Identity Discourse: Having given a concise idea about the French colonial ideology, we will examine the French colonial ideology from another perspective which is identity. Ideology here is similar to discourse in terms of conception as it was discussed by Stuart Hall, a Jamaican-British cultural theorist and sociologist, who he compared ideology to discourse; “A discourse is similar to what sociologists call an "ideology", it is a set of statements or beliefs which produce knowledge that serves the interests of a particular group or class.” in the other hand, Hall deals with identity as a very complex issue, which intervened by other aspects. So when we deal with the colonized identities we automatically evoke the European (colonizer). However, Stuart Hall also distinguished between three very different conceptions of identity: Enlightenment subject, sociological subject, and …show more content…
Frantz Fanon, one of the prominent postcolonial theorists, discussed the duality, self/other, whose origins are found in Hegelian’s dichotomy, and developed the term “other”, and represented it as the colonizer and the colonized, however, the other by definition, is one who lacks identity, propriety, purity, literality. he is the unacceptable one, unfamiliar, uncanny, unauthorized, inappropriate, and the improper. All negative adjectives are gathered in the “Other”, of course, always from the European perspective represented as the “Self”. However, there are also other synonyms that shared the same meaning such as; Master/slave, civilized/savage, human/subhuman ... Fanon deals with that binary from gender perspective, but it has another dimension, which we can adapt to our subject identity discourse. For instance, this binary helps us to assimilate the idea of identity within the colonial gaze, which is basically a sort of negation, and annihilation of the others culture and
Looking at the three Declarations from America, France, and Haiti, a common theme of liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty arises that directly sprung from France. So contagious were the ideas that even though the Thirteen Colonies previously warred with France it could not stop the revelation caused by Enlightenment thought. Nationalism on a worldwide scale began with France’s conquest for domination under Napoleon. As Napoleon physically “freed” the countries he conquered from their previous rules, he simultaneously freed them intellectually by the exchange of Enlightenment thought. As a result, nations around Europe reunited amongst themselves with new national identity as freemen. Even France’s colonies clamored for reform as Haiti rose to newly defining a free black man. At the end of it all, these physical marks that stained the earth 's geography all originated with a quill and ink pad in
Fanon focuses on two related desires that constitute the pathology of the colonial situation: “The Black man wants to be white. The white man is desperately trying to achieve the rank of man” (p. xiii). As an unconscious desire, this can result in a series of irrational behaviors and beliefs, such as the Antillean speaking French, the desire for a white
French occupation of Haiti began in the mid seventeenth century. For the next century and a half, the people of Haiti were forced to abandon their livelihoods and instead take up residence on namely sugar, indigo or cacao plantations in order to generate exports for the French market. Conditions on these plantations were often so cruel and oppressive that the common cause of death was exhaustion. No longer able to yield to the terms of their exploitation, Haitians participated in a string of slave revolts, the most prominent of which was led by Toussaint Louverture from 1791, which paved the road for Haitian emancipation. This essay will advance the idea that colonialism has impeded the political stability of Haiti during the nineteenth century, particularly from when Haiti formally declared independence in 1804. It will cover how issues such as; despotism, conflicting economic institutions, the militarization of the political system and racial supremacy, have negatively affected nineteenth century Haitian politics. Moreover, it will also elaborate on how these issues are, in effect, actually insidious derivatives of French rule during pre-independent Haiti.
Fanon's next novel, "The Wretched Of The Earth" views the colonized world from the perspective of the colonized. Like Foucault's questioning of a disciplinary society Fanon questions the basic assumptions of colonialism. He questions whether violence is a tactic that should be employed to eliminate colonialism. He questions whether native intellectuals who have adopted western methods of thought and urge slow decolonization are in fact part of the same technology of control that the white world employs to exploit the colonized. He questions whether the colonized world should copy the west or develop a whole new set of values and ideas. In all these questionings of basic assumptions of colonialism Fanon exposes the methods of control the white world uses to hold down the colonies. Fanon calls for a radical break with colonial culture, rejecting a hypocritical European humanism for a pure revolutionary consciousness. He exalts violence as a necessary pre-condition for this rupture.
"Identity is a dynamic feature of social life. That is, it is something that is constantly evolving and changing. For some people, identity can change rapidly and dramatically, of course, but for most of us our identities evolve slowly and imperceptibly" (Livesey, n.d., p.1).
In Brent Hayes Edwards essay, “ The Use of Diaspora”, the term “African Diaspora” is critically explored for its intellectual history of the word. Edward’s reason for investigating the “intellectual history of the term” rather than a general history is because the term “is taken up at a particular conjecture in black scholarly discourse to do a particular kind of epistemological work” (Edwards 9). At the beginning of his essay Edwards mentions the problem with the term, in terms of how it is loosely it is being used which he brings confusion to many scholars. As an intellectual Edwards understands “the confusing multiplicity” the term has been associated with by the works of other intellectuals who either used the coined or used the term African diaspora. As an articulate scholar, Edwards hopes to “excavate a historicized and politicized sense of diaspora” through his own work in which he focuses “on a black cultural politics in the interwar, particularly in the transnational circuits of exchange between the Harlem Renaissance and pre-Negritude Fran cophone activity in the France and West Africa”(8). Throughout his essay Edwards logically attacks the problem giving an informative insight of the works that other scholars have contributed to the term Edwards traces back to the intellectual history of the African diaspora in an eloquent manner.
Post-colonialism is a discourse draped in history. In one point in time or another, European colonialism dominated most non-European lands since the end of the Renaissance. Naturally, colonialists depicted the cultures of non-Europeans incorrectly and inferior. Traditionally, the canon has misappropriated and misrepresented these cultures, but also the Western academia has yet to teach us the valuable and basic lessons that allow true representations to develop. Partly in response, Post-colonialism arose. Though this term is a broad one, Post-colonialists generally agree on certain key principles. They understand that colonialism exploits the dominated people or country in one way or another, evoking inequalities. Examples of past inequalities include “genocide, economic exploitation, cultural decimation and political exclusion…” (Loomba 9-10). They abhor traditional colonialism but also believe that every people, through the context of their own cultures, have something to contribute to our understanding of human nature (Loomba 1-20). This is the theme that Lewis prescribes in his, self described, “satirical fantasy”, Out of the Silent Planet (Of Other 77).
In Stuart Hall’s “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” he claims that identity is a volatile social process through which one comes to see the self. Hall argues that identity is not a thing rather a process “…that happens over time, that is never absolutely stable, that is subject to the play of history, and the play of difference.” These factors are constantly entering the individual in a never-ending cycle, re-establishing and affirming who one is.
...e French influence that it has received, and is still getting through its departmentalization. In certain ways, Martinique looks a lot like the Westernized world and Europe; this can be seen in it’s economy, race relations, social welfare programs, and cultural norms. However, while colonization played a huge role in making Martinique what it is today, it’s native roots are still visible in much of the demographics of the country and the Creole presence within the department. Martinique is a unique Caribbean island in the sense that it never fought with its colonizers for independence, but it still has managed to blend the French, with the African, with the native, with the West Indian and has used different aspects of each of these cultures to ensure that no other place would be able to replicate Martinique in demographics, economy, culture, geography, or society.
Fanon start off his argument with describing how colonialism and decolonization are violent affairs. He describes the colonized and colonizer as old adversaries whose first meeting was rooted in violence and continued relationship was sustained at the point of a gun (Fanon, p. 2). He goes on to state that the colonized person is a fabricated person created by the colonizer and that the colonizer validates themselves, via wealth, through the colonial relationship. Decolonization, therefore, is the destruction of these fabrications and the liberation of ...
The study of the (non-Western) “Other”, defined by Trouillot as the Savage Slot, commenced before Anthropology became a discipline. Thus, Anthropology did not fashion the concept of the “Savage” or “Other” (Trouillot 2003:28). Instead, it is initially associated with the accounts of travelers and explorers and literature of the sixteenth century and seventeenth centuries. In 1516, Thomas More composed a fictional account of the island Utopia, which became “the prototypical nowhere of the European imagination” (Trouillot 2003:14). The appeal of the “Elsewhere” to Europeans was fulfilled by travel accounts that portrayed the savage, such as those of Jean-Baptiste Du Tertr...
According to Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin “Othering describes the various ways in which colonial discourse produces its subjects. In Spivak’s explanation, othering is a dialectical process because the colonizing other is established at the same time as its colonized others are produced as subjects” (156). According to Leino et al Otherness occurs or is enacted when the policies, practices, and/or culture of a dominant group habitually exclude, demoralize, debate or disfigure other groups in order to ensure the dominant group’s cohesiveness and identity” (100). Gingrich points out the influence of Spivak and suggests that Spivak’s influence on anthropological writing appears to have beenstronger than that of Bhaha.Spivak often points out the highly problematic nature of terms like “Third World,” “Orient” and “Indian”. For her, as for Said, these terms are essentialist categories whose meanings hinge on binary oppositions that are of dubious usefulness because of their history and arbitrary
Her text, “Who Is That Masked Woman? Or, the Role of Gender in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks” critically assesses Fanon’s treatment of gender in his first book. She focuses primarily on his psychoanalytical approach and challenges the supposed discrepancy between psychoanalysis and the politics of racialization so common in the interpretation of Fanon’s work (75). For Bergner, “race and gender are mutually constitutive” as the “white gaze produces multiple subject positions.” She provides a comprehensive summary of Fanon’s contribution to psychoanalysis and shows how he reinterpreted some of Freud’s central assumptions to include race as an analytical category. She contends that Fanon’s approach largely excludes women, acknowledges their subjectivity only in their sexual relationships to men, who use the female body as a mediating object in their struggle for power (80). She contends that Fanon merely replicates Freud’s misogynistic model, with the difference that he assigns the feminine role to black men, thus creating a white men-black men binary, a male-centered model of liberation, which reinforces the colonial structure Fanon wants to overcome, at least with regard to gender (84). Bergner suggest that a synthesis of postcolonial and feminist psychoanalysis could remedy the shortcomings in Fanon’s approach
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
The inhabited islands clustered in the Caribbean Sea are an interesting study in cultural and social identity. Colonized by european powers from the Fifteenth Century, the Caribbean islands have become mixtures of cultures from Europe, Africa, and India, as well as from the original inhabitants of the islands. As a result, describing and defining the Caribbean is a much more difficult task than it appears on the surface. The norms and ideas of identity and history that exist on one island are vastly different than those that exist on a near neighbor, despite similarities in geography and history.