ANJANA PP- ASSIGNMENT II

ANJANA PP- ASSIGNMENT II

            A REVIEW ON SAID’S INTRODUCTION TO CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM

           Culture and Imperialism is actually a lecture by Edward Said. It is an important book as far as the post colonial reading are concerned. The book radiates his concepts on two terms ‘culture’ and ‘imperialism.’ The very introduction of the book written by Said himself, gives us a elaborated kind of explanation that leads us to the rest of the text. He starts with the creation of the text. The thoughts that came after the production of Orientalism led him into a series of lecture conducted in the Universities of United States, Canada, and England. The main argument of the lecture, that constitutes the core of the text. He found the fact that there are several studies had happened on the ideas of Orientalism, this has made a major shift in academic thought that was limited to Middle East. He needs to expand his ideas so that he describing “a general pattern of relationship between the modern metropolitan West and its overseas territories. He had also used non- Middle Eastern materials for writing the text. That includes European writing on Africa, India, and Parts of the Far East, Australia, and the Caribbean etc. for said these discourses seems as a part of the general European effort to rule distant lands and people.

                  When analyzing these texts ha says that one keep on confronting the grant narratives on the “mysterious East”, as well as the stereotypes of the third world nation. We can see the stereotypes of Africans, Indians, Irish, Jamaican, or even Chinese. This is what he already mentioned in his previous book Orientalism too. The Western representation of the third world nation’s civilization as something barbaric and primitive. And also the need for taking punishments when ‘they’ misbehaved or become rebellious. The West people have the notion that “they”( people from third world nation) mainly understood only force or violence. Said says that the writers propagating the idea that “they” are not like “us”, and for that reason deserved to be ruled. Said says that the emergence of some sort of resistance among the non- European world was an important change. He reclaim the fact that these kinds of resistance was the response to the western domination and that mass movement all around the world resulted in the decolonization itself. While talking about the kinds of resistance Said never stick upon the armed resistance but also according to him, a kind of cultural resistance also there all around the world. “There was always” he says “some form of active resistance, and in the over whelming majority of cases, the resistance finally went out.” He describes two different factors in the resistance. The first one is the general worldwide pattern of imperial culture and second is the historical experience of resistance against empire.     

                 Culture is very important in his both books- Orientalism, and Culture and Imperialism. Before he enters into the term he clarifies the term in his own way- the way that word seems to him. He had given two meanings for the term ‘culture.’ In which the first one is nothing but the whole “practices, like the art of description, communication, and representation, and have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realm and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principle aim is pleasure.” While giving this it is important that he gives importance to the modern Western empires of both nineteenth and twentieth century. His major area of study culture is on the cultural forms. He focused on novels here. He believed that these cultural forms are very important in creating imperial attitudes, references and describing the experiences. The reason behind selecting novels as its study material is that novels are very much connected to the expanding societies of Britain and France. Even in the introduction too Said is trying to give instances for what he is going to discuss. Here he had given an example of the novel Robinson Crusoe. This novel is considered to be a best example for prototypical modern realistic novel. Even in this realistic novel too we can see that the protagonist, who is a European and he trapped in a lonely island and the story travels with how he made a fiefdom in that distant non European land. According to said there are many studies had held on the narrative fictions but in fact a little study that held on its position in the history and world of empire. Narrative is important in this book also. The description of these narratives is very crucial for his argument too. Said believes that “stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelist say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history.”

                In an overall analysis, most of the narratives are based on the land imperialism. The issues related to this land were reflected, contested, and even for a time decides narrative. There should be a power to narrative and also there is a power to block other narratives from emerging etc are very much important in culture and imperialism, and that narrative itself make the main connection between them.

                   Said’s second way of looking at culture includes a refining and elevating elements. According to him it is each society’s reservoir of the bests. This is what differentiate people- differentiate “us” from “them.” This is in the sense that people from the west are not like people from the East. In this case culture become a tool for identification. Recently a going back to culture and tradition had happened, this might be a part of decolonization. In the formally colonized world, these “returns” have produced varieties of religious and nationalist fundamentalist. In this second sense of culture according said “is a sort of theater where various political and ideological causes engage one another.” He also mentions some problems regarding this dimension of culture. The problem with this is that as a result of this the humanists are unable to make a connection between the prolonged and sordid cruelty of some bad practices of colonizers such as slavery, colonialist and racial oppression and imperial subjection on the one side and in the other side the poetry, fiction, philosophy of the society that engages in these practices etc.  He shares some difficulties which had confronted him while working on this book. It is a widely accepted notion that some races are inferior and subjected. That idea can see even in the writings of some writers those whom Said admires.

                   He says that culture conceived in this way can become a protective enclosure. The criteria said has taken to analyze the literary texts are; all of them are admirable in the same time estimable works of art. The second reason is that it is very difficult to connect them with the imperial process in which they are directly or indirectly a part of. It is a practice that ignoring their participation in what was an unquestioned reality in their societies. According to Said this ignoring factor is what we want to understand from them. He had given a great narrative analysis of Dicken’s Great Expectations. But I this kind of a large explanation about a text is unnecessary in an introduction.

                   By the end of nineteenth century the empire was not in its disappeared form. It was moreover evident everywhere. But this was not the case of the subjects of the writers such as Conrad, Cliping, Gide, and Loti. His second example he given is a Western nation which is dominated but at the same time an interested area for the outsiders. He speaks of the work of Joseph Conrad. He is talking about the Latin American republic. most of the governmental amendments that took in the society is almost described in the novels, especially in Conrad’s texts. Said says that “yet it is a rhetoric whose most damning characteristics is that it has been used before, not just once but with deafeningly repetitive frequency in the modern period, by British, the French, the Bulgarians, the Japanese, the Russian, and now the Americans.”

               It is a well known fact that Conrad is a precursor of the western views of third world countries. Said has very deliberately contemn Conrad for his very objective kind of view on third world nation from the point of view of a mere west. Said accuse Conrad that his is very much blind to other histories about the non western nations. This was the same accusation put forth by African writer Chinua Achebe against Conrad’s The Heart of the Darkness. According to Achebe, the representation of Africans in Conrad’s text is very insufficient. This fact can be include with the very nature of Conrad as mentioned by said in this part. Conrad’s view about the third world is very much reflected in the characters he creates too. Said also shows his concern about the growing intellectual group who never suspect Conrad in the way Said described us. According to them Conrad’s works sometimes “making the world safe for democracy.” Said has given some a list of writers and their attitude or the perspective towards native people and the westerners. In which we can see a gradual deconstruction of the perception of non western people. It was actually a deconstruction of the western representation of non- western world.

              Said says that Conrad wrote by criticizing and reproducing the imperial ideology of his time, in that way we are capable of judgments on all these. Said claims that, the condition has changed a lot. The age of Conrad and Dickines has changed. The European people now very used with the non- European people. The immigration itself is the reason behind this change. The Europeans have to face the others everyday basis, and it is an interesting observation from Said that, the Europeans are forced to read the narratives from the non Western nations. The globalization process that makes this difference that both colonized and colonizers are co- exists in a same place. The overlapping of the cultures also happens through this.

                     “the great cultural archive” Said argue “is where the intellectual and aesthetic investments in overseas dominion are made.” Said has stressing on the fact that imperialist agenda was not hidden, and their culture was not invisible. There is a sufficient clarity in the culture’s major lines. Said is seems to talk from the part of imperialists. He did an attempt to appreciate imperialist’s achievements- that they could bring the world together. Even though he is accepting the fact that, the distinction between the West and the non- west is an unjust one. He says that most of us should now regard the historical experience of empire as a common one.

               It is good to give a particular method of the book. He approach the individual works from the perspective of a work of art and deals with the aesthetic part of the texts, in the same time it focuses on the relation of these texts with the culture and imperialism. In the introduction itself he claims his argument of the book that he says “I do not believe that authors are mechanically determined by ideology, class, or economic history…authors are very much in the history of his societies, shaping and shaped by history and their social experience in different measures. He also took bail for the convenient omission of some other imperialisms such as the Russian, the Austro Hungarian, the Ottoman, The Portuguese and Spanish etc. he say that these imperialisms are not at all less danger than that of the West, but the Western imperialism has a unique coherence and a special cultural centrality. There are another reasons behind the selection of these countries selection. The vastness of their expansion of their territory into distant lands, and it is important that they had a privileged status also. His personal reason also there in the selection of these countries as a study material. He had also given explanation to this reason.

                  He talking in a very informal way, and he presents his hopes in constructing a history of imperial adventures rendered in cultural terms. He also assured the fact that in analyzing the imperialist’s history the nature of colonized is not escaped from the criticism. The history doesn’t mean that a flattering story. It should comprise the fortunes and misfortunes of nationalism. The story of separatism and nativism should also come under consideration. Towards the end of the introduction, he is talking about the emerging writings from the part of women. According to his it seem something in a very deconstructive in nature.

             He makes a valid observation that “instead we begin to sense that old authority cannot simply be replaced by new authority, but that new alignment made across borders, types, nation, and essence are rapidly coming into view, and it is those new alignment 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 ideological concerns are not in a free form, it is very much connected to the interests and agendas of various groups. So we are not capable of determining something about these things. The idea Said has put forth for reading history is somewhat very interesting and the same time very important. There should be a reading from two opposing parts of a same incident. That makes us more enlighten than that of hearing a one sided history. All cultures are entangled in one another no one culture is free from another culture. It is not pure, and single, but it is very much hybrid, heterogeneous as well as extraordinarily differentiated.

                 Said’s concern going into the educational field, the recent issues like non- Americanism and the threat to Arabism. He talking about how this factors affects the educational field and how the educational institutes taught to venerate and celebrate the uniqueness of their tradition. Said seriously looking on this and also suggests an alternative to this issue, a patient alternative. According to him the Universities have the responsibility to took up this issue and investigate on it and analyze the issue with full seriousness. A kind of exploration of history should be there. This is a very good observation from the part of Said is that “narratives of emancipation and enlightenment in their strongest form were also narratives of integration not separation.”

                  The claim of Said that this book is a “an exile’s book,” is seems to be a kind of bailing that he took before he really entering into the text. Eighteen pages long introduction is seems sometimes deviate from reading. The matters that includes in the rest of the text is seems to be already revealed by the introduction itself.  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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