NonWestern World Lit Lecture 1 The Tempest Heart

Non-Western World Lit. Lecture #1 The Tempest Heart of Darkness Chapter 1 of Loomba

The Tempest n Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, was overthrown, years ago, by his brother and the King of Naples. These two stranded him on a deserted island, with his only progeny, Miranda. The play is about how Prospero gets his revenge. But, it’s also about how Miranda and Prospero interact with the “natives, ” those who inhabit the island before them.

The Tempest n n Prospero and Miranda find two beings on the island when they land, both of whom Prospero very quickly enslaves. One is Ariel, a spirit, whose powers Prospero uses throughout the play. The other is Caliban, an indigenous inhabitant of the island, who initially embraced Prospero and Miranda, showed them where they could find food and water, helped them to establish themselves, but then turned bitter when he realized their disdain for him, their distaste for his appearance and their dismissal of him because of the differences in their “knowledges. ” (The island their appearance 25 -26, Prospero’s view of things, 26, Miranda’s view of things 26, Caliban, again 26 -27)

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad Marlow and his friends sit on the deck of a ship docked in the mouth of the Thames and Marlow tells the story of his trip to Africa. n One of the most famous quotes from the novel is this one: The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretence but an idea, and an unselfish belief in the idea – something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . . ” What do you think Marlow could intend by this “idea” ? n

Heart of Darkness n n Marlow describes how, as a young man, he decides that he needs to see Africa, so he gets his aunt who has connections in Belgium, to find him a commission. His task is to steam down the Congo River to find Kurtz, an agent for the company who has been very successful in sending back ivory, but who has suddenly stopped. Marlow encounters all kinds of bizarre behavior on his way to Kurtz: inefficient officers of the company, people who hold to westernized patterns of behavior in spite of circumstances that make them untenable, dying natives, abuse. At the end of his trip, he finds Kurtz, who has “gone native. ” He’s become the god-ruler of a group of natives, setting himself up as deity-king. He’s quite ill, and eventually dies.

Heart of Darkness n n Before he dies, though, he leaves Marlow with two things. One is a treatise on the Suppression of Savage Customs. In this treatise, Kurtz surmises that the natives must look on whites as supernatural beings. He continues, “By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded. ” The narrator is carried away by the beauty of Kurtz’s words, his “burning, noble words. The manuscript concludes with a postscript in Kurtz’s handwriting: “Exterminate all the brutes!” How does this connect with that famous line we looked at earlier?

Heart of Darkness n The second thing Kurtz leaves Marlow are some haunting final words, “The horror, the horror. ” We discover that Kurtz participated in cannibalistic rites, that he had “enemy natives beheaded and stuck their heads on poles outside of his home base, that he had a native lover. One critic wonders about the meaning of Kurtz’s last words: n n n Is Kurtz reforming in death and claiming that colonialism and the exploitation accompanying it is horrible? Or is he horrified at his own actions, his own descent into savagism? Or is he horrified at how his actions will be received back at home?

Heart of Darkness n n At the end of the story, Marlow goes to meet Kurtz’s “intended. ” She asks him what Kurtz’s last words were and Marlow can’t tell her; he lies and says that his last word was her name. To justify his lie, he writes, “It would have been to dark – too dark altogether [to tell her the truth]. ” How does this connect to that famous quote we looked at in the beginning? One of the critical questions critics ask of the novel is what is the Heart of Darkness? n The heart of man, the heart of Africa, the evil of colonization?

Your Comments on the Text n Everybody read or summarize some part of your response.

Main Points of Loomba Reading 1 -19 Defining the Terms n No matter what else happened in terms of settlement or trade or war or restructuring of cultural and economic conditions, all types of colonialist movements produced an economic imbalance in favor of the colonizing nation. This imbalance was the “midwife that assisted at the birth of European capitalism. ”

Two definitions of Imperialism and Colonialism n Temporal: n n n Colonialism: take over of territory, appropriation of material resources, exploitation of labor and interference with cultural and political structures. Imperialism: the globalization of colonialism as an economic and/or political system Spatial: n n n Imperialism: the origination of ideas from the metropolis, the process leading to domination and control. Colonialism: the result of the implementation of these ideas in the colonies. This makes sense of terms like “American Imperialism – because you don’t need actual colonies to practice imperialist moves.

Postcolonialism – Some problems with the “POST” 1. 2. Is any country that has been colonized ever POST colonial? Can a country escape the legacy of colonialism? How do we define POST temporally? Or, when does POSTcolonialism begin? With the ending of the American Revolution in 1776? With the ending of the major liberation movements in Africa in the 1970’s? Does current American, Korean, Soviet, etc. imperialism, mean that we’re still in a colonial age, not a postcolonial one?

Problems of heterogeneous POSTs 1. 2. 3. How does postcolonial South African independence and the establishment of a white government differ from postcolonial Kenyan independence and the overthrow of a white government by indigenous rebellion? How is the postcolonial situation different in South America and the Caribbean, where different racial and ethnic populations “mixed, ” than it is in Liberia, where liberated American slaves began settling in 1822, mixing with indigenous people and immigrants to Liberia from other African countries? How is a global term like postcolonialism supposed to work to define both the white Canadian relationship to the “mother country, ” and the Indian outcasts’ relationship to that same “mother country? ”

A Solution n Perhaps the best way to define postcolonial is not by focusing on the POST, but by focusing on the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, perhaps postcolonialism should be defined as the struggle between the colonizer and the colonized or as the struggle between imperialist metropolitan centers and the dominated or exploited outposts.

Some problems, too, with Pre-colonial n What does pre-colonial mean? Does it mean untainted by colonial influences? Is it possible to return to such a past? Why are romanticizing and idealizing tendencies in this direction dangerous?

Problems with the Pre-Colonial n n All societies change and always have. To focus on the PRE, to speak of the possibility of the recovery of a precolonial state is simplify and essentialize in way that negates and erases the complicated nature of precolonial societies. It implies that they wouldn’t have evolved, wouldn’t have “modernized” in some way if left untouched by the “civilized” West. It is also possible to over simplify the definition of precolonial by focusing on COLONIAL. To say that cultures can never be the same after they have been colonized, to say that they can now only be defined in terms of the colonial or from the perspective of the colonizer, erases long and complex histories of places and people before colonial incursions.

What a good postcolonial thinker does well. . . n n The trick or key to being a postcolonial scholar is to hold the generalizing terms of theory in mind at the same time, and with equal weight, as she or he holds the particulars of each nation/peoples’ circumstances in mind. Neither theory nor the particular story should subsume the other. We need both to enable us to come to an understanding.

Theory/Practice n When we apply the idea or theory of oppression to two very different situations, say the situation of an African American woman from the U. S. and an African woman living in Sudan today (who is subject to attack and molestation by her Muslim neighbors), we get similar theoretical stories of diasporic displacement, discrimination and sexual abuse. However, the African American is speaking as a citizen of one of the most powerful countries in the world, from which she gains many benefits in terms of education, social programs, a fairly well-developed justice system, etc. , whereas, the African woman is faced with starvation, no systemic enforced legal due process, little or no formal education, no social programs or relief from government intervention.

Postcolonial Methodology n Theoretically, they tell the same story. In terms of the particulars, however, very little looks the same. Balancing the multiplicity of stories with the unifying nature of theoretical explanations is the key to being a good postcolonial scholar.