Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 11:34:42 +1200
Subject: Re: Not White, Not Quite?
From: "Danny Butt" <db-AT-icvp.com>


Hi Andrew

Yeah, I agree with Marlene and Joe. 

If we look at the list of critics offered as guides for discussion on this
list, they address race/colonisation in different and possibly more explicit
ways than Joyce.

It's not difficult to argue that Joyce has something to offer postcolonial
analysis. But he already sells more books than all the other postcolonial
critics we discuss here combined. It's not about assessing whether Joyce
"meets the criteria" for postcolonial study, but asking what effects a
postcolonial study of Joyce is going to have. To argue in this forum for the
"broadening" of the category of the postcolonial critic to include Joyce is
a very different move to, for example, arguing for the relevance of
colonialism as a framework for the study of Joyce within a conservative
English department.

> I find it interesting that such a "liberal minded" stance for
> criticism has proponents who are so willing to turn a blind eye to the
> "colonization" or, at least, oppression, of members of a "majority race," i.e.
> whites, all over the world.

So who is the audience for this innovative broadening of postcoloniality?
The sentence above makes it sound like your project is about opening the
"blind eyes" of postcolonial critics. How will this impact on the realities
of postcolonial societies?

I think the basic question is whether it's about "social transformation" or
self-inscription (developing one's "understanding", adding to the pile of
things one is "knowledgeable" about). Could a postcolonial reading of Joyce
develop our understanding of what postcoloniality might be? Sure. Will it
increase our desire and opportunity to combat the effects of colonialism as
much as the study of, say, Spivak? Well, you haven't clarified that yet.

regards,

danny

--
Danny Butt  --  db-AT-icvp.com
ICVP        --  http://www.icvp.com


> Have to agree with Joe Flanagan here...about seeing the "other" through the
> evolving lens of the likes of Joyce or other literary lens....if the mind
> operates metaphorically then it becomes critical to deconstruct the source
> metaphor which in this case would be Joyce in all his degrees of
> colonization as an Irishman and certainly...the equivalencies are "like"
> and the onus on the postcolonial project I believe is to help us understand
> how different those "likes" truly....
>
> The evolution of colonization is intimately tied to the "voice" and its
> decolonization....
>
> iterestingly enough there are parallels in current psychotherapeutic
> literature which has for a long time looked at the issues around
> "transference" as problematic.....
> ah, so many frames, so little time....but I am with Joe.....one frame does
> not fit all the pictures.....
> Mar.
>
> At 01:29 PM 7/24/99 -0400, you wrote:
>>I think that part of the problem about talking whether Ireland should be
>>considered (post)colonial (I use this moniker because the status of
>>Northern Ireland is still subject to question) is that the category of
>>"whiteness" alternates between a pre-given, empirical "fact" and a
>>discursive category. At the time Ireland was colonized, "race" simply did
>>not have the meaning it did in the 18th and 19th century. Certainly, one
>>can talk about Ireland as being colonized by the English (I suggest that
>>anyone interested read Spenser's View of Ireland, which employs many of
>>topi that characterize colonial discourse).  The problem with comparing
>>the English colonization of Ireland with that of India, Africa, and the
>>Caribbean is more than one of historical distance and different
>>mobilizations of racial, cultural, national identies (besides. If we
>>extend it far back enough, can we not say that England was also
>>colonized--not only by the French but by tribes from Germany?) It's the
>>question of _why_ scholars want to make the comparision in the first
>>place...Even if we accept the term "colonization" to describe what
>>happened in Ireland, does that mean Joyce can tell us about the situation
>>in India or Africa? Is Irish nationalism at the end of the last century
>>(and continuing today) the same as national liberartion movements in this
>>century? Or is it instead that people want to preserve the traditional
>>canon by adopting the most current theoretical approach--a decade ago we
>>had postmodern Joyce, now we have a postcolonial one.  The problem is not
>>that "whites" cannot be colonized--it's that by attempting to categorize
>>Ireland, or the US, or Canada, etc. as colonized countries, we can feel
>>good about nationalistic study of literature we would otherwise feel
>>embarassed about. It's the kind of self-congradulatory attitude that I
>>thinks mars much of the "whiteness" movement--we are not racist because we
>>are already "racialized" (obviously I do not refer to all who are involved
>>in this project). It is, in other words, another way of reclaiming the
>>"universality" of the traditional canon and its ethnocentric
>>biases--everything that we could learn from, say, Ngugi, is already found
>>in Joyce, so why bother studying all this "foreign" stuff?  Joe F
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
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