Hello and welcome to another lecture on postcolonial
literature.
Now in our previous meeting, we discussed
how the field of Postcolonial literature combines
within itself two already existing areas of
study.
And what are these studies?
One is the study of commonwealth Literature,
the other is what we are calling colonial
discourse analysis or the study of colonial
discourse.
And among these two, we have already discussed
the category of commonwealth literature at
some length.
And therefore, today we are going to take
up colonial discourse analysis.
Now if you remember the first lecture of this
course you will know that there we had defined
colonialism, or more specifically the post
16th century forms of colonialism as a capitalism
driven enterprise where one country or group
of people forcefully acquires the land and
economic resources belonging to another country
or group of people for the purpose of profit
making.
Now our concern today is how does this process
of violent subjugation, that is colonialism,
relate to the idea of discourse.
Now to understand this we have turn to the
works of the 20th century French intellectual
Michel Foucault.
And here you have the image of Michel Foucault
and also his dates which are 1926 to 1984.
And we need to turn to the writings of Foucault
because it is from there that postcolonial
studies primarily derives its understanding
of discourse.
So what is a discourse?
If we consult a dictionary, we will see that
the simplest definition of discourse is that
it is a set of meaningful statements, made
orally or in writing, on a given topic.
The insight that Michel Foucault brings to
this simple definition of discourse through
his works like The Archaeology of Knowledge
or through his essays like “The Order of
Discourse” is that there are certain deep-seated
regulations which structure and limit the
creation and circulation of discourse.
In other words, what Foucault was saying is
that though in theory the number of things
that we can say or write about is infinite,
in practice the number of meaningful statements
that we can make is actually strictly limited
by certain factors.
Now what are these factors that limits discourse?
Foucault primarily talks about three factors.
The first one is taboo, the second one is
the distinction between madness and sanity
and the third one is institutional ratification.
Let us start with the notion of taboo, which
is the first in our list.
Now in any society at any given point of time
you will see that there are always prohibitions
surrounding certain topics.
Any discussion on these topics which are considered
taboo or which are considered prohibited are
therefore socially looked down upon.
Therefore, there is an absence of discourse
on certain topics within certain social milieus.
So take for instance the subject of sexuality.
Even today certain areas of sexuality are
considered to be taboos in our society and
therefore it becomes very difficult to talk
about, say for instance, sexual violence that
happens within the confines of domesticity.
Now though our ability to talk about sexual
violence has increased greatly from say what
it was hundred years back, yet certain areas
of sexuality and sexual violence still remains
taboo.
Such prohibited subjects, which I am calling
tabooed subjects, they may vary from one society
to another and in fact from one time to another,
but the fact remains that whatever be the
variation there will always be some subjects
which are impossible or at least extremely
difficult to discourse.
Some subjects around which discourse formation
is extremely difficult.
And that fact remains constant in every society.
Thus, though in theory the topics on which
we can have a discourse is infinite, in practice
we cannot talk or write about anything and
everything.
Now let us come to the second point, which
is the distinction between madness and sanity.
And according to Michel Foucault, the notion
of madness and sanity also acts as another
important factor limiting the possibility
of discourse.
For instance, if someone says that “humans
walk on their heads”, then in all likelihood
that person will be taken as mad and his or
her statements will be considered as outpourings
of an insane mind which do not have any meaning.
Thus, if discourse is to be understood as
composed of meaningful statements, then someone
who is deemed mad is by definition someone
who cannot create a discourse.
So, even though a mad person might be able
to speak, the speech never gains the acceptance
of a discourse.
Now here it is important to note that like
the concept of tabooed subjects, the definition
of madness too changes with time and place.
That is to say, different societies separated
from one another by time or space might draw
the line separating madness from sanity differently.
And in fact there is a very interesting work
by Foucault on this aspect titled Madness
and Civilisation.
But however a society might choose to demarcate
madness from sanity the basic concept of madness
remains present in all society.
Which means that in any given society, at
any given point of time, there would always
be a group of statements which will be kept
out of the pale of discourse because of its
association with madness.
Now apart from taboo and madness, Foucault
also talks about institutional ratification
as an important factor that limits the proliferation
of discourse.
If we think carefully then we will understand
that our process of knowing something and
talking or writing meaningfully about those
things are closely guided by various institutions
like schools, colleges, publishing industry,
news agencies, learned societies, scientific
laboratories, so on and so forth.
If I were to state today that the sun goes
around the earth, this would not be admitted
as part of a meaningful discourse because
it won’t be ratified by these institutions
which regulate knowledge production and knowledge
dissemination in today’s world.
Yet at one point in history this very statement
that the sun revolves around the earth enjoyed
institutional validity.
Thus for instance during the 16th and early
17th century Europe, it was the geocentric
model of the universe which enjoyed institutional
validity and proponents of the heliocentric
models like for instance Galileo Galilei,
who claimed that it was the earth that revolved
round the sun rather than it being the other
way around, were imprisoned and stopped from
propagating this new idea.
As this example shows, institutions therefore
closely control the discourse by regulating
the circulation of statements and by prioritising
and foregrounding certain statements, while
marginalising or even gagging certain other
opposing statements.
And if the social situation is underlined
by a power imbalance, then it is the institutions
of the more powerful that controls or that
regulates knowledge and its discursive manifestation.
Therefore the kinds of discourses that are
prevalent in any given situation largely depends
on the institutions which regulate and ratify
the production and dissemination of knowledge.
And which will be the institute which will
get to regulate the discourse?
Well the institutions that are associated
with the powerful.
Now here with this last statement we come
to another very important idea of Michel Foucault
that is significant if we are trying to understand
colonial discourse analysis.
And the big idea that we are talking about
here is this:
that power and knowledge are interrelated.
As I stated just now, if in a society there
is power imbalance then it is the institutions
of the more powerful that gets to regulate
knowledge and its discursive manifestation.
To try and understand this let us look at
this statement.
“I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit
or Arabic.
But […] I have conversed both here
and at home with men distinguished by their
proficiency in the Eastern tongues.
[....] I
have never found one among them who could
deny that a single shelf of a good European
library was worth the whole native literature
of India and Arabia.”
Now, this statement is extracted from a document
dated 2nd February 1835 and the document is
titled “Minutes upon Indian Education”.
The author of this document is this gentleman
here:
his name is Thomas Babington Macaulay and
his dates are 1800 to 1859, and while writing
these words Macaulay was employed as a member
of the Governor General’s Council.
And Governor General’s Council was a body
which looked after East India Company’s
affairs in India.
So he was a part of that institution or that
body.
Now such a statement that Macaulay makes,
which denigrates the rich tradition of Indian
and Arabic literature and compares the whole
of it with just a single library shelf of
European books, is at best a thoroughly biased
statement.
Indeed, listening to it today one might be
tempted to dismiss it as a rambling of a mad
person.
Yet, in 1835 this statement was not dismissed
as madness.
In fact, it was taken very seriously, and
it was taken seriously because Macaulay was
making this statement from a position of power.
As a member of the Governor General’s Council,
Macaulay represented colonial authority that
was backed by Britain’s military, and economic
domination of India and the Middle East.
The very fact that the Governor General’s
Council, to which Macaulay belonged, represented
the institution of the powerful colonisers,
gave the statements issued by one of its members
an unquestioned truth value and this in spite
of the fact that Macaulay did not know either
Sanskrit or any other Indian or middle eastern
languages for that matter.
So it does not take much of an imagination
to figure out that if Sanskrit or Arabic scholars
from India or the Middle East were asked to
compare their literary traditions with the
tradition of European literature they would
come up with an assessment that would be very
different from Macaulay’s assessment.
Yet their status as representatives of a subjugated
population meant that their statements never
enjoyed the institutional backing that was
given to the statement of Macaulay.
So in any situation characterised by such
an imbalance of power, it is always the discourse
of the powerful that gets circulated as true
knowledge.
Now in our discussion so far we have tried
to demonstrate how power influences knowledge
and discourse.
But Foucault’s understanding of the power
knowledge interrelationship tells us that
knowledge and its discursive manifestations
also influence power and how power is enacted.
So it is not merely power which influences
knowledge, it is also the other way around.
Knowledge and its discursive manifestations
also influence power and its enactment.
To understand this let us go back to Macaulay’s
statement.
This highly biased statement, which today
frankly sounds ridiculous, not only enjoyed
widespread circulation because of its relationship
with colonial authority but it in turn influenced
how colonial authority should function in
India.
So Macaulay’s 1835 “Minutes upon Indian
Education” was soon turned into a legal
act which was called English Education Act
of 1835.
And this act resulted in East India Company
diverting all the funds allocated for the
purpose of education in India to English education.
This meant in turn depriving the educational
institutes in India that taught Sanskrit or
Persian for instance and depriving them of
all monetary support.
In other words, Macaulay’s discourse resulted
in an exercise of colonial power that sought
to systematically destroy all native institutions
of learning because all native institutions
of higher learning, prior to the advent of
the British, use either Sanskrit or Persian
as medium of instruction.
Now this connection between discourse and
colonial power relations was most elaborately
explained in a book titled Orientalism which
was published in 1978.
It was authored by the Palestine born American
professor, professor of literature, Edward
Said.
And here you can see his image and his dates
which are 1935 to 2003.
Edward Said is widely regarded as the founder
of postcolonial studies and what we now know
as colonial discourse analysis was something
that was initiated by his book Orientalism.
In that particular seminal text as well as
in his later works like Culture and Imperialism,
Said contends that the expansion of post 16th
century European colonialism, especially in
Asia, was inherently connected with a particular
kind of discourse, a kind of discourse which
Said refers to as the discourse of Orientalism.
And Said further argues in these texts that
much of Western literature ranging from Greek
tragedies produced during the 5th century
BCE by playwrights like Aeschylus to 19th
and 20th century novels written by novelist
like Gustave Flaubert or Joseph Conrad, they
all formed an integral part of this discourse
of Orientalism which justified the colonial
domination of the East by the West.
We will talk more about Edward Said, about
Orientalism as well as the implications of
connecting literature with colonialism in
our next lecture.
But today I would like to point out just one
interesting thing before ending.
Now Edward Said, who founded postcolonial
studies, primarily focused on the literature
that was produced from within the European
colonial metropolis.
And postcolonial literary studies, as the
legacy bearer of Edward Said’s works, therefore
also includes discussion on metropolitan literature.
And here we find yet another point of distinction
that separates postcolonial literary studies
from the study of commonwealth literature.
Because, as mentioned in my previous literature,
one of the shortcomings of the category of
commonwealth literature was that it is only
focused on the literature that was coming
out of the colonised parts of the world.
In postcolonial studies, thanks to Said primarily,
the novel of a British writer like Joseph
Conrad is as much an object of study and discussion
as for instance a novel written by an Indian
novelist like Raja Rao.
And this shift is crucial because it allows
us to gain a more comprehensive understanding
of how colonialism relates to culture, not
only to the culture of the colonised subjects
but also to the culture of the coloniser.
We will continue with this discussion on postcolonial
literature in our next lecture.
Thank you.
