V.S. Naipaul Homelessness and Exiled Identity Roshan Cader 12461997 Supervisors: Professor Dirk Klopper and Dr. Ashraf Jamal November 2008 Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (English) at the University of Stellenbosch Declaration I, Roshan Cader, hereby declare that the work contained in this research assignment/thesis is my own original work and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it at any university for a degree. Signature:……………………….. Date:…………………………….. 2 Abstract Thinking through notions of homelessness and exile, this study aims to explore how V.S. Naipaul engages with questions of the construction of self and the world after empire, as represented in four key texts: The Mimic Men, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World. These texts not only map the mobility of the writer traversing vast geographical and cultural terrains as a testament to his nomadic existence, but also follow the writer’s experimentation with the novel genre. Drawing on postcolonial theory, modernist literary poetics, and aspects of critical and postmodern theory, this study illuminates the position of the migrant figure in a liminal space, a space that unsettles the authorising claims of Enlightenment thought and disrupts teleological narrative structures and coherent, homogenous constructions of the self. What emerges is the contiguity of the postcolonial, the modern and the modernist subject. This study engages with the concepts of “double consciousness” and “entanglements” to foreground the complex web and often conflicting temporalities, discourses and cultural assemblages affecting postcolonial subjectivities and unsettling narratives of origin and authenticity. While Naipaul seeks to address questions of postcolonial identity, his oeuvre is simultaneously entangled within the Anglophone literary tradition. The texts in this study foreground the convergence of the politics of writing and the politics of subjectivity. Through continuous re-writing of the self, the past and history, Naipaul focuses on the fragmentary, the partiality of knowledge and the obscurity of the present to evince the continuous renewal of subjectivities. His narratives enact deep feelings of despair and melancholy that attend the migrant position in the current age of mass migrations, technological advancement, militarism, and essentialised ethnocentrisms and cultural constructions. In his poetics of exile, he endorses the particular over the universal. His commitment to a “politics of difference” underscores the texts in this study and serves to foreground Naipaul’s position of otherness. 3 Opsomming Aan die hand van die begrippe, ontheemding en ballingskap —wat beide die ontheemde subjek impliseer—ondersoek hierdie studie V.S. Naipaul se post- imperiale konstruksies van die self en die wêreld. Vier sleuteltekste, The Mimic Men, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World, getuig van die mobiliteit van die skrywer, sy nomadiese ervaring van ’n wye spektrum van geografiese en kulturele terreine, asook van sy eksperimentering met die genre van die roman. Met verwysing na post-koloniale en modernistiese teorie, belig hierdie studie die posisie van die migrant in die tussenruimte, wat enersyds ’n ondermynende invloed het op die outoriserende diskoers van die Verligtings- paradigma, en andersyds teleologiese narratiewe strukture en homogene self- konstruksies destabiliseer. Wat gevolglik duidelik word is die verwantskap tussen die post-koloniale, die moderne subjek en die subjek van modernisme. Die studie betrek die konsepte van “dubbele bewussyn” en “verwikkeldhede” (“entanglements”) om die komplekse werking te belig van die dikwels teenstrydige temporaliteite, diskoerse en kulturele konstrukte wat postkoloniale subjekte affekteer, asook destabiliserende narratiewe van oorsprong en outentiekheid. Insoverre Naipaul postkoloniale identiteit onder die loep neem, is sy oeuvre ook in die Engelstalige literêre tradisie verwikkel; aldus stel hierdie studie die gepaardgaande politieke diskoerse van literêre komposisie en van subjektiwiteit op die voorgrond. By wyse van ’n volgehoue herskrywing van die self, die verlede en die geskiedenis, fokus Naipaul op die gefragmenteerde, die partydigheid van kennis, en die ontwykende karakter van die hede. Sy werk herroep die gevoel van wanhoop en melankolie wat spruit uit die posisie van die migrant in ’n konteks van massa migrasies, tegnologiese vooruitgang, militarisime, asook essentialistiese etnosentrisme en kulturele konstruksies. In sy poetika van ballingskap onderskryf hy die partikulêre teenoor die universele. Sy verbintenis tot ’n “politiek van verskil” is grondliggend aan die vier romans waarop hierdie studie fokus, en belig Naipaul se posisie ten aansien van andersheid. 4 The writer at work: “In the dream of writing I was attracted less by the act and the labour than by the calm and the order which the act would have implied.” (V.S. Naipaul) 5 Acknowledgments I would not have surfaced out of the mire of my Naipaulian world(s) had it not been for the eternal patience, enduring support and encouragement of my supervisors. Prof. Dirk Klopper, who provided close and careful readings, commentary and insight which this work has greatly benefited from. Dr. Ashraf Jamal, who taught me to take a sceptic’s leap of faith, and offered invaluable suggestions and bristling intellectual engagement. To the Andrew Mellon Foundation for its financial assistance. To my mum and dad, whose history seeded the fruits of this project, and who have provided me with a constant source of strength and nurturance. I owe a debt of gratitude to my sisters and their families for their kinship and love and engaging in discussions around the work. To Dawid and Siegfried for their translation. To Janine for her willingness to listen and offer sound advice at pivotal moments. To my friends for their ardent motivation and soothing words of encouragement. And, to the literary works of V.S. Naipaul that have enabled me to explore the movement of one’s soul through the creative process. 6 Contents Chapter 1 Introduction: Locating V.S. Naipaul 8 Chapter 2 The Politics and Poetics of Writing in The Mimic Men 24 Chapter 3 Traversing the Literary: Identity and National Discourse in A Bend in the River 44 Chapter 4 Literary Traditions and Re-Writing England in The Enigma of Arrival 65 Chapter 5 On Homelessness and History: A Way in the World 86 Chapter 6 Conclusion: Naipaul’s Melancholia 112 Bibliography 120 7 ONE Introduction: Locating V.S. Naipaul It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home. (Adorno) The wanderer: He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer – though not as a traveller towards a final goal, for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be something wandering within him, which takes its joy from change and transitoriness. (Nietzsche) Written in response to the large Jewish diaspora following Hitler’s dictatorship in Nazi Germany, Adorno’s axiom captures the zeitgeist of our current age. Displacement, migration and uprootment is the current “language of life”, and this sense of homelessness, as Stuart Hall lucidly states, “disturbs the notion that people come from originary whole cultures” (“Re-Inventing Britain” 38). The purpose of this study is two-fold. In the first place, it aims to study V.S. Naipaul’s portrayal of a rootless (exilic) condition from the perspective of his own cultural displacements and minority position (in Trinidad and subsequently in England). His ancestors travelled “the Middle Passage” as indentured labourers from India to Trinidad to work on the sugar plantations in the New World colony. In the early 1950s the young Naipaul won a scholarship to read English at Oxford University, England. Some of these details are captured in his fiction, The Mimic Men but also receive attention in his travelogues, The Middle Passage and An Area of Darkness. The second aim of this study is to consider the literary context in which Naipaul writes. Much like his central characters, Naipaul is a product of the colonial condition. His education in Trinidad (the Caribbean at large) was in English and based on a colonial British system. The impact of colonisation on the psyche of the colonial subject has been a recurrent trope in Naipaul’s oeuvre. 8 Because of the writer’s immersion in empire, his “entanglements”1 with English culture and society fed through literary ideals, his writings are deeply embedded in the British literary tradition. What is of interest, however, is how Naipaul, drawing upon his own exilic condition, engages in a revisionary practice in relation to this tradition. The methodological framework to this thesis is indebted to a body of foundational arguments posited by postcolonial theorists, such as Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, as well as the subsequent elaborations of these arguments by writers such as Achille Mbembe and Paul Gilroy. The postcolonial arguments germane to this study converge with postmodern critiques of Enlightenment thought around the notion of a “politics of difference”. Postcolonialism and postmodernism are both concerned with showing how the binary logic in terms of which master/slave relations and master narratives operate fall