Introduction to culture
and imperialism
Edward
Said was born in Jerusalem, He was a Christian Arab. He is a brilliant amalgam
of scholar, literary critic and political activist, examines the roots of
imperialism in the Western culture and traces the relationship between culture
and imperialism. Orientalism is his most influential work which represents the
western view of the Islamic world. It is limited to the Middle East only but it
covers the whole landscape occupied by 19th and 20th
century. In the introduction to culture and imperialism, Edward states that his
previous work orientalism was limited to Middle East, and in the present book
he wanted to describe a more general pattern of relationship between the modern
west and its overseas territories. This book he says is not a sequel of orientalism,
as it aims at something different. According to Edward there are two types of
attitudes towards culture. One that considers culture as a concept that
includes refining and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of best that
has been known and thought. The other is the aggressive, protectionist attitude
viewing culture as a source of identity that differentiates between “us” and
“them”, and power with which we can combat the influences of the foreign
cultures. Such an attitude is opposed to liberal philosophies, as
multiculturalism and hybridism, and has often leaded to religious and
nationalist fundamentalism. Culture conceived in this way becomes a protective
enclosure that divorces us from the everyday world.
The
introduction to culture and imperialism begin with the reference of his
masterpiece orientalism, published in 1978, and he says he got a clear idea
about the relation between culture and empire, while writing that book and
after the publication of the book he began to gather together some ideas about
the general relationship between culture and empire. Imperialism is a type of
advocacy of empire. Its name originated from the Latin word imperium which
means to rule over large territories. Imperialism is a policy of extending a
country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or
other means. Here he had tried to expand the arguments of the earlier boo to
describe a more general pattern of relationships between the modern
metropolitan west and its overseas territories. In the book orientalism he
explains the attitude of Europeans towards third world cultures and now also he
pointing to the same vision of European writings over Africa, India, Ireland,
Far East and other lands as part of European effort to rule distant lands.
These European writings present the colonised lands as ‘mysterious lands’
inhabited by uncivilized barbarians, who understood only the language of
violence, and deserved to be ruled. The Europeans see the third world peoples
are uncivilized and they aim to make them through their writings and show them
the bad implications of their culture. But the real thing is that they do not
represent their real culture, as an outsider they only see their tradition of
third world as worst practise but they do not see the reasons behind these
practices. These writings ignore the important aspect of the reality the native
people and their culture. Next in this introduction he says about his idea of
culture. In his view two things are particular 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 and
that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principle aims is pleasure.
Then he says about his focus that is on the modern Western empires of the 19th
and 20th centuries, he especially looks at the cultural forms like
the novel, he gives more importance to novels because it is the aesthetic
object whose connection to the expanding societies of Briton and France is
particularly interesting to study. He sees Robinson crusoe as the prototypical
modern realistic novel, and certainly not accidently it is about a European who
create a freedom for himself on a distant, non European island. He draws his
argument particularly from the novel because he believes that narrative is
crucial to my argument here, my basic point being that story are at the heart
of what explores and novelists say about strange regions of the world, they
also become the method colonized people use to assert there, an identity and
the existence of their own history. 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 of empire In time culture comes to be
associated, often aggressively, with the nation or the state, this
differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them’ almost always with some degree of xenophobia.
We can see it in India people also here the people from the north had a very
much bad impression on the people belong to south. They see their culture and
their colour prominent and they collectively call disgrace the southern as modern
culture in this sense is a source of identity. In the second sense culture is a
sort of theatre where various political and ideological causes engage one
another. Here a problem is emerging the third world peoples have an affinity
towards the other cultures they imitate the dressing style, food and way of style
from the European cultures. Edward Said says that first up all everyone should
admire their own culture. They should read their national classics first before
they read others and expect to appreciate and belong loyally, often
uncritically, to their nations and traditions while denigrating or fighting
against others. The trouble with the idea culture is that most of the people
not know about their own past, the cruelty of the practices such as slavery,
colonialist, and social oppression and empirical subjection, on one hand, and
the poetry, fiction, philosophy of the society that engages in these practices.
His analysis, the novels and other books because finds them estimable and
admirable works of art and learning, he refers to two
novels in order to explain what he had in mind: Dickens’ Great
Expectations, and Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. Dickens’ Great
Expectations is a primarily a story about Pip’s vain attempt to become
a gentleman. Early in life Pip helps a condemned convict, Abel Magwitch, who
after being transported to Australia, pays back Pip with huge sums of
money through his lawyer. Magwitch reappears illegally in London after
sometime. Pip does not welcome him and rejects him as an unpleasant criminal.
Magwitch is unacceptable being from Australia, a penal colony designed for
rehabilitation of English criminals. This is a remarkable novel, according to
Said, but the focus of the narrative is London, not Australia.
Dickens did not bother to discuss the plight of the convicts in Australia,
from where they could never return. In Said’s judgment the prohibition placed
on Magwitch’s return is not only penal but also imperial. These ugly criminals
could not by allow returning to England-the land of decent people.
Nostomo the second example is set in a central American
republic, independent, and dominated at the same time by outside interests
because of its immense silver mine, and it would be incomplete to Conrad’s
great work simply as a happening in 20th century Latin America, with
its string of unified fruit companies, colonels, liberation forces and American
financed mercenaries. Conrad sees the world which is dominated by Atlantic West
his novel embodies the same paternalistic arrogance of imperialism that it
mocks in characters like Gould and Holroyd. Due to the colonialisation Africa
and America do not have a history or culture independently. Through this novel
Conrad allows the reader to see that imperialism is a system. In this novel 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 we can, i guess’. This is the general thinking of the
imperialists. Much of the rhetoric of ‘the new world order” with its self
assumed responsibility of civilizing the world, seems to be originated from
this thinking. Due t the globalization process set in motion by modern
imperialism a new set of population emerged from the non while immigrant
peoples and they voice their narrative to be heard. The history of imperialism
and its cultures each now be studied as neither monolithic nor reductively
compartmentalized, separate, distinct now the wish to liberation, independent,
to speak freely and without the burden of unfair domination is emerged.
In his argument the great cultural archive is where the
intellectual and aesthetic investments in overseas dominion are made. One of
imperialism’s achievements was to bring the world closer together, and most of
us should now regard the historical experience of empire as a common one. In
our Medias and also the news papers there is a tendency to give much importance
to British family and their celebrations Their private life is portrayed with
as much interest like the British even though we have no interest to know it.
He mainly focus on the individual works, and see them as great
products of the creative or interpretive imagination, and then to show them as
part of the relation between culture and empire. He do not discus about several
empires like Ottoman and the Spanish and the Portuguese these omissions is not
due to the domination central Asia and Eastern Europe , Istanbul’s rule over
the Arab world, Portugal’s over Angola and Mozambic, and Spain’s domination in
both the pacific and Latin America have been either benign or any less
imperialist. The British, French, and American imperial experience is that it
has a unique coherence and a special cultural centrality. America began as an
empire during the 19th century, but it was in the second half of the
20th after the decolonization of the British and French empires,
that it directly followed its two great predecessors. In these imperialist
countries England is the greatest Almost two centuries France was in
competition with it. It is due to the unbroken tradition of novel writing.
Western imperialism and third world nationalism feed off each other, but even
at their worst they are neither monolithic nor deterministic. Besides, culture
is not monolithic either, and is not the exclusive property of East or West, or
of small groups of men or women. We begin to sense that old authority cannot
simply be replaced by new authority, but that new alignment made across
borders, types, nations, and essences are rapidly coming into view, and 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.
In the last part of the Introduction to
‘Culture and Imperialism’ Said makes some other points about the book. The
purpose of his book, he says, is so trace the relationship between culture,
aesthetic forms and historical experience. His aim is not to give a catalogue
of books and authors, “Instead, I have tried to look at what I consider to be
important and essential things.” My hope is that readers and critics of this
book will use it to further the lines of enquiry and arguments about the
historical experience of imperialism put forward in it.” Moreover, he has not
discussed all the empires. He has focused on three imperial powers: British,
French, and American. This book is about past and present, about ‘us’ and ‘them’,
he says. Said says that the origin of current American policies can be seen in
the past. All powers aspiring for global domination have done .the same things.
There is always the appeal to power and national interest in running the
affairs of ‘lesser peoples’ and the same destructive zeal when the going goes
rough. America made the same mistake in Vietnam and Middle
East. The worst part of the whole exercise has been the collaboration of
intellectuals, artists and journalists with these practices. Said hopes that a
history of imperial adventure rendered in cultural terms might serve some
deterrent purpose.
Said makes it clear
that the criticism on imperialism does exempt the aggrieved colonized people
from criticism. The fortunes and misfortunes of nationalism, of what can be
called separatism and nativism, do not always make a flattering story. Narrow
and dogmatic approach to culture can be as dangerous to culture as is
imperialism. Secondly, culture is not the property of the East or the West. He
also pointing to multiculturalism he says the present debates over
multiculturalism is hardly like to be lebanonization. The last point he
portrayed is that this book is an exile’s book.
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