The Importance Of Writing In The Colonial Language

Sium and Ritskes (2013), argued that indigenous people should be breaking colonization with academic articles through indigenous ways, one way is through story telling. Storytellers are important to indigenous culture, for their existence, survival, identity and connecting people and bonding the people together (Sium and Ritskes 2013). However, storytelling is also important to decolonization by, proving indigenous people had a way of life before colonizers, and acknowledgement of the sovereignty over their lands (Sium and Ritskes 2013).

Postcolonial criticism analyzes literature created by cultures that developed in response to colonial domination. This type of criticism defines formerly colonized people as any population that has been subjected to the political domination of another population. Readers analyzing literature in a postcolonial critical way will seek the political, social, cultural, and psychological understanding of the colonialist and anticolonialist. Authors, like Ralph Ellison, address the problem of cultural identity using postcolonial critical theory through their works of literature. In “Battle Royal” (Chapter 1 of Invisible Man,) Ralph Ellison discusses a number of postcolonial issues such as control, race, and double consciousness.

Why are culture collisions so hurtful? Nwoye’s sense of identity was challenged with the introduction of Western ideas into the Ibo culture. Nwoye started out in the novel as lazy boy, but the cultural collision of the British colonists and Ibo people affected Nwoye to the point of him abandoning his birth culture and to run away to be a missionary. The reasons for Nwoye’s change in their sense of identity included Nwoye’s struggle with identity leads him to embrace the new culture, which ultimately saves him, and illustrates the positive effects colonialism can have on individuals.Ultimately his reaction to the western ideas shaped the work as a whole because of what he did influenced many other people to do many different things.

Language can be a powerful tool which can build individuals up but it can also tear them down. When reading Literature through a post-colonial lens it can give us the needed tools to provide or grasp the information in order to reveal the bigger picture in the story. “Post-colonialism examines the manner in which emerging societies grapple with the challenges of self- determination.” (Aladren, 2013) In one way we can see that approach of colonist being conveyed through the native tongue which tends to be taught to its subjects. Such examples can be seen in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act1 & 2) and the The Epic of Gilgamesh which illustrates how a “savage” can be domesticated simply by learning the imperialist language. As the subjects Caliban and Enkidu encounter these dominating issues due to the situation they face once they are introduce to oppressors culture.

While each ethnic group had their own language, there are also over 100 inter-ethnic languages applied to allow for communication among the thousands of ethnic groups. When Europeans arrived in Africa, they manipulated the spoken language by imposing French, Spanish, English, and other European languages as a “neutral alternative” to the myriad of languages spoken across ethnic groups. African’s multilingualism clearly counters the idealist’s impression that ethnic groups in Africa were

For this essay I have chosen to use the identity lens for the postcolonial theory review. There are three literary works I will be analyzing: The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Tempest, and The Heart of Darkness. Each of these literary works introduces us to characters dealing with struggles impacting identities. The identity lens will show the connection between the colonizers and colonized and better define the struggles of the colonizer.

The erasure of culture begins with the erasure of language and identity. Throughout modern history, the “dominant” culture seeks to eliminate other cultures under the guise of them being uncivilized or savage. Missionaries were used to spread the dominant religion, laws were made in the United States to move Native Americans onto reserves to help ‘settle them’, names of both indigenous people and immigrants were changed to fit to erase culture, children were sent to residential schools so they too could become like the good, little, white boys and girls. In Leona Makokis’ piece “Disordered Dependencies”, she focuses on her experiences in a residential school in Canada to illustrate the impact of colonization, focusing on the loss of language.

However, to solely conceptualize colonialism as a set of governance projects based on the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their spaces for the purposes of installing settlements and extracting resources would be a gross simplification of colonialism. To do so would be to ignore how the colonization of indigenous territories by European settlers was an ideologically and culturally contested process as much as it was a material one. As explained by Said (1995), imperialism and colonialism were both supported by ideological formations that were comprised of notions that indigenous peoples and territories require and beseech domination (p. 9). Expanding on this analysis, Jacobs (1996) discusses how racialized notions of the Self and the Other were the building blocks for the hierarchies of power under colonialism, as negative constructions of the

Postcolonial critiques of literary works are often accomplished by reading and interpreting the work with a specific theme in mind or a ‘lens’. By allowing oneself to use a ‘lens’ when reading specific works, it allows the reader to interpret the effects of the themes and the changes throughout the writings. The goal of the critical lens is to seek to understand the behavior of characters or the society ("Post Colonialism," 2016). A few of the most popular themes used to view literary works are identity, oppression and power; applying this ‘lens’ can give the reader a different perspective and experience while reading the writings.

It is easy to see that current events and issues of the world around them have had an impact on authors and what they have written from the stories in this time period. The Native American authors wrote stories describing life during and after white man came to America. We read Oratory’s by two Native American’s COCHISE and CHARLOT. They gave heart-wrenching speeches, giving great details into the history of the tribes and the devastating effect the white man had on them. Author Zitkala Sa gave us a powerful interpretation of her life as a Indian and how the white’s coming to America affected her life.

Language is a primary mean of communication that has contributed to society for millions of years. Language can tell a story about people’s culture. Language can produce a series of emotions and meanings. Language can be spoken distinctively through changes in spelling, speed, tones, and pitches. Language creates an atmosphere of togetherness, mystery, and security to outsiders. In my life, Ebonics had revealed an unique aspect of how my parents and distant relatives influenced my understanding of the Afrocentric dialect of the English language. In addition, it revealed how I communicate to my family and friends and the distinction of my reading between Ebonics and Old English during my high school years.

Coinciding with the independence of colonized nations, stereotypes of the indigenous cultures were brought back with the colonizers to their mainland, and were usually of a negative connotation. Words like “catastrophic” or “savages” were terms associated with these nations, and this was not necessarily the truth. Consequently, literature was created with these stereotypical identities of colonized people. Since storytelling has a major impact on the development of one’s identity, many people from once colonized nations succumb to the dishonesty told about them in literature. A speech given by Chris Abani stresses that, “What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture (Abani).” With that being said, a majority of the literature that is written about decolonized nations depicts them in an inaccurate way, representing the nations as disastrous and in need of help. Since this narrative is repeated often, colonized people give into it, and see themselves as the media does. The poem “How To Write the Great Indian American Novel,” by Sherman Alexie, also addresses the issue of stereotypes of marginalized groups in literature. Throughout the poem, Alexie uses a sardonic tone to implicitly explain that books are written in a certain way that does not necessarily demonstrate truth, saying that in books about Indians, “All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and

Meta-narrative is an important method that postcolonial authors use to show the colonizer’s intolerance in the way they structure their stories. These authors point out these strategic ways that colonizers write so you can more easily see their bias and prejudice when addressing the colonized. Things Fall Apart has many instances of meta-narrative, both big and small.

With more of an idea of what the inland was like, the powers decided to meet up and split Africa among themselves. It was at this meeting of nations that Britain (the main English speaking empire of the time) collected around 20 colonies in Africa. Each of these colonies were operated under the English language. Additionally, English speaking immigrants flooded these newly organized colonies. This influx of the English language not only spread the English language, but it also influenced it. Again the powers that conquered were influenced by the places that they conquered. The influences that were given by the British-African colonies were much more direct now. Now English had been formed, and they were spoken together with the indigenous languages. As with Aramaic and Latin, the invading force picked up several words and language additions. Africa offered a plethora of indigenous languages to influence the English language. Inland Africa also exposed the English speaking colonists to various things that they had never witnessed before. For example Zebra was a word with African origins, because to this point the Europeans had not seen this creature. They took what the locals called it and added it to the English language. This happened with a lot of words that are now commonly used in the English language. Banjo, banana, chimpanzee, impala, jazz, jenga, jumbo, safari, tango, tilapia, yam, and zombie are all examples of African words that were added to the English language.

Here, the postcolonial reality is experienced as a mild but insistent inferiority complex, a sense of internalised alienation. However, in Surfacing Atwood addressed the pressures of America’s cultural colonisation of Canada, and in an interview she expanded: “it’s impossible to talk about Canadian literature without also talking about the fact that Canada’s an economic and cultural colony”. This broader view of colonialism encompasses various manifestations of national domination and suppression, and for Atwood, Canada’s marginal position in terms of political and economic power places her, as its citizen, as a marginal, colonial, and postcolonial subject.