What kind of History Do we read in the Postcolonial Archives?
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Menia Almenia
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Dr. Lothian
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 ENG 985
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Assignment #2
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 8 October 2013
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¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 1 Since I start reading literary works written by postcolonial authors, I usually find myself digging in the past to identify the facts of many historical events that might be misled by the hegemonic superstructure. Surly I can see why most of the postcolonial writers choose to relay on history in most of their canonical archives. As being hunted by the legacies of colonialism, memories, and miseries from the past, texts are willing to portray power. This power is what Avery Gordon calls in her Ghostly Matters as, “the power relations that characterize any historically embedded society are never as transparently clear as the names we give to them imply” (3). Therefore, reading postcolonial literary texts, may give a feeling that they represent real history without being manipulated by the cultural hegemony as discussed by Benjamin. In his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” In his book Illuminations, Walter Benjamin said that, “To historians who wish to relive an era, Fustel de Coulanges recommends that they blot out everything they know about the later course of history…which historical materialism has broken” (256). With this in mind, my profession in the humanities is to read and teach some of these postcolonial canonical texts and to identify the real history, which is the part of the messages that authors of such texts are trying to deliver.
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 1 It is attributed to Winston Churchill, but of unknown origin, that he said, “history is written by the winners.” Although the last phrase of this quote is variously phrased as winners, victors and conquerors, its meaning still indicates that history is biased to the powerful. The meaning indicated by this quote, for critics and intellectuals, can complicate things and require looking after an alternative history. Its meaning applies to the political facts more often. And if someone traces some political movements, it might turn to be quite the contrary from what s/he has already perceived. On the political level, a good example would be the resistant movement by the indigenous against the colonizers. Indigenous resistant acts usually are an act of nationalist movement; however, they ought to be portrayed as an aggressive and linked to terrorism acts by the colonizers. Even in this very day, examples can be shown. The Al-Nusra Front, translated as the “victory front,” is a Rebellion movement by Syrian indigenous against the Syrian regime. It is one of many other Syrian rebellion movements against the killing machine regime; however, since it is linked with some extremist conservativist ideology, many international powers, such as France, are calling to label it with Terrorism. History has many examples of this kind, especially in the colonized African countries. Thus, as I mentioned above, critics and intellectual might look for an alternative history for other opinions on a specific political act. The Kenyan Mau Mau resistant movement during the 1950s against the British colonizers is the focus of this here; and it would look at Ngugi Wa Thiang’o A Grain of Wheat as an alternative history that approaches the Mau Mau movement differently. His novel portrays the movement as a cultural and nationalist resistant movement, while the official colonizer, British, reports portrays it as an aggressive terrorist militia.
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Ngugi Wa Thiang’o describes some vivid images of the impact of the British colonialism in his home country, Kenya, that drives those colonized people to madness. In his A Grain of Wheat, he depicts the movement of the Mau Mau rebellions as an act of resistance that he calls them “freedom fighters.” And as an anti-colonial nationalist writer, Ngugi portrays in this novel that Mau Mau movement represents a notional consciousness that rejects the colonialist politics. Therefore, Readers can see that Mau Mau rebellions’ challenging the British colonialism is an act of a nationalism that creates a struggle of resistance to colonialism. However, the British colonizers consider Mau Mau as violent and terrorist militias by the indigenous to their colony. During the time of the Mau Mau movement in 1952, the New York Times archive shows that the authority of Eurocentric Universalist discourse referred to the Mau Mau nationalist act as a terrorist act to the British colony. And by examining the controversy historical representations of the Mau Mau can help readers to understand how the ideology of the colonization has had been a stereotypical to the Mau Mau.
¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Ngugi is one of the African authors who wrote several literary works that depict how the African history has been repressed by colonialism. As a Kenyan writer, Ngugi is also defined as a nationalist writer. James mentions that, “he was implicated in what was ‘a derivative discourse’: the nation –centered nationalism rooted in the kind of modernist politics that eventually had major influence on the colonies, focusing on the European-defined boundaries and institutions, and on notions of progress shaped by capitalism and European social thought” (6-7). Ngugi argues for the radical interpretation of the Kenyan history. As a nationalist author, his works can be read as correction portrayals of the Kenyan history that has been distorted by the colonial writers and the Eurocentric discourse. A Grain of Wheat is one of his major works that represents Kenya’s history through his depiction of the Mau Mau movement in the 1950s. In order to identify Ngugi’s representation of the Mau Mau act in this novel, some facts of this movement better be discussed.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 David Brown’s Land, Freedom, and Fiction defines the ‘Mau Mau’ as the armed struggle waged by the Gikuyu peasantry against the British colonial forces from 1952 to 1956. Brown describes the Mau Mau as one of the greatest liberation struggles in African against the oppressive Colonial rule (20). He mentions that this act is known as an evil, malignant growth, a dark, tribal, and should be destroyed based on the ideology of the British rule. He means that if Mau Mau is a liberation act for Kenya’s independence, then the ideology of the British aims to present this revolution as an evil act that needs to be ended. However, Brown refers to the rebellion as a movement that aims at correcting the abuses in existing social, political, and economic structures.
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Gikuyu indigenous are seen as victims of the oppression they confronted by the colonizers’ dominance power in Kenya in 1950s. Frantz Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, presents his philosophy of revolution based on his experiences of the Algerian struggle and his work as a psychiatrist. Killam refers to Fanon argument that, the colonial victim can only free himself from the oppression through a socialist revolution and the revolution must be achieved by violence (qtd. in Killam 13). Fanon mentions that, the instrument of the revolution will not be the urban proletariat, but the poor peasants will be those who trigger the revolution. Fanon’s argument can give us, readers, an interpretation of the facts that drive the Gikuyu to lead a socialist revolution against the dominant British authority in Kenya. Although their violent act has different implications based on various ideologies, Fanon’s theory gives us a reasonable justification of the Mau Mau movement. In this situation, Mau Mau movement is interpreted as an act of resistance by those colonized people against the British colonizers. Therefore, it is argued that Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat can be read as a literary work that represents the reality of the Mau Mau movement as an act of resistance, which implies Ngugi’s portrayal of his notion of nationalism.
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Consulting the historical archives to prove that the Mau Mau is a nationalist resistant movement shows several results. Some of these results prove that Mau Mau is an act of resistant to the colonial project in Africa whereas others indicate that Mau Mau is a terrorist organization that threatens the European colonies in the region. This act of resistance of the Mau Mau has had been a very controversial issue that many has debated over. In the 1960s, for example, international newspapers and magazine has approached it differently; some has justified it as a nationalist act of resistant and others have gone the opposite direction and almost repeated the British opinion. In an article published in The Republican in 1967 titled “Upheaval in Kenya” that says that “the African was left to eke out his existence on land which could not support half of his members…With little prospect of relief, the African’s ‘nationalism of petition and constitutional protest gave way to a militant nationalism employing direct in seeking a new political order’” (Lowenkopf 34). The author in this article portrays a rational judgment on the Mau Mau movement. He expresses that Mau Mau is a natural petition because their lands were taken by force. Although The Republican is part of the Eurocentric discourse, this article indicates that, Mau Mau movement should be considered as the African nationalism of petition that represents their act or resistance. At the same time, when consulting the historical archive of The New York Time in1950s, the results shows different portrayal of the same actions.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Several articles in the New York Times, on the other hand, represent the Eurocentric discourse that pictures the Mau Mau movement as and a terrorist organization against the Kenyan and British authority in the area. For example, an article published in the New York Times in 1953 titled “Mau Mau Growing Despite Reverses” that states “Terrorist Movement is Kenya Spreads Even as it Loses 100 Killed in Week”, the author of the article mentions that, “The Mau Mau organization still exists and its mobilizing heads are calling in reserves and setting up areas of action that have been during the first months of the struggle, free of terrorism” (New York Times). This article describes a vivid image of the Eurocentric discourse in which the Mau Mau movement in the 1950s was identified as a terrorist organization.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 3 To sum up what is being already said, reading A Grain of Wheat as a postcolonial text can give the reader the real image that represents facts behind the indigenes being oppressed by the oppressor. The Mau Mau’s has been portrayed and presented as both a terrorist movement and as a cultural and nationalist activism. It was, as Lowenkopf puts it, “an ‘integral part of an ongoing, rationally conceived nationalist movement” (34). And this ongoing movement happened to be approached differently. The British colonizers who see this act of resistance as a threat, would put effort to make it looks like a deviated movement towards terror; while the intellectuals would see it as a normal react by the oppressed indigenous. Fanon for example claim, as Lowenkopf states, that the Mau Mau “was a purifying fire and comment it to those developing nations which escaped violence in their struggle for nationhood, and thus are not cleansed” (35). Ngugi presents the Kenyan history in many works he writes. A Grain of Wheat represents his nationalist ideas through which he considers the Mau Mau movement in Kenya during 1950s is an act of nationalist resistance against the dominance of the British colonizers. Ngugi, when approached as a postcolonial author, his ideas in this novel can be considered as a way of reconstructing Kenya after the colonial legacy. His narrative makes the readers sympathy with the Mau Mau revolutionists whom he calls the “freedom fighters”. Ngugi retells the real story of the oppressed Gikuyu tribe and their violence act represented through several characters in the novel to be justified as a nationalist resistance toward the Kenyan independence.
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¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 Work Cited
¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Brown, David. Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History and Ideology in Kenya. London: Zed Books, 1985. Print.
¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 Fanon, Frantz. “From The Wretched of the Earth From On National Culture” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Vincent Leitch. NY: Norton, 2010. 1437-1446. Print.
¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 Killam, Gordon Douglas. An Introduction to writings of Ngugi. London: Heinemann, 1980. Print.
¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 Lowenkopf, Martin. “Upheaval In Kenya (Book).” New Republic 156.8 (1967): 34-35. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 October 2013.
¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 Ogude, James. Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Print.
¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 Special to THE NEW,YORK TIMES. “Mau Mau Growing Despite Reverses.” New York Times (1923-Current file): 4. Jun 06 1953. ProQuest. Web. 5 October 2013 .
¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 Walter Benjamin. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. 1940. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. 253-264
I can see a number of ways these kinds of postcolonial texts can be useful in complicating or overturning archives and narratives. I really like your eloquent analysis of the ways in which political movements are constructed has a lot more to do with the stories those in power want to tell than the ideas at hand. The same actions, for the same reasons are ‘terrorism’ in one hand, and ‘patriotism’ in another, a crusade or a jihad (and nevermind the *actual* history involved!).
These kinds of inclusions look like they would be most effective set against and interrupting a Eurocentric discourse. Perhaps the archive (personal, class, or cultural) even needs to include some of these texts just so they can be blown up by the alternative perspective. And there well might be some perspectives sympathetic to the postcolonial view to be found in euro-texts.
I like the way you use A Grain of Wheat to show the divergent ways of reading the political movement, it puts the ideas from your beginning into concrete terms. I am probably going to say this wrong, but let me try anyway… I tend to be cautious about using terms like “find the truth” or “real facts”, mostly because I usually find life way too complicated not to question absolutes. That doesn’t mean I disagree with your reading, just it makes more sense to me to think of it as alternative narratives, as questioning one absolute reading, as showing both sides as they think they are. And, too, I like questions more than answers… I get more mileage out of asking why Eurocentric discourse doesn’t see things the same way and what we should do with the discrepancy, than trying to replace one narrative with the other.