UNIT 1 RACE AND ETHNICITY Race and Ethnicity

K. Suneetha Rani

Structure

1.1 Introduction 1.2 Objectives 1.3 Contexts 1.3.1 Colonial Designs 1.3.2 Postcolonialism 1.3.3 The Diaspora/Migrant Interrogating the Nation 1.3.4 Multiple Nations and Multiple Ethnicities 1.4 Voices of Resistance 1.4.1 Biased Histories 1.4.2 Gender Roles and Racial Stereotypes 1.4.3 Questioning Sexualities 1.5 Mapping and Naming 1.5.1 Colonial Countries and Maps 1.5.2 Representing the Colonial Nations 1.5.3 Inherited Legacies 1.5.4 Changing Names 1.6 Representations and Reformulations 1.6.1 The Subverted Gaze 1.6.2 Deprivation of Roles and Belongings 1.7 Race, Gender and Nation 1.7.1 Tribal Nations and Nationalism 1.7.2 Confused Masculinities 1.7.3 Mainstream Femininities and Other Masculinities 1.8 Let Us Sum Up 1.9 Glossary 1.10 Unit End Questions 1.11 References 1.12 Suggested Readings

1.1 INTRODUCTION

In the previous courses MWG-001, MWG-002 and MWG -004 you read about race and ethnicity from social science approaches. In this Unit and other courses of the literature specialization (MWG-007 and MWG-008), you will learn about aspects of race and ethnicity from literary perspectives. As you know, race has always been a decisive factor in imperialist politics. It has

97 Interrogating the Nation often been used as the most convenient reason for the marginalisation of countries and peoples. The concept of race determines the notions of superiority and inferiority. ‘Superior’ races have always embarked on civilising missions to the lands of people whom they considered inferior and in need of civilising. Across the world, this racial discrimination and racial prejudice have structured imperialist onslaught on land, massacre of people, appropriation of their identities, elimination of their languages and eradication of their cultures. Thus, race is a crucial determinant of divisive politics. Similarly, ethnicity is quite often associated with race. Race and ethnicity do often overlap and interact in an ambiguous manner. According to Nira Yuval-Davis (1997), ethnicity is determined by biological, cultural, religious, linguistic, and/or territorial boundaries. Ethnicity relates to the politics of collectivity, dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Ethnic groups mobilise cultural resources such as customs, language and religion to promote their ideologies and practices. This Unit will introduce the scope of these concepts and demonstrate the ways in which they have been deployed in the hegemonic discourses on nation, nationalism and gender. At the same time, it will also engage with alternative voices on these issues.

1.2 OBJECTIVES

After completing this Unit, you will be able to:

• Understand the politics of race and ethnicity in determining gender and nation;

• Analyse diverse views on race, ethnicity, gender and nation;

• Trace the parallels and contrasts between the voices that foreground alternative arguments; and

• Interpret postcolonial transformations in the context of debates about race, ethnicity, gender and nation.

1.3 CONTEXTS

Race and ethnicity are not only identity categories but are instrumental in designing power and divisions. Histories were documented, and constructed around racial and ethnic identities. Such deployment of identities, in turn, helped some peoples and countries to rationalize their imperialist tendencies. European colonisation over other countries in the name of its civilising mission is the best example of this. Interestingly, in the rubric of colonialism, anthropology served this imperialist agenda by authenticating the prejudiced racial differences as genuine. On the other hand, anthropology was written and used by such aspiring and powerful forces in order to manipulate the life chances of powerless people and developing societies. Stereotypes of

98 gender are one of the most prominent features of the aforementioned Race and Ethnicity politics of race and ethnicity.

1.3.1 Colonial Designs

We have heard about supremacism that leads to subjugation of some people in the name of race, class, caste, gender, etc. Racial supremacism has led to what is called ‘the white man’s/woman’s burden’ of having to civilize the uncivilized, non-western people, as we have seen in histories of various countries.

1.3.2 Postcolonialism

Such racial and ethnic supremacism is being questioned in a postcolonial context. Writers have condemned imperialist tendencies and conveyed their dissent in various ways. Edward Said, in his book Orientalism (1979) examines the history of the analytical category ‘orientalism’ from a post- colonial perspective. According to him, “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’ (Said, 1979, p.10). Colonisation has led to the formation of the image of the orient in the western context in some respects while the orientalist standpoint has led to colonization in some other respects. These situations have given rise to the emergence of the discourse on the binary oppositions of ‘self’ and the ‘other’.

For some other writers such as native writers from Australia and Canada, writing becomes a mode of healing. It not only heals the colonised but also the colonisers who reproduce racist attitudes. Lisa Bellear (2000), an Australian Aboriginal writer, said that her poetry was her way of healing the wounds of the racist and colonialist prejudices and priorities. Similarly, Anita Heiss (2001) argues that there is no post-colonialism for Aboriginals as they are still under the rule of colonisers and continue to be treated as second grade citizens. It is important to remember here that Australian Aboriginals, who were the original inhabitants of Australia, were sanctioned citizenship rights by the white government only in 1970s.

One of the most prominent tropes of postcolonial protest against racist ideology is the use of subversion. These postcolonial voices not only write their stories and rewrite the versions written by the colonial masters, but also subvert the stories that were constructed to suit the colonial interests. Thus, it could unveil the myth of universality that was attributed to such identities and articulations and could offer thought-provoking re-readings of the texts that were till then only analysed and acclaimed for their literary dexterity. Postcolonialism laid bare the political dimensions of the so-called apolitical literary ventures. 99 Interrogating the Nation 1.3.3 The Diasporic /Migrant Interrogating the Nation

While colonized indigenous people have their stories of effacement, the migrants have their own stories of dislocation and displacement. Where voluntary migration most often produces stories of adventure and exploration, forced migration produces tales of angst and alienation. However, these are the migrants who move on or moved on to become part of the host country, often as labourers who were assigned inferior and stigmatised work.

Alex Haley’s (1976) novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family narrates the painful journey of ‘slaves’ towards a land which is a land of opportunities for many but a land of slavery for them. Diasporic writing has interrogated and interpreted the nation that they migrated to and the nation they migrated from. Just as the land to which they migrate has different implications for different people, the land from which they migrate can also mean different things to different people. For some, it could be a cherished, longed for memory recollected in nostalgia, whereas for others it could be a curse left behind. Think about writers of the Indian diaspora such as V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rusdhie, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri and others whose diasporic narratives attempt to define the nation in connection with race, ethnicity and gender. The sense of the identity left behind or lost in one’s ‘native country’ could turn into the construction of imagined communities which are interestingly called ‘global tribes’ in contemporary Diaspora Studies.

1.3.4 Multiple Nations and Multiple Ethnicities

A country like India is known for its diversity accommodates ethnic identities in a fascinating manner. Although it highlights its diversity as its asset, we need to understand how quite often the ethnic hierarchies lead to exoticism or alienation of some of the cultures and peoples. Mahasweta Devi’s oeuvre brilliantly captures such hegemony and exploitation resulting from this diversity. Such multiple ethnicities give rise to the concepts of multiple nations as well. Craig Womack in his Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism (1999) argues for the need to question post-structural and postcolonial criticism, which is racist in nature, and turn towards tribal criticism. He also argues for tribal nationalism that is each tribe in America as a nation by way of subverting the colonial supremacy. As you may know already, one section of native people of Canada calls themselves as ‘First Nations’. This is meant to be a negation of the term tribal/primitive or celebration of their tribe as a community thus harking back to the pre- colonial history of Canada when there was no nation called ‘Canada’ but only a number of small ‘nations’ comprising native populations.

100 Quite often these multiple identities and multiple nations resulted in hybrid Race and Ethnicity lives and generations of miscegenation. Jean Arasanayagam, a Srilankan woman writer terms such hybrid identities as hybrid flowers that inherit the negative qualities of the two communities and races.They lack the fragrance and the softness of their parent flowers and suffer the predicament of nowhereness. Simultaneously trying to belong to more than one place and community and not being able to belong anywhere, inheriting too many identities and being constantly questioned about their authenticity quite often leads to the schizophrenic nature of the postcolonial beings.

Check Your Progrees:

i) How do you understand the concepts of race and ethnicity in the context of gender? Explain briefly in your own words.

1.4 VOICES OF RESISTANCE

Resistance becomes the fundamental principle of postcolonial life since such societies are required to break themselves away from the burden of colonialism in political as well as cultural, economic, social and intellectual fields. Questioning, deconstructing, rewriting and mimicking become some of the crucial ways of resistance. As Homi Bhabha (1994) puts it, the liminal space available to postcolonial peoples as the third space is almost like a razor’s edge that is available between the ‘native’culture and the ‘colonial’ culture in which they stand and raise their voices. “This interstitial 101 Interrogating the Nation passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (Bhabha,1994,p.5). This space not only produces new meanings and identities but also disrupts and subverts the existing and established identities and institutions. Although they attempt to condemn the colonialist culture and uphold the native culture, they inevitably inherit the legacies of both the cultures. Mimicking of the colonizers by the colonised not only reflects the power relations and the forced imitation but also extends to the ambivalence of the postcolonial identities and ideologies.

1.4.1 Biased Histories

History has come in for a lot of criticism in contemporary times as the story of the successful/dominant ‘he’. Scholars have more or less agreed upon the fact that there is no one history but there are multiple histories. Writing histories was one of the most important strategies of colonisation. Coming very close to the agenda of colonial anthropology, imperialist histories also contributed to convince the colonised and the onlookers that colonisation was part of the noble civilising mission. Both of them performed the function of naming, categorising and mapping of bodies, identities, places and cultures. In some cases they completely ignored the presence of the colonised people; for instance, the White colonisers calling Australia ‘Terra Nullius’, a land populated/owned by none even though hundreds of Aboriginal communities had lived there for centuries.Thus, postcolonial discourse initiated the deconstruction of colonial history in a major way. This automatically lead to the construction of alternative histories from the perspectives of Natives and Blacks. Gender plays a major role in this context, as women were colonized by the external as well as internal/domestic colonisers.

Jackie Huggins, an Australian Aboriginal woman writer brilliantly captures the history of colonial Australia by tracing the contradiction between the white women and the Aboriginal women. Like a typical postcolonial historian, Huggins takes race, gender, ethnicity, class and other categories/identities to depict the historical clash between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. Her book Sister Girl (1998) attempts to rewrite the colonial histories that projected Aboriginal people as uncivilised, aggressive and ignorant groups. She questions the designs behind removing of Aboriginal children to missionary homes in the name of their welfare. It is debated whether Aboriginal women and White women can be considered the same since the White women had carried out the agenda of colonisation and the Aboriginal women were subjected to this White women’s burden.

Interestingly, Jackie Huggins chooses the concept of ‘difference’ between the colonised and colonising women to establish the hidden histories of the marginalised people, like a quintessential third world woman writer writing 102 from the first world.This is a dilemma that exists in the societies which are Race and Ethnicity simultaneously caught in the vestiges of colonialism as well as postcolonialism. While Australia claims to be a postcolonial society, Aboriginals continue to remain colonised like Dalits and tribals of India who are subjugated by internal colonization in the name of the caste system. Such ‘fourth world’ voices play a major role in the politics of resistance.

1.4.2 Gender Roles and Racial Stereotypes

Jackie Huggins writes the story of her mother Rita as Auntie Rita, her mother’s voice narrating the experience of the ‘stolen generation’ and the daughter’s voice narrating her interpretation. This is typical of those postcolonial stories which treat autobiography as history. While the previous generations narrate their stories, the later generations interpret them via postcolonial retrospection. Thus,life stories become the histories of people who are absent in mainstream histories or distorted by the narratives of colonisation.Similarly, bell hooks, an African American woman writer, challenges the categories such as gender, race, class, nation and movement. She comes down heavily on the dominant models that influenced the colonised people as well. Such influence leads to mimicry which does not in any way contribute to the postcolonial subversion but only adds to the multiple burdens on the postcolonial woman. She offers an analysis on how African American women are compelled to choose and declare their loyalty to either the Black Movement or the Feminist Movement. It is true that postcolonial people are caught up in overlapping multiple identities. They are cornered with questions of loyalty and authenticity on one hand and are forced to choose the identity with which they would like to be associated. On the other hand, she raises a vital question about the desirability and sexuality of Black women observing that Black men have imbibed the models of White women in terms of their fair, slender and delicate bodies but they also want the hardworking Black woman’s quality in them. Thus, Black women remain the objects of exploitation and sites of atrocity for White men as well as Black men. bell hooks’ integration of race, ethnicity, gender, class, movement and nation unveils a challenging aspect of identity politics. Other African American women writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston also raise similar questions about the identity of African American women in a society conditioned by white standards.

1.4.3 Questioning Sexualities

These predicaments about postcolonial women’s sexuality become more pertinent in the writings of other women writers such as Lee Maracle from the Native Canadian context. In her I am Woman (1996), Lee Maracle analyses how Native women have become undesirable for Native men as well as for White men. This is not only a negation of the Native woman’s sexuality but also an attack on her self-esteem and dignity. Lee Maracle 103 Interrogating the Nation chooses to call herself ‘woman’ rather than ‘a woman’ or ‘the woman’. Thus the word ‘woman’ becomes a noun, a name rather than a category emphasising her gender identity above all identities. Her being a woman or her gender identity is unique and not one with all women. This assertion of sexuality is taken ahead in discussions of other sexualities and the restrictions on them especially in postcolonial societies which have imposed more and more constraints in the name of civilisation and normativity. For instance, Native societies never condemned ‘different’ sexual choices and never proclaimed themselves as heterosexual communities.

A Native Canadian woman writer Beth Brant, in her collection of essays Writing as Witness (1994), compares the ‘twin-soul relationship’ that is lesbian love, to spiritual fulfillment. Therefore she traces the origins of homophobia to colonialism. Her views seem to have emerged from the Native perception of nature and earth as women. Beth Brant declares that homophobia is an extension or offshoot of colonialism, thus emphasising the close connections between imperialism and patriarchy. Similarly, we can see how a particular version of heteronormativity may be an extension or offshoot of racial superiority. Thus, the other identities of postcolonial societies get merged with sexuality studies and reveal how the already ‘othered’ women become much more’ othered’ as they express or follow their sexual choices. It is here that gender colonisation gets closely integrated with the larger colonisation.

In the same way, a Black writer Audre Lorde, in her Cancer Journals (1997), questions the heterosexual models around her. Her mastectomy (breast removal surgery) makes her not only recollect the Amazonian women warriors who had to cut off one of their breasts to facilitate the holding of the shield but also reminds her that as a Black lesbian woman, she has no models in front of her to deal with the post-mastectomy. We can see here how sexuality and sexual choice also become part of postcolonial debates.

1.5 MAPPING AND NAMING

As we have discussed earlier, mapping and naming play a very important role in colonial as well as postcolonial politics. While colonisers mapped and named during colonial times to serve their imperialist desires, these were quite often projected as explorations of enthusiasm, adventurous spirit, reformist invasions. Postcolonial people world over now take up naming and mapping as well as de-mapping and de-naming and remapping and renaming as part of the postcolonial resistance and subversion. Indigenous cultures and images become predominant in this process of deconstruction and reconstruction.

104 1.5.1 Colonial Countries and Maps Race and Ethnicity

While colonised countries become spaces that are to be and can be mapped and named, colonising countries force their burden on the colonised as maps. The ruled can hardly gaze at, evaluate and estimate the ruling countries. However, the overwhelming presence of the rulers hangs heavily on the shoulders of the people who are presumed to be desperately in need of civilisation by the ‘superior races’. The ‘naïve’ descriptions of these maps and names by the ‘noble savage’ express the repressed anger and protest.

Jamaica Kincaid, a Caribbean writer brings out this anger and protest by narrating her experience of her acquaintance with England. Her narrative On Seeing England for the First Time (1991) articulates at length about how England surrounded and influenced their lives in the Caribbean islands. Their studies were centred on England, they ate English food,they dressed up like the English.This imitation which was forced on them was meant to transform them into the unquestioning slaves for the colonial masters in mind and body. Jamaica Kincaid explains how their school text books were obsessed with the English climate which was beyond imagination for the Caribbean children. We notice similar situations in several other colonial contexts where the colonised people are compelled to admire and follow the ways of the colonisers. For instance, William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Daffodils’ is studied by students and taught by teachers who have not even seen this flower. Obsession with something that cannot be seen and felt and something that exists elsewhere but not here could also be part of the politics of the dominating classes to mesmerise the dominated into admiration for them. Ngugi wa Thiong’o rightly identifies the generation of cultural amnesia as a method of erasing the collective memory and sensibility of the colonised people. He refers to the loss of native language and infliction of the colonial language as the first step towards cultural amnesia. Jamaica Kincaid takes it a little further and shows how maps, names and words can transport the colonised people into the coloniser’s world as trained slaves.

While the ‘Made in England’ goods and identities crept into all walks of their life, the day of the Caribbean school children began with hymns, poems and prayers praising England and its rulers. Jamaica Kincaid expresses her anger by saying that she wished, when she saw England literally, that all those salutary words ended with ‘everyone died, how no one knows’. She strongly wishes that England once again becomes a map in her hands as it was in her school days so that she could name it, draw it, and tear it into pieces.

105 Interrogating the Nation 1.5.2 Representing the Colonial Nations

Jamaica Kincaid foregrounds interesting images to describe the map of England. It looked like a special jewel but it was worn only by the privileged people and it spread its wings across the world to establish its colonies. For Kincaid, England ‘looks like a mutton leg’ with red veins running through it. This image, like the one mentioned above of tearing England into pieces, captures her angst. A powerful country that devours the entire world by establishing colonies and enslaving peoples turns into a piece of mutton in the imagination of Jamaica Kincaid. The edible image of the country reveals how the colonised people could subvert the power relations through their imagination. A country that boasted about the sun not setting on its empire becomes a mere dead piece of meat waiting to be consumed.

Similarly, the Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo in her autobiographical fiction Our Sister Kill Joy or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint (1988) narrates her journey to Europe as a learning experience not only to discover the ‘other’ but also to rediscover herself. When she is pointed at as a ‘Black’ in Germany, she is initially confused. But, when she realises that she is surrounded by people who are white, she recognises herself as a Black woman. Like Jamaica Kincaid, she too uses the ‘edible’ food images to describe the whites. She says that the white bodies around her looked like heaps of sliced pork. The white bodies gazing at her black body and presence as the other become the gazed bodies associated with food that can be accessed and consumed.

However, Audre Lorde in her essay The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (1984) and Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2007) discusses how the powerless people’s resistance, quite often, remains only mere words. The subversion of the image of England that we see in Jamaica Kincaid might give the oppressed people some solace as it gives vent to their frustrations. But, it does not really affect the powerful people and change the power dynamics that come into play in the colonial contexts.

1.5.3 Inherited Legacies

Colonised people inherit from not only their subjugated ancestors but also from the subjugating masters. People forced to live with multiple identities learn to adapt according to societal pressures. At the same time they do experience the burden of those identities. There could also be a very conscious effort to conceal certain identities and declare certain other identities. Food and language become the most important elements of such efforts. Nostalgia for the indigenous culture, language, past and identity is a typical trait of postcolonial expressions. However, distancing themselves

106 from their indigenous identities due to known and unknown threats and Race and Ethnicity fears also becomes a way of life for the postcolonial people.

Marlene NourbeSe Philip, a Black Canadian writer in her short story Burn Sugar (2001) chooses the Christmas cake as a symbol for family history. The narrator feels that the cake that she prepared did not have the colour and the texture of the cake that her mother prepared for Christmas. Mother’s absence in an urban context makes her to think about the past with nostalgia. The ‘Western’ cake replaces the food culture of Black Canadians. Cake making like straightening of hair in bell hooks’ essay Straightening Our Hair (1988), becomes a ritual and part of a family history. Nourbese Philip is able to see their stories in cake making whereas her mother warns her of reading too much into a simple thing like cake making. However, both of them know that it is not mere cooking but much more than that. Their identities, their status, their transformation, their acclimatisation are all associated with it. The colour of the cake is dark, we understand from the narrator, when the mother made it and it is lighter in colour when it is made by the daughter. This portrayal of the inexperienced daughter as a novice in cooking reiterates the experience of the mother as a knowing elder. This also presents the interdependence, sharing and concealing between the two and the difference between the two generations; hesitant, scared and silenced mother and thinking, articulating, emboldened daughter.

The evolution in cake making is reflected in the language used in the narrative. It begins in ‘grammatically incorrect’ English. Gradually, it improves and finally sounds as ‘proper English’. While learning to cook is articulated in learning to speak, this gradual change also represents the Black people’s trauma in adopting English and giving up their own languages. Amy Tan of Chinese American origin in her ‘Mother Tongue’ depicts a mother who refuses to speak ‘English English’ and insists on speaking Chinese English. The daughter feels embarrassed that her mother cannot speak English and wonders why she does not improve her proficiency in English. Later, she realises that her mother has an agenda and a strategy and that is to speak Chinese English in order to protect her Chinese origins.

1.5.4 Changing Names

This discourse of language gets closely connected to naming and mapping. Most postcolonial societies longingly refer to their lost languages. In most of the contexts, the coloniser’s languages have played havoc by eliminating the identity, culture, life style and belief system of the colonised people and by wiping out their languages. This linguistic imperialism, according to Ngugi, is a major issue in cultural amnesia that haunts the colonised people. There could be societies that believe that the coloniser’s language is helpful in changing their predicaments. For instance, in the Indian context, tribals, dalits and other disadvantaged sections have been arguing in favour of 107 Interrogating the Nation English as the redeeming language as the Indian languages have also been equally alienating and discriminating towards them.

Native people from Australia, Canada, America and New Zealand speak at length about the ways in which they are intimidated by English as well as the English speaking people. They resisted its influence by refuting the English language and reviving their indigenous languages. A good example of this politics of decolonising language is change of names. Kath Walker, an Aboriginal woman writer from Australia changed her name to Oodgeroo Noonuccal after a woman writer of her tribe. Similarly Colin Johnson, another writer writing with an Aboriginal identity changed his name first as Mudrooroo Narogin, later as Mudrooroo Nyungah and finally as Mudrooroo, which are Aboriginal words. These are only two examples to show how native writers are trying to reclaim their language and their past by rejecting the western names and taking up indigenous names that epitomise their distinct culture.

1.6 REPRESENTATIONS AND REFORMULATIONS

As we have discussed earlier, race and ethnicity are subjected to romanticisation and exoticisation on one hand and condemnation and hatred on the other hand. These presentations and formulations based on prejudice and bias become the site of deconstruction in the writings of the people who are on trial. Thus, re-presentations and re-formulations become their means of resistance. Hence, the woman who is considered as a ‘mere object’ in a colonial and patriarchal system, rewrites the colonial, patriarchal and racial narratives.

1.6.1 The Subverted Gaze

bell hooks discusses the politics of oppositional gaze in the context of American film and African American women. She describes gaze as power and as touch. All gaze does not come out of desire and all gaze does not mean sexuality. But, it also implies the power of looking at others and powerlessness of being looked at in some specific contexts. bell hooks reminds us how a child is reprimanded by the parents for looking at them and also for not looking at them in different contexts and sometimes in the same context. Connecting this to the African American context, she describes how African American women felt empowered to see the white bodies on the screen. However, she also refers to the traumatic condition of the African American women spectators who have to watch the Black women in demeaning roles in the American film. This embodied condition shows that looking alone does not imply an investment of power in the viewer, being looked at may equally have similar implications. However, the liberty to look/to be looked at also determines where power gets located. 108 Similarly, an Egyptian Muslim woman Saadawi questions the cultural Race and Ethnicity inhibitions and orthodox practices that inflict cruel punishments on women’s bodies in the name of traditions. Although men are also subjected to such punishments, women suffer more as the atrocities on their bodies do not stop with these traditional practices but extend into the so called modernity as well. Being a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, Saadawi severely condemns the inhuman practices such as genital mutilation. She argues that ‘religion is politics’. This critical understanding erases the hierarchy between races, ethnicities, religions and genders. She discusses how Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the Egyptian society play similar roles in the oppression of women. She exposes the gender bias in all these religions thus bringing them onto the same platform despite their ideological differences. She condemns the male genital mutilation as well since she believes that no one should be subjected to violence. A subverted gaze is presented in her novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (1987) when the woman medical student is called upon for the dissection of a male body. She stares carefully at the body recollecting all the restrictions on her body, mind, thought and life as a Muslim woman of Egypt. For her, as a woman, gazing at the naked male body, even if it is dead, is empowering. This is because the male gaze or rather patriarchal gaze has restricted her to engage with certain fields of knowledge. The woman who is not even supposed to look at a man starts dissecting a male dead body for exploration and discovery. She is simultaneously reminded of her limitations as a woman in a patriarchal society. At the same time, her achievement and adventure into the world of male bodies and the liberty to gaze is also discussed.

1.6.2 Deprivation of Roles and Belongings

Trinh T. Minh-ha, a Vietnamese writer, filmmaker and feminist critic settled in the United States of America, brings together woman, native and the other in her works to understand the patterns of discrimination and exploitation against them. The ‘intended gaze’ and ‘the oppositional gaze’ become more prominent in the works of Minh-ha. She, like the Black woman writers bell hooks, Audre Lorde and others, focuses on ‘difference’ as charactering the third world women’s identity. This difference could be positive or negative according to the outsiders. But, for the third world women, this difference is essential as uniqueness but not as peculiarity. While they declare solidarity with people especially women like them, they also emphasise their specificity as their identity. This identity is not one that is manipulated by others but one that is chosen and constructed by the the third world women themselves. While deciding on such specific identities, their histories and locations become very crucial for these women. They do not hesitate to shatter the stereotypes that were created by the patriarchal society as well as those that were reconstructed by the feminist movements.

109 Interrogating the Nation Ruth Hegarty, an Australian Aboriginal woman in her autobiography Is That You Ruthie? (1999), connects her missionary experience to depict the deprivations that haunted the Aboriginal lives under colonisation. While they were groomed constantly to become good slaves, they were cut off permanently from their communities and families. Children were deprived of their parents and parents of their children. Miscegenation between races led to ‘the bastard complex’ in Aboriginal people of mixed origin and the government policies towards Aboriginal people intensified it.

1.7 RACE, GENDER AND NATION

We have already discussed how the racial identities have contributed to the predicament of gender and nation and how race, gender and nation have been connected. In this section, let us also see how nations have been associated with masculinity and how certain racial notions define ‘inferior masculinities’. Like men and women together became colonisers, men and women equally became the colonised. The colonised people were exoticised, despised and ridiculed irrespective of their gender. It would be interesting to study how masculinity of the colonised men is constructed in racist, patriarchal and hierarchical societies where masculinity stands for strength, expansion, superiority, intelligence, success and assertion. Although the colonised men are also attributed the above features in their own societies, their masculinity is marginalised and challenged by the colonisers.

1.7.1 Tribal Nations and Nationalism

Craig S. Womack (1999), a Native American of Creek-Cherokee ancestry dismisses the notions of centre and periphery in literature. He deconstructs the notions of mainstream literature being at the centre and other literary voices at the margins. He says that the other voices/literatures should not be trying to move to the centre/mainstream but rather they should become the centre/mainstream. He also argues that the mainstream literary yardsticks should not be used to analyse the native literatures since the highly prejudicial yardsticks can dismiss the spirited and subjective native literatures.At the same time Mudrooroo Narogin argues that colonisation should not become the criterion to write a nation’s history by dividing it into two categories such as pre-colonial and post-colonial. He also questions the concept of hybridity which is used to interpret the postcolonial predicaments as if all the dominant races/nations are pure and all the dominated races/nations are hybrid/adulterated. Let us examine how these arguments shape the native masculinities.

110 1.7.2 Confused Masculinities Race and Ethnicity

Craig S. Womack’s novel Drowning in Fire (2001) depicts the life of a young gay Native American thus extending the discourse of the Centre and the Periphery to the heterosexual vs. same sex love. This also reflects the homophobic attitude of the White society which is quite contrary to the Native societies. Tomson Highway, a Native Canadian writer well-known his play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989) extends this discussion to the confused masculinities of the Native men. He traces the domestic violence in native families and emphasises on the gendered language and gendered religion in their day to day life. According to Tomson Highway, their indigenous languages and their religions were gender neutral with gods and goddesses who are gender neutral. This attitude was reflected in the language as well. This does not mean that native cultures were ideal and perfect in terms of gender equality and that there was no gendered violence at all. However, Highway focused on the confusions that native men were subjected to after colonisation. This confusion resulted in debating/ debatable masculinities that found vent in domestic violence against women and children in Native families.

Such re-readings of colonial attitudes and racist tendencies of the so-called unquestionable cultures and races provide us with a new perspective into the familiar but biased readings from the past. For instance, Caribbean literature has been re-reading the colonial past and reinterpreting the British classics. To give an example, Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is read from various perspectives including feminist, queer, postcolonial and native. Caribbean writers have not only analysed the victimised femininities but also the subjugated ‘other’ masculinities. This kind of re-reading the familiar turns out to be a major issue in the discourse related to race, ethnicity and gender.

1.7.3 Mainstream Femininities and Other Masculinities

We have understood the ways in which gendered identities intersect with other major forms of identities. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s short story The Man from Mars (1989) brilliantly maps the internal conflict of a woman between her sexuality as a woman and her imbibed racial beliefs. The man from the East with whom she has an unpleasant encounter is kept at a distance by her and her family.

The ethnicity of the ‘other’, in most cases the ‘other’ being the colonised, becomes an exhibit for the ‘Other’, in most cases the ‘Other’ being the colonisers. Living human beings also become part of the ethnic exhibits apart from the inanimate objects and the landscape and the animals. The abovementioned short story focuses on a young woman who is not considered ‘feminine enough’by people around her. She begins to discover herself as 111 Interrogating the Nation a woman when she notices that she is being followed by a man from ‘the East’. However, she refuses to accept him as a friend when she comes to know about his racial identity. This example can be juxtaposed with the instances of white men as colonisers and explorers who exploited and abused Black/Native/Asian women.

1.8 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we tried to understand how race and ethnicity impact gender. We studied how the contexts of racial conflicts and ethnic prejudices were decided by colonial ideology. We also discussed how postcolonialism brought in tremendous change in the discussion related to race, ethnicity and gender. We have analysed how multiple ethnicities and dominated races could create multiple nations within the nation. While voices of resistance decide the tone and content of postcolonial narratives, maneuvered histories and racial stereotypes come in for scrutiny. We learned how gender roles and identities get transformed under colonial cum patriarchal discourses. We understood how naming and mapping became important tools in colonisation and how re-mapping and re-naming became major tools of decolonization. The all-powerful colonial nations become mere edible images in the subverted gaze of the colonised people moving towards complete liberation. Diasporic/ migrant voices interrogating the nation also give rise to changing names and re-reading and reformulation of representations. Femininities, masculinities and sexualities also become focal points of discussion in the context of inherited legacies and the questioning feminist ideologies.

The colonial (internal as well as external, pre as well as post), patriarchal, casteist, stratified, biased, heteronormative societies not only give rise to certain gendered identities that fall into the boundary of acceptability but also design roles and codes for such genders. However, there are also gendered identities which are equally conditioned but do not fall into the boundary of acceptability.

1.9 GLOSSARY

Supremacism : The belief that a particular race, species, ethnic group, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class, belief system or culture is superior to others and entitles those who identify with it to dominate, control or rule those who do not.

Global Tribes : People geographically spread across the world but tied together in terms of their sense of belonging to a nation, culture, language etc.

112 Fourth World : People from the communities that are marginalised Race and Ethnicity and subjected to internal colonialism in a society even though the country is politically sovereign.

Mimicry : The means by which the colonised people adapt the ways of the colonisers. This post-colonial mimicking is loaded with the echoes of hybridity and subversion.

1.10 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1) Write an essay on the characteristics of post-colonial resistance.

2) How does language play a crucial role in discussions on race, gender and ethnicity? Examine critically.

3) Discuss masculinities in turmoil in the changing contexts.

4) Analyse the relationship between race and gender with the help of examples from literary texts.

1.11 REFERENCES

Aidoo, Ama Ata (1988). Our Sister Killjoy: Or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint. London: Longman.

Atwood, Margaret (1989). “The Man from Mars. Goh, Maggie and Craig Stephenson”. (Eds).Between Worlds. pp. 64-84. Oakville, ON: Rubicon Publishing.

Bellear, Lisa (2000). Healing Through Poetry. Reed-Gilbert, Kerry (compiled by) The Strength of Us As Women: Black Women Speak. pp.70-71. Charnwood: Ginninderra Press.

Bhabha, Homi K. (1994[2004]). Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Brant, Beth (1994). Writing as Witness: Essay and Talk. London: Women’s Press.

Brant, Beth (1995). Writing as Witness. U.K: Women’s Press.

Cohen, Robin (2008). Global Diasporas: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.

Craig, S. Womack (2001). Drowning in Fire. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

El-Saadawi, Nawal (2000). Memoirs of a Woman Doctor. (Trans.) Catherine Cobham. London: Saqi Books.

Fanon, Frantz (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. (Trans.) Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press.

113 Interrogating the Nation Goldberg, Jonathan (2013). Tempest in the Caribbean. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Haley, Alex (1976). Roots: The Saga of an American Family. New York: Doubleday.

Highway, Tomson (1989). Dry Lips oughta move to Kapuskasing: a play. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Hegarty, Ruth (1999). Is That You Ruthie? St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

hooks,bell (1988). Straightening Our Hair. Retrieved 20th Jan, 2014 from

http://postsoulfeminism.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/straightening-our-hair- by-bell-hooks-1988/

hooks,bell (1999). Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Cambridge: South End Press.

Huggins, Rita & Jackie Huggins (1994). Auntie Rita. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

Huggins, Jackie (1998). Sister Girl: The Writings of Aboriginal Activist and Historian Jackie Huggins. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

Kanfla A. Louis & Haijo Westra (2010). (Eds). Aboriginal Title and Indigenous Peoples: Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Kincaid, Jamaica (1991). On Seeing England for the First Time. Transition, 51, pp.32-40.

Kincaid, Jamaica (2000). A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Lorde, Audre (1984) . “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. pp. 110- 114.

Lorde, Audre (1997). The Cancer Journals. San Franscisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Maracle, Lee (1996). I am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers

Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1987). “Difference: A Special Third World Women Issue”. Feminist Review. 25, pp.5-22.

Philip, Marlene NourbeSe. (2001). Burn Sugar. Rosemary Sullivan (Ed). Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women in English. pp. 405-411. Toronto: Oxford.

Prasad, Chandrabhan (2004). Dalit Diary: 1999-2003, Reflections on Apartheid in India. Pondicherry: Navayana.

114 Tan, Amy (2010). “Mother Tongue. Marjorie Ford and Jon Ford” (Eds).Dreams Race and Ethnicity and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers. New York: Longman- Pearson.

Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa (1986). Decolonising the Mind: the politics of language in African literature. Hanover St.: Heinemann.

Womack S. Craig (1999). Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.

Yuval-Davis, Nira (1999). “Ethnicity, Gender Relations and Multiculturalism”. In Race, identity, and citizenship: a Reader(Eds). Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis F. Mirón, Jonathan Xavier India.

1.12 SUGGESTED READINGS

hooks, bell (1999). Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Cambridge: South End Press.

El-Saadawi, Nawal (2000). Memoirs of a Woman Doctor. (Trans.) Catherine Cobham. London: Saqi Books.

Fanon, Frantz (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. (Trans.) Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press.

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