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The present book, though
succinct, proves significant in refuting the first rule of a
supposedly existing secret handbook for post-colonial critics,
which reads:"’Begin by rejecting the whole notion of
post-colonialism." (In the "Gaudy Supermarket"
by Terry Eagleton). For here, Walia attempts to scrutinise the
notions and ideas associated with post-modern theories through
the kaleidoscopic vision of a great literary and post-colonial
critic, Edward Said. The book illuminates Said’s perceptions
and impressions about the contemporary issues not only in the
literary world but also in the political domain. Walia’s
deeply focused study examines Said in the light of his
engagement as writer, teacher and political activist.
Tracing the
evolution of Said’s thinking over the past 30 years, he
draws attention to its conceptual coherence and value as a
work-in-progress of cultural and historical critique, thereby
emphasising Said’s involvement in public cultural activity
and personal commitment to his insistent interrogation of
political systems.
"Exile
is a universal figure," says George Lamming and no one
could apprehend this better than Said who has lived his life
as an American as well as a Palestinian. But for Said,
"exile" is not merely a physical separation from one’s
mother country or being "in between" the two worlds.
Rather, it is a position from where an individual can question
the accepted tenets of society and thus become an intellectual
critic. Shelley Walia, while pointing at Said’s "hybridity",
argues that his "life of an exile" has enabled him
to unveil the ideologically constructed and essentialised
truths to unravel the quashed realities. He writes:
"Taking the entire world as his home he (Said) looks at
adversial cultures and the role of the intellectual in
liberating human scholarship and validating cultural forms
through the re-interpretation of history."
How far is
history-writing free from prejudices and to what extent does
it bring to light disinterested facts is quite debatable.
However, the author doesn’t intend only to show that Said
considers all historical accounts adulterated with the
political objectives of their writers; he elucidates how Said
grasps the true aim of these European scholars in employment
of the practice of history-writing and other cultural forms,
like the novel or the opera, as a vehicle of subjugation and
as a hegemonic strategy.
In his new
book, Shelley Walia brings "History and Literature"
on the same platform to emphasise that "no writing is
transparent". Applying Derrida’s concept of "‘difference"
to historical narratives and literary texts, one can
contemplate that there cannot exist a single interpretation
and that some meaning is always left out.
To
corroborate such thoughts, it becomes essential to carry out a
"‘contrapuntal reading" of seminal texts like
"Heart of Darkness", "Kim" and
"Mansfield Park" or Verdi’s "Aida". Said
had endeavoured to show these narratives as part of the
relationship between culture and empire, emphasizing the fact
that the authors are impelled and modeled by their social set
up. It has been implanted into our psyche that the West is the
only spring of anything and everything that is meaningful and
consequential.
In other
words, the non-western regions of the world, by default, do
not and cannot be in possession of any history, culture or
even dare to think of rectitude. And this is fortified by the
science of Orientalism, the critique of which is studied in
this book.
According to
Walia, all writings are in a sense "representations"
and thus conjoin fact and fiction. This reminds me of Salman
Rushdie’s belief that no passport is required to enter the
terrain of imagination and no writing can be confined to
strict paradigms. Thus history itself can be subverted by the
re-writing of it, whether in the form of fiction or as factual
narrative.
"The
Writing of History" reveals the length to which Said and
his work are swayed by theorists of Foucault and Gramsci. The
concept of "‘field" is an elementary organizing
principle to Foucault’s writing. He intends a"’field"
to mean the "formal conditions which make the appearance
of meaning possible". And Said by conceiving Orientalism
as a field or a "power-in-space" seems to be
gesturing towards the imperial aggrandisement of the
geographical space of the colonised country and the psychic
space of its people. Shelley Walia further insists that
crucial to the understanding of Said’s work is the relation
of power and knowledge whose nexus establishes rules, laws, as
well as appropriate or normal behaviour. The ruling elite
codifies them through their instruments of power and are
gradually reinforced to become fixed ideologies.
Knowledge is
constructed by assuming a "panoptican view" (Foucauldian
concept) of the governed, causing anxiety in them which
further leads to nervousness, uncertainty and finally
disintegration of their mental faculties. At the same time,
the author does not omit to speak of the point where Said
shifts his track of thought from Foucault’s conviction that
there is no premeditated design behind western ascendancy.
Said rather espouses Gramsci’s standpoint regarding the
relevance of counter discursive practices and resistance from
the subalterns along with his notion of "hegemony".
Shelley Walia writes: "Gramsci’s theory of cultural
production and critique when applied to Said brings out the
relevant issues of social domination and the subversion that
takes place continuously to resist any fixed notions of
cultural behaviour."
The book,
which will be of particular interest to students of
literature, history, and social and political theory, as it
brings the perplexing issues of eurocentrism, universalism,
post-modernism and cultural positioning and political
affiliations under the microscope of a secular critic. And
Said, as a secular critic, desires a "universal
vocabulary" that can give "a greater human scope to
what a particular race or nation suffered". Bruce Robbins
cites Said’s comment on the "politics of secular
interpretation "as proposing "a way . . . of
avoiding the pitfalls of nationalism".
For Said
universalism means to move beyond the fixities and
confinements imposed by our language, nationality and
individual experiences in search of a "single
standard". While focusing on Said’s major works,
referring back always to the seminal work, "Orientalism",
Shelley Walia comments that Said is not a rigid pos-structuralist;
"the author, for Said, is never dead" and
"unlike a post-modernist critic, he believes in the
origins of the text".
Nevertheless, the book brings
out the chronology and interconnectedness of certain
fundamental concepts in post-colonial theoretical practice. At
the same time it draws attention to the gap, the
inconsistencies and the incoherence within western historical
discourse that exposes the ends of ideology. And when
intellectuals like Said subvert the ideological reproduction
of the bourgeoisie, social relations and institutional
discourse, they engage in revolutionary action.
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