Unthinking Coloniality

Refashioning Paracolonial Identity through History in Neocolonial

Contexts

Majid Jafari Saray1,* - Ehsan Emami 2

1
University of Neyshabur
2
University of Neyshabur

_________________________________________________________________________________________
ABSTRACT

This article focus on the issues in close relationship with the identity refashioning during transition periods in Iran,
Malaysia and the West Indies as reflected in the literary and historical documentations registered during the
transitional periods in transcolonial and neocolonial settings under the light of the notion of power in the form of
language, history and culture. The motifs of cultural diaspora and identity bewilderment are depicted in the works of
some colonial and postcolonial authors such as Naipaul, Ondaatje, Achebe and others in their literary and non-literary
creations like novels, short stories and travelogues. Power and its tools including language are essential in creation of
realities and identities of the readers and through them the commons. The current study intends to analyze both travel
and fictional narratives to explore the way the depictions of situations are related to the idea of power and how those in
power positions create identities and realities for the rest in the postcolonial and neocolonial societies, especially
during the transition periods.

History, closely interconnected with language and its creative features is usually inferred or interpreted by the power
holders based on historical facts that are by no means perfect. This in turn contributes to the creation of unreal stories
and interpretation of them into false conclusions under the influence of linguistic elements which lead to creation of
fiction and the impact of the mood and viewpoint of the writer or narrator. Therefore, histories are also forms of
fictions, at least partly, that are presented under the guise of factual reality. Power holders manipulate some social
phenomena such as language, religion, race, nationality and the like to create images of the events of which the main
outcome is a “selective” presentation of distorted facts in those societies and creation of fictional realities to convince
the subjects of the imposed, and preferred, realities. A second result of these creations is the formation of identity
directly or indirectly under the guise of the created values and boundaries called nationalism. The same thing happens
to colonial nations leading to creation of identities and histories, sometimes based on false realities, which is the
subject of investigation of this research. These fabrications are expected in transnational, transcolonial and
neocolonial societies more than others to compensate for the lost identity in the wake of long history of colonization
and domination by the colonial and neo-colonial powers. This research discusses the notion of power in the form of
history in connection to the motifs of diaspora and exile as delineated in transnational, transcolonial and postcolonial
terrains reflected in some colonial, postcolonial and neocolonial writers’, like Naipaul, literary and non-literary
creations such as novels, short stories and travelogues. Power and its tools are essential in creation of realities and
identities through history.

Keywords: Postcolonial, Trancolonoal, Neocolonial, Paracolonial, Foucauldian Notion of Power, History

1. INTRODUCTION

Colonialism is a familiar notion for not only Asian, African, and American colonized nations, but also some
European nations such as Britain, France, Portugal and Spain, and the Asian nations of China and Japan, along
with the United States that all have experiences of colonization in its both significations (colonizing and
colonized) in their long or short histories of existence. One of the most significant but subsidiary outcomes and
consequences was transition along with transmission in their cultures, literatures, religions and languages to and
from peoples and nations far beyond their borders. Nowadays, cultural activities around the globe have clear traces
of such histories closely intermingled with the ideas of Diaspora and colonialism. However, this lending and

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 borrowing has been able to generate a rich body of cultural texts (movies, literature, historiography, art, etc.) and
contexts (academic environments, research areas, etc.) exposed to postcolonial and transcolonial analyses.
Majority of the postcolonial cultural texts are created by formerly colonized hands employing the minority
discourse but in the language of their colonizers. This can perhaps be considered as the most obvious trend in the
postcolonial literary arena. Senghor (Francophone), Marquez (Hispanophone), Naipaul, Achebe and Ondaatje
(Anglophone) are a few of the many authors who write in their current or former colonizers’ language, and
sometimes even discourse. The recent political, social, cultural, ideological and linguistic permutations detectable
in the postcolonial contexts necessitate expansion or reformation of the frame to sufficiently cover the multilateral
study of the colonial and postcolonial trends of the time, which is known to be transition period. However, most
postcolonial cultural studies have mainly been focusing on a vertical interpretation and analysis of the issues
strictly limited to one nation-state, such as the impact of British colonialism on India and Indian politico-cultural
issues. Nevertheless, a horizontal approach to the study of the postcolonial cultural texts can help gain productive
results from projects concentrating and comparing postcolonial minor cultures and transcolonial studies of
minority discourses, with regard to interactional relationships with the colonizers’ cultural effects, both
advantageous and disadvantageous.
What possibilities and potentialities do transcolonial and transnational cultural studies of a minority discourse
promise? As nation-states wane as meaningful categories of citizenship, subjecthood, and identity, the
transcolonial and transnational pursuits of minority cultures may indeed foreshadow the ways of identification to
come for various peoples across metropolitan and postcolonial terrains. Minority cultures may yet be the most
cosmopolitan of all cultures precisely because they bear the traces of multi-national cultures due to colonialism
abroad and at home, and more recently, in global arena. However, minority culture members can hardly be
convinced of the cosmopolitan nature of the mental and physical migrations which is known as involuntary or
unwanted emigration and diaspora which displaces the colonials, postcolonials and neocolonials from their
homelands. A horizontal and comparative study of the postcolonial nations around the world during their identity-
gap-filling-transition periods, which led to their full or partial independence from their colonizers, will provide us
with a broader and brighter view of the facts behind the politico-social prejudices and propaganda determining the
hues of the world and its issues for us.

2. FICTIONAL REALITY

However, most of the real issues or events are first created in the form of fictions, but the gradual passage of time
molds them into a kind of reality, like the fictional Republic of Plato that after more than two thousand years has
turned into a reality that most of the eastern and western societies have adopted as sacred rules and laws, while
most of the Platonic laws are based on fictional fabrications of Socrates and Plato originated from the Greek
mythical interpretations of life and the universe. Today we witness the replay of the same project in most of the
countries including the developing and developed ones. Therefore, new colonizers try to expand their domination
over their former colonies, which had been subjugated formerly through force, and new colonies through culture.
And culture is constituted or permuted through education, mass media, language, politics, history and literature,
among others. The essential role of these factors in creating realities makes the position of the writers and
educators more sensitive and susceptible to the extent that Plato finally expels them from his fictional republic. In
his The Republic, Books II and III, Plato offers garlands to the poets who might happen to come to his would-be
state and then asks them to leave the republic as soon as possible. In Plato’s republic there is no place for the
artists and poets. If it becomes necessary to have some, they have to comply with the norms and standards
established by the Council of Guardians who are expected to revise and even rewrite their works before the public
can have access to them. Today, some states based on ideological foundations attempt to enact a Platonic state in
their subject countries. Hence, realizing the fictional creations of Plato produced centuries ago. The study of these
nations as reflected in their writers works will reveal the importance of language in creating realities and identities
by power holders who creates fictions and imposes them on the masses.
However, regardless of the nature of reality and identity, i.e. fictional or real, 1 they seem to be essential in
forming the mental structure and personality of individuals through their exposition to culture and its norms and
values rampant in a given society and time. Hubbard believes that “stable data” is gradually acquired and
fossilized through teachings, experiences, and trainings. What one learns and knows “may be regarded as having
two parts. There is, first of all, what one sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells. Next there is the way these
perceptions are organized by the mind to form ideas or concepts.” 2 The formulated concepts influence the
1
In this context, ‘real” is different from “reality”. “Real” is closer to “fact” in meaning. It is an entity which does not need human mind to exist.
2
“Genius.” Retrieved on 26/9/2008.

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 perception of individuals in turn. That is the main cause people differ in their ideology, religion, values, and
beliefs from society to society in which different norms are ruling. The formulated concepts are themselves
influenced by inability of the senses in generating a full image of facts. Gradually these concepts are deposited
into sediments in the mind of the individuals and are later fossilized to make new layers covering and stabilizing
the older and basic ones. This is one of the main reasons that the followers of an established ideology find it hard
to accept the teachings of a new one, if the means of introduction of the new ideas are not sufficiently effective or
influential to permute and transform the stable data to form new patterns. In this case, the believers prefer their
old and solidified worlds which give them the required security and ease of mind. My intention is to look at ways
realities and identities are formed according to the data that form the structure of the minds of the subjects of
power holders using language and mass media as reflected in the literatures of the afore-said periods. Writers, as
power holders, who manipulate language and narration, contribute to the creation of the subjective worlds of
individuals and nations. This kind of language control is more vivid and tangible in fictional and none-fictional
writings which are expected to deal with facts rather than the personal realities of the writers.
The discussion of the mentioned concepts and notions foreground the notions of fiction, fact and reality and
their creations or recreations with power tools. The idea of power and its role in creating realities and identities
have occupied my mind for a long time. How can power create reality and identity for individuals and societies?
As a result of the nature of the notions which carry a more subjective signification and definition, this study is
partly based on my own personal history and experiences as well as the writings of other critics. Power and its
tools are, and as this study will demonstrate, essential in creation of realities and identities. The main purpose of
this research, then, is to find out connections between two of the Foucauldian power tools 3, i.e. language and
literature in historical context, and the creation of reality and identity by the holders and manipulators of these
tools in transition settings in former colonial societies in contrast to those of the colonial powers. The notions of
reality, identity, and power and its tools will be discussed with relation to Transnational and Nationalistic motifs in
Naipaul’s, Ondaatje’s, Achebe’s on one hand, and Hedayat, Al-Ahmad and Jamalzade on the other hand, in
contrast.

3. HISTORY AND ITS FICTIONALITY

Language and history are two of these means that play essential roles in building up the mentalities and identities
of the individuals and communities about Self and Other. All other tools, such as ideology, education, politics and
economy, gain validity through language and history. As Language is able to create the realities and identities
through diction and depiction, history can confirm and stabilize the created realities and identities as valid and
reliable. In George Orwell’s words, “who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls
the past.”4 And hence, who controls the language, in this case Newspeak, controls the minds; who controls the
minds controls the masses. Therefore, the modern and postmodern colonizers have again taken up the cultural
elements like language and history to secure or expand their power positions and dominance over the subject
nations. Some postcolonial governments seem to be at the service of this new mode of colonization
(neocolonialism) with the tools at their disposal. The language of fiction and the history of the target nations are
the main means through with which they try to manipulate and create or permute the realities fabricated, preferred
and refined according to their own perceptions, right or wrong. This occurs through the presentation and
representation of the images these peoples see and perceive in their actual lives or accounted from past or future
ones. Therefore, this project is going to analyze these phenomena to discover how people in authority and of
authority control the power tools to create and represent realities of others, and define and present their identities.
The questions of reality and identity have sparked serious debates among new historicists as well. New
historicism has been an important mode of critical approach to literary studies from the mid-eighties up to the
present. It came into existence in the late 1970s, flourished in the later decades, and has ever since been growing
incessantly up to the very present (Brannigan 4). New historicism is in some degree a reaction against formalism
and deconstructionism. It has risen against the deconstructionists’ exclusive focus on the issues of textuality and
their obsession with the importance of the properties of language regardless of their context. New historicism aims
to return literary criticism to more contextualized reading practices. The main idea that new historicists deal with
in all their studies of texts is the power relations in the miscellaneous ramifications of society, especially in the
literary texts as important historical writings (23-24).

3
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was an influential French philosopher and anthropologist whose notion of power and its
tools has been elaborated in Background of the Study of this project.
4
Nineteen Eighty Four, 248.

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 The founding text for new historical studies is Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980) which
itself reflects the Foucauldian notion of power. According to Stephen Greenblatt, the role of the new historicist is
to create a “more cultural or anthropological criticism” which will be “conscious of its own status as interpretation
and intent upon understanding literature as part of a system of signs that constitutes a given culture” (9). Literary
criticism and cultural critique combine and integrate with the critic’s role that is to investigate “both the social
presence to the world of the literary text and the social presence of the world in the literary text” (9-10). New
Historicism is more specifically concerned with questions of power and culture. Nevertheless, when it is said that
new historicists focus their interests mainly on power, it does not mean that they are obsessed with “power plays
between contending monarchs or between monarchs and usurpers;” but they are more “interested in the operations
of power within regulating ideologies” (Brannigan 7). For some modern literary critics and scholars, especially
those in the realm of new historicism, this regulatory mission “has extended to the ‘self’ …. This removes the need
for power to be oppressive” (Brannigan 7). Claude Levis-Strauss similarly recognizes that “culture is a self-
regulating system … that polices its own customs and practices in subtle and ideological ways” (7). In this case
ideological institutions play a fundamental role in manipulating the realities and identities of their subjects. This is
the main reason that the colonizers used to stabilize their positions in the conquered communities by channeling
scores of priests and cultural missioners into the regions to convert the subjects ideologically and culturally.
The concentration of power agents and power holders on the formation of culture and identity, and molding
individuals gradually resulted in individualism that has ever since alienated man from his formerly tribal and
communal entities. This nascent notion shifts the responsibility of monitoring and controlling the subjects from the
rulers unto the individual subjects themselves. This is one of the common challenges in the postmodern and
postcolonial eras as well. In The Idea of Culture (2000), Terry Eagleton reiterates the necessity of culture in giving
identity to the individuals. He states that “someone who was entirely absolved from cultural conventions would be
no more free than someone who was their slave” (4). However, in Clifford’s words, “culture and identity are
inventive and mobile. They need not take root in ancestral plots; they live by pollination, by (historical)
transplanting” (Clifford 15). Despite their fictional nature, as Clifford implies, culture and identity determine the
private and social behavior of the individuals. Cultural dominance, therefore, is a rather ancient idea that has
regained the heed of diverse powers around the world to be utilized instead of military forces that were used
formerly during the colonization era to dominate over colonies. Using martial forces to fight against rival societies
in order to gain dominance over them is now being replaced by the application of power tools to influence other
communities in cultural domains in transitional and neocolonial periods, which seems to be more convenient and
durable.
In “Columbus and Crusoe” Naipaul himself probes into a history which has, over the centuries, been presented
to us by the colonizers as the only genuine account of the events and stories about the discovery of the new world.
The colonizers have always had the required authority to predetermine the course of history and, consequently, the
destiny of their subjects. Their historical evidences are mainly based on the stories which come from their own
minds or, at best, from their perspectives. These, in turn, form the point of view in their narratives of history and
travel. At 2 AM on October 12, 1492, aboard the Pinta, which Christopher Columbus captained, drifted westward
by contrary winds, sailor Rodrigo de Triana’s first cry of the new world dissipated all the prosperity away from the
unlucky inhabitants of the old world. The history of the indigenous Amerindians goes back 20,000 years in time.
But the European names given to the discovered places e.g., San Salvador, whose Indian name was Guanahani,
buried the old names with their stories under the mask of the new ones, giving them one by one up to the dark
layers of time (Fiske 115-17).
However, as Naipaul points out, the ecstasy which must have flown through the veins of Columbus and his
sailors was not because of the impending encounter with inhabitants of the new continent (who possessed their
own histories, cultures and exotic customs and cults), nor the sake of the scientific explorations and discoveries of
these cultures and peoples, but only for rich resources of gold, food, land, and (recently) oil, which later turned to
be major resources for the colonizers in Europe right up to the 21st century. When the discoverers moored their
flagships in Haiti, they found the Indians “more than helpful” (1976: 205). Some even wept to display their
sympathy and hospitality. With this in his mind, Naipaul invites us to review the history of Central and Latin
America and all the formerly and currently colonized and conquered countries anew, but this time from another
perspective. This time he encourages his readers to look at the history of the region not from the viewpoint of
Columbus or Cook, but through the eyes of the victims although Naipaul, as it will be elaborated in the rest of this
chapter, does not follow this method in his own observations in the Islamic countries, the West Indies and India.
Concerning Columbus’s discovery and observation of the New World, as reflected in First Voyage to America:
from the Log of the "Santa Maria", Naipaul states. The concrete details are deceptive. The sea and its life are
observed, but mainly for signs of the nearness of land; just as, at the moment of discovery, the natives are studied,
but only by a man ‘vigilant’—his own word—for gold. …Columbus believed that where Negroes were, there was

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 gold. Beyond this vigilance the words and perception fail. The nightingale, April in Andalusia: the props of a
banal poetry are used again and again until they are without meaning. (1976: 204)
However, and ironically too, the same “deceptive” method is used by Naipaul to depict India and other
countries he visits during his travels. The images on which Naipaul focuses on in his narratives hide the real face
of the countries under a particular shadow. Some of these images, so efficiently deployed by the use of language in
Naipaul’s travel books, have been discussed in Chapter One of this thesis. In this essay Naipaul concludes that
later on in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe tried to set the basis for the fantastic notion of mastery that the
English adventurers took up in the following centuries, “the dream of being the first man in the world: … the
dream of being suddenly, just as one is, in unquestionable control of the physical world” (206). Crusoe is a
stereotype of the Anglo Saxon explorer who takes the world for granted and tries to cultivate the “primitive”
cannibal traditions of the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies into their own so-called civilized and Christian
British culture. Ever since then “England” and “the English” have meant civilization, culture, science, philosophy
and development and, more importantly, mastership before whom the rest have to submit and supplicate.
However, despite all this, in his own travel books, Naipaul relapses into the same trap he criticizes in this essay
about the European discoverers and observers of the new world. Today, writers like Naipaul, following the path
that Defoe has set, interpret and depict history according to the wishes of their sponsors and mixed with their own
passions and prejudices. Such travel narratives deface the nations who have just been set free from the dominance
of their colonizers. Regarding the fictionality and subjectivity of historical accounts, E. H. Carr states in What Is
History.
It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue, The facts
speak only when the historian call on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the
floor and in what order or context…..The facts of history never come to us “pure,” since
they do not and cannot exist in a pure form: they are always refracted through the mind of
the recorder. It follows that when we take up a work of history, our first concern should not
be with the facts which it contains but with the historian who wrote it. (23-4)

During the colonial phase, travel writers were dominantly of Western origin. The postcolonial era, has seen the
shift of the “Whiteman’s burden from western to eastern writers, who do the same service for the West in
analyzing and interpreting the East and its history for both western and eastern audience. In the above essay,
Naipaul believes that the notion of “Whiteman’s burden” began with Defoe’s Crusoe who felt the responsibility to
save and civilize the indigenous inhabitants of the other regions. In effect, this shift of the “burden” allows the
white writer to leave, in Paranjape’s words, the “dirty” job to Indian (and eastern) experts and agents to carry out
reporting task that is to be in accordance with the palates of western authorities. In this regard, in Towards a
Poetics of the Indian English Novel, Paranjape classifies Indian writers into three groups who adhere to a kind of
syndrome and serve as mouthpieces for the West.
History is unable to provide us with an objective truth and reality of past events, peoples, or periods. Unlike
old historicism, new historicism considers history to be only one of the many discourses that are present in a given
society. Sociology, politics and literature are some of the other available discourses which make it possible for us
to see and understand the past of a society by observing recorded events and documents from various perspectives.
History itself, as a genre and one of many discourses, is, in effect, the documentation of events that have taken
place in the near or distant past to which we do not have any concrete access anymore except through the stories
and descriptions captured in the written materials that have survived the ages and have ultimately come down to
us. It is commonly believed by scholars that history owes its expansion to “material documentation, (books, texts,
accounts, registers, acts, buildings, institutions, laws, techniques, objects, customs, etc.) that exists in every time
and place, in every society, either in a spontaneous or in a consciously organized form” (Foucault 1972: 7).
Dealing with history selectively and interpreting and distorting historical accounts according to one’s wishes
turn history into a power tool through which men in authority try to convince their audience or subjects of the
validity of their dominance. In his masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell reiterates that “who controls
the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past” (248). However, it is hard to draw a
distinctive “line between books on the history of a country and travel and description as they so often are
combined.” Some writers take Naipaul’s travel narratives as historical writings of a sort that give a realistic
account of the societies in question. It is often claimed that Naipaul’s travel books depict real events and are first
hand, frank and honest accounts of the experiences of the author during his adventurous expeditions in the regions
he has visited.

4. Conclusion

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 History and its manipulations by men in authority, i.e. politicians, political artists and writers, can turn it into one
of the means that new historicism defines as power tool. Naipaul’s dexterity in English language as an
international communicational means has raised him to the top of the ladder of internationally celebrated
intellectualism. His mastery on his narratives easily absorbs his readers into the world of his narratives. His
dealing with historical facts can turn his travel writings into a kind of historical document that depicts first-hand
visions of the issues around the regions under scrutiny in his books. But he deals more with histories as an
interpreter and clarifier. The first reading of his travel books defines them as a depiction of delicately tackled truth
about the visited societies, from the Central America to the Middle East and Asia. However, a second reading
freed from the blind prejudices against the peoples in question makes his travel books look not totally acceptable
to an unbiased reader. Selective recounts and exegeses of historical facts and their brutal distortions distance
Naipaul from being a reliable registrar of facts or interpreter of histories. An analysis of his historical discussions
betrays his either insufficient knowledge of the history of the regions or his intentional corruption of the facts
about the regions dealt with in his travelogues. Naipaul’s travel books not only deal with the histories of the
regions and peoples in question, but also present stories of those peoples and societies in representing their real
image to the world outside and future. This kind of approach turns his dealing with history and historical issues
into a means to manipulate or create realities and identities for himself and his sympathetic readers. This kind of
vision of history is what Foucault and new historians label as power tool through which men in authority can
control the past and consequently the present and future of a nation, but never does reflect the facts as they are.

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