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UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA Departamento de Filología Inglesa ______________________________________________________________________ CREOLISATION AND CARIBBEANNESS: THE ASSERTION OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH CARIBBEAN FICTION Zenaida Seguin Pedraill 2003 2 UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA Departamento de Filología Inglesa ______________________________________________________________________ CREOLISATION AND CARIBBEANNESS: THE ASSERTION OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH CARIBBEAN FICTION Vº Bº Trabajo que para optar al Grado de Salamanca, presenta ZENAIDA LA DIRECTORA SEGUIN PEDRAILL , dirigido por la Dra. OLGA BARRIOS HERRERO Salamanca, septiembre 2003 3 CONTENTS Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 5 Chapter One Theoretical Approaches to Caribbeanness and Literature …………….. 17 Creolisation and Cultural Identity .................………………………………. 20 Some Considerations on Caribbean English Creole ………........................... 31 An Approach to the Short Fiction in the English Caribbean ........................... 41 Chapter Two The Liminal Caribbean Identity in Summer Lightning”, by Olive Senior: A Reading Between the Lines ......................................................... 53 Chapter Three The Alienated Sociocultural Self: Karl , by Velma Pollard ....................... 72 Chapter Four Self-pride and the Expression of an Afro-Creole Identity in “A Brief Conversion”, by Earl Lovelace ………………………………... 91 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 108 Appendix A Brief Exchange of Ideas With the Authors .............................................. 113 Works Cited ................……………………………………………………… 118 4 Introduction Identity has become a major issue of debate in contemporary literary theory and cultural studies within postcolonialism 1. It has been approached by sociological and anthropological sciences within the context of multicultural communities, as well as from the standpoint of writers, critics, and artists living in multicultural and transculturated social contexts. The importance of the question of identity in cultural and social studies can be viewed as a consequence of the internationalisation 2 of cultures, a process that has been taking place after the major events that have marked the history of humanity —from the rediscovery 3 of the New World, through the colonial experience, the two World Wars, the independence of countries under colonial rule, and to recent political and geographical reorganization of states. All these events have been accompanied by processes of migration, disintegration, transformation, and the formation of diasporic cultural communities worldwide. As a result of such transformations, the human being, whose life experience develops in transforming sociocultural contexts, may be frequently confronted with the dilemma of inhabiting two spaces, two cultures at a time. The tensions generated by this social and cultural dilemma are intensified when these two cultures share a history of antagonistic 1 The term postcolonialism or post-colonialism has incited and still incites much theoretical and interdisciplinary debate. Several critics use it to “signify the political, linguistic and cultural experience of societies that were former European colonies” (Ashcroft et al 186), whereas others disagree with the post quality of the term, alleging that post-colonial societies have not undergone serious transformation to get rid of the very colonial status. Besides, the use of the hyphen is meant, sometimes, to indicate the historical period after colonial countries were granted independence. Although I agree with this polemical character of post colonialism, I use the term to refer to these new literatures coming from ex European colonies, since it is already a widely acceptable term in cultural and linguistic studies. However, I deem necessary to add that, in my dissertation, I consciously rely on my personal experience as a Caribbean subject, in an attempt to avoid the homogenizing aspect of Eurocentric notions in the field of postcolonial studies. 2 This internationalisation of cultures responds to the multiculturalism of today’s world. But the term is related to postcolonial critic Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, in which he pillories the idea of the existence of pure cultures and traditions, and advocates for the hybridized or multicultural nature of contemporary societies, for an “ inter national culture, based . on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity” (38). This notion of hybridity in postcolonial theory alludes to the mixture of cultures and is, thus, similar to those of transculturation and creolisation; whereas the notion of multiculturalism generally alludes to the presence of several cultures not necessarily intermingled in a social context. These issues will be examined in Chapter One. 3 Here I mean that the Spanish conquistador Christopher Columbus actually rediscovered the New World, because America was at the time of the discovery —the fifteenth century— inhabited by indigenous peoples. They came to the region centuries before from the Asian continent, and thus became the real conquistadores of the land. 5 relationships to one another, i.e., the dominating stance of one upon the other (as is the case of postcolonial societies) or when domination still operates through a set of economic, cultural, and ideological mechanisms (what has been known as neocolonialism). Certainly, the postcolonial, neocolonial state derives from a history of colonialism in which European countries or cultures exerted political and cultural domination upon countries/cultures from Africa, Asia, and America. This cultural domination in Third World countries during the colonial era continued to be exerted on postcolonial societies through other more subtle mechanisms of imperial domination and sociocultural perspectives inherited from their colonial history. Within this colonial and postcolonial context of cultural domination, the individual has been forced to appropriate the ways and values of the dominating, colonizing culture. Most of the times, such appropriation has taken place through the mimicry of European Western cultures. This mimic stance of the colonial and postcolonial subject might have been given consciously or not, but, as some critics assert, the mimicry of the European culture by colonized subjects has usually entailed some kind of subversion against the social and cultural order imposed by the colonizer 4. Consequently, despite the dominating stance of the European Western culture, the colonized man or woman has tried to oppose the impulse of assimilating into the dominating culture by maintaining his/her own cultural heritage. The maintenance of one’s cultural heritage has actually being the ground for a rebellious position that has aimed at asserting a cultural legacy marginalized by a dominating European Western discourse, which has been fundamental in the colonized individual’s assertion of cultural identity. My interest in the way the postcolonial subject asserts his/her identity is concerned with the negotiation he/she has to undertake in order to cope with the reality of his/her hybridized society. By negotiation I mean the reconciliation of and accommodation by 4 In postcolonial theory, mimicry is understood as the colonized subject’s imitation of the colonizer’s cultural values and customs. The mimicry of the colonized has been analyzed as an ambivalent phenomenon, because his/her imitation of the colonizer’s culture may also entail a passive rejection or mockery of this culture. Therefore, the colonized will never be like the colonizer; and it is in this sense that some critics, such as Homi Bhabha and Bill Ashcroft, perceive the mimic colonized man as a flawed copy and a menacing identity to the colonial system: “This identity of the colonized subject means that the colonial culture is always potentially and strategically insurgent” (Ashcroft 141). 6 agreement to the different sociocultural elements provided by a hybridized or creolised social context. Certainly, postcolonial societies provide a social and cultural reality that forces the individual to develop his/her sociocultural experience while participating in different sociocultural discourses, and his/her personhood and cultural identity must be formed through the individual’s multiple relation to these different sociocultural discourses or milieus. Generally, the relation of domination/subordination that has characterized the cultural interaction in colonial and postcolonial societies has determined the quality of the individual’s relation to these various milieus shaping his/her social and cultural reality. However, recent cultural studies within postcolonialism reveal that the assertion of cultural identity may disavow the traditional disagreement between sociocultural milieus created by the colonial relation of domination/subordination. In these cases, the process of negotiating these different sociocultural discourses within postcolonial social contexts tends to be a necessary social and cultural experience. My specific interest focus precisely on those postcolonial societies formed through a process of creolisation —understood as the intermingling of cultures— because here the individual is bound to go through a process of negotiation despite his/her affiliation with an original ethnic group. In this line, the Caribbean context is, in my personal opinion, the most suitable