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The Self/Otherness and Occident/Orient Dualisms: A European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies Vol.4, No.3, pp.23-36, April 2016 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) THE SELF/OTHERNESS AND OCCIDENT/ORIENT DUALISMS: A SAIDIAN COMPARATIVE READING OF GEORGE LAMMING’S WATER WITH BERRIES AND FIROOZEH DUMAS’S FUNNY IN FARSI Mona AlinaghiZadeh Talaie M.Sc. Alumni, Department of Foreign Languages, Azad University, Tehran, Iran ABSTRACT: Withregard to the theory of thepostcolonialcritic; Edward Said in his book Orientalism , the study ahead aims at analyzing the novel Water with Berries (1972) by George Lamming and Firoozeh Dumas’s a Memoir, Funny in Farsi (2003). Indeed, Said in his book examines the key elements such as the dualities of self / otherness and Occident/ Orient; as well as the attitudes of the western in relation to the Eastern. Moreover, the immigrants’ new identities by which they are to escape from being considered as an “Other” can be observed in this investigation. The study based on analysis of the content and how it is described through the characters interactions. To fulfill that, the researcher highlights the relations and the similarities of the two works; in the lights of the given theory, in terms of the content. Therefore, by providing a precise definition of post-colonial theory and duality selected in this study, the study attempts to have a comparative analysis of the two works. Recurring themes such as: other, self, superior, inferior, savage, civilized, occidental and oriental, which are noticeable in the Dumas’s and Lamming’s works.In other words, considering Said’s theory of the Orientalism, the comparative study of the two mentioned works, it comes to the conclusion that both of them with collation of Said’s key facets of his theory in Orientalism. KEYWORDS: Otherness, Occident, Orient, Superior, Inferior, Savage and Civilized. INTRODUCTION Funny in Farsi as a genre of memoir is a collection of short, humorous stories about Dumas’s growing up in America. The book tells a story unique to her experience of immigration to America with her family, but ultimately, it is about shared humanity. In addition, George Lamming’s Water with Berries, is a story of identity. Throughout the Novel, the experiences of prejudice and racism, from being Caribbean in England are retold. The works, which have been written about the Postcolonial concept, mainly epitomizes on considering this issue versus the colonial land and people in the individual cultures. For instance, The Pleasures of Exile (1960) another book that is written by George Lamming, as a Postcolonial work, gives us George Lamming’s glimpse of the complex issues of Said’s identity contained within the Caribbean island-states that were largely shaped by European colonial discourse. In addition, the melding of cultures and the struggles (often humorous) of immigrants, living in the United States again can be ob-served in Dumas’s second novel: Laughing without an Accent (2008). It gives the reader insights into her stories that reflect the differences among the generations, in how immigrants adapt to life in another culture. George William Lamming was born on June 8, 1927, in Car-rington Village, Barbados. Although he has written poetry, essays, and speeches, he is best known for his novels. Lam- ming’s reputation remains overall intriguingly obscure. As an author, Lamming has an extraordinary ability not only to cap-ture the wide array of Caribbean realities, but also to 23 ISSN 2055 - 0138(Print), ISSN 2055 - 0146(Online) European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies Vol.4, No.3, pp.23-36, April 2016 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) explore and unravel the uniqueness of Caribbean soul, mind, and land. As a writer and as a scholar, Lamming has tried to validate the Caribbean cultural identity. Lamming’s literary produc-tion flourished in England (Notable Caribbean and Caribbean Americans 2003). Lamming’s writing focuses on finding new political and social identity and the long-lasting effects of early colonialism on the minds and actions of the Caribbean people. His use of allegory and metaphor give deeper political meaning to stories of people newly freed from the oppression of colonial rule. Lamming’s writing style is experimental often-containing cir-cular plot structures, and abrupt shifts in narrative through his confrontation of old colonial rule, and his inventive writing style. According to Bill Schwarz’s article " C. L. R. James and George Lamming: The Measure of Historical Time" (2003), Lamming is principally a writer of fiction. Water with Berries (1972) is in the form of a novel. It is an account of two chaotic weeks in the lives of three artists from San Cristobal living in London and pursuing the purity of intention. Teeton is a writer and a painter, had betrayed his wife, Randa, years earlier in San Cristobal, abandoning her there; her suicide revives his buried guilt. In addition, his departure from the Old Dowager; his white landlord, to whom he has taken refugee in London, is imminent. Derek, an actor, makes his living by playing a corpse on stage. He has had one particularly successful season at Stratford as Othello, the jealous Moor. Since then, however, his career has suffered a decline, and his habitual role has come to be that of a corpse. As well, Roger Capildeo, the musician, has come to London to escape from the influence of his father, and from a land with which he has no ancestral sympathy. In the end, their quest for fulfillment ends in failure, disillusionment, death and imprisonment. Firoozeh Dumas was born in (1965) in Abadan, Iran and moved to Whittier, California at the age of seven. After a two-year stay, she and her family moved back to Iran and lived in Ahvaz and Tehran. Two years later, they moved back to Whittier, then to Newport Beach. With dry wit and a bold spirit, Dumas puts her unique mark on the themes of family, community, and tradition, filled with joy, love, and laughter. It is also filled with keen insight into human behavior. Moreover, she is the author of Laughing without an Accent (2008), which is a memoir containing a few stories about her childhood, but mostly stories about her adventures as an adult. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America (2003) is the book that is to be compared to Lamming’s Water with Berries; based on Postcolonial Approach in this study. "Funny in Farsi - A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in Amer-ica," tells the story of Firoozeh, her parents Kazem and Nazireh, her brothers whom eventually transplanted from their home- land of Iran to America. At just seven years of age, Firoozeh and her family moved from Abadan, Iran, to Whittier, Califor-nia, Kazem, who was an engineer with the National Iranian Oil Company, had lived in America when he won a grant to attend graduate in California. With advent of the Iranian Rev-olution, Americans became less friendly and more suspicious of Iranian residents. Kazem lost his job. Eventually, Firoozeh married a Frenchman, Francois Dumas. Edward W. Said (1935) was a Palestinian-American cultural critic and author, born in Jerusalem and educated in Egypt and the United States. Postcolonial theory that was coined by Edward Said was a phenomenon, a literary critical movement that took shape on the East Coast. The term Post colonialism refers broadly to the ways in which race, ethnicity, culture, and human identity itself are represented in the modern era, after many colonized countries gained their independence. Indeed, Postcolonial literature seeks to describe the interactions between 24 ISSN 2055 - 0138(Print), ISSN 2055 - 0146(Online) European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies Vol.4, No.3, pp.23-36, April 2016 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) European nations and the peoples they colonized. Other key terms that are supposed to be investigated in this study are ethnicity and national Identity. “Division of the world into two parts; the East and the West or the Occident and the Orient or the civilized and the uncivilized was totally an artificial boundary; and it was laid on the basis of the con-cept of them and us or theirs and ours”. Drawing on Said’s book, Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, in Ori-entalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia (1993),explores the ways colonial administrators constructed knowledge about the society and culture of India and the processes through which that knowledge has shaped past and present Indian reality. One common theme that links the essays in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament is the proposition that Orientalist discourse is not just restricted to the colonial past but continues even today. The contributors argue that it is still extremely difficult for both Indians and outsiders to think about India in anything but strictly Oriental-ist terms. Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament provides new and important insights into the cultural embeddedness of power in the colonial and postcolonial world. "The clash of ignorance" is an article appeared in the October 22, 2001 edition of The Nation written by prominent scholar Edward Said. This article is a critical response to Samuel Hunting-ton’s "The Clash of Civilizations". In the article, Edward Said demonstrated the misleading fallacies of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilization” theory and the reasons for such misunderstanding. Edward Said first describes the paradigm of traditional western oriental thinking; that is precisely the construction of binary opposition between westerner and oth-ers, which have produce most cultural misunderstandings, and the clash of civilizations.
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