ENU22013-1

Hilary Term 2020

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

School of English

INTRODUCTION TO POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE AND THEORY

Take-Home Exam (off-line)

Eliza Meller

18331695

Wordcount: 1924

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Section A

3. Analyse this photograph with reference to Orientalism.

The photograph presented below is a portrait of a veiled woman wearing an intricate

mask covering her nose and the bottom half of her face; she stares fixedly away from the camera;

attached to the picture is a label reading: “Arab woman”. An Orientalist interpretation of this

image would be that this woman’s stare is of deep sexual longing and she is enslaved by an

exotic, primitive culture in the Middle East that brutalizes women. Apart from the vague

deduction of her ethnicity, this judgment is by no means grounded in fact since we have no

information about her identity, the community she belongs to, her personality, nor the mood she’s

in as the photo was being taken. Edward Said, a Palestinian academic who wrote the

ground-breaking text in post-colonial studies, Orientalism (1978), would argue that this

interpretation is not new, and its lense is in fact a symptom of a highly complex Eurocentric

system of power which has been at play for centuries. This essay will discuss this Orientalist

lense with reference to past and present representations of women from the Orient.

In his book, Said maintains that the image of the oppressed and hyper sexual ‘Oriental’

woman can be traced as far back as Antiquity, however, it was only until 1798, at Napoleon

Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt, that this image became most widely circulated and endorsed as

the truth. Taking after Sir Francis Bacon’s outlook that knowledge is power, Napoleon brought

scientists with him to Egypt to validate, with reference to biological determinism, “‘the

(alleged[...] inferior[ity]) [of the] Orient’ and ‘the (alleged[...] superior[ity]) [of the] Occident,’”

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and justify his formations of institutions of government and economy in the Orient. These

institutional foundations lay the bricks for the Orientalist discourse that still exists today.

If we were to compare depictions of women from the Middle East from the nineteenth

century and those we have in popular culture today we would see no difference. The most

famous depiction of the sexualized ‘Oriental’ woman is that of a belly dancer called

“Ruchiouk-Hânem”. She was a Syrian courtesan who the French Romantic author, Gustave

Flaubert, had met in Egypt and had written about in his book Voyage in the Orient. He describes

a hypnotic and highly erotic scene of her dancing with “just a violet gauze around her breasts” in

a room pervading with oils, perfumes, smoke and enchanting music. This image has dazzled

Western male audiences like a myth. This includes French author Gerard de Nerval as he wrote

almost identically about the Muslim women he met on his trip to Egypt. In the opening to his

same-titled Voyage in the Orient (1846) he comments on Muslim women’s hyper sense of

sexuality despite the Islamic laws that disallow it: “No matter how severe the laws may be,

[Muslim women] seldom succeed in rendering that delicate tissue [their veils] any more opaque”.

These portrayals of Muslim women as mysterious, fantastical, seductive and oppressed

“creatures” are evident today in Hollywood films like James Bond and Sex and the City 2, while

also featuring in songs like Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” and Busta Rhymes’ “Arab Money”. In

Sex and the City 2 and in most scenes shot in the Middle East in James Bond movies (like From

Russia with Love and The Man with the Golden Gun) Muslim women are solely depicted as

either in belly dancing scenes or scenes when they are fully clad in a black niqab. Similarly, the

women evoked in Perry and Rhymes’ lyrics and music videos are highly sexualized and dressed

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up with highly elaborate and colourful costumes, making them look like goddesses, not real

people.

The fact that these fictitious images still remain after two centuries and dominate Western

imagination demonstrates what the Marxist academic, Antonio Gramsci, called “cultural

hegemony” at play. The West practices cultural hegemony in its control of political and civil

society to establish Western identity as superior to any other power in the world. This is done in a

manipulative way because Western populations are told they live in a liberal society where they

are free to adopt the identity they want, when in fact they can’t because the societal institutions

that govern their lives don’t offer an ideology that challenges the mainstream one. As a result,

people consent to their subjugation as pawns in an international power game.

In conclusion, only Middle Eastern women were discussed in this essay for the sake of

the photograph mentioned and Said’s focus on this part of the world. However, it is clear that the

image of the sexualized, enslaved woman is in fact imposed on all women of non-Western

cultures - this was a point Said was criticized for. Kurtz’s African mistress in Joseph Conrad’s

Heart of Darkness (1899) is described in this manner. For her debut album, Gwen Stefani got

four Harajuku girls to act in her music videos as submissive sex dolls. And for an instance closer

to home, a Thai student studying English at Trinity wrote to the Irish Times about her

experiences of getting mistaken for a “Thai bride” by Irish men. What this shows is two powers

at play - gender and ethnicity - which still dominate in Western societies.

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Section B

9. “African expressions of ‘self’ cannot break free from their ‘endless’ inscription into imperial

discourse” (Stephanie Newell). Discuss the implications of this statement with reference to

Things Fall Apart.

Chinua Achebe’s debut novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is one of Africa’s first texts to

receive global attention and has thus been praised to be foundational in portraying the “African

experience”. Published shortly before Nigeria’s independence, Achebe was driven to write such a

novel to recover “the tarnished image of Africa” which colonialist writers like Joseph Conrad

propagated in their dehumanizing and hostile depictions of African characters and landscapes in

their novels. In his essay: “The Novelist as Teacher”, Achebe likens the responsibility of the

African writer to that of a teacher with “the task of re-education and regeneration” of his own

people brutalized by colonialism. With this in mind, he writes his novel claiming an authenticity

in his portrayal of African selfhood which is free from colonialist influence. This essay will

argue in favour of Stephanie Newell’s statement and against Achebe’s claim for authenticity, and

it will demonstrate how Achebe fully embraces his colonialist education rather than reject it.

The most obvious point of inauthenticity in the novel is the language it is written in.

English, rather than Igbo, is the language Achebe uses to tell a story set in his own Igbo culture.

There are several problems with this. Firstly, there is the issue of translation. Achebe

occasionally mentions certain elements in his native Igbo with English translations, such as “The

elders, or ndichie… His own hut, or obi”; he also directly translates Igbo proverbs: “like a yam

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tendril in the rainy season”. According to him, these linguistic aspects add authenticity. However,

because English culture differs so much from the Igbo, and language is formed according to the

culture it originates from, English is unable to accurately express Igbo culture. For example,

“obi” could mean a type of “hut”, but it also means “heart” or “chest”. This shows that there

always arises losses in translation which draw away from the truth. Secondly, there comes the

issue of alienation. Ngugi Wa Thiongo, a Kenyan academic, argued that an African who writes in

the language of his colonizer is still colonized in his mind. Language controls the way a person

relates to himself and the world, hence, if there is a disharmony between the culture in a person’s

mind and the culture around him, he finds himself alienated. What is troubling is that Achebe

claimed himself as a teacher to his people, and the father of African literature, but he adopted the

same language that his British capitalist imperialists used to brutally subjugate his people.

Although Achebe admitted in an interview to feeling “guilt” and a sense of “betrayal” for having

rejected using Igbo, it is clear he doesn’t understand the full weight of his decision when he casts

those feelings aside and says: “I have been given the [English] language and I intend to use it.”

Moreover, his illusion that he was “given” the English language, not aggressively forced onto

him by the colonial administration in his country, most explicitly confirms that Achebe was still

colonized in his mind. Therefore, as a result of using the English language, Achebe not only

paints his novel unauthentically, but he alienates his African readers in the same way the British

colonial education system did to his own Igbo people.

Another element which drew Achebe’s novel close to colonialist discourse was his

adoption of European narrative techniques. Things Fall Apart has three parts, which mirrors the

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Roman three-act structure of a play, and presents its protagonist, Okonkwo, like a Greek tragic

hero. The first act, protasis, introduces the play’s worldview and its central question. In Achebe’s

novel, the first part gives an extended account of the dynamics and culture in Umuofia, as well as

Okonkwo’s character flaw, or harmatia, which will drive the story’s plot (this is: “the fear of

himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father”, or showing weakness). The second act,

or epitasis, sees the protagonist’s character deteriorate. Okonkwo experiences an inner conflict as

a result of his obsession to display manliness and reject everything feminine, which expresses

itself as a conflict with his chi, or personal god: “he was a man whose chi said nay despite his

own affirmation”. This goes against Igbo belief that strength involves the balance of femininity

and masculinity in one’s chi and as a result creates a conflict between himself and his clan too.

Okonkwo’s condition exacerbates when the colonial administration arrive in Umuofia in part

two, as demonstrated when Okonkwo’s suggestion to drive the British out is ignored by his clan

when they decide to ostracize them instead, to which Okonkwo remarks that the clan have

become “womanly”. Finally, the third act, catastrophe, features the climax and solution to the

play’s question. This plays out by Okonkwo’s complete physical and spiritual detachment from

his clan in his suicide. This style of story-telling is a distinctly European one. Moreover, using

the medium of the novel - also a European construction - is not necessary in telling this story.

Achebe has a wealth of narrative techniques to draw from from the oral culture of his Igbo

heritage. He occasionally gives a glimpse of it in his use of proverbs, however, this is

overshadowed by the European narrative styles as well as the English language.

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 In conclusion, Achebe’s conscious choice of the use of the English language and

European narrative styles and mediums in Things Fall Apart confirms how “African expressions

of ‘self’ cannot break free from their ‘endless’ inscription into imperial discourse”. It is without

doubt that this novel was a refreshing read from the Orientalist discourse circulating at the time

in European texts, and it succeeded in humanizing Africans and depicting complex African

societal structures and value systems. However, this was for the benefit of European readers and

not African readers. This text was more of a reeducation of the West than Achebe’s own people.

If Achebe’s idea of reeducating his people was solely in telling them they were human in a

foreign language, using European narrative techniques, this was a mistake. To truly rehabilitate a

traumatized people at a time when they are about to be free from their oppressor, what is needed

is a holistic cultural revival which embraces and celebrates their culture in their distinct ways.

Therefore, for Achebe to claim a title such as “teacher of Africa”, he was acting more as a puppet

for the British, just as he believes he was “given”, altruistically, the English language.

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Bibliography section A

Dennison, Polly. “An Asian woman in Ireland: Some people assume I’m a ‘Thai bride’”, Irish

Times, 27th November 2019.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/an-asian-woman-in-ireland-some-people-assum

e-i-m-a-thai-bride-1.4086888?fbclid=IwAR1VAGdAfjA07WrPv5ocrTnJolOIT6mCPa87ACs0Ri

6i5yiTJ2IB96E-8Cs

Flaubert, Gustave. Voyage en Orient (Voyage in the Orient).

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Notes_de_voyages/%C3%89gypte

De Nerval, Gerard. Voyage en Orient (Voyage in the Orient). Translated.

https://archive.org/details/womenofcairovolu005575mbp/page/n21/mode/2up

Bibliography section B

Achebe, Chinua. “The Novelist as Teacher”, Hopes and Impediments. (New York: Anchor

Books, 1989).

Achebe, Chinua. “Africa’s Tarnished Image”, Things Fall Apart. (New York: W.W. Norton &

Company, Inc, 2009).

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Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2009).

Achebe, Chinua. “The African Writer and the English Language” (1964), collected in Morning

Yet on Creation Day, (1975).

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