Showing papers in "Ariel-a Review of International English Literature in 1995"

Once more with feeling : what is postcolonialism ?

Abstract: D EF iN iNG T H E P A R A M E T E R S and boundaries of the postcolonial territory is a task not without its challenges. M u c h of the work done under the label \"postcolonial\" is content to assume a general understanding of its limits and possibilities. A sufficiently thoughtful definitional and conceptual framework, however, continues to elude us. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak writes, in postcoloniality, \"every metropolitan definition is dislodged. The general mode for the postcolonial is citation, reinscription, rerouting the historical\" (Outside 217). In a very fundamental sense, o f course, \"postcolonial\" is that which has been preceded by colonization. The second edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines it as \"of, relating to, or being the time following the establishment of independence in a colony\" (968). Even this minimally descriptive definition, to no one's surprise, is not empty of ideological content or the power to encapsulate and transfix a \" th ing\" simply by naming it; it is no revelation that one can become a function of what one is called. Rather than contend with definition when it fails, postcolonial theorists are apt to multiply its connotative possibilities to suit their various needs. Despite problems and limitations in terminology, the description \"postcolonial,\" in a certain abstract sense, obtains and is used with relative impunity by scholars, publishers, journalists, and so on. Whi le the definitional \"postcolonial\" might be considered a fairly bounded creature, the actual usages of the term make it a very Protean, indeed, often Procrustean sort o f being, which allows us to yoke together, sometimes arbitrarily, a very diverse range of experiences, cultures, and problems (see McCl intock) . Thus is it used not merely to characterize that which succeeds the

Postcolonial differend : diasporic narratives of Salman Rushdie

Abstract: "Home" has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in our present travails Salman Rushdie (East, West 93)

She Ties Her Tongue:The Problems of Cultural Paralysisin Postcolonial Criticism

Abstract: T H E I N C E P T I O N of postcolonial criticism marked a l iberating rejection of the self-fulfilling criteria of a Eurocentric, patriarchal canon, i f we now reflect with a critical eye on the effects of increasing centrality and popularity (albeit i n the name of difference and marginality) within this growing discipline, its own orthodoxies and prejudices demand attention. A l though postcolonial scholarship developed in opposition to prescriptive modes of thought, the consolidation and institutionalization of its works would seem to have generated in some respects an unhelpful homogenization of polit ical intent and a stifling consensus of \"good\" practice. It might not be an exaggeration to suggest that postcolonialism has unwittingly become its own nemesis. Does not the imperative to celebrate, alongside the \"polit ical untouchabil ity\" and the terrorism of cultural sensitivity, generate a spectre of the \"model , \" acceptable postcolonial response, which both chokes critics and arrests the possibilities for making meanings? The relentlessly positive reception afforded resistant subjects and rebellious discourses, the canonization of contemporary postcolonial women (writers), and the general academic conscience-pricking that have dominated postcolonial studies may have functioned (and continue to function) as important gestures against a profile o f self-satisfied and defensive Eurocentric thought, but I would argue that they have a l imited, i f not an exhausted, value for those working within, rather than against, the field o f postcolonial criticism and theory. If postcolonialism's battle for intellectual and institutional recognition has a record of successful campaigns, it also has its casualties. In its venture to give voice to the silenced, little consid-

Towards Articulation:Postcolonial Theory andDemotic Resistance

Abstract: I wil l return to During's remarks later in this essay, but, for the moment, I want to note that his statement—"I do not think there is a Maor i word for 'postcolonial ism'"—not only assumes lexical incommensurability but also forwards the argument that a concept or term such as "postcolonialism" is utterly foreign and irrelevant to the Maoris in their struggle for autonomy and selfdetermination. The Maoris, Dur ing implies, do not have a word for "postcolonialism" because they have no need for it. To defend the Maor i struggle for autonomy from the totalizing tendencies of metropolitan theory, Dur ing utilizes a strategy of cultural separatism. Thus, on one side, we are presented with Maor i culture with its specific, local concerns, and, on the other, we have the academic culture of postcolonial studies, with its own separate and distinct agenda. One can understand why Dur ing would want to oppose cultural separatism to the perceived threat of cultural assimilation and domination. L ike many contemporary critics, Dur ing is suspicious of any discourse that seeks to explain or represent anything other than itself; thus, resisting what he suspects to be a

Spenser and Milton on Ireland: Civility, Exclusion, and the Politics of Wisdom

Abstract: ^ ) N E OF THF. THEMES with which Edward Said begins Culture and Imperialism ( 1 9 9 3 ) is the inability of most \"professional humanists . . . to make the connection between the prolonged and sordid cruelty of practices such as slavery, colonialist and racial oppression, and imperial subjection on the one hand, and the poetry, fiction, philosophy of the society that engages in these practices on the other\" (xiii-xiv). As an example he adduces the case of Spenser in Ireland: \"it is generally true that literary historians who study the great sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser . . . do not connect his bloodthirsty plans for Ireland, when he imagined a British army [sic] virtually exterminating the native inhabitants, with his poetic achievement or the history of British rule over Ireland, which continues today\" (7) . Culture and Imperialism is a rich and suggestive book, but on this point it is hard not to feel that Said has been overtaken by his own success and is preaching to many of those he himself has converted. The truth is that few contemporary Spenser scholars are unfamiliar with the poet's career as a colonist and even fewer literary critics of the generation that came to maturity in the eighties and nineties have any difficulty seeing the relationship between culture as aesthetic achievement and culture as social formation with all its often dire political consequences. What is at issue, then, is not the existence of the relationship, but its evolving nature, how variable it is, and in the case of Spenser and his early modern contemporaries how distinctive it is. To explain that distinctiveness perhaps I can begin with my own experience in what the Englishman W. H. Auden calls \"mad Ireland.\" Between 1974 and 1975 I served as an infantry officer

Noh and Yeats: A Theoretical Analysis

Abstract: BEFORE T H E E N D of the Second World War, all the secret theories concerning the acting and writing of Japanese Noh plays were usually shown only to one actor in each of the five main schools in each generation, although limited copies of works explaining these aesthetic ideas were sometimes kept at the houses of highly privileged people such as the daimyo (or feudal lord) or—from the end of the Edo period (1603-1886)—with extremely rich merchants. Not only were the concepts behind the Noh hard to find in Japan but translations of these basic ideas have been published only since W. B. Yeats's time. In 1964, Hinoki-Shoten first published Kadensho, a translation of one of the 16 books of theories of Noh drama by the actor and playwright Ze-Ami ( 1 3 6 4 1 4 4 3 ) . Thomas J. Reimer and Masakazu Yamazaki then published a free-style translation in 1984, while I produced another edited translation in 1985. Yeats, therefore, when he started to write Four Plays for Dancers actually had never had the opportunity to study the jealously guarded secrets (which were protected in the same way as those of medieval guilds in Europe) that explained the essence of this theatrical tradition. His information was limited to what he had gleaned from Ernest Fenollosa's translations of Noh plays and from meeting a few Japanese amateur singers of Noh plays and a Japanese dancer, Michio Itoh. Thus, given only that, Yeats had no direct knowledge of the underlying philosophy of the Noh drama. In this article, I examine how close his plays are to these medieval masterpieces. Yeats was searching for a poetic form of theatre because he believed that poetry was the most powerful and common means