hello today I'm going to be discussing
00:03
post-colonialism
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the Caribbean and Jean Rhys Wide
00:07
Sargasso Sea so in order for us to and
00:12
this is a build-up to a discussion on
00:16
Wide Sargasso Sea we have to understand
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a little bit about post colonialism both
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in terms of post-colonial theory and how
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it might apply to literature post
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colonialism is a body of thought
00:29
primarily concerned with and what I'm
00:31
going to go through here is a variety of
00:33
slides that describe and outline various
00:37
tenants of post-colonial theory so this
00:40
is a body of thought primarily concerned
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with accounting for the political
00:44
aesthetic economic historical and social
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impact of primarily European colonial
00:52
rule what is colonial rule colonial rule
00:56
is one country one power moving into
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another country supplanting various
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aspects and various institutions of
01:07
culture and installing their own
01:11
cultural ideology is cultural
01:13
philosophies cultural institutions and
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we're gonna be talking today about the
01:18
Caribbean even here I've already
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mentioned European colonial rule but
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this is something that has taken place
01:25
throughout history one country in purely
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coming in and taking over another
01:30
country and in printing over the native
01:34
country cultural institutions in history
01:38
we've been talking primarily about the
01:40
18th through the 20th century and we're
01:42
also going to talk about what it means
01:44
to be post-colonial here in just a
01:46
moment the world we inhabit is
01:49
impossible to know without acknowledging
01:51
colonialism or colonial history and as
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we see in this presentation in the
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Caribbean and places around the world
02:00
there is a combination a change of
02:05
trajectory an imprinting hegemony of
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European colonial rule over other
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native countries what is post and post
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colonialism or neo colonialism post
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means it comes after but we have to
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think about this term both in terms of
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well in in many different ways in terms
02:26
of politics and economics in terms of
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geography it doesn't mean that once an
02:32
imperial power has left a colony let's
02:35
say that the colony returns to a place
02:39
that existed in time before the colonial
02:41
power came and imprinted itself over
02:45
that native culture so perhaps in terms
02:48
of geography that colonial power may
02:51
have left but in terms of thinking about
02:55
that culture and the ways with which
02:57
that culture has been changed that is
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part of post colonialism and that hasn't
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laughed and in the native country has it
03:05
returned to a pre colonial society
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cribbing Islands that gained
03:11
independence in the 20th century and the
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point here that I want to make is that
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that you will notice that all of these
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countries gained their independence in
03:21
the 20th century that this is not
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something that we're talking about that
03:24
took place in the 19th or 18th or 17th
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century that for many of these island
03:30
nations thinking about themselves as an
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independent people is a fairly recent
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phenomenon here this is just the the
03:38
Caribbean islands so this is a process
03:42
that began in the Caribbean with
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European contact with Christopher
03:46
Columbus in 1492
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and just to sort of recap some major
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facts that I've covered in some earlier
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presentations that within a hundred
03:55
years of first European contact nearly
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90% of all native peoples and the
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Americas are dead through war and
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genocide but primarily through disease
04:06
and this is important because then this
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made it in many ways easier for European
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powers to imprint their culture on these
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colonized peoples and that then
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facilitated the middle passage and the
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importation of slaves from Africa which
04:25
then populated the Caribbean in order to
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work on the sugar plantations so post
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colonialism is concerned with forms of
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political and aesthetic representation
04:36
it has been committed to accounting for
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globalization and global modernity yes
04:43
when you have one culture collide or one
04:46
culture introduced or interact with
04:49
another culture both of those cultures
04:52
are changed but what happens to the
04:54
colonial to the to the colonized culture
04:57
what happens to the native country that
05:00
doesn't have the sort of political and
05:02
economic power in post-colonial theory
05:05
economics goes hand-in-hand with
05:08
cultural institutions and cultural
05:11
change post-colonial theory has been
05:14
invested in reimagining politics and
05:17
ethics from underneath imperial power so
05:19
there's a hierarchy of power and we're
05:24
gonna see in just a moment that there is
05:26
really a kind of dichotomy binomial
05:28
dichotomy in terms of the way that we
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look at Western and Eastern powers it
05:34
has been interested in perpetually
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discovering and theorizing new forms of
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human and justice from environmentalism
05:40
to human rights and oftentimes we think
05:43
about the economy with the colonizer and
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the colonized two terms that I'm using
05:49
specifically from Elbert Memon ease the
05:53
colonizer and the colonized in terms of
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indigenous versus the imperial powers
06:00
various so what are we talking about
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here we're talking about the various
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collisions of culture and just because
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that one culture and maybe it's a
06:09
British culture we're talking about
06:10
primarily here goes into India or the
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Caribbean or the French move into Africa
06:16
and their desire is to supplant that
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native culture the colonial culture also
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changes language technology sovereignty
06:28
and law close post-colonial theory is
06:32
interested in how these things change
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language I think is one in particular
06:37
because the ways with which colonized
06:40
powers often then tell their story which
06:43
is what in many ways post-colonial
06:46
theory is about the recovery of lost
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voices those voices often have to
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express themselves not in their native
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language but in the language of the
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colonizing power we will be concerned
07:02
and discuss the construction or
07:05
destruction and reconstruction of
07:07
identities in three terms that often
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come up in post-colonial theory
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pertaining to identity that it is
07:14
doubled hybrid or unstable in terms of
07:20
the doubling of identity and I think
07:23
this term might come from w e-- d de
07:26
juez be do as du bois excuse me the
07:30
souls of black folk when he talks about
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the double consciousness of identity
07:34
that african-americans experience within
07:37
American culture from African roots but
07:40
I think that this term applies also to
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the colonized that in terms of identity
07:45
do they identify with their original
07:48
native culture which may have been one
07:51
or two or more generations behind them
07:54
and they may not even be familiar with
07:56
that or their new identity the identity
08:00
that is imparted to them placed over
08:04
their native identities from the
08:06
colonial powers so we're talking about
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hybrid identities or hybridity to
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express the soul the sort of multivalent
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the multi-faceted complexity of identity
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in colonial and colonized and in the
08:21
colonial and colonized dynamic and so
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what can happen and we're gonna see this
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in Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea
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we often have an identity that is
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unstable one where here a protagonist or
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an individual a subject is uncertain
08:39
about their identity that it shifts may
08:42
be dependent on context there was an
08:45
alteration of historical trajectories so
08:48
a native country in a
08:50
of people maybe on one particular
08:52
trajectory in history development
08:56
culture technology and the colonial or
09:00
imperial power comes in and that
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historical or that trajectory changes
09:05
significantly we need to think about
09:09
assimilation coercion oppression or
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combination of these things
09:14
it is rare if if it happens at all that
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a colonized power that a colonized
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people that a native people just says
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okay come on in here and take over and
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in print your culture and ideology on us
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so there's a coercion and my point at
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the bottom is that there's often
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violence and trauma that are associated
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with this as well the ways with which
09:45
the sort of BI bipolar if you will
09:51
hierarchy the East versus West in a very
09:56
in a very simplified oversimplified way
10:00
that often Westerners think about the
10:03
differences between Western powers and
10:05
the East terms such as the Occidental
10:09
the West versus the Orient or
10:11
Orientalism what do these terms then
10:15
represent in these very sort of neat
10:18
over generalized terms they are code for
10:21
that the West is represented as ordered
10:25
civilized cultured and normal as opposed
10:30
to this and this is part of the ideology
10:31
the justification for what Western
10:35
powers the colonizer has done the East
10:39
is represented by the West so here the
10:41
East does not represent itself the West
10:44
represents the East as having base human
10:48
desires that they are chaotic confused
10:52
illogical mysterious and civilized or
10:57
excuse me uncivilized
10:58
the image that I have over my right
11:01
shoulder here Orientalism
11:03
by Edward Sayid in the late 1970s this
11:07
was one of the early texts that scholars
11:10
point to that discussed the differences
11:14
between East and West and was really one
11:17
of the seminal texts that many scholars
11:19
suggest of post-colonial theory so some
11:24
questions perhaps for us to consider
11:26
when does assimilation become diversity
11:30
and can it become diversity the terms of
11:35
hybridity versus integration you know is
11:39
a society can a society become a melting
11:42
pot or does it become fractured and stay
11:46
fractured and what moments in time what
11:50
moments in history would posit that a
11:53
diverse society becomes fractured or a
11:55
diverse society blends itself together
11:58
in a kind of hybridity can one return to
12:03
a pre colonized period of tribal
12:04
communal regional or national and
12:06
cultural history so is it the fantasy of
12:11
colonized peoples to return to a pre
12:15
colonized state it might be a fantasy
12:18
but is it a possibility and I think for
12:21
the most part the answer is no both
12:23
cultures engaging in this the struggle
12:27
for dominance primarily the
12:30
imperialistic and colonizing power in
12:32
printing culture over a native country
12:35
both of those countries have been
12:38
changed the native country however
12:41
cannot return to a pre colonized state
12:44
so what does that mean what are the
12:47
effects of and on the colonizer and the
12:49
colonized when does the colonizer become
12:51
a native a primary citizen and at the
12:53
end of colonial rule how does the former
12:56
colonialist fit in with Society
12:59
now that question is posed from the
13:03
colonialist perspective which we say
13:07
well the colonialists why are we
13:09
concerned with the colonialist and how
13:11
they might fit into a country that is
13:14
not theirs and I think that is a ver
13:17
appropriate question and something very
13:20
important for us to consider I asked
13:22
that question because I think it's
13:24
important for us to pose it in order to
13:26
understand the position that Antoinette
13:29
has in Wide Sargasso Sea
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so in literature some of the themes that
13:36
we might come across and these are in
13:39
part I think that we can see the
13:41
relationship between post-colonial
13:43
theory as a theory and how some of those
13:46
how some of the theory enters into the
13:49
literature so topics that we might come
13:51
across in the literature independence
13:53
themes of immigration national identity
13:58
and Allegiance
13:59
childhood resistance primarily to
14:03
colonial powers language how to
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communicate experience in the language
14:08
that is no longer native and a revision
14:11
of history to include the colonized or
14:14
other voices this is a couple of quotes
14:19
here from post-colonial theorists one
14:23
from Hama Baba post-colonial critique
14:26
emerges quote from the colonial
14:29
testimony of third world countries and
14:32
the discourses of minorities within the
14:36
geopolitical divisions of east and west
14:38
north and south they intervene in those
14:41
ideological discourses of modernity that
14:44
attempt to give a hegemonic normality to
14:47
the uneven development and the
14:49
differential often disadvantaged history
14:52
of nations race communities peoples and
14:57
from a text that I mentioned earlier
15:01
from Albert nemenyi quote the
15:03
colonialist does not plan his future in
15:05
terms of the colony for he is there only
15:08
temporarily and invests only what will
15:10
bear fruit in his time the true reason
15:13
the principal reason for most
15:14
efficiencies is that the colonialists
15:17
never planned to transform the colony
15:19
into the image of his household nor to
15:21
remake the colonized in his own image
15:24
many also discusses the kind of
15:28
the quality of person that the native or
15:32
mother country sends to its colonies and
15:35
oftentimes according to many that the
15:38
colonialist is not the best of what the
15:43
native excuse me of what the mother
15:45
country has to offer
15:47
Europe if we take Europe as an example
15:50
they have a kind of class system where
15:55
titles represented where might where one
15:59
might exist and live in society not a
16:03
lot of upward movement always the
16:05
possibility I think of downward movement
16:07
but for the colonialist you could become
16:10
something more than you were and take
16:14
Christopher Columbus as an example
16:17
Christopher Columbus came from a
16:20
background that that did not entitle him
16:23
to lands and titles and all sorts of
16:26
other things
16:26
he became the ultimate colonialist
16:30
bringing European culture and beginning
16:32
a process that took place in the first
16:36
50 years first hundred years that were
16:38
obviously living in today but because of
16:42
Christopher Columbus's success he became
16:45
something more than he would have been
16:47
back in Europe back in Spain or back in
16:50
Italy so Jean Rhys some background some
16:58
background about Jean Rhys I think it's
17:00
important for us to have some
17:03
information about her it helps us
17:07
understand the text a little bit
17:08
although I think reading the text and
17:11
understanding more about the historical
17:13
period might be a little bit more
17:15
fruitful but there's been a lot of
17:16
thinking and writing about Jean Rhys
17:19
particularly because of the various
17:21
spheres of discourse that Jean Rhys sort
17:24
of operates in she was born 1890 and
17:27
died in 1979 she grew up on the island
17:30
of Dominica and perhaps some of you have
17:33
visited Dominica in the Caribbean lots
17:37
of islands to visit in the Caribbean
17:40
very beautiful islands
17:42
but it's important for us to understand
17:44
it's very important colonial history
17:46
Jean rise as you can see from the image
17:49
here was a white woman from a British
17:53
society she was born on Dominica and she
17:58
lived there until about the age of 16
18:00
she was alienated by her background she
18:04
lived most of her life in Europe most of
18:06
her life in Britain but she didn't feel
18:09
that she really belong there and some
18:13
scholars have pointed out that she was
18:15
both a West Indian writer a European
18:17
modernist and a female writer and part
18:22
of the problem that Jean Rhys had in
18:25
terms of her identity in terms of her
18:28
being a professional in terms of her
18:30
being a writer was that when she
18:31
occupied one particular space
18:34
she felt alienated or was alienated
18:37
because she occupied these other spheres
18:40
of discourse as well so wide Sargasso
18:44
Sea published in 1966 this was her most
18:47
popular novel and I think it's difficult
18:50
in many ways for us to place I'm reading
18:54
Jean Rhys novel here as a post-colonial
18:57
text there's a very strong argument that
19:00
this novel is a modernist text we see
19:03
most most of the action comes through
19:06
the perspective of the characters and so
19:09
it's prejudicial these perceptions are
19:12
biased there's one of the important
19:15
themes of this text is the fracturing of
19:18
identity both important in post-colonial
19:22
theory post-colonial post-colonial
19:24
literature as well as modernist
19:27
literature so this could be read as a
19:30
late modernist text or a post-colonial
19:33
text and to to lend evidence to the sort
19:38
of thinking that this is a modernist
19:40
text that in the 1920s perhaps one of
19:44
the most fruitful periods the fruitful
19:48
decades of literary production you know
19:52
you have a lot of writers working
19:55
in publishing in the 1920s painters
19:58
philosophers Gertrude Stein Ernest
20:00
Hemingway machine Rises with one of the
20:06
expatriates Ford Madox Ford becomes his
20:11
mistress
20:11
so the 1920 is a particularly productive
20:15
period of literary history and so this
20:17
is where Jean Rhys is sort of
20:20
understanding literature so this is the
20:22
tradition that she is coming from so
20:25
she's outside of the main current so
20:27
when she is occupying one particular
20:30
space she as a writer feels alienated
20:33
because she also occupies these other
20:35
spaces as well she could be considered a
20:38
third world writer and a woman in exile
20:42
she writes in her autobiography good
20:45
morning midnight I have no pride no name
20:50
no face no country I don't belong
20:52
anywhere and I think that this quote
20:56
from her autobiography if I did not tell
21:01
you it came from her autobiography we
21:04
could see this spoken by Antoinette or
21:07
one of the other characters and Wide
21:09
Sargasso Sea I also want to bring up
21:12
absence versus loss now this is these
21:16
are definitions that are often used and
21:20
discussed in trauma theory and I think
21:22
it's important for us to consider them
21:25
here as well
21:26
what what is loss loss is something that
21:29
you have had whatever that might be a
21:33
positive experience foundation and
21:36
growing up something parents or whatnot
21:40
that is now gone and so now there's a
21:45
period of grieving there might be a
21:47
traumatic reaction to the loss of what
21:50
that thing or what that person was that
21:53
is no longer there absence is something
21:56
different both I think in terms of Jean
22:00
rise in post-colonial theory and in
22:03
psychoanalytic theory and trauma studies
22:05
absence is something different
22:08
there is a kind of vacuum that is
22:11
created for something that is supposed
22:13
to be there but not that that thing that
22:16
was there is was there now lost but that
22:20
thing is now that thing was not there in
22:25
the first place what is its relationship
22:28
to development of identity okay so it's
22:31
some terms for us to consider so Jean
22:35
Rhys grew up on Dominica a very
22:37
beautiful island in the Eastern
22:40
Caribbean and so you know we go to these
22:44
places at least in the old days some of
22:47
us might have had the opportunity to
22:49
Davitt to visit Dominica and some
22:51
Caribbean islands I highly highly
22:54
suggest when you go visit these places
22:57
if you have the opportunity in the
22:59
future when we can fly' again to
23:01
consider its history the islands and the
23:04
Caribbean have a very very complicated
23:08
history and are very complicated
23:11
societies today and many of the islands
23:14
and I think Dominica is no different
23:16
than many of the other islands there is
23:18
a great discrepancy between the wealthy
23:22
and the poor and most of the population
23:26
of these islands live with a
23:28
considerable amount of poverty to make
23:32
things infinitely worse these i''m or
23:36
Dominica was devastated by a series of
23:38
hurricanes both in 2015 and in 2017 part
23:44
of the history of Dominica is that it
23:45
was owned by the French from the 1690s
23:47
to the middle of the 18th century and
23:50
then the British took over from 1763 to
23:55
1978 Dominica produced timber coffee but
24:01
like many of the Caribbean islands their
24:03
main staple was sugar cane and because
24:06
of the sugar cane industry both in
24:08
Dominica and in the Caribbean in general
24:11
this facilitated the by some estimates
24:14
15 to 20 million slaves brought over
24:17
from Africa in order to work the plant
24:22
so just for us to consider I mean you
24:26
might have looked at the title the Wide
24:27
Sargasso Sea and this is something that
24:29
you've never heard before
24:31
interestingly enough in a 2018 I'm not
24:36
sure I don't recall exactly what month
24:38
but in 2018 National Geographic did a
24:41
really nice article on the Sargasso Sea
24:44
so the Sargasso Sea is a region of the
24:47
North Atlantic Ocean bounded by four
24:49
currents the Gulf Stream in the West the
24:52
North Atlantic Stream the canary in the
24:55
east in the North Atlantic equatorial
24:58
and you can see in the map you can see
25:00
on the map over my left hand shoulder
25:02
North and South America and Africa and
25:04
Europe that the Sargasso Sea and you can
25:08
see the rotating currents in the
25:10
Atlantic this is a place that exists
25:14
that scholars refer to that scientists
25:17
referred to Jean Rhys what was certainly
25:20
not the first person and what is
25:23
interesting about the Sargasso Sea I
25:26
think for us to consider is that in this
25:30
is the location of the Caribbean the
25:33
Caribbean is located in the currents of
25:37
the Sargasso Sea that in her text
25:40
there's a death exists in a lot of
25:44
different ways the struggle and death of
25:48
identity the real death of various
25:51
characters the Sargasso Sea itself is
25:54
really a kind of Oasis if you will it's
25:59
an enigma of life there are no land
26:03
boundaries here it's characterized by
26:06
brown Sargassum seaweed and often in
26:10
calm blue water there is an incredible
26:14
diversity of marine life and in this
26:21
article in National Geographic and you
26:23
can find this more information about
26:25
this that animals have adapted
26:27
specifically to exist in Sargassum weed
26:31
in terms of their color terms
26:33
their ability to some animals can can
26:36
exist on top of the seaweed other
26:38
animals exist just below that there are
26:41
various fish and other aquatic life
26:44
turtles that just exists in the
26:48
Sargassum weed and again this is really
26:51
about life and the stands I think in
26:53
many ways in contrast to some of the
26:56
things that are taking place in gene
26:58
arise novel the Sargasso Sea also houses
27:04
the North Atlantic Garbage Patch and so
27:09
we can see here I think the collision if
27:12
you will between human interaction and
27:16
the natural environment ok well this
27:21
just gives us a kind of background on
27:22
post-colonial theory on post-colonial
27:25
literature and a very brief introduction
27:27
to Jean Rhys and hopefully some context
27:30
that you can begin reading Wide Sargasso
27:32
Sea thank you