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.
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