Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark
Volume 3 Article 3
April 2017 The otM ionless Half-Sun Over the Postcolonial Horizon: Adichie, Bhabha, and Inaction Themal I. Ellawala 2896594 Clark University
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Recommended Citation Ellawala, Themal I. 2896594 (2017) "The otM ionless Half-Sun Over the Postcolonial Horizon: Adichie, Bhabha, and Inaction," Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark: Vol. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://commons.clarku.edu/surj/vol3/iss1/3
This Manuscript is brought to you for free and open access by the Scholarly Collections & Academic Work at Clark Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark by an authorized editor of Clark Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The otM ionless Half-Sun Over the Postcolonial Horizon: Adichie, Bhabha, and Inaction
Cover Page Footnote I would like to thank Prof. Stephen Levin who cultivated my interest in Postcolonial Theory and Literary Theory, and who inspired this particular line of inquiry. My thanks also go to Prof. Olga Litvak, for her insightful comments and critiques.
This manuscript is available in Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark: https://commons.clarku.edu/surj/vol3/iss1/3 MANUSCRIPT The Motionless Half-Sun Over the Postcolonial Horizon: Adichie, Bhabha, and Inaction Themal Ellawala ‘17 | Psychology
ABSTRACT Action is a metaphysical reality of our daily existence, one so commonplace and privileged that it has transcended its dialectical relationship with inaction to a position of primacy. The latter has failed to capture the imagination of philoso- phers and critical theorists, leaving the subversive potential of this negative space unexplored. This essay seeks to interrogate the space of inaction, and restore unity within this duality. This exploration is situated in a postcolonial context, as a conversation between Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Homi Bhabha, to examine how inaction offers a site from which we can begin to challenge the violence of action and the unitary discourse of nationhood. What potential does inaction hold to resignify nationhood? How does it create the psychic space to (re)imagine nationhood as narrative, and situate it within the temporality of modernity? How does the figure of inaction inform the discourse of postcolonial nationhood? These are some of the questions that preoccupy the author and this work. * This piece contains brief discussions of war-time violence.
In his introduction to a seeking not a conclusive resolution capacity to resist colonial collection of essays titled Nation to these matters but to extend discourses and violence. and Narration, postcolonial this line of inquiry further. Continuing a tradition of theorist Homi Bhabha poses at Much of the discourse of feminist scholarship (Das 1996, the end a series of questions that nationhood focuses on doing – of Menon and Bhasin 1996, Suarez- seem fundamental to the field of articulating a national identity, Orzoco 1992), Kalpana Rahita postcolonial studies and many performing, rationalizing, and Seshadri has demonstrated in other fields of critical inquiry, assimilating. The resistance to HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language questions that have plagued the unitary, totalizing iterations of how silences can be read as more haphazardly engineered project national identity are predicated meaningful than mere privations of nationhood and nationalism upon forms of action as well. of speech, as spaces in which the since its inception. He asks: History serves as a testament to powers of discourse are neutral- “When did we become ‘a people’? these forms of resistance – of ized (34). I endeavor to apply this When did we stop being one? Or splintering, factionalizing, secession, same revisionist thinking to the are we in the process of becoming and conflict – as kinetic modes of metaphysical concept of inac- one? What do these big questions self-expressions. The course of tion, resignifying this hitherto have to do with our intimate human development indicates a meaningless blank space as one relationships with each other and definite privileging of action in its teeming with the potential for with others?” (7). Questions of violent and redemptive multiplici- subversion. The postcolonial belonging, of inside and outside, ties. In contrast, negative spaces dimensions and implications of of inclusion of race, gender, such as inaction have garnered this question bring me to Chim- class, sexuality, and diasporic little attention. Inaction tends amanda Adichie’s novel Half of positionalities lie central to the to be conflated with apathy and a Yellow Sun, to interrogate the articulations of nationness, and disinterest, and its subversive multiple, hidden presences of are raised when drawing national potential is yet to be interrogated inaction in this text and what boundaries of geographic, in a meaningful way. effect it has upon the Nigerian cultural, and psychological What is lost in this privi- and Biafran project. Indeed the proportions. The present work leging of action is the radical theatre of post-independence begins at this poignant close, potential of inaction and its Nigeria presents an insightful
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glimpse of the destructive year old domestic servant, and the Biafran army, an experience potential of action when stays with them for the better which affects him deeply, as is sundered from the meditative part of the novel. This action demonstrated by his rape of a capacities of inaction. Ultimately, occurs against the backdrop of young woman during the height this work is a conversation rising ethnic tensions in Nigeria, of the war. Kainene, too, is moved between Adichie and Bhabha, which gained independence from by the cataclysms of the war, between the postcolonial the British in 1960. Much of this abandoning her war profiteering moment Adichie illustrates in friction is centered within the ways to operate a refugee camp her novel and the theory Bhabha relationship between the mostly for those displaced by the war. expounds in texts such as in Christian Igbo people of the Through a scattered col- Nation and Narration, Locations South and the Muslim Hausa lection of writings in Nation and of Culture, and DissemiNation?. of the North, who are divided Narration, Locations of Culture, This critical exploration arises along ethnic and religious lines. and DissemiNation? Bhabha from the nexus of these two Following decades of the “divide suggests an optic for critiquing the interlocutors and their texts, yet it and conquer” politics of British project of the nation, long consid- bears the potential to contribute rule, Igbo people chafe under a ered a fraught and contested site something novel in its own right, Northerner-dominated federal by postcolonial theorists. Taken for the resignification of inaction is government, which leads to a together, these texts raise critical not an explicit theme in Adichie’s military coup that installs Igbo questions about how the modern political novel nor in Bhabha’s military leaders in power, later nation-state accommodates di- preoccupation with the problems dubbed the Igbo coup. This is verse peoples and differences. Of of nationhood. Thus, the present soon followed by a counter-coup, significance to Bhabha is the ca- work offers a new optic for the with Hausa factions in the military pacity of the state to collapse such reading of both authors and their assuming power and killing differences into a singular entity, works. In the subsequent sections Igbo people in the process. This one that is often remarkably similar I will introduce the reader to sparks waves of killings across the to the identity of those that Adichie’s and Bhabha’s texts, country, with the Hausa killing maintain power (DissemiNa- offer a conceptualization of action Igbo in cities like Kano, and the tion? 1999). In addition, Bhabha and inaction, and interrogate Igbo retaliating against the Hausa is perturbed by the tendency to moments of action and inaction and other ethnic groups. Olanna treat social locations (e.g. gender, respectively in Half of a Yellow witnesses the massacre of Kano, race, class) as singularities that Sun, paying close attention to how where her entire extended family are universalized and totalized these interpretations relate to is murdered, and is only saved across a range of peoples, eliding Bhabha’s theorization of nation as from violence herself due to the meaningful individual differences narration. help of her ex-lover, the Hausa within each site (Introduction: Half of a Yellow Sun em- Mohammed. Locations of Culture). Indeed, bodies the ethic of the personal Nsukka, an Igbo-domi- Bhabha’s concerns can be sum- as the political, weaving together nated city, is sheltered from the marized as a wariness of naming the drama of private lives with ethnic violence that has swept the the subject, thereby limiting it the narrative of upheavals Nigeria country. Given its revolutionary and displacing those that seek to experienced post-independence. character, it serves as a site for the belong in it. This phenomenon The text follows the journeys of burgeoning Igbo secession move- can then be traced to their results Olanna and Kainene, twin sisters ment, which seeks to declare an of silencing through disenfran- and the daughters of a wealthy independent Igbo state called chisement and violence that business tycoon. Olanna rejects Biafra. Led by Colonel Ojukwu, accompanies questions of her family background of political the Biafran army engages the fed- national belonging. Instead, machinations and capitalist eral government over a period of Bahbha argues, we must approach scheming to live with Odenigbo, three years, leading to the loss of the rhetoric of nationalism and an intellectual and a revolutionary, countless lives, large-scale property the project of the nation as a in Nsukka. Ugwu arrives at destruction, and severe famine. narrative, one that may prevent Odenigbo’s house as a thirteen Ugwu is forcibly conscripted to foreclosure and is open to (re)
36 Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark University | Volume III negotiation and (re)interpretation throughout Bhabha’s Nation and to Bhabha’s project of resignifying (Introduction: Narrating the Na- Narration is a pluralism repre- nationhood, as outlined in Na- tion). It is through such an optic, sented by Janus. To early Romans tion and Narration, Locations of he says, that we can acknowledge Janus was “the god of the begin- Culture, and DissemiNation? How the constructed nature of the na- nings and the ends, presiding does it create the psychic space tion, disrupt the linear temporality over every entrance and departure, to (re)imagine nationhood as that accompanies this construction, and because every door and pas- narrative? How does the figure of and conceptualize “in-between sageway looks in two directions, inaction inform the discourse of spaces” that accommodate those Janus was seen as two-faced or postcolonial nationhood? These displaced by the singular social Janus bifrons -- the god who are some of the questions that locations that the modern looked both ways” (Wasson). He inform this essay. national discourse imposes also represented the duality of the (Introduction: Locations of beginnings and ends of conflict, ACTION AS DESTRUCTION Culture). the personification of both war One of the many dangers The current work seeks and peace. Therefore, Janus was of the kinesthetic facilities of the to engage with both Adichie the embodiment of both motion, body lies in its ability to rehearse and Bhabha through offering a or action, that marks beginnings centuries-old scripts of violence. conceptualization of inaction as and stillness, an iteration of inac- Similarly, Adichie’s commentary a construct that unites the two tion, that is achieved at the end. on the Biafran war of 1967-70 and their interests in the failure The privileging of action cleaves to gain independence from the of nation-building. Inaction is this duality, and the two faces of Nigerian state is a narrative that characterized by the cessation of Janus are sundered in order to is saturated with action that re- motion, yet it is also the womb of venerate the active elements of inscribes colonial violence. “The future action as it precedes it. The this persona. It is unsurprising fantasy of the native is precisely figuring of action and inaction as that a people who were as con- to occupy the master’s place while a neat dichotomy is expeditious stantly in motion as the Romans keeping his place in the slave’s and facile, for the two naturally – in war, migration, expansion avenging anger,” Bhabha says, exist in an uninterrupted – found little use for the worship illustrating the spirit of identifica- continuum with one spawning the of inaction (Broadhead). The tion and possession that haunts impulse for the other. Inaction is symbolism of a cleaved duality the relationship between the an awareness of the world, a sensory appears throughout Adichie’s Colonizer and the Colonized, experience of the external. It is a text, figured most prominently with the former seeking to possess pause, a stillness of the body, and in the motif of beheading. Even the latter and the Colonized the disruption of psychic the symbology of the Biafran flag, desiring the power and status of inertia. For the performance which bears a halved sun, speaks the Colonizer (Remembering of action requires one to first to a wholeness that has been sun- Fanon, xxviii). It is this very phe- decide, often times prematurely, dered – resonant with the plight nomenon that has contributed in favor of a specific thought of inaction both in the novel and to the lamentable phenomenon (or sequence of thoughts) that the postcolonial condition. of postcolonial states and actors is transfigured into motive for Inaction bears a plethora performing colonial violence action. This selection implies the of iterations – paralysis, listless- while repudiating colonial death of the multitude of other ness, and passive resistance. This authority. This is all too evident thoughts, visions, and realities exercise of categorization is con- in the Biafran secession project, that could be. Inaction opens trived, for these states may often doubly reprehensible considering the space for the resuscitation of co-exist and occur simultaneously. its radical rupture from British these psychic processes, and the However, the focus of this essay colonialism and the colonial-style imagining of new possibilities. It is passive resistance, the capacity regime of independent Nigeria. is a site for processes of meaning- inaction bears to resist and reject Their use of child labor, with making, interpretation, and the singular vision of action and “children forced into a truck by resignification. its violent realities. What potential soldiers and returned at night A recurring motif does inaction hold to contribute with their palms chafed and
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bleeding from grinding cassava” between Olanna and Odenigbo modern social cohesion - the (329), echoes the capitalist labor about Mohammed, Olanna’s many as one - shared by organic exploitation of the colonial epoch, friend and former lover, in which theories of the holism of culture such as in Colonial Zimbabwe he states that Mohammed, the and community, and by theorists where “African children were “bloody Muslim Hausa man…is who treat gender, class or race as a ready-made source of cheap complicit, absolutely complicit, in social totalities that are expres- labor that could be harnessed everything that happened to our sive of unitary collective experi- to the capitalist transformation people” (238). Both Ugwu and ences” (DissemiNation 212). This of the new colony” (Grier 34). Odenigbo seem perfectly capable skepticism of “unitary collective The colonial ethic of exploiting of rehearsing and performing experiences” and “modern social alterity is all too present in this Igbo scripts of ethno-nationalism, cohesion” is what leads Bhabha secession enterprise. Examples of demonstrating that this ethno- on the path to reinterpreting the Biafran militia plundering the fascist fervor transcends differ- nationhood as a narrative. Such relief rations meant for refugees ences in social class and formal an interpretation of nationhood or its leader Ojukwu manipulat- education. Essentializing forces resists the “authoritarian, ing the propagandistic rhetoric of operate in this appeal to an ethni- ‘normalizing’ tendencies within saboteurs to root out dissidents cally homogenous, “pure” state, cultures in the name of the speaks to the corruption of the constructing significant divisions national interest or the ethnic fledgling Biafran state, which based purely on one’s birth and prerogative” (Introduction: mirror the policies of their British spoken tongue. The fact that Narrating the Nation 4). The rulers and the post-independence Mohammed saved Olanna violence perpetuated by both government of Nigeria. Biafra during the Hausa riots, at the risk the Hausa and the Igbo retells was meant to be a symbol of the of his own life, does not figure in this narrative of an ethnically liberation of all of Black Africa, Odenigbo’s scathing denunciation, bound state, a unitary experience and yet it too enslaved thousands nor the sheer reality of the Igbo- of ethnicity, gender, and other and sacrificed millions in its led reprisal attacks against the social orientations imposed by doomed quest. Hausa in Ugwu’s estimation of the discourse of the nation and One of the most signifi- the Igbo. Reality, with its nationalism. cant aspects of this replication of complexities and subjectivities, The violence of such colonial dominance is in the has no place in this nationalistic nationalist dogma is only realized ethno-nationalism that the dis- rhetoric. Rather, this rhetoric when thought turns to deed. In course of Biafran statehood (in) is predicated upon dualisms of his seminal work on postcolonial cites. References to the purity good/bad and insider/outsider, identities in India and Sri Lanka, of the Igbo people, the ethnic with a mythic understanding of Postcolonial Insecurities, Krishna identity of Biafra, abound, which what constitutes each. Adichie explores the dangers of the are contrasted with the “vandals” gestures towards the colonial embodiment of abstraction. (the Muslim Hausa) and “sabo- origins of this phenomenon, Modernity, he states “is the teurs” (other minorities). Even with a discussion at the onset of disciplining of ambiguity and the principal characters, such as the novel of the British policy of an intolerance for multiple or Olanna, her husband Odenigbo, divide and rule that pitted the layered notions of identity, terri- and their houseboy Ugwu are Hausas against the Igbo. tory, and sovereignty, citizenship enmeshed in the violence of This reductive, essential- is invariably an either-or matter” ethno-nationalism, for their izing, totalizing vision of nation- (32). This relates to Bhabha’s Igbo identity is constructed in hood is what Bhabha attempts to theorization of nationhood that opposition to the other ethnici- dismantle through his emphasis is predicated upon the articulation ties. The conversation between on the constructed nature of the of singular social locations that Olanna and Ugwu of the first nation. He suggest the dangers can be represented as “unitary military coup, in which Ugwu of imbibing “the many as one” collective experiences,” as ends with “we are not like those mythos of nationhood, stating discussed earlier. In this site of Hausa people” (222) is repeated “we may begin by questioning intolerance for ambiguity and in the more heated exchange that progressive metaphor of diversity, ideologies of ethno-
38 Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark University | Volume III nationalism can often inspire 12-13). One needs to look no stillness that expand and add violence, as the postcolonial further than the response to the complexity to the construct. It is history of many states can attest. second military coup in Adichie’s inaction that holds the redemptive However, in quoting Henri text, the ethnic violence directed potential that allows Ugwu to Lefebvre, he says this violence at the Igbo people, or the Igbo mourn his action, his assault of “does not stem from some force response to this in the form of the bar-girl. He murmurs to intervening aside from rationality, a civil war to understand how himself, in barely perceptible outside or beyond it. Rather, it Adichie’s novel manifests this motions “The World Was Silent manifests itself from the moment uncertain quality of action. When We Died. It haunted him, any action introduces the rational Action is synonymous filled him with shame. It made into the real, from the outside, by with violence in Adichie’s text. him think about that girl in the means of tools which strike, slice Even the actions that resist the bar” (496). It is in moments of and cut—and keep doing so until reductionist abstractions, the hushed murmurs, silence, and the purpose of their aggression is homogenizing discourses of interiority that Ugwu finds the achieved” (32). Communal vio- nationhood, appear to inscribe capacity to acknowledge his guilt. lence in the postcolonial state is a violence. For instance, Olanna’s It is then that he grieves the pain product of reductionist abstraction twin Kainene’s reaction to the of his victim. Repentance, with its turned action, or a(bstra)ction, Igbo refugee woman who spits ability to reject the violent narra- and cannot be attributed solely to on the doctor from an ethnic tive of conflict arises not through the first. minority group – two hard slaps action but inaction. Inaction pos- What is intrinsically vio- across the face – is shaped by sesses a retrospective capacity to lent about action? The problem- their class difference, and exem- resignify events of the past, which atics of action lie in its bounded plifies the violence that binds the bears the ability to redeem the nature and the uncertainty that elite to the proletariat. However, present moment and transform marks it. Action is limited to the the violence that stems from the the future. This linking of the bodily capacities of the actor, by ethno-nationalistic paradigm three temporal states resists a the kinesthetic faculties, muscle is significantly more damaging linear temporality that is assumed memory, and spatial awareness of and repugnant. Ugwu’s rape of by the dominant discourse of the individual. It is restricted by the bar-girl in the height of the nationhood. the social conventions that render war is a testament to this. This The temporal dimensions it readable to the external world. section of the narrative contains of inaction can be read throughout Actions are not performed in a no sense of stillness or meditation Adichie’s narrative. Olanna, as vacuum, and thus the regulatory on Ugwu’s part. The scene is a the only character in Nsukka who powers of the social sphere govern montage of different motions in witnessed the violence against it, even what is intended to be time played at high speed, which the Igbo people firsthand while subversive motion. The actor conveys this sense of “beyond in Kano, gazes across all temporal frequently experiences difficulty control” that Bhabha speaks of dimensions. However, the others in translating the expansive in reference to motion. Ugwu’s in Nsukka, where “life was universe of the psyche, with resistance to the violence is not insular and the news was unreal” its untold multitudes, into the figured implicitly or explicitly. (168), conceptualize this violence diminished modalities of speech Instead there lingers a sense of only in abstraction. To them, the and corporality. Upon performing inevitability to the scene. One violence does not carry the same the action, ambiguity shrouds its finds no relief from such grotesque gravity, the quality of realness result. Bhabha speaks of action representations of violence in that Olanna has experienced. that seems “somehow beyond action, but must turn to inaction They are able to look squarely control” and quotes Hannah to find liberation. into the future. While at the rally Arendt’s suggestion “that the held in Nsukka to commemorate author of social action may be the DISAMBIGUATING INACTION the birth of the secessionist initiator of its unique meaning, Inaction has been theo- movement, Odenigbo raises his but as agent…cannot control its rized earlier, but a close reading arm to emphasize the grandiosity outcome” (Locations of culture of the text supplies moments of of the Biafran future. Olanna sees
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this gesture and remembers “how a golden future, disregarding the of Culture 2). Inaction presents awkwardly twisted Aunty Ifeka’s exclusions, atrocities, and harsh such moments of in-betweenness. arm had been” (205), her mind realities that exist in the now and As both the moment of birth suspended in the past. While are prerequisite for a homogenous and death of action, it exists as Odenigbo and her daughter dance utopian state. While all of the the space between and around around the room after Ojukwu characters in Nsukka embrace motion and stillness, thought announces the birth of the free a mythologized, abstract vision and deed, beginning and ending. Biafran state, Olanna simply of a Biafran state of the future, it The figure of Janus is interstitial watches on “her mind frozen is those who have witnessed the in the embodiment of duality. in the present” (203). While violence of ethnic conflict who The merging of temporalities, the Olanna does not stagnate in these temper this (destructive) ideal. It resignification of culture – all of temporalities but bears the ability is figures like Olanna who ‘renew’ these phenomena suggest a limi- to look to the future as well, the the past by rehabilitating it from nality to inaction. The inaction other characters can only orient the debris of memory and weaving through which Ugwu repents the themselves to futurity. While it into the present moment. Her sexualized violence he committed other characters do, Olanna presence signifies the refiguring inhabits “that gray space between observes. Thus, a clear relationship of culture, the emergence of a dreaming and daydreaming” develops between the act of counter-stance to the insulari- (497), illustrating the borderland witnessing, especially of violence, ties of the dominant paradigm of nature of inaction. It is this collapse and the capacity to traverse various secession, suggesting alternative of boundaries, the existence temporal dimensions of past, readings of history and futurity. outside of and between paradigms present, and future. Bhabha’s reference to that enables one to realize the Bhabha’s theorizing on ‘in-between’ spaces relates to his potential of inaction to unite cultural production bears similar theorizing of interstices in Loca- artificially isolated temporalities, temporal dimensions. In the tions of Culture. He posits that and to resist the homogenizing introduction to Locations of society must reject the singu- force of nationhood. Culture he states “the borderline larities of social locations such It is to the rejection of work of culture demands an as class or gender, and instead nationalist discourse that we encounter with ‘newness’ that is seek interstices that manifest in arrive at through a close reading not part of the continuum of past the moment of the articulation of of both Olanna and Kainene and present. It creates a sense of cultural differences. “These and the role(s) that they play in the new as an insurgent act of in-between spaces provide the the narrative. Here, inaction is a cultural translation. Such art does terrain for elaborating strategies site that is fertile ground for the not merely recall the past as a social of selfhood – singular or cultivation of subversion, and for cause or aesthetic precedent; it communal – that initiate new producing narratives that reject renews the past, refiguring it as signs of identity, and innovative the totalizing powers of colonial a contingent ‘in-between’ space, sites of collaboration, and contes- discourse. If action is that which that innovates and interrupts the tation, in the act of defining the produces and reinforces discourses performance of the present” (7). idea of society itself” (Locations of ethno-nationalism that both Half of a Yellow Sun develops of Culture 1-2). It is in these Ugwu and Odenigbo explicitly this idea further, for the remem- interstitial spaces that culture cite, it is inaction that positions brance of the past interrupts not is reinterpreted, and matters of Olanna to resist these narratives. simply the present but also the inclusion and exclusion are nego- The two key exchanges on ethno- ‘present of the future,’ a temporal- tiated. According to Bhabha, it is nationalist discourse in the text, ity that seeks to focus the present in “the emergence of interstices between Olanna and Ugwu and moment exclusively on futurity, – the overlap and displacement of Olanna and Odenigbo, take place and is often employed by domains of difference – that the after she witnesses the massacre nationalist discourse to intersubjective and collective of Kano. Witnessing the brute obscure its violence. The project experiences of nationness, reality of the violence that the of nationhood always spends community interest, or cultural homogenous state – the Hausa the present moment looking to value are negotiated” (Locations nation – must enact in order to
40 Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark University | Volume III define itself awakens Olanna’s inability of her body to control being saboteurs and responsible sensitivities to the pervasive excretory functions. From this for the evils that have befallen nature of violence, including state, Olanna appears whole but Biafra. While Kainene’s reaction the silent violence of the Biafran transformed, with a heightened cites certain scripts of violence, narrative. It is not action – a consciousness that has been intimating an intrinsically violent state of doing, of motion – that explored earlier in this paper. aspect of action, much of what Olanna inhabits in this moment However, there appears a direct she does comes from a critical of witnessing violence, but of connection between this state positionality, one that attempts to motionlessness, observation, and of inaction and the “actions” of deconstruct all forms of violence. inaction. Thus, while Olanna those around her. Adichie states Inaction not only possesses the embraces the idea of the Biafran that Olanna’s Dark Swoops grew capacity to be critical of action, state, she is cautious in accepting worse during times when her but to escape the paralysis that its propaganda uncritically. It is visitors abused the Hausa, deriding this state may induce by suggesting through her eyes that the reader them as “the black-as-he-goats an alternative space, a way of is able to discern the inequities, Northerners, those dirty cattle- doing that seeks to minimize the the cruelties, and the miseries rearers with jigger-infested feet” intrinsic violence of action. that the ethno-nationalism of all (198). It is tenable to assume that The exercise of resignify- factions inspires. her state of inaction is poised to ing nationhood as a continuous It is her capacity for reject this binary world view of and dynamic narrative is what inaction that enables Olanna to good Igbo/evil Hausa, and that negotiates the porosity of culture witness this violence, to make it it labors to rehabilitate Olanna’s and the nation state, Bhabha says. salient to the ‘present of the mind from the violence of “The problem of outside/inside future’ space, and reject the dichotomies. must always itself be a process ethnic homogenizing powers Kainene’s narrative follows of hybridity, incorporating new the culture of Biafra perpetuates. a similar trajectory. She witnesses ‘people’ in relation to the body She is able to observe “we are all the grotesque death of her steward, politic, generating other sites of capable of doing the same things Ikejide, a moment of inaction meaning and, inevitably, in the to one another, really” (222). that marks her significantly. The political process, producing This is an explicit renunciation of text emphasizes the fact that the unmanned sites of political the Igbo rhetoric of ethnic purity memory of this incident lingers antagonism and unpredictable and chosenstatus. This is echoed on, and that it is frequently forces for political representation” in her defense of Mohammed renewed and rehearsed in her (Introduction: Narrating the against Odenigbo’s prejudiced mind. The Kainene that emerges Nation 4). Narratives possess overgeneralizations. While Olanna from the inactive moment of the spatial capacity to debate supports the central cause of the witnessing violence is altered questions of belonging and pose secession movement, she repu- significantly. She too is moved to alternatives to totalizing myths of diates the violence it engenders thoughtful, premeditated action. citizenship. The figures of Olanna and is moved to more thoughtful Kainene rejects the classism and and Kainene strive towards a action. It is important to recog- corruption that defines the elites similar vision, one in which the nize Olanna’s Dark Swoops, the of wartime to establish a camp for necessity of violence, irrespec- trauma-induced mental illness refugees. She commits her entire tive of the actor or the cause, is she experiences after witnessing being to this project, yet is able to questioned. In this process of the massacre in Kano, as a state of critically examine the discourse questioning narrative, a new inaction which, while seemingly of belonging the Biafran state culture emerges. Olanna and an undesirable state of paralysis, cites. It is through this critical Kainene suggest the possibility of creates the space for her to heal positionality that Kainene a third space, one which rejects and reconcile the many experiences opposes the refugee woman the colonizing potential of both of her past, present, and future. who spits on the doctor from an the federal government and the Her Dark Swoops represent a ethnic minority group, rejecting Biafran rebels, in which questions cessation of motion – from the the woman’s ethno-nationalist of who we are and what binds us weakness of her limbs to the rhetoric of all minorities together are approached through
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new, more inclusive ways. modalities of expression and motif of the severed head serves While moments of inac- pluralities of being in this world. to illustrate the violent disassoci- tion could be read as products Much like Gayatri Spivak argues ation of action and inaction, and of subjection or even impotence, for the resignification of the Indian the destructive potential of action it is necessary to be critical of independence fighter Bubane- that reigns unchecked by the this impulse. For instance, the swari Bhaduri’s suicide beyond mediating powers of inaction. execution of Nnaemeka, the the gendered narrative of unin- However, the symbol of the Igbo security officer at the Kano tended pregnancy, the death of severed head also carries the airport, could be interpreted as a Nnaemeka must be reinterpreted potential to reinforce the semantics moment of paralysis. His inaction to recognize the capacity of inac- of inaction, and inspire a shift before his Hausa executor could tion for “disavowal, resistance, in belief and consciousness. The be construed as a passivity that displacement, exclusion, and severed head seeks completion, arises from being overwhelmed cultural contestation” (Bhabha, a uniting of the body, to make with fear. However, to read it only Introduction: Narrating the Janus whole again. As two who in this light is to further disem- Nation 5). It is only then that we have experienced the sym- power the subject, amplifying circumvent the reinforcing of bolic power of the severed head, the violence that is performed alterity, and avoid further silencing Olanna and Kainene perform this upon them. While it is tenable the colonial subject. labor of merger and regenera- to assume that the paralysis of The severed head is a tion. It is fitiing that Olanna and fear does exist in this moment, symbol that appears throughout Kainene, twin sisters who are the reader must interrogate the Adichie’s text. Its connection to both similar and significantly figure of inaction to determine inaction brings us back to the different from one another, are what other, potentially subversive, splitting of Janus, the sundering of the sites for the healing of the capacities it holds. A reading action and inaction. The severed rupture between the duality of informed by this aim suggests head of her daughter that the inaction and action. that the refusal to comply with woman fleeing the massacre of In its wariness of total- the Muslim soldier’s order to say Kano carries in a calabash can be izing epistemes the present work ‘Allahu Akbar’ is a sign of passive interpreted as a representation must tread with caution, for to resistance. It especially rejects of the cerebral state of inaction construct too absolute a position the appropriation of religion to that is cleaved from the bodily- on inaction would be to perpetuate justify ethnic violence. Whatever kinesthetic. Beholding it, Olanna the same epistemic violence. In Nnaemeka’s intentions may have experiences a moment of stillness the interest of exploring certain been – we do not know for the as she “stare[s] at it for a while” critical alternatives to the main scene is mediated by a white (188). She takes no action taken thrust of this paper, it must be man’s narration – the inaction he over the severed head, there is no noted that inaction may very well embodies acquires meaning of its dramatic reaction to it. While fail to realize its subversive poten- own in the singular moment, another passenger screams, tial, and even replicate forms of representing, among many Olanna stares on, transfixed violence that action inspires. For things, a passive resistance to a by the vision before her. The instance, when Ugwu attempts project that aims to subjugate memory lingers on in her mind, to seek sanctuary inside a church and eliminate difference. It can for references to this incident to evade the Biafran soldiers who be argued that Nnaemeka’s death appear elsewhere in the book. It will conscript him, the priest was inevitable, for his birth and is telling that Olanna experiences does nothing, thereby denying identity mark him irrevocably. her first moment of being rooted him assistance. This moment In such a context the capacity to in the present after witnessing of inaction leaves Ugwu at the confront and defy through the severed head. It serves as a mercy of the soldiers, who recruit passivity is perhaps the only form site for the uniting of temporali- him forcibly into a bloody and of empowerment that exists. It ties. Similarly, the beheading of futile war. Thus, at times inaction is only through the recognition the steward Ikejide precedes the can aid and abet this program of of this defiant nature of inaction transfiguring of Kainene to a state violence. It is not my aim to totalize that one can recognize multiple of heightened consciousness. The inaction to always possess the
42 Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark University | Volume III capacity, and more importantly evidence to substantiate the many realize this potential, to resist capacities of inaction. Inaction colonial discourses. Subjectivities provides the psychic terrain for prevail even here. However, what the uniting of temporalities to I hope this work demonstrates is heal a continuum destroyed by the potential inaction holds to be the ‘present of the future’ orienta- resignified as a site of contestation tion of the nationalist paradigm. and passive resistance. Similarly, Through inaction, one discovers one can argue that action can reject means of resisting colonial its destructive potential to be discourses of power and violence, anti-colonial, especially by pro- the space to grieve the violence ducing “recesses of the national of action, and to conceive con- culture from which alternative scious and deliberate expression. constituencies of peoples and It supplies the interstitial spaces oppositional analytic capacities that serves as fertile ground for may emerge” (Bhabha, Introduc- cultural production and the refig- tion: Narrating the Nation 3). uring of nationhood as narrative. While this potentiality of action To Bhabha, the “study [of] the must be acknowledged, we must nation through its narrative address also bear in mind that such a does not merely draw attention to space of motion is often preceded its language and rhetoric; it also and mediated by inaction, a site attempts to alter the conceptual of meditation and reflection. object itself. If the problematic Lastly, I am in no way implying ‘closure’ of textuality questions that we must unequivocally the ‘totalization’ of national condemn the Biafran secession, culture, then its positive value lies or at least Adichie’s representa- in displaying the wide dissemi- tion of it. My interests do not lie in nation through which we con- passing such value judgments, but struct the field of meanings and in interrogating the capacity that symbols associated with national exists in postcolonial self- life” (Introduction: Narrating the determination to replicate colonial Nation 3). Inaction contributes examples of violence. This begs to this project of deconstructing the question if there is any space and reconceiving national life that is devoid of the detritus of through its existence outside of colonialism, which is incidentally the discourse of nationalism and a topic for a different discussion, its counter-stance to the privileging but the critical consciousness of action. The healing of the Janus must flourish in order to disturb figure resurrects the spaces of our complacency in a troubled pluralities and ambivalence that world. totalizing discourses have col- An attentive study of lapsed, and negotiate questions the figure of inaction serves to of belonging to craft a nationhood inscribe more meaning in this that aims to include. construct than mere apathy or subjection. Negative spaces such as inaction and silence possess immense potential to resist, subvert, and reimagine the nation. Adichie’s generous novel supplies prodigious textual
43 THE MOTIONLESS HALF-SUN OVER THE POSTCOLONIAL HORIZON: Themal Ellawala
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Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun. New York: Anchor Grier, Beverly C. Invisible Hands: Child Labor and the State in Colonial Books, 2007. Print. Zimbabwe. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006. Electronic.
Bhabha, Homi K. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of Krishna, Sankaran. Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the the Modern Nation.” The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Question of Nationhood. Minneapolis: University of Min- Social Theory. Ed. Anthony Elliot. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. nesota Press, 1999. Electronic. 211-219. Electronic. Menon, Ritu and Kamala Bhasin. “’They wanted to die’: Women, Bhabha, Homi K. “Introduction: Locations of Culture.” Bhabha, Homi kinsmen, and partition.” Violence against Women: Victims K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 1-18. and Ideologies. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka Foundation, Electronic. 1996. Electronic.
Bhabha, Homi K. “Introduction: Narrating the Nation.” Nation and Seshadri, Kalpana Rahita. HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language. Minne- Narration. Ed. Homi K. Bhabha. Oxon: Routledge, 1990. apolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Print. 1-7. Electronic. Spivak, Gayathri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak, Gayathri. A Bhabha, Homi K. “Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- Condition.” Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. versity Press, 1999. 2197-2208. Electronic. London: Pluto Press, 1986. vii-xxv. Electronic. Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo. “A grammar of terror: Psychocultural Broadhead, Will. “Migration and Hegemony: Fixity and Mobilty in responses to state terrorism in Dirty War and Post-Dirty Second-Century Italy.” People, Land, and Politics: Demo War Argentina.” The paths to domination, resistance, and graphic Developments and the Transformation of Roman terror. Ed. Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin. Berkeley: Italy 300 BC-AD 14. Ed. Luuk de Ligt and S. J. Northwood. University of California Press, 1992. 219-259. Electronic. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 451-470. Wasson, Donald L. Ancient History Encyclopedia. 6 February 2015. Das, Veena. “Sexual violence, discursive formations, and the state.” Electronic. 6 May 2016.
FACULTY SPONSOR: Stephen Levin, Ph.D.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Prof. Stephen Levin who cultivated my interest in Postcolonial Theory and Literary Theory, and who inspired this particular line of inquiry. My thanks also go to Prof. Olga Litvak, for her insightful comments and critiques.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | Themal Ellawala Themal Ellawala ’17 is a Psychology major with an interest in the intersection of Anthropology, critical theory, and social justice. He is particularly attentive to how modernity imposes on racial, sexual, and gen- dered ontologies, especially in the Global South. His interests coalesce around South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora, and the possibilities that postcolonial studies and queer theory offer to interrogate various gendered and sexualized existences in these geo-cultural spaces. Themal is currently working through an ethnography on genders and sexualities in Sri Lanka that was conducted in 2016 and plans to continue exploring these themes in a doctoral program in Anthropology. 44