Sinobiya P.T- Assignment 02

Edward Said, the renowned literary and cultural critic and author of numerous books, explores the idea of how the reach of Western imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been a devastating thing. The argument of this book was first presented at various universities in the form of a lecture series.

Edward Said begins Culture and Materialism by telling his experience after writing Orientalism and the relationship he has understood between culture and empire. He says that his ideas were limited to Middle East in Orientalism. In this work, he prefers to elaborate it to discuss the relationships between modern metropolitan West and its overseas territories also.

The Indianist and Africanist discourses, like European writing on Africa, India, Australia, parts of Far East and the Carribean could be considered as an effort of the Europeans to rule over the distant lands and peoples. The striking ideas in this discourse are about the descriptions of “the mysterious East” and the stereotypes about “the African mind”. There was a notion of bringing civilization to barbaric people. There was a world created between “they” and “us”, which they considered as a reason for “they” to be ruled. He considers this as a misrepresentation about the native people and their cultures and he urges it to be redressed. These writings ignore the pivotal aspect of reality- native people and their culture.

The case was similar in almost everywhere in the non- European world. The coming of the white man brought some sort of resistance. In Orientalism, he forgot to include the response to Western dominance that lead to decolonization all across the Third World. There were armed resistance, cultural resistance, the assertions of nationalist identities, and the formation of various parties and associations with goal of self- determination and national independence. All these happened in places like Algeria, Ireland and Indonesia.

Said says that he uses the term “culture” to mean two things in particular. At first, “all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principle aims is pleasure” (xii). He is actually looking at novels for his study, as he believes that it plays an important role in the formation of imperial references, attitudes, and experiences.

Culture and Imperialism presents both the virtues and vices of the notion that the intellectual must take up the public and political role. He speaks of how narratives, like classical fiction or operas are used in order to assert national identity.  The imperialist have two ways to impose their powerful value systems. They have the power to narrative and at the same time, they block other narratives from forming/emerging. This work could be considered as an extended study of the literary representation of colonial history. The narratives of emancipation and enlightenment made people in the colonial world to react against imperial subjugation.

Secondly, he treats the term “culture” as a concept that has a refining and elevating element in it. It is like treating the culture as each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought. When we differentiate “them” and “us”, there is always an element of xenophobia attached to it. Culture could then be regarded as a source of identity. In this sense of culture, various political and ideological causes engage with one another.

Said then talks of Dickens’ Great Expectations (1861), being a novel of self- delusion. It shows the character Pip’s vain attempts to become a gentleman, neither with hardwork nor with the aristocratic source of income. Pip in his early life helps a condemned convict, Abel Magwitch. He pays back Pip with huge amount after being transported to Australia. When Magwitch illegally reappears in London, Pip not only didn’t welcome him, but also rejects him as an unpleasant criminal. He was considered as unacceptable for being from Australia, a penal colony designed for rehabilitation of English criminals. Said says that Dickens did not take much effort to discuss the inmates of Australia, but London. In Saidian reading, prohibition on Magwitch’s return is not only penal, but also imperial. Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo is yet another novel he takes for elaborating his idea. Conrad wrote in such a way that a man whose Western view of non-Western world is highly and deeply rooted in his mind that he behaves blind to other cultures, histories, and aspirations. He failed to understand that countries like India and Africa possessed the essence of lives in them.

One of the achievements of imperialism was that it brought the world together. But in the process of doing this, there occurred a separation between the Europeans and the natives, which was an unjust practice. Said probes the roots of imperialism in Western culture and describes the relationship between culture and imperialism.

Said puts forth the point that the world has changed a lot from Dickens’ to Conrad’s time. With the emergence of globalization, there was immigration to the West. According to Said, to ignore the intermingling and co- existence of colonizer and colonized would mean to ignore the past in the last centuries. Though the aim of imperialism was to bring the world together, it resulted in the creation of a separation. The same situation persists even now also in the post- colonial countries.

Said gives importance to individual works at first hand, to read them as products of creative or interpretative imagination, which would then enable the study of relationship between culture and empire. He does not believe that the authors are mechanically influenced by factors like class, ideology, or economic history. Rather, he believes in the history of their societies and two- fold idea of experiences, such that the authors are shaping and are shaped by the social and historical experiences. In his opinion, Western imperialism and Third World nationalism have got a parasitical existence. But even at that condition also, they are neither monolithic nor deterministic in nature. To quote from the book,

“Western imperialism and Third World nationalism

  feed off each other, but even at their worst

  they are neither monolithic nor deterministic” (xxiv)

Besides all this, culture is not something that is monolithic in nature, or the exclusive property of East or West, or of small set of men or women.

This could be considered as a book about the ‘past’ and the ‘present’, about ‘us’ and ‘them’. Said opines that none of the cultures are single and pure, “all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic” (xxv).

Towards the end of the Introduction, he mentions that this is an exile’s book. He grew up as an Arab with Western education. He has the feeling of belonging for both the places, ever since he remembers.

Culture and imperialism is actually an extension of his idea of the worldliness of imperial texts. It is very interesting to look at the cultural productions of the West and the way they portray the political realities of imperialism. Said in this book talks of how the post-colonial world should react to the dominance of imperialism.

            The style of Culture and Imperialism appears to be conversional, digressive and even repetitive in nature. By this style, he is actually sticking onto the idea of worldliness of the text. The book begins with the premise that with the power of the culture, the political, institutional and economic operations of imperialism have got no existence of their own. All these are expected to be maintained by the culture. The book focuses on the portrayal of power and ideology in the creation of domination.

            There are two themes that dominate culture and imperialism. The first one is an analysis of ‘general worldwide pattern of imperial culture’ that justifies and reinforces the establishment and exploitation of the empire. The second one acts as a counterbalance to the first one, ‘the historical experience of resistance against empire’. (xii)

             Culture and Imperialism ‘de-universalizes’ the imperial culture by revealing its birthplace. There were criticisms against Said that despite paying attention to resistance, he fails to provide a strategy for resistance in the work.

Culture and Imperialism is considered as a sequel to Orientalism by many critics. It discusses the interdependent nature of culture and imperialism. It also discusses the post-colonial resistance. He shows his discontent for omitting the responses to western dominance which culminated in the great movement of decolonization all across the third World.

            The book depicts not only how Europe colonized the world but also how the colonized fought back, the ways they expressed etc.

Bibliography

ü  Ashcroft, Bill and Pal Ahluwalia. Edward Said. New York: Routledge Critical Thinkers, 2001.

ü  Cox, Brian. "Said's Global Consciousness." The Hudson Review (1994): 773-778.

ü  Lyons, Harriet D. "Presences and Absences in Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism." Canadian Journal of African Studies (1994): 101-105.

ü  Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

asssginment 2 sisitha kv

Assignment 2

Culture and Imperialism – review of introduction

                                                                                                                        Submitted by

Submitted to                                                                                       Sisitha kv

Dr. Shalini Moolechalil                                                                       lcl051422

Dpt. English and of Comparative Literature                                      cuk

cuk

Culture and Imperialism

Edward said began to think the general relationship between culture and empire five years back after the publication of his Orientalism he develops some arguments, which he mentioned earlier in orientalism. Here he tries to expand those arguments. In the book, mostly he describes about imperial culture and a historical experience of resistance against empire. According to Edward said, culture means two things in particular. First of all it means all those practices like the arts of description, communication and representation. Here he focuses on the western empires of 19^th and 20^th centuries; he also looks at cultural forms like the novel which he considered important thing in the formation of imperial attitudes, references and experiences. But he do not mean the only the novel was important but the aesthetic object whose connection to the expanding societies of Britain and France is particularly interesting to study. He is saying that, a great deal of recent criticism has concentrated on narrative fiction, yet very little attention has been paid to its position in the history and world empire.

Edward sad arguing that, the main battle imperialism is over land. But there are many issues, which are; when it come to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back and who now plans its future. He also says that, as one critic suggested, nations themselves are nations. One of the main connections between the culture and imperialism is the power to narrate or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, it is very important to culture and imperialism. Secondly he describes culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought with Matthew Arnold. Culture is a source of identity and rather combative one at that as we see in recent returns to culture and tradition. Most professional humanists are unable to make the connection between the prolonged and sordid cruelty of practices such as slavery, colonialist and racial oppression, and imperial subjection on the one hand, and the poetry, fiction, and philosophy of the society that engages in these practices on the other.  He told that, one of the difficult truths he discovered in working on this book is how very few of the British or French artists whom he admire took issue with the notion of subject or inferior races so prevalent among officials who practiced those ideas as a matter of course in ruling India or Algeria.

They were widely accepted notions; and they helped fuel the imperial acquisition of territories in Africa throughout the nineteenth century. I believe, relegated these writers' ideas about colonial expansion, inferior races, or "niggers" to a very different department from that of culture. He believes that American fiction belongs in a history both more inclusive and more dynamic than such interpretations allow. It has been left to two more recent books than Dickens's Robert Hughes's magisterial The Fatal Shrwe and Paul Carter's brilliantly speculative The Road to Botany Bay.  It reveals a vast history of speculation about and experience of Australia, a "white" colony like Ireland. The end of the nineteenth century the empire is no longer merely a shadowy presence.

He says that, he shamelessly availed himself of various intellectual, political, and cultural associations as he worked on this book. Those include close personal friends. In the preparation of the manuscript, he has been very ably helped in different ways by Yumna Siddiqi, Aamir Mufti, Susan Lhota, David Beams, Paola di Robilant, Deborah Poole, Ana Dopico, Pierre Gagnier, and Kieran Kennedy. These are the thing he says in the introduction of Culture and Imperialism.

Bibliography

Said Edward.Culture and Imperialism, A Division of Random House, Inc. 1993

Assignment II Culture and Imperialism Nithya A

Assignment II                                                                             Nithya A

                                                                                                    

                    Culture and Imperialism

    

             Today the importance of culture is high in all fields of society. The chief peculiarity of the modern era is the heightened sense of the importance of culture. It is equal to the base of a self-conscious discourse on modernity as a distinct historical era was of the idea is that to know the importance and the understanding and practices of culture. The relation between modernity and perception together constituted and created a new meaning of culture.  These relationship can be showed in terms of changing concepts of identity, space and place and a heterogeneous set of practices associated with culture that are not limited to the arts.

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       The publication of Edward said orientalism in 1978, so many academic discourse has begun to use the term “orientalism” this was showed the general patronizing western attitude towards the Asian and North African societies. Said’s opinion is that the western attitude towards the third world countries as static and undeveloped. So the main idea is provided and focusing that the western society is developed rational flexible and superior.

             The central idea of orientalism is the western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality. The Eastern knowledge is constructed with literary texts and historical records that often are of limited understanding of the facts of life in the Middle East. The nineteenth century European, an interesting range of options are offered all type of superiority depends upon the subordination and victimization of the native. The orientalism plays important role separating the culture in various way.

        Culture and imperialism is a collection of essays by Edward Said published in 1993. In this book he tries to attempts to trace the connection between imperialism and culture in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries. It followed his highly influential book of Orientalism published in 1978. Edward said make difference between culture and imperialism for using the argument of Orientalism. The mainstream culture is the impact of this book for using the British writers during the 19^th and early 20^th century like Jane Austen and Rudyard Kipling. In the introduction part said focusing on the importance of the novel. The connection between culture and empire is highly influenced in this book. He defined culture is a more complex way.

    According to said the age of empire largely ended after World War II, when the time of colonies get the independence. The imperialistic attitudes still exist because of the cultural influences. The colonialists and imperialists employed culture to control the peoples. The most important book Culture and Imperialism is one of the discussing books of the past year. In this collection of essay he focusing on three major metropolitan cultures that are, British, French and American to show how even their present indenties are the product of power. The main element is that it shows the interpretation of third world countries but also in to the study of the formation and meaning of western cultural practices themselves.

     Edward said beginning to the introduction part expressing the commitment of the book Orientalism to and paved the way for writing this book. And also helping to the university lectures in the United States, Canada and England in 1985 and 1986. Then he says that orientalism provides so many limitations to the Middle East, so he tried his best to expand the arguments of the earlier book to describe a more general pattern of scholarships between the modern metropolitan West and its overseas territories.

      The orientalism was the response to western dominance which constituted in the great movement of decolonization all across the Third World countries. In this book said explain two factors, a general worldwide pattern of imperial culture and a historical experience of resistance against empire; these two factors make a sequel to Orientalism, but an attempt to do something else. In both books explain culture in a different way. The meaning of culture looks two things; first of all it means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation that have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms.

         The modern western empires of the nineteenth and twentieth century looks especially at cultural forms, like the novels and all other literature forms. In the sense it is also the formation of imperial attitudes, references and experience. The novel is not considered important for other literature; he considered it is an aesthetic object whose connection to the expanding the societies of Britain and France is particularly for using interesting to study. It is very helpful to know connection between what the societies culture and how to look up the other societies value.

             Edward said says that culture is sort of theater where various political and ideological causes engage one another. It provide so many good things to the societies and to which causes expose themselves to the light of day and contend with one another. It is utilizes all living things. The American, French and Indian students who are  taught to read their national classics before they read their national classics before they read others are expected to appreciate and prayed for them. This type of nationalism leads their nations and traditions while denigrating or fighting against others.

          Imperialism does not lend itself to complete conclusive definitions, though it is more easily comprehensible than the word culture. The interaction between imperialism and culture take place towards the dominating and dominated nations. These developments not considered a proper way of relation because of distrust and contempt on either side. The dominated nation never accepts the ideology and characteristics of dominating nation. It is the universal truth in any other periods. This was not changed the contemporary sociopolitical life of the human being.

         Many intellectuals argued that literature is the mirror of culture but Said rejected this opinion and says that literature not the mirror of culture, it is the general attitude of the critic and reader who never care to look at the cultural aspects of the works of fiction, like the work of Carlyle, Ruskin or Dickens.  Literature is not a single concept, it is includes so many elements. All are looks the all type of works in a cultural way. This was changed for important thing and avoids the suppressing attitudes towards the other concepts of analyzing work of art.

      The culture includes ideology and attitude of a nation, the imperialist take any other effort to subdue the culture. The proper way of education is the field through which imperialist finds easiest access to the culture of the subjugated nation. The third world countries considered lowest position in other countries. The education is not played in this nation.in this time the imperialist contributed so many programs for the developments of education. One of the goal is that achieved the freedom from British colonialism.

          The introduction to culture and imperialism is a proper way of appraisal of current world scenario around us. And also considered the warning for people of world against the United States of Americas imperialistic attitudes. During the cold war, US had to contribute for the socio- economic developments of the third world countries. In the case of US aggression, the victim state could invoke the intervention of USSR, which US could afford to ignore. With the engineered fall of USSR , US emerged as the self-appointed  lord of the world. Muslim militants groups were created, trained and organized and financed to cause the fall of USSR. These groups were made to believe that it was the war between Islam and communism.

        During the 19^th century the immense power was concentrated in Britain and France as a result of industrialization. In the later years, US also came up with Britain and France and make a west domination. Said clearly mentioned imperialism in US is doing around the third world countries.   

     

Ayshathul Sumaya.P - Assignment II

REVIEW FOR THE INTRODUCTION FROM CULTURAL IMPERIALISM -EDWARD SAID.

                       Cultural Imperialism was a book by Edward said. In which he seeks to define a space that is true to both to his experience of literature and of art more generally and to his enforced awareness of imperialism. It is an essential contribution to political, cultural, and literary criticism that has been engaged in the process of decentring knowledge. It should be closely read by all interested in recent development in cultural studies. Defining culture is seems to be simple but it is not simple as it was.

                    In the introduction he says that “after the publication of Orientalism in 1978 Said began to gather some ideas about the general relationship between culture and empire that had become clear to me while writing that book”.( Said xi) There is an influence of Orientalism in this book.  The discipline of anthropology, history and area studies have developed arguments that he put forward in Orientalism, which was limited to the Middle East. It has to describe general patterns of relationship between the modern metropolitan west and its overseas territories. However the present book giving prominence to the westerners and also the non western countries and for their literature too. In this he includes mainly a series of lectures that he gave at universities in the United States, Canada and England in 1985 and 1986. These lectures core argument where the argument of this presents work.

                    In the introduction he goes on to make a comparison between his previous work and the present work. That is what he missed in Orientalism, the present book is an elaboration of that points. He left out of Orientalism was that response to western dominance which culminated in the great movement of decolonization all across the third world. He actually lists need of a third world, i.e. cultural resistance, national identities and political realm the creation of associations and parties whose common goal was self determination and national independence. It was never the case that the imperial encounter period. An imperial encounter period was an active western intruder against a resistless or insert non western native; there was always some form of active resistance in the overwhelming majority of cases the resistance finally won out.  

                 These two factors a general worldwide pattern of imperial culture, a historical experience of resistance against empire inform this book in ways that make it not just a sequel to Orientalism but an attempt to do something else. Hence altogether it called as “Culture”. There are so many meanings attached to it, but none of them were accurate it tangles according to community differ. In this book Said uses the word mainly in two broad categories particularly. The first one was; culture it means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication and representation that have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms and often exists in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aim is pleasure. His exclusive focus was on modern western empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

                 Said focus on the novels to illustrate imperialism in culture, he gives importance to fiction that he justifies that “he believed that novels were immensely important in the attitudes, reference and experiences.” which expands aesthetic object mainly in Britain and France. He explains main battle in imperialism was over land, of course; but when it came to who owned the land, which had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back and now plans its future issues were reflected congested in narrative. He refers to some critics opinion to prove his argument that one critic has suggested nations themselves are narrations. It was very important in culture and imperialism, the power to narrate or to block other narratives from emerging and forming. Most of the narrative themes rise up and throw of imperial subjection. It narrates equality and human community.

              The second point he explains in relation with culture was, culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought as Mathew Arnold put in the 1860s. Said explains Arnold‘s opinion about culture. For Arnold culture is a law, that altogether neutralizes the ravages of modern aggressive, mercantile, and brutalizing urban existence.

                The main idea that the said put forward was that the culture comes to be associated with nation or state. This differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them’. It creates social phobia in the concept of culture. Culture in this sense is a source of identity, and   rather a combination one at that, as we see in recent returns to culture and tradition.  In the colonial perspective these world returns have accompany. In this sense culture is a sort of theatre where various political and ideological causes engage one another.

                    To make sure about the opinion of culture and imperialism he takes an example of great fictions like; Dickens Great Expectation (1861) is self delusion and Conrad‘s Nostromo in (1904). Through these fictions he explains how the imperialism works in our culture and how it depicted the way as westerners and nonwestern identity, a cross cultural identity. There many other novels he sites too and the portrayal of imperialism in it.  He again argues in the introduction that the novels of V .S .Naipaul   and Robert Stone o theoreticians of imperialism and they mainly focus it in their travelogues.  In the work of Conrad, he allows the reader to see that imperialist system in western and non western world.

                Imperialist culture was a visible one and nor did it conceal its worldly affiliations and interest. Its main achievement is that to bring the world together. And although in the process the separation between Europeans and natives was an insidious and fundamentally unjust one. It is our belief that the historical experience of empire as a common one, it is the impact of imperialism.

              It was said who focus the individual works because to read them first as a great products of the creative or interpretative imagination and then to show them as part of the relationship between culture and empire. Every work it was influences, the author his social experience and history. Thus culture and aesthetic forms; it contains a method to derive historical experience. The result was a global circulation, global process of exchange.  Said adds the British, French and American imperial experience is that it has a unique coherence and a special cultural centrality.

                    It is considered as identity that has been important cultural thought during the era of imperialism. Yet the ideologies concern over identity is understand entangled with the interest and agendas of various groups. The later part of the introduction giving an account of reason for the argument of this present book. That is, it was like I said earlier the book wrote in the culmination of series of lectures that  given at  universities. While writing he was received many opinions and suggestions from his friends. In introduction a gives a brief merit to them too.

               It is exposing contemporary inter cultural communication to define cultural communication in two terms i.e. culture and imperialism. In culture and imperialism Edward recognizes culture as it is used throughout the text as a dual paradigm. First of all it means all whose principal aim is pleasure. And the second idea is that culture it associated with nation or state, the idea of us differs from them. It was imperialism that fosters an equally complex significance. Imperialism possesses some powers over politicized, economic and socio cultural identity. The former colonized structures provoked the emergence of new and controversial form of imperialism. The imperialism employed singularity by the United States implies an indirect control over democratic values in deprived nations.

                In concluding the introduction Edward Said ultimately focuses on how culture especially through literary works perpetuates an acceptance and legitimacy of imperialism and its resistance to empire. At the end it establishes its relation to the human historical reality.  The introduction covers the idea that culture and imperialism is the book to link with intercultural communications. It seems to convey realities and unique implications, yet in reality this is not the case. It is a part of historical reality and hierarchical division in human experience (western and non western).

               In could be conclude that ,as we examine closely the ideas of Edward Said’s introduction on culture and imperialism we sometimes agree with it or sometimes we deny. Hence his ideas would lead us to examine and understand the world around us. It is to identify the complex identities of global periphery. It is visible that inter cultural communication; in which the non western voices continually changes, it shapes its subordination in all spheres of literature, art etc.

Bibliography

·          Said, W Edward. Culture And Imperialism. New York: Library of Congress Cataloging, 1994.

·              Wikipedia.

SREYA K T -ASSIGNMENT II

                CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM

                             -EDWARD W. SAID

Edward Said was a prominent literary critic, theorist as well as significant political figure. He was an eminent advocate of rights of Palestinians because he has a Palestinian origin. He has experienced the refined relationship between east and western imperialism. As a political activist, he examines the roots of imperialism in the Western culture and traces the relationship between culture and imperialism. Imperialism has always attracted the literary writers and political thinkers as a discipline. It was a major idea of thought among the nineteenth and twentieth century native and non-native writers. Different writers have different perception on imperialism. A lot of persons have already written on imperialism but Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism attracted everyone’s attention. It was read and criticized in all over the world and critics and reviewers considered it as a significant work. Edward Said stated that, his former work Orientalism was limited to Middle East and the book Culture and Imperialism wanted to describe a more general pattern of relationship between the modern West and its overseas territories, and he also said that this book is not a sequel of Orientalism, as it aims at something different.

In his work Culture and Imperialism, he advocates two types of culture. According to Said culture is “those practices which includes description, communication and representation that have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aim is pleasure”. He considers novel as a form of culture which is important in the formation of imperial attitudes, references and experiences. He believe that the novel Robinson Crusoe is a modern realistic novel, and it is about a European who creates fiefdom for himself on a distant, non- European island. The narrative power is very important to culture and imperialism. This kind of narratives make people stand up in the colonial world against imperial subjection. Likewise many Europeans and Americans were also evoked by these stories and their protagonists, and they fought for new narratives of equality and human equality.

Secondly the culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought. Culture is closely associated with aggression, with the nation or state; this differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’. In this sense culture is a source of identity, in which we are going back to culture and tradition. It includes intellectual and moral behavior that is opposed to liberal philosophies as multiculturalism and hybridity. In this sense culture is a sort of theatre where various political and ideological causes engage one another. The students from America, French or India who must taught and read their own national classics before they read others.

Edward Said sees the European writing on Africa, India, Ireland and other lands as part of European effort to rule distant lands. The colonial and post colonial fiction is central to his argument. These writings describe colonized lands as ‘mysterious lands’, inhabitated by uncivilized barbarians who know only the language of violence and deserved to be ruled. Here he will deal with parts of the British and French empires only and culture will be represented by a small number of novels and opera.

Edward Said bring up two novels in order to explain what he had in mind: Dickens’ Great Expectation and Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. Dickens’ Great Expectation is primarily a story about Pip’s vain attempt to become a gentle man, neither with hard work nor the aristocratic source of income required for such a role. Early in life he helps a condemned convict, Abel Magwitch, who after being transported to Australia, pays back Pip with huge sums of money through his lawyer. Magwitch appear again illegally in London after sometime. Now Pip rejects him as an unpleasant animal. After that a penal colony planned for rehabilitation of English criminals. According to Said this is a remarkable novel, but it concentrates on the narrative of London not Australia. He says that the prohibition placed on Magwicth’s return is not only penal but also imperial. These people could not be allowed to return back to England.

The second example is Conrad’s Nostromo; it is set in Central American Republic. It is independent but dominated by outside interests because of its immense silver mines. One of the characters in the novel named, Holroyd, the American financer tells Charles Gould, the British owner of a mine: “We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not. The world can’t help it- and neither can we, I guess”. This is the general idea of imperialists. Edward Said says that, the problem with Conrad is that he writes as a man whose Western view of non-Western world is so ingrained in as to blind him to other histories, other cultures and other aspirations. He will not understand that India, Africa, South Africa had their own culture; they are not completely controlled by the imperialists. In his view, Conrad was both imperialist and anti-imperialist.

He argues that source of World’s significant action and life was the West, rest of the world has no importance. They don’t have any life, history or integrity of its own. The drawback of the third world countries is that their inability to take any alternatives to imperialism. The world has changed since Conrad and Dickens due to imperialistic globalization. Now different cultures coming together and they are interdependent. The colonizers and the colonized do not exist in separate worlds. Towards the end of the introduction, he makes some other points too. The aim of this book is to trace the relationship between culture and historical experience. Here he is not giving the list of books and authors; instead he gives important and essential things only. He hopes that the readers and critics will use this for further enquiry on historical experience of imperialism. Here he has not discussed all the empires, he has focused on three imperial powers; which are British, French and American. Actually the book is about past and present, about ‘us’ and ‘them’. The current policies of America can be seen in the past. All those who wish for global domination have done the same things. Said concludes the introduction to culture and imperialism by saying that the book is an exile, and he relates the book to his personal experiences in the multicultural circumstances.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993.

 

Meera Paul - Assignment II

                          A Review on the introduction of Said's Culture and Imperialism

Edward Said, the renowned literary and cultural critic and author of numerous books, including Orientalism, explores the aspects of imperialism and the resistance against it in the book Culture and Imperialism. Written in 1993, this work is a collection of essays that enquires the general relationship between culture and empire by exploring the great works of the Western tradition - including Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Austen's Mansfield Park, Verdi's Aida, and Camus's L'Etranger. It is considered as a sequel to his own work – Orientalism, one of the important post-colonial texts, which but did not include the resistance of the colonized that resulted in the widespread decolonization of the Third World. When Orientalism was limited to the Middle East, here he tries to expand his arguments to describe a more general pattern of relationships between the modern metropolitan West and its overseas territories.

In the Africanist and Indianist discourses by the Europeans Said finds it striking the rhetorical representations of “the mysterious East” and the stereotypical presentations of the “African mind”. The colonialists and the imperialists considered the natives of the colonies as the ‘other’ who deserved to be ruled. These images have historically shaped the West’s negative conceptualization the “other” justifying its obligation to rule.

 Said, provides two meanings as to his use of the word “culture”. He says that, “it means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure” (Said xii). Here he focuses on how in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the cultural forms like the novel legitimized the western imperialist attitudes, references, and experiences. Westerners used the method of narratives to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history. The power of the creation of both positive and negative narrations constitutes the connection between culture and imperialism. When through some novels and travelogues the West tried to assert their superiority, that became fruitful to an extent, the grand narratives of enlightenment and emancipation resulted in the resistance that eventually led to the decolonization. He also attributes a refining and elevating element to the word “culture”. It acts as a reservoir of the society’s best that has been known and thought. Here culture acts as a source of identity. It creates differentiation between “us” and “them” and paved way for the ‘return’ to one’s own culture and tradition. These returns are more conservative and have produced many religious and nationalist fundamentalisms. Said points out the trouble in this idea of culture as it needs to venerate one’s culture and nation. This can be seen in the idea of “white man’s burden” deep rooted in the West. Even the writers like Carlyle, Ruskin, Thackeray and Dickens had shown a notion of belonging to the high culture in their works. He says that in Great Expectations (1861), “what Dickens envisions for Pip, being Magwitch’s “London gentleman”, is roughly equivalent to what was envisioned by English benevolence for Australia, one social space authorizing another” (Said xvi). He further adds that, “the prohibition placed on Magwitch’s return is not only penal but imperial: subjects can be taken to places like Australia, but they cannot be allowed a “return” to metropolitan space, which, as all Dickens’ fiction testifies, is meticulously charted, spoken for, inhabited by a hierarchy of metropolitan personages” (Said xvi). Britain’s imperial intercourse through trade and travel with the Orient emerges when Dickens settles everything with Australia, when Pip becomes a colonial businessman.

By the end of the nineteenth century, when imperialism gained its grip, writers like Conrad, Kipling, Gide and Loti wrote about it making it a central area of concern. Said cites Conrad’s Nostromo (1904) as an example which forecasts the unstoppable unrest and misrule of the Latin American republics. Conrad’s Portrayal of Holroyd is based on the rhetoric of the ‘New World Order’ – with its highly suggestive self-congratulation, unconcealed triumphalism and grave proclamation of responsibility - that the American government promoted after the Cold War. But these warnings were rarely reflected under the benevolence of the rhetoric of power. For Said, Conrad is a precursor of the Western view of the third world. But still he seems to be reluctant to acknowledge the existence of independent history or culture for countries like Africa and South America. He seems to be saying that independence is to be wished for them as long as it is the independence that the West approves of. It makes him both an imperialist and an anti-imperialist. He could see that the imperialist schemes such as ‘making the world safe for democracy’ could never succeed as in Said’s words, “they trap the planners in more illusions of omnipotence and misleading self-satisfaction, and because by their very nature they falsify the evidence” (Said xix).

Said says that the world has changed much from Dickens’ and Conrad’s time. By the globalization that was set in motion by the imperialist structures helped immigration to the West and these populations voice their need for their narratives to be heard. To ignore this intermingling and co-existence of the colonized and the colonizer, according to Said, would be to ignore the past in the last centuries. Although the imperialist motive was to bring the world together there was a separation created. What is relevant now is that this still pertains in the post-colonial countries.

Said focuses on individual works and studies them as a part of relationship between the culture and the empire since he believes that authors are shaping and have been shaped from the historical and social experiences. His focus is mainly on the British, French, and the American empires as he thinks that their long way of literary tradition has a remarkable part in the imperial quest as the narratives do. The idea of overseas rule also gives them a privileged status and Said who was born and brought up in these countries have also remained a native of the Arab world which gives him a sense of belonging to both sides. He says that out of the many things that went into the writing of this book the appeal to power by the metropolitan centers and a national interest in the affairs of lesser people is depressing. Whenever the natives raise their voice a disclaimer comes out saying, “we” are exceptional not imperial. Said hopes that a history of the imperial adventure in cultural terms might serve a deterrent purpose. As the imperialism advanced in the nineteenth century, the resistance to it also advanced and excluding the resistance will not be just. Said says that “Western imperialism and Third World nationalism feed off each other, but even at their worst they are neither monolithic or deterministic” (Said xxiv).

Today there has emerged a new intellectual and political conscience. After the publication of Orientalism there have been works like Lila Abu – Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments, Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam, that are feminists but not excluvists. They demonstrate the diversity and complexity of experiences that works behind the totalizing discourses. The binaries are dissolved and we see that the old authority could not simply be replaced by a new authority. It is about the multicultural cross border alignments. Said says that “it is those new alignments that now provoke and challenge the fundamentally static notion of ‘identity’ that has been the core of cultural thought during the era of imperialism”. The kind of identity thought where there is “us” and “them” has been the hallmark of the imperial cultures. We are still identified by the nation to which we belong to. We need to remember that because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated and unmonolithic. The ideological understanding of ‘identity’ is now entangled with the interests and ideas of various groups. They add defensive and sometimes paranoid nationalism to the fabric of education. Said addresses these uncritical and unthinking forms of education through this work and suggests an alternative. He considers universities as a Utopian space where vital issues like this are discussed and pondered over. For Said, if the current debates over multiculturalism point a way for political changes and changes how the minorities see themselves then it is not to be defended against. Finally he also makes a point that this book is an exile’s book.

Bibliography

      Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993.