to a new English that better suits the African surroundings. Here stands the main difference between the two points of view: Wa Thiong’o refuses to use the English language, to enrich it and give it more power, preferring to defend his own mother tongue and increase the value of African languages by fully using them; Achebe doesn’t write in an African language, but recognizes the English language as an important and valuable mean of communication to change and shape differently so that it could also reflect the African experience. Indeed, he believes that English is “An African language spoken by Africans on African soil, a language in which Africans write, justifies itself.” THE REWRITING AND THE REREADING OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ITS CLASSICS Why do postcolonial writers do rewrite literature classics? They want to offer an alternative perspective of history, counter narratives against the official narratives that are shaped and constructed through the European and so colonizer’s point of view. The big classics vehicle certain ideas and ideology, as well as the language of the side of the world “in power”. Language is a carrier of culture, but another important weapon of the colonizers was literature itself. The classics of English literature have always been imposed as a role model from an aesthetic but also moral point of view. Classics deeply contributed to that complex of inferiority of colonized people. The role of the novel is crucial indeed: the colonized internalized a cultural, psychological, and internal system right from childhood and teen age. Many writers described traditions of Christmas for example imposed In the Australian reality, whose territory and climate were completely different form the British one. Classics of the English literature seem to foster the perfect reality and attitude of that British world. In former colonized countries teaching English literature didn’t mean, indeed, to focus on grammar on diction, but rather to present English literary texts in moral terms, inviting students to consider how they conveyed “universal” and “timeless” truths, all linked with Christian morality. This led to ideological consequences that convinced that moral behavior and English behavior were synonyms. The western Canon in British colonial policy -> the British colonized thanks through the military force, but they also colonized the minds through a very well-constructed colonial policy of instruction and education based on English literature: - Education played a crucial role as tool of control. - The theory of mimicry studied by Bhabha, an imitation of the model imposed by the colonizers, the canon fostered by English classic literature. Baba said that the colonized people were asked to follow that role model that in the end wasn’t perfectly reproduced, so the colonizers are aware that their reproduction would have been imperfect. In the mimicry of the model Baba finds the destruction of the colonial model itself, as it is no longer seen as something sacred and unreachable, but rather easily reproduced by everyone. Bhabha better explores the matter in his work “Of Mimicry and Man”, focusing on India in particular. Literature as an object of study is first introduced in colonies, India in particular, because missionaries recognized in the literature an important mean to control education and minds, and only later English literature will become a subject in England and its schools and universities. Colonizers found so important in India to form the figure of the interpret to better communicate with the Indian colonized people and strength the white power on them, so interpreters and language in general play the role of a bridge between these two realities. So that this class of interpreters may be composed by “Indian people that keep the black of the skin but gain the white mind, ideology and attitude.” This is why Bhabha speaks about the so called “mimic men”, those whose mind is manipulated by the white beliefs, that imitate the white power even though they will forever be seen as “inferior” by white people. - Ngugi: “the bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.” - Lord Macaulay, “Minute on Indian Education”, 1835: “We are free, we are civilized to little porpoise, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilization.” - Franz Fanon, in his “Black skin, White Mask”: “colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.” - “Colonial educational policies were directed towards the suppression of a sense of identity” (Griffiths, 1978) -> the use of the English classics in education was meant also to make colonized people feel the need to be educated and to get an identity, since theirs is destroyed. - “English literature of the XIX century cannot be understood without remembering that Imperialism, understood England’s social mission, was a crucial part of the cultural representation of England to the English” (Spivak, 1985). Imperialism’s values found voice in the big classics of the English literature, that also shape a self-aware image of the Englishes. The postcolonial rewriting of the classics: - Strategy of cultural decolonization - Subvert but also critically appropriation of the canon, as all the postcolonial writers have received an English education in their former colonial country, so on one hand they criticize the colonial system offering an alternative view of history and culture, in order to give colonial countries their identity back, on the other the writers don’t delete a background of knowledge coming from an English-like education, but rather appropriate of those English classics re-reading them in a critical and different way. Postcolonial writers try to revalue the culture of their colonized country but also keep in mind English classic with the goal to rewrite them in a decolonized way. Considering this crucial point, it is fundamental to underline that not every postcolonial writer reacts in this both subversive and critical way, since some such as Achebe reacted violently against some precise works. Achebe, for example, deeply contradicted Heart of Darkness of Conrad, pointing it out as racist and dis-human work that reflected the typical Victorian racist attitude; he doesn’t activate any productive dialogue with the work, but completely destroys it. - Writers do not dismiss and contradict the classics, but they establish a critical and productive dialogue with the canon. - Remember the role of the classics in maintaining and imposing the status quo, they were imposed in colonized realities as role models of superiority in moral and cultural terms. - Rewriting is a powerful mean to dismount colonial discourses. - The writing back model is adopted with the view of questioning a cultural tyranny while recognized the precious and inevitable legacy of the mother country. Postcolonial literary criticism has become more concerned with reading literary texts in relation to the historical, social, and cultural context they were written. By “context” it is meant not simply the historical background, but the dominant issues and debates in circulation at that time the work was written: first, it is important to notice how such contexts are made present or absent in the texts; secondly explore how the text itself intervene in the debates of its days, applauding or resisting dominant views of the world. Two classic works have been particularly reread and rewritten in their colonial context: “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen and “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. In his work “Culture and Imperialism” Said dealt with Austen’s novel, while a rewritten version of Jane Eyre’s history is given by Rhys’s work, a Caribbean writer, “Wide Sargasso Sea.” to Daniel Cosway preferring his point of view respect to the one of Antoinette; he has made for himself his own version of events. These masculine voices try to define and confine Antoinette reconstructing her character and judging her behaviour. Through this attitude, Rhys explores how colonial discourses have created their own images of authority rather than reflecting an existent reality. In the light of what we've seen until now, Rhys’s novel does much more then fill in the gaps missing in Brontë’s work. Wide Sargasso Sea is partly engendered by Jane Eyre, but its meanings are not fully determined by it. Rhys’s never turns to challenge the meanings made available in Bronte’s work by entering critical discourse with it. Finally, the naming of characters represents another great issue to consider while analysing the relationship between the two works. If we identify Brontë’s novel as the source of meaning which can explain and resolve the ambiguities of naming in Rhys’s text, we probably do what she doesn't, there is to say constructing a hierarchical relationship in which Wide sargasso sea is contained and determined by Jane Eyre. Readers are called to pay attention to the kind of relationship they establish between the two novels. Rhys in many interviews has declared that her main aim was to give Bertha a voice and the possibility to speak for herself, to explain herself the reasons that led her to madness. She identifies with Bertha in a sort of way and her personal experience seems to be the same as Antoinette’s as told in the beginning of the novel. At the end of the first part Antoinette’s house will be set on fire because her family is considered a threat by both the black and white community. The nature of the landscape is wild, savage and unruled. These negative events add to the loss of Antoinette’s brother, that eventually lead her mother to a confusional status. Video of Adichie > feminist activist. Personal story: Nigeria, she read English and American's books (not from her culture): she wrote stories based on the books she read; she didn't know many things written in these books; she describes a world which is not her own; when she knew about African books she shifted her own point of view; she went to University (her American roommate was shocked by her - she couldn't believe she could know English so well); she reflects on the role of Western literature; she went so Mexico and reflects about the behavior of the politics towards foreigners and about the role of medias; she read many American novels, and she claims that she hasn't a single story about America. She explains that stories construct the reality, the truth and believes they foster as definitive and can not be doubt. The problem is not that a single story is not true, but that it is incomplete. Another great example is given by “Foe” – J.M. Coetzee, that represents a form of rewrite of a very well know work, “Robison Crusoe” by Defoe. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) He was brought up as a Dissenter by the father, a nonconformist merchant. After school he went into business and became a merchant (wine, tobacco). He travelled throughout Europe, then, back in England, he opened a shop and became involved in politics, but after he went bankrupt, he ventured into many activities including journalism and literature. After the publication of a satirical pamphlet in defense of the Dissenters, he was imprisoned for 6 months. He later became a secret agent and government spy. In 1719, at the age of 60, he turned to prose fiction, he considered writing a business activity. He was one of the most prolific authors of his time. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe (1719) Robinson is the prototypical colonizer, and he has a particular relationship with a native, Friday (=like master and servant). “Like Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe was part of the process of “fixing” relations between Europe and its “others”, of establishing patterns of reading alterity at the same time as it inscribed the “fixity” of that alterity, naturalizing “difference” within its own cognitive codes. But the function of such a canonical text at the colonial periphery also becomes an important part of material imperial practice, in that, through educational and critical institutions, it continually displays and repeats for the other the original capture of his/her alterity and the processes of its annihilation, marginalization, or naturalization as if they were axiomatic, culturally ungrounded, “universal, natural” (Tiffin, 1987, one of the 3 authors of “The Empire Writes Back”, that opens the path to postcolonial studies). Published in 1719, the first realist novel, inspired by real events. Based on the experiences of Robert Selkirk, a seaman who was put ashore on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean, after a shipwreck, and later rescued, Defoe also took inspiration from travel books fashionable at the times. The travel is narrated in 3 parts: - In the first part Robinson leaves his family and goes away to sea to make a fortune. The most interesting: shipwrecked on a desert island, he talks about his life for 28 years. Detailed record in the journal he keeps. - Return to Europe. In the second part a diary-like account of how he can recreate the world he left behind him, how he saves a young savage and makes him his servant and how he is finally rescued and brought back to England. Ur-text of the English realist novel: It represents the embodiment of the myth of Western imperialism; it embodies the new character of the middle class, man of success, who is able to fulfill his dreams thanks to his intelligence and hard work, but also thanks to his faith. Enthusiastic narrative of the project of “civilizing” indigenous peoples, like a celebration of the myth of colonization; it embodies the spirit of that time, of the growing British Empire. “Just a history of facts” (Preface), so a realistic form of representation, it tells a true story: autobiographical narration, so a story told in first person. The novel is built around a careful accumulation of circumstantial details, which for us modern readers could be irrelevant, but it’s fascinating. It has a linear narrative sequence because it corresponds to the myth of the glorious advancement, of progress, towards the future; it follows the chronological development of the story (typical of the realistic novel). Illusion of transparent representation of a social world which is, in fact, a construction; it’s not a fantasy reconstruction. It suggests the idea that “this is the real world” (just a history of facts). Crusoe is the new hero of the middle classes: celebration of the ethics of hard work, perseverance, self-reliance, moderation and rational control, cult of profit and myth of success. On the desert island, Robinson tries to reproduce and translate the old world in a new organizational system, with new habits and traditions = typical approach of colonizers. The unknown is mapped and thus controlled and tamed (act of taking possession also through naming). Crusoe saves Friday’s life: subjection of the colonized (justification of the colonial enterprise) = Friday becomes his servant. Robinson Crusoe reveals the enthusiastic imperialist spirit of that time and the base values of the Augustan society. The description of Friday in the novel reveals a stereotypical approach to the “cannibals” -> the term cannibal comes from the “carris” (?), the name of a community in the Caribbean. The chapter: “I call him Friday.” Right from the title the novel recalls the tendency of “re-naming” of colonialism. Stereotypical elements can be noticed mainly in the physical description of Friday, who is not so savage, so terrible, so bestial as the common stereotyped image of an indigenous is. He is not too black, but even has something “manly in his face”, something that can bring him closer to humanity, and gives Crusoe the possibility to civilize him and transform him in his servient. Friday is represented as an exception respect to the “others” like him, is not like the others “negros”, and from the very beginning he recognize the superiority of Crusoe as a white man -> “he made all the signs to me of subjection”. Friday is not free to have an identity as Crusoe imposes him the name he chose, and teaches him to call him “master”, so that he must recognize his subjection, and other words of submission “yes” or “no”. What Robison Crusoe tries to do is to civilize Friday in a white and European way, educating him to his habits. What Crusoe does with Friday is to transform him in a “mimic man”, by introducing him to the European culture, habits and religion. J.M. Coetzee – Foe (1986) Who is Coetzee? He was born in Cape town 1940 and now lives in Adelaide, Australia. He was a white Afrikaner, and he grew up speaking English at home and Afrikaans with his relatives. Afrikaans was the official language of South Africa. He so belongs to the middle class of the society, as his father was a lawyer and his mother a teacher. Afrikaans, not English, during the colonial regime was perceived as the language of the oppressors, so as an imperialist language. The Soweto protest by students happened in order to complain against the use of Afrikaans. Coetzee moved from South Africa to the U.S., where he started to teach, precisely in Texas. In the 1972 he decided to go back to South Africa, during one of the harshest periods for the country. Going back to Africa he started to write lot of works in English to defend the rights of black people, even though he was an Afrikaner. Ethnically he belongs to the group of the oppressors, but on the other hands he contrasts that same system that guaranteed him such privilege, as he was against the values and principles of the Afrikaans class. He admis he feels in a middle position: on one hand he goes against Afrikaners, but on the other he is constantly seen with suspect and skepticism by black people. He has a hybrid position also in the field of literature, as his culture is mainly shaped by white European authors, so he is also perceived as a traitor of the African country by many black writers. His prose is very sophisticated and postmodern, but he has also been accused of irresponsibility because he doesn’t explicitly tackle urgent political and social issues in his works. The novel: it is introduced as a metafictional text as different kinds of proses are involved (realist novel – epistolary novel). It is divided in three main parts: - In the first one we can find the explicit rewriting of Defoe’s novel, as it keeps the base plot of the original novel, but some crucial things are rewritten and changed: the relationship of Crusoe and Friday; an additional female character. The story is indeed of a female castaway, Susan Barton, who also is the narrative voice of the story. At the beginning she narrates she arrived in Brazil looking for her lost daughter, but during the voyage of return, after a mutiny she is cast adrift which brings the reader to the opening lines of the novel. On the island she meets Cruso and Friday. The Cruso readers expect to find according to Defoe’s novel is completely different. She sails back to England, bringing with her Cruso and Friday, but the first one dies of the struggle of leaving the land he has inhabited until then, while Friday arrives in England with Susann becoming her servient. - In the second part, after having been rescued, she looks for the writer Foe so that he writes down her own story of adventure (epistolary part). The reference to Defoe and Crusoe is crucial, but it is also important to notice how the author re-names them, picturing Foe as the enemy. - In the third part of the novel Susan Barton meets Foe and discusses with him about the relation between truth and fiction and the act of writing itself. Differences with the source text: the first principal difference between Coetzee and Defoe’s novels is the presence of a female protagonist, that arrives in an island inhabited by Cruso and Friday. Cruso is no longer represented as that bold and brave man of the source novel, he has lost the “e” in his name, he is no longer the protagonist of the novel and is also disinterested in governing the island and becoming its king. In his relationship with Friday, he behaves exactly in the opposite way as the typical colonizer’s attitude of the original Crusoe, he only cares about surviving, not building a new world there, nor “civilizing” Friday. He also is “indifferent to salvation”, doesn’t want to go back to Europe, neither improve nor progress in this new territory. Robinson Cruso is anti-colonizer in the spirt, Susan is now the one who has the attitude of a colonizer. Friday is different too: he is very lonely and isolated; he doesn’t speak because he has lost (literally) his tongue, and metaphorically obscene images on the wall that keep on reappear even though they are erased each time. Ouma Kristina says to Kristien “When you will be ready, I will tell you (about the Girl)”. The house was known as the “Bird place” and “The place where everything was possible”. Kristien writes all the stories that Ouma Kristina told her. At some point of the novel Ouma Kristina reveals being the daughter not of Petronella, her grandmother, but of Rachel, the Girl kept in the basement. “Story or history?” asks Kristien -> as she was a child she thought they were stories, but now she knows each of these stories belong together to the same history they build. MAGONA Her life was characterized by many difficulties, and in her many literary texts she denounces the terrible system of apartheid and mostly of the female condition. She denounces both the white and black violence against women, as they were oppressed both by the colonial regime and the black men within the black community for a specific reason: during apartheid black men lost their dignity and reacted to the violence they experienced by internalized it and executed and exerted the power they lost against women and children. Mother to mother – Magona. It was published in 1998 and has a completely different overtone and form of narration respect to the one of Andrè Brick. Magona describes her story and addresses another mother telling her what happened to her daughter. She tells the story of Abiel, an American student that has moved to South Africa in 1993 to help and organize the first democratic election. She was a very brilliant student, but once she entered Googoleto her friends and she were attacked by a group of black man. The mother that tells the story is the mother of one of these black men, Xionisi, and she writes to Abiel’s mother to ask her forgiveness, looking for an ideal sisterhood with the woman, by explaining her the violent context of that territory, the same in which the writer grew up. Mandisa, the mother of Xionsi, tries to understand and makes other understand the context of the violent society of South Africa The novels:  “By the Sea” – Gurnah Its narrator is a refugee from an East African island nation, Zanzibar, who is seeking to enter England. Since his home country was once a British possession, he qualifies for asylum—yet he is traveling on a fake passport. Although he is a cultivated man, he has been advised at home to pretend he neither speaks nor understands English. An immigration agent tries to dissuade the refugee from entering the cold, miserable lands of Europe, and confiscates a box of incense—the only valuable item in his bag. He is sent to a detention center, but a social worker named Rachel, who specializes in difficult immigration cases, intervenes on his behalf. The narrator begins to tell Rachel stories, starting with the tale of the origins of his incense. He lays on story after story for her, until the strands that connect past and present, magic, and real, become thickly—and seductively—meshed. From his new home in England, the narrator takes us deeper into his past. The thread of the story winds backwards to the monsoon of 1960, when an incense merchant, cultured and cultivated, whose politeness is "like a kind of talent, an elaboration of forms and manners into something abstract and poetic," seduces and dishonors the mother of a certain Latif. Seven years later, the monsoon brings civilian strife and a Marxist coup. As the island's banks are nationalized, the merchant's business fails. Houses change hands, families are ruined, governments change and fall. Nor is the refugee only a victim: as his story goes on, he encounters other refugees, here in England, who were ruined by his own father—including the same Latif. Slowly, the story takes shape. The refugee acquires a voice and a name, and as he does so, not only his identity and history but that of his country, with the deep changes wrought in it by colonization and revolution, become clear with a vividness that could never have been captured by a more conventional narration.  “Wanting” – Flanagan Wanting cuts between two stories based on real historical figures under the central theme of 'wanting' and is set in both nineteenth century Tasmania and Britain. One tells the tale of an Aboriginal child, Mathinna, adopted by then governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane; the other of Charles Dickens’ love affair with Ellen Ternan after one of his daughters dies. It is 1841. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, a barefoot aboriginal girl sits for a portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island’s governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and the subject of a grand experiment in civilization -- one that will determine whether science, Christianity, and reason can be imposed on savagery, impulse, and desire. Years later, somewhere in the Arctic, Sir John Franklin has disappeared with his crew and two ships on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified by reports of cannibalism filtering back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin’s story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his own life. Wanting (solo per desiderio) Written by Richard Miller Flanagan, born in Longford (Tasmania) 1961. He leaves his studies at young age, and he graduates in 1982. He does different jobs before to become writer (1994) he is even film director and screenwriter. He was widely considered “the finest Australian novelist of his generation”. THEMES: It’s the story of Mathinna, (example of experienced horrors) destined to the alcoholism, prostitution and to die at 21 years old. We have an omniscient narrator (third singular person) who gives us an external image of her, but it’s expressed when she dances. The difference is placed in the auto control because she doesn’t belong to white men’s world and the failure of the project (Mathinna doesn’t get used to the occidental behaviors) PLOT: Wanting tells two stories based on real historical figures: - Sir John Franklin, the famed polar explorer and governor of Van Dieman’s Land and his wife, Lady Jane; - the novelist Charles Dickens, and actress Ellen Ternan. - It also involves a young Aboriginal girl named Mathinna Flinders who was adopted into white society, thrown back, fell into dissolution, and at 21 drowned in a puddle - or was possibly murdered - while drunk in 1856. A small Australian town located in Tasmania has also been named after her. She is the subject - the lore of her - of dance performances, poetry, and now fiction. One story tells the tale of an Aboriginal child, Mathinna, adopted by Sir John Franklin, and his wife Lady Jane; the other of Charles Dickens’ love affair with Ellen Ternan after one of his daughters dies. 1. In 1830 George Augustus Robbins gets to Tasmania to bring civilization. Charles Dickens is having a great success. The process of civilization was justified by white men themselves. 2. In 1851 John Foster (his friend) says to Dickens that his daughter Dora is dead. It starts the destruction of this family and the relationship with his wife Catherine gets worse. 3. In the third chapter we have a description of Mathinna. She was taken away when was 7 years old. There is a scene very important where she refuses the shoes, so she refuses the civilization. She represents what English men want. The word WRETCHED is repeated more than once. It’s highlighted the division between white and black. Robbins is the only teacher. 4. In 1836 Sir John Franklin starts a shipping in Australia with his wife Jane. Robbins is saddened, understanding their intentions. They choice Mathinna. In 1854 Jane finds out that her husband is dead, charged with cannibalism. She asks to Dickens to writing about her husband to deleting this accuse. Rae even finds out the Jane’s past (She got married by an older man than her, and she wants to take the civilization). 5. In the fifth chapter we have three flashbacks: the first meeting between Jane and Mathinna; the relationship between Franklin and Jane; the moment which Mathinna is adopted. 6. The bond between Mathinna and Dickens: - the alternating between Tasmania and London. - The Desire represented by Mathinna and felt by Dickens (he choices the actress and make his wife lock in the asylum. There are letters that underlined the falsehood of this last one). 7. Flashback on the John’s death and Mathinna’s education (dance) and rape. 9. The two lose the hope with Mathinna (they call her savage); flashback of John’s death. 10. Dickens and Ellen Ternan 11. The six survived children are brought to the hospital 12. Dickens leaves with his new wife Ellen 13. Mathinna now adult has the drinking habit and while she is talking with Walter she puts on a red scarf. She dies at 21 years old. The author highlights different questions: when does our education stop us in our real feelings and bring us to live a life full falsehood? The attempt to keep everything in check, leads us to commit savage actions out of morality.  Mister Pip, L. Jones Mister Pip opens with a description of the last white person left in a village on the island of Bougainville, near mainland Papua New Guinea. Fourteen-year-old Matilda, the narrator, explains that everybody calls this man Pop Eye and that he looks like somebody who has “seen or known great suffering.” Adding to the curiosity surrounding him as the island’s sole non- black resident, Pop Eye often wears a red clown’s nose and walks through town in a white linen suit while pulling his wife Grace—who is from the village—in a small trolley. As the older townspeople look on in bewilderment, children fall in line behind Pop Eye and Grace, creating an odd procession nobody understands. Matilda reveals that Pop Eye’s real name is Mr. Watts, and that he lives in what used to be the minister’s house. Like Matilda, the children of Bougainville have seen very few white people other than Mr. Watts, especially since the Australian miners left the island after the copper mine shut down. In fact, white people weren’t the only people to flee Bougainville, as even Matilda’s father left the island for Australia. Before Matilda and her mother Dolores could join him, though, Papua New Guinea forces—referred to as “redskins”—descended upon the island to keep Bougainville from becoming an independent country. Fearful of the gunboats and helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the island, Matilda and Dolores were forced to remain in Bougainville.  Jack Maggs - …. A rewriting of Great Expectations, as the stories seem to follow the same development. The point of view is no longer Pip’s but the one of Jack Maggs that in the original Victorian novel is marginalized.