POSTCOLONIAL ENGLISHES

SUBVERTING LANGUAGE TO REINVENT IDENTITY

Marta Cristina Faras Taller Las nuevas literaturas en ingls 2009

LANGUAGE
[...]the distinction between English and english has been between the claims of a powerful centre and a multitude of intersecting usages designated as peripheries []shaped by an oppressive discourse of power [] They are the result of the energies uncovered by the political tension between the idea of normative code and a variety of regional usages. (Ashcroft, B. The Empire Writes Back, 2002, 8) 2

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
A counter-discourse to dismantle Eurocentric literary hegemonies A weapon against marginality and oppression A breaking down with stereotypes A reinvention of communal and individual identity 3

Writing back
as an act of agency from the periphery to the centre (metropolis) against mainstream culture to celebrate difference and multiplicity: plurality of narratives, viewpoints and shifts a subversive tool to resist oppression 4

Why English and englishes?

The norm (SE) and the appropiation and hybridisation of the norm A site for struggle and recreation An in-between space to articulate the voice of the diaspora the dislocated, the displaced and the culturally denigrated A tool to reveal contact zones of culture clash and power relations in conflict A means to raise awareness about key concepts: otherness, displacement, dislocation, hybridity and difference 5

Deconstructing evidence
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
(Stockton, California, 1940)
Key elements: Identity crisis Antithesis In an in-between space Clash of values Marginalia Articulateness / Silence - Gender Her statement
I have various ways of melding the Chinese and Western experiences. One thing is that I will say aloud conversations in Chinese, and at the same time I am on the computer or the typewriter writing and translating with my hands. My hands are writing English, but my mouth is speaking Chinese. Somehow I am able to write a language that captures the Chinese rythms and tones and images, getting that power into English. I am working on some kind of fusion language that has Chinese tonalities and accents. [] I feel that I had to translate a whole Eastern culture and bring it to the West, then bring the two cultures together seamlessly. That is how one makes the Asian American culture.

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

Her writing
The Chinese I know hide their names; sojourners take new names when their lives change and guard their real names in silence. (p. 5) Walking erect (knees straight, toes pointed forward, not pigeon-toed, which is Chinese-feminine) and speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself Americanfeminine. (p. 11) (No Name Woman) 7

AMY TAN
(Oakland, California, 1952)
Key elements: Identity crisis Antithesis In an in-between space Clash of values Silence and revelation Displacement - Gender Her statement Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large group of people [] I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her [] all the forms of Standard English I did not use at home with my mother. [] Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, full of observations and imagery. [] I later decided I should envision a reader for the stories I would write. And this reader was my mother. [] So I began to write stories using all the englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke to my mother, the English she used with me, my translation of her Chinese, her internal language, the rythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts []. 8

AMY TAN
(Oakland, California, 1952)

Her writing My mother was right, I am becoming Chinese. (p. 267) Aiyi and my father speak the Mandarin dialect from their childhood, but the rest of the family speaks only Cantonese of their village. I understand only Mandarin but cant speak it that well. [] And they stop only occasionally to talk to the rest of us, sometimes in Cantonese, sometimes in English. (p. 275) Your name also special, he says. [] Not just good, its something pure, essential, the best quality. (p. 282) How can I describe to them in my broken Chinese about our mothers life? Where should I begin? (p. 288) (Jing-mei Woo. A Pair of Tickets) 9

CHINUA ACHEBE
(Ogidi, Nigeria, 1930)
Key elements: Clash of cultures Hybridity Identity Otherness The assertion of difference Displacement Dislocation Minor narratives Contact zones His statement Art is, and always was, at the service of man. Our ancestors created their myths and told their stories for a human purpose. Any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose. The English of the African will have to be a new English, still in communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings. My revolutionary mission is to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self- abasement. Language is a weapon and we use it, and theres no point in fighting it.

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CHINUA ACHEBE
(Ogidi, Nigeria, 1930)
His writing

Ikemefuna had an endless stock of folk tales. Even those which Nwoye knew already were told with a knew freshness and the local flavor of a different clan. (p. 35)
When they had all gathered, the white man began to speak to them. He spoke through an interpreter who was an Ibo man, though his dialect was different and harsh to the ears of Mbanta. Many people laughed at his dialect and the way he used words strangely. (p. 144) The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. (p. 208) (Things Fall Apart) 11

J. M. COETZEE
(Cape Town, 1940)
Key elements: The colonising culture as a minority Clash of cultures In-betweeness Contact zones Struggle for power

His statement
Prose, fortunately, does not demand emotion. "Our history is such that all of a sudden ordinary people are confronted with major decisions in a way that ordinary people are usually not faced by. I think South Africa in the past 40 years has been a place where people have been faced with really huge moral debts." Coetzee personifies the split personality of whites in South Africa. [] while English then became his primary language, he remained fluent in Afrikaans, a language with its origins in Dutch settlers. And he has sometimes defended Afrikaners against the stereotype that they are uniformly racist and, as he once put it, "notably intolerant in their attitudes, heartless in their conduct or indolent in their daily life." 12

J. M. COETZEE
(Cape Town, 1940)
His writing He would not mind hearing Petruss story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mould of English, Petruss story would come out arthritic, bygone. (p. 117) (Disgrace) 13

Merle Collins
(Grenada, 1950)
Key elements: Appropriation and hybridisation Culture clash Identity Writing from displacement Contact zones / contact languages (creole) Her statement
My grandmother knew details about William the Conqueror which would perhaps not have been taught in English schools and perhaps not even in my grandmothers day.
[]I feel that any colonial people have to have a revolutionary future in order to really move forward for themselves. In order to be ourselves, we have to throw out a lot of what has been given. 14

Merle Collins
(Grenada, 1950)

Her writing
Mind emptied and filled. [mind] skillfully twisted/ by a sin/ unequaled by Eves. Grannie din remember no /Carib Chief/No Asante King []. (The Lesson) Wey dey so frighten o de power/ in the deep spaces/ behind our watching faces/ dat they shout / NO AFRICAN LANGUAGES PLEASE!/ Its against the law! Every time we lif we foot to do we own ting/ to fight we own fight/ dey tell us how British we British [] (No Dialects Please)

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Grace Nichols
(Georgetown, Guyana, 1950)
Key elements: Appropriation and Hybridisation Migration Displacement- Identity Breaking down with stereotypes Culture Clash Her statement

As long as you get the rhythm right, the poem works. You have to
write for the ear and hear the music... [Creole] an integral part of my voice and how I speak. Grace moves seamlessly between so-called Standard English and Creole in all her writing, drawing on influences as disparate as African rhythms, Caribbean folklore and English nursery rhymes. Theres always the intermingling of the two; Caribbean and English culture both influence each other in my poetry.

I like poetry where the landscape still features.

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Grace Nichols
(Georgetown, Guyana, 1950)

Her writing
*Repetition of the words out of and into help to link past and present. (1st and 2nd stanzas) *Personification of Africa as a mother (Out of Africa of the suckling) (Out of Africa of the first rains, the first mother) *The voice of the African people (sarcastic tone) about stereotypes (baleful tourist glare / happy Creole so-called mentality) * Symbols to create separate images of each country (the dryness of Africa, the tropical Caribbean and the dampness of England) (Out of Africa)

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Maya Angelou (St Louis, Missouri, 1928)

Her statement

The honorary duty of human being is to love. I am human and nothing human can be alien to me. 18

Maya Angelou (St Louis, Missouri, 1928)

Her writing
STILL I RISE *Contrast between the 1st person persona (I, marginal and denigrated) and its appeal to a 2nd person (an empowered you) *A call to assertiveness and pride for blacks *An outcry against prejudice, humiliation and submission *A parallel drawn between slavery, racism and drug addiction 19

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (Topeka, Kansas, 1917-2000)

Her statement on the poem We Real Cool
[The seven pool players] are dropouts, or at least theyre in the poolroom when they should possibly be in school, since theyre probably young enough, or at least those I saw were when I looked in a poolroom.[] Theyre a little uncertain of the strength of their identity. The We [] I say it rather softly because I want to represent their basic uncertainty []. The form of this poem was determined by my feeling about these boys. 20

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (Topeka, Kansas, 1917-2000)

Her writing
*Ambivalence toward the players: tragic pathos (die soon) and existential freedom (meter, epigraph, alliteration and repetition)
*Climax and brevity of existence *1st person persona choosing defiance and nonconformity We Real Cool 21

Benjamin Zephaniah
(British Jamaican, 1958)

His statement
My mission is to fight the dead image of poetry in academia, and to take it everywhere even to those people who traditionally shun books.

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Benjamin Zephaniah
(British Jamaican, 1958)

ABOUT The British

Directed by Najma Bhatti at Square Zero, The British was shot in Spalding and features nine teenagers cast from local colleges, of mixed ethnicity, reciting his poem over a slap up meal.Bhatti cleverly highlights the essence of The British illustrating just how weve become such a wonderful melting pot of cultures, uniqueness and diversity. Although well versed with the challenges of live action, the shoot was not without risk. [] The biggest challenge was of course in the timing, to get one continual shot with 9 teenagers all saying their lines perfectly, said Bhatti but the kids were just fantastic and inspiring to work with and really brought the poem to life which is what it was all about.
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ACROSS LANGUAGES
PAINTING BACK THE EMPIRE A birds eye view on Postcolonial Contemporary Art

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MAIN THEMES

Art as a political weapon against established power structures Globalization Identity Hybridity Intertexuality (parody, irony and pastiche) Deconstruction of the European canon Appropriation and multiplicity of larger narratives Power contestation for cultural space (urban art)

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MAIN TECHNIQUES

Urban art (interventions) Complex collages (visual and textual representations) Set-like presentations (visual dramas) Mixed media Recycled elements, fabric and other materials Oil on canvas 26

CONTEMPORARY CHINESE-AMERICAN ART

ZHANG HONGTU

Ping Pong Mao (1993)

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Quaker Oats Mao (1987)

ZHANG XIAOGANG A BIG FAMILY (1995)

ZHANG XIAOGANG A BIG FAMILY

Based around the concept of family: immediate, extended and societal Based on family photos from the Cultural Revolution period and European surrealism The notion of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism An endless repetition of imagined forebears and progenitors, all similar and distinguished by minute differences

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART MATATU ART IN NAIROBI

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MATATU ART

A key to understand Kenya: minivans and buses, contradictory vehicles of freedom fighters transmitting oppression downwards because of their rebellion against traffic rules. Misspellings and coinages in words and catchphrases: `Dj vu We still lovin`it No one like U Truss Blaque tattoos Contagious-

YINKA SHONIBARE MBE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA (2000)

Late Victorian England and its territorial expansion into Africa during the 1880s. A historic gathering of European world leaders claiming their stake around a large map of Africa Hunger for a slice of this magnificent cake

The Victorian Philanthropists Parlour

Installation on 19th Century Britains wealth Relationship between colonial haves and colonized have nots: the repeated motif of a black soccer player on the parlors wallpaper Setlike presentation: British love for costume dramas
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CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN ART Hew Locke El Dorado

The Caribbean and its geopolitical relations with Europe and North Americas tension A tension between containment and expansion

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Arhur Simms and Peter Orner Globe: The Veldt (2004)

Hybridity Personal and family identity Evoking memory, loss and crosscultural ties Spiritual and physical journeys

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Alex Burke The Spirit of Caribbean (2006)

47 dolls made of fabric and other materials A questioning of collective memory through historical narratives and a world of odds and ends Caribbean identity building up on a field of ruins, fertilizing a field of corpses, patching things up and making a treasure of nothing.

BUILDING BRIDGES

Since 1492, the world is a mosaic that shows the effects of colonialism. The Spanish Caribbean and South America, among other regions, are no exception to this control of European colonial powers. No matter the colonizing language, the aim is the celebration of difference and the reinvention of identity.
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LUIS PALS MATOS (Guyana, Puerto Rico, 1898-1959) DANZA NEGRA

Calab y bamb. Bamb y calab. El Gran Cocoroco dice: tu-cu-t. La Gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-t. Es el sol de hierro que arde en Tombuct. Es la danza negra de Fernando Poo. El cerdo en el fango grue: pru-prupr. El sapo en la charca suea: cro-cro-cr. Calab y bamb. Bamb y calab. Rompen los junjunesen furiosa u. Los gongos trepidan con profunda o. Es la raza negra que ondulando va en el ritmo gordo de mariyand. Llegan los botucos a la fiesta ya. Danza que te danza la negra se da. Calab y bambu. Bamb y calab. El gran Cocoroc dice: tu-cu-t. La gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-t. Pasan tierras rojas, islas de betn: Hait, Martinica, Congo, Camern; las papiamentosas antillas del ron y las patualesas islas del volcn, que en el grave son del canto se dan. Calab y bamb. Bamb y calab. Es el sol de hierro que arde en Tombuct. Es la danza negra de Fernando Poo. El alma africana que vibrando est en el ritmo gordo de mariyand. Calab y bamb. Bamb y calab. El Gran Cocoroc dice: tu-cu-t. La Gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-t.

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NICOLS GUILLN (Camagey, Cuba, 1902-1989) CANTO NEGRO

Yambamb, yambamb! Repica el congo solongo, repica el negro bien negro; congo solongo del Songo baila yamb sobre un pie. Mamatomba, serembe cuseremb. El negro canta y se ajuma, el negro se ajuma y canta, el negro canta y se va. Acuememe seremb, a yamb, a. Tamba, tamba, tamba, tamba, tamba del negro que tumba; tumba del negro, caramba, caramba, que el negro tumba: yamba, yamb, yambamb!

Tamba, tamba, tamba, tamba, tamba del negro que tumba; tumba del negro, caramba, caramba, que el negro tumba: yamba, yamb, yambamb!

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