Colonialism and Literature: An Affective Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) 1496241045, 9781496241047

Table of contents :
Bookmark 1
Cover Page
Frontiers of Narrative
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Introduction: Imperialism and Its Stories
1. Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative: Theoretical Principles
2. Idealized Sacrifice: Pádraic Pearse, Attachment Love, and the 1916 Easter Uprising
3. Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love: Shame and Desire in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat
4. Family Separation and Reunion: Attachment and Mirth in Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer
5. Disfigured Heroism and the Possibility of Romance: War and Love in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians
6. Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue: Guilt and Disfigured Genres in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing
7. Minor Genres: Revenge in Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment,” Crime in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, and Seduction in Dinabandhu Mitra’s The Indigo Planting Mirror
8. Afterword: A Note on the Psychology of Stories and the Psychology of Colonialism
Source Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Colonialism and Literature

Frontiers of Narrative

Se rie s E ditor

Sue J. Kim, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Colonialism and Literature An Affective Narratology Patrick Colm Hogan

University of Nebraska Press  |  Lincoln

© 2024 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear on page 237, which constitutes an extension of the copyright page. All rights reserved The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-­grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-­Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-­Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Hogan, Patrick Colm, author. Title: Colonialism and literature: an affective narratology / Patrick Colm Hogan. Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2025. | Series: Frontiers of narrative | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2024026112 (print) lccn 2024026113 (ebook) isbn 9781496241047 (hardcover) isbn 9781496241696 (epub) isbn 9781496241702 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: Postcolonialism in literature. | Imperialism in literature. | Colonies in literature. | Narration (Rhetoric) | bisac: literary criticism / Semiotics & Theory | literary criticism / Subjects & Themes / Culture, Race & Ethnicity | lcgft: Literary criticism. Classification: lcc pn56.c63 h64 2025 (print) | lcc pn56.c63 (ebook) | ddc 809/.93358—­dc23/eng/20240617 lc record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/​2024026112 lc ebook record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/​2024026113 Set in Minion Pro by Lacey Losh.

For Lalita

Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Introduction: Imperialism and Its Stories  1

1. Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative: Theoretical Principles  13



2. Idealized Sacrifice: Pádraic Pearse, Attachment Love, and the 1916 Easter Uprising  53



3. Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love: Shame and Desire in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat  74



4. Family Separation and Reunion: Attachment and Mirth in Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer  98



5. Disfigured Heroism and the Possibility of Romance: War and Love in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians  139



6. Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue: Guilt and Disfigured Genres in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing  167



7. Minor Genres: Revenge in Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment,” Crime in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, and Seduction in Dinabandhu Mitra’s The Indigo Planting Mirror  193



8. Afterword: A Note on the Psychology of Stories and the Psychology of Colonialism  224 Source Acknowledgments  237 Notes  239 Bibliography  257 Index  273

Illustrations



1. Noriko smiles with affectionate indulgence at Isamu’s childish prank  114



2. Mr. Mamiya chuckles at Isamu’s misbehavior  116



3. Noriko keeps the child’s-­eye view, even when speaking to Mrs. Yabe  118



4. The uncle delights in a Noh performance  119



5. Noriko and Aya’s friend, Taka, seems to side with her dog over her husband  120



6. Taka appears only a few moments later  120



7. Isamu approaches the conversing adults  122



8. Isamu’s father drives him off  122



9. Noriko and Aya in Western clothing  123



10. Their married friends in Japanese dress  123



11. A European Modernist painting forms the backdrop to the young women’s conversation  124



12. The adults try to hide the cake  127



13. The adults try to act as if they are not hiding anything  128



14. Isamu retrieves the bread  130



15. Minoru and his father have a serious fight  131



16. Isamu sneaks in a kick at the offending loaf of bread  132



17. Noriko tries to force a social smile  136



18. Minoru puts on his baseball cap  137



19. Isamu imitates his older brother  138

20. An outline of the thematic structure of Surfacing  176

Colonialism and Literature

Introduction Imperialism and Its Stories

In his valuable “short introduction” to empire, Stephen Howe (2002, 10) writes that, at the height of modern colonialism—­say, 100 to 150 years ago—­“the mass media, popular culture, and much of the art of the day would have reflected an image of empire seemingly almost the opposite of today’s. To be an empire builder was to be an adventurer, a hero, a selfless labourer for others’ well-­being.” In saying this, Howe tacitly refers to two things. The first is stories. To say that popular culture reflected an image of empire builders as heroes is to say that they were the characters readers and audiences rooted for, or at least were expected to root for, when the events of the tale put them in danger or in competition. They were the comely homesteaders bravely defending their children from the inexplicable onslaught of savages, or the soldiers of Her Majesty, protecting ethnic minorities and women from the cruelty of native despots. In short, they were the great protagonists in tales of violent conflict with metaphorically—­and most often literally—­dark enemies. Adventurers were a bit different. They too were estimable—­brave and manly as well, but in a somewhat different register. The adventurers plunged into a world unknown to any but small, isolated groups of ancient and history-­less primitives who may or may not have been hostile. But, like the savages faced by the hero, they lived in metaphorical darkness. The task of the adventurer was not necessarily to fight them. His first task was simply to know—­to know what rivers flowed from where to where, what parts were navigable, what flora and fauna there were, what mineral and human resources, what forms of language (or “dialect”), what customs and beliefs (or “superstitions”) had been for millennia concealed in this place or that.

1

Both the heroes and the adventurers in some ways labored selflessly for others’ well-­being. But characterizing a type of empire builder in this way (i.e., as “a selfless labourer,” etc.) calls to mind neither a soldier nor a cartographer and anthropologist but someone more like a saint—­a medical missionary, toting a black bag with forceps and penicillin, or a Christian proselytizer, marching into the thick of the jungle with nothing in his hands but the word of the one true God. The former freed the native from diseases of the body; the latter freed him or her from diseases of the soul. As is probably already clear, these three represent not just three types of character but three types of story—­roughly, what are commonly called stories of war, quest, and salvation. The second thing Howe tacitly refers to is the force that, so to speak, animates the actions of these heroes, adventurers, and saints—­and enlivens the reader’s response to those actions—­which is to say, emotion. The brave soldier is brave precisely to the degree that he or she successfully modulates fear, fear that the reader compassionately feels on his or her behalf. Moreover, the soldier modulates fear due to his or her love of the homeland, which is shared by the admiring reader, as is his or her pride in the military success of “our” empire (however little the reader or the soldier may in reality benefit from imperial expansion and rule). The adventurer is driven by love of knowledge and, ultimately, love of the homeland, as he or she plants flags in new soil for queen and country. His or her discoveries may inspire readers’ pride in “our” scientific success, which extends national luster beyond force of arms or strategy in battle. The final set of stories elevates our national self-­worth higher still by expanding to the ethical and spiritual excellences, the (selfless) compassion, of the medical and religious missionaries, spurred on by love of God and of their fellow humans. Of course, in speaking of “our” pride, I am tacitly imagining the readers to be members of the colonizing nation. When colonized people read such works, a few may experience pride. But others may instead experience shame from their depiction as savages and primitives, animalistic in the first case, infantile or adolescent in the second. Still others may respond to this shaming depiction with anger, with disgust, or even with a sense of guilt. Indeed, some readers from the metropole, more aware than their compatriots of the actual facts of the case, or not so confined in empathy, may respond with shame, anger, disgust, and/or guilt as well. 2  Introduction

In any event, as these cases illustrate, responses to colonialism—­by writers and readers (and characters), by colonizers and colonized—­are bound up with stories, and those stories work on us precisely because they are pervaded by emotions. As all this suggests, understanding and responding to stories is, and should be, a key part of understanding and responding to colonialism. The primary purpose of this book is to present a clear, plausible account of some key aspects of colonialism, insofar as these can be illuminated by the study of literary narrative. As readers are certainly already aware, this is not in itself a novel idea. Indeed, the study of literature has for a long time had a central place in the theorization of colonialism, as can be seen in such foundational postcolonial works as the writings of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. We even see literature highlighted in some works that take up colonialism as part of political or economic (thus nonliterary) analyses, such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology; as Piketty (2020, 1040) notes, “literature and film can also shed light on our subject in a way that complements the light shed by the social sciences.” In a sense, then, I am taking up my literary and theoretical project from writers such as Fanon, Said, and others. However, there are several differences in our projects that it is important to note here. First, I am directly and explicitly concerned with describing and explaining a set of phenomena that we can describe and explain clearly and systematically. As such, I am interested in beginning from empirically well-­established premises. More precisely, I have focused particularly on psychological aspects of colonialism. I have therefore drawn on what seem to be the most plausible and empirically best supported forms of psychological theory available—­principally social psychology and affective and cognitive science. In connection with this work, I have endeavored to make empirically plausible, logically consistent, and parsimonious claims. In contrast, literary theorists are often more interested in the political affiliations of a theorist or in his or her moral rhetoric, rather than in empirical support or algorithmic rigor of explanation.1 Moreover, postcolonial critics tend to treat literary works solely in their particularity, a perfectly reasonable approach but one that does not necessarily foster systematic, theoretical development. More commonly, such interpretations have an illustrative function, rediscovering one or another theme associated with some influential theorist. For example, a wide range of critics uncover in the works Introduction  3

they study intimations of Orientalism or a celebration of hybridity or inarticulable quandaries that lead inexorably to the question—­can the subaltern speak? In contrast with these approaches, I have organized the treatment of stories according to cross-­culturally recurring genres—­heroic, romantic, sacrificial, and so on (as explained in chapter 1). These genres appear prominently in a range of distinct literary traditions and reflect human ways of construing and evaluating important social and ethical issues. They appear cross-­culturally because the stories they define are animated by cross-­culturally recurring, motivationally fundamental emotion systems, prominently including those of pride and shame, empathy, attachment and caregiving, and remorse. These and other emotion systems may be valuably analyzed and explained through cognitive and affective science. (This too departs from the common reliance of literary critics psychoanalytic accounts or on the fusing of psychoanalysis with elements of anti-­psychiatry and various strands of poststructuralism in affect theory.)2 One of the main contentions of this book is that the psychology of colonialism—­the topic of much postcolonial theorizing, from Octave Manonni, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, Ashis Nandy, and others (for the most part writing prior to the development of cognitive science)—­needs to be understood, in part, by reference to human causal inference, which manifests itself in stories about particular actions and events, along with the human emotions that motivate those actions and give significance to those events. The preceding points indicate how this is a work of affective narratology. However, organizing the literary analyses of the following chapters according to these emotion-­defined, cross-­cultural story genres runs into a difficulty—­a small difficulty, but one worth noting. Story genres refer to particular trajectories of events. They do not refer to literary works as such. Specifically, a given literary work—­a novel, for example—­may combine a range of different story sequences, representing different story genres. Often, one or two of these genres will be dominant. But that is not inevitable. Moreover, sometimes, the complexity and power of a given work will derive in part from its fusion of story genres, such that it is possible to interpret it as ambiguous between, say, romantic and familial or heroic and sacrificial. (That does not undermine the distinctions, as there are clear cases of each sort; indeed, the great majority of 4  Introduction

individual story trajectories appear to be such clear cases.) One of the things that makes this ambiguity interesting is that choosing to construe a given work in one way or another may change our response to the work. For example, Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer has an extended or encompassing story line that appears to be romantic. However, in chapter 4 I will analyze it as, fundamentally, a familial separation story, with the love story wholly contingent on that familial narrative. Put somewhat oversimply, the lovers are not brought together by passion (as Joan Mellen [1976, 256] writes, “passion between these two seems inconceivable”). Rather, they are brought together by grief over the loss of one attachment bond and relief and gratitude over the restoration of another. All of these events and causal sequences occur in a context that is fully colonial. But our sense of the film and its relation to colonialism (either Japanese or American) is likely to change if we consider it a (disappointing) romance or a (restorative) familial story of loss and companionship. Finally, it is important to note one significant thematic and interpretive variable affecting narratives, in a colonial context or elsewhere. Stories can of course be construed literally—­focusing, commonly, on individual psychology—­or allegorically. There are also some roughly intermediate options. Between the particular, idiosyncratic minds of literal characters and the abstract, symbolic identifications of allegorical ones, we find characters who may be viewed as “purely typical” of a group, as Lukács (1980, 48) put it. As Northrop Frye (1982, 85) contends, for somewhat different reasons, “Typology is not allegory,” though the two are not unrelated. More exactly, a typical character may be a stereotypical distortion or an empirically plausible prototype. But, in either case, it serves as what people take to be a good example, rather than as a mere signal referring to a group or a broad tendency (e.g., the word “Irish” is, first of all, such a signal; a literary character who is a bibulous sentimentalist from Dublin, however, is a type). Of course, these three alternatives appear with any set of stories; however, allegories—­and to some extent typologies—­appear to be unusually important in a colonial context. Fredric Jameson (1986, 70) famously claimed that “all third-­world texts are necessarily . . . to be read as . . . national allegories.” This is clearly a vast overstatement. However, it does seem to be the case that national allegories become particularly common at times and places where people are intensively engaged in nation building, as is often the case in col Introduction  5

onies that have recently become independent nations or are striving to achieve independence. I of course agree with C. S. Lewis, who wrote in The Allegory of Love (2017, 55) that allegory does not belong to a particular period, “but to man, or even to the mind, in general.” But historical and cultural conditions can render allegory more or less prominent and affect its development and expression, including just what is allegorized. For example, Heath (2010, 99) notes that “the allegories of the last century have tended to be political rather than philosophical or spiritual.” Though he is discussing “Allegory in the Islamic World,” the claim applies to quite a variety of non-­Islamic allegories also, in part as a result of colonialism (see, for example, Kelley [2010, 216–­17] on allegory and the French Revolution). Chapter Overview The opening chapter takes up the general topic of emotions and stories. It begins by isolating and analyzing a series of emotions that appear to be particularly important for colonial and anticolonial motivations and behaviors. These emotions prominently include shame, guilt, pride (differentiated into “essence pride” and “accomplishment pride,” parallel to shame and guilt respectively), disgust, desire, attachment, trust, indignation, and rage. (A number of these emotions also have different varieties insofar as they bear on an individual or an identity group.) In discussing these emotions, I draw illustrations ranging from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene to Forster’s A Passage to India (England), Hazari’s autobiography (India), and novels by Ekwensi, Tutuola, Gordimer, and Gurnah (Africa). This section also includes a brief treatment of the (stifled) emotions of Camus’s L’Étranger (The Stranger or The Foreigner). The second part of the chapter turns to stories and cross-­culturally recurring genre structures that are, I have argued, derived from a limited set of motivating emotions—­largely the same emotions that figure prominently in colonialism and anticolonialism. The genres, along with some of the more important emotions in each case are as follows: heroic (pride, shame, rage), romantic (attachment integrated with desire), sacrificial (guilt, trust), familial separation (attachment), revenge (trust, rage), criminal investigation (indignation), and seduction (desire). In overviewing these genres and their place in the way people have thought and felt about various colonialisms, I draw a number of exam6  Introduction

ples from metropolitan sources, including James Cameron’s film Avatar; Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Five Minutes of Heaven (about Northern Ireland); Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (about Vietnam); and Costa-­ Gavras’s Missing (about Chile). From Africa, examples include Nigerian and Ghanaian novelists (Fagunwa, Saro-­Wiwa, Adichie, and Aidoo), Kenyan and South African playwrights (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Micere Githae Mugo, and Shezi), and writers of short stories from Egypt and Nigeria (Aboulela, Manyika, and Adeaga), as well as a work by descendants of settlers (Gavin Hood’s film of a novel by Athol Fugard). Indian examples include Khushwant Singh’s novel about the partition of India and Pakistan and two works treating Kashmir (Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown and Kakkar’s The Notebook). Examples from other regions include a film from Israel/Palestine (Alayan’s The Reports on Sarah and Saleem) and a memoir from Australia (Garimara’s Follow the Rabbit-­ Proof Fence). The chapter gains a touch of historical depth by considering two Yuan Dynasty plays from China (The Zhào Orphan and Qiu Hu Tries to Seduce His Wife). As I discuss in the opening chapter, the default mode of emplotting nationalism—­a central part of one’s response to any colonial situation—­is heroic. National groups tend to imagine conflict with an enemy in terms of violent confrontation through which the in-­group defeats the threatening out-­group, definitively establishing its autonomy or even domination in a renewed or revived home society that is typically idealized (see Hogan [2009, 16]).3 Specifically, the heroic narrative includes two sequences, one treating foreign invasion and the other treating the usurpation of legitimate in-­group governance. In the invasion sequence, an external enemy poses a threat to national sovereignty; in the usurpation sequence, an internal enemy poses a threat to the legitimate authority structure of the in-­group. However, in some cases, people in a particular society will find their situation relative to the external and/or internal enemy so disadvantageous that they cannot envision defeating that enemy in a heroic confrontation. This commonly leads to a sacrificial emplotment through which the in-­group seeks to atone for some past sin that has led to their current misery. It is probably obvious that this is frequently the situation in which colonized people find themselves, faced with the sometimes overwhelming military superiority of the colonizer. Indeed, despite the fact that the heroic narrative is, again, the default mode for Introduction  7

national emplotment, the sacrificial structure is perhaps more common among colonized writers, at least in its most straightforward form. For that reason, it seemed best to begin with a straightforward case of the sacrificial structure. Chapter 2 therefore considers Pádraic Pearse—­a poet, a playwright, and one of the most famous and influential anticolonial revolutionaries of Ireland.4 He is particularly relevant to our concerns because his dramas clearly develop a sacrificial emplotment of Irish anticolonialism, but so did his political activism. Specifically, his leadership of the Easter 1916 uprising manifested that prototypical structure no less clearly than the plays. Pearse thereby gives a concrete case of the continuity between story genre in literature and story genre in political understanding, motivation, and action. Not all cases of sacrificial emplotment are as straightforward as we find in Pearse. Moreover, in literary works particularly, different genres are often combined. Chapter 3 turns to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat. Ngũgĩ’s influential novel includes a sacrificial narrative, treating the relation between sacrifice and (heroic) military struggle. However, to a great extent, this part of the narrative operates in the background, often through agricultural imagery beginning with the title of the novel (the social devastation of a sacrificial plot is often represented as a drought and famine). The foreground in part treats a romantic story, specifically the love triangle part of the romantic narrative, used allegorically by a range of writers, such that one lover stands for the nation and the two rivals stand for different possible commitments that the nation might make, two alternative futures it might choose, given its colonial status. The third chapter considers Ngũgĩ’s development of these genres and their relation to the future of the (at the time, newly independent) Kenya. The fourth chapter moves outside the usual nations studied under the rubric of “postcolonialism,” considering Japan during the period of U.S. occupation after World War II. Though different from the standard cases of colonialism examined by literary critics, the occupation has key features of colonialism. Indeed, it is, I believe, particularly illuminating precisely because it is the type of case that is widely ignored. Specifically, the chapter focuses on Yasujiro Ozu’s film Early Summer. It returns to the romantic genre, but Ozu’s use of this genre differs from that of Ngũgĩ’s novel in three respects. First, it does not treat the love triangle but the main story of the lovers’ conflict with society (often, as 8  Introduction

here, a familial conflict). Second, it is not allegorical. Third, it is integrated, not with a sacrificial plot, but with a familial separation and reunion plot. Moreover, Ozu’s attention to children in connection with the latter genre foregrounds the emotion of mirth as elicited by humor. Though not commonly discussed in this context, humor is arguably as closely bound up with colonial conditions as pride and shame. This chapter, then, allows us to explore the relation between colonialism and humor as well as that between colonialism and attachment (due to the centrality of the latter emotion to the familial and romantic genres). Chapter 5 returns to a more canonical colony, South Africa, and finally brings us to the heroic genre, or rather one use of the latter. Specifically, the chapter considers Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. Coetzee is of European extraction, thus a “settler” author, as the term is commonly used. (This is, of course, misleading, as Coetzee himself is as native to the place as any Black African born there. To avoid this problem in certain cases, descendants of settlers are sometimes referred to as “creole,” but the term is ambiguous, referring sometimes to mixed-­race individuals, and generally restricted to part of the Americas.) Coetzee’s implicit use of the heroic structure involves nothing at all heroic; even the main character’s moral opposition to the empire and his consequent suffering are pathetic, and almost certainly inconsequential, rather than glorious in any way that is typically associated with the heroic genre. It is, as such, what I refer to as a “disfigured” or “fractured” use of the structure. This is not to say that the novel takes no stand on the main character’s behavior. It is morally admirable, even if it is quixotic. This chapter also introduces a cognitive and affective distinction between liberal and conservative colonialism. It is important to recognize that this division is often a mere matter of rationalization and rhetoric. Many “liberal” colonialists might not diverge in very consequential ways from their right-­w ing colleagues. Their differences may be little more than a matter of decorum. Peter Morey (2000, 62) puts the point well, discussing liberalism’s “complicity in . . . imperialism’s perpetuation,” noting that “the liberal construction of empire on a national level—­ incorporating the civilizing mission and the preparation of the child-­ like native for an accession to ‘man’s estate’ sometime in the conveniently distant future—­serves as a counterpoint to the baldness of financial greed and territorial acquisitiveness.” This is of course deeply important. Introduction  9

However, it is also important to recognize that not all liberal colonialists are opportunists in liberal clothing; not everyone is being deceitful and exploitative in expressing sympathy for those who are downtrodden in another culture. It is, for example, perfectly possible for a European to be sincerely distressed for the victims of widow-­burning in another society and to believe the practice should be outlawed. The point may seem self-­evident. However, I believe it is often passed over by writers on colonialism. For example, in her magisterial history of British imperialism, Legacy of Violence, Caroline Elkins (2005) repeatedly blames “liberal colonialism” for the violence and cruelty of the British Empire (violence and cruelty that she anatomizes expertly). It is almost certainly true that the liberal ideological rationalization of imperialism played a significant role in reducing or disabling opposition to British policies. But it also seems likely that genuinely liberal individuals—­those who were sincerely motivated to oppose the killing of widows or other practices (such as slavery)—­were also more open than many others to learning about and opposing the cruelties of empire.5 Coetzee examines some complications of this division between liberal and conservative or right-­wing colonialism in his novel. The penultimate chapter considers Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, another “settler” work. Atwood’s novel is in part a semi-­a llegorical treatment of colonialism and culture. Specifically, Atwood suggests the importance of drawing on Native American traditions in the face of the (self-­destructive) violence of European culture, including European ideas of nationhood. Atwood’s novel focuses on Canadian cultural identity, tacitly contrasting First Nations practices with those of the European settler population.6 However, she complicates this representation by treating a second level of cultural colonialism, that of the United States. Indeed, she in effect poses the alternatives for Canada as (toxic) Americanization versus the (life-­giving) acceptance of First Nations’ culture—­suggesting a so-­to-­speak double reversal of colonial values. Thus, her ranking of cultures is First Nations > Euro-­Canadian > U.S., rather than U.S. > Euro-­ Canadian > First Nations.7 In developing this allegory, Atwood takes up aspects of several genres. Perhaps the most important is part of the heroic structure, what I call the epilogue of suffering or, here, epilogue of atonement. This epilogue occurs after the main heroic story and involves the victorious heroes undergoing an atonement process so that they are able 10  Introduction

to experience the full benefits of their victory. However, Atwood presents a version of the genre that lacks its main motivational consequence. The “victorious” Europeans must undergo atonement not to rest comfortably in their own triumph but to change the outcome and establish the (cultural) dominance of the (militarily) defeated First Nations peoples. In repudiating the standard, defining goals of the heroic genre, Surfacing is (like Waiting for the Barbarians) a disfigured version, though in this case a disfigured version of the epilogue, rather than the main heroic story. The seventh chapter takes up the less pervasive genres—­revenge, criminal investigation, and seduction. In the first case (revenge), examining Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment,” it considers the subtle ethical issues that arise in connection with a wife’s terrible betrayal by her husband, when that betrayal is inseparable from the conditions created by colonial exploitation. The second section addresses the criminal investigation genre in Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Bamako, which stages a literal trial where the accused are international, neocolonial institutions. The film deals most obviously with broadly “cognitive” or information processing issues, thus the articulation of arguments regarding the nature and causes of deplorable conditions (such as high infant mortality) in Africa. The film’s recruitment of emotion for its political goals is less salient and, for that reason, calls for perhaps greater scrutiny. The seduction genre is put to effective use in Mitra’s play The Indigo Planting Mirror, a work that was highly popular and influential for anticolonial activism in Bengal in the years after the (failed) 1857 Indian revolution. In some ways, Mitra’s play depicts the precise opposite of one common motif in postcolonization literature—­interracial romance. An interracial romance is a story that suggests the possibility of broad, social reconciliation between different races by representing two individuals of different races, united by romantic love. In contrast, Mitra’s drama depicts interracial sexual relations as the apex of colonial domination and as powerful elicitors of disgust in colonized people, the opposite of anything that might lead to equality and bonding between the groups. The chapter concludes with some very brief comments on a possible eighth cross-­cultural genre, treating spiritual realization, and R. K. Narayan’s development of a noncolonialist, spiritual trajectory for his protagonist in The English Teacher.8 In each of these cases considered in chapters 2 through 7, the point is Introduction  11

not merely that the author has used a particular structure in a literary work. Rather, it is that the same structures operate outside such works, in our understanding of, response to, and action in real-­world political, economic, and cultural conditions. But how exactly do they operate there? Are we in effect coerced into a particular behavior by whatever genre dominates our cognition and affection? Or is the genre itself merely a signal that we were already thinking and feeling in a certain way? Or is it something between, or wholly outside, these alternatives? Though a full analysis of this topic requires separate treatment, the aim of the afterword is to sketch a plausible, preliminary account of the relation between genre prototypes and action, whether colonial or anticolonial.

12  Introduction

1

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative Theoretical Principles

Needless to say, colonizers and colonized people have all the usual emotions, and they have them in all the usual ways, issuing from the same sorts of provocation, frustration, enjoyment, and so on. At the same time, however, it is clear that a range of emotions, and the “eliciting conditions” that give rise to them, often take on a particular inflections in colonial conditions, sometimes with consequences that they would not have produced in other circumstances.1 In the first sections of this chapter, I sketch some of the key emotions evoked by colonialism, considering some of the characteristics they acquire in colonial conditions. Having done so, I turn to stories. This may initially appear to be a somewhat arbitrary juxtaposition. However, I have argued that stories are typically generated from the goals pursued by the protagonist or protagonists (see Hogan [2003; 2011a]), goals that are themselves defined by human emotion systems. For example, in one common story genre—­love stories—­ the hero and/or heroine seeks union with his/her beloved. Thus, he/she pursues a goal defined by the integration of the emotion-­motivation systems of sexual desire and attachment. The love story is, then, defined by just this (emotion-­based) pursuit and its ultimate success or failure. If this relation between stories and emotions holds true, the study of stories is, in part, a subfield of the study of emotions. Emotions Perhaps the first task one needs to undertake in treating emotion and colonialism is isolating some of the key parameters that apply to a broad range of emotions, with significant consequences for our understanding of colonialism. The most obvious parameter addresses whether a given instance of an emotion applies to an individual or to a group. For 13

example, I may feel pride because I won a contest or because the sports team that represents my hometown won a game. That many emotions may be individual or collective has obvious consequences for colonial situations, where identity categories play such a key role. More exactly, identity categories are concepts (e.g., white, Pakistani, male, gay, and so on) that we take to define something like an essence for persons; they label people in a way that, we (mistakenly) assume, gives us highly reliable information about their nature. As such, identity categories serve to define in-­groups and out-­groups with associated evaluative biases, stereotypes, and so on. Standard identity categories include sex, race, and nationality (see chapter 1 of Hogan [2009]). The racial and ethnic divisions of colonialism are cases of in-­and out-­group formation through the attribution of identity categories. In addition to the individual/group distinction, it is also sometimes important to distinguish between social esteem and intrinsic value. For instance, we need to differentiate pride based on a sense of the intrinsic worth of an act from pride based on the sense that an act is admired by others. The difference may appear particularly striking in colonial situations, where one is commonly judged by one’s “loyalty” to an in-­group rather than by the justice of one’s actions. For example, in A Passage to India, Fielding’s support for Aziz earns him the loathing of the Europeans, while his protection of Miss Quested leads to problems with the Indian community. And, of course, Miss Quested’s fair-­minded decision to admit she may have been mistaken when accusing Aziz is greeted with horror by such fellow Europeans as Mrs. Turton.2 A final parameter that is valuable to keep in mind is the difference between emotions that apply to persons “essentially” and emotions that apply only incidentally, in other words, emotions that apply to one’s self (e.g., “I am a terrible person”) and emotions that apply to one’s actions (e.g., “I did a terrible thing”). For example, Tangney and Tracy distinguish forms of pride that bear on acts from those that bear on the self; while I follow their division, I will use a different terminology, referring to these as “accomplishment pride” and “essence pride,” respectively. In my view, essence or whole-­self emotions are typically, perhaps invariably, harmful. This is true when we have them about ourselves, for example when we are proud of or disgusted with our self or essential being. It is also true when we have them about others, as when we despise a 14  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

racial or other group, tacitly finding them disgusting in their being and not merely for some specific acts some, many, or even all of them engaged in. Unsurprisingly, we tend to generalize pride for in-­groups and disgust for out-­groups, but not the reverse. An amusing case of the former is the experimentally established tendency of students to refer to a winning sports team from their school as “we” and a losing sports team from their school as “they” (see Ortony, Clore, and Collins [1988, 136]); in doing so, these students are prone to share the pride of their team’s success but not the shame of their team’s failure. In addition to these parameters, we need to recall that the actual sources or even targets of an emotion need not coincide with our judgments about its sources or targets. We tend to imagine that we simply have some sort of direct intuitive understanding of our emotions. But, in fact, we infer their causes in a way that is not too different from how we infer the causes of other people’s emotions. In Frijda’s (1986, 464) words, “One knows, generally, that one has an emotion; one does not always know why, and what exactly makes one have it; and if one does know, it is a construction, a hypothesis, like those one makes about the emotions of someone else.” Moreover, this means that we do not necessarily know even what emotion it is that we are feeling. For example, in one well-­k nown study, some young men crossed a suspension bridge before being stopped by an attractive, female interviewer. Others did not cross the bridge. The former group judged the woman more attractive than did the latter group. It seems that they misjudged their physiological arousal (due to the suspension bridge), attributing it to the attractiveness of the woman (see Gilbert and Wilson [2000, 183]), and thereby misconstrued the nature of any emotion they were feeling, as well as its cause and target. As the preceding distinctions suggest, probably the most important emotions in colonial situations are those that bear on one’s identity group, often in relation to other identity groups. Members of the colonizing society frequently feel pride regarding the superiority of their in-­group, even if they happen to feel demeaned as individuals. In contrast, colonized people commonly experience some form of distress over their group status in colonial conditions. In keeping with this, as Diabate (2019, 339) notes, “Colonization as a source of shame for the colonized is a recurring theme in African literature,” or as Bewes (2011, 119) puts it, more generally, “the colonial system itself is shaming.” 3

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  15

Considering shame in light of the preceding distinctions, we may identify individual versus collective shame, intrinsic versus status shame, and essence versus failure shame (obviously, “accomplishment” would be inappropriate here). While pride concerns features that do or should elicit admiration as a result of their (positive) value, shame concerns those that do or should elicit disgust as a result of their (negative) value. Again, I write “should,” as social esteem is often divorced from intrinsic value. Indeed, it is quite possible for intrinsic pride to occur in the midst of a general lack of social admiration, and even with actual status shame. (On shame, the self, and social esteem, see Tangney and Tracey [2012, 447–­48] and Sapolsky [2017, 502].) One widely discussed result of shame is cycles of withdrawal from society and aggressive rage against society (Scheff 2011; Walker and Knauer 2011); the latter at least appears to suggest that the shamed person does not feel that the diminished social esteem is merited. This is consistent with the finding that “in shame, the source of blame or negative valuation of the self was localized as ‘out there,’ originating in the ‘other’” (Parker and Thomas 2009, 216).4 Needless to say, colonialism is commonly rationalized by racist ideology. Part of that ideology is cognitive, involving beliefs and models, such as the model that assimilates colonized people to nonhuman animals. This is, of course, a model taken up by colonizers and applied to colonized people. However, it may also be adopted by colonized people who map it onto the colonial situation differently, viewing the colonizers or rival indigenous groups as beasts (see, for example, Gurnah [1994, 120 and 181]). In addition to this cognitive component of racist ideology, there is an emotional aspect. When considered in relation to oneself, that emotional component is commonly a matter of group pride or group shame and may also involve discrepancies between accomplishment pride and status shame. In colonial conditions, these discrepancies most obviously occur when social esteem is in conflict with intrinsic value. This happens when, say, an African’s achievements go unrecognized by social authorities due to racism, or when different groups in society genuinely disagree about what constitutes intrinsic value. Cases of the latter would include the shaming—­by settlers—­of one particular settler who (“disloyally”) protests colonial policies. It is important to distinguish shame from guilt. Like “pride” and “shame,” “guilt” is an ordinary language term and therefore has prob16  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

lems of vagueness and ambiguity. I will use the term to refer to a particular sort of regret, specifically regret that concerns actions one either undertook or contemplated undertaking—­or, in some cases, failed to prevent—­and that did or readily could have resulted in the infliction of unmerited pain on others.5 Note that, as usual, I am not saying that “guilt” “really means” this. I am merely saying that this sort of empathy-­ based emotion exists, is important for discussing colonialism, and I will use the term “guilt” to refer to it. As with shame, the most relevant type of guilt in colonial situations tends to be collective, which is to say, based on actions by the group, not necessarily the individual. Nadine Gordimer (1980, 162) illustrates the phenomenon well in Burger’s Daughter, in this case with regard to the colonizer’s feelings, when she has Rosa comment that “whites, not blacks, are ultimately responsible for everything blacks suffer and hate, even at the hands of their own people; a white must accept this if he concedes any responsibility at all. If he feels guilty, he is a liberal.” In my view, collective guilt is at best highly problematic. Fundamentally, I do not believe we are morally responsible for acts committed by other people with whom we share a social identity category. Note that liberals and leftists commonly agree with this rejection of collective guilt when it comes to oppressed or colonized peoples. What right-­thinking person would disagree with the character in Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1989, 149) who tries to oppose anti-­Muslim violence in his village, saying, “What have the Muslims here done to us for us to kill them in revenge for what Muslims in Pakistan are doing? Only people who have committed crimes should be punished”? Indeed, what right-­thinking person would insist that these local Muslims were morally obligated to devote themselves to stopping the crimes of the distant Pakistani Muslims, simply because they are all Muslim? This is the attitude promulgated by, for example, the Indian prime minister (and a sort of archvillain for the Left) Narendra Modi, who as “chief minister of Gujarat, publicly accused the entire Muslim community of collective responsibility” for the deaths of some Hindu activists in a train fire (Piketty 2020, 965n152). My point is simply that the same considerations apply to members of dominant groups. It is certainly morally good for Europeans to devote themselves to anti-­racist work. But this is not because they do or should feel guilty about racist acts committed by other Europeans. Here,

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  17

advocates of collective guilt will often respond that I benefit from this view, since it makes me guilty only of things I do (or refrain from doing), not things that other people do. That is true. I am not disinterested. Moreover, I agree that it is difficult to judge where one’s moral obligations begin and end, especially in cases involving broad, social hierarchization. But I believe the criticism of collective guilt is still correct and that it should be applied uniformly. Indeed, in practice, the affirmation of collective guilt most often has harmful consequences for oppressed people; its practical consequences for members of dominant groups are negligible. In the end, it often amounts to little more than allowing some individual to feel proud of being so self-­critical. Nonetheless, collective guilt does figure in colonial situations and thus in colonial literature. The colonizers’ collective guilt tends to focus on the colonial situation itself and to be associated with liberalism. Sometimes, colonized people feel guilt for, say, terrorism or anti-­European racism, in other words, aspects of the current, colonial situation. However, the collective guilt of colonized people is more likely to be found in works by indigenous writers that dwell—­sometimes in a complex and indirect way—­on past crimes committed by one subgroup of indigenous people against another. For example, a number of postcolonial, African works are, so to speak, haunted by the crime of slavery as practiced by Africans themselves. Novels by Balewa, Ekwensi, Tutuola, and Gurnah, among other works, suggest a pervasive insecurity and social disintegration due to the lawlessness and inhumanity of the slave trade and related practices. Balewa’s (1989) Shaihu Umar focuses in part on the benefits of Islam and in part on the devastation caused by the slave trade. In Ekwensi’s (1962) Burning Grass, the attention to slavery is less central; even so, it is clear that the main problems in the characters’ lives result from the slave trade. In Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-­Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the connections are still more concealed; however, the dangers faced by the protagonist repeatedly function to suggest the dangers posed by the slave trade. Gurnah’s (1994) Paradise treats indentured servitude directly, but it also makes frequent reference to slavery and arguably culminates thematically in the main character’s condemnation of “own[ing] people” in its various forms (241). On the other hand, what might initially appear to be collective guilt is often predominantly collective shame, perhaps with some culpability 18  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

for harm but not necessarily any remorse (thus guilt in the juridical, but not emotional sense). A particularly interesting and complex case may be found in Camus’s (1971) L’Étranger. The novel’s title is usually translated as The Stranger or The Outsider, a translation that reasonably emphasizes Meursault’s failure to conform to the social norms of his society. These prominently include emotional norms, which require him to have certain feelings (e.g., grief over his mother’s death and remorse over shooting a man), or at least expressive norms, which require him to act as if he has such feelings. But, it is crucial, I believe, that the title could also be translated as The Foreigner, thereby emphasizing not Meursault’s difference from the European settlers around him but rather his difference from the native people of Algeria, the Arabs. However we translate the title, we are faced with the question of why Meursault behaves the way he does, not only in killing the man but in answering the police questions and in his general responses to others, such as his utter insensitivity to the feelings of his girlfriend. For much of the novel, Meursault responds with little of what we would consider ordinary interpersonal emotions—­ whether empathic or antipathetic. Indeed, he often appears to have little sense of the interiority of others. This of course inhibits any feelings of guilt (which, as I am using the term, would necessarily rest on emotional empathy with the victims of one’s culpable actions). It would also appear to inhibit feelings of status shame (triggered by one’s sense that other people find one disgusting). Meursault’s apparent indifference to the emotions of others, his attitude—­more technically, his interpersonal stance—­of seemingly complete neutrality toward the emotions of others, is particularly significant; it would be less surprising if a settler such as Meursault were to kill the Arab as an act of rage triggered—­as rage is often triggered—­by status shame.6 Meursault’s status shame would, in this case, result not from something specific to his (nonexistent) relationship with this Arab. It and its associated rage would, rather, derive from his sense that the indigenous population feel contempt for him as a colonial settler, an étranger, a foreigner. This interpretive possibility is obviously highlighted by the alternative translation of the title. Indeed, this is arguably just how we should understand Meursault, with the qualification that he suffers from a pathological numbing of his feeling of the emotion, which is to say, an insensitivity to the subjective experience of shame and rage. This numb

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  19

ing does not prevent the actional outcomes of the emotion (here, the murder) from occurring; it does not prevent the aggression and violence that stem from shame-­induced rage. Rather, such numbing suggests an almost allegorical depiction of the (expressive) emotional norm of settler society, a society that is entirely self-­confident about its supposed rights and thus indifferent to the feelings of the native population but is at the same time ashamed before that population and, alternately, outraged by the insolence of the native population for provoking such shame. We do eventually learn that Meursault is not indifferent to the disgust and anger of others, that he is prone to status shame, though the case given in the novel is quite different. Specifically, in the course of the trial, he suddenly has “une envie stupide de pleurer parce que j’ai senti combien j’étais détesté par tous ces gens-­là” (70, “a stupid urge to cry because I felt how much I was detested by all these people”). This leads him to say that he then understood that he was culpable (70). But this does not indicate that he feels the shame of a settler before the dispossessed, indigenous population, a type of shame that might have provoked this particular murder. Rather, it is shame over the possibility of provoking disgust from fellow settlers. Indeed, Meursault seems to be alienated from both groups—­a stranger to the settlers (though it might have seemed that killing an Arab would have earned him the esteem of this group) and a foreigner to the indigenous population, therefore always an out-­group member, with all that this implies about the frequency of occasions for shame (or for futile attempts to establish in-­group belonging). Both shame and guilt focus on oneself and one’s own actions, even as they do so in relation to the emotional experience of other people—­ disgust (in shame) and pain (in guilt). Other key emotions may focus on other people’s selves and actions. The fundamental point about emotions bearing on others is that they vary with our interpersonal stance toward the latter. When introducing interpersonal stance, I usually speak as if it were a simple matter of being either empathic or antipathetic; for example, if Jones is grieving, Smith may feel empathic grief, or he may feel schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the suffering of, say, an out-­group member. However, interpersonal stance may be qualified in many ways. Most obviously, it may be merely indifferent. As it is often a function of social identity, interpersonal stance may be affected by the cognitive models used to understand the group. For example, if Doe imagines and in20  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

terprets Jones through a childhood model, he may respond to Jones in a way that suggests limitations on his empathy. He may assume that Jones is less capable of responding to a difficult situation than Doe (or another “adult”) would be, or that Jones has a limited understanding of his own emotion. Thus, Doe may be patronizing to Jones. Instead of feeling what we might call “compassion” (understood as an empathic relation to Jones as a fellow adult), he feels something of Jones’s pain but also feels himself superior to Jones. Thus, he feels what we might call “pity” (understood as empathic but somewhat demeaning). Hazari (1951, 148), an Indian Dalit or Untouchable, writes in his autobiography that “I confided in no one, since I dreaded either sympathy or condescension.” I take it that by “sympathy” he intends what I am calling “pity,” while “condescension” is the practical consequence of the other person’s associated sense of superiority. Here, again, we have an emotion, pity, that is common in liberal colonialism. Two other-­directed emotions that are also particularly consequential in colonial situations are disgust and desire. The most extreme forms of racist antipathy tend to involve an emotional response that interprets the other person—­and indeed everyone in his or her identity category—­as repulsive. This often goes along with a model of the out-­group as diseased and contagious. It may initially seem that desire is the opposite of disgust. But that is not the case. Both disgust and desire may involve objectifying the other person, adopting a stance that is not really interpersonal at all, as it does not attend to the target’s subjective experience; rather, both may address the other person solely as a body.7 In a colonialist and racist context, taboos on intergroup sexual relations are often accompanied by a fetishism regarding the out-­group. This appears to occur especially when stereotypical gender traits are associated with one of the groups, as when hypermasculinity (including outsize genitalia) are associated with Black men. Thus, Fanon (1967, 166) discusses how, in empirical studies, the word “negro” was associatively linked with male genitalia. We may see the complement of this in so-­called yellow fever, the sexual focus of some white, American men on Asian women (see Lee [2022, 18]). This may be explained in part by the stereotype that Asian women are passive, deferential, frail, and generally hyperfeminine. A fuller opposite of disgust is attachment, since attachment tends to inhibit disgust or at least increase disgust tolerance.8 For this reason, it

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  21

is important for racist, colonialist societies to limit the development of interracial attachment bonds, through friendship or, even more, through marital love. Of course, colonial ideology objects to miscegenation even when it is purely sexual, because it can lead to mixed-­race offspring. But even purely sexual relations can lead to the “problem” of attachment also. Mixed-­race offspring blur the opposition between the races, and their mere existence may lead to familial attachment bonds across races, bonds that are inconsistent with racist ideology. On the other hand, this is less of a “problem” than one might have anticipated (or hoped), as shown by the ways in which white slave-­owners often brutally mistreated their mixed-­race offspring. In any case, colonial, racist ideology tends to oppose interracial, romantic union even more vehemently. This is at least in part because interracial romantic union in marriage is an institutional acknowledgment of the attachment bond that stands as a powerful antithesis to racist disgust. Moreover, one important, differentiating feature of attachment is that it is insistently individual. Most emotions respond to classes of object—­fear to dangerous objects, for example, and sexual desire to, say, persons with particular features. But attachment is individual. A child’s attachment to his or her caregiver does not leave the child content with anyone who provides similar care. A parallel point applies to the parents, who would not settle for any child with a comparable degree of dependence on them. This focus on individuals is antithetical to the submersion of out-­group persons in the putative “essence” of their race (or ethnicity, or religion, or whatever identity category is central to the particular form of colonialism at issue). Attachment—­or attachment and caregiving if we wish to distinguish the two—­is closely related to another emotional response, that of trust. Trust, in turn, stands most clearly opposed to suspicion, with its strong element of fear, which is itself opposed to the sense of security that is commonly part of trust. As, for example, Hardin (2006, 17) has discussed, trust is generally taken to have two components—­competence and benevolence. Competence means that the trustee is in a position to judge or to act appropriately (e.g., a competent lifeguard can swim to save a drowning person; a competent physics professor knows physics). Benevolence means that the trustee wishes to act in the most helpful manner or to convey the truth about the topic at hand (e.g., a malevolent lifeguard might 22  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

let me drown; a malevolent physics professor might give the class false or misleading information). Hardin treats competence and benevolence as if we make a decision about these traits, and this gives rise to trust; that certainly happens with rational trust, our calculation about whether to believe someone’s statements, for example. But many of our trust relations are emotion-­based. In those cases, I may feel that so-­and-­so is trustworthy and, in consequence, I become inclined to attribute competence and benevolence to him or her. There are a couple of aspects of emotional trust that merit particular comment in this context. First, the attribution of benevolence is the opposite of a process or attitude that is quite common in colonial contexts—­ “hostility attribution bias” (Lukianoff and Haidt 2018, 158). This is the tendency to assume that out-­group members have a nonparallel interpersonal stance (thus, hostility) with regard to oneself. The point is nicely illustrated by a study where white test subjects watched white or Black confederates identically jostle a member of the other race; the test subjects judged Blacks jostling whites to be more aggressive than whites jostling Backs (Kunda 1999, 347); similarly, white test subjects are more likely “to perceive anger in Black faces than in White faces” (Banaji and Greenwald 2016, 49). Colonial conditions foster hostility attribution bias between colonizers and colonized for obvious reasons. The second aspect of emotional trust that is important here concerns the failure of trust. If the trustee turns out to be incompetent, that is disillusioning. But if he or she turns out not to be benevolent, that constitutes a betrayal. As such, it is another area in which one might feel rage. It too figures prominently in colonial situations. For example, this occurs between members of antagonistic groups, where one is inclined to attribute failures of trust to the trustee’s ill will—­even in cases where the problem arose due to circumstances and not due to any fault in competence or benevolence. Of course, it occurs also within identity groups, most obviously when the trustee appears inadequately loyal to “our” side. For example, Sternberg and Sternberg (2008, 107) note that “in the Rwandan genocide, empathetic Hutus, not Tutsis, were the first to be killed.” Having mentioned circumstances, I will refer to one further emotion, which bears on situations (though it may also bear on other individuals). I am referring to indignation. It is a commonplace of evolutionary ethics today that humans are prepared by evolution to judge social re

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  23

lations to be fair or unfair—­in the assignment of labor, the distribution of rewards, and so on (see, for example, chapter 5 of Boyer [2018]). Our judgments in these areas constitute an important part of our morality. I do not accept the standard, evolutionary account of ethics (for reasons discussed in Hogan [2022a, 80–­88]). However, it seems clear that we have a strong inclination to evaluate distributions of labor, goods, and so on as fair or not, and we have a strong inclination to respond emotionally (and punitively) to anything we perceive to be a violation of fairness. I will refer to this emotion as indignation. More precisely, I take indignation to be a species of anger in response to the violation of guiding principles for social cooperation, whether explicit or implicit. Thus, these rules encompass, but are not limited to, fairness. (In stressing the importance of enabling social cooperation, I am guided by the general approach of Tomasello [2016], though I do not agree with him in viewing cooperation as the fundamental source of an extensive array of human capacities and practices.) As should be clear, colonialism proliferates situations in which people will feel indignant over the violation of rules fundamental to cooperation, both those that are a matter of fairness stricto sensu and those that are not. Indeed, part of the inevitability of, so to speak, mutual indignation is that the main groups—­metropolitans, settlers, native peoples—­differ broadly in what they imagine to constitute fairness and cooperation. Before going on to stories, I should remark on one further aspect of emotion. So far, I have been considering discrete emotions. But in life, including colonial life, emotions come together in a sort of dynamic muddle. These emotions qualify and alter one another in their expressions and behavioral outcomes. This muddle even includes contradictory emotions, such as pride and shame, that most often alternate with one another. As Ito and Cacioppo (2001, 69) put it, “The affect system has evolved to produce bipolar endpoints because they provide both clear bivalent action tendencies and harmonious and stable subjective experiences.” But sometimes ambivalence manifests itself in more or less simultaneous attitudes or actions, particularly in colonial contexts, which readily foster contradictory feelings and responses. A possible example of this may be found in the opening book of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Though English colonialism developed a version of anti-­Irish racism (see Curtis [1968; 1971]), the primary 24  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

identity division that served colonial ideology in Ireland was religious—­ the division between the one true faith and Satanic deceit, which is to say, Protestant Christianity and Catholicism respectively. There were many features that served to differentiate the two, such as the existence of the papacy in the latter. One cluster of such features concerned the status of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Marianist devotion was often viewed as verging on or even constituting idolatry. Admittedly, this was not so true in Anglicanism, but it was certainly a familiar idea and might be suggested by the figure of Duessa, who is wrongly venerated by the misguided characters in Spenser’s poem. But Duessa is contrasted, not with a male figure akin to Jesus, or the prophets, or even the leaders of the Reformation, that is, Luther or Calvin (or Henry VIII). She is contrasted with a virginal woman—­Una Vera Fides or One True Faith—­who receives the worshipful love of her devotees, seemingly in the manner of Mary. Thus, while he appears critical of Catholic Marianism through Duessa, Spenser may be viewed as simultaneously celebrating Marianism in a slightly concealed form through Una. Moreover, he suggests an association between Una and Queen Elizabeth (cf. Fitzpatrick [1998, 14] and King [2001, 211]), most obviously in their virginity. Finally, he does not choose an English name for this character. Rather, he chose an Irish first name, “Una.” As Roland Smith (1935, 971) pointed out many years ago, there is “every reason for accepting” the view that “Spenser got the suggestion for the name of his heroine Una in Ireland.” Thus, Una may to some extent simultaneously suggest both Protestantism and Catholicism, both England and Ireland, indicating a degree of Spenserian ambivalence regarding both—­despite his apparently unequivocal celebration of the former and antipathy toward the latter. Emotions and Stories As indicated earlier, my account of story structure is of a piece with my account of emotion. Specifically, “story” is a prototype concept; thus, some discourses are better instances of a story than others. This is not the same as saying there are good stories and bad stories.9 Prototypical stories involve agents pursuing significant goals, commonly finding themselves baffled in that pursuit. In tragedy, the baffled goals become unreachable (e.g., the beloved whom the hero wishes to marry has died). In the cross-­culturally far more common case of comedy, the baffling of the

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  25

protagonist’s goal pursuit appears to make goal achievement impossible; however, overcoming the difficulties, the protagonist ultimately achieves his or her goal. This is all inseparable from emotion for three reasons: (1) The goals of the protagonist are defined by emotion systems; (2) prototypical story structure derives from the nature of emotion intensification (for example, a steeper gradient of change from one emotion to another strengthens the hedonic or aversive quality of the latter emotion. Thus, the “tragic middle” of an ultimately comic story increases the happiness of the ending); and (3) the engagement of readers is a function of their interpersonal stance regarding the characters in the story, most commonly their congruent emotional response to the heroes and heroines and their noncongruent emotional response to the villains. Given this account of stories, it becomes clear that one valuable way of defining genres is by the emotions guiding the protagonists’ goals. Indeed, a few such emotions and goals appear to guide the great majority of stories in much the same way across literary traditions. These give us the (highly prototypical) universal story genres. There appear to be three genres that are particularly prominent across cultures, a fourth that is somewhat prominent, and three more that are less widely distributed.10 These are heroic, sacrificial, and romantic (prominent), family separation and reunion (intermediate), and seduction, revenge, and criminal investigation (less prominent).11 These genres too have prototypical forms. The prototypical heroic story has two parts, one treating the external relations of the (in-­group) society, the other treating internal relations. Specifically, one part (prototypically) involves an enemy invading and conquering the home society, then (in the comic version) being driven out by the revived forces of the in-­group, who typically establish an enduring, idealized state. The second story sequence depicts the overthrow of the legitimate governing hierarchy (commonly the king or other leader or a prominent military hero), the usurpation of the leadership position, the rallying of the legitimate leadership, and (in the comic version) the restoration of the legitimate leader. The emotions that guide this structure are status shame and failure shame (both collective and individual), indignation, rage, and (the pursuit of) accomplishment pride and essence pride.12 Specifically, the invasion and the usurpation inspire in the hero both status and failure shame (collective in the case of the invasion, individual in the case of the 26  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

usurpation) as well as indignation over rule violation. The status shame and the indignation in turn inspire anger. The hero’s response is of course designed to restore collective and individual status through military victory. When successful, this yields achievement pride, but it also serves, ideally, to establish the in-­group as intrinsically superior to the relevant out-­groups (yielding essence pride). This is the basic or default narrative structure through which colonized people imagine the colonial situation (primarily because it fits the colonial situation so well at a literal, historical level). They tend to take up alternatives to this structure only when circumstances require it. For example, they may shift to a sacrificial story model in circumstances where it seems that their (colonized) society cannot possibly achieve a heroic victory by direct, military means. Cases of this default heroic genre would include, for example, the enormously successful film Avatar. The film concerns an American marine sent to a distant planet rich in a valuable mineral. Earth has taken colonial control over this planet in order to extract the mineral. The film takes place in a future where humans can inhabit the bodies of “avatars” (as in video games), and the marine does this, assuming the role of an undercover operative on the planet. He learns the ways of the people and comes to understand the destructive effects of the colonial project he is serving. The native people are clearly a different species. However, they also speak and can communicate with humans. In a straightforward instance of the interracial romance motif, the marine falls in love with one of the native women, then joins the indigenous people in their struggle against the (human) colonialists. Though the “Na’vi” on the planet are a creation of the filmmakers, they are clearly modeled on Native Americans. There is a common motif in heroic works where one member of the enemy forces sees the justice in the in-­group’s cause and joins with the in-­ group against his or her own social identity group. (Of course, from the perspective of the enemy, this character is a traitor.) A number of (more or less) anticolonial works take up this motif, generalized beyond the heroic plot, and present “one good European,” who sides with the native population. Instances may be found in works by (liberal) metropolitan writers, such as Fielding in Forster’s A Passage to India, and by settler authors, such as the magistrate in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. As to works by colonized people, we find, for example, Mr. Freemantle in Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column, Dr. Kennington in Kamala

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  27

Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve, Eugene in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, and William Gordon in Ketan Mehta’s (2005) film Mangal Pandey: The Rising, among others. Avatar takes up this figure in the character of Jake. In connection with this, the film is sometimes criticized for putatively showing native peoples saved by a white man.13 There is an element of this, probably designed to appeal to white audience members, who are presumably the ones most in need of anti-­racist tutelage. (The point of this would be to encourage white people to imagine themselves as heroically helping the colonized people, rather than heroically attacking them.) But the criticism seems to me mostly misguided. Early on, Jake, the main American character, is separated from his group and left behind on the planet. The Na’vi heroine saves his life, thereby establishing her heroic superiority right at the start. She repeatedly refers to him as a “baby,” taking up but reversing a childhood model (applying it to colonizers, rather than to the colonized). Another Na’vi refers to him as a “demon,” taking up the demon model so often invoked by colonizers. In both cases, the reversed modeling makes sense in the context of the film. Jake is like a child who must learn from his Na’vi elders. Moreover, his association with the invading marines is in many ways aptly characterized as Satanic. It is only when Jake becomes assimilated into Na’vi culture that he is able to secure the status of a nondemonic adult. His subsequent role in defeating the marines simply suggests that a combination of native wisdom and inside information about the marines’ weaponry is particularly effective.14 Before going on to the sacrificial prototype, I should remark on a common addendum to the heroic plot. This “epilogue of suffering” represents the sorrow that necessarily follows war, even for the victorious side. It frequently includes some sort of penance and/or purification of the story’s heroes, often in the form of trials and even out-­and-­out punishment. Its driving emotions are grief (based on attachment) and, more significantly, guilt. When developed as a separate work—­as, arguably, in Euripides’s Trojan Women—­the “epilogue” often serves an antiwar or antiheroic function. Its relevance to colonial conditions should be clear also. An interesting case of the epilogue—­one that gives the antiheroic elements of the epilogue particular prominence even in a nationalist and anticolonial work—­may be found in Fagunwa’s 1939 Yoruba-­language novel, The Forest of a Thousand Daemons. Indeed, much of the novel is in 28  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

effect an elaboration of the epilogue of suffering. About halfway through the book, the hero—­Akara-­ogun—­undertakes an expedition in which he and a mighty band of “comrades” (Fagunwa 1982, 87) will achieve “honor” by “serving [their] country” (77). The problem is that “our country . . . lacks sufficient renown among nations” (giving rise to status shame); they must go “to battle dangers for the prestige [or status] of our country”; otherwise, they will (rightly) feel “shame” (78). In case the relation to colonialism is not yet clear, the narrator soon explains that “if our nation is backward so that its citizens have not experienced civilization, yet our nation is still our nation and only its own people will administer it” (87; recall that colonialists commonly rationalized their undemocratic control of African and other colonies by claiming that such control was required by their “mission” of “civilizing” the uncivilized). In connection with this, Akara-­ogun recruits a group of warriors. His primary focus is on Kako, who—­in a violation of moral principle through militaristic/heroic violence—­brutally murders his fiancée, a “guiltless woman” (89), when she is, in Kako’s words, “seeking to obstruct my path of duty” (83). This triggers a series of events that in effect constitute an epilogue. The murder soon produces a crisis for the group, which is punished for Kako’s crime and must perform a sacrifice; in other words, a brief, sacrificial story is embedded here (89–­90; see below on the features of sacrificial narrative). This is followed by an allegorical section in which the troupe encounters an enemy named Fear. To defeat Fear, one of them sings that their “motive” was “to perform some good for our country, a purpose in which God took great delight.” On hearing this, Fear “fled” (92). I take it that the allegory here is evident—­fear departs when soldiers recall that they are fighting for the good of their (colonized) nation. After they overcome Fear, the soldiers enter the city of birds, where they face three trials because they have in the past needlessly killed birds, another violation requiring reparation. Two of the three trials are successfully undertaken by Kako, appropriately in that he is the most guilty of unnecessary killing. After the city of birds, they pass through other ordeals as well. In a surprising development, after they have succeeded in their various trials, they arrive at their destination—­Mount Langbodo. This is not the occasion for a great battle, as one might have expected. Rather, they find a sort of utopia in which “the voices were many but they sang as one;

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  29

there was such unity” (104)—­just what nationalists wish to create in their own (new) nations, such as the author’s Nigeria. At Mount Langbodo, they learn the sort of wisdom that is commonly represented in the epilogue of suffering. In keeping with nationalist anticolonialism, the teaching particularly emphasizes what has been given to “the black nations” by “their Creator” (112), praising the “sons of the black races . . . Who adopt the entire land of the Yoruba as the parent who gave them birth” (114) and those “who submit themselves to the country of Nigeria which is the great ancestor who gave them life” (115). This stress on the land derives from the nature of national identity categories. Specifically, these identity categories (e.g., “Indian,” “Belgian,” “Nigerian,” and so on) attribute to the group a special, usually ancestral relation to the national place—­thus the land, with its flora and fauna, geographical features, and so on. It also tends to claim either a literal or metaphorical familial (or ethnic) connection among the people of the nation. (Metaphorical kinship may be seen in such phrases as “the founding fathers.”) Perhaps most importantly, all this is made functional by a sort of familial emotion—­attachment.15 In connection with this last point, the teacher in Fagunwa’s utopia maintains that “it is love which the world respects, not power” (127). He thereby stresses the importance of attachment-­bonding among the colonized, which leads to mutual empathy, with all the solidarity and cooperation that this entails. Indeed, that unity of feeling is, in this view, what is crucial, not force of arms (either against external enemies or against internal rebels). This sequence manifests the epilogue’s usual criticism of military violence, even while implicitly asserting its necessity, for the alternative is “shame” (127). In sum, the “King of Mount Langbodo” advises “the King of the Nation” that, in the ideal polity, “the people of your land love one another” (150). This is not to say the internal hierarchy is abandoned, for they will also “not be disobedient” (151). In any event, one further result of their atonement for the (heroic) crimes of violence is that, in keeping with the epilogue generally, not all the heroes make it back to the nation. Indeed, only three of the seven return (152)—­ the narrator or storyteller (Akara-­Ogun), the singer (85), and the “wise” Imodoye, whose name suggests “knowledge fuse[d] with understanding” (85). The novel ends with an exhortation once more linking its concerns with anticolonialism—­“raise three cheers . . . your nation will wax

30  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

in wisdom and in strength, and we black people will never again be left behind in the world” (153).16 Turning to the sacrificial genre, we find that the in-­group society is suffering widespread devastation. This is often a matter of famine or epidemic disease, either literally or metaphorically/allegorically. In relation to colonialism, the devastation is likely to be—­explicitly or implicitly—­ colonial domination and is the result of some sin committed by the society generally or by some representative of the society (e.g., a monarch), often due to the manipulations of some out-­group member. The only way in which the devastation may be ended is through sacrifice. There are two common versions of this sacrifice. In one case, called “penitential,” one or more members of the in-­group—­often entirely innocent individuals—­sacrifice their lives for the well-­being of the group. In another version, called “purgative,” the sacrifice is focused on the in-­ group members who have sinned and on any out-­group members who have been instrumental in this sin. These two versions both treat collective guilt in the sense of responsibility for harm. In addition, the penitential version involves collective remorse and reparation (in a more elaborate and extreme form than the epilogue of suffering, which typically addresses suffering that has already been ended heroically, rather than still ongoing devastation). The purgative version involves collective disgust at the violations by in-­group members and the infiltrations (into the home society) by seductive out-­group members (such as Satan in the Judeo-­Christian story of the Fall of humankind). The potential bearing of each on colonial relations—­and the devastation of the home society due to colonialism—­are presumably clear. Though often combined in practice, the two versions of the sacrificial structure have radically different consequences when they appear separately—­or, rather, when we consider them separately. We see this in, for example, the case of Gandhi’s nonviolence. In his anticolonial activism, Gandhi was a paradigmatic case of penitential sacrificial emplotment, repeatedly stressing the importance of sacrificing oneself and not harming others (for discussion, see chapter 6 of Hogan [2009]). This contrasts strikingly with the violence of, for example, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte) in their struggle against the colonialism of Sri Lanka. As Weiss (2012, 61) notes, “the ideology and practice of revolu-



Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  31

tionary sacrifice” were central to ltte analysis and policy. The violence of ltte policy derived from—­or was at least rationalized through—­the purgative version of sacrifice. The ltte use of suicide bombers for assassination and related killings combines the two versions. As Weiss writes, “Hitherto unthinkable violence was legitimized and elevated into the poetry of national liberation by acts of self-­sacrifice” (67). Again, the sacrificial emplotment of a colonial condition and anticolonial action arises in conditions where the default heroic emplotment appears impossible. But there are different ways in which this shift can be understood and represented. Ken Saro-­Wiwa’s (1998) Sozaboy presents what I will call a “critical” version of the transition between heroic and sacrificial emplotment. By a critical version, I mean a work through which the usual social purposes of the story structure are challenged. A standard, Igbo construal of the Nigerian Civil War—­a construal with which I am not unsympathetic17—­is that it was a case of what I call derivative colonialism. I say this because (1) the Nigerian government sought to deny the political autonomy of the Biafrans on the grounds that Biafra is part of Nigeria (thus the colonialism part) and (2) the Nigerian claim to political authority over Biafra was based on prior British colonial political organization (thus the derivative part). (This view is approximately that of Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun [2006], though the novel is of course more complex than a single phrase can suggest.) Roughly the first half of Saro-­Wiwa’s novel recounts the celebration of nationhood that characterizes national enthusiasm generally and here clearly suggests that of Biafra. The main character, Sozaboy (a dialectal nickname, for “soldier boy”), enthusiastically joins the new (Biafran) army to fight “the enemy,” though he has little understanding of what is at issue and cannot answer the question, “Why are we fighting?” His side shows itself to be brutal in imprisoning its own soldiers and subjecting them to inhumane treatment. Sozaboy is conscripted into the military of the “enemy” after deserting his own (Biafran) army. This (Nigerian) military behaves similarly to its (Biafran) counterpart—­using torture, denial of rights to prisoners, and so on. Sozaboy eventually escapes from both armies and tries to return to his home, only to find the entire village abandoned. This is where he realizes that the military conflict is necessarily unwinnable; war itself produces such devastation that it makes no sense to speak of victory. This leads to the recognition that the de32  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

struction of the home society is so vast that no heroic emplotment makes sense. As a friend of his explains, “Dukana [Sozaboy’s village] done die. The war have buried our town” (Saro-­Wiwa 1998, 135). Sozaboy mocks the utopian visions of the independent society (Biafra) in which food and medicine will be free, corruption will be unknown, and life will generally be perfect (154–­55), the common idealization of the revived nation in the heroic narrative. At this point, Saro-­Wiwa shifts to the sacrificial story, just as we would expect. Thus, his narrator says that “I cannot know why Dukana people will suffer like say God have sent them punishment because of some bad thing that they have done before this time” (146). Indeed, on the same page, in keeping with the link between sacrificial narratives and famine, he alludes to the Biafran famine, drawing our attention to “all those children with small big belly like pot” (146). Subsequently, Saro-­Wiwa has the local pastor refer to “Dukana people hav[ing] done [something] which is annoying God,” and who therefore are experiencing “hell sef” (hell itself). He then prays that God will “forgive” the people, due to the sacrifice offered by the town in the form of “all those people why have already dead in this war” and have thereby “used their blood to suffer for all those who are still alive” (152). Of course, if Sozaboy’s wish were fulfilled, the story would be an ordinary sacrificial narrative. However, the critical nature of this sacrificial story becomes clear at the end. There, Sozaboy learns that the people of Dukana have come to view him—­or, rather, his spirit (for they believe he is dead)—­as the source of the community’s devastation. They propose to “kill [Sozaboy’s] ghost” (180), thereby purging society of the cause of devastation. As is common in sacrificial stories, they will combine this purgative sacrifice with a penitential sacrifice, also choosing innocents—­“seven young young girls”—­as a “sacrifice” (180). Sozaboy prudently leaves, rejecting war and its false “prouding” (181), which is to say the association of war with the emotion of pride, as well as the heroic and sacrificial emplotments of anticolonial nationalism, which tragically fail to achieve the goals they profess. The third prominent genre is romantic. This has the expected structure where two people fall in love, are opposed by society and separated (often through exile or imprisonment, frequently with imagery of death) before being reunited. The emotion at issue here is romantic love, which is to

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  33

say, an integration of attachment bonding and sexual desire (see chapter 3 of Hogan [2011b] and works cited therein). This structure is commonly used to explore the possibility of reconciling different groups, which are, as Doris Sommer (1990) has pointed out, often subnational. For example, if Nigerians are not unified in opposition to British colonialists, a romantic story might treat the union of an Igbo and a Yoruba or Hausa lover to examine and possibly foster such unified opposition. Perhaps surprisingly, the more common use seems to treat the colonizer-­colonized relation, exploring and assessing romantic love between, for example, a European and an African. (As this is such a frequent and prominent story structure, and as it appears with many variations, I will give a larger number and range of examples than I have generally given in this chapter.) One of many possible cases is The Notebook, a 2019 Hindi-­language film by Nitin Kakkar. A Kashmiri Hindu teacher in Wular flees with his family from the (Muslim, nationalist) insurgency in Indian Kashmir. A Muslim friend risks his own life to protect the Hindu’s home. The teacher’s son, Kabir (named for a famous, anticommunalist poet), is filled with rage over the exile. He joins the Indian army but is disillusioned when he sees a young Muslim boy killed by a landmine. He leaves the army and decides to reopen his father’s old school. In the school building, he finds the notebook of the previous year’s teacher, Firdaus (a Muslim). As recorded in her notebook, she had a conflict with what appears to be a fundamentalist and/or militant family, who withdrew their son, her prize pupil, from the school. In general, the film portrays Firdaus as smart and as a fine teacher, though she exhibits horrendously bad judgment in agreeing to marry a philandering sexist; fortunately, the marriage never takes place. Unlike Firdaus, Kabir is not terribly bright, though he is well-­meaning, and he manages to appeal to the prize pupil’s mother to get him to return to school. He also has the good sense to fall in love with Firdaus, who turns out to be the daughter of the friend who protected the home of Kabir’s family. The film clearly suggests that the union of the lovers exemplifies the possibility of union between the religious communities that define the major fault lines in Kashmiri and Indian society. Another anticolonial example of the romantic genre from South Asia may be found in Shoaib Mansoor’s 2007 film Khuda ke liye (In the Name of God), where one Muslim, Pakistani character’s European American wife organizes protests against his detention without trial and stands in 34  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

striking contrast with the American officials who torture him, ultimately inflicting severe brain damage. In the same film, an Anglo Pakistani woman is kidnapped and forcibly married when visiting Pakistan. It is only through the efforts of her English boyfriend that she is eventually freed. On the other hand, though these relationships are clearly positive, beneficial, and noncolonialist, neither appears to last. The brain-­ damaged man is deported to Pakistan and the kidnapped woman decides to remain in Pakistan (rather than joining her boyfriend in England), evidently to work for the education of women. Perhaps the suggestion is that such large-­scale political problems as the deferred effects of British colonialism and the current consequences of U.S. imperialism cannot be resolved at the level of individual relationships, which is clearly true. Within a few weeks of writing the preceding two paragraphs, I happened to see two Indian films that take up this structure in the context of colonialism (which suggests the frequency of its occurrence). One is the 2019 Hindi film Kalank, directed by Abhishek Varman, which treats the Hindu-­Muslim divide leading up to the partition and independence of India and Pakistan. A romance between a married Hindu woman and a Muslim man leads the latter to repudiate communalist violence and to ultimately save the Hindu woman and her husband during a riot. (The story is actually more nuanced than may seem to be the case in that it draws on and subtly criticizes the Rāma mythology that is commonly invoked by anti-­Muslim, Hindu nationalists.) The second film is rrr, directed by S. S. Rajamouli (2022), which portrays almost all the British administrators and settlers as cartoonishly evil. There is, however, one exception—­t he love interest of one of the two heroes of the film. She is the single British person who is a positive force for good in the film, though her very good intentions have little effect, due to the limited means available to her. These works clearly treat the intergroup romance as politically progressive. That is not invariable. Sometimes, intergroup liaisons are criticized. This is most often the case when the relations are purely sexual, as we see in some American slave narratives. A more complex, ambivalent case may be found in Chimamanda Adichie’s 2006 novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, which may be contrasted in this respect with Biyi Bandele’s 2013 film, based on Adichie’s novel. The story in both cases concerns the secession of Biafra from Nigeria and its

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  35

reincorporation into Nigeria. Thus, it has a strong, heroic (and—­in taking a largely Biafran perspective—­tragic) component. But in recounting this national story, it also considers two sisters and the men with whom they are involved. The relevant couple for our purposes is Kainene and her English lover, Richard. In the novel, despite his living in Biafra, identifying as Biafran, and suffering some deprivation due to his support of the Biafran cause, Adichie (2016, 530) has Richard say that the story of this war is not his to tell, seemingly suggesting that he does not truly identify with Biafra, possibly even that no European could be a genuinely patriotic citizen of an African nation.18 Worse still, toward the end of the novel, Richard becomes jealous of a friend of Kainene’s, thinking with disgust about the possibility that Kainene was touched by his “filthy black hand” (537). The association of disgust with African skin color suggests an underlying racism in Richard’s relation to Biafra and to Kainene. This may indicate that, in Adichie’s view, interracial romantic relations cannot be anti-­racist, or even nonracist, since there is underlying racism even in those cases where it seems, outwardly, to be absent. The film, in contrast, does not present Richard as alien to Biafra or as feeling suppressed, racist disgust at Africans. Rather, it stresses his commitment to finding Kainene when she disappears. This search is central to the family separation prototype (as we will see). As such, it highlights Richard and Kainene’s attachment bonding. In contrast with the novel, then, the film would appear to suggest not only the possibility but the deep value of interracial romantic love, at least so long as that romantic love is based on strong attachment bonds. In any case, criticism of or even ambivalence about interracial romance is not the norm, quite the contrary—­and with good reason. In general, intergroup bonds are progressive. For example, as Cashin (2017, 134) points out, “A study of whites married to blacks and other people of color . . . documented increased understanding of racism.” This is more often the implication of literary works treating this topic. It is worth briefly considering a few other examples, as the interracial—­ or, more broadly, intergroup—­romance is such a prominent subgenre of the romantic narrative, particularly in the context of colonialism. Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s (2006) story “Modupe” is a sort of cautionary tale addressing the way distrust between people of different races may be irrational and destructive,19 even when history seems to teach one group 36  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

(Africans) that members of the other group (Europeans) are untrustworthy. The main character is an African woman who could not bring herself to have faith in the romantic bond she seemed to share with a European man. Now, many years later, regretting her decision to marry someone else, she sets out to find the earlier lover. This is, in effect, a romantic narrative in which one of the lovers accepted the social judgment that social identity differences meant that she and her beloved had to separate. Or, rather, she accepted this initially but then realized her mistake and determined to be reunited with her love. What intervened, then, was a period of doubt, as sometimes occurs in romantic stories. The main difference here is that, instead of lasting days or weeks, this doubt lasted for decades—­despite the fact that (the story suggests), trusting members of the racial in-­group over those of the racial out-­group may be entirely mistaken, even when the out-­group has included the colonial government. Tomi Adeaga—­a Nigerian, as is Manyika—­has treated interracial romance in a more prototypical way. Her first-­person narrative “Marriage and Other Impediments” (2006) concerns an African woman and a German man who fall in love,20 meet with staunch resistance from their families, but eventually reconcile the families, marry, and live happily ever after. Curiously, Adeaga begins the story by emphasizing the vast differences that divide the families and (potentially) the lovers—­“not only . . . differences in language but also in cultures and mentalities” (22). I say “curiously” because the entire story is built on establishing close parallels between the two groups. The parallels begin with the parallel love of the (similarly named) couple, Till and Tola, and their work to reconcile each family to the marriage. More significantly, both families are immediately distressed by the prospect of communal disgust and the associated feelings of shame that such communal disgust will provoke (see 24 and 27; the only difference here is that the Africans worry about the reactions of family members, while the Germans stress neighbors). Both families exhibit racial prejudice (e.g., in their use of derogatory racial terms for the prospective daughter-­in-­law/son-­in-­law) and stereotyping. They seek to rationalize these by insisting on the prudential nature of their opposition to the marriage. Thus, the German family emphasizes the danger that Tola will leave Till after securing residence in Germany (24), while the Nigerian family presses the worry that Till will fail to stand by Tola

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  37

when his parents continue to reject her (30). The parallels extend even to seemingly idiosyncratic details. For example, while Till’s family at least sometimes speaks (nonstandard) Platt Deutsch, Tola’s family sometimes takes up pidgin English. Fortunately for the lovers, the parallels are not complete. Adeaga presents Tola’s father and uncle as having genuine concern for Tola and as rationally cautioning her but also allowing her autonomy. The affection, empathy, and reasonableness of these Africans is thematically important as the story serves to highlight, in detail, the shared humanity of Africans and Europeans as well as the falsity of stereotypes about European rationality and African irrationality (and the stereotype of Black men as bad fathers). Moreover, the humane, thoughtful, indeed wise attitude of these African characters makes it possible to transform Till’s family. There are two reasons for this transformation. One is specifically counter-­ stereotypical. Till’s family worried that Till would be besieged by importunate in-­laws (24–­25). But then Tola’s family paid for all their expenses in Africa (33). The second is general. Research indicates that cooperative, practical activity with out-­group members diminishes antipathy toward that out-­group (see Duckitt [1992, 98, 252, and 256]; Varshney 2001; 2002). The strategy of having Till’s family come to Nigeria to participate in the wedding with Tola’s family does just that; indeed, it even eliminates their shame as they “could not stop . . . showing pictures of the wedding and [Tola’s] family to their family members and friends” (Adeaga 2006, 33). This is what enables the story’s fairytale ending, where Tola can “now live with my beloved husband Till, and our two lovely kids in Bonn” (33). Leila Aboulela, of Egypt, shifts the main identity division between the lovers from race to religion. Her story “Something Old, Something New” (2006) concerns a Sudanese Muslim woman and an English man who has converted to Islam.21 Aboulela treats the intolerance and petty greed of the Sudanese family critically but also gently, in that they remain human and basically sympathetic throughout. Her treatment of the English man’s disorientation, innocence, and good will, however, are deep and humane. The basic story is the usual one—­the two fall in love; they encounter obstacles; they overcome the obstacles and are united. But, in this case, the obstacles are posed only by the Sudanese family, not the English one. Not unlike Manyika, Aboulela here seems concerned primarily with disabusing her African readers of their mis38  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

taken distrust of Europeans and fostering social self-­criticism, though without stigmatizing Islam. Indeed, the fiancé is more clearly devoted to Islamic ethics than any of the Sudanese characters. Late in the story, he is tested for his ability to recite the Fātiḥa. Readers familiar with the prayer are likely to feel that, whatever his relative fluency in recitation, he is almost certainly more sincere than any of the other characters in his petition that God lead him on the straight path and keep him from going astray. Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, the story suggests that the attachment bond of these two is so profound that it does genuinely dissolve any awareness of race they might have had and that might have formed the basis for a social identity division between them. Of course, the romantic plot tends to oppose identity categories, for these commonly block the romantic union. In this way, the anti-­racist and anticommunalist themes of Adeaga’s and Aboulela’s stories are not unexpected. A somewhat different use of the romantic prototype—­more in keeping with Sommer’s observations—­is found in Mthuli Shezi’s (1981) anti-­apartheid, Black Consciousness play, Shanti. The play treats the relationship between Shanti and Thabo who, in the usual manner, are in love but find their marriage blocked by their parents. This is an interracial romance, but neither partner is the white colonizer. Rather, both are part of the fragmented group of colonized people. They cannot marry because Thabo’s parents object to Shanti’s race, while Shanti’s parents object to Thabo’s religion. This points toward two of the main types of identity categories that serve to divide an oppressed group, thereby preventing their unified action against oppressors. Shanti is explicit about the problem, stating that Africans, Asians, and mixed-­race people in South Africa are “all . . . black groups” that “refus[e] to define the problem [with South Africa] and tackle it together” (69). Their mixed-­race friend, Koos, similarly asks, “Are we not all Black . . . Black like my mother. / Black like the sufferers. / Black like the continent?” (72). Thabo soon realizes the preceding points when he is arrested and convicted of a crime on the basis of “evidence” that is not merely flimsy but ludicrous. This shifts the social interference with the lovers from the parents to apartheid society. Indeed, the audience can now see the interference of the parents as a product of the larger, functional division of the society, a division that is functional in the sense of supporting white domination. As the prisoners phrase the theme, “Stand united, fight united”

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  39

(78). This opposes identity categories insofar as they separate the lovers, but it draws on those identity categories that enable resistance—­thus, a unified, solidaristic Black identification, as opposed to the identity of whites, who are “thugs, knaves, criminals” (78). And yet the romantic story does not seem to accept any identity divisions too readily. Thabo escapes from prison and finds his way to a group of Black revolutionaries. The revolutionaries do not “trust” (79) Thabo, suggesting perhaps a lack of attachment feeling (which would tend to foster trust insofar as one’s attachment style is secure).22 In any case, this shows a clear lack of Black solidarity. This distrust leads one of the revolutionaries to kill the innocent Thabo (while making it appear to be an accident [81]). One might argue that this shows the importance of a strong commitment to a “Black” (nonwhite) identity. But it may equally be taken to suggest that Black identity is no more intrinsically real than any other sort of identity. The latter point is more consistent with the revolutionaries’ ultimate goal, “to eliminate all prejudice, especially the evil called ‘racism’” (82). In addition, the problems with identity categories are exacerbated by violence, which the author criticizes at least through the death of Thabo—­who survived apartheid only to be killed by Black revolutionaries—­and perhaps also, indirectly, through the fact that Thabo’s beloved is named “Shanti,” meaning peace. Ama Ata Aidoo’s (2015) novel, Changes: A Love Story is also (as the title indicates) a love story, and indeed one that takes up the intergroup theme. In this case also the groups at issue are not colonizer and colonized but rather indigenous groups that pose a possible threat of subnational division. Specifically, the groups are Christian and Muslim Ghanaians. Indeed, Aidoo in effect alerts the reader to this thematic concern (that is, the subnational threat posed by social identity groups) when she writes of one character, Ali (who later becomes the main character’s Muslim lover, then husband), that “one area of communication that always made him feel sad were these walls which the different colonial experiences seemed to have erected between the different groups of Africans” (9). Speaking of this character later on, she elaborates on the idea, explaining that “on the campus at Atebubu, as on the others, the students still maintained a tendency to relate along ethnic lines. Ali was of course a loner in that respect. He was not a southerner, and he did not feel like a northerner, or an upper either, what with his French accent and all” (63). Aidoo fol40  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

lows out a version of the romantic narrative, with the two falling in love, suffering a period of doubt, facing familial obstacles, then being united. But Aidoo ultimately criticizes the romantic susceptibility of her protagonist, developing a feminist criticism of Ghanaian culture and of the gender politics of religious traditions there. However, this still bears on subnational divisions as it might be taken to suggest that religious or other social identity categories often serve to conceal the more pervasive divisions of sex and gender. In addition to the features of romantic stories that we have been considering, there is also a common complication of the basic romantic story in the love triangle, which takes up emotional trust along with jealousy. This structure turns up frequently in literature treating colonialism. However, it does not typically appear to focus on the emotions of the triangle. Rather, it is (as already mentioned) a frequent model for organizing an allegory about the policy choices facing a colonized people, like the choice between suitors facing a story’s heroine. Consistent with this, Heath (2010, 100) identifies “allegories where the characters represent examples of political classes or competing ideologies.” Though he is speaking only about Islamic literature, his claim applies far more widely. There are numerous examples of such an allegory. For instance, it is clear in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World (see chapter 2 of Hogan [2004]), Derek Walcott’s Omeros (chapter 5 of Hogan [2004]), and Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy (see Hogan [1999a]).23 Consider the 1955 Hindi-­language film Shree 420, directed by Raj Kapoor and written by K. A. Abbas and V. P. Sathe. In that film, Raj (meaning Rule or Government) has to choose either the Westernized and materialistic Maya (Illusion) or the devoted school teacher, Vidya (Knowledge), with her connections to indigenous traditions (see chapter 3 of Hogan [2008]). A less obvious case may be found in a metropolitan novel treating Vietnam, Graham Greene’s (2004) The Quiet American. It includes a sort of love triangle in which the young, Vietnamese woman, named Phuong, must choose between the narrator, named Fowler, and the quiet American, Pyle. “Phuong” means “phoenix” and the suggestion would appear to be that Vietnam can only rise from the ashes by stabilizing some sort of a relationship with the colonialist world.24 Greene narrows the choice here to European versus Euro-­American colonialism. One could imagine a version of this novel where Phuong had a choice between, say, an American and a Chinese

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  41

lover. Instead, Greene gives us Fowler, who is an “old colonialist” (i.e., British) in class origin (to use the Marxist phrase). His class stance—­or political orientation—­however, is not colonialist (thus, not a simple reflex of his class origin). It is putatively neutral, the stance of an objective observer. But, on witnessing the violence of the “new colonialists” (the United States), he is drawn into collaboration with the Vietminh, facilitating the murder of one European-­American whom we know to be guilty of facilitating the deaths of many Vietnamese. That man is Pyle. One of the most striking things about Pyle is that he almost seems designed to illustrate how a colonialist may be—­or may at least appear to be—­sincerely committed to an ideological principle, even while violating that principle in virtually every act. Thus, Pyle seems in some sense genuinely committed to furthering democracy, at least eventually, despite what he does. As a result, Pyle can ally himself with the most brutal and antidemocratic thugs and can support their violence, while apparently convincing himself that he does this in the service of a democratic and humane ideal. Pyle is able to act in this self-­contradictory way because he is also able to preserve his innocence (i.e., to escape a feeling of guilt) in part by not allowing himself to see the results of his colonialist policies and alliances. Fowler tells us that Pyle will “always be innocent, you can’t blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. . . . Innocence is a kind of insanity” (155). This criticism of Pyle is complicated by the fact that Fowler too deceives himself (specifically about the nature of his collaboration with the Communist revolutionaries). Nonetheless, the main force of the novel’s criticism is of the “new colonialism,” and the allegory favors Fowler over Pyle. In some cases, the sexual relations of the intergroup romance and even the love triangle are, so to speak, sublimated into “friendship” between men. This occurs, for example, in the case of “innocent homosexual” bonds treated by Leslie Fiedler (1992). One case of this sort is the relation between Fielding and Aziz in Forster’s (1924) A Passage to India. Though literally a friendship, with no suggestion of romance, the two come into conflict primarily due to Fielding’s marriage. Aziz reacts to Fielding’s marriage as if it were a sort of betrayal. True, this is not incomprehensible on a literal level. Aziz understandably views Miss Quested as his enemy and he mistakenly believes that Fielding has married her. On the other hand, he does not change his view even after he learns the actual iden42  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

tity of Fielding’s wife. She is the half-­sister of his other enemy, Heaslop. But she is also the daughter of his friend, Mrs. Moore. Indeed, when he learns of Fielding’s wife’s identity, he reacts with “shame” quickly turning into “rage” (chapter 35)—­a transformation characteristic of an experience of betrayal, as already mentioned. His repudiation of Fielding, and indeed of all the English, follows immediately, in a manner that many readers are likely to find reminiscent of a spurned lover. (It would also appear relevant that Fielding’s primary disquiet about Aziz is his sexual response to women. I am far from the only critic who has found a suggestion of sexuality in the relation between Fielding and Aziz; indeed, it is almost a critical commonplace (see, for example, chapter 6 of Suleri [1992], and Parry [1998, 188].)25 The love triangle, with its issues of trust, also turns up in one of the minor genres—­that of revenge, to which we may now turn. Revenge stories often treat a betrayal of trust, producing both grief and rage on the part of the protagonist who is the victim of that betrayal. The rage then gives rise to a desire for personal retribution (not merely the impersonal justice of the state). While undertaking that retribution, the protagonist typically causes great harm and not infrequently ends up dead himself or herself. Perhaps due to its great ambivalence, the revenge story does not seem to appear often enough to define standard uses in relation to colonialism. On the other hand, it is certainly not absent. One prominent work that includes a love triangle in a revenge narrative is Salman Rushdie’s (2005) novel Shalimar the Clown. In this work, the revenge plot operates allegorically, as the Kashmiri Muslim, revolutionary, and terrorist Shalimar, seeks to avenge his betrayal by his Hindu wife (thus perhaps by Hindu society). He does this by trying to kill a character named “India,” who stands allegorically for the nation or some part of the nation. Since the outcome of the conflict over Kashmir is unknown in real life, the outcome of this attempted revenge is indeterminate in the novel. To complicate matters, the author’s attitude is clearly favorable toward (the character) India, even while condemning the violent, derivative colonialism of (the country) India. This may suggest a distinction between the nation and the government, or something along those lines. In any case, the novel is clearly opposed to the politics of revenge. Perhaps the most historically significant instance of the revenge genre in a colonial context is the Yuán dynasty drama by Jì Jūnxiáng, The Zhào

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  43

Orphan (or more fully, The Great Revenge of the Orphan of Zhào). This work might appear to go in the opposite direction, supporting rather than opposing revenge. The Mongol rulers of China during this period were often viewed as colonial occupiers who had usurped the divinely sanctioned rule of the Southern Sòng dynasty. As I have argued elsewhere (see Hogan [2022b; 2022a, 246–­57]), the play suggests a parallel between the Zhào orphan and the people of China, with the target of his revenge (Tu Angu) standing in for the Mongol ruler. Moreover, the play certainly does favor the young man’s revenge for the murder of his father, and in that sense it does differ from Shalimar. But this does not mean that the play thereby champions individual vigilantism. Rather, if my reading is correct, the play aims to inspire commitment to Sòng loyalism, which would presumably take the form of coordinated social action. In part, the unusual appearance of The Zhào Orphan is due to the fact that it is on the surface a revenge narrative, but as such it serves to suggest a usurpation-­restoration (heroic) narrative. In other words, it operates by a sort of indirection, or allegory, like Shalimar. There are, of course, also nonallegorical versions of the revenge plot. An interesting, if not wholly successful case may be found in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2009 film, Five Minutes of Heaven. The story takes place in Northern Ireland, though (with some obvious changes), it could have been located in a number of postcolonial societies, such as South Africa. The two main characters are a Protestant, Alistair, and a Catholic, Joe. As a teenager, Alistair had joined a paramilitary organization and assassinated Joe’s brother. Joe was perhaps seven or eight years old at the time and witnessed the murder. As an adult, Joe wants to take revenge for the irreparable loss of an attachment relation and plans to murder Alistair. This would clearly have terrible consequences for Joe’s family. It might have harmful consequences for the larger society as well, for Alistair abandoned violence and, after a period in prison, has devoted himself to healing the emotional traumas of intercommunal violence that developed out of British colonialism in Ireland. The film follows the usual revenge structure in showing that revenge itself only makes matters worse, repeating rather than rectifying the injustice. What is interesting, especially in a colonial context, is that it deviates from the common preference for criminal investigation and legal proceedings (as illustrated most famously in The Eumenides of Aeschylus). The traumas caused by colonial conflict leave 44  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

the victims with unresolved emotional distress (e.g., rage) and the perpetrators with guilt, even after they have been punished by the legal system (as in Alistair’s case). Thus, instead of advocating criminal investigation leading to the determination of culpability followed by suitable punishment, a number of activists have advocated the confession of guilt by the perpetrators, that is, their admission of the truth and their forgiveness by the victims, leading to the reconciliation of the two groups—­in sum, neither revenge nor criminal investigation but a truth and reconciliation process (such as occurred in South Africa, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere). Unfortunately, there are problems with this alternative (as there are with the legal solution), which the film does not really address. But it does suggest a different story trajectory, derived in part from the revenge narrative prototype, with particular relevance to colonialism. The love triangle may appear in another minor genre as well—­the seduction story. In this genre, a man seduces a woman (or, more rarely, a woman seduces a man) under false pretenses (e.g., claiming love) or simply forces himself on the woman, then abandons her. The abandoned woman (or, more rarely, man) commonly pursues the seducer/rapist. The two may end up married (as in the “problem comedies” of Shakespeare and Terence) or one or both of the “lovers” may end up dead. The motivating emotion here is, first of all, sexual desire, though trust—­and the violation of trust—­a lso enter. This genre appears with some frequency in colonial contexts. It often functions to suggest that the claims of intergroup romance (e.g., between Europeans and Africans) may not be a matter of genuine attachment but of deceitful, exploitative lust. The most obvious cases of this sort concern white masters and African slaves. Despite considerable diversity across individual works, such stories seem often to suggest the duplicity of colonial ideology generally (allegorically represented in the protestations of love proffered by the dominant partner) or the near impossibility of reconciling the two groups (colonizers and colonized) even at an individual level.26 On the other hand, there is not always a clear, consistent link between the genre and the work’s thematic concern with colonialism. An example of this sort may be found in another Yuan drama, Shi Junbao’s (2014) Qiu Hu Tries to Seduce His Wife. This is the story of a man who is drafted into the military immediately after his marriage. He is away for ten years, during which time he succeeds in becoming an adminis

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  45

trator. Over the course of those years, his wife demonstrates her loyalty and fidelity to her husband, in part by refusing to remarry and in part by caring for her mother-­in-­law. When the husband finally returns, he sees his wife. He does not recognize her but is entranced by her beauty and tries to seduce her; she, however, remains steadfast in loyalty to her husband (as she does not recognize him either). This story presents an instance of the seduction genre that appears to be anticolonial but is perhaps only sporadically rather than systematically so. By “sporadic” here I mean that the author works in (covert) criticisms of the colonial forces (the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty, in this case) or support for anticolonial forces (such as the disempowered Confucian scholars of this period). However, the author does not develop these isolated expressions into a fuller analysis or critique extended through the course of the story. An example of what I am referring to may be found on only the second page of the play. There, the wife (Meiying) explains the practical, ethical lessons to be drawn from the Classic of Poetry. The idea is transparently Confucian, as is her interpretation of the poem in question. This clearly associates her with Confucian scholarship, a centerpiece of earlier, Han Chinese dynasties but reviled by the Yuan. In this context, her admirable loyalty to her husband recalls the admirable devotion of the political “loyalists,” who remained faithful to the Sòng Dynasty. The point is furthered by the downtrodden state of the Qiu family (not unlike that of the former rulers) and Meiying’s association of her husband with the office of prime minister (see 304 and 327n14). There are other points where this sort of connection recurs. For instance, Meiying laments that her husband’s possibilities for scholarly advancement now appear lost. The editors comment that this may be “an oblique reference to the low status of Confucian scholars during the Yuan” (327n18). I would say that it was almost certainly seen that way by at least some audience members at the time. However, it is not clear that these points develop into, say, a continuous allegory. Most importantly, it is not clear how the main events—­crucially, Qiu Hu’s attempted seduction—­bear on the Sòng and Yuan dynasties or anything related to them. An unusual (intergroup) version of romantic and/or seduction genres may be suggested in Muayad Alayan’s 2018 film, The Reports on Sarah and Saleem. In this story, a Jewish Israeli woman and a Palestinian man have an affair. There is no clear indication of their feelings, beyond sexual de46  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

sire, nor do they spend any time trying to convince one another that they do feel something beyond lust. Both have a spouse and a child (unborn, in the case of Saleem). Saleem is arrested by the Palestinian Authority; the reasons are somewhat unclear but are explicitly connected with the affair. Due to the arrest, Saleem ends up losing his job. At the same time, Sarah breaks off their relationship. A Palestinian political leader tells him that, to resolve his problems with the Palestinian Authority, he must write that he has seduced Sarah to recruit her as an informant for Palestinian intelligence. The suggestion appears to be that any bond with an Israeli suggests disloyalty on the part of a Palestinian and that this can be rebutted only by an equally extreme assertion of Palestinian nationalism. Saleem writes the statement and the whole problem appears resolved, except that, later, Israeli military personnel raid some Palestinian offices (killing the political leader who helped Saleem) and take Saleem’s written testimony along with a set of other documents. As it happens, Sarah’s husband is a high-­ranking member of the Israeli military. Once, he mentions that there will be a raid in Bethlehem (in fact, this is the raid in which they take the document written by Saleem). Though she is no longer seeing him, Sarah warns Saleem. This, of course, suggests some genuine affection on her part. However, when the affair is exposed, she initially agrees to testify that Saleem sought to recruit her as a spy, which would almost certainly result in Saleem being convicted of very serious crimes. This would seem to suggest that her attachment to Saleem is not terribly deep. She does change her testimony but only after it is revealed that she communicated the government secret about the raid. The film does not really treat either Sarah or Saleem as a mere seducer. Rather, it suggests that intergroup relations such as theirs are neither exemplars of reconciliation nor hypocritical pretenses that conceal exploitative impulses. They are, rather, incoherent mixes of desire, sincere attachment, and a range of (largely concealed) egocentric concerns. That is presumably true of any such relationship. But the colonial context makes the usual social condemnation of the couple more profoundly consequential and thus more destabilizing of the relationship. It is important to note, however, that the results of the affair in this context are not at all equal. Both Sarah and Saleem suffer the personal punishment of being divorced by their spouses. But the dominant colonizer, Sarah,

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  47

apparently does not suffer any legal repercussions, though she clearly broke the law by communicating a state secret. In contrast, the subordinate colonized character, Saleem, first loses his job and is subsequently imprisoned for years, suffering both economic and political disabilities.27 The final, “minor” genre is the criminal investigation story. This concerns the commission of a crime and the work to uncover and punish the criminal. The animating emotion is what I have been calling “indignation,” the sense that people have not played by the rules, that they have sought to enjoy the benefits of society while eschewing the associated responsibilities. Though not terribly frequent, when it does turn up, its significance is often quite direct and obvious, at least in general terms. Specifically, it may involve the investigation and judgment of the crimes of colonialism generally or of particular cases of those crimes. As we will discuss, Sissako’s film Bamako stages a literal trial of international financial institutions, presenting testimonies and other evidence that these institutions have followed policies that continue (colonialist) wealth-­extraction even after the nations in question have achieved political (though not economic) independence. Even without a plethora of examples, we can readily see that treatments of colonialism in this genre are likely to divide into two broad groups. First, there are works that address the investigation itself, which in this case concerns some criminal consequence of colonialism or neocolonialism. One difference from the usual prototype is that the investigation is not necessarily undertaken by official authorities. Indeed, the biases of those authorities may make it virtually impossible for official agencies to perform the investigation properly. Rather, they are often complicit with the criminals. Thus, in Costa-­Gavras’s 1982 film Missing, for example, a young American disappears during the neocolonial (U.S.-­backed) military coup in Chile. The corruption of the entire system leaves responsibility for investigation in the hands of the young man’s father. Though this situation recalls the closely related revenge structure, the problems with revenge do not compromise the investigation in this case. This film exhibits another common feature of postcolonization criminal narratives, one in some ways similar to allegoresis. This is the use of exemplification. The murder of the young American stands for the thousands murdered by the neocolonial dictatorship installed by the coup. Another example of this sort may be found in the novel Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje 48  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

(2000). This novel treats a government-­sponsored murder during the Sri Lankan civil war. The nature of the murder is uncovered by a forensic pathologist working on human rights in the region. Here, one of the characters makes the point explicit, thinking, “One victim can speak for many victims” (176, emphasis in the original). The second type of postcolonization work in this category is focused on the legal evaluation that follows arrest and is commonly represented in a trial, allowing different parties to formulate explicit analyses of the effects of colonialism and to articulate arguments concerning various colonial practices as part of the prosecution or defense. We find an indirect case of this in Forster’s A Passage to India, in which the trial of Aziz is not simply an attempt to determine whether Aziz is guilty or innocent of assault. The trial is, rather, a way of critically exposing some of the baseless ideas—­indeed, fantasies in a roughly psychoanalytic sense—­ that at the time pervaded British thought about the (out-­grouped) “natives” and their relation to the (in-­group) English, along with some biases of the Indians themselves. Other works critique colonialism more explicitly through the trial (or its equivalent). For example, as already mentioned, Bamako addresses neocolonialism as such. A more standard case of this “adjudication” part of criminal investigation stories is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo’s (1976) The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. This play imagines a trial in which the revolutionary Mau Mau leader—­who is the one explicitly accused of a crime and on trial—­treats the British legal system as the defendant, rather than himself.28 In other words, he challenges the legality of an English court trying a Kenyan patriot in Kenya. Thus, when asked to plead innocent or guilty, Kimathi responds with the question, “By what right dare you, a colonial judge, sit in judgment over me?” He goes on to state that it is, rather, the judge, the court, and the law itself that are “criminal” (25). The authors suggest that Kenyans who cooperate with the colonialists are behaving criminally also. Such criticisms of colonial legal systems are common, whether in trial narratives or in nonfiction history, political analysis, or other writings. This is unsurprising, for, as Piketty (2020, 252) points out, “inequalities of legal status were quite pronounced” in colonized societies, such that “the legal system . . . was substantially biased in favor of the colonizers” (288). Indeed, the “legal system in the colonies” was “often in direct contradiction with the principles on which the met

Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative  49

ropolitan legal system purported to be based” (290). Piketty has in mind modern, European colonies, but the point about bias holds for other colonial systems also, such as the Mongol domination of Yuan China (see Rossabi [1994, 428]; Mote [1994, 631]; and Liu [1972, 8–­9]). A perhaps unexpected example of this general type may be found in Ali Mazrui’s (1971) Trial of Christopher Okigbo. This novel puts African subnationalism on trial, rather than colonialism proper or even derivative colonialism. On the other hand, in one sense, this is the same as a trial of derivative colonialism, with a change in the values assigned to the alternatives. Rather than condemning the Nigerian government as colonialist, Mazrui criticizes the Biafrans for beginning a war that killed so many people. The problem with Mazrui’s view is that such a criticism tacitly assumes that the Nigerian government had no choice but to engage in a war once Biafra declared independence, which is clearly untrue. Despite this, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo is a thought-­provoking and insightful work that is unfortunately largely forgotten. One valuable peculiarity of Mazrui’s novel is that it reframes the issues in such unexpected and thought-­provoking ways. Specifically, Okigbo is accused of placing his ethnic allegiances above his art, which should have served pan-­Africanism. Again, the family separation and reunion genre is more prominent than the three minor genres, though perhaps a bit less so than the romantic, heroic, and sacrificial genres. It is similarly positioned in the context of colonialism. This structure prototypically treats the separation of parents and children for various reasons. Sometimes it is due to the parents’ decision that such a separation would benefit the children, though it is painful for both them and their offspring. Sometimes it is the result of accident or circumstances. At some point, either the parents or the children determine that the separation should end, leading them to seek the other party, often with ambivalent results (joy at the reunion but sorrow over the irrecuperable time than has been lost). The animating emotion for this genre is attachment, along with separation anxiety and grief, which is our response to attachment loss. In a colonial context, this genre may be used in a direct and literal way to condemn colonialist practices. This use is possible because readers tend to be extremely sensitive to the plight of young children and to attachment concerns, which foster an enhanced, parallel interper50  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

sonal stance toward the people involved (on the development and enhancement of empathy in relation to attachment, see Stern and Cassidy [2017], as well as Bucchioni et al. [2015]). This is, for example, a feature of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery writing. A more focused employment of this story structure may be found in Nugi Garimara’s (Doris Pilkington’s) Follow the Rabbit-­Proof Fence. In this narrative, the liberal, colonial government of Australia takes over the role that should be played by parents when it forcibly separates three young, half-­Aboriginal girls from their families. This is not simply the result of genre conventions. In keeping with the liberal, colonialist use of the childhood model for colonized people, the Australian government followed this policy regarding mixed-­race children, including the author’s own mother. This is the story of that mother’s experience. This genre is at times used for other thematic purposes as well. For example, Balewa structures his novel, Shaihu Umar, around familial separation due to the slave trade, rather than colonialism. Thus, it functions as part of the social self-­criticism undertaken in some post-­colonization works. The 2005 South African film Tsotsi (directed by Gavin Hood, from the novel by Athol Fugard) presents a striking variation on the political implementation of a family separation narrative and the recruitment of attachment feelings to political ends. First, Tsotsi shifts the usual perspective of the family separation from those who are separated to the abductor who causes the separation. Second, the story focuses on the transformative, humanizing effect of attachment feelings when these are experienced by the abductor. Specifically, Tsotsi—­despite his youth—­ appears to be an almost unfeeling thug. His solution to every problem is to threaten someone with death; he beats even his close comrade to a pulp; he taunts and harasses a disabled man, and so on. One day, to steal a car, he shoots a young woman (it is worth noting that Tsotsi and all the other main characters, including this young woman, are Black). He subsequently discovers that he has accidentally kidnapped an infant. Surprisingly, he is moved by the child’s needs and begins to care about his well-­being. This growth of empathy-­fostering attachment with the child leads Tsotsi to gradually expand the scope of his empathy to the comrade he pummeled, the disabled man he abused, a young woman he taunted, and ultimately the parents of the child. Phrased so bluntly, the

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story is likely to appear contrived. However, it is developed effectively, in part due to the main actor (Presley Chweneyagae) who conveys a growing sense of attachment love for the (quite adorable) baby, his distress over the child’s pain, and his grief at having to surrender the child. Indeed, when he chooses to return the child to his parents, he in effect takes up the role of the self-­sacrificing parent (not the abductor), the parent who puts the child’s well-­being above his own. Finally, in Literature and Moral Feeling (Hogan 2022a), for both theoretical and empirical reasons, I conjectured that it might be appropriate to add another (presumably, minor) genre, that of spiritual realization. In this type of story, a protagonist becomes dissatisfied with the world, often due to some traumatic experience. Specifically, he or she comes to view ordinary happiness goals—­of the sort given in the other cross-­ cultural genres—­as ephemeral. This leads him or her to leave ordinary life (perhaps retreating into nature and solitude), a retreat that allows him or her to pursue a genuinely enduring happiness, which he/she achieves through some supramundane experience. That transformational experience may be understood as either ecstatic or deeply peaceful, or in some cases as deeply painful. However, it typically resolves itself into an enduring feeling of peace. The main story is commonly followed by a sort of afterword in which the spiritually enlightened individual shares his or her wisdom with others. Since I began thinking about this possible genre only recently, I do not have a clear sense of how frequently it appears in postcolonization literature or if there are recurring patterns in its use. I will return very briefly to this (possible) genre at the end of chapter 7.

52  Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative

2

Idealized Sacrifice Pádraic Pearse, Attachment Love, and the 1916 Easter Uprising

As discussed in the preceding chapter, nationalism—­including the nationalism of colonized societies—­is not simply a set of beliefs or ideas. It is equally, perhaps more importantly, a set of story structures that both express and guide understanding and emotional response. There are many such structures—­organized and oriented by human emotion systems—­that may be used to emplot national identification. The most prominent is the heroic structure, with its usurpation and threat/defense sequences developed in relation to group and individual pride and shame. This is, again, the default form of emplotment for anticolonial (and other) nationalisms. In some settler colonies, such as the United States in 1776, the heroic structure remained dominant. There are, however, conditions in which the heroic structure cannot readily be carried through and made real. If the nation is so thoroughly devastated that it cannot engage in direct military confrontation with an enemy—­as in most colonial conditions—­then it may be difficult to apply the heroic structure plausibly to the nation’s current situation. In that case, national emplotments may more commonly instantiate other structures. At the same time, the heroic structure is unlikely to disappear completely. Indeed, the other structures are often, so to speak, embedded in a heroic narrative. In other words, the threat/ defense and usurpation sequences are commonly presupposed as broadly applicable to the national condition, even when another genre is expressed in the emplotment of more local or immediate events. The most prominent of the alternative structures is sacrificial tragicomedy. In sacrificial emplotment, the society has been devastated due to some sin on the part of the populace as a whole or some representative section 53

of the populace (e.g., the leadership). That sin has often been provoked by some enemy, a seductive or corrupting figure. Social devastation may take different forms, but in (non-­nationalist) literary manifestations it is often a matter of drought and famine. For this reason, real conditions of famine—­ which are far from unheard of in politically devastated societies—­are particularly likely to foster sacrificial emplotment. Whatever the nature of the social misery, in the minds of many people, one way to end the suffering appears to be sacrifice. Sacrifice in effect atones for the original sin and thereby allows the reversal of the national devastation. In the purgative version, the governing emotions are usually relatively straightforward—­disgust and/or rage at in-­group treachery and out-­ group seduction. Both emotions suggest the goal of eliminating the guilty parties, who may or may not exhibit remorse. Despite what I indicated earlier in a brief outline of the genres, the emotions governing the penitential sacrificial structure are often complicated. In their idealized form, they involve a feeling of remorse on the part of the in-­group generally. The innocent scapegoat is motivated by empathy for the suffering of others—­specifically, his or her fellow citizens—­an empathy so profound that it displaces all egocentric self-­interests, even his or her interest in his or her own life. This degree of empathy is made possible by the intensity of the scapegoat’s attachment love for the national in-­group. More realistic versions of the sacrificial story, however, present us with members of the in-­group who may be not so much remorseful as resentful and a scapegoat who may be ambivalent about his/her sacrifice or even entirely unwilling. On the other hand, this discrepancy between idealized and more realistic versions appears in most genres (think, for example, of the impossibly brave soldier of the [idealized] heroic structure). It is part of what allows for the critical versions of the genres, mentioned briefly in the previous chapter. Given the degree to which the colonial condition fosters sacrificial emplotment, it seems appropriate to begin with a case of that genre, and a particularly clear, even idealized case—­and, if possible, one that illustrates the bearing of such emplotment, not only on literature but on real-­ world politics. Such a case, involving partially heroic and partially purgative killings of the enemy as well as penitential self-­sacrifice, may be found in Ireland, specifically in the imaginative writing and real political activism of Pádraic Pearse. 54  Idealized Sacrifice

Irish Colonial Politics and the Sacrificial Genre On Easter Monday, 1916, a few hundred people rose up in an insurrection against British rule in Ireland. The leaders proclaimed an independent Irish republic. They were defeated easily and executed. The uprising was a bloody and miserable failure. But the failure did not last long. Five years later, Ireland was a free nation. The uprising inspired the Irish people with a renewed desire for independence and a will to work for independence. Or, rather, the British reaction to the uprising did this—­ especially the executions, thus the martyring of the leaders. As Coffey (1969, 262) put it, “After the execution of the leaders, public opinion in Ireland swung sharply in their favor and in favor of the Republican cause” (for a fuller discussion, see Lyons [1973, 375–­77 and 381–­82].) Lyons points out that the “rank and file” revolutionaries who went out on Easter Monday “may have hoped for some miraculous deliverance in the form of German aid” and thus may have had some hope of victory. But it is clear that “the leaders” had “no such comfortable illusion” (1979, 92). The proclamation of the Irish Republic (“The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland,” in Coffey [1969, 27]) was signed by seven revolutionaries. Three of them were poets—­Pádraic Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunkett (Lyons 1979, 86). “The poets, especially, assumed that they would die in battle . . . for they shared a common myth” (92). Lyons refers to that myth as “Messianism.” It is in fact a version of the cross-­cultural sacrificial plot. Specifically, the Easter 1916 poets saw the uprising as a sacrifice that would renew Ireland and ultimately redeem the nation, ending foreign rule and restoring sovereignty. The final sentence of the proclamation makes the point explicit, referring directly to “the readiness of [Ireland’s] children to sacrifice themselves for the common good” (Coffey 1969, 27). The word “sacrifice” here is more than a mere incidental metaphor. It suggests the story implicit in the authors’ imagination of the uprising, its motives, precedents, and consequences.1 The word “children” too is suggestive, for it indicates that this is a sacrifice of the innocent. It also draws on the standard metaphors of the nation as mother and the devotion of the people to the nation as a form of the devotion given by children to an aging parent, a form of (selfless) attachment love. It is surely no accident that the time of the rebellion coincided so close

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ly with the major Christian feast celebrating the sacrificial narrative of Jesus and that it became known universally as the “Easter Uprising.” It was, in fact, initially planned for Easter Sunday itself. That was the date chosen by the Military Council, including Pearse and most other signatories of the proclamation of independence. (The decision was made before Thomas MacDonagh joined the Council; see Lyons [1973, 342] and Porter [1973, 34].) It was postponed until Monday due to internal divisions among the Irish Volunteers (see Porter [1973, 34]; the Irish Volunteers were a nationalist militia that contributed the bulk of the fighters in the uprising; see Lyons [1973, 366]). Indeed, Lyons is right to conceive of this in terms of messianism, for the sacrificial narrative here relies on a specific paradigm—­the story of Jesus. A number of Irish writers took the story of Jesus as a model for understanding the condition of Ireland. Colonial occupation was like exile from the Garden of Eden. The martyrdom of patriots, willing to die for the freedom of their country, was parallel to the crucifixion. The major difference between the 1916 poets and others was that these poets seem to have taken the sacrificial narrative more seriously and to have elaborated it more fully. They saw Ireland as having sinned and brought the suffering of colonialism on itself. They saw a “blood sacrifice” as necessary for the redemption of the nation (on the doctrine of blood sacrifice among the 1916 revolutionaries, see Lyons [1979, 89–­92]). They were sure that, if rightly done, such a sacrifice would indeed redeem the nation, just as Jesus’s sacrifice redeemed humanity. Observers recognized this connection. Within weeks of the uprising, James Stephens (1916)—­entirely an outsider to the events—­set out the following comparison in the opening paragraph of his account: “The day before the rising was Easter Sunday, and they were crying joyfully in the Churches ‘Christ has risen.’” On the following day they were saying in the streets “Ireland has risen.” He predicted that Ireland would not “ever again [be] buried.” The sacrificial emplotment of national history, its formative contribution to the sense of national identity, appears to have had particular importance and persistence in Ireland. Lyons points out that even popular and religious novelists such as Canon Sheehan took up this work of fusing “nationalism and religion”—­or, more properly, nationalism and sacrificial narrative. Thus, in his 1914 novel Kilmorna, we find characters making such proclamations as the following: “As the blood of martyrs was the seed 56  Idealized Sacrifice

of saints, so the blood of the patriot will be the sacred seed from which alone can spring new forces, and fresh life, into a nation that is drifting into the putrescence of decay” (qtd. in Augusteijn [2010, 295]). Lyons argues that Sheehan was not setting out to express a new, revolutionary ideology. Rather, he was “an unconscious” follower “of the Zeitgeist” and “swimming with a current” (1979, 91). After the establishment of the Irish Free State, George Bernard Shaw looked back at the Easter Uprising and spontaneously drew on the standard imagery and metaphors of sacrificial narrative to characterize it: “Those who were executed . . . became not only national heroes [thus figures in a heroic plot], but the martyrs whose blood was the seed of the present Irish Free State” (qtd. in McHugh [1966, 361]). It is worth noting that Sheehan and Shaw do not only point to the importance of sacrifice. They also draw on agricultural imagery for the nation, in keeping with the most prototypical form of devastation in the sacrificial narrative (which, again, treats famine). But why was the sacrificial narrative so important, so pervasive in Ireland at the time? There were several reasons for this. The first was the condition of the country. In order to invoke a sacrificial narrative, the people must be seen as suffering. Again, the basic sacrificial narrative involves suffering, commonly through famine or epidemic disease. The nationalist version may and often does involve hunger or illness. But it almost necessarily involves suffering, first of all, from a loss of sovereignty, a loss of the in-­group’s status as a nation—­thus an utter and apparently irreversible defeat in the invasion/defense sequence of the heroic narrative. In short, there is a complete loss of the goal of group autonomy. This leads in turn to a shattering of pride, for the home society is thoroughly subordinated to a national enemy. Such domination most often entails a threat to distinctive practical identity as well.2 The loss of sovereignty was, of course, palpable in the case of Ireland. Moreover, according to Irish nationalists, the loss of sovereignty was leading to the gradual loss of shared, national practical identity, as Irish people began to lose touch with Irish language and Irish custom. Thus Pearse, in his “Graveside Panegyric on O’Donovan Rossa,” called for Ireland to be “not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well” (1966, 397). As is well known, many political nationalists in Ireland were active cultural nationalists, men and women who worked to preserve or restore Irish traditions. Pearse, for example, was “an en

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thusiastic member” of the Gaelic League (Lyons 1973, 333), which was devoted to the preservation and spread of the Irish language (Lyons 1979, 43), and an educationist who founded his own school to “instill into the rising generation a love for their own past, and for their language and literature” (Lyons 1973, 332). On the other hand, the long-­standing loss of national sovereignty and the creeping dissolution of culturally distinctive practical identity were not the only reasons for the importance of sacrificial narratives in Ireland. A further reason is suggested by Lyons’s emphasis on Messianism. The cultural centrality of the story of Jesus provided Irish nationalists with a sacrificial paradigm for understanding their condition and for formulating responses to that condition. Indeed, religion defined a crucial practical and, perhaps even more significantly, categorial opposition (i.e., opposition in identity categories) between the Irish and their English rulers. Though in this case both groups were Christian, the nature of their conflict nonetheless tended to make religious identity categories (Catholic and Protestant) salient, functional, enduring, dichotomous, and highly affective and to intertwine these religious identity categories with the national identity categories (Irish and English).3 (Note that the general principle holds even for Protestant Irish nationalists, who could hardly be impervious to the centrality of religious identity categories in the national conflict.) One result of this was that religious motifs became prominent for Irish nationalists; of these, the most important was Jesus’s redemptive self-­sacrifice. A final reason for the importance of the sacrificial prototype is the national-­historical significance of “the Great Hunger,” the terrible famine of the mid-­nineteenth century. Again, sacrificial narratives are, prototypically, narratives of famine. Certainly, many nations have experienced famine. Moreover, many have experienced famine as the result of colonialism. However, the Great Hunger of 1845–­50 has had a particularly important place in Irish conceptions of nationalism. For example, it is no accident that Lyons’s standard history of modern Ireland is entitled Ireland since the Famine or that Sinéad O’Connor (1994), the Irish pop singer, wrote a song about contemporary Ireland attributing its current problems to, precisely, the famine. In part, the prominence of the famine in Irish nationalism is due to the fact that so many Irish people emigrated at the time. Thus, many Irish American families trace their 58  Idealized Sacrifice

links with Ireland back to the famine. But the prominence of the famine is not merely a matter of exile. As Amartya Sen (2001, 170) notes, it “kill[ed] a higher proportion of the population than any other famine anywhere in recorded history.” The famine was a crucial point of cultural transformation as well. In Ireland itself, traditional Irish customs, even the Irish language, declined rapidly after the famine. The catastrophe marked the point where distinctive Irish practical identity came to be threatened, centuries after the loss of sovereignty. Pearse and Sacrificial Nationalism Given these various factors, it is hardly surprising that sacrificial narrative assumed unusual significance in Irish nationalism. Of course, this does not mean that it was equally significant at all times and places in colonial Ireland. Nor does this imply that it was equally significant for all individuals. It was singularly evident in the writings and activism of Pearse, “Commander-­General Commander-­in-­Chief of the forces of the Irish Republic” (in the uprising) and “President of the Provisional Government” proclaimed at the outset of the uprising (McHugh 1966, 260). Pearse was obsessed with the story of transgression, collective punishment, and sacrifice and almost always formulated the national question in terms of sin and redemption. For example, in his 1915 pamphlet Ghosts, he chastised the constitutional nationalists for their failures—­ “How, he asked himself, had these men sinned, that they should have come to such impotence?” (Lyons 1973, 85). Specifically, he asked, “Is it that they are punished with loss of manhood because in their youth they committed a crime against manhood?” Their main or general crime, Pearse indicates, was a betrayal of Ireland. However, Pearse also suggests a more particular crime—­the betrayal of the Irish nationalist parliamentarian, Charles Stuart Parnell—­for he goes on to ask, “Does the ghost of Parnell hunt them to their damnation?” (Pearse 1924, vol. 1, 224; see also 241–­46, 255). (Parnell lost the support of many Irish nationalists after it was revealed that he was having an affair with a married woman. Those loyal to Parnell saw this as a personal and political betrayal, particularly as the opposition to Parnell followed the lead of the British Liberals. See Moody [1978, 292–­93].) In keeping with his focus on the nation and sin, Pearse developed his nationalism in spiritual terms, emphasizing the special relationship of

Idealized Sacrifice  59

Ireland to God in a way that fit well with sacrificial emplotment.4 In part, this was personal, a matter of Pearse’s own long-­standing commitment, as indicated by his statement that “when I was a child of ten I went down on my knees by my bedside one night and promised God that I should devote my life to an effort to free my country” (qtd. in McHugh [1966, 260]). But it was also general, social. For example, the intellectual problem with the constitutional nationalists was that they “conceived of nationality as a material thing, whereas it is a spiritual thing. . . . They have not recognized in their people the image and likeness of God” (qtd. in Lyons [1979, 85]). Unsurprisingly, the God that Ireland resembles, for Pearse, is Jesus: “The people itself will perhaps be its own Messiah, the people labouring, scourged, crowned with thorns, agonising and dying, to rise again immortal and impassable” (qtd. in Lyons [1979, 90]). Of course, not everyone in Ireland would have to be sacrificed. (That would rather defeat the purpose of independence.) Thus, Pearse distinguished between the rebels, who were identified more directly with the Messiah, and the people in general, as when he wrote, “We must be ready to die . . . as Christ died on Calvary, so that the people may live” (qtd. in U. O’Connor [1975, 68]). Lyons notes that “metaphors . . . of sacrifice recur in the speeches and writings of the last two years of [Pearse’s] life” (1979, 91), which is to say, in the period leading directly to the uprising. A good example may be found in “The Coming Revolution,” published just before the period to which Lyons refers. In that article, Pearse made one of his most famous statements, one that clearly emplots nationalist activism in a sacrificial narrative: “Bloodshed is a cleansing and a sanctifying thing” (qtd. in Porter [1973, 60]). Bloodshed is cleansing and sanctifying only in a ritual of sacrifice. The idea finds almost continuous expression in Pearse’s subsequent writings. In 1914 he referred to the death of the patriot Robert Emmet as a “sacrifice Christ-­like in its perfection.” He went on to generalize the point, maintaining that “when England thinks she has purchased us with a bribe, some good man redeems us by a sacrifice” (qtd. in Porter [1973, 61]). In his “Graveside Panegyric on O’Donovan Rossa,” delivered about eight months before the uprising, he stated that “life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations” (1966, 397). Just before his execution, Pearse wrote to his mother, urging her, “Do not grieve for all this but think of it as a sacrifice which God asked of me and of you” (qtd. in McHugh [1966, 262]). 60  Idealized Sacrifice

As these examples suggest, Pearse is a figure in whom we see with particular clarity the way in which anticolonial activists may emplot national history and national identity and the way those emplotments are bound up with political actions. The Easter Uprising is inseparable from the sacrificial narratives that Pearse and others used to organize and understand Irish colonial subordination and Irish nationhood—­its history, its present condition, and its possible future. In the case of Pearse, this emplotment was elaborated in fictional form as well. He wrote not only political tracts but also literary narratives—­ nationalist literary narratives in which sacrificial emplotment figures prominently. Specifically, Pearse wrote stories, poems, and dramas. The dramatic work comprised “two three-­act outdoor pageants, a three-­act passion play, one short skit, and four one-­act plays” (Porter 1973, 94). The pageants were drawn from Irish epic and have a heroic orientation. The passion play is a straightforward rewriting of one part of the primary Christian sacrificial narrative, the story of Jesus. The earliest one-­act play, Iosagan, treats the salvation of an old man by a young boy. It is a spiritual tale, which relates to Pearse’s usual preoccupations, giving the innocent youth a redemptive role. The skit, Owen concerns a young boy who discovers that his teacher is a rebel against British rule and that he (the teacher) is about to be arrested. He alerts the teacher, who escapes. Owen stays behind to delay the police. In the subsequent encounter, he is killed. Though primarily heroic, this story stresses those elements of the heroic plot—­particularly its celebration of selfless devotion to the nation and martyrdom—­that overlap with the sacrificial plot. The remaining one-­act plays bear even more clearly on the sacrificial emplotment of national identity. We may consider them in sequence. The King The first and most famous of Pearse’s plays is The King. First written in 1912, it was revised for performance at the Abbey Theatre the following year. The play takes place in a monastery, thus establishing its religious orientation from the start. It concerns a king who has lost many battles—­in fact, “every battle into which he has gone” (Pearse 1924, 51).5 The link with Ireland’s many failed rebellions is only suggested but inescapable for any reader or audience member familiar with Pearse and with Irish history.

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Several boys discuss whether they would like to be the king. The superficial characters dream of ruling the land, but the hero, a “little boy,” “Giolla na Naomh,” meaning “the Servant of the Saints” (46), feels differently. When asked whether he would “like to be a King,” Giolla na Naomh answers, “I would not. I would rather be a monk that I might pray for the King” (50). This is a very striking dialogue. At one level, it may seem simply trite and pious. But it directly opposes the desire for social domination that animates heroic tragicomedy, and thus most nationalism. It sets aside the idealized martial hero for something else. Though not clear at this point, the alternative proposed by Pearse is the idealized scapegoat of sacrificial narrative, which relates to the King’s repeated losses. In connection with Ireland, the contrast between Giolla na Naomh and the other boys begins to suggest that Ireland cannot win the battle against England by traditional means of heroism. The monks enter. We learn that the King is at war once again. The First Monk explains that “it is a good fight that the King fights now, for he gives battle for his people” (52). Here, the parallel with Irish revolutionary activity becomes clearer. But the First Monk wonders why the King always loses his battles. The Abbot responds that the King has sinned. He has committed the spiritual violation that leads to collective punishment in sacrificial narratives. Specifically, he “has shed the blood of the innocent. . . . He has oppressed the poor. He has forsaken the friendship of God and made friends with evil-­doers” (52; note that forsaking the friendship of God and making friends with evildoers, which is to say, tempters, are primary features of the prototypical sin in the sacrificial narrative—­as, for example, the case of Adam, Eve, and Satan illustrates). The implication is that Ireland too has sinned, or at least Irish leaders have sinned, and their sins have led to the sufferings of the people. The point is developed in what follows. Introducing the motif of sacrifice, and relating it to the model of Jesus, the Abbot predicts that the King will fail in this battle too, for “it is an angel that should be sent to pour out the wine and to break the bread of this sacrifice,” not “an unholy King” (52). The First Monk questions this, asking, “Why must all suffer for the sins of the King?” The Abbot responds, “The nation is guilty of the sins of its princes. I say to you that this nation shall not be freed until it chooses for itself a righteous King” (52–­53). The Abbot’s statement serves not only to rational62  Idealized Sacrifice

ize this collective punishment. It does so in such a way as to reinforce the link with Irish nationalism, for the Irish people choose their national representatives, while the nation does not choose its princes and king. Indeed, the Abbot’s statement seems to point toward something more specific—­t he Irish parliamentary nationalists (see Lyons [1973, 301–­11] on legislation regarding home rule in the year the play was written). Pearse may be suggesting that, as long as the Irish people give their support to this group, they will continually fail to achieve independence. In any case, the First Monk worries, “Shall women be mourning in this land till doom?” (Pearse 1924, 53). This question expresses a momentary feeling of despair—­not a personal despair, but a sort of national one, a despair over the possibility of national redemption, very much in keeping with the abandonment of the heroic prototype and the substitute of a sacrificial prototype. Here the discussion turns to the “music of the fighters” that “makes drunk the hearts of young men” (54). Even the Abbot waxes lyrical over this “heady ale which all young men should drink” (55). Here once more we have the standard heroic ambition. Giolla na Naomh undercuts this by explaining that he would indeed go into the battle—­but only to serve the King “when all would forsake him” (55). The Abbot realizes his mistake. “The child is right,” he says. “While we think of glory he thinks of service” (55). Again, the idealized heroism of victory in battle is diminished and an alternative ideal is raised in its place. We are now beginning to see more clearly that this is an ideal of self-­sacrifice. Giolla na Naomh does not wish to fight along with the King when the King’s forces are strong and when they might win. He will join the King when everyone else abandons him, and thus when the King is, to all appearances, sure of losing. The news comes quickly that the King has suffered yet another defeat. He enters, fully recognizing his sin: “It is I who have brought God’s wrath upon this land” (57). He begs the Abbot to intervene with God, not on his behalf but on behalf of the people. In connection with this, he expresses national despair, saying, “God has forsaken my people.” The Abbot responds with certainty that God “will save this nation.” However, God will do so only “if [the nation] choose a righteous king.” The King agrees immediately. But looking around, the Abbot cannot find any monk or any boy who will do. One by one, they all confess “I have sinned” (58).

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But the boys tell him that there is one who is “sinless” (58) and “innocent” (59), Giolla na Naomh. Like Jesus on his way to the crucifixion, Giolla na Naomh is “stripped of his clothing,” in this case to put on “the raiment of a King” (61). The monks and the King kneel before him as their ruler, and he sets off to the war. The Abbot prays, “O God, save this nation by the sword of this sinless boy” (63). The phrase suggests that Giolla na Naomh will defeat the enemy by force of arms, in short that this will be a heroic narrative, perhaps akin to the story of David and Goliath. But things do not work out that way. This is not a heroic plot but a sacrificial one. The enemy is defeated; “they are scattered as a mist would be scattered” (66) when the sun rises. But the child is dead. The King pronounces a eulogy over his corpse, explaining that “it is thy purity that hath redeemed my people” (67). It is a highly prototypical version of the sacrificial narrative, where the idealized scapegoat dies to save his people—­here in its anticolonial version, where the people are saved by achieving their sovereignty and the form of the sacrifice is bound up with military conflict (due to the intrusion of the default heroic prototype). The political point, and its implicit relation to Ireland, are recapitulated in the final speech of the play, as the Abbot adjures those present, “Do not keen this child, for he hath purchased freedom for his people” (67). The Master Though it is not precisely a sacrificial plot itself, The Master deals with issues that derive directly from Pearse’s sacrificial emplotment of Irish national history. Like the skit, Owen, this play concerns a teacher and pupil. Here too the pupil’s purity is crucial, and it saves the teacher—­though, in this case, the salvation is spiritual. The action takes place in ancient Ireland. Ciaran has been preaching Christianity. He is challenged by the king, Daire, who demands that Ciaran produce a sign from God. But Ciaran’s faith wavers. The innocent student, Iolann Beag, however, has such firm faith that he calls down an angel. Seeing this miracle, Ciaran dies, now certain of his faith. Produced in 1915, this play is most noteworthy for its development of Pearse’s own doubts about the nationalist sacrificial narrative.6 It is, in this way, a play about Pearse’s own crisis of faith—­not regarding religion per se but regarding the religious version of national identity that he espoused and that would culminate the fol64  Idealized Sacrifice

lowing year in the uprising. When Iollan Beag asks if God’s angels will come to one who invokes them, Ciaran responds, “Yes, they will come.” But in an aside, he confesses his uncertainty. “Is it a true thing I tell this child or do I lie to him?” he asks, adding, “My spirit reaches out and finds Heaven empty” (Pearse 1924, 89). These are almost certainly the doubts that assailed Pearse himself as he called on his fellow Irish men and women to sacrifice themselves for the redemption of Ireland. In the prototypical story, sacrifice brings renewal—­the rain falls on the drought-­stricken land; crops grow again. But Pearse must have wondered if the sacrifice he was calling for would in fact beget national renewal and free Ireland or would simply lead many young people to a tragic, pointless death. In keeping with the central motifs of the sacrificial structure, Ciaran sees his doubt as a punishment for his own sin—­the sin of pride, the characteristic sin of a warrior: “I thought that I was sacrificing everything, but I have not sacrificed the old pride of my heart . . . and God, that terrible hidden God, has punished me by withholding from me His most precious gift of faith” (91). The connection with the heroic or warrior ethos is clear in the play, for Ciaran’s pride comes initially from the fact that he was always “first in all manly games” (86). Here again we seem to see a criticism of the heroic emplotment of nationalism and its replacement by a sacrificial emplotment. Ciaran’s inability to believe, to have faith, results from his continuing desire to achieve domination, the heroic goal. Like the secondary characters in The King, he has falsely concentrated on glory, when he should have devoted himself to sacrifice. But heroic emplotment is not the only problem here. In keeping with the usual development of sacrificial nationalism, the play points to the fundamental sin of collaborationism as well. When Daire comes, he offers Ciaran a place in his government. This appears to suggest the parliamentary alternative to Pearse’s revolutionary activism. In other words, Daire offers Ciaran a way of achieving individual authority while putatively working in “the service of [his] people.” This would put Ciaran in the position of the parliamentary nationalists, who entered the British governmental system supposedly to work in “service” of the Irish people. The link is strengthened by fact that Daire’s primary opposition to Ciaran is religious; he opposes Ciaran’s Christianity. The motif of religious intolerance was bound to remind Irish readers and audience members of the English suppression of Catholicism in Ireland. Crucially, Ciaran’s re

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sponse to Daire’s offer is a rejection of collaboration. He dismisses Daire’s offer, asking contemptuously, “You would bribe me with this petty honor?” (95). Here Pearse seems to imply that the parliamentary nationalists have been bribed by the petty honor of entering British government. The connection becomes clearer when one recalls Pearse’s statement the year before that “when England thinks she has purchased us with a bribe, some good man redeems us by a sacrifice” (qtd. in Porter [1973, 61]). On the other hand, sacrifice alone is not enough. The play culminates in what must have been a painful admission for Pearse. He has Ciaran call to Daire “slay me,” explaining, “I will bear testimony with my life” (Pearse 1924, 98). This is, in effect, Pearse’s real solution to the dilemma of his country—­his own death. But Daire responds quite rightly, “What will that prove? Men die for false things, for ridiculous things, for evil things. What vile cause has not its heroes? Though you were to die here with joy and laughter you would not prove your cause a true one” (98). In the context of Pearse’s own life and work, this is a moment of almost complete despair. There seems to be nothing that resolves the questions Pearse raises, questions that, if unanswered, threaten to undermine his entire work. The crisis proceeds further still as Daire insists that he will kill Iollann. This, I believe, reaches the very crux of Pearse’s dilemma. Perhaps his sacrificial views will send out young boys such as Iollann to be killed by the British—­and all to no purpose. The problem is resolved in the play when Iollann calls out for Michael, and the angel arrives. Daire accepts the angel. Ciaran sees the “Splendour” of the “Seraphim and Cherubim” who “stand horsed” (100) as Michael is ready to lead the “Host of God” as its “Captain” (99). Ciaran dies and the play ends. Though superficially an affirmation of faith, the ending of the play is far from convincing. It seems more like Freudian wish fulfillment than resolution. It is very difficult to believe that Pearse himself accepted the conclusion. Moreover, the point of Ciaran’s death is unclear. Is it the required sacrifice? Is it a punishment? What are we to make of his final celebration of war and military “Splendour,” given what has gone before? The Singer Pearse’s last and lengthiest play, The Singer, was scheduled to receive its first performance the week before the uprising but was canceled for fear 66  Idealized Sacrifice

that it would “jeopardize the planned insurrection” (Porter 1973, 151n36). At least superficially, the play shows little of the self-­doubt that pervades The Master. It is, rather, a straightforward national sacrificial narrative: it expresses Pearse’s own commitment to sacrificial action on behalf of the nation and urges the readers or audience members to engage in such action as well. The play concerns a singer, MacDara. It begins with his family—­his mother, Maire ni Fhiannachta; his brother, Colm; and the woman who loves him, Sighle. They discuss how MacDara left seven years earlier, banished from the place; we later learn that the banishment was due to his songs (Pearse 1924, 21). As in a number of Irish works, the mother suggests traditional Ireland. Sighle suggests contemporary Ireland. She loves MacDara deeply and speaks of how “He put me into his songs” (8)—­but, of course, it must be Ireland that he put into his songs, for a simple love poem to Sighle would not merit banishment. The sacrificial motif is introduced almost immediately as well. In speaking of her love of MacDara, Sighle explains that “at Mass his face used to come between me and the white Host” (8–­9)—­this association with the Host is, of course, an association of MacDara with the Savior, whose self-­sacrifice is commemorated in the Eucharist. Here, the conversation turns to an imminent rebellion against the British. Sighle imagines the deaths of the young men in detail. She stresses Colm in particular: “Colm’s hair will be dabbled with blood” (9). Maire responds, “I am his mother, and I do not grudge him” (10). Her statement connects directly with Pearse’s poem, “The Mother” (beginning, “I do not grudge them; Lord, I do not grudge/My two strong sons,” in Edwards [1978, 263–­64]). The suggestion is that this uprising will be “a glorious thing,” as “The Mother” has it. Indeed, returning to Sighle’s images of death, we see that they are not simply terrible but divine as well. Her description of the boys with “a red wound in their white breasts, or on their white foreheads” recalls Jesus, stabbed in the side by the Roman soldier (see John 19:34), his forehead torn and his hair, like Colm’s, dabbled with blood, due to the crown of thorns. Sighle goes on to explain that the boys are going out to fight “because a voice has called to them to right the wrong of the people.” This is not simply a metaphor, the voice of the people. There is “a mountainy man” who has “set their hearts on fire with the breath of his voice” (Pearse 1924, 10). Colm enters and explains that they are waiting for a command

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to begin the uprising. He also explains that this great man, who inspires the people—­“the Singer,” as he is called—­may be coming as well. Some of the other rebels enter and they compare the Singer to an angel (such as Michael in The Master) “or the Son of Mary Himself that has come down on the earth” (17). Just as they are speaking of the Singer/Jesus, MacDara enters. After the expected scene of reunion, MacDara goes off with his family and the remaining rebels speak. One asks why it was that MacDara was banished. Another explains, “Songs he was making that were setting the people’s hearts on fire”—­in short, nationalist songs. The content of the songs confirms the association of Sighle with the nation: “They were full of terrible love for the people” (21; recall Sighle’s comment that “He put me into his songs” [8]). Referring to the frequent complicity of the Catholic Church with the colonial power, this character goes on to explain that “some said there was irreligion in them and blasphemy against God. But I never saw it, and I don’t believe it.” Nonetheless, MacDara was threatened with both prison and excommunication (21). Indeed, the suggestion here is that the Church itself has betrayed Jesus—­for MacDara has already been linked with the Savior, and the Irish national cause has been tied to “the Son of Mary Himself that has come down on the earth” (17). The Christlike nature of MacDara is repeated on the next page, where he explains that “when my mother stood up to meet me with her arms stretched out to me, I thought of Mary”—­recall that his mother’s name is Maire or Mary—­“meeting her son on the Dolorous Way” (24), on the way to his crucifixion. One of the rebels then asks MacDara why he has returned home. Here, we have a curious passage that verges on the sort of self-­doubt that filled The Master. MacDara explains, “I seemed to see myself brought to die before a great crowd that stood cold and silent; and there were some that cursed me in their hearts for having brought death into their houses.” With this vision, he feels that he must see his mother, his brother, and Sighle once again, for they would inspire him “to die with only love and pity in my heart, and no bitterness” (25). In this context, the three people MacDara comes to see are not only individuals but symbols of or metaphors for larger groups. His mother is, again, traditional Ireland, which has given him birth. His brother is the leader who goes forth to battle the English. He stands for the heroic fighters of Irish history. Sighle is, 68  Idealized Sacrifice

once more, Ireland today. These are what inspire MacDara. These are what allow him to follow through with his sacrifice. But, of course, there is a problem here. To say that these figures inspire MacDara “to die with only love and pity . . . and no bitterness” is not to say that they justify the deaths that he has brought into the houses of others. The question of such justification remains, to be answered at the end of the play. The following pages develop the sanctity of the nation, even going so far as to displace religion per se with the sacrificial plot of nationhood. The first indications of this are mild enough, such as MacDara’s comment that “beauty like Sighle’s must be holy” (27). This suggests a sanctification of the Irish people, and of the land itself, for Sighle is equally the population and the physical place of Ireland. Subsequently, MacDara discusses the task of the poet, identifying the ideal poet with the nationalist orator, and assimilating both to Jesus: “He must break bread to the people.” The poet must share the ordinary life of the people by sharing their food. But, more importantly, the poet must institute the Eucharist, specifically a Eucharist of the nation (“the people”). Moreover, the poet must, like Jesus after the last supper, sacrifice himself as well: “He must go into Gethsemane and toil up the steep of Golgotha” (31). This is all common enough. Pearse is simply using the story of Jesus to develop the role of the nationalist poet. Subsequently, however, MacDara proposes something more radical—­t he replacement of religion per se with the national sacrificial narrative. “Once, as I knelt by the cross of Kilgobbin,” he explains, “it became clear to me . . . that there was no God” (33). He lives with his miserable “secret” (33) for some time until he has a second, positive revelation. God, he says, finally “revealed His Face to me” and, as if MacDara were Moses, God told MacDara His name.7 But it was not the Face he expected, and not the Name: “His Name is suffering.” The rebel to whom he is speaking does not understand. MacDara goes on, “I have lived with the homeless and with the breadless . . . the poor!” (34). He has discovered “the people . . . suffering people: reviled and outcast, yet pure and splendid and faithful. In them I saw . . . the Face of God. Ah, it is a tear-­stained face, blood-­stained, defiled with ordure, but it is the Holy Face!” (34–­35). Here, Pearse takes the common sanctification of the nation and extends it to the point where it actually replaces divinity. Rather than being chosen by God, these people are God. It is a strange transformation within the sacrificial context, for one

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is left wondering what a sacrifice will accomplish. If the people are God, then who is being petitioned or placated by the sacrificial death, and who will set things right after the sacrifice? On the other hand, it makes the sacrifice absolutely pure, for it is now only an act of love for God, which is to say, the people, not a sort of bribe offered to an omnipotent deity. As it turns out, however, Pearse does not seem to maintain this extreme view. The passage is hyperbole, intended to divinize the ordinary people as manifestations of God, as forms of Jesus. Indeed, at one level, it is extremely orthodox Christianity. It is the literalization of Jesus’s claim that he is identical with “the least of these brothers of mine” (Matthew 25:40 in Jerusalem Bible). Specifically, Jesus asserted that when one gives drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked, welcomes the stranger, visits the sick and imprisoned—­and thus does good to the downtrodden people celebrated by Pearse—­one does those things to Jesus himself. From here, the play returns to the issue of the uprising. Colm is, again, a military leader, a hero in a heroic tragicomedy. The enemy is marching, but there is as yet no word as to whether the rebels should act, for the messenger has not yet arrived. While MacDara is offstage, Colm argues that they should go out and meet the advancing troops no matter what. In true heroic fashion, he says that he will go “out the road to meet the Gall, if only five men of the mountain follow me” (Pearse 1924, 37). He receives little support from the other rebels but heads out to fight anyway. MacDara reenters, ignorant of what has passed. He tells Sighle that “once I had wanted life. You and I to be together in one place always.” Once he had wanted to live with his beloved, beautiful, holy Irish people in the beautiful, holy land of Ireland. But now “I have to do a hard, sweet thing, and I must do it alone.” He is, of course, referring to the sacrifice, and he must do it this way, he explains, “because I love you” (39). MacDara exits again and the focus returns to Colm, shifting from the sacrificial part of the plot back to the heroic. One of the rebels, Diarmaid, feels remorse that they allowed Colm to go out with a small group of men, facing certain defeat; “We should all have marched,” he says (40). When MacDara reenters, Diarmaid recognizes him as the Singer. All present acknowledge MacDara as their leader. Here the sacrificial and heroic lines of the plot come together. The question is—­how will they be resolved? Moreover, how will their resolution answer the earlier question regarding the justification of multiple deaths? MacDara chastises the 70  Idealized Sacrifice

rebels, asking them, “Why did you let him go out with fifteen men only? You are fourscore on the mountain.” He seems to be pointing toward a heroic narrative in which the united forces fight bravely in an attempt to defeat the enemy. Diarmaid speaks of strategy—­they would lose no matter what: “We thought it a foolish thing for fourscore to go into battle against four thousand, or, maybe, forty thousand” (43). These were precisely the arguments used against the Easter Uprising, the very arguments Pearse opposed in real political action. Here, MacDara (or Pearse) changes the terms of the debate. He says that it is not for the sake of his brother or even for the nation that they should have gone. It is not for a heroic goal, aimed at victory. “It is for your own souls’ sakes I would have had the fourscore go, and not for Colm’s sake, or for the battle’s sake.” He goes on to make an even stranger comment: “The battle is won whether you go or not” (43). The point is that the purpose of the battle is not domination through arms but redemption through sacrifice. MacDara regrets that they have not gone because they will feel the shame of it forever. He says that it is a better thing to die in self-­sacrifice than to live in remorse. This is also MacDara’s response to the accusation that he has brought death into the houses of many people. It is Pearse’s response to the accusation that he knows will be thrown against him—­that because of him so many young people died before they had a chance even to live. It is hard to say just what Pearse really thought of this response. As with the end of The Master, there seems to be an element of psychoanalytic denial here. Pearse is faced with the accusation—­not only from others, but from himself—­that he is leading a group of naive boys to destruction when they could have lived full lives. He responds by saying that this is their true spiritual fulfillment. He probably did believe this in part. Indeed, there is even some degree of truth in the idea that one hardly lives at all if one simply surrenders to oppression. But, of course, self-­effacing submission and self-­destroying sacrifice are not the only options. One can defend principles without committing suicide. In any case, however much Pearse believed McDara’s claims, a strange thing happens at this point in the play—­a thing that has no parallel in Pearse’s own life and practical political action. Just after MacDara makes the comments we have been considering, a messenger enters announcing that Colm has died. Here, MacDara completely reverses his previous

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judgment—­though in a way that preserves his central point about sacrifice. Specifically, he says that, rather than everyone going with Colm, they should have kept anyone from going with him. He chastises them again, saying, “You should have kept all back but one” (43–­44), explaining, “One man can free a people as one Man redeemed the world” (44). This is a sacrificial narrative in its purest, penitential form. He insists that no heroic battle was necessary, only the willing death of a single scapegoat. Indeed, heroic battle should have been prevented in order to preserve the purity of that sacrifice. The play ends with MacDara making himself this sacrificial victim who eschews heroic combat. “I will take no pike, I will go into the battle with bare hands. I will stand up before the Gall as Christ hung naked before men on the tree!” (44). He exits, “pulling off his clothes as he goes” (44). The nakedness suggests his childlike innocence, the innocence of the idealized scapegoat. It also recalls the stripping of Jesus on the Dolorous Way. The implication is that his death will redeem Ireland and that no other deaths are necessary. Indeed, no other deaths are even permissible. The ending is strange because it does not fit Pearse’s own actions in the uprising that followed the first planned production of this play by only a matter of days. Indeed, there are in effect two endings to this play. The first shows MacDara chastising the men and explaining that a collective sacrifice in battle would have benefited them—­a sacrificial emplotment, both purgative and penitential, and with significant heroic elements. The second shows MacDara repudiating a general sacrifice of martyrdom—thus, in the latter case, rejecting the heroic model—­in order to replace it with a purely penitential sacrificial structure in which there is one Jesus-­like scapegoat only. I suspect that the first ending more accurately represented Pearse’s nationalist vision. It was certainly more in keeping with what actually happened in the Easter Uprising. He does not appear to have seen a single sacrifice as adequate to the nationalist task. In part, this was simply the result of history; there had been many sacrifices to that point and none had resulted in the redemption of the nation. But such a vision also derived from Pearse’s continuing attachment to heroic narratives. He never fully extricated the sacrificial from the heroic—­a point related to his mixing of purgative and penitential forms of sacrifice. (On Pearse’s “emotional addiction to the heroic,” see Edwards [1978, 37].) This is unsurpris72  Idealized Sacrifice

ing, given the fundamental or default status of the heroic emplotment for nationalism. On the other hand, as I have stressed, it seems that Pearse was also deeply uncertain about this mixed sacrificial narrative (combining purgative, penitential, and heroic elements). The plays suggest that he feared it was all a mistake, that collective sacrifice would be pointless. Consistent with this, Augusteijn (2010, 316) points out that Pearse experienced “moments of doubt” even during the uprising itself. In The Singer, he resolved the dilemma by limiting the sacrifice to a single figure, a figure evidently representative of Pearse himself. In life, however, he did not have that option.



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3

Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love Shame and Desire in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat

Though Pearse’s sacrificial emplotment of Irish anticolonial activism is not simple, his stories are more straightforward than those found in many major works of postcolonial literature. One of the most admired and influential writer-­activists of the formerly colonized world is the Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. His 1967 A Grain of Wheat, like most novels, interweaves a number of stories, including some that instantiate different cross-­cultural genres. Two of these genres are particularly prominent—­the sacrificial narrative and the romantic narrative, the latter specifically in the form of an allegorical love triangle. Moreover, the sacrificial narrative is itself more complex, both cognitively and emotionally, than what we find in Pearse’s works. The emotional and thematic complexity of the stories in the novel is enhanced by the “discourse” or manner of narrative presentation, which varies the point of view of the narration and the time sequence of the events. Due to difficulties this poses for many readers, I overview of some main narrative sequences, along with their thematic import. Following that, I turn to Ngũgĩ’s use of the romantic and sacrificial genres. However, before proceeding, a brief sketch of some relevant points in Kenyan history is necessary. Notes on Kenyan Colonial History One important feature of A Grain of Wheat is its development of complex, “three-­d imensional” characters, especially Kenyan characters. Unsurprisingly, these nuanced portrayals serve Ngũgĩ’s thematic purposes in the novel. By depicting the entire spectrum of characters as complexly human, Ngũgĩ indicates that they should not be divided into angels and 74

demons; more technically, they should not be formed into moral identity groups (see Morton [2011] and the afterword to my Literature and Moral Feeling [2022a] on the effects of this sort of division). The colonial occupation and settlement of Kenya proved particularly traumatic and divisive for Kenyans. As the novel’s revolutionary hero, Kihika, explains—in keeping with the British strategy of divide and conquer—­“Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them” (Ngũgĩ 1967, 186). Divisions among the people were only deepened in the decade and a half prior to independence, a period that witnessed the Mau Mau uprising and the British counterinsurgency war. As Kennedy (2016) points out, “the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya . . . was as much a civil war among the Kikuyu population” (58) as it was a rebellion against the colonizer. In consequence, the Kenyan people needed to forgive one another for what they did in the brutalizing conditions of a colonial war of occupation. If the people could not recognize that brutal conditions foster brutal behavior, even by people who would ordinarily be sympathetic, generous, and humane, then the new nation seemed to be doomed. The idea underlies the official program of “Harambee.” As Maxon and Ofcansky (2000) explain, this “national motto of postindependence Kenya” urges the people, “let us all pull together” (89). Ngũgĩ sets out to foster this national reconciliation by humanizing individuals from the various pre-­independence factions and clarifying the historical circumstances that led them to behave in sometimes heinous ways—­while also demonstrating that they did not act only in heinous ways. Ngũgĩ’s attitude in this novel is broadly in keeping with the views of Jomo Kenyatta, the most prominent Kenyan politician and the first president of independent Kenya. Specifically, Kenyatta maintained that Kenyans must “erase from our minds all the hatred” of the preceding years, “never refer to the past,” and accept that “we all fought for freedom” (qtd. in Elkins [2002, 876–­77]). I say “broadly in keeping” because Ngũgĩ does not avoid referring to the past. Indeed, for him, such reference is needed. To use a French phrase, rather than a Swahili term, we might say that the assumption of A Grain of Wheat is “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardoner,” to understand everything is to forgive everything.1 Of course, Ngũgĩ cannot provide all the information needed for such understanding—­and neither can an interpretive explication (such as the present chapter). But it is possible to fill in at least some background that

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may be unfamiliar to many readers. Anderson (2005, 387–­94) presents a useful chronology, from which I draw the following points. In 1895 the British claimed East Africa (which was not at the time formed into its current nation-­state units) as a “protectorate.” When not simply “a masked form of annexation,”2 the unilateral declaration of a protectorate relation suggests at best a paternalistic relation of the “protector” nation to a minor or ward. Over the following years, the British constructed the railway that served their political, commercial, and cultural purposes (and appears as a sort of entertaining oddity in A Grain of Wheat). Within a decade, English immigrants began to settle on the farmland in the highlands of Kenya and to establish a governmental structure. Unsurprisingly, organized Kikuyu resistance to the settler appropriation of land was evident by 1920. Those developments reached one sort of culmination in the proceedings of the Kenya Land Commission, beginning in1932. In 1934 the commission issued a report “denying and nullifying virtually all Kikuyu land claims against European expropriation” (Anderson 2005, 388). This is one key source for the later focus on land in the “Kenya Land and Freedom Army” (klfa, also referred to as the “Mau Mau”). The other focus of the klfa was, of course, freedom. This meant many things, such as the ability to choose one’s own political representatives or simply to live in one’s home without being arrested or forced at gunpoint to relocate to a “safe” place (i.e., a place where the government could more easily observe and control one’s actions), as occurred on a massive scale during the counterinsurgency war. It also meant having the ability to preserve one’s cultural practices. In Kenya, perhaps the most emotionally intense conflicts in this domain came over the practice of female circumcision (sometimes termed “female genital mutilation”). The practice makes a brief appearance in A Grain of Wheat (Ngũgĩ 2012, 84–­85), where Ngũgĩ’s hero, Kihika, maintains the compatibility of this Kikuyu cultural practice with Christianity. The compatibility is important, given that Ngũgĩ is trying to reconcile these aspects of Kenyan culture (i.e., Kikuyu tradition and Christianity), in part because he appears to genuinely value both traditions. In any event, the conflict over female circumcision formed a significant part of many Kenyans’ concerns about (cultural) freedom. In the 1940s both the conflict over freedom and that over land in76  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

tensified. For example, regarding the former, specifically political freedom, the colonial government banned the Kikuyu Central Association of Jomo Kenyatta and others. As to the latter, government land policies enabled the removal of Kenyan tenants—­or “squatters”—­from (settler-­ owned) farms (Anderson 388). By the middle of the decade, some Kikuyu were taking oaths to oppose the colonial government and militant resistance by squatters had begun. Over the following years, some hundred thousand African squatters were forcibly evicted from white farmlands (Anderson 2005, 24). The escalation in evictions was paralleled by an escalation in militant resistance, with antigovernment oathing spreading significantly from 1950 and the colonial government outlawing what they called “Mau Mau” beginning in that year.3 Despite government actions, by 1952 there appeared to be a more systematic, militant insurgency. Arson attacks against white farmers and chiefs collaborating with the colonial government occurred in early 1952. Starting in May of that year, a number of collaborators (“loyalists”) were assassinated by the revolutionaries, at the rate of roughly ten per month. In October, the government declared a state of emergency. The declaration enabled the suspension of civil liberties and the build-­ up of government troops, including the Home Guards. As Maxon and Ofcansky (2000, 93) explain, the Home Guards were African soldiers employed by the colonial government, eventually numbering some twenty-­ five thousand. Because they “provided good intelligence” and “helped to control the local population,” the British “often overlooked atrocities committed by Home Guards personnel.” Through both the Home Guards and non-­African troops, the British practiced collective punishment (Anderson 2005, 391); here, the government does not punish the perpetrators (whom they cannot apprehend) but instead brutalizes the entire community of the (supposed) perpetrators. For example, Ngũgĩ refers to a case of “collective punishment” (2012, 115) in which all African businesses in an area were closed down as retaliation for Mau Mau activity. The colonial government officially intensified such punishments in 1953 through the “Emergency Regulations” of that year (see Elkins [2005, 55]). Other restrictions on freedom occurred when the Kikuyu independent schools organizations were outlawed and the Kenya African Union of Kenyatta and others was banned. In addition, the government used torture on suspected revolutionaries (a practice exposed and con

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demned by British anticolonialists Barbara Castle of the Labour Party and Eileen Fletcher [Anderson 2005, 92–­393]). The main fighting of the Mau Mau uprising had effectively ended by the February 1957 execution of klfa leader Dedan Kimathi. The revolutionaries had in one sense lost. But in the following month, Kenyan elections finally included Africans. The process leading to independence seemed inevitable from this point on. In this sense, the revolutionaries were at least partially victorious (not unlike the 1916 revolutionaries in Ireland). Of course, that hardly makes the war itself any less cruel and painful. As Kennedy (2016, 58) explains, in the course of the war, “The Royal Air Force carpet-­bombed the forests that harbored Mau Mau camps. Most of the Kikuyu population—­more than a million people by one estimate—­was rounded up and resettled in villages patrolled by Home Guards. Several hundred thousand suspected militants were incarcerated. . . . An estimated 20,000 Mau Mau rebels and 100,000 Kikuyu civilians died during the war.” The “last hangings of Mau Mau convicts” occurred in 1959 (Anderson 2005, 393). The exposure of deaths in the Hola British detention camp (the model for the incident that led to Thompson’s disgrace in the novel) occurred in early 1959. In September of that year, the British admitted using “excessive force” in their response to the Kikuyu rebels (393), rather an understatement but at least a step in the right direction. In January of 1960, the state of emergency officially ended. That same year, Kenyan political parties formed and engaged in political work, and the following year, Kenyatta was released from prison. Constitutional conferences were held in 1962 and 1963. On the basis of a new constitution, general elections “on a common franchise” were held in 1963, and on December 12 of that year, Kenya became an independent nation (394). The Characters and Their Stories As already mentioned, given the fragmentation of the narrative and the multiplication of narrative foci, it is valuable to sketch the main concerns of the novel in a more continuous manner. In this section, I reorganize the narratives around the most prominent characters. In doing so, I also provide some further (though necessarily incomplete) background information. 78  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

Kihika and Mugo The most important of the main narratives in A Grain of Wheat is probably that of Kihika. Though Kihika was executed before the action of the novel begins, he serves as a sort of exemplar against which we might evaluate all the other characters. Kihika, the brother of Mumbi and Kariuki, was a legendary, revolutionary leader, fighting with the klfa in their struggle against the British colonial administration and its Kenyan collaborators (e.g., the Home Guards). He forcefully opposed British colonial domination and should remind readers of the real, historical revolutionary, Dedan Kimathi, a klfa leader revered by Ngũgĩ (cf., for example, Ngũgĩ’s celebratory claim that “the spirit of the Kenya Land Freedom Army (klfa) and its leader Dedan Kimathi is being reborn in Kenya today!” [Ngũgĩ 1987, xvi]).4 Among other acts, Kihika assassinated the notorious district officer, Thomas Robson. Robson was responsible for shifting people to (prison-­like) “protected” villages. He also executed suspects without trial and engaged in psychological cruelty (e.g., by keeping them uncertain about their death until the last minute; see 181).5 Many readers are likely to feel some discomfort at Kihika’s straightforward advocacy of terrorism, for example when he asserts that “that is our aim. Strike terror in their midst. Get at them in their homes night and day” (186). Nonetheless, he is the author’s ideal figure in the novel, a character whom Ngũgĩ even assimilates to Jesus. In keeping with this assimilation, Kihika dies and, just as Jesus—­living under Roman, rather than British, imperial rule—­was betrayed by Judas, Kihika is betrayed by Mugo, who calls himself “Judas” for precisely this reason (218; see also 141). Perhaps surprisingly, Ngũgĩ focuses much of the novel on Mugo, and his treatment of this character is far from damning, despite Ngũgĩ’s antipathy toward treachery against the klfa. Mugo was orphaned as a child, then raised by cruel aunt. He does betray Kihika. But his betrayal is due principally to fear. He is acutely aware of the danger he is put in when Kihika hides in his home. He reflects that “to be caught harbouring a terrorist meant death” (188); at the same time, “If I don’t serve Kihika he’ll kill me” (189).6 Though he feels ashamed of himself for most of the novel (recalling Judas’s suicidal remorse [see Matthew 27:3–­5]), Mugo is not unredeemed. Without knowing who she is, Mugo subsequently tries—­at con

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siderable risk to himself—­to save Kihika’s former girlfriend (Wambuku) from assault by a Home Guard: “A homeguard jumped into the trench and lashed the woman with a whip. Mugo felt the whip eat into his flesh, and her pained whimper was like a cry from his own heart” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 168). While others do nothing, “Mugo pushed forward and held the whip before the homeguard could hit the woman a fifth time” (168). This act of basic human decency—­marked by particularly intense empathic sensitivity—­is widely construed as political and leads to his imprisonment and torture. Specifically, the British were waging a brutal counterinsurgency war against the klfa. When they captured someone they identified as a klfa militant, they demanded that he confess having taken an illegal oath of loyalty to the klfa and that he identify others who had taken the oath as well. Mugo never took the oath. Nor was he in a position to identify people who had. It is principally for these reasons that he never confesses. However, he is seen by actual revolutionaries as an exemplar of the strictest revolutionary discipline. In consequence, these actual revolutionaries choose to honor Mugo especially at the time of Kenyan independence. This unmerited celebration leads Mugo to confess to the Kenyan people that he betrayed Kihika. A small group of revolutionaries then undertakes the task of executing him. The execution of Mugo may seem to suggest that Ngũgĩ condemns him. But Ngũgĩ appears to be very sympathetic to Mugo, expecting us to be sympathetic also. We recognize why the revolutionaries feel that this execution is necessary. Indeed, the Mau Mau fighters’ loyalty oath included the statement “If I know of any enemy of our organization and fail to kill him, may this oath kill me” (Elkins 2005, 26). If they are to remain faithful to their oath, and to the comrades with whom they shared this oath, it seems they must execute Mugo. But the development of the entire story suggests a criticism of the oath, with its devaluing of life (a disturbingly recurrent aspect of Mau Mau militancy), rather than a criticism of Mugo. This criticism is enhanced by the fact that the oath does not seem consistent with orthodox Gikuyu beliefs and practices. For example, speaking of traditional, Gikuyu ethics, Kinoti explains that the Gikuyu had a “traditional concern to spare the life of an offender rather than to snuff it out.” In consequence, “there had to be a sufficient reason for a habitual criminal to be given up as incorrigible and consequently to be executed” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 163). Such orthodox restraint is radically 80  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

at odds with the Mau Mau practice, which may be characterized as reactionary in consequence.7 In keeping with this, Wambui—­the “judge” in Mugo’s Mau Mau trial (234)—­views the execution as “a terrible anti-­ climax to her activities in the fight for freedom” and reflects that “perhaps we should not have tried him” (239). The Europeans Mugo voices the view that white people are devils (178), taking up the animacy domain in what is arguably a reactionary attitude as well.8 This is not the opinion of Ngũgĩ, at least as expressed in the novel. In any case, it is valuable to briefly consider the white characters in this context. It does seem to be the case that Ngũgĩ represents European women as sexually promiscuous in contrast with their more serious and politically engaged African counterparts. But this is arguably less a matter of racism than of an anti-­racist response to the common representation of African women as promiscuous, and in particular a means of exculpating Mumbi for her infidelity (to which we will turn in a moment). Only one white, male character is presented in much detail—­John Thompson, district officer for the area treated in the novel. He was formerly in charge of the detention camp where Mugo was sent, but he was caught in a scandal in which a number of detainees died (46). Ngũgĩ based the episode on the “Hola Camp Affair” in which eleven klfa fighters were killed in forced labor (in Thompson’s scandal, eleven detainees died as well [45]). As Maxon and Ofcansky (2000, 92) explain, “The incident and the failed cover-­up provoked a major political controversy in Great Britain.” Thompson is a champion of the British Empire, apparently believing that the empire will benefit Africans, as it is “based on the just proposition that all men were created equal” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 53); it is presumably not without irony that Ngũgĩ has Thompson allude to the American Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonists’ rejection of the British empire along with its social hierarchies while continuing the white settler population’s practice of slavery. Thompson’s reasoning here is in keeping with his liberal colonialist view that Africans are akin to children (54). In connection with this last point, Thompson is writing a book entitled Prospero in Africa. Ngũgĩ’s aim here is evidently to criticize the postcolo

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nial theorist Octave Mannoni, author of the influential book Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization (1956). In that book, Mannoni develops the idea that colonized people become dependent on colonizers in a roughly oedipal pattern, in the manner of small children dependent on their parents. The dependent colonial population becomes enraged when they determine that the colonizers have not exhibited adequate parental devotion, which leaves them feeling betrayed. This (oedipal) rage may then be invoked to explain such phenomena as the Mau Mau rebellion and its violence, making it unnecessary to consider more plausible motivations, such as overcoming poverty, restoring stolen Kikuyu land, ending the racist organization of government, or even responding to shame. There is an added irony here, as Ngũgĩ connects Thompson with Conrad’s Kurtz. Specifically, Thompson writes in frustration over the recalcitrance of the African rebels: “Eliminate the vermin” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 130), echoing Kurtz’s “Exterminate all the brutes!” (J. Conrad 2016, 46; the parallel is noted by Gurnah in his introduction [1986, xiv]).9 At the start, Thompson’s attitude, though clearly culturally biased, is broadly humane—­that colonial policies (or at least the ideals that he imagined to guide those policies on the whole) “must surely lead to the creation of one British nation, embracing peoples of all colours and creeds, based on the just proposition that all men were created equal” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 52–­53). But, like the participants in Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment, Thompson’s moral sensibilities are degraded by his authority and the practice of violence that became part of his regular administrative activities.10 Mumbi, Karanja, and Gikonyo Along with the treatments of Kihika and Mugo, the novel’s other main story sequence concerns Kihika’s sister, Mumbi, and the two men who love her and compete for her affection—­Karanja and Gikonyo. Karanja begins as a Mau Mau anticolonial nationalist. However, he comes to believe that Africans will be unable to defeat the British (144). Initially, “he confessed the oath and joined the homeguards to save his own life” (226). More exactly, in order to secure his future—­and, he believes, the future of the woman he loves (Mumbi)—­he collaborates with the British, becoming a member of the (African) counterinsurgency paramilitary working for the British administration against the klfa. Subsequently, he be82  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

came one of the pseudo-­traditional authorities or “chiefs” established by the British (143). A number of “chiefs” were “colonial-­appointed,” which is to say, “created by the colonial government and thus wholly illegitimate in the eyes of ordinary Kikuyu people” (Elkins 2005, 18–­19). As Cheeseman, Bertrand, and Husaini (2019) explain, “colonial governments often granted potential collaborators ‘warrants’ to act as local representatives of the colonial regime among their people,” hence the common phrase “warrant chief” (s.v. “Warrant Chief” in Cheeseman, Bertrand, and Husaini [2019]). And so Karanja identifies his former comrades to the British authorities, despite what this will entail for the people he betrays (Ngũgĩ 2012, 226). But this is not all there is to Karanja. He is, in fact, generally kind to Mumbi, giving her and her mother-­in-­law food when they are hungry (138, 141), aiding them during forced relocation (138), helping her younger brother to avoid the social stigma that being the sibling of a Mau Mau leader would otherwise have produced (144). Then, as the forces for Kenyan independence achieve greater success, Karanja loses his chieftaincy, and his social authority more generally. Eventually, he is employed in a library, wholly dependent on his white employer, John Thompson. When Thompson and the other Europeans lose power and arrange to leave Kenya, Karanja feels betrayed himself. (It is worth noting that Ngũgĩ represents Karanja’s feelings as entirely rational and based on his cost-­ benefit calculations; they contrast directly with the convoluted, psychoanalytic interpretations put forth by Mannoni.) In the contest for Mumbi’s love, Gikonyo wins and marries Mumbi. In partial contrast with Karanja, Gikonyo remains loyal to the Mau Mau revolution until he is detained by the British for six years (112). During that detention, in part tortured by his separation from Mumbi, Gikonyo confesses to taking the Mau Mau oath. He does this despite the fact that he is never beaten (66). On the other hand, he confesses only his own violation of colonial law. He does not name names but protects his comrades, though this prevents his release and return to Mumbi. During this time, Mumbi has a single sexual encounter with Karanja and conceives a child. Upon his release, Gikonyo finds it impossible to forgive Mumbi and treats her brutally—­again, in contrast with Karanja. For example, at one point, he slaps her twice and calls her a “whore,” after mistreating the child. More significantly, at another point, he resolves to mur

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der her. He does not do so. But this is only because he accidentally injures, and thereby disables, himself before he can lay his hands on her. In contrast, Karanja in effect saved her life while Gikonyo was in prison. The novel concludes, however, with the beginning of a reconciliation between Gikonyo and Mumbi. The tentative, first steps toward this reconciliation suggest what I take to be the overall purpose of the novel. Ngũgĩ is aiming to end the pre-­independence factionalisms, with their political antagonisms and personal hatreds, in order to join former enemies in working together for the benefit of the new nation.11 The novel was published in 1967, only four years after Kenyan Uhuru, which is to say, national independence on December 12, 1963. (“Uhuru” is Kiswahili for “freedom” [Elkins 2005, 359].) Ngũgĩ wrote the novel at the time when Harambee (“Let us all pull together,” in Maxon and Ofcansky [2000, 89]) seemed most necessary and most possible. It is for this reason that Ngũgĩ represents militants and Home Guards, as well as Kenyans with various degrees and kinds of political commitment in between. It is also why all the characters are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Though despicable as a Home Guard, Karanja is sympathetic in his kindness to Mumbi. Though largely loyal to his comrades, Gikonyo has no feeling for what Mumbi went through when he was incarcerated, and she didn’t even know if he was alive. Though he betrayed Kihika, Mugo acted out of fear, and he bravely defends a young woman he does not know; later, he confesses his betrayal of Kihika rather than letting someone else be punished for that betrayal. Stories and Emotions In developing the stories of these characters, Ngũgĩ clearly relies on the historical context. But he integrates history with myth and legend; he simulates the experiences and emotions of individual characters and the details of events to yield particular causal sequences (not merely broad, national trends); and—­what is most important for our purposes—­he selects from these simulations, and organizes and articulates that selection, by reference to story structures. (Note that those story structures are not simply static but also alter in interaction with the history, myth, and simulation of particulars.) In a prefatory note to the novel, Ngũgĩ explains that “all the characters in this book are fictitious. . . . But the situation and the problems 84  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

are real” (xix). In the course of the novel, he seems to suggest that there is less fiction than we might imagine. For example, one of his characters is General R, the “R” being an abbreviation for “Russia.” Readers familiar with Kenyan history will inevitably recall the famous Mau Mau General China. Especially in the context of General China, the name “Karanja” might bring to mind China’s close associate, Karani Karanja (see Anderson [2005, 233]). The scandal that ruined Thompson’s career clearly recalls the Hola Camp Affair, as already mentioned. There are other links of this general sort as well. However, on consideration, it is clear that these associations do not suggest identity. For example, the novel’s General R is clearly not General China. Rather, I take it that the point of these resonances is to cue the reader to recall historical persons or events in connection with these fictional characters and events, suggesting the historical plausibility of the fictions and thereby facilitating the reader’s emotional responses to both. Another way of thinking about it is that Ngũgĩ is employing a sort of complex personification. As Angus Fletcher (1964, 26) explains, in personification, typically “the agents are intended either to represent abstract ideas or to represent actual, historical persons.” In Ngũgĩ’s novel, the characters frequently represent social and historical tendencies (a sort of abstraction, though often a dynamic, rather than static one). Sometimes the same, sometimes different historical tendencies are partially exemplified in fictional characters (e.g., General R) and in the particular, historical individuals (e.g., General China), who may be suggested by those characters’ names or some event in their lives. Again, for our purposes, the most important components of Ngũgĩ’s fictional simulations are the (emotion-­defined) genre structures. As is the case with most novels, A Grain of Wheat encompasses stories from several genres. There is the story of revenge for Kihika’s betrayal and death. General R’s pursuit of Karanja and execution of Mugo are explicitly characterized in the novel as driven by a desire for “revenge” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 26, 218). Moreover, in keeping with common patterns in the revenge genre, the final act of revenge is, at best, morally equivocal, for it is a cruelty that does not undo but merely adds to the harm of the initial crime. In keeping with this, Mumbi reflects, “Surely enough blood had already been shed: why add more guilt to the land?” (176). This is particularly striking because, at this point, she believes that Karanja will be the one

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executed—­and he has committed many more crimes than Mugo. The one positive feature of this revenge is that Mugo is indeed guilty of betraying Kihika. This revelation prevents General R from killing the wrong man, Karanja. This positive feature results from the fact that the revenge is combined with a process that is roughly that of criminal investigation. But events in the novel suggest that the two processes—­impassioned, individual revenge and putatively rational criminal investigation—­are intertwined and that, at least in the emotionally and cognitively distorting conditions of colonialism, they share an almost inevitable tendency to be inhumane and unjust.12 (The last point is consistent with the advocacy by some authors of reconciliation processes, though this does not seem likely to be the solution favored by Ngũgĩ.) Another genre that puts in a limited, but perhaps significant appearance is that of seduction. Specifically, the relation between Mumbi and Karanja is roughly a seduction, but it is a complex and in some ways anomalous one. After being pursued by Karanja for years, Mumbi finally has sex with him at a point when there is almost no pressure on her to do so. Karanja does kiss her, but far from rejecting his approach, she “welcomed” it (146). Moreover, the abandoned partner in this case is clearly Karanja, not Mumbi. (Indeed, Mumbi is abandoned by Gikonyo, not Karanja.) In this respect, Ngũgĩ in part develops a variation on the “fertility” version of the seduction plot, in which a woman seduces a man—­ or allows him to “seduce” her—­in order to have a child, setting the man aside once this is accomplished (see Hogan [2011a, 211–­13]). But this is a peculiar version of that as well. Clearly, Mumbi did not set out to get pregnant and thereby face Gikonyo with a child he could not possibly have fathered (having been in detention for six years). I take it that the reasons for Ngũgĩ’s unusual development of the seduction plot derive from his thematic concerns. But those thematic concerns are not expressed primarily in the seduction plot. Rather, they are part of the romantic plot, which the other plot enters and complicates. Similarly, the revenge plot enters the sacrificial narrative. As this suggests, the two principle genres in the novel are romantic—­specifically, the love triangle part of that genre—­and sacrificial. The seduction and revenge narratives operate primarily to render the romantic and sacrificial narratives more ambivalent and ironic. As such, they may aid the

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reader in being more critically self-­aware in reading and responding to the romantic and sacrificial stories. Romantic Allegory As noted in the first chapter, one part of the romantic narrative often appears separately in postcolonial literary works and commonly takes on allegorical resonances when it does appear. That is the love triangle. In these cases, a man or, more frequently, a woman implicitly suggests the nation or some important group within the nation (e.g., the electorate). This character is faced with two suitors of divergent attitudes, professions, statuses, and so on. The suitors represent two different directions in which the nation can proceed in the future, two alternatives that the nation might “embrace,” leading ultimately to the “birth” of a child/new nation. Ngũgĩ varies this standard formula, so that the choice of the nation and the birth of the new nation are separated and in effect contradict one another, in part because the love triangle follows (rather than precedes) marriage and, in consequence, treats adultery—­t hus, a betrayal and reconciliation following betrayal, rather than a foundational choice of the marriage partner. Thematically (that is, in terms of the worldly issues Ngũgĩ wishes to address), this is the result of historical forces that effectively limited the freedom of the Kenyan people who are allegorized in this love triangle. Specifically, Mumbi/the Kenyan people must choose either Gikonyo/the revolutionaries or Karanja/the collaborators (or “loyalists”). She initially chooses the former. However, faced with the apparent defeat of the revolutionaries and made dependent on the collaborators, she forms a temporary bond with the latter. This has consequences for the new Kenya. The social acceptance of former collaborators is not only opposed by the revolutionaries but leads them to feel hostility toward those ordinary Kenyans who ended up cooperating in some degree with the collaborators. Everyone needs to overcome the resulting antagonisms if they are going to live together—­as individuals or as (allegorical representations of) segments of the new nation. This is, again, the problem of Harambee. Ngũgĩ is an author who makes repeated use of allegory, particularly national allegory, as a number of critics have emphasized (see, for example, chapter 2 of Ogude [1999]; these critics do, however, tend to under-



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stand Ngũgĩ’s allegories rather differently from what I will be proposing). Moreover, he suggests the related metaphors at various points. Of course, to some extent, this could be written off as a simple matter of employing common idioms, such as the “birth” of a nation. This may appear to be the case, for example, when Ngũgĩ refers to Gikonyo’s idea that “his reunion with Mumbi would see the birth of a new Kenya” (2012, 103). The obvious point of this sentence is simply the banal one that Gikonyo’s reunion with Mumbi would occur in time for them both to celebrate Kenya’s independence. If a reader suggests that Kenyan independence would allegorically be a reunion of whatever Gikonyo and Mumbi represent, a skeptic might respond that such a claim overinterprets what is likely to be a simple, unselfconscious use of a common idiom. But on the same page, Ngũgĩ develops the larger complex of metaphors in such a way as to indicate that he is indeed self-­conscious about the modeling of political relations on family relations. Specifically, he—­or, rather, Gikonyo—­refers to Jomo Kenyatta’s conviction on charges related to the Mau Mau insurgency. (The charges were almost certainly false [see Anderson (2005)], but—­given their sympathies—­Gikonyo and Ngũgĩ would not have been critical of Kenyatta had they been true.) In connection with this, Gikonyo “extends” the basic metaphor of an independence leader as father of the nation (in Lakoff and Turner’s terminology [1989]). Specifically, Gikonyo thinks, “Jomo had lost the [legal] case. . . . The whiteman would silence the father and the orphans would be left without a helper” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 103). This may not be the most felicitous development of the metaphor, but it clearly goes beyond the “birth of a nation” idiom. Specifically, Gikonyo indicates that the conviction and sentencing prevented Kenyatta from communicating with his children, which is to say, conveying his understanding of colonialism and Uhuru to the people of Kenya. This separation of Kenyatta from the people of Kenya amounted to an orphaning of the latter, who now lacked the political leadership that would guide them in the way a father guides his children. It is worth noting that, here again, Ngũgĩ opposes Mannoni by replacing Mannoni’s paternal colonizer with an African political leader who, Ngũgĩ suggests, is a genuine parent to the colonized people. (It is also worth noting that Gikonyo sees this separation of the metaphorical Kenyan family as the result of the white man engaging in “devil’s trickery” [103]. Thus, he draws on the animacy domain in a standard way 88  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

to characterize an out-­group that appears preternaturally powerful. As already noted, Mugo presents the same idea later on, asserting that “a Mzungu [white person; see Oxford (2010)] is not a man—­always remember that—­he is a devil—­devil” [Ngũgĩ 2012, 179].) There are points at which Ngũgĩ indicates the people generally recognize and develop the analogy. A particularly striking case of this comes on the eve of Uhuru. A group has come together to celebrate the event. Ngũgĩ continues, “When the hour of midnight came, people broke into one long ululation. Then the women cried out the five Ngemi to welcome a son at birth” (200). This not only links the independence of Kenya with birth, it elaborates that connection by reference to Gikuyu tradition. Though it is not so clearly a self-­conscious development of a standard, national metaphor, a particularly significant case of allegorical extension concerns Gikonyo’s “wedding gift” for Mumbi. He does not manage to give her this gift before his detention. But their gradual reconciliation is accompanied by his return to the gift, and his work to produce it. Gikonyo is a carpenter and he hears Mumbi lamenting the lost art of carving traditional Gikuyu items, such as stools, which have been replaced by European chairs. Gikonyo determines immediately that he will carve a traditional stool for his union with Mumbi (107). This fairly straightforwardly suggests that the gift in some sense represents the association of their union with the revival of Gikuyu tradition. Gikonyo’s only problem is that he cannot think of a motif to carve on the stool. In detention, he returns to the issue. He is speaking with a fellow prisoner apparently about a different topic. But Ngũgĩ’s phrasing suggests that they are the same problem after all. Thus, Ngũgĩ tells us that Gikonyo is “dwelling on a motif which had just occurred to him,” when his interlocutor asks, “What’s there to think about now?” Gikonyo responds “triumphantly,” with a single word that presumably applies to both the conversation and his reflections on the motif, thus his marriage with Mumbi—­“Freedom!” (107). The suggestion would appear to be that the motif representing the marriage of Gikonyo and Mumbi is itself the motif of national freedom or, more concisely, the union of Gikonyo and Mumbi represents Uhuru, allegorically. Lest this appear to be a wholly fantastical interpretation, I should point out that Ngũgĩ comes close to making the allegory explicit. Specifically, he has Gikonyo sing a “new song” (78) to Mumbi. In that song, Gikuyu

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and Mumbi—­mythic ancestors of the Gikuyu people (see Elkins [2005, 171] and Treister [1984, 268])—­consider a bad situation (see Mwangi [2012, 101]); to convey the point, the song uses the Gikuyu idiom that something “is burnt at the handle” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 78; on the meaning of the idiom, see Mwangi [2012, 101]). As it turns out, in the novel, an important cooking utensil has literally been burnt at the handle; Mumbi asks Gikonyo to repair it, which he does quickly and effectively. Mumbi remarks on the parallel between Gikonyo and Gikuyu and between herself and the ancestral Mumbi. Later, in detention, the terrible thing (represented by the burnt handle) is connected with Kenyatta’s conviction, through what was more or less a show trial, in the case brought against him by the colonial government (Ngũgĩ 1967, 104). This suggests that the actions of people such as Gikonyo will be able to refashion the politics of Kenya, indeed repair Kenya itself, in the way Gikonyo—­drawing in part on Kenyan traditions—­repaired what was burnt at the handle. These refashioners of Kenya are, specifically, the people to whom he is speaking about Kenyatta and Uhuru—­the anticolonial militants of the klfa. This is all consonant with Gikonyo’s reflections in being sent to detention initially. At that time, repeating the reference to a “new song,” he reflects on how the day will come when they will sing “a new song at the birth of freedom” (102). Ngũgĩ obviously draws again on the “birth of a nation” metaphor in the preceding comment. This tacitly turns up when Gikonyo at last decides on a motif for the stool. At the end of the novel, Gikonyo finally begins the effort to reconcile with Mumbi. Having been hurt by Gikonyo’s violence in the past, she responds equivocally. Specifically, she responds “as if she was now really aware of her independence” (242). This shortly follows Uhuru and suggests (like much else in the novel) that we should connect Mumbi with the—­now, newly independent—­nation or, alternatively, the people who have become free with the establishment of the nation. Gikonyo considers once again the motif on the stool. First, he reflects that “he had never seen himself as father to Mumbi’s children” (241). Literally understood, this is a peculiar phrase. Gikonyo’s wife, Mumbi, has only one child. On the other hand, the ancestral Mumbi has many children—­the entirety of the Gikuyu people, in fact. So, what does this phrase imply? It seems to indicate that, just as Gikonyo did not accept his wife’s child (fathered by Karanja), so too the revolutionaries had not 90  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

fully accepted to various Gikuyu (or, more generally, Kenyan) people who did not adhere narrowly to the klfa oath and its commitments. Before going further with the stool, it is worth puzzling out this allegory a little further. Who exactly are “Mumbi’s children”? They would seem to be, roughly, the ordinary people, with their cultural practices, individual histories and dispositions, etc., as these developed in recent Kenyan history, especially during the Emergency and Mau Mau revolution. At the time, those people were living in isolation from the forest fighters and the detainees, but in regular, close contact with the Home Guards. Endangered by both groups, the people had to develop behaviors and even associated beliefs that allowed them to live while faced with threats both from the Home Guards (against any sign of dissent) and from the revolutionaries (against collaboration).13 The novel is designed to make us recognize this dilemma and sympathize with the people facing it. For example, as noted earlier, though Mugo was responsible for the death of the novel’s hero, Kihika, Ngũgĩ encourages the reader to be sympathetic with Mugo, given his extremely difficult position, then his courage in admitting his crime, which saved another man’s life and ended his own. Despite the fact that the victim was her own brother, Mumbi too is sympathetic with Mugo, recognizing the impossibility of his situation as an ordinary person. In this sense, he is more of an allegorical “brother” to Mumbi than was Kihika. As General R’s vengeance against Mugo indicates, these ordinary, uncommitted or, so to speak, “in between” Kenyans are never fully embraced by the revolutionaries after Uhuru. The revolutionaries are Manichean; their universe is divided into selfless heroes (such as Kihika), who sacrifice themselves to revive the nation and make it prosperous for all, and covetous devils (settlers and collaborators) who kill others in order to appropriate the wealth of the nation for themselves. But this Manichean division is profoundly misguided. No living character in the novel is so simple—­ again, Karanja harms many people, but aids Mumbi; Mugo betrays Kihika, but saves Kihika’s beloved Wambuku; Gikonyo confess to taking the oath and—­what is of course far worse—­he nearly murders Mumbi, but he does not betray his comrades (even though that would have secured his release and probably prevented Mumbi’s affair with Karanja). The list could obviously be extended. Moreover, Karanja is similar to some Home Guard in having genuine national feeling, genuine devotion to Mumbi/Kenya. Thus, he proclaims

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his passionate love for Mumbi (therefore, allegorically, for Kenya) and tells her that “he wanted only [her], that he had saved himself from detention and forests for [her]” (143). The latter point is clarified on the next page, where Karanja explains that he had decided to reject the mass suicide that he saw in the Mau Mau rebellion, the willingness for “us all to die in the Forest and in Detention so that the whiteman could live here on this land alone” (144). In this context, Karanja’s words apply to Kenya as a whole, not to Mumbi as an individual only. Given these points, it is clearly wrong for Gikonyo not to accept the “children” of Mumbi, the offspring of recent Kenyan history, for at least some of the “loyalists” loved Mumbi/Kenya as well. But what about the other side of this relationship, Mumbi’s feelings for Karanja? Why does she have sexual relations with him? I take it that this is simply an illustration of the disturbing fact that many Kenyans had sympathy with the Home Guards. As a boy, General R once tried to aid his mother when she was abused by his father, only to find her supporting the very man who was abusing her. Later, General R came to recognize a larger, human pattern in his mother’s apparently anomalous response—­ “when he saw how so many Kenyans could proudly defend their slavery . . . he understood his mother’s reaction” (208). The point extends to popular support for former Home Guards and other loyalists. One result of this was that “those now marching in the streets of Nairobi were not the soldiers of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army but of the King’s African Rifles,” which is to say, “colonial forces” (216). Keeping these points in mind, we may now return to the wedding gift. At the end of the novel, Gikonyo first envisions a motif that joins a man, a woman, and “a child on whose head or shoulders the other two hands of the man and woman would meet” (242). These figures evidently represent Gikonyo, thus the anticolonial revolutionaries; Mumbi, thus the (now independent) people of Kenya; and Mumbi’s child (from Karanja), thus the “offspring” (or inheritors) of the recent, divisive history, including the long interaction between ordinary Kenyan people and loyalist collaborators. But this design leaves something out—­the future, the new possibilities that arise from Uhuru itself. Thus, in the concluding words of the novel, Gikonyo makes one limited but consequential change in his design. He will carve a Mumbi who is “big with child” (243), pregnant with the promise of a future Kenya. It is of course no accident that 92  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

Gikonyo’s realizations about “Mumbi’s children” and about the future of Kenya occur in a chapter entitled “Harambee.” Again, that represents the central thematic concern of the novel—­and, indeed, the ideological program of the new nation. It is also no accident that this final chapter follows one that stresses the work ahead in building a new society. As Kihika puts it much earlier in the book, defeating the colonizer is “a question of unity” (86) and the Mau Mau oath was “the Oath of Unity” (93). Of course, for Ngũgĩ, the unity is not indiscriminate. It is unclear whether Karanja—­and others guilty of depredations against the people—­ will in fact be part of the new Kenya. It is also unclear whether Asians and Indians will be welcomed in this society. Finally, while some Europeans will remain in the new Kenya, they will not be part of the affective community that Ngũgĩ envisions for the new nation. On the other hand, despite the actions of General R, it seems clear that Ngũgĩ is concerned not with punishing the criminals of the past but with fostering the sense of forgiveness and unity that are necessary to the success of the new nation. This suggests an optimism that was, in many former colonies, often overwhelmed by disillusion a few years after independence. We see this disillusion in Ngũgĩ’s next novel, Petals of Blood, and even at points in A Grain of Wheat (e.g., in the government representative’s deception of Gikonyo to acquire good land for himself). But disillusion had not (yet) displaced the (cautious) optimism of the novel as a whole. Sacrifice Despite the importance of the love triangle in the novel, the most pervasive story genre in A Grain of Wheat is sacrificial. I do not take it to be the primary vehicle for the thematic concerns highlighted by Ngũgĩ. Rather, I see it as a general background, providing the fundamental principles of the way Ngũgĩ—­and many others—­conceive of colonialism and anticolonial nationalism. The novel certainly takes up purgative sacrifice. The assassinations of Robson and others may be instances of this, though they may also be seen as part of an attenuated heroic narrative of the sort that is often a subdued background in sacrificial nationalist works. However, Ngũgĩ focuses particularly on the case of Mugo, which is more clearly linked with the sacrificial genre and is, moreover, the one sacrificial narrative developed at length in the novel. The case of Mugo is purgative in that Mugo collaborates with the out-­group in

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betraying Kihika. But this is an unusual case, for there are mitigating circumstances, and Ngũgĩ’s treatment of the purgative sacrifice is critical, not celebratory. Indeed, thematically, Ngũgĩ’s central aim of reconciliation stands in direct opposition to the norms of purgative sacrifice, which are more in keeping with General R’s revenge.14 Thus, the sacrificial attitude of the novel is primarily penitential, with Kihika as the (Jesus-­like) scapegoat and hero.15 The social devastation at issue is the pervasive loss of wealth—­particularly land—­and of autonomy due to colonial domination. The suitable and effective response to that devastation, the novel repeatedly indicates, is the self-­sacrifice of the innocent. Though he is not drawing on the same distinctions and theoretical principles that I have been developing, Ogude (1999, 23) makes a closely related point, when he writes that “Ngugi underscores . . . the necessity of sacrifice” and that “the nationalist perspective of the text hinges on sacrifice, sowing of seeds which would die in order to bear grain”; this sacrifice, he continues, “is embodied in Kihika.” The importance in the novel of anticolonial self-­sacrifice is not in the least concealed. Indeed, it is quite explicit. On only the third page, Mugo looks at the homes of his town and sees “burnt sacrifices” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 3). On page 12, Ngũgĩ recalls the death of the nineteenth-­century anticolonial leader Waiyaki, writing that “Waiyaki’s blood contained within it a seed, a grain, which gave birth to a movement whose main strength thereafter sprang from a bond with the soil.” The image of the grain recalls and partially interprets the title of the novel, further indicating the centrality of the sacrificial emplotment. The title is also explained in a parallel manner by a biblical quotation later in the novel. The quotation, from John 12:24, is highlighted by Kihika and reads as follows (in the King James version): “Except a corn [here, meaning ‘grain’] of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (197). Kihika is the key sacrificial figure in the novel. From the moment of his introduction, Kihika “talked of the great sacrifice” (15). Moreover, he did not merely talk; “Kihika lived the words of sacrifice he had spoken to the multitude” (15). We soon learn that Uhuru is to be celebrated by “sacrifice and ceremonies to honour those who died that we might live” (24), which is to say, to honor the heroes of a sacrificial narrative, who save the nation through their own deaths. As the franchise is ex94  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

tended and Kenya becomes increasingly democratic, political meetings serve to “introduce the men whose sacrifice and loyalty to the country had made these elections possible” (63–­64). Thinking of Kihika, Mumbi reflects on the importance of “acts of sacrificial martyrdom” (87). Later, Kihika maintains that “Mahatma Gandhi won freedom for people and paid for it with his own blood” (93). In keeping with this, “In Kenya we want deaths which will change things, that is to say, we want true sacrifice” (93). (Further instances could be adduced as well.) The title of the book, and the image of the grain in reference to Waiyaki’s sacrifice, may serve to remind us that sacrificial narratives frequently address agricultural devastation—­drought and famine. Ngũgĩ makes use of the agricultural resonances of the genre also, linking colonial domination with drought and Uhuru with revitalizing rainfall. Thus, from the early pages of the novel, the reader is made aware that “there were no crops on the land and what with the dried-­up weeds . . . and the sun, the country appeared sick and dull” (6). The idea is stressed later, as when we are faced with the image of “sickly crops just recovering from a recent drought, one more scourge which had afflicted the country in this period leaving the anxious faces of mothers dry and cracked” (102). In contrast, just before Uhuru, rain begins to fall. Ngũgĩ develops the image, indicating that the rain comes from Ngai (God), so that the Gikuyu are “never without food or water or grazing fields” (173). Of course, the imagery suggests that the period of colonial domination is in effect a period without those things—­as we see, for example, from Mumbi’s hunger. But this is not due to a problem with the “beautiful country” given by God to the Gikuyu (173). It is, rather, a problem with colonial wealth extraction and redistribution. In keeping with this, Ngũgĩ goes on to associate rain with politically significant events, such as Kenyatta’s return from England (173). It is important to note that the general connection between the imagery of drought versus rain and colonialism versus Uhuru does not begin with Ngũgĩ. It is to be found in Mau Mau discourse itself, as we see from the prayer “I pray to you Ngai,” as “our forefathers used to” pray “for rains,/and rains used to come . . . grant us victory” (qtd. in Elkins [2005, 176]). The prayer directly parallels the end of colonialism with the beginning of rainfall that ends a drought.16 A somewhat unexpected or counterintuitive feature of Ngũgĩ’s elaboration of this parallel is the association between rain and God’s “tears”

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(2012, 173). Why, after all, would God be weeping? And why would that be a good thing, linked with restorative rainfall? Ngũgĩ clarifies the connection at the Uhuru celebrations, where one of the speakers invokes God, saying “your tears, oh Lord, are eternal blessings,” in line with earlier passages on rain. The speaker then continues, “Blood has been spilt for this day” (213). God weeps tears of sorrow and joy for the Kenyan national martyrs, whose deaths—­in the sacrificial narrative—­redeem and revive the nation by leading to the end of colonialism. Put differently, just as the land is revived with rain, the blood of martyrs revives the nation—­ through the mediation of Ngai/God in both cases. Indeed, this identification of the martyrs’ blood with rain is explicit from early in the novel, as when we learn that Kihika “had once stood calling for blood to rain on and water the tree of freedom” (17).17 These connections are further extended by Ngũgĩ’s use of Judeo-­Christian parallels.18 The most striking cases of this connect Kihika and other klfa fighters with Jesus, as when Mugo considers “Kihika . . . crucified” (171), or Kihika himself explains that “a few shall die that the many shall live. That’s what crucifixion means today” (186). Here we need to return to the execution of Mugo. Does it too nourish the freedom of the new Kenya? Ngũgĩ refers to Mugo’s execution as “the sacrifice before the storm” (219). “Sacrifice” may seem to suggest that it is beneficial. But “storm” would appear to imply something very different—­a violence that is not restorative but destructive, as when, earlier, “the wind and the rain were so strong that some trees were uprooted whole, while others broke by the stems, or lost their branches”; as a result, “crops . . . were badly damaged” (200). The phrasing seems most consistent with Mumbi’s thought, already quoted: “Surely enough blood had already been shed: why add more guilt to the land?” (176). Indeed, in this context, it is striking that Mumbi’s reflection concerns precisely the effect of killing on the land, thus continuing the agricultural focus of the metaphors we have been considering. The passage on the destructive storm concerns what occurred at night, before the dawn of independence. As such, it suggests the period of violence during the Mau Mau revolution and the Emergency. However necessary violence may have been at that time, it hardly seems appropriate to initiate such violence once more at the moment of the nation’s new birth.19 Again, Mugo’s story has the form of a purgative sacrifice (as he is guilty), but Ngũgĩ’s criti96  Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love

cal treatment of that story structure, along with his fostering of empathy with Mugo, suggest an attitude that is penitential rather than purgative. The mention of guilt and of empathy brings us back to emotion. Again, the heroic story is the default narrative form for nationalism. It is replaced by the sacrificial structure when the alien domination cannot be overcome by heroic means. This occurs for two closely related reasons. First, the dominant society is too strong for a military response by the conquered people to succeed. Second, the ultimate reason for the great difference in strength is that the dominated society has lost God’s favor. One result of these factors is that there is complex shame over defeat and subjugation. Indeed, this feeling is at the core of sacrificial nationalism. In keeping with that point, Diabate (2019, 339) remarks that in A Grain of Wheat, Ngũgĩ “restages an account of both individual and collective shame.” And indeed shame is pervasive in A Grain of Wheat. For example, at the very beginning of the novel, “Mugo walked, his head slightly bowed, staring at the ground as if ashamed of looking about him” (3). At any given moment, a character may be ashamed for personal or political reasons, but it is clear that Ngũgĩ sees the two as interrelated. Political attitudes (e.g., one’s commitment to policies aimed at reducing poverty) often derive from personal experiences; in addition, personal experiences (such as Mumbi’s shame over her relation with Karanja) are themselves often deeply political. For many characters in A Grain of Wheat, a key condition that underlies experiences of specifically colonial shame is the defeat of the heroic warriors of the Gikuyu past and present. In keeping with this, Oliver and Fage (1990) contend that, in the early period of European colonialism, “the most important factor . . . was probably not . . . land and labour . . . but the far more intangible psychological issue of whether any given society or group was left feeling . . . that it had been humiliated” (177). Shame drives the sacrificial thinking that is ubiquitous in the novel and that promises the restoration of individual and in-­group pride, through the establishment of an independent Kenya built on the ruins of its colonial predecessor and made possible by sacrifice, specifically by penitential sacrifice, for that alone is consistent with Harambee.



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4

Family Separation and Reunion Attachment and Mirth in Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer

Like Ngũgĩ’s novel, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1951 film, Early Summer, is generically ambiguous. It is most obviously a love story about Noriko and Kenkichi, who marry at the end. But the emotional center of the film is in the brief episode of the loss and discovery of the two children, Minoru and Isamu, and in the back story of the death of Noriko’s brother. Both are abbreviated versions of family separation—­comic in one case and tragic in the other. Moreover, as the mention of comedy and tragedy indicates, the emotions stressed by the film are complex and, in a sense, ambivalent. All the sequences just mentioned are based on attachment love, but that love is inflected differently in each case. The story of the dead brother obviously treats grief, and the story of the children’s disappearance concerns fear involved with a certain sort of attachment insecurity—­specifically, insecurity over the dangers posed by a changeable, dangerous, and unpredictable world. (Attachment insecurity can result from distrust regarding the attachment object or distrust regarding the world; in both of the cases in Ozu’s film, it is the world that is untrustworthy.) And romantic love is in part the result of an attachment bond. But perhaps the most obvious emotion provoked by much of the film is the sort of mirth that expresses itself in subdued laughter. This is clearly different from grief, but the two are not as rigidly contradictory as one might imagine, for both are related to attachment bonds and childhood. Thus, Ozu’s film presents us with an unusually subtle interweaving of genres, even if the familial genre is dominant (in the sense that it is crucial to the outcome of the more obviously pervasive romantic genre). Indeed, that dominance is nuanced as well, through its emotional understatement (typical of Ozu). Moreover, despite that understatement, the familial separation genre maintains its recurring function of fostering empathic response. 98

Of course, none of that, in and of itself, would make the film relevant for this book. But, in fact, all these emotions and the associated genres occur in the context of a widely ignored, atypical—­but, for those reasons, all the more important—­form of colonialism. Thus far, we have focused on emotions such as pride, shame, and guilt, whose bearing on colonialism is straightforward. But other emotions are inflected by colonialism as well, including mirth. Ozu’s film is, in this way, particularly valuable in the present context, for it gives us the opportunity to consider an emotion that is rarely considered in relation to colonialism but which can be significant and illuminating when examined in that context. Like everyone, colonized people laugh, even if they may have less to laugh about. The general principles of their laughter are also like those of anyone else, built on the same neuro-­affective mechanisms, derived from the same evolutionary history. Nonetheless, conditions following the onset of colonization enhance certain properties of humor and particular attitudes toward colonialism make certain uses of humor more salient in those conditions. In the present chapter, I first consider the difference between conditions and attitudes after the onset of colonialism. I then turn to the general nature of humor and its relation to properties of childhood, as this is crucial to the genre of this film. The third section takes up an instance of colonialism (albeit one rarely discussed in postcolonial studies)—­the U.S. military occupation of Japan after World War II. Based on this example, it outlines some characteristic properties and functions of humor in a colonized society. The final section explores the use of humor in Early Summer, the relation of this humor to the colonial condition of Japan at that time, and the relation of both to the generic structures of the film’s stories. The Postcolonization Condition and the Postcolonial Stance “Postcolonial” is a category that orients our description and explanation or interpretation of a work. Thus, it takes its place among many such categorizations, each of which is likely to have different orienting effects. For example, we might understand Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children differently if we think of it as a postcolonial novel, a comic novel (in the tradition of Tristram Shandy), a postmodern novel, and so on. It is important to note, however, that interpretive categories come in at least two varieties. One involves some situation or (generally nonelective)

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property—­for example, “woman”;1 the other involves an attitude—­for example, “feminist.” The distinction holds generally but is particularly important in cases where social hierarchies are involved. The situation and attitude of writers after the onset of colonialism is one such case. I will refer to the situation as a “postcolonization condition.” I will refer to the attitude as a “postcolonial stance,”2 drawing on a Marxist concept (“class stance,” as opposed to “class origin”) and a concept from affective science (“interpersonal stance”). The distinction bears on different aspects of literary production and reception. For example, Jameson’s (1986, 70) famous insistence on reading postcolonial works as national allegories presumably applies to works with a postcolonial stance rather than works merely produced in the postcolonization condition (though, even then, it is overstated—­as, for example, Ahmad [1992] has stressed). In other words, the postcolonial condition alone probably does not produce national allegory. In contrast, it may be that the condition alone fosters resentment toward the colonizers and their culture. This may underlie the stress on “resistance” found in so much postcolonial theory, though here too the tendency may be overstated. The emotional responses of colonized people are, on the whole, probably better characterized as ambivalent. This means that colonized people to a great extent both resent and admire, reject and aspire toward the culture, attitudes, even physical features of the higher-­prestige colonizers. At the same time, they feel both resentment and admiration toward the traditions and current practices of their own colonized in-­group. Indeed, a postcolonial stance is not so much a pure commitment that manifests an unequivocal motivational orientation. Rather, it is much more like the management of ambivalence, a simplification of impulses that are usually much more equivocal and contradictory. These general points apply no less to laughter than to anger or sorrow. In speaking of postcolonial humor, then, we may distinguish between humor that arises from a postcolonization condition and humor that expresses a postcolonial stance. Postcolonization condition humor is simply humor that is rendered more likely through the conditions of colonialism. An obvious case of this would involve translation errors. Such errors may lead to laughter at the colonizer or the colonized, in keeping with the ambivalence just mentioned. In contrast, postcolonial stance humor involves some strategic aim. Put different100  Family Separation and Reunion

ly, the study of postcolonization condition humor involves examining the ways in which general mechanisms of humor are characteristically specified in postcolonization works. The study of postcolonial stance humor involves both the examination of such mechanisms and the further study of the characteristic social and political uses to which humor is put in postcolonial works. Laughing In order to consider these issues more fully, we need to begin with a basic sense of what makes us laugh. I have argued elsewhere that the mechanisms of humor derive from errors in thought, speech, and action that are characteristic of childhood—­specifically, errors that tend to occur when children are striving beyond their developmental level (see Hogan [2008, 115–­18]). These range from the lack of certain sorts of motor coordination (as in pratfalls and comic drunks) to under-­inhibited right-­ hemisphere language processing (as in puns) to various forms of social gaffes (characteristic of not having learned proper social rules). I should stress that the point here is not that, for instance, verbal humor is confined to the types of pun that children would produce. Rather, the point is that there are certain mechanisms governing children’s errors. These include the sort of right-­hemisphere language processing that overproduces meanings—­or, rather, does not eliminate contextually irrelevant meanings. This leads to various sorts of children’s speech errors. Adults may produce statements that manifest the same mechanisms, either by accident or by design. When they do so, they are unlikely to confine their overproduction to meanings known by children. For example, an adult may pun on technical terms in Heideggerian philosophy, though these would be familiar to only a small percentage of children. Of course, it is possible that a child might inadvertently make a pun on Heideggerian philosophy. Indeed, children inadvertently make sexual jokes with some frequency. Again, it is the mechanisms of childhood errors that produce humor. These mechanisms do not require any intention to be funny. They bear, again, on errors, not cleverness. Indeed, children’s self-­conscious jokes are notoriously unfunny. Here, too, it is valuable to draw a distinction roughly parallel to that between postcolonization condition and postcolonial stance. On the one hand, there is the spontaneous instantiation of an error—­such as we

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find in children’s mistakes but also in slips of the tongue or certain sorts of unintentional falls (such as those caused by an unnoticed a banana peel). On the other hand, there is the intentional manipulation of mirth-­ generating mechanisms. We may refer to the former as a humorous condition and the latter as a comedic stance. One aspect of this distinction, likely to strike many readers immediately, is that a humorous condition is not always humorous for the person in the condition. Indeed, it may be humiliating for him or her. Put differently, the distinction between antipathy and empathy in the comedic stance is roughly parallel to the distinction between laughing at and laughing with. (As such, it may be connected with shame and pride.) The point obviously has bearing on any use of humor within conditions of social hierarchy. Of course, not all laughing at is derisive. After all, one may laugh at oneself without self-­loathing or even embarrassment. In keeping with this, not every instance of a humorous condition gives rise to derisive laughter. The childhood-­based account of humor helps us to understand just how the humorous condition can give rise to derisive laughter. First, by this account, viewing someone’s condition as humorous tacitly involves placing him or her in the position of an erring child. This is necessarily to some extent belittling. However, I would not consider that minimal belittling to be derisive in itself. If this were the case, then every time a parent laughed at his or her child, that would count as belittling the child, which is surely not the case. Two closely interrelated factors enter here, both of which concern empathy.3 The first factor is empathic sensitivity. Insofar as a humorous condition involves harm to the person in the condition, the observer’s empathy should serve to inhibit his or her mirth in response to that condition. Suppose Jones slips on a banana peel and, flailing his arms about, manages to grab hold of something nearby that slows his fall, which is still ludicrously awkward. This is quite a different situation than if he slips on a banana peel and cracks his skull, begins to bleed, and is unconscious, even if the awkward flailing is the same. My empathic response in the second case should serve to inhibit my mirthful response. If it does not, then we have a case of derisive laughing at. Here as elsewhere, empathic response rests on one’s sense of the other person’s suffering. A particular fall may look harmless, but not have been 102  Family Separation and Reunion

harmless. In addition to such sensitivity, it is bound up with the second factor—­one’s emotional inclination toward the other person, thus how one is affected by his or her suffering, which is to say one’s interpersonal stance (whether it is parallel or complementary/antipathetic). Both sensitivity and inclination bear on colonialism, because both bear on in-­group/ out-­group relations. We are far more likely to be aware of the harm done to members of our own in-­group than to members of out-­groups. For example, in a war, we may find the escapades of our brave soldiers to be delightful as we do not have a clear sense of the suffering of enemy soldiers. In addition, out-­grouping tends to produce complementary rather than parallel emotions (e.g., joy over an enemy’s fear, rather than fear for that enemy). Thus, other things being equal, any given American is more likely to feel grief over the suffering of an in-­group member (e.g., an American soldier) and more likely to rejoice in that of an out-­group member (e.g., an Afghani), compared to the reverse. In keeping with this, Jones may find my response to his fall objectionable even if he is entirely unharmed. From Jones’s point of view, it is a matter of trust. Put simply, Jones may not be sure that I would have responded differently even if he had been injured. Of course, Jones does not think through the issue this way, but this is roughly what his resentment often means. From my point of view, the correlate of Jones’s trust would be (empathic) benevolence. If I feel benevolence toward him, then I merit his trust (whether or not he recognizes this). Benevolence may be understood as an orientation toward supporting the other person’s interests (e.g., providing aid in his or her distress). Jones is likely to feel greater trust to the extent that he has greater certainty of my benevolence (along with my competence, but I will leave that aside). That benevolence may be general, a broad inclination toward helping everyone, or everyone in an in-­group. But it may also be particular. For example, Jones may not feel that I should care generally about people in his group but feel that I should care very particularly about him. In this second case, my benevolence is generally a function of attachment—­whether the attachment of friends or spouses or the even more fundamental attachment of parents and children. Indeed, it may be more apt to refer to this as “attachment-­ care.” Attachment bonds involve not only dependency (most obviously of the child on the parent) but also caregiving (most obviously from the parent to the child).

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The preceding comments return us to the sources of humor. Most of us feel very strongly that the amused response of parents to children should not be derisive. This is because parents should feel attachment bonds with their children, and these should promote both empathic sensitivity and benevolent caregiving. In fact, part of my argument about humor has been that its primary evolutionary function is the regulation of adult response to children’s failures—­or, more generally, the discrepancies between children’s efforts or performance and their developmental stage—­particularly in connection with attachment. This involves an intensification of interest in and attention to children. Put simply, without our humor response, children would be excruciatingly boring and we would be inclined to stop paying attention to them rather quickly. Moreover, the interaction of our emotional “mirth system” with empathic worry involves inhibition in both directions. Comic response tends to inhibit excessive worry, which would limit children’s necessary risk-­taking. But danger above a certain level inhibits comic response, when the lack of caution in such a response might lead children to risk serious harm. The point fits with research showing that “availability, noninterference, and encouragement” of an attachment figure are highly beneficial characteristics for both children and adults (Feeney and Thrush 2010, 57). One suggestion of the preceding points is that attachment enhances not only empathic response but also mirth. Both responses are, I believe, what most of us expect in daily life anyway. The enhanced empathy is obviously important for aiding one’s children when they are in genuine need or in genuine danger.4 However, that enhanced empathy could render the comic response null, undoing its functional role of preventing excessively cautious parenting. One consequence of the attachment-­based enhancement of mirth is that, in cases of non-­harm, we are much more likely to find our own children (or other attachment figures) amusing—­ hence the propensity of parents to recount the most banal stories about their children’s latest utterances and gurgle with delighted laughter over them. Indeed, we may oppose derisive mirth to what we might call “celebratory” mirth. Just as derisive mirth is prototypically associated with out-­groups (e.g., in racist cartoons), celebratory mirth is prototypically associated not only with in-­groups but with attachment figures partic-

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ularly. Examples would include parents’ often excessive enthusiasm for their children’s newest malapropisms. In sum, then, mirth is a response to certain properties, actions, etc., conforming to principles that characterize children’s failures in striving beyond their developmental level. This response may be enhanced, and made celebratory, by attachment. However, it may be inhibited by empathic sensitivity and benevolence, which are themselves enhanced by attachment. Humor is derisive to the extent that it is inadequately empathic. This inadequacy may result either from an inhibition (e.g., through in-­group/out-­group divisions) or through a misunderstanding of the suffering produced by the humorous situation. As to the last point, the observer of a humorous situation (“comic subject”) and the person in those circumstances (“comic object”) have different perspectives on the situation. Given this, we would expect some cases where the comic object views laughter as derisive, whereas the comic subject does not. In other words, we would expect cases of misunderstanding. Moreover, as with other emotions, we would expect some degree of ambivalence in many comic situations, for both comic subjects and comic objects, even when these are the same person. Finally, the spontaneous instantiation of mirth-­triggering mechanisms produces a humorous situation. However, the self-­conscious manipulation of such mechanisms expresses a comedic stance. This latter involves not only a comic subject and a comic object but a comic narrator who recounts the comic situation in a manner consistent with an encompassing attitude—an interpersonal stance—toward the comic object. Colonialism and Humor Given this analysis, what sort of humor would we expect to find in colonial (i.e., colonizing or colonized) societies? As to humorous situations, we would expect to find a great deal of mirth over the discomfort of out-­group members. Moreover, we would expect that discomfort to derive from the particular conditions of postcolonization society, insofar as these give rise to situations in some ways parallel to those facing children. Obvious cases of this include errors in language or in etiquette. Just as children make mistakes in learning language or in internalizing social rules, colonizers and colonized people are likely to make mistakes



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in learning the other group’s language and interacting with its members socially. We would also expect to find that the mirth provoked by these errors is greater for out-­group objects than in-­group objects, due to the inhibition on empathy. For example, we would expect American soldiers in Japan to find Japanese English humorous. In keeping with this, the well-­k nown Japanese difficulty distinguishing “r” and “l” has given rise to anecdotes concerning Japanese enthusiasm for Americans arranging to have elections in Japan. We would also expect Japanese people to see more humor in American attempts at observing Japanese customs than would Americans themselves. Thus, we would expect some form of alienation between the two groups on this score. Of course, not all Japanese would be inclined to categorize themselves as first and foremost “Japanese.” Some may, rather, see the crucial division as “educated” and “uneducated.” Thus, they might categorize themselves with educated Americans and Japanese, making uneducated Japanese and Americans into the out-­group. Similarly, a particular American may identify more strongly with colonized people than with colonizers. (This is the sort of case addressed by the origin/stance distinction in Marxism; for example, a petit bourgeois intellectual may commit himself or herself to the workers, thereby adopting a proletarian class stance despite his or her petit bourgeois class origin.) Nonetheless, the nature of the colonial system is such that few people in the colonial system can entirely avoid the emotional and cognitive effects of the colonial division of in-­groups and out-­groups. No matter how much a given Japanese person identifies as “educated,” he or she cannot help but recognize that at least some educated Americans are likely to categorize him or her as “Japanese,” with no restriction by education level. As a result, an American’s laughter at any Japanese person, even if the former is educated and the latter is not, is likely to make him or her feel ambivalent. Similar points apply to the American who takes a stand against colonialism. Perhaps surprisingly, the opposite seems to apply as well. My guess is that a wide range of even staunch nationalists sometimes find humor in the linguistic or social errors of their compatriots. That humor may be strongly inhibited by other feelings. But it is likely to remain part of a fundamental ambivalence. I also suspect that very committed imperialists have some sense of the humiliation suffered by colonized people

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in certain humorous situations, and that they too feel some spontaneous empathy, and therefore ambivalence, however limited. Postcolonial critics often stress colonized peoples’ resistance to colonization. For example, in her very valuable book, Insurgent Empire, Priyamvada Gopal (2019, 4) underscores the point, explaining for example that “the history of the British Empire is also the history of resistance to it.” Given colonial propaganda about the liberatory goals of colonialism, that emphasis is important. Even so, as already mentioned, it is probably more accurate to say that on the whole colonized people are ambivalent.5 The difference between being resistant and being ambivalent is important. On the one hand, both indicate that colonized people are not simply supine conduits for the glorification of the colonizer—­though that point should have been obvious all along. In addition, both indicate that, even in the most pacific conditions, the relation of colonizer and colonized may always have an element of instability. But this is not all there is to colonial relations. In addition, there may be sincere cooperation with the colonizer—­not merely a superficial acquiescence that papers over resentment and anger, and not merely selfish collaborationism (which is rightly highlighted in some scholarship on colonialism as well; see Keay [2000, 376]). Too great a stress on resistance also fails to indicate that there may be widespread anger, resentment, disgust, and other negative responses to the practices and ideas of one’s own, colonized group (e.g., the Japanese).6 Finally, in colonial conditions, emotional responses may shift both individually and collectively. This results from the fact that, as circumstances alter, the emotions constituting ambivalence may change their relative strength—­sometimes being quite pacific, then quite hostile. In short, the emotional relation between colonizer and colonized—­ with respect to humor or anything else—­is much more volatile and complex than is usually recognized. As with so much else, this complexity may be simplified by self-­conscious decision. Thus, we may, as usual, distinguish between condition and stance. There is the condition of postcolonial ambivalence. But then there is a stance. That stance may be favorable to the colonizer, favorable to the colonized, favorable to some combination of their properties and practices, or something else. Moreover, that stance will interact with the condition, altering the dynamics of



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ambivalence—­sometimes in such a way as to shift between opposites (e.g., from mimetic aping of the colonial culture to a reactionary affirmation of indigenous tradition).7 Finally, a particular, self-­conscious stance on the part of colonized people may lead to planned resistance or planned collaboration with colonizers. On its own, however, the postcolonization condition is more likely to lead to alternating and un-­self-­conscious acts of both spontaneous resistance and spontaneous collaboration. As all this indicates, most of us probably think about a comedic, postcolonial stance as, first of all, an unempathetic confrontation across in-­ group/out-­group divisions. Our prototypes are likely to be the racist joke of the colonizer and the grandiosity-­puncturing joke of the colonized. There are, of course, jokes of each sort. In fact, colonized people seem quite happy to tell the same sorts of racist jokes about colonizers as the latter tell about them. But humor after the onset of colonization is actually much more complex than our initial intuitions might lead us to believe. There are two reasons for this. First, as I have already stressed, the actual emotional relations across groups are more ambivalent than we generally imagine, even if stances tend to simplify this complexity. Second, in general, colonized people are much more concerned with their own society than with that of the colonizers. Their daily lives are much more bound up with other members of the colonized group than with colonizers. Moreover, in public contexts, there are often constraints on just what one can say about colonizers (e.g., in literature and film). In this way, expression is even more fully oriented toward colonized people. Japan, Colonialism, and Humor Consider, for example, the opening period of the American occupation of Japan. (The occupation lasted from 1945 to 1952.) As Dower (1999, 27) notes, this was clearly a colonial (or, as he prefers, “neocolonial”) situation. The Americans were politically, economically, and socially dominant, a foreign nation that controlled—­circumscribed the political, economic, and cultural autonomy of—­the Japanese. They had the usual privileges of colonists. They and their culture enjoyed the usual prestige as well (see, for example, Dower [1999, 136–­37]). What was the Japanese reaction to this? On the one hand, the Japanese had been adjured to believe their emperor was divine and that the war was 108  Family Separation and Reunion

holy (see Dower [1999, 34]). At the same time, even while widely expressing support for the emperor and the war effort, it is clear that they felt considerable ambivalence. The negative component of this ambivalence grew as the war dragged on and the sufferings of people on the home front increased. Thus, on the one hand, many Japanese wept when the emperor announced the surrender. But many accepted the Americans enthusiastically, embracing the changes that they brought. Certainly, they felt some antagonism toward what was in effect an American dictatorship. Certainly, they felt some nostalgia for the traditional cultural practices that they saw being replaced with American imports. They also resented the relative prosperity of the occupiers. But at the same time they felt angry at the Japanese governments that had led them to this condition—­governments that drove them to extremities of self-­sacrifice, then abandoned them to collaborate with the enemy. Moreover, ordinary Japanese people also felt critical of many traditional cultural practices. Almost every society underprivileges some people relative to others. A broad change in social practices offers the opportunity for the underprivileged to alter their status. Finally, while resenting the prosperity of the occupiers, many Japanese also wished to emulate them in order to achieve that prosperity themselves. None of this suggests that colonialism is ever, in any way, a just form of international relations. However, it is to suggest that the feelings of men and women in colonial situations are complex. Admittedly, this is more obvious in the case of the American domination of Japan. The Japanese had been aggressors in the war and soon came to realize this (and blame their leaders for it). Moreover, in the early stages, the occupation did bring genuinely beneficial political reform—­even if it did so in highly undemocratic ways. But, at the same time, the U.S. war against Japan had been marked by great cruelty against civilians, and the victors’ condemnation of Japanese war crimes was clearly marked by a hypocritical double standard. Japanese ambivalence was not simply the result of benevolence on the part of the American colonizers. In any case, Japanese ambivalence is evident in comedy from the period. There were certainly jokes that took the occupiers as their target. For example, in 1946 an entertainer asked, “How can we have democracy with two emperors?” (qtd. in Hirano [1992, 72]). The two emperors were Hirohito and General MacArthur. The joke relies on a childlike naivety that serves to undermine the pretentions of adults—­in this case, the

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pretense that democratic equality results from imposing a dictator, who himself supports another dictator (for MacArthur took pains to assure the continuation of Hirohito’s imperial rule). This is just the sort of joke we would expect intuitively—­or, rather, half of it is the sort of joke we would expect intuitively. The joke at least seems to lampoon Hirohito as well as MacArthur, and in that sense could just as readily have been told by a disgruntled American, with some rephrasing. In short, the joke is critical of both the colonizer and of the colonized society. There were no doubt many jokes of this sort told in private. Dower (1999) recounts a riddle that relied on a pun (thus childlike right-­ hemisphere processing).8 Specifically, “the imperial ‘We’” and a slang word for “penis” were both pronounced “chin.” The joke was that MacArthur was the navel of Japan because he was above the “chin,” thus above emperor or penis (305). Here too we have the dual criticism of the colonizer and the traditional order. Indeed, these two examples suggest that the difference between the powerful and the powerless is perhaps a more important axis of comic opposition than that between colonizer and colonized. Certainly, the suppression of humor may account for part of this, since the occupation authorities were very sensitive to any criticism of the colonizers (e.g., the comedian who asked about democracy with two emperors found his show closed down [Dower 1999, 405]). But we should not take this to mean that public humor overrepresents criticism of social hierarchies within the in-­group, for these too were inhibited. Indeed, the constraints on humor directed at the emperor were, in some ways, more severe. For instance, a worker turned up at the 1946 May Day celebration with a poster carrying a mock “Imperial Edict,” whose gist was that ordinary Japanese should starve to death. He was sentenced to eight months in prison (266–­67). More interesting than these criticisms of the powerful are the satires of broader social tendencies. Puns transformed “military uniforms” (heitai fuku) into “defeat suits” (haisen fuku), “military footwear” into “defeat shoes,” and so on (170). This too may be understood as operating to redraw the in-­group/out-­group lines. Humor directed at the emperor served to separate the Japanese people from the leaders whose incompetence and deceit led to the colonial occupation. There may have been a similar impulse in humor directed at soldiers. On the other hand, “defeat suits” would have involved self-­directed 110  Family Separation and Reunion

humor to the extent that the phrase was used by soldiers themselves. A similar point may be made about the revision of a “saccharine” children’s song to apparently celebrate the black market (170). Since virtually everyone had to participate in the black market, the singers and those who listened and laughed may have been partially implicated in its operation. Even so, all of this “self-­criticism” remains somewhat superficial. In most of these instances, we still find a basically confrontational and identity-­related use of humor. It is largely humor that relies on the inhibition of empathy. Indeed, this is true even of self-­directed humor, one function of which would seem to be inhibiting one’s own empathy with oneself—­since what is called “self-­pity” or “feeling sorry for oneself” is, fundamentally, a form of self-­empathy. Laughing at oneself may operate to disrupt cycles of self-­enhancing self-­empathy or self-­pity. During the period of kyodatsu or despair that was epidemic in Japan after the surrender (see chapter 3 of Dower [1999]), such humor was particularly important. As one writer put it, “I seriously feared Japan would collapse if the situation continued where people forgot even to laugh” (qtd. in Dower [1999, 174]). This is important and does go beyond our intuitive imagination of antagonistic humor after colonization—­even beyond the extension of antagonism to elements of the home society. Thus, we see cases where humor in occupied Japan addresses in-­group/ out-­group antagonism and serves to assist in “mood repair” (the operation of emotion systems to alter dysphoric states; see Forgas [2000, 258 and citations]). It is possible that these are the only significant functions of humor in postcolonization societies. But, if the evolutionary function of humor is bound up with attachment, this would be very surprising. It would mean that the more straightforwardly positive functions that are at the foundations of mirth do not carry over to either humorous conditions or comedic stances in such societies. Yasujiro Ozu, Attachment, and the Family Reunion Genre This brings us to Ozu. Making films during the American occupation of Japan, Ozu presents an unusual but compelling vision of the problems surrounding colonial cultural hegemony. Ozu, I believe, sought to separate the treatment of culture from identity categories—­such as large in-­ group/out-­group divisions—­and to redirect it toward intimate personal relations. Colonialism leads to rapid cultural, political, and econom

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ic change. The rapidity (and to some extent the nature) of that change may lead to emotional estrangement among people who have attachment bonds (e.g., parents and children)—­though it may also lead to the formation of bonds that would otherwise have been impossible. Ozu’s view on colonialism seems to have been that we should evaluate cultural changes individually—­not by reference to their origin or their location within national traditions but by reference to their effects on practical human life, particularly attachment relations. His use of humor, and his use of story genre, directly serve that purpose. More exactly, in Early Summer, Ozu presents us with the sort of child-­ centered humor that is paradigmatic for the preceding account of mirth.9 Moreover, he does this in a way that explicitly develops the humor in relation both to colonialism and to attachment bonds. Ultimately, the (celebratory) postcolonial stance humor of Ozu’s film operates to foster attachment relations rather than abstract considerations of identity categories. In this way, Ozu presents us with a radically different use of postcolonial humor—­one that is positive and enhances empathy with others even across strongly held identity divisions. Indeed, there is something radical about Ozu’s postcolonial use of humor, particularly in the Japanese context of this time. He does poke fun at the occupation government and at Japanese mimicry of American culture. Thus, he does employ, in a subdued way,10 this common form of postcolonial stance humor. There are also points at which he is clearly critical of Japanese traditions. But the basic function of his humor is to encourage tenderness for real children—­crucially, other people’s children. Indeed, Ozu develops both the tenderness and the humor through the rather innovative use of perhaps the most cross-­culturally common narrative prototype—­romantic tragicomedy. As the reader will recall, in this structure, two people want to marry but face impediments due to the interference of social representatives, typically parents (often the girl’s parents). Frequently, the conflict results from the lovers being from different religions, castes, classes, or other social groups. In Ozu’s film, the dilemma results from the fact that the man (Kenkichi Yabe) is a widower who has a young daughter. The family of the woman (Noriko) is opposed to the marriage in part because their daughter will be raising a child who is not her own. But Noriko is clearly fond of the girl. Moreover, her af112  Family Separation and Reunion

fection for Kenkichi derives in part from his own deep sensitivity to her attachment relations—­for example, his concern about her nephews when they temporarily disappear. Indeed, the substory of the boys’ disappearance forms a family separation and reunion narrative that is crucial for the romantic story, as we will see. The film has feminist elements as well—­a lso as part of the humor. It represents the debate between men and women over women’s recent acquisition of rights in a way that makes the men look somewhat foolish. But that humor never breaks the attachment bonds linking husbands and wives or brothers and sisters. Moreover, the film broaches these issues in a way that is not uncritical of Western attitudes toward women—­ which are also the target of gentle humor. I say all this is radical but not because it is feminist. Supporting equality for women was simply in line with the emerging status quo at the time. I say it is radical because of its stress on attachment—­and particularly on attachment that is not limited to one in-­group (e.g., one family) over another. It is radical because it responds to what some writers at the time saw as the root cause of all the problems faced by Japanese people—­not the Americans, not the Japanese wartime leaders, but practices and ideas in Japanese culture that led to their own imperialist terror in China, the Philippines, Korea, and elsewhere. In 1945 the feminist reformer Hani Setsuko wrote in Asahi Shimbun that the Japanese commission of atrocities in Manila and elsewhere was inseparable from “the low position of women in Japanese male psychology, as well as the general disregard Japanese held toward other people’s children” (as Dower [1999, 506] summarizes her argument). Hani is, in effect, pointing toward a widespread inhibition of empathy and attachment feelings. Ozu’s film—­including his use of humor and of the family separation genre—­ is, in effect, a small corrective to this inhibition. Early Summer After the credits and some shots establishing the scene, the film begins with a family at breakfast. We are introduced to the heroine, Noriko (played by Setsuko Hara); her brother Koichi (a physician); her sister-­in-­ law, Fumiko; her and Koichi’s parents; and the two young children of Koichi and Fumiko—­Minoru (maybe nine years old) and little Isamu (maybe four years old). Two things are noteworthy about this opening

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Fig. 1. Noriko smiles with affectionate indulgence at Isamu’s childish prank. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

scene. First, it is comic. Second, Noriko evidences the greatest attachment relations with the children (who, though related, are not her own), particularly Isamu. At the start of the film, Noriko observes that Isamu has not washed his face. Though she is correcting Isamu for this, she never stops smiling and looking at him in an affectionate and amused manner. Indeed, sometimes she even giggles at his antics, while the others largely ignore him. Hara’s way of playing the relation between aunt and nephew suggests how the viewer might respond to the young boy as well. Isamu patters out, enters the bathroom, picks up the towel, dampens it without touching his face, and returns the towel to the rack. The scene is very funny and predictably relies on Isamu’s littleness in reaching the towel, the tap, and so forth. Though she clearly suspects that Isamu has pulled a trick, Noriko does not press the point when he returns but continues her affectionate and amused look (fig. 1). The mood is enhanced by the music box–­like soundtrack.

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The scene continues comically when the father, Mr. Mamiya, talks about an uncle’s visit. When asked about the uncle’s food preferences, all he can recall is that the old man likes beans. Isamu enthusiastically chirps, “Me too.” It is funny in part because it is difficult to imagine the four-­year-­old boy genuinely relishing beans, rather than just following along with what he perceives as an adult preference. This opening establishes the links between humor and attachment. However, it does not yet suggest any relation of all this to colonialism. That will come later. Some short scenes follow, one of which introduces us to Kenkichi Yabe. Kenkichi is also a physician, junior to Koichi. We eventually learn that he was a classmate and close friend of Noriko’s other brother, Shoji, who is missing in action, presumably killed during the war. The familial separation of the Mamiya family and Shoji is a fragmentary and largely implicit story in the course of the film. However, in many ways, it tacitly pervades the rest of the film, setting the emotional tone and to a great extent orienting other emotional responses. A scene change takes us to Mr. Mamiya cutting Isamu’s toenails. He gives Isamu a treat in exchange for Isamu saying, “I love you.” However, after four treats, Mr. Mamiya decides that is enough. Isamu stomps off and says, “I hate you.” Though he is not simply joking, he does not make the statement with much emotion. It is, in a way, part of the game. Now that no treats are involved, he can simply say whatever he wants—­and he says the opposite of what his grandfather wishes. Though the humor does not come across in a description, it is a funny scene—­and Mr. Mamiya reacts with the sort of attachment-­based laughter we would expect (see fig. 2). Children in Ozu’s films are never very well behaved. But this sort of sweet indulgence and humor—­in effect, the adult laughing at himself and his demands for “I love you”—­nonetheless runs against the fetishization of filial piety that characterized imperial Japan (see Dower [1999, 277]). The following scene introduces Noriko’s boss and her friend, Aya. Aya has come to collect a bill from the boss. Speaking with Noriko, Aya introduces the issue of romantic love, explaining that a friend of theirs is getting married to a fellow who played basketball. Her use of the English word “basket,” in a distinct Japanese pronunciation, begins to suggest the cultural context in which the film is taking place.



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Fig. 2. Mr. Mamiya chuckles at Isamu’s misbehavior. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

It also suggests the common association between romantic marriage and Western influence—­though this connection will not be confirmed by subsequent events. Another partially comic scene follows, where Noriko, Koichi, and Fumiko have dinner. They discuss “etiquette,” again using the English word in a clearly Japanese pronunciation. However, their topic is not really politeness. It is, rather, the basic rights of men and women. Koichi complains that women have become too forward since the war. It is clear that Koichi is referring to the policy of gender equality put forth during the occupation and incorporated into the new Japanese constitution, which came into effect in 1947. So, at last, we have a clear indication of the colonial context. Moreover, he says this to Noriko, who is drinking beer. One could certainly imagine a scene that shows him to be correct and that illustrates problems with the new system. For example, it might show the woman behaving badly due to intoxication, or responding in a harsh and unkind way. But Ozu never allows the attachment bond be-

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tween brother and sister or husband and wife to be broken. Noriko responds completely reasonably that women are simply taking their natural place. In the course of the conversation, both Noriko and Fumiko poke fun at Koichi in a very gentle way, suggesting that (like a child) he has not yet learned “etiquette.” Here, too, Ozu provides a model for response to misbehavior—­in this case, misbehavior by Koichi that is not entirely dissimilar to that of little Isamu.11 The following scene continues the light comic orientation by presenting the uncle who can neither understand what anyone says nor chew any food. Though this is far from a comic condition in reality, it does parallel the condition of children. As such, it provokes a humorous response. Moreover, since the uncle is not presented as suffering from these conditions, the humorous response is not inhibited by empathy. In a later scene, Minoru has Isamu go and test the uncle’s hearing by shouting “idiot” at him. Isamu’s willingness to follow his older brother’s orders is at once touching and funny. It is also not insignificant because the older brother, born during the war, is problematic. He is somewhat authoritarian with Isamu and somewhat greedy, even for a child. While Isamu’s obedience is funny now, we would not like to see it continue. It is a type of deference to authority of which Ozu is generally critical. In any event, the uncle appears to be oblivious to Isamu’s shouts. But when he finally turns, Isamu runs away in dismay. The uncle laughs—­once again, suggesting what our reaction might be as well. There is some association of the uncle with tradition, as he and Mr. Mamiya discuss a scroll painting. Later, the uncle will be delighted by a Noh performance. This association with a decrepit old man does not bode well for the survival of Japanese tradition. But, in keeping with Ozu’s general orientation, the film does not convey a sense of nostalgia. What counts for Ozu are people and relationships. If Noriko does not share this old man’s love for Noh, that is no disaster. It is good that he is able to enjoy the Noh drama and that she is able to enjoy other things. Another scene of this sort involves the uncle sitting beneath a massive statue of the Buddha. Isamu engages in the usual comic practice of imitation, repeating what he sees Minoru doing. He eventually gives the uncle a piece of candy. It is a nice act that shows Isamu is not simply selfish, as the interaction with Mr. Mamiya might have seemed to suggest.



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Fig. 3. Noriko keeps the child’s-­eye view, even when speaking to Mrs. Yabe. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

However, the scene turns comic when the children witness with shock that the uncle didn’t know to remove the wrapping paper from the candy. Fortunately, the mishap has no harmful consequences. While the uncle sits beneath the towering Buddha, Noriko greets Kenkichi’s mother and his little daughter, Mitsuko. Noriko interacts affectionately with the girl, crouching down to see her eye-­to-­eye. She stays crouching at the child’s level even as she speaks with Mrs. Yabe (see fig.3). The scene serves to further connect Noriko with attachment and, indeed, to establish her relation to other people’s children. The scene once again links the uncle with tradition. But there is nothing in it that is critical of Noriko with her modern clothing and new attitudes about gender equality. Nor is there anything that criticizes the sorts of tradition associated with the uncle. There is a sense of inevitability in the transition from the uncle to Noriko. But Noriko’s tender, attachment-­based attention to Mitsuko suggests that this is not necessarily a bad thing. A “modern” and “Western” woman, Noriko is the most warm and affectionate of all the 118  Family Separation and Reunion

Fig. 4. The uncle delights in a Noh performance. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

characters. But, as the story develops, we will see that this is not a matter of westernization. It is, rather, an emotional propensity that is compatible with various cultural habits. The following scene leads us to the uncle deeply enjoying the Noh play (see fig. 4). Simultaneously, Noriko and Aya host a friend, Taka, who has had a fight with her husband. There is perhaps some mild criticism of westernization here as this wife seems to take the side of her dog against her husband and, elsewhere in the film, pet dogs are associated with westernization. On the other hand, the wife shifts from Japanese to Western clothing when she reconciles with her husband (see figs. 5 and 6), suggesting that this sort of cultural categorization may not be at all accurate. In any case, the scene is, once again, comic. For example, the husband became angry with the woman’s dog because the dog ruined his pipe. She punishes the husband for his anger by serving him carrots. As a result, Aya repeatedly refers to the husband as “Mr. Carrot.” Eventually, the husband telephones and they are happily reconciled. Here, as elsewhere in the film, cultural issues bearing on social change and colonialism seem

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Fig. 5. Noriko and Aya’s friend, Taka, seems to side with her dog over her husband, suggesting that she is not as traditional as her clothes might imply. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

significant only insofar as they have lasting effects on attachment bonds. Fortunately, we are not witnessing such enduring effects here. In a couple of earlier scenes, the uncle had raised the issue of when Noriko would marry. Noriko evaded the topic with giggles. Now, she meets her boss, who has a concrete possibility in mind—­the director of a company and an avid golfer. Noriko does not seem entirely opposed to the idea and takes a copy of his photograph. In subsequent scenes, Koichi and Fumiko become interested in the match, in part due to the social status of the man’s family. In another comic touch, Ozu has Isamu literally circling near Koichi and Fumiko as they discuss this match. Koichi waves him away as if he were an annoying fly. Isamu turns but then just circles back around—­ until Koichi finally gets up, causing Isamu to flee, much as he did from the uncle in an earlier scene (see figs. 7 and 8). Though not cruel, the father’s attitude toward Isamu is much less affectionate than Noriko’s. Given the 120  Family Separation and Reunion

Fig. 6. When Taka appears only a few moments later, having reconciled with her husband, she is dressed in a European manner. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

topic being discussed, this may begin to suggest that the “traditional” approach to marriage arrangements is not guided by attachment but by concerns of familial prestige. The general idea is commonplace. But its suggestion here is noteworthy due to the way it is connected with humor and the possible activation of attachment feelings—­and thus the intensification of empathy—­in the audience. A subsequent scene is again in a restaurant. Like the earlier scene, it involves a debate—­in this case, between single and married women over the relative value of their different marital conditions. Noriko and Aya are meeting two of their friends in a Western-­style restaurant. (The dinner of Noriko, Fumiko, and Koichi was in a Japanese-­style restaurant.) The issue of cultural colonialism is prominent as the unmarried Noriko and Aya, both wearing Western clothing, sit across from their two married friends, both wearing Japanese clothing (see figs. 9 and 10). The tall chairs contrast strikingly with the mat of the earlier restaurant. Here, again, Noriko apparently represents “westernization.” But, as she

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Fig. 7. Isamu approaches the conversing adults, only to circle back . . . From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

Fig. 8. . . . until his father drives him off, a bit harshly. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

Fig. 9. The unmarried Noriko and Aya in Western clothing. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

Fig. 10. Their married friends in Japanese dress. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

Fig. 11. A European Modernist painting forms the backdrop to the young women’s conversation. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

explains it later, she feels that her married friends look down on her for being unmarried. Indeed, it was something of an accomplishment for a young woman to be married at the time. In the earlier restaurant scene, Koichi had rather cruelly told Noriko that she was unable to get married. Noriko had responded that she could marry any time she pleased. But, in fact, things were not that easy. The deaths of young men during the war meant that many women of Noriko’s age would never find a husband (see Dower [1999, 106–­7]). There is a sense in which the married women may think of themselves as superior, for they have managed to get husbands in a time of relative scarcity. This complicates the apparent cultural division. Noriko and Aya are differentiated from their friends primarily in having to support themselves rather than anticipating support from a husband. Their difference is more a result of the war—­thus the Japanese colonial policies that led to the war—­than of American (neo-­) colonialism or Euro-­American cultural colonialism. During the whole scene, the viewer cannot help but be aware of a huge 124  Family Separation and Reunion

painting directly behind the young women (see fig. 11). It is an imitation modernist piece with a flute player, an animal—­possibly a goat—­and a somewhat abstract woman with huge breasts; all the figures are white. The musician and the goat seem to be taken from Picasso’s The Flute Player. The woman may imitate a work by Matisse (cf. Bordwell [1988, 319]). In any case, it is clearly intended as a modern, Western painting—­directly contrasting with the traditional Japanese paintings that we see before the Noh performance or on the scroll owned by the uncle. The sexuality of the painting is obvious and provides a humorous backdrop for the conversation. It helps to suggest that much of what is at stake for the married women is sexual knowledge and experience, that this is at least one subtext for their claim that unmarried women just “don’t understand.” Of course, the painting also foregrounds the issue of cultural difference, hence colonialism. In part, it is making fun of the Western obsession with large breasts—­an ideal of beauty that was only then being imitated in Japan (see Dower [1999, 152]). Moreover, once one is aware of it, it is easy to see that the Japanese clothing of the married women does not show off their figure in the same way as the western clothing of Noriko and Aya. But there is a complication here. It is the women in Japanese clothing who are more clearly sexualized, not the westernized women. For example, one of the women explains that, on their honeymoon, she and her husband simply stayed in their room, since he was very skilled with a spinning top. The unmarried girls say that they are not interested in children’s games. But, in doing so, they put themselves in the position of children who “don’t understand,” as the married women immediately inform them. This reverses the stereotypical association of sexuality with westernization. This seems to be the point of a later scene as well. Aya comes to see Noriko at work. She is gone, but her boss is there. The boss rather crudely teases Aya about her supposed sexual knowledge. He wonders about whether Noriko is a lesbian, simplistically linking her views on gender equality with a disinterest in men—­an idea that is clearly not confined to Japanese men. He then asks Aya if she would like to join him for sushi. She agrees. He asks if she would like to eat a clam. She says yes. Then he asks about a long roll. Realizing the sexual innuendo, she says no. On the basis of her liking clams, but not long rolls, the boss concludes that perhaps she too is a lesbian, again drawing on the same idea. There are two things to remark on in this scene. First, though there is nothing that

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suggests Aya is lesbian, there is nothing that would clearly condemn this if it were true. Even the boss seems to find it more amusing than objectionable. Second, despite his implicit assumption that westernization is associated with some sort of promiscuous sexuality, it is clearly the boss who is sexually crude. He is not only being unkind to Aya; he is married and is in that way behaving inappropriately as well. In both scenes, Ozu indicates that, despite cultural stereotypes, emotional attitudes and related behaviors are not a function of superficial cultural distinctions. Of course, we should not assume that the attitude of Ozu and his contemporaries to the second scene would be the same as our own in an age of mandatory sexual harassment sensitivity seminars. The point is merely that the sort of sexual desire and behavior depicted in the European Modernist painting is not something foreign to Japan, even if it is expressed differently (e.g., in a man asking a woman if she would like a long sushi roll rather than in a goat ogling a woman’s prodigious breasts). These various scenes also contribute to sketching a sort of emotional topography that is unaffected by national geography. On the one hand, we have the pride of the family, interested in the social status of Noriko’s suitor. On the other hand, we have the somewhat crude sexuality of the boss and the married women (even if the latter is more delicately expressed). Both offer possible motives for marriage. But neither seems quite right, and both are contrasted with the attachment feelings that we already see are characteristic of Noriko. In the scene after the friends’ lunch, Noriko brings home “short cake.” Here, again, the phrase is borrowed into Japanese with a Japanese pronunciation. The childlike delight of the adults in short cake is comic and provides a motif that is developed in the course of the film. Early in the occupation, shortage of rice made the use of flour and baking much more common in Japan. As Dower (1999, 170) explains, “Bread making was integral to plain survival . . . . At the same time, it also was a small manifestation of the horizontal westernization that reached into every corner of society.” Bread and cake provide the occasion for some subsequent humorous scenes as well. For example, in one scene, the adults take up the stereotypical role of children, sneaking a piece of cake, then concealing it from an actual child (see figs. 12 and 13). There may be a suggestion of westernized greediness in this. But the scene is played with such good-­ 126  Family Separation and Reunion

Fig. 12. The adults hear a child coming and try to hide the cake. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

natured, comic innocence that it seems more to indicate that even the differences between children and adults are less constant and simple than one might initially believe. On the other hand, there are hints of a criticism of consumerism elsewhere in the film, as we will see. Kenkichi’s mother, Mrs. Yabe, now comes by the Mamiya home. She speaks with Mrs. and Mr. Mamiya about Kenkichi and Shoji. It is here that we learn Kenkichi has been a widower for two years and that Shoji has almost certainly died in the war. Mr. Mamiya explains that his wife still listens to the radio reports. He is referring to the Missing Persons program. “Until 1950,” thus the year before this film was released, this “program continued to clear up the whereabouts or announce the deaths of significant numbers of individuals” (Dower 1999, 58). On the other hand, Mrs. Mamiya continues to have hope—­and, indeed, the program did continue for another twelve years, suggesting that this hope was not entirely misplaced. The great pain caused to the family by this situation is obvious in the mother’s face (portrayed with quiet pathos by Chieko Higashiyama).

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Fig. 13. The adults try to act as if they are not hiding anything when Minoru enters. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

The brief, elliptical suggestion of the tragic family separation could in principle operate to criticize Japan’s enemies in the war—­including the Americans—­who were presumably responsible for killing Shoji. In the context of the period and the rest of the film, it seems much more plausible to see it as criticizing the Japanese government that led the nation into the war, thus criticizing Japanese colonialism. In any case, it seems primarily to represent the great attachment loss that goes along with war. In this way, it once again suggests that the cultures and ideologies governing colonial conflict are not the crucial issue for Ozu. The crucial issue is human attachment, which can be furthered or inhibited by different cultures in their own ways. The next scene brings us a room full of young boys. Minoru’s friends have come to the Mamiya home to play with trains. Combining their individual pieces of track, they have made a long track for the train. The play is interrupted by “sandwiches,” with the word clearly borrowed from English—­and, of course, the dish itself borrowed from the West. In the 128  Family Separation and Reunion

course of the scene, Minoru makes a plea for his parents to buy him more pieces of track, so that he can have a really long course for his train. This is actually the second time we have heard Minoru talk about this. Earlier, he had agreed to give his grandmother a massage if she would pay him, thus giving him money to buy train tracks. I take it that here Ozu is criticizing something often associated with Westernization—­consumerism or what Marxists would refer to as the fetishism of commodities. Ozu develops his point very carefully. First, he presents an act of physical affection between grandmother and grandson, not as an expression of attachment but as a commodity exchange—­ service being traded for yen. Then he presents the still more intense attachment bond of parents and children as one of supply and demand of consumer goods. The suggestion is that Minoru is not developing genuine attachment relations with his family. Rather, in a manner reminiscent of Marx (1970, 72), the relations between people are being reduced to relations between things (or, more accurately, between people and things). But it is not clear that this is a criticism of Westernization as such. We see an element of this same issue in the (traditional) concern of Noriko’s family over the wealth of her prospective husband. In this case, it is more a matter of (feudal) pride than of (capitalist) commodity fetishism. But the two are parallel in the crucial manner of replacing attachment with some sort of economic relation. The following scene further challenges the stereotypical association of fully human relations—­including attachment and caregiving—­with tradition, and the opposition of such bonds to “modernization” and westernization.12 Noriko, Aya, and their two more traditional friends have arranged to meet at Noriko’s home. Noriko has prepared for their meeting, with food and drink. But the two “Japanese” friends do not come—­ one actually lying about her excuse. Noriko laments, “We were such close friends in school. Now we’re drifting apart.” This is clearly an attachment loss, and it is not the fault of the westernized Noriko and Aya. A few scenes later, Minoru’s consumerism is brought up again. Koichi has just returned home after working all night. He has brought a loaf of bread. This once again signals the colonial situation and the cultural effects of that situation—­after all, bread is what the family needs to make sandwiches for the boys. Minoru mistakenly thinks his father has brought him track for the model train. When he opens the package, he is

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Fig. 14. Isamu retrieves the bread. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

furious. The scene is played simultaneously for humor and drama. Much of the humor is associated with Isamu. For example, when Minoru exclaims, “What’s this?”—­meaning something like “What kind of cruel deception has father perpetrated here?”—­Isamu takes him at his word and explains that it is bread. When Minoru throws the bread out into the hall, Isamu politely brings it back to him (see fig. 14)—­only to be rewarded with verbal abuse. The association of humor with Isamu in this context is enabled by Isamu’s qualities as a young child and by his clear attachment to Minoru. In contrast, the drama is associated with Minoru and Koichi, the two least sympathetic and least attachment-­oriented characters in the film. Minoru confronts his father with real anger (in striking contrast with Isamu’s impish insults earlier in the film). He throws the bread to the ground and boots it away. Koichi gives him the ludicrous order “not to kick food.” The order is comic, I believe, because it does not quite get the right level of normative generalization—­again, the sort of fault we expect from children striving beyond their developmental stage. Typically, we 130  Family Separation and Reunion

Fig. 15. Minoru and his father have a serious fight. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

would expect an order to be specific to the situation (“Don’t kick that!”) or to generalize up to the appropriate ethical or prudential norm (e.g., “Keep food clean!” or the like). But Koichi presents us with a generalization that is just strange, telling Minoru that he should not “kick food,” as if this were a recurring problem, bearing on Minoru’s treatment of other items, such as tofu or eggs. In any case, another kick from Minoru leads to a physical struggle between father and son (see fig. 15). During this altercation, Isamu comically imitates his elder brother by sneaking in and giving the bread another little kick (see fig. 16), then scampering off. After the fight, Minoru is not physically injured, but he clearly feels humiliated. This sense of humiliation shows an intense attachment alienation between father and son. In response, he runs off, leading Isamu. When Noriko asks where they are going, Minoru keeps a sullen silence, but Isamu—­somehow oblivious to everything except how he can imitate his big brother—­humorously chirps, “I don’t know,” then goes out. After many hours, they do not return. Koichi is concerned and regrets his behavior, but he does not take an active part in finding them.

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Fig. 16. In support of his brother, Isamu sneaks in a kick at the offending loaf of bread. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

Neither does Fumiko. But Noriko goes out searching. She goes to the Yabes and asks if the boys have gone there. Kenkichi—­in striking contrast with Koichi, Fumiko, and others—­volunteers to help. Mrs. Yabe suggests that they check the train station. The suggestion is a good one. Ultimately, Noriko and Kenkichi find the boys, “starving, just sitting in the train station.” Of course, the prospect of children being lost is always frightening. But, in the context of postwar Japan, this sequence of events is particularly resonant. The chaos at the end of the war had separated many families. A 1948 report of the Ministry of Health and Welfare estimated that over eighty thousand children had “lost their parents, or simply become separated from them, in the turmoil that accompanied the end of the war” (Dower 1999, 63). These homeless children often “lived in railroad stations,” from which they were “commonly rounded up and loaded on trucks like cattle,” then sent to “militaristically authoritarian” detention centers (63). This entire complex of historical associations is 132  Family Separation and Reunion

triggered by the separation of the boys, their hunger, and their appearance in the train station. This is, I believe, the key ethical and emotional moment in the film. It is the point where both Noriko and Kenkichi show that they do care about other people’s children. I noted earlier that Hani Setsuko had seen Japanese colonial atrocities as the result of patriarchy and the disregard for other people’s children, thus two inhibitions on attachment. She was not the only one to make a diagnosis of this sort. When asked about the terrible condition of postwar street children, Osaragi Jirō, “a distinguished author respected for his humanism,” blamed a lack of love “toward strangers.” He even went so far as to worry whether “Japanese were shallower than other peoples when it came to love” (Dower 1999, 63)—­love here, of course, being attachment love. The actions of Noriko and Kenkichi suggest that Osaragi’s worries were misplaced and simultaneously present a model for viewers to imitate. Ozu indicates this by way of his specification of the family separation and reunion genre, a specification that is unusual in not confining the action to the parents and children, but rather achieving the reunion through agents who are not part of the immediate family—­nor even of the extended family, in Kenkichi’s case. Several scenes intervene before Noriko agrees to marry Kenkichi. But I take it that this rescue of Minoru and Isamu—­this comic resolution to the family separation narrative—­is determinative in her decision. When Noriko explains her decision, she emphasizes her feeling of “trust” in Kenkichi. Trust here signals two things. First, it signals her sense that his behavior is not “shallow when it comes to [attachment] love.” Rather, his attachment feelings—­and his related ethical behavior—­are prompted not only by his own daughter but also by other people’s children. Second, it suggests that Noriko’s feelings for Kenkichi themselves involve the sort of secure attachment that is characterized by trust.13 In the scene after the return of the boys, we learn that Kenkichi has accepted a position at a hospital in the provinces. His mother is very upset about this. He explains that it involves a considerable increase in salary. But he also mentions that it will allow him to work on “local problems there.” In this sense, it involves a commitment to strangers, including other people’s children. The next scene presents us with the crude sexual innuendos of Noriko’s

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boss aimed at Aya, discussed above. This is followed by a conversation between Noriko and Kenkichi. I take it that the purpose of this pairing is to stress the attachment orientation of Kenkichi’s conversation, in contrast with the sexual talk of Noriko’s boss. Noriko and Kenkichi speak about Shoji, Kenkichi’s friend and Noriko’s brother, and the still pervasively painful family separation story implied by his death in the war. While Noriko’s boss offered Aya a “long roll,” Kenkichi offers Noriko a letter he received from Shoji when Shoji was at war. Indeed, even the café where they are sitting is associated with enduring attachment bonds. Kenkichi explains that he and Shoji used to go there frequently when they were in school together. In the scene after this, Noriko goes to the home of the Yabes. Kenkichi is not there. He is attending the farewell party, since he is leaving for the provinces the next day. After entering, Noriko first peeks in at the sleeping Mitsuko. She then speaks with Mrs. Yabe. When Mrs. Yabe indirectly proposes that she marry Kenkichi, Noriko humbly accepts. At the Mamiya home, this causes a family crisis. Superficially, this is framed in terms of something like Japanese tradition versus Westernization. Everyone in the family seems regretful that the new order of things has given girls the freedom to do whatever they like. This is already problematic, since it contrasts Noriko’s free choice with paternalism and a form of authoritarianism. Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, that paternalism is clearly not governed by a genuine interest in the well-­being of the young woman who is to be married. It is, rather, guided by concerns of prestige and self-­interest. Moreover, as presented by Ozu, there is another problem as well. One of the few genuine concerns the family has about Noriko is that Kenkichi already has a child. They worry about her being saddled with another woman’s daughter. The fact that this is such a problem serves to foreground the social issue of “other people’s children.” Toward the end of the film, Noriko has a frank discussion about this with Fumiko, who explains that the very thought of this situation causes Mrs. Mamiya to weep. Noriko simply explains that “I love children.” She does not confine her attachment to her own offspring or relatives. Her openness to forming attachment bonds extends to children promiscuously, which is clearly what Ozu feels is right. 134  Family Separation and Reunion

Eventually, the family is reconciled to the decision. But, before that occurs, Noriko meets with her friend Aya. Here the colonial context returns—­and the humor. Aya does a delightful comic routine, explaining what she saw as Noriko’s “type”: “I imagined you’d live Western-­ style, with a flower garden, listening to Chopin. In your tiled kitchen, you’d have a refrigerator filled with Coca-­Cola.” The speech is clearly a stereotype (its humor related to the childlike tendency to overgeneralize category properties). Of course, it is “comedic” in that Aya is clearly manipulating the stereotype for comic effect—­especially as Chikage Awashima (playing Aya) physically mimes column after column of coke bottles in Noriko’s imaginary appliance (a childlike vision of a perfectly well-­stocked icebox—­endless cola). But the thematic function of the humor is not to criticize the colonizer’s culture.14 Rather, the point, I believe, is to criticize judgments of human feeling and commitment based on superficial matters of dress. In other words, the stereotype is wrong. The thoroughly westernized Noriko is precisely the one who rejects consumer culture for an attachment relation that extends beyond kinship ties and self-­interest. The point is emphasized in the subsequent dialogue with Fumiko. Both women note that they will have to economize. Specifically, they will have to give up buying (Western) “short cake.” While discussing this, both women are wearing Western clothing. There is no reason to believe that they will reject Western cultural influences, or Japanese cultural practices. But, whatever her culture, Noriko at least has chosen attachment over acquisition. This does not mean that Noriko leaves the family without any regret. She has deep attachment there as well and weeps bitterly over breaking up the family (see fig. 17). Before they separate, however, the family sits for a group portrait. Minoru cannot make up his mind whether or not to wear his baseball cap. As he puts it on and takes it off, Isamu comically imitates him (see figs. 18 and 19). Once again, the humor is linked with childhood, attachment, and cultural colonialism. But the point is that it does not really matter whether they wear the caps or not, whether they are “westernized” or not. The film ends with Mr. and Mrs. Mamiya now back in their traditional home with the uncle. They were in Tokyo for sixteen years—­roughly the

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Fig. 17. Noriko tries to force a social smile while her tears betray her sadness at the impending separation of the family. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

period of the war. For them, then, time has not been organized simply by the American occupation. Rather, the resolution brought by Noriko’s marriage extends back through Japan’s own colonialism. This resolution suggests that Ozu’s film is, in one sense, deeply anticolonial. But its anticolonialism is not based on an exclusive national identity that makes “our” colonialism good and “their” colonialism bad. Rather, it is based on a generalization of the feelings of attachment that enhance our empathy with parents, spouses, and particularly children, a generalization that works against colonialism per se, not against one colonialism and for another. It is also bound up with a sense that those attachment feelings may be expressed by different cultural means, none of which is inherently superior to others. Moreover, any culture may fall into a form of fetishism that substitutes a concern with commodities or prestige for a commitment to human relations. Finally, and most significantly for our present purposes, this view is given form by its specification of the family separation genre and it is given emotional force in part by the cultivation of mirth, thus by Ozu’s comedic stance, which is simultaneously a postcolonial stance.

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Fig. 18. Minoru puts on his baseball cap, carefully observed by Isamu. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

In short, in Early Summer, Ozu takes up humor not to affirm identity categories but rather to enhance human interactions across such categories. One diagnosis of Japanese militarism was that it relied on an excessive narrowing of benevolence through patriarchy—­particularly, constraints on empathy with women and children, or, more exactly, other people’s children. Ozu systematically explores the cultural changes resulting from the postcolonization condition of Japan. But his aim is not to establish a profound, cultural opposition. As it turns out, the differences between “traditional Japanese” and “westernized” are superficial and largely inconsequential. The crucial concern of Ozu’s film is not whether a particular type of clothing is “ours” or “theirs.” Rather, it is whether the human feeling of attachment has been enhanced or inhibited, expanded or limited. One crucial aim of Early Summer is to cultivate benevolence across gender divisions and to foster attachment feelings for other people’s children. To a great extent, Ozu pursues this goal through humor,



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Fig. 19. Isamu imitates his older brother. From Yasujiro Ozu, dir., Early Summer. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1951.

often celebratory humor. He integrates this with the attachment-­based story genre of family separation and reunion, fostering poignant feelings of empathetic trust, fear, and grief that are part of this genre. None of this is opposed to either Japanese or western traditions. But it is nonetheless anticolonial. Indifference to other people’s children was raised as one possible explanation for Japanese colonial atrocities. But the problem was not unique to Japan. Colonialisms all involve atrocities. Moreover, the home populations go along with colonialisms for the same reasons. The imperial Japanese were not exceptional in their inhibitions related to empathy and attachment-­care. Indeed, one could perhaps go so far as to say that every colonialism is enabled by the metropole population’s inability to feel celebratory mirth for other people’s children or to empathize with them in their stories of familial separation.

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5

Disfigured Heroism and the Possibility of Romance War and Love in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

In the preceding chapter, we saw how Yasujiro Ozu anchored his treatment of colonialism and the romantic plot in feelings of attachment and in the attachment-­derived, familial genre. This produces a very different result than the more usual intertwining of romantic and heroic genres where, for example, the military success of the hero often makes possible his union with the beloved. That intertwining occurs most obviously in works that commend the colonial enterprise undertaken by the home society, though it may also occur in works that reject colonial structures and practices. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians is undoubtedly anticolonial. However, it does not achieve its political goals by presenting a romantic plot integrated with an anticolonialist, heroic narrative. Rather, Coetzee chooses to develop the romantic and heroic genres in a way that renders them grotesque and implausible as responses to the conditions produced by colonialism. At the same time, however, he elaborates on the failure of both in such a way as to hint at possibilities for a more beneficial story with less undesirable outcomes. More exactly, modern colonialism rationalizes and seeks to justify its procedures by appeal to ethical and political ideals, such as democratic egalitarianism. But, all too obviously, colonialism systematically violates the rights to which it appeals, most intensely with regard to colonized peoples, denying them precisely the equality and democracy it proclaims. Since this point seems so obvious as to be undeniable, how do colonialists respond when faced with this criticism? Perhaps the most common form of response is for the colonialist to divide his or her compatriots into two groups. The first group, which of 139

course includes whoever happens to be drawing this distinction, comprises the well-­intentioned colonialists, those who do indeed believe in and commit themselves to the uplift and eventual equality of the subject peoples. These are the “good” (or “liberal”) colonialists—­though they may eschew the term “colonialism” to describe what they are doing. (For example, during the Cold War, there were many politicians, academics, and others who supported “temporarily” restricting the democratic possibilities for other countries—­even to the extent of establishing dictatorships—­ putatively on the grounds that this would better preserve the future democratic egalitarianism of those countries [see, for example, Bristol (2019); see also Parenti (2003)].) In contrast, the “bad” colonialists—­t he ones to whom the objection applies and whom the liberal camp might label the colonialists tout court—­are either insincere (thus, “very wicked,” as Sartre [2006, 36] puts it) or perhaps misguided. As Sartre rightly says, this division is nothing more than “mystification” (36). This type of response is most plausible, on its surface, when it refers to another nation—­for example, when the British distinguish their colonial policies from those put into practice by Belgium in the Congo (and depicted by Conrad in Heart of Darkness). But the problem with this response is that, even if Belgian colonialism was worse than British colonialism, that hardly exonerates the latter. If Jones steals Smith’s life savings, he cannot reasonably defend his theft by saying that Doe not only stole Smythe’s life savings but cut off his hands as well. In this case, liberal colonialists are likely to make another sort of claim. They may of course dispute the facts (just as Jones might insist that he did not touch Smith’s life savings, possibly covering his bets by also insisting that he received the life savings as legitimate payment for services rendered and that Smith never had any life savings to begin with anyway). Perhaps more commonly, they may accept the criticism (at least to some degree) but insist that those prior practices have been set aside and the new regime is fully in accord with the most humane and well-­considered principles. This is what Noam Chomsky (1999, 38–­39) calls the “change of course” doctrine, the claim that, however imperialist we may have been in the past, we have now seen the light and henceforth will not follow any policies that are deleterious for our “allies” (i.e., colonies). This is a frustratingly effective claim because it can be invoked repeatedly in reference to the present, a time when definitive evidence of its falsity is typically not 140  Disfigured Heroism

widely available or disseminated (due, for example, to the common restriction on circulating “sensitive” details of current government policies). When such evidence later becomes available—­showing no change of course—­enough time will have passed that the doctrine may simply be invoked again (“Okay, maybe some of our behavior in the Philippines was imperialist, but there is a change of course in Vietnam”; “Okay, maybe some of our behavior in Vietnam was imperialist, but there is a change of course in Iraq,” and so on). From the opening pages of Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee (1982) makes it abundantly clear that colonial domination is a nasty business. He does indicate that it is at its nastiest in its authoritarian forms. In that sense, he partially accepts the idea that there are moral differences between liberal and authoritarian colonialists. However, he also suggests that they are not differences between “good” and “bad” colonialism, but between, say, bad and appallingly bad colonialism or rationally self-­interested, exploitative colonialism and gratuitously cruel colonialism. Moreover, in the novel, the Magistrate’s development suggests that the liberal colonialists are considerably more likely to eventually recognize the fundamental inhumanity of colonialism and thus to reject it. In Coetzee, this difference may be understood as a matter of three underlying, psychological processes, which are closely interrelated. The liberal colonialist has an at least partially parallel interpersonal stance toward the colonized population. In other words, the liberal colonialist is in some degree inclined to experience empathy with colonized people. In contrast, the authoritarian colonialist is inclined to have a contrasting or antipathetic attitude toward the feelings of colonized people. For example, the liberal colonialist might empathically share some of a colonized person’s anger at unjust treatment before the law, while the authoritarian colonialist might only feel fear of that anger or reactive anger against the colonized person. This partial empathy is connected with a second process, that of willful ignorance or what Sartre calls “bad faith” (see chapter 2 of his Being and Nothingness [1966]). In what we might term “colonialist bad faith,” one in effect convinces oneself that one is behaving with, say, benevolent motives in benign conditions. However, one also knows that this is false, that one’s motives are selfish and one’s means are exploitative. One maintains bad faith principally by avoiding any situations that would

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make one’s actual motives or the real effects of one’s actions salient, difficult to ignore. This strategy is, however, vulnerable to unexpected revelations of colonial brutality and suffering. Finally, this emotional difference in attitude is cognitively organized by different models of the target (i.e., different models of the colonized people). Authoritarian colonialists often conceive of colonized people as animals or as contagiously sick (or both). As animals, they may be exploited for labor, like the horse harnessed to the cart or the plow. As contagiously sick, they may be exterminated, like plague-­bearing vermin. In contrast, liberal colonialists are more likely to view colonized people as children. This subordinates them to the colonial administration and limits their autonomy, but it does not rationalize systematic exploitation or extermination. Indeed, the model implies that the colonized people will eventually reach adulthood and thus acquire the autonomy they are currently denied. The same sort of future does not characterize animals. These differences also have a loose connection with different narrative prototypes. Authoritarian colonialism frequently stresses heroic narratives, with their celebration of national hierarchy and martial valor against an enemy, inevitably interpreted as threatening. Liberal colonialism, in contrast, often emphasizes a form of the romantic plot, specifically a plot of intergroup romance in which the union of the lovers represents the reconciliation of the colonizer and the colonized. This connection is central to Coetzee’s purposes, for both the heroic narrative of his authoritarian colonialists (Colonel Joll, Warrant Officer Mandel) and the romantic narrative of his liberal colonialist (the Magistrate) are failed narratives. I do not mean that they are tragic (though there is pathos in both) but that they never genuinely attain to heroism or to romance, despite their pathos. Indeed, they are so fundamentally distorted as to be in some ways incompatible with the fundamental emotions, logic, and purposes of their respective genres. To signal this, I refer to such instantiations of story prototypes as “disfigured” or “fractured.” In the case of the romantic narrative, the disfiguring is due, at least in part, to the integration of the two genres.1 In contrast, when a romantic story is dissociated from the hierarchies and identity categories of heroic narratives, it may suggest a noncolonialist—­thus, potentially successful—­a lternative to heroic stories, as briefly hinted at in the novel. 142  Disfigured Heroism

These narrative connections constitute the central concern of the present chapter. However, before turning to narrative as such, we need to consider some more general thematic aims of the novel. The following section, then, will examine its opening pages, considering how they orient Coetzee’s critique of colonialism. The second section will treat the scope of Coetzee’s critique, which is to say, just what colonialisms he intends to address. The third section turns to a somewhat fuller elaboration of the bad faith of liberal colonialism. All of this prepares for the treatment of heroic and romantic-­heroic emplotment in the novel, as well as some possibilities for a romantic emplotment of an anti-­colonial politics. Two Colonialisms: Establishing the Thematic Orientation It is not obvious from the outset, but the title does, retrospectively, suggest some of the political alternatives developed in the course of the novel. We may distinguish the extension of the term “barbarian” (i.e., the people to whom it refers) and the meaning or definition of the term. Moreover, for each of these we may distinguish the way the term is used by characters in the novel from what we might infer of the implied author’s view about its proper application. It seems uncontroversial, indeed obvious, that the characters routinely use “barbarian” to refer to the nomadic peoples of the area and, in some cases, the fisher-­folk, those who are outside the Empire—­put differently, those who are colonized. This term is regularly opposed to “civilized,” which is given an extension complementary to that of “barbarian”—­thus, in this case, the citizens of the Empire (see, for example, Coetzee [1982, 38]). Within the two groups, there are individuals who may be viewed as particularly good exemplars of their category. For instance, government officials (such as Joll and Mandel) and the armed forces they command might be viewed as particularly “central” cases of civilization. (This is in part due to their place in the heroic narrative; the officials representing the [putatively] legitimate ruling hierarchy of the usurpation part, the army representing the military defense forces of the invasion part.) It does not require any special hermeneutical subtlety to understand that the implied author sees the government officials and the army not as the best representatives of civilization but as exemplary of barbarism. As this last point is more or less self-­evident, the real question here is whether the Magistrate escapes this condemnation as a barbarian and,

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if so, how that occurs. Clearly, such escape is the Magistrate’s aspiration. Faced with the violent cruelty of “patriotic bloodlust” (104),2 he expresses the wish that “in some remote future” people considering these events will feel “that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian” (104). I imagine most readers would agree that, at least in comparison with Joll and Mandel, this is accurate. He may not have much success, but he does return the girl to her home (while offering her the possibility of remaining with him). More significantly, he suffers great physical and emotional pain in order to oppose the Empire’s mistreatment of prisoners. But, at the start, his status is equivocal. He is critical of Joll, but he nonetheless cooperates with him, and, as he himself puts it, “The Empire does not require that its servants love each other, merely that they perform their duty” (6). To clarify the position of the Magistrate, we need to turn to the definitions of “barbarian” and “civilized” as implied in the book. At the most basic level, the society that is not civilized does not have cities, such as the capital of the Empire, or more generally is not so technologically advanced, large in population, and complex in socioeconomic organization. Such socioeconomic magnitude and technological sophistication are often taken to be an index of another sort of advancement, which is moral. Thus “civilized” is widely used to refer to a moral and just society, while “barbarian” takes on the opposite significance. This is true in the novel also. Indeed, it largely explains Coetzee’s divergent uses of the terms. Specifically, the authoritarian colonialists simply refer to the empire as “civilized” and those outside the empire as “barbarian.” In contrast, the implied author—­and, at times, the Magistrate—­signal that injustice and immorality, thus barbarism, are key features of the Empire’s policies and practices. As such, the Empire is “barbaric” in the moral sense, however “civilized” it may be in the socioeconomic and technological sense. This does not mean that either the implied author or the Magistrate imagine that the nomads are necessarily just. Indeed, the Magistrate certainly does not idealize those outside the Empire—­quite the contrary. (He asks himself, “Do I really look forward to the triumph of the barbarian way: intellectual torpor, slovenliness, tolerance of disease and death?” [52].) How do civilization and barbarism compare to one another, then? The Magistrate—­and probably the implied author also—­suggest that there is a difference, perhaps even a difference that makes sense of calling 144  Disfigured Heroism

some people in the Empire “civilized.” But that is not a difference in morality or justice. It is merely a difference in decorum. Indeed, decorum is the principal difference between authoritarian and liberal colonialism. As the Magistrate asks, “What is it I object to in these spectacles of abasement and suffering and death that our new regime puts on but their lack of decorum?” (120). Decorum is clearly not the same as ethics; however, it is not entirely irrelevant to ethics, at least in the novel. Indeed, one’s sensitivity to decorum allows the possibility of responding to cruelty with genuine moral feeling. The mere fact that the Magistrate finds spectacles of cruelty indecorous reveals that they cause him distress. On the other hand, this also indicates the importance of violating decorum, for the observance of decorum is precisely what allows the liberal colonialist to maintain his or her “innocent” ignorance and bad faith. But this violation should not occur through Joll’s and Mandel’s public acts of cruelty, which result in habituation to cruelty and, in some cases, popular participation. It rather should occur through the critical exposure of the cruelty, prominently in what Kaplan (2011) and others refer to as “witnessing.” Before leaving the title, we should consider how these points fit with the idea of waiting for the barbarians. The obvious meaning of the phrase is that the colonists are endlessly anticipating an attack from the “uncivilized” out-­group, an invasion (in keeping with the structure of the heroic narrative) in which they risk being killed or subordinated. But, at the end of the novel, it makes sense to say that they fear an invasion by the nomads, and with a sort of naive hope anticipate, wait for, the return of the imperial troops. They wait for the arrival of these (imperial) barbarians as their defense against the feared invasion, even though it was these troops that created the danger initially. The novel proper begins with the introduction of Colonel Joll, in the context of the suspension of civil liberties under the “emergency powers” (1) that allow him to take up his investigative role. Joll is almost immediately identified as sinister. His sunglasses suggest a self-­concealment that immediately appears untrustworthy and hints that official secrets will serve not to protect democracy or general well-­being in society but to advance authoritarian domination.3 The first suggestion of a problem comes from the fact that Joll is interested specifically in seeing prisoners, despite the fact that the prisoners in this case are only an old man

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and a boy picked up after a cattle raid. Joll insists that he should interrogate them anyway, suggesting that he is following a policy that assumes guilt based on ethnoracial identity: they are barbarians and thus guilty until proven innocent. Coetzee goes on to make it clear that the colonel tortures the two. People “afterwards claim to have heard” someone “screaming” (4) during the interrogation, and Joll explains that he exerts “pressure” on prisoners until he discerns a certain “tone” in their voice. That is “the tone of truth” (5). It follows the “lies” (5) that Joll seems to assume invariably begin the statements of any barbarian. During one session of torture, the old man dies. The guards testify that the prisoner “attacked the investigating officer” (6) and his death was due to an accident that occurred as the officer defended himself. However, the guards admit to the Magistrate that they were instructed as to what they should say; they equivocate on whether or not the prisoner’s hands were tied. What is more important, his injuries do not conform to what might reasonably be expected from the sort of accident they describe. In short, it is clear that the old man was tortured to death. Coetzee extends the general condemnation of authoritarian torture when the boy is mutilated by Joll until he “confesses” to absurd and clearly false claims about plans for “a Great War on the Empire” (10–­11). The Magistrate tells him that Joll will act on this (false) information, leading to attacks upon and killing of his people. But the boy is too “sick” to respond (11). Joll does attack some people who are not citizens of the Empire, though they are not “barbarians” (used technically to refer to nomadic peoples of the region) but the ethnically distinct, sedentary “fishing people” (17). Joll takes further prisoners and commands that they be held “incommunicado” (17), based solely on the fact that they responded to Joll’s military force with fear. At the risk of stating the obvious, a rationalization of colonial domination based on “civilization,” presumes that the colonizer has more just institutions and has the right—­perhaps even the obligation—­to impose those institutions on the “backward” peoples being colonized. Joll’s racist presumption of guilt and the Empire’s broad denial of legal and political rights make it clear that, in practice at least, the Empire does not in any way satisfy the conditions necessary to make such a rationalization even slightly plausible. Coetzee indicates that one possible, colonialist response invokes the “change of course” doctrine. At the end of the first chapter, he explains 146  Disfigured Heroism

that “the new men of Empire . . . Believe in fresh starts, new chapters, clean pages” (24). But there are at least two problems with this response. First, as usual, it is implausible. What reason do we have to believe that past brutality has been left behind? None, except in one, possible set of circumstances—­which brings us to the second problem. Right before the passage just quoted, the Magistrate explains that one could return to the settlement, “full of new intentions, new resolutions,” now running an empire “in which there would be no more injustice,” only after one has “obliterated” the colonized people “from the face of the earth” (24). New starts are either a lie or they apply only after the holocaust of the “enemy.” On the other hand, this passage suggests another response as well. Since the “new men of Empire” are the authoritarians, the “liberals” preceded them. Perhaps, then, the atrocities of colonialism are due only to the particular variety of colonialism that is, so to speak, “at the helm” of the country; perhaps the problem is authoritarian colonialism. Again, Coetzee definitely indicates that while authoritarian colonialism is far more of a problem than liberal colonialism, the latter is destructive also. Though I suspect that many readers miss the point, it is evident already on the second page of the novel—­and not because the Magistrate is cooperating with Joll, or not that only. The Magistrate cooperates with Joll by bringing him to see their two prisoners—­“an old man” and “a boy.” They were arrested for no better reason than that they shared an ethnoracial identity with a group that the Magistrate infers was responsible for a livestock raid. This is the same sort of colonial and racist presumption we find in Joll. Moreover, the two prisoners deny the association. The old man explains that the boy “has a sore that does not get better” (4) and that they were going toward the settlement in order to find a doctor. Indeed, the boy does have such a sore. Moreover, as the Magistrate admits, it does not make any sense to think that a raiding party would bring along a sick child or anyone elderly or to imagine that these two could have participated in such a raid. This leads to the incomprehensible conclusion that “perhaps” they are telling the truth (4). In fact, everything suggests that they are telling the truth and nothing contradicts this, yet he implies that the preponderance of evidence weighs against the two prisoners—­a llowing only the bare possibility (“perhaps”) that they are innocent—­and acts on this implication by keeping the two imprisoned. Indeed, the Magistrate goes so far as to claim that even this minor

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concession (“perhaps”) constitutes “pleading” for the two (4), claiming a sort of bias in favor of the old man and the boy, when of course the bias of the entire scene is very strongly in the opposite direction. To make matters worse, the two “lie bound on the floor” (2), roped like animals—­or like Joll’s prisoners, though the Magistrate later suggests that Joll cinches the rope more tightly. (Recall that Joll is just now learning of the prisoners; here we are reading about their condition before Joll begins to interrogate them.) The “smell of old urine” surrounds the prisoners (2), suggesting that they have not been allowed to leave their prison to relieve themselves. Moreover, “The boy’s face is puffy and bruised, one eye is swollen shut” (3). He has been tortured, then, even before Joll approached him with his little knife and made its many incisions on the boy’s groins (10). In a gratuitously cruel or pathologically oblivious gesture, the Magistrate “pat[s] his cheek” (3). He asks the guard, “Who beat him?” thereby exhibiting the liberal colonialist’s main technique of self-­defense—­the assertion of ignorance. Somehow, the boy was tortured and the town’s Magistrate, with no other governing authority in the town, knew nothing about it. The guard adopts the same strategy of self-­defense, asserting, “It wasn’t me. . . . He was like that when he came” (3). Evidently, no one is responsible for the atrocities; the liberal colonialists all have their eyes firmly closed; they are as surprised as anyone to find the evidence of torture when they raise their eyelids and look carefully at the prisoner’s body. Of course, the Magistrate does not kill the boy’s father. Instead, he gives the boy food and has a doctor swab ointment on his wounds. That is not entirely insignificant. Once the liberal colonialist opens his eyes and witnesses the pain, it may affect him or her. The magistrate thinks that he is like “a mother comforting a child between his father’s spells of wrath” (7). He does not consider the boy (or, at this time, any barbarian) his equal. The boy is like someone else’s child. But people are inclined to care about children, to be affected by their pain, even when they are not one’s own children. Witnessing that pain with a parallel interpersonal stance may lead one to do something. In contrast, looking at the boy, as he slices away bits of flesh pressing onward toward the “tone” of truth (5), Joll does not see a child in pain. At best, he sees a writhing beast toward which his own attitudes and understandings allow no scope for shared feeling. This is why the Magistrate so regrets being “drawn into 148  Disfigured Heroism

this” (8). If he had only kept his eyes closed and “stopped [his] ears to the noises” of torture, then he would be able to return to his “placid” life and “sleep with a tranquil heart” (9). But “once one has been infected” with the knowledge of this pain, there is “no recovering” (21). He has no choice but to increasingly oppose the violence of colonialism. (It is also worth noting that Coetzee reverses the common use of the disease model, for the only illness spread by contact with the out-­group here is a feeling of humanity, otherwise numbed by colonial ideology.) Unfortunately, this evaluation may be overoptimistic. As Coetzee indicates elsewhere in the book, even witnessing pain may not be enough. It is always open to the ideologues of colonialism to assert that crucial aspects of the business must be hidden as state secrets whose publication would threaten general well-­being. When asked about the torture of the barbarian girl, a guard responds, “Sir, there were many prisoners to take care of, some of them sick! I knew that her feet were broken but I knew nothing about her being blind till long afterwards. There was nothing I could do, I did not want to become involved in a matter I did not understand” (37). Even if one is moved by the suffering of someone else, should one oppose the infliction of suffering if one cannot gather all the relevant information, if there may be justifications that cannot be made public and thus that one cannot take into account? The answer is that our decisions about understanding in such cases depend on the degree to which we view the different speakers as trustworthy, that is, the degree to which we believe them to be competent to make relevant judgments and well-­meaning (here, honest) in their reports of those judgments. This trustworthiness is certainly open to rational evaluation. But it is, in the end, inseparable from our interpersonal stances toward the individuals involved. If the out-­group is successfully dehumanized, there is little possibility that we will even question the trustworthiness of their antagonists, the imperial colonels and warrant officers. Historical Reference and the Scope of Interpretation Readers familiar with the history of Coetzee’s native South Africa are likely to notice that there are two levels on which one might interpret the novel. We may refer to these as involving a narrow versus a broad scope of interpretation. By “narrow scope,” I mean attending to the particular, historical connections that link the conditions in Waiting for the

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Barbarians with conditions in South Africa. By “broad scope,” I mean construing the themes of the novel as bearing on colonialism much more generally, not treating South Africa only, but extending its commentary to a range of other colonies. I do not take these interpretations to be mutually exclusive. Rather, I consider the two approaches as complementary, at least in some cases. This is particularly appropriate in the case of Waiting for the Barbarians, as Coetzee has worked at systematically incorporating allusions to South Africa in the novel, while also incorporating implicit references to other colonies and colonial situations. In this novel, the particular case of South Africa lends an illustrative concreteness to what might otherwise be overly abstract reflections on colonial relations; at the same time, the more diffuse connections of the story with colonial histories outside South Africa prevent the novel’s critique of colonialism from being limited to the idiosyncrasies of one country. As to South Africa, the connections with the novel are diverse. They include, for example, the (so to speak) “layered” indigeneity of the “aboriginal” fishing people and the (later) nomads, with their different language (Coetzee 1982, 18), lumped together as “barbarians” by Joll and others. As Ross (2008, 6) explains, historically, the earliest inhabitants of the region lived by “fishing and hunting.” Subsequently, pastoralists—­ speaking a different language (8)—­entered the territory. There was also a third wave, of “agro-­pastoralists” (Ross 2008, 8). Coetzee largely leaves these aside. However, the Zulu—­who are part of this third group—­are the clearest South African model for the nomads in Coetzee’s novel, with their apparent martial qualities. These qualities were most in evidence under the leadership of Shaka in the early 1800s (29–­30), but their historical relevance to European settlers was greater with Shaka’s successor, Dingane (44). It is also possible that the remnants of a great, forgotten civilization, unearthed by the Magistrate, are intended to suggest Great Zimbabwe, or at least the associated debates—­ clearly marked by colonial racism—­about its provenance (see chapter 1 of Chirikure [2020]). Of course, the details are quite different. But both suggest the historical depth and social complexity of the colonized society, which were routinely denied by colonialists. This is not to say that the primary reference to a military danger from “barbarians” was a mere historical memory (concerning, say, Dingane). 150  Disfigured Heroism

Living as a relatively small, but vastly privileged minority in a country of disenfranchised, impoverished, and brutalized people, white South Africans existed in an almost continual state of terror, petrified by what they imagined to be the inevitable, apocalyptic outcome of apartheid. That is the primary historical source of the people’s dread of the barbarian invasion in Coetzee’s novel. Moreover, the real-­life dread of South African whites was bound up with their fear of abandonment by their own leaders, who had means of escape not available to ordinary citizens, even those with the great privileges awarded simply for having white skin. As Coetzee (2009, 5) put it in Summertime, speaking of “the men who ran the National Party and the security state,” “Behind a smokescreen of patriotism they are . . . calculating how long they can keep the show running . . . before they will need to pack their bags, shred any incriminating documents, and fly off to Zürich or Monaco or San Diego,” much as the garrison abandons the settlement in Coetzee’s novel. One of the most significant connections between Waiting for the Barbarians and (in 1980) then-­current concerns in South Africa bears on the distinction between different varieties of colonialism. Specifically, in the South African context, authoritarian colonialism was associated with the National Party and the Afrikaner (Dutch) population of the country. In contrast, the South African Party, with its more British electoral base, was likely to be connected with liberal colonialism. Though all the major parties were colonialist, the National Party was more thoroughly racist and more rigidly hierarchical (see, for example, Ross [2008, 113–­14]). This division was widespread in people’s understanding of the National Party’s institution of Apartheid, which was indeed more brutal than the (British-­associated) system that preceded it. This historical sequence is why Coetzee (1982, 24) presents the more brutal system as connected with “the new men of empire.” It is may also be why he gives both Mandel and Joll (pronounced either “Yoll” or “Dzholl”) names that could be Dutch, though it is uncertain in both cases and Joll may equally be English. Indeed, it seems likely that this ambiguity is intentional. Of Afrikaner ancestry himself, Coetzee is aware of the bias against Afrikaners and the ethnoracism involved in common presumptions about British political superiority.4 His novel clearly draws on this difference in types of colonialism but may tacitly question its ethnicization. In any case, Coetzee not only modeled the conditions in his novel on

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South Africa; he also generalized his treatment of colonialism in order to cover a wide range of other places and times. On the one hand, he wished to address the colonial violence that was a pervasive (if denied and partially concealed) feature of life in South Africa at the time. But he wished to locate his treatment of South Africa within a treatment of colonialism that would encompass and illuminate the colonial conditions and experiences of readers outside South Africa, both at the time and in the future. Indeed, he aimed to include colonialisms of the past also, perhaps in part because the expanded range of cases should enhance our understanding of colonialism generally and thereby further clarify the nature of current and future cases. Moreover, instances from the past commonly still have consequences in the present. For example, Coetzee’s treatment of the nomads draws a great deal from the Native American resistance to European, then U.S. colonialism in the New World. The connections seem to me so clear as to be obtrusive. As such, most readers should recognize the similarities, thereby linking European American settlers to colonialism as fully as the Afrikaners in South Africa (a relatively commonplace view now, but not so commonplace forty-­plus years ago, when Coetzee’s novel was published). The point is of current relevance, and not merely of antiquarian interest. Coetzee also has one of the characters describe the tactics of the barbarians: “They led us out into the desert and then they vanished! [. . .] They lured us on and on, we could never catch them. They picked off the stragglers, they cut our horses loose in the night, they would not stand up to us!” (147). These tactics are a form of guerrilla warfare, particularly associated with Communist revolutionaries at the time Coetzee was writing. These associations serve to remind us that Communist revolutions of the preceding decades were not only engaged in class struggle; they were often explicitly anti-­imperialist as well, as we see in Vietnam, and even in China. These associations may also lead readers to recall that the Communist Party of South Africa (cpsa) was one of the very few largely white political organizations that supported the overthrow of the colonialist-­racist political and economic system of South Africa. (The place of the cpsa is effectively represented in such novels as Nadine Gordimer’s [1980] Berger’s Daughter and Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy [though the representation is indirect in the latter case; see Hogan (1999a)].) Perhaps the most obvious links between the events in the novel and 152  Disfigured Heroism

practices in Apartheid South Africa are simply in the widespread use of torture and the frequent occurrence of custodial deaths, implausibly explained—­as suicide, as self-­defense by the guards, as an unforeseeable stroke or heart attack—­and supported by the fabrication of witness reports from guards and others. Regarding the former, Goldberg (2016, writing before the end of apartheid) explains that “torture [was] the norm in the interrogations [by] security police of the racist regime. A study conducted by experts at the University of Cape Town reveals that 83 percent of those interrogated by the security police had been tortured. Beatings, electric shocks to the genitalia, suffocation, injection of drugs and physical brutality dreamed up in the nightmare minds of the interrogators are the order of the day.” He goes on to note that “the former South African ambassador to Britain, Mr. [Denis] Worrall, conceded in a press interview that child torture occurs in South African prisons” (271), such as occurs with the boy at the beginning of Coetzee’s novel. As to custodial deaths, Goldberg writes that “it is impossible to know the exact number of those murdered under interrogation in South Africa” (271; on, for example, the notorious case of Steven Biko’s murder, see ibid., 389–­90). But, at the same time, these are key points in the generalization of Coetzee’s portrayal of colonialism, suggesting France in Algeria (with its staggeringly widespread use of torture) or the United States in Vietnam (e.g., the cia’s Phoenix program, which “produced over twenty thousand extrajudicial killings” [McCoy 2006, 196])—­extending even to the future, as borne out by the revelations regarding U.S. torture in Afghanistan (see chapter 4 of McCoy [2006]).5 The sort of generalization suggested by Coetzee’s novel indicates that, for example, twenty-­first century Americans cannot reasonably dismiss the novel’s depiction of colonialist practices as if they applied only to another country at a different time. This is why, in addition to a narrow scope interpretation of the novel, it is important to undertake a broad scope interpretation as well. On Liberal Emotions Again, the practical point of differentiating liberal from authoritarian colonialism is that the former may be open to change, to opposing colonialism. And again, this possibility results from the (mostly) parallel interpersonal stance toward the emotional experience of colonized people, which entails a degree of empathic sensitivity, even if qualified

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by a cognitive model of indigenous people as children. (Authoritarian colonialists are not wholly excluded from experiencing empathy toward colonized people. Indeed, it seems likely that most experience this at some times and in some measure. But it is likely to be significantly less in both intensity and duration.) A response that motivates opposition to colonialism is likely to derive from one (or both) of two emotions—­compassion for the pain of colonized people and anger at colonizers for causing that pain. Though each emotion is fundamentally straightforward, there are a few complications in each case that are worth remarking on. The case of anger against the in-­group is somewhat simpler. When one identifies with a group, one is more inclined to respond to the actions of its members as if they are in some way attributable to oneself. Thus, one may feel pride in some actions of an in-­group member and what is called “collective guilt” over other actions by in-­group members (for thought-­ provoking reflections on the latter topic, see the essays in Branscombe and Doosje [2004]). I say, “what is called,” because the case is complicated. Specifically, “collective guilt” is ambiguous between at least three meanings. First, it may mean that an entire group is genuinely responsible for a crime, which seems to me impossible for such large, dispersed groups as are typically defined by identity categories (e.g., “races”). (In contrast, if one department member is engaging in sexual harassment, one might reasonably view all the other department members who knew, but did nothing, as collectively guilty, though of course in lesser degree than the actual perpetrator.) Second, it may mean that objectively innocent individuals feel guilty because they share some identity category with the perpetrator. This seems particularly likely when the motive for the initial crime is connected with the identity category. For example, a white person would presumably be more inclined to feel guilty over some white person’s act of racial discrimination than over, say, his or her tax evasion. We might refer to collective guilt in the second sense as “identity-­based remorse,” for in that meaning, “collective guilt” concerns a feeling of moral taint rather than actual, objective responsibility. Though less obviously problematic than identity-­based culpability, identity-­based remorse still both manifests and fosters identity-­based thinking, which is a key part of the problem to begin with. 154  Disfigured Heroism

Beyond the ambiguities already mentioned, the phrase “collective guilt” seems often to refer not to guilt at all but to shame, in the sense of feeling that one is the target of other people’s disgust. This can easily occur when a member of a socially prominent identity group commits a crime and other members of the group realize that the society generally will view them as tainted by the crime, though they are as unrelated to it as anyone else. (Obvious examples of this would include the extension of moral disgust to Muslims generally following a terrorist attack that happened to be perpetrated by Muslims—­or to Irish people at the time when the ira was engaging in such attacks.) This collective shame seems particularly likely to develop into rage. As such, it does not typically work against identity categorization. Indeed, it tends to intensify identity-­based antipathy. Thus, it is more likely to drive colonists to authoritarian colonialism, even as it often drives colonized people to revolutionary violence. In all these cases, then, it would seem that stressing “collective guilt” is likely to be counterproductive, though it might inspire reparative behaviors in some cases. If the Magistrate were a real person, I would be inclined to say that neither identity-­based remorse nor identity-­based shame is determinative in his case. In connection with this, I do not have the sense that the Magistrate really identified as white or European or British (or Afrikaner) or anything else. My feeling, rather, is that his motivation is triggered by seeing the suffering and feeling the empathic response that this naturally engenders in him. On the other hand, this empathy may be most effective when it is compounded by a personal feeling of guilt based on real—­albeit undesired and largely passive—­complicity, thus genuine culpability. He is made particularly aware of this culpability by the gaze of the barbarian girl, with its inscrutable indirection, the result of a crime he passively enabled. He is culpable, however, not due primarily to his whiteness (or whatever it is that is viewed as distinguishing the citizens of the Empire from the barbarians) but due to his administrative position, his direct involvement in allowing a culture of torture to develop at the settlement. There is some sense in which this recognition of his responsibility drives him to seek to force the barbarian girl to view him as innocent, though Coetzee (1982) develops this basically reasonable point in ways that are somewhat opaque. Specifically, the Magistrate repeatedly insists

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that he cannot fathom the girl, “as if there is no interior, only a surface” (43), which at least appears dehumanizing, either for racist or sexist reasons, or both. Stranger still, he represents his dilemma as identical with that of Joll, and the method as ultimately quite similar. He explains that he behaves “like a lover,” but “I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her” (43). Frankly, I find this view bizarre. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that the Magistrate has been reading too much Michel Foucault on the disciplinary society. Indeed, I am inclined to agree with his own subsequent evaluation that he is “seducing” himself “into these meanings and correspondences” (44). On the other hand, there is a way in which he is correct—­not about his caresses when washing her feet but about his cooperation with Joll and about the conduct of his administration before Joll arrived. In a sense, he has tied her to a chair and beaten her, for he provided the administrative structure in which Joll’s torture of her could occur. He goes on to explain what he takes to be the alternative, what must be the case if there is no genuine correspondence between himself and Joll. Specifically, he questions how he could possibly believe that “a woman’s body” is “anything but a site of joy” (44). This is a cringeworthy moment, for it so blatantly treats “a woman’s body” as a mere object of use, not a being animated by that woman’s emotions, sensations, ideas, and so on. At the same time, this suggests a specifically sexual instrumentalization of “a woman’s body,” which as it happens is precisely what he does not do with the girl. Indeed, she tries to initiate sexual relations with him, guiding his hand to her vulva, arching her body as he massages her there, then shuddering when the climax arrives—­but he experiences “no excitement” (44). It is not a problem of his virility declining with age (as he notes after a “reassuring experiment” of sexual relations with another woman [43]). It is just that—­however much she wants him to do so—­he cannot bring himself to see her body as a site of joy, for it is a body that his negligence has made to suffer terrible pain. Consider again his washing of her feet. The scene alludes to several passages in the New Testament (Matthew 26:6–­13, Mark 14:3–­9, Luke 7:36–­50, John 12:1–­8) in which a sinful woman washes Jesus’s feet and receives Jesus’s praise and blessings for the act. The allusion seems to serve two functions. First, it frees the girl from any moral criticism she might be subjected to by readers critical of her sexuality (as re156  Disfigured Heroism

flected in the Magistrate’s surmises about the views of his colleagues; see Coetzee [1982, 73]). Second, and more importantly, it elevates her to the role of Jesus and places the Magistrate in the role of a penitent. What he seeks from her is absolution for the crimes he has allowed or even facilitated. Indeed, despite his statement about her inscrutability, the Magistrate is certainly aware of the internal self of the girl, and to a degree feels spontaneous empathy with her, as when he imagines her feeling shame (e.g., in begging [see p. 32]).6 More importantly, like Harriet Beecher Stowe or Rabindranath Tagore with regard to characters in their writings, the Magistrate appears to be most sensitive to the girl’s interiority when he imagines her in an attachment relation, thus in connection with her father. He is particularly distressed that the two were made to suffer in one another’s presence. On the other hand, even here the Magistrate seems to evidence more empathy with the father. That empathy is with the father’s inability to “protect” his “child,” his inability to “fulfill his duty” to “someone he loves” (80). The Magistrate concludes that the father “knows he is never forgiven” (80). The reason for the Magistrate’s focus on the father would appear to be that he (the Magistrate) too feels that he can never be forgiven (unlike the sinful woman who washed Jesus’s feet). He feels this, even though he tried to perform “penance” and “make reparation” (81). He goes on to explain just how he facilitated the torture that killed her father and permanently mutilated and disabled her. He facilitated it precisely by his bad faith, by the willful ignorance that characterizes liberal colonialism. Once again, his responsibility and thus remorse are direct, personal to him, not based on an identity category. His response suggests a feeling of guilt that drives him to make genuine efforts at repairing the harm to which he himself has contributed, however inadvertently. (Citing empirical research, Parker and Thomas [2009, 217] explain that “guilt produced a sense of tension and regret borne of empathy, which often led to reparative action such as confession, apology, or making amends”.) It also suggests the desire to be forgiven and to know that she has forgiven him. But how can he know if she has forgiven him if he has life and death power over her? He hopes to know her mind when he undertakes the great trek to escort her to her people, and he hopes that she will then agree to return with him to the settlement. In keeping with this, it is only once they have begun this trek that he

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is able to respond to her advances and they make love for the first time (Coetzee 1982, 63). I suppose it should come as no surprise that Coetzee suggests that the Magistrate is driven by complex emotions and that his own understanding of those emotions is unreliable.7 Our motivations are invariably ambivalent and changeable, our self-­understanding tentative and fallible. The Magistrate himself suggests the point when he conjectures that the girl must have experienced his embrace of her as “a miasma of . . . Envy, pity, cruelty all masquerading as desire” (135). But he illustrates the fallibility of self-­understanding even while referring to it. Pity has some bearing on his response. Again, one feels pity (as opposed to compassion) when one has a parallel interpersonal stance and thus feels empathy for the other person but simultaneously sees oneself as superior to him or her. The sense of superiority is consistent with the Magistrate’s liberal colonialist view of the colonized people on the model of children—­as when he explains that he tried to be a “father” to the girl (80). The empathy is nonetheless clear when he opposes the authoritarian colonialist view of indigenous people as animals, for example when he confronts Joll on torturing the barbarian prisoners, shouting that they would not treat even a “beast” so brutally (107). Indeed, at this point (which is considerably after his last embraces with the barbarian girl), the Magistrate seems to have finally overcome his own limitations, no longer thinking of the barbarians on the model of children. That, I take it, is part of the reason why he repeats and stresses the otherwise apparently banal observation that the barbarian prisoners are “Men!” (107, italics in the original). They are not only not animals; they are also not “boys.” (The contrast should have been more salient in South Africa at the time, when whites commonly referred to Black men as “boys.”) Thus, from the emotions on the Magistrate’s list, pity does appear significant, though that feeling seems to have developed into (nonpatronizing) compassion soon after. However, the others appear largely irrelevant. Envy and cruelty do not seem to be primary motives for him, nor is it clear that he displayed much desire, either as a masquerade or sincerely. It is not terribly unusual that he seems to have gotten this wrong. We often make mistakes about our emotions, their causes and targets (as noted in chapter 1; see Frijda [1986, 464] and Gilbert and Wilson [2000, 183]). Moreover, he leaves things out. If the preceding analysis is right, 158  Disfigured Heroism

he is motivated primarily by direct, personal guilt and the empathy that presupposes, perhaps along with some hints of personal shame, though he fails to mention—­or apparently recognize—­either. But, again, despite his empathic response, the Magistrate speaks as if he has no sense of the girl’s internal thoughts and feelings, an idea that now appears even more baffling, not so obviously and simply the result of racist (and sexist) out-­grouping. We can make some headway in understanding this as we see the Magistrate’s anxiety about her impenetrable opacity as the result of seeking certainty about her attitude toward him, including her forgiveness. But the power and urgency of his concern suggest something else as well, something along the lines of what I have called “reward dependency” (see Hogan [2011b, 36]), the contingency of one’s enjoyments (the functioning of one’s reward system) on the security of one’s attachment bond with someone else. It suggests a particular need and urgency as to her feelings regarding him. It suggests, in short, romantic love. As in any case of romantic love, the lover is deeply concerned, perhaps even tortured by the question of whether or not the beloved reciprocates his or her feelings. This possibility is indicated most clearly when the Magistrate takes the girl back to the barbarians, then tells her that he wants her to return with him. He has undertaken the entire journey to establish the conditions in which her choice would be clearly revealed; were she to choose to return at this point, it would be an unequivocal signal of love, as well as forgiveness. Relative to ordinary empathy, romance so to speak raises the bar for establishing that we have genuinely understood the other person. Put simply, we require more evidence that someone forgives us or loves us than that he or she is in pain. It is difficult to say just what we are to make of these suggestions in the novel, to what extent we should take seriously the possibility of genuine attachment bonding, with finely calibrated empathy, reciprocity, forgiveness, and trust, uniting the Magistrate and the barbarian girl across identity groups and their colonial histories. The novel does hint that such love is possible, though that hint is embedded in the Magistrate’s imagination. Specifically, he envisions her speaking to him about how to “do it” (Coetzee 1982, 135); “it” here appears to point toward his aim of imprinting his attitudes and ideas on her consciousness and memory. In keeping with the Magistrate’s view of his parallel with Colonel Joll, she refers him to his “friend with the black eyes” (135) for pursuing such an aspira

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tion. In this, the imagined barbarian girl simply mouths the imaginings of the Magistrate. But then another voice seems to break through in his simulation, just as anyone’s imaginings might head in unexpected directions, as if guided in fact by the other person one is envisioning. (Indeed, if this were not the case, if we always simulated only what we already believed, never learning anything in the process, it would be difficult to see what evolutionary function the capacity for simulation might have.) Specifically, this simulated barbarian girl explains, “But if you want to love me you will have to turn your back on [Joll]” (135). In a way, the point is obvious. However, there is a further complication here, for the interracial romance in Waiting for the Barbarians may be understood—­indeed, effectively demands to be understood—­in part through its relation to the heroic story prototype with which it is integrated. Its connection or contrast with the tactics and aims of Colonel Joll is part of that integration. Fractured Heroism, Failed Romance Like many people in government, Joll and Mandel both view the current condition of the Empire in heroic terms. They construe the activities of the barbarians as preparatory to invasion. In other words, faced with scattered and often unrelated events involving the barbarians, they tacitly take up the narrative prototype of the threat-­defense sequence from the heroic narrative and interpret the events in terms of that structure. In addition, they understand the Magistrate’s very limited noncooperation, and his contact with the barbarians, by tacit reference to the usurpation sequence of the heroic narrative and to the related motif of the traitor in the threat-­defense sequence. This is facilitated by the fact that the usurper in heroic narratives often collaborates with the invader, enabling the (temporary) victory of the latter. But of course nothing about the heroic story structure here is straightforward. Most importantly, as always, any given military conflict may in principle be interpreted as invasion or liberation and any given change in leadership may be viewed as usurpation or restoration, depending on whose perspective one adopts, which is to say which group one takes to be “us” (the in-­group) and which group one takes to be “them” (the out-­ group). Thus, considered from the barbarian point of view, Joll’s military excursion merely continues the invasion scenario begun with the initial colonial conquest and settlement—­which, in the case of South Africa, be160  Disfigured Heroism

gan some three centuries before the publication of Coetzee’s novel. The removal of the Magistrate from his position of authority is slightly more complex. In terms of the readers’ sympathies, it is clearly a usurpation, as the Magistrate has not been “treasonously consorting with the enemy” (77). Indeed, his cooperative interaction with the barbarians—­which the Magistrate would presumably see as characteristic of his general political practice (“liberal colonialism” in my terminology)—­is presumably more beneficial to the Empire than Joll’s rash and ignorant belligerence. On the other hand, from the perspective of the barbarians, the entire administrative structure that includes the Magistrate and Joll is itself illegitimate; neither the Magistrate nor Joll could count as a usurpation, since the Empire itself is illegitimate from this perspective—­though clearly the Magistrate would be less harmfully illegitimate than Joll. Additionally, the novel presents us with what are in a sense alternative heroic sequences. First, there is Joll’s militarism, with its “patriotic bloodlust” (104). This is the standard form of the national heroic plot, even for colonies—­despite the obvious fact that it is no easy task to write history in such a way as to represent European settlers as having a legitimate claim to the land and, say, Zulu, Xhosa, or San people as invaders. To do this, one might claim that the indigenous people were not in fact occupying the land in question but subsequently attacked the innocent settlers, or that they initially welcomed the settlers, then changed their attitude, or that they sold the land, but then violated the contract, and so on. One standard form of the anticolonial heroic story is the mirror image of this. In this version, the Zulus, Xhosas, San, and so on have the legitimate claim and the Europeans are the invaders. This version of the story is hinted at by the Magistrate when he explains to an imperial officer just what it is that the barbarians want: “They want their land back, finally” (50). This reacquisition would presumably proceed by heroic means. If Coetzee settled on one or the other of these two alternative versions, I would not say that the heroic plot is “fractured” in the novel. It is, of course, contested. But one can readily acknowledge such contestation while also supporting either the colonialist or anticolonialist version. And, of course, Coetzee fully recognizes that the latter is far more valid than the former. But, in Coetzee’s imagination, there is ultimately nothing truly heroic about either. The point holds whether one is speaking of South Africa, or Canada, the United States, or Australia.

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Despite the vastly greater validity of the anticolonial version, problems remain even there. Many years ago, before the end of Apartheid (and, indeed, before Coetzee’s novel appeared), I went to a talk by a militant, anti-­Apartheid activist that I believe illustrates some of these problems. Sympathetic with the Azanian People’s Organization and the Pan-­Africanist Congress, but critical of the African National Congress, he spoke movingly of the colonial brutalization of his country, explaining that the problem would be resolved only if the Black political activists realized that they would have to kill white people. Of course, he didn’t mean killing all of them. However, he did envision something along the lines of what later came to be called “ethnic cleansing.” I remember him making a little joke about how the white people were brave enough to come to Africa in ships. But they seem to have lost their bravery, for now they were afraid to board those ships and go back to Europe. The problem, of course, is that only a tiny fraction of the white people in South Africa (or Canada, the United States, or Australia) today actually came from Europe. For most of us, the “colony” is where we were born and grew up. Our connection with Europe is only ancestral. All progressives agree that Japanese Americans were no less American than anyone else and should never have been treated as less, which is of course what occurred with the internment of Japanese Americans during the second World War. But what makes them American also makes me American, Coetzee South African, and so on. Moreover, it is not at all clear that, today, having (say) Kiowa or Laguna ancestry makes one “more” American than someone whose great-­ grandparents came from Iceland or China. The history of colonialism in South Africa, North America, and elsewhere has had terrible consequences for indigenous peoples that continue to the present day. Obviously, those need to be addressed. But we cannot address those problems by tacitly presuming that we can somehow return to the time of first contact. (And this does not even touch on the sometimes-­conflicting interests of rival indigenous groups, such as the fishing people and the nomads in Coetzee’s novel.) In any case, I hope that the great majority can agree that there is nothing heroic about ethnic cleansing, at least not in the commendatory sense of the word, “heroic.” Coetzee indicates these problems through the third point of view presented in the novel—­not that of the Empire, nor that of the Barbarians, 162  Disfigured Heroism

but that of the Magistrate. The Magistrate too represents a perspective on the heroic understanding of events, and the problems with any such understanding. To an extent, his version inverts the imperial version of Joll and Mandel, repeating the barbarian perspective. But it does not do this completely, for it strips all alternatives of their distinctive and destructive quality—­heroism—­and, in keeping with its repudiation of anything glorious in war, seeks an alternative that minimizes the harm that is so frequently celebrated in heroic narratives. In addition, this context ambiguously recontextualizes the romantic narrative and alters its implications. More exactly, in speaking with the representatives of the Empire, the Magistrate articulates a point of view presumably reflecting that of most indigenous people—­that the Europeans stole the land that should belong still to the native populations. Moreover, he suggests the legitimacy of this very serious grievance. Nonetheless, he does not romanticize the barbarians. He does not see their “high” culture or their ordinary routines of daily life as necessarily superior. To the contrary, he manifests clear in-­group biases against the fisher people and the nomads. On the one hand, he asserts that the differences between the citizens of the Empire and the barbarians are a mere difference in “table manners” (51). Yet only a few moments later, he dismisses the “barbarian way” as vitiated by “intellectual torpor” (52). Then there are the fishing people, whom he accommodates far more humanely than Joll and whom he arranges to restore to their former lives. Yet, he is repulsed by “their animal shamelessness” (19). The ambivalence is far from impossible. Indeed, it is quite ordinary. Nonracist responses of, say, whites to nonwhites are often the product of modulation, the inhibition of racist attitudes and inferences; moreover, such inhibition is frequently followed by a brief period of increased racism, due presumably to a rebound effect, where the prior modulation of racist attitudes temporarily enhances the subsequent force of those same racist attitudes (see Krendl et al. [2006], and Kunda [1999, 340–­45]). One consequence of this is that “racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next,” as Kendi (2019, 10) puts it, in a different theoretical context. This ambivalence and nonromanticization—­of the barbarians and, indeed, of the Magistrate—­are crucial for de-­heroicizing the Magistrate’s action. After all, he is (sometimes) a racist despite himself, and the barbarians—­even if they do not suffer from intellectual torpor or animal shamelessness—­

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are unlikely to be much better at treating other people equitably than are the servants of the Empire. The Magistrate emphasizes the point himself, insisting for example that “in my opposition there is nothing heroic” (Coetzee 1982, 78). He aspires to be “the One Just Man” (113–­14), as Joll puts it. But how can he expect to be anything other than a “clown” (114), when his resistance manifests itself in an inarticulate, seemingly pointless rant delivered over the backsides of the enemy prisoners (108), or the ludicrous spectacle of himself in noose and frock, soiled with his own feces (as his “bowels turn to water” [118])? Indeed, he cannot even fully clarify to himself just what motivates his resistance. As he puts it, “I walked into that cell a sane man sure of the rightness of my cause, however incompetent I continue to find myself to describe what that cause may be” (95). The deflationary depiction is not confined to the Magistrate. There is nothing heroic in Mandel’s escape from the settlement, or in the corruption of the soldiers stationed there. Nor is there anything glorious in Colonel Joll’s retreat, driven by hunger, disorientation, and a feeling of helplessness. Wherever the heroic plot would have led us to expect grandeur and glory, we find nothing but humiliation and shame. Again, though he marches into his cell “sure of the rightness of [his] cause” (95), the Magistrate experiences only “humiliations” (84). He is merely in pain and there is nothing in that pain that is “ennobling” (115); there is no “consoling grandeur” (117), as we would expect from heroic stories. To the contrary, it is all simply “degrading” (85). Interpreted in one way, the romantic narrative enters here as well—­ not as a romantic narrative per se but rather as a motif attached to the threat-­defense sequence of the heroic plot. Again, the novel does touch on the possibility of a genuine attachment bond between the Magistrate and the girl, particularly when he imagines her explaining that “if you want to love me you will have to turn your back on [Joll] and learn your lesson elsewhere” (135). Indeed, what are little more that hints in the novel are developed in the film (Guerra 2019; scripted by Coetzee). There, the Magistrate is gentler, more attentive and affectionate, less focused on sex than in the novel. When they are on the journey to the barbarians, the change in the depth of their connection is not represented by sexual penetration, but by, well, cuddling. It sounds almost trivial when phrased in this way, but in my view the scene where this occurs is quite moving. 164  Disfigured Heroism

As in the novel, the Magistrate and the girl are in the tent. But, in the film, the girl rests her head on his chest, embracing him with emotional warmth and almost childlike trust. At first surprised, the Magistrate gently reciprocates. There is, I believe, a hint in this that in making this connection with the girl, the Magistrate has definitively broken his ties with the Empire. In the film, then, this bond of attachment may be the key factor in guiding the Magistrate’s subsequent resistance to Joll. But their relation is not so romantic nor so consequential in the novel. In the novel, beyond the thematic concerns discussed earlier, Coetzee uses the story of the Magistrate and the girl in the way that heroic stories take up romantic—­or perhaps I should say “pseudo-­romantic”—­stories. Specifically, there are two ways in which conflicts between two national groups may be resolved. These are war and diplomacy. The threat-­defense sequence of the heroic narrative commonly treats war. From the barbarian perspective, it is not clear that any nonbelligerent option is available, for diplomacy seems designed to forestall aggression rather than to reverse prior conquest. But from the perspective of the Empire, diplomacy should not only be possible but favored. It is clear throughout the novel that this is the approach preferred by the Magistrate (just as Joll clearly prefers war). We see this, for example, when he complains that “it will take years to patch up the damage done” by Joll’s blundering violence (Coetzee 1982, 51). His trip with the girl to the barbarians is one standard type of such diplomacy. When he asks her to return with him, however sincere his affection, he is in part asking her to form a marriage alliance between their societies. Such a bond would not, of course, end barbarian discontent or resolve the problems created by Joll. But it might be imagined to improve conditions for the settlement, at least for a time. This too not only fails but is an absurd development, in keeping with the fractured or disfigured nature of the heroic narrative here. First, as already mentioned, there is no reason for the barbarians to undertake diplomacy, given their situation and interests. Second, there is no reason to believe that the inscrutable horsemen who keep him in the gunsight of their antique rifle, then take his money as well as the girl—­there is no reason to believe that these men have the authority to speak for the barbarians, or that they care in the least about the girl, her family, or even barbarian society generally. And, of course, the girl says no anyway—­ as she must, for even in the film, where she seems to have genuine af

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fection for the Magistrate, joining him would mean living in the society where she was broken, mutilated, and blinded. In both the film and the novel, her response is precisely put: “No. I do not want to go back to that place” (71). In short, Coetzee clearly takes up the heroic and romantic genres in interpreting and responding to colonialism (first, in South Africa, but more generally as well). Moreover, he makes it clear that colonialist emplotments of both sorts are invalid. But he goes further. The events that colonialism represents through the heroic plot are both ludicrous and terrifying, utterly devoid of heroism. They are a chaos of cognitive incomprehension and affective volatility. This is true also of the romantic story, which—­entangled as it is with the heroic narrative—­sets out to reconcile the warring groups through “love” that is more a matter of remorse and strategic alliance than attachment. Moreover, the reconciliation of the barbarians and the Empire involves only a handful of men from both groups, none of whom (as far as we know) is empowered to make any agreement on the relations between the groups. And, again, the girl refuses the alliance anyway. Far from suggesting the transcendence of intergroup differences, her relationship with the magistrate seems to be interwoven with the associated misunderstandings—­except for brief hints that something else might be possible if only they could fully set aside the heroic prototype and its identity categories. Finally, the novel even addresses anticolonial sacrifice, as the Magistrate stands up against the cruel practices of the Empire. In doing so, he exhibits as much courage as one can imagine real people exhibiting. But his efforts are absurd, inarticulate, and in the end more humiliating than effective, degrading rather than spiritually exalted. Coetzee of course presents the Magistrate’s anticolonialism as far superior to the alternative, but he is no less concerned to de-­heroicize the sacrificial genre than he is to de-­heroicize the other genres, at least insofar as the sacrificial genre is integrated with and subordinated to heroic narratives. This de-­heroicizing—­and thus disfiguring—­of the genres emplotting colonialism remains necessary even if the ultimate goals animating the particular stories in question are, as in this case, anticolonial. 166  Disfigured Heroism

6

Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue Guilt and Disfigured Genres in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing

Margaret Atwood’s 1972 novel deals with a number of topics. For example, reading it at a time when the #MeToo movement is prominent, one is particularly likely to notice its treatment of casual sexual harassment. Perhaps less obviously, it examines nationalism and settler colonialism, specifically the relations, in Canada, between First Nations peoples, on the one hand, and European settlers or their descendants, on the other. It bears on what happened in that encounter initially, what effects that history has had on the nation subsequently, and what one might do to change the nation in the future. In addition, it treats a subsequent sort of colonialism—­or “imperialism,” if we wish to reserve the former term for cases that at least might involve the establishment of settler colonies. This later imperialism is the restriction on Canadian autonomy by the United States, an imperialism that allows Atwood to establish some degree of connection between the settler population of Canada and the First Nations peoples (though, of course, the autonomy of the latter has been restricted far more extensively and cruelly than that of the former).1 What is more important for our purposes is that it serves to address the historical guilt of European settlers for the genocide of First Nations peoples and the decline of their cultures. Atwood draws on a number of genres to organize the events of the novel and several of these are consequential for the trajectories of actions and events in the story. But, in both form and function (derived from a feeling of collective guilt), the culminating vision quest is most important for our concerns, and it most clearly draws on the “epilogue of suffering,” more aptly referred to here as an atonement narrative.2 In the following pages, I first elaborate on the idea of disfigured nar 167

ratives and their relation to allegory. I then sketch some of the key allegorical suggestions of Atwood’s novel, outlining her main thematic concerns and giving some cultural background, such as that on vision quests. Following these points, I outline their relation to the atonement epilogue in its disfigured form. The penultimate section considers some specific passages in relation to the epilogue and these thematic concerns. The final section reformulates the previous analyses in relation to Atwood’s implied criticisms of nation-­states and nationalism, and in relation to Amerindian culture. Disfigured Stories and Their Allegories To address the topics in colonialism just mentioned, Atwood employs the sort of “disfigured” or “fractured” stories introduced in chapter 5. Again, by “disfigured” (or “fractured”) here, I mean that the stories broadly fit a genre pattern but also deviate from it in sometimes extreme ways, to the extent that something fundamental to the purpose, characteristic cognitive processes, and/or motivating emotion of the genre seems to have been lost. A simple example concerns Atwood’s use of the criminal investigation genre. For part of the novel, the narrator busies herself trying to piece together clues about her father’s disappearance, fairly clearly suggesting a murder mystery. But there is no murder. Moreover, the other possibility she considers is that her father has suffered from some mental illness. It turns out, however, that the disturbed character is herself. The search for the missing parent is also part of a family separation and reunion story. But the separation from the mother is not resolvable (unlike when the children are stolen by bandits in youth or the family is divided during war). Rather, the mother died a premature, but unambiguous, death. The separation from the father might have been resolved by reunion, but we learn that he simply died by a freak accident (falling into the water with a heavy camera looped around his neck and striking his head against a rock). The narrator indicates that there is a sort of indirect, ghostly reunion, or at least communication with the dead parents, but this is at best doubtful, perhaps the result of the narrator consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms (Atwood 1998, 156). Taken literally, the novel involves a murder mystery without a murder and a (temporary) family separation that is not plausibly considered temporary. In part, this is a sort of postmodern “deconstruction” of common 168  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

generic expectations. On the other hand, both are a bit like metaphors. As Donald Davidson (2009) pointed out, metaphors are often signaled by claims that are trivially false (e.g., “Smith is a rat”) or trivially true (e.g., “No man is an island”). Atwood’s twisted use of genre conventions could be taken to have a similar function, pointing us toward a figurative interpretation of the novel. The parallel with trivially false statements is not perfect. The point is merely that it becomes obvious that the novel is not a murder mystery or a family reunion story. This may lead us to ask why Atwood seeks to frame it (partially and ambiguously) in these ways. If we do ask this, one possible response is that the novel is best understood as figurative, thus as allegorical (since, as a narrative, it extends metaphors into stories). The point appears most clearly in yet a third genre—­the disfigured romantic narrative of the novel, a narrative so disfigured that readers familiar with the work may not be sure just what I am referring to. The narrator tells the story of a married man with whom she conceived a child, subsequently aborted. At first, she falsely identifies this man as her husband (subsequently, ex-­husband) and represents the child as having been born. At the time of the events of the novel, she has another partner, Joe, with whom she believes she has conceived a child (though she may be wrong)—­and, having done so, largely abandons him. This defines a sort of love triangle in the sense that it presents us with one woman sexually involved with two men. But it isn’t really a triangle because the affairs are not simultaneous and the men are not really in competition over the woman. Alternatively, we might think of the narrator’s relation with Joe as a seduction narrative, one in which the woman deceives and seduces the man in order to conceive a child, abandoning him once she has achieved her goal. (This is one form of the “fertility” version of this plot; see Hogan [2011a, 211–­13].) But in this case we are still dealing with a disfigured story, because the narrator is no more reliable regarding her pregnancy from Joe than anything else. Romantically, it is a love triangle without rivals. In the seduction genre, it is a story of conception, but perhaps lacking the conception. Again, these anomalies may suggest the presence of metaphor—­or, as these are stories, allegory. In connection with this, it is important to make a few comments on allegory and colonialism before going on. As mentioned in the introduction, Fredric Jameson (1986, 70) has famously

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asserted that “all third-­world texts are necessarily . . . to be read as . . . national allegories.” Again, the claim is greatly overstated. But it does serve to draw our attention to the frequency with which widespread social commitment to anticolonial and nationalist or other nation-­building inspires literary works that treat nationalism, literally or figuratively. Many of these works take the form of allegories or extended, narrative metaphors. Literary theorists have analyzed allegory from a range of perspectives (e.g., in The Political Unconscious, Jameson [1982] adopts a sort of socially extended, psychoanalytic view). In recent years, a number of writers have brought the insights of cognitive and affective science to bear on allegory (see, for example, Thagard [2011]). Though I will not be adopting any particular theorist’s approach, it is valuable to outline some of the features of a cognitive-­affective method, relying in part on Thagard, though also extending and adding to this account. First, metaphor, analogy, and allegory—­or, more generally, modeling—­ have an information-­processing component. This involves mapping a source domain onto a target domain. (The target is the topic we are interested in understanding and responding to. The source domain is what we are using to understand the target. For example, in “Life is a journey,” life is the target that we are seeking to understand and a journey is the source that we are drawing on in trying to understand life.) Some components of a standard mapping relation are virtually always manifest in standard idioms of a language. For example, “the birth of a nation” is a common idiom that signals a partial mapping of the source domain (roughly, human life cycles) onto a target domain (national history); in this case, the mapping links the official beginning of individual nationhood with the official beginning of individual life. Other parts of the mapping are given in idioms such as “father of the nation.” (There are also closely related mappings and idioms, such as the characterization of fellow citizens as “brothers and sisters.”) This mapping is only partial. To take a silly example, the “birth” of a nation is parallel to the birth of a child in that neither had the same status as a separate entity before the birthday/independence day and after. But they do not parallel one another in, say, wearing pajamas with little booties at the feet. Or, rather, what aspects of the two domains are allegorically mapped onto each other will vary with the particular story told in the allegory. In one story (e.g., that of the United States), the “child” may grow in size over the years, while in 170  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

others (e.g., Pakistan, before and after the secession of East Pakistan/ Bangladesh) that “child” might actually shrink. The distinction between mapped and unmapped features—­aspects of the source and target that are and are not connected with one another—­ might draw our attention to a broad distinction between types of allegory or, more accurately, tendencies of allegory. Specifically, some allegories do not seek to present a plausible, literal story and others do; thus, some tend toward a sort of pure and continuous allegory while others set out only to present allegorical elements at enough points to enable readers to identify and infer the allegorical meaning. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Spenser’s Faerie Queene are good examples of works that tend toward pure allegory. Surfacing, in contrast, is a partial and discontinuous allegory; a great deal of this novel is not open to allegorical interpretation. Not every detail of The Pilgrim’s Progress or The Faerie Queene has allegorical resonance, but it almost always makes sense to ask what a particular detail might suggest. This is not the case with Surfacing—­or A Grain of Wheat, which we considered in chapter 3. (In contrast, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children—­probably the most famous and influential allegory in the postcolonial canon—­is akin to The Pilgrim’s Progress or The Faerie Queene in developing a more or less continuous allegory.)3 One difference here is that the works of Bunyan and Spenser are religious and moral, while those of Atwood and Ngũgĩ are political and historical. Thagard (2011, 132) stresses the importance of “political allegories” and their usual purposes of “explaining aspects of a previous historical situation and providing lessons about how to avoid past mistakes.” As will become clear, these purposes are central to Atwood’s project in this novel. As these purposes involve representing some historical particulars literally, they tend to constrain the degree to which political allegories can be “pure.” This distinction between pure and discontinuous allegory is related to a further distinction, which is arguably more consequential—­that between what we might call self-­consciously plotted and associative allegory. Self-­consciously plotted allegory is the prototypical case, where the author is fully and consistently aware that he or she is writing an allegory and is capable of articulating the main points of the relations between the source and target domains. On the other hand, even in self-­consciously plotted allegory, the author cannot articulate everything about that re

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lation. A good number of the images and events in an allegory are likely to seem right or appropriate to an author, even if he or she cannot articulate their meaning or function in an entirely satisfactory way. Indeed, for an allegory of any length, the majority of details in the work are likely to be of this sort, as the author would find it difficult to complete, say, a novel if he or she had to plot out all the correspondences and meanings, rather than engaging in more fluid, uninterrupted processes of writing. These are associative elements in a work. We have a work that we might categorize as associative on the whole when even many of the broader connections between source and target are not self-­consciously plotted by the author. One result of this is that the allegory is likely to be discontinuous and at some points inconsistent. (For readers who hesitate over the possibility of inconsistency, I should perhaps note that the fluid process of writing often produces inconsistencies even at the literal level, without any issue of allegory.) I suspect that the allegory of Atwood’s novel is more associative than that of Ngũgĩ’s novel (and both are certainly more associative than Rushdie’s novel). In addition to the information-­processing points we have been considering, Thagard also stresses the second component of cognitive-­affective treatments of allegory. They involve not only information-­processing but also the communication of feeling. Indeed, Thagard (2011, 136) particularly emphasizes the emotional consequences of political allegories, writing that “the purposes of political allegories . . . usually include transfer of emotional reactions from source to target.” I would only add that a full treatment of political (or nonpolitical) allegory includes the consideration of emotion at several levels—­for our purposes, the most important being our interpersonal stance toward individual characters and their identity groups and the role of emotion-­defined goals in the generation and development of stories, including the aspects of those stories that operate allegorically. Surfacing, Vision Quest, and National Allegory From early on and repeatedly throughout its course, Atwood’s novel has strong allegorical suggestions. It concerns a young woman who has completely repressed the memory of an abortion. She eventually recalls the event, when trying to find some First Nations cliff art that her father had written about before his death. This leads to the seduction nar172  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

rative wherein she tries to become pregnant again (by a man she connects with bison). This seduction narrative is embedded within a sort of First Nations–­derived vision quest that she undertakes to realign herself with the dead (represented by the spirits of her parents) and with nature. As to the allegory, putting it very roughly, our nameless narrator is (more or less) the nation itself. There are many suggestions of this throughout the book. The clearest comes at the end, when she explains that “I am not an animal or a tree. I am the thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place” (Atwood 1998, 187). The initial union between the First Nations and Europeans did not turn out so well.4 A new and better society was not born from that interaction. Rather, what might have developed was terminated (or aborted), and the entire bloody history was forgotten. As psychology, the story in the novel does not appear very plausible. It seems unlikely that someone could simply forget major parts of her past (not merely isolated events) but still apparently live a normal life. Things are different with history, however. We can live quite normally even with a completely false view of our nation’s past. The unrealized union of European and First Nations people has led to violence and environmental degradation throughout North America. However, the lost past can perhaps be recovered by a union of white and red cultures. (As this suggests, Atwood takes up one thematic consequence of interracial romance without taking up the romance itself.) The new child will not be aborted but will rather be sanctified by something along the lines of a collective vision quest, partially enabled, perhaps, by hallucinogenic mushrooms, as in some Ojibwe practices. (On the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms by the Ojibwe, see Navet [1988]. Vastokas [2015] notes that the Ojibwe were among the producers of pictographs and petroglyphs in the region—­a key part of Atwood’s novel—­ suggesting their likely relevance to Surfacing in this respect also.) More exactly, Atwood takes up the standard association of First Nations people with nature. Even their art is fused with nature in that it is painted on rockfaces. This organic art contrasts starkly with the fragmentary and mechanical art of the narrator’s European Canadian companions, who are making a movie called Random Samples. The title of the movie alludes to a part of scientific method. But the film appears to consist of shots of unconnected oddities that do not add up to anything coherent, anything from which one could draw some sort of meaning.

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Or, rather, the only meaning one can draw concerns the ideological dispositions of the director, David. David considers “a naked lady with big tits and a big ass” (Atwood 1998, 135–­36)—­David’s sensitive way of referring to his wife—­as somehow equivalent to a family of stuffed moose, all clothed (9). Worse still, he cruelly harasses his wife in the process of coercing her to appear naked in the film. There is also an important contrast with the narrator’s drawing. She had aspired to be a creative artist but was directed by a sexist teacher into commercial art. In contrast with the First Nations paintings—­which are, again, integrated with nature—­she feels that her illustration work is alien to her, “strapped” on, like “an extra, artificial limb” (49). There is something false about the entire undertaking. For example, she finds she cannot illustrate a book on the folk tales of Quebec. Among other problems, the tales are odd. They cannot have developed in Quebec, focusing as they do on princesses and other figures that had no place in Quebec, or Canada more generally: “this isn’t a country of princesses” (51). They too contrast sharply with the First Nations paintings that are integrated with the place itself. A key feature of the First Nations’ relations to art and to nature (in the novel) is that they involve a sense of the sacred.5 The narrator observes that “the Indians did not own salvation but they had once known where it lived and their signs marked the sacred places, the places where you could learn the truth” (146). These places presumably included those signaled by the paintings. Our understanding of these paintings comes in part from the narrator but also in part from the researcher whose article she reproduces. The aptly named Dr. Robin Grove cites the reports of informants regarding local traditions. “Some state that the sites of the paintings are the abodes of powerful or protective spirits,” she explains. In connection with this, the paintings may be “associated with the practice of fasting to produce significant or predictive dreams” (103).6 Grove’s characterization of the paintings indicates that they were involved in vision quests.7 As Gill and Sullivan (1992) explain, a vision quest is “a solitary fasting ritual done in quest of wisdom and power in the form of a vision.” Perdue and Green (2010, 14) state similarly that “many [Amerindian] groups believed that individuals . . . needed to establish personal relationships with a spiritual guide and protector. One did this through fasting, suffering, and prayer, the result of which ideally would 174  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

be a vision in which the protector revealed itself.” Such a vision quest is precisely what the narrator undertakes at the end of the novel, drawing on First Nations traditions, including the rigorous fasting. Gill and Sullivan (1992, 324) go on to explain that “the site for the quest may be chosen to place the seeker” in proximity to “a sought-­after spirit”—­just what the narrator does in selecting the place where her mother and father lived and the place from which her father recently disappeared. They also note that some Native American “cultures use pharmacopeia to induce visions” (323), as the narrator may use hallucinogenic mushrooms (intentionally or inadvertently). Such quests may be undertaken at any time “of life transition,” such as the narrator’s (possible) new pregnancy. Moreover, “Although the acquisition of a vision is a way for an individual to receive power and distinction, vision quests may be undertaken by the visionary’s community for broader benefit” (324). Margaret Conrad (2012) explains the same general idea in a way that bears more obviously on ecological issues. She writes that “only by communing with the spirits on all planes and maintaining harmony among the whole could people ensure worldly success and happiness.” This “could be accomplished . . . through elaborate rituals; dreams induced by dances, drugs, or a period of fasting,” etc. (19). This, I take it, is the suggestion of Atwood’s novel, where the narrator’s attempt to conceive a child and to expiate her feelings of guilt over the abortion point allegorically toward a more encompassing hope for a new national birth that will incorporate First Nations’ understanding of and reverence for nature. Continuing on the topic of art, we also find a significant contrast with the narrator’s childhood drawings. When she was ten, she “believed in glamour.” In a perverse variation on the sacrality of art associated with the First Nations paintings, she held glamour as “a kind of religion.” Pictures of women “in fashion-­model poses” were her “icons” (Atwood 1998, 39; of course, this is a perverse variation on European sacred art as well). Some of the Amerindian paintings are submerged, since “the lake had been flooded” (128) by the logging industry (13). The suggestion of such submersion is related to two issues of importance in the novel. First, the raising of the water level is a (literal) instance of the human manipulation of the environment that is having harmful ecological consequences. Thus, the mere fact of the submersion contrasts with the (widely asserted)

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Fig. 20. An outline of the thematic structure of Surfacing. The first row represents the lost past. The second represents the parallel elements in the actual present. The third sets out the parallel elements of a possible future. Created by the author.

ecological sensitivity of First Nations people.8 Second, at a metaphorical level, the submersion suggests the repression of the past, both the narrator’s psychological repression and the nation’s historical repression.9 This is why the search for the paintings under the water is what triggers the narrator’s memory. In the historical allegory, the memory at issue is what should have been part of cultural integration between colonists and First Nations people, a cultural integration that might have led to an integration with nature as well. In addition to the link between art and nature, Atwood also draws a thematically consequential connection between nature and genuine, human intimacy. At the very least, it is clear that the artificial existence of European Canadian and European American society is pervaded by alienation. This is represented most graphically in the image of anonymous sex that occurs to the narrator—­two people having intercourse with bags over their heads (65). It is presented more powerfully in the estrangement of the couples in the novel—­David and Anna, who seem bent on torturing one another (though David is the more brutal of the two by far), as well as the narrator and the man who impregnated her, then coerced her into having an abortion. Even the narrator’s relation 176  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

with Joe seems to include little mutuality. Nature and intimacy are, in turn, connected with conception, the formation of new life, thus possibilities for the future, such as familial attachment bonding. In contrast, the abortion—­as treated in the novel—­is not new life oriented toward the future but a haunting memory, or not even that but mere shards of fragmented memories. These two lines of inverse parallels—­treating art and intimacy—­in essence culminate and reveal their significance in their link with national history and culture. (For a schematic representation of this analysis, see fig. 20. The reader may wish to consult this figure in connection with the interpretations developed in the remaining paragraphs of this section as well.) Nature and the First Nations art are obviously connected with First Nations culture, which is in turn linked with intimacy, conception, and family or attachment bonding (as in the first row of the figure). Similarly, Random Samples and commercial art are connected with the modern, European settler-­based nations—­paradigmatically, the United States, which stands in the novel for the most extreme case of unnatural, destructive insensitivity. For example, perhaps the prime case of senseless violence is the killing of the heron. In the novel, it is, in effect, Americanism that kills this paradigmatic representation of tradition (as well as the first created being according to Tlingit myth; see the first chapter of Beck [1993]). Americanism here is the culture of mechanism, alienation, anonymity, loss of intimacy, and the destruction of nature. In keeping with the last especially, it is parallel with the disease that is killing the birches (a synecdoche for the general destruction of nature); as we are told in the very first sentence of the novel, “the disease is spreading up from the south” (Atwood 1998, 3), thus from the United States (see the second row of fig. 20.) Perhaps the most salient aspect of the national allegory is the identification between memory and history (as in the third row of the figure). Again, it is the search for submerged First Nations’ paintings that revives the narrator’s repressed memories. Allegorically, then, this recalls the repressed history. Atwood recurs to this connection between memory and history at different moments in the novel. For example, at one point, she worries about the authenticity of her memories. She explains that “if the events are wrong the feelings . . . will be wrong too.” Moreover, “there will be no way of correcting it, the ones who could help are gone” (70).

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The point applies very well to memory.10 Intuitively, however, it applies more obviously to history. We have the wrong feelings about history—­ and indeed about the present—­if we get the events wrong. Here too the people who could correct the (historical) record—­for example, the First Nations people who experienced pre-­Columbian and settler conditions—­ are gone. Elsewhere, the connections between memory and history are more explicit. For example, part of the ritual undertaken by the narrator involves placing her wedding ring—­the symbol of her false and misremembered “marriage”—­in the fire, to “burn off” the “blood.” She explains that “everything from history must be eliminated” (181). Her personal delusion about her past stands in for our collective delusions about history. There too the blood must be burned off if the violence is to be repaired and we are to make a new beginning. Moreover, the conception of the new embryo is undertaken by the narrator in connection with the vision quest, which involves her sense that she has been able to communicate with the spirits of her deceased parents. It seems clear that the aims of the vision quest are to make a sort of reparation for the past, to negotiate a reconciliation with nature, and—­ through some sort of ceremonial and mystical practice, based in part on at least an imagination of First Nations’ practices—­to sanctify the new life that she feels growing within her. This is all very much in keeping with the prototypical atonement narrative (epilogue of suffering), with its retreat from the world of the heroic victors, its ritualized subjection to painful trials, and its ultimate outcome in a utopian society. But there are differences, which are crucial. First, in Surfacing, the character who undergoes the suffering or atones is not a military hero. Second, the atonement is not designed to secure the idealized state achieved by the military victors. It is, rather, designed to repudiate that state and to celebrate the culture of those who lost the heroic conflict. This perhaps makes it more like what we might call an “anti-­prototypical” work, as it reverses the values assigned to the in-­and out-­group societies. I refer to it as “disfigured” because, in addition to this revaluation, the narrator’s story holds out the possibility of success through the suggestions of the pregnancy and through the success of the quest (for example, in connecting the narrator with the dead parents). But, in fact, we do not even know if she is pregnant. In addition, we can hardly take seriously the idea that she has connected with her forebears spiritually. Thus, the utopia is not only re178  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

versed or anti-­prototypical (derived from the dominated, rather than the dominant group); it also appears to be based on nothing more illuminating than hallucinations, perhaps resulting from the ingestion of toxins. As noted earlier, the atonement narrative in Surfacing is integrated with either a romantic or seduction narrative. The love story is even more obviously disfigured than the atonement narrative. It is the love story of the narrator and the husband she never had, with their (aborted) love child, or possibly the love story of the rival, Joe, whom she does not love but who might have deserved her love—­except of course that he tries to rape her (152). In other words, the love story of the nameless narrator and her nonhusband is not a love story at all. It is a delusion in which she confuses, for example, a trip to the abortionist with a wedding. Most importantly, it is a love story without love, a loveless love story that develops into the story of a happy family, but without the happiness and even without the family. If it were just without the happiness, it would be a tragedy. But it lacks the basic, definitional constituents of the love story, while giving us all the usual indications that it is one. Even so, the epilogue and its reparative sufferings end in a utopian society or at least the idea of a cultural syncretism that would produce such a society. More exactly, interpreted nationally and culturally, the narrator’s second pregnancy points toward another “birth of the nation,” where the new polity will integrate First Nations and European American culture (or parentage), resulting in a humane and ecologically sensitive society. The vision quest is not the only thing that links this second pregnancy with First Nations people. The embryo/new society is conceived by the narrator and Joe, who is identified with the buffalo—­a lmost like a totem animal—­from the beginning of the novel. The significance of this derives from the fact that the buffalo was crucial to the life of many First Nations people and its destruction was a key factor in the demographic and political decline of those peoples (see Cobb 2016, 257–­59). For example, Mooney (2018) explains that “while lawless white men were . . . destroying the buffalo, the Indians themselves were suffering for food.”11 The deprivation was not merely nutritional; later, Mooney explains the cultural significance of the loss, writing that “the buffalo had now disappeared, and with it the old Indian life.” As Mooney’s account shows, a recurring feature of Native American religious movements involved spiritual practices aimed at

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restoring the buffalo, an aim suggested by the narrator’s relations with Joe and her characterization of the embryo as “the fur god with tail and horns” (Atwood 1998, 187). Finally, all this takes place in a context where Atwood repeatedly characterizes personal life and personal relations in terms of national politics and history. For example, the narrator characterizes sexual relations in terms of national power relations. The crucial thing for some people in a relationship is dominating the other person in precisely the way one nation dominates another. The concrete details don’t matter, “As long as there’s a victory, some flag I can wave, parade I can have in my head” (87). When she wants to reconcile with Joe, she wants a “truce,” and the restoration of “borders . . . to where they’d been” (95), as might occur after a war. When she thinks about married people, she conceives of herself unmarried as “a small neutral country” (87). When she misremembers the past, she explains that the memories were “fraudulent as passports” (145); they misrepresented, not her personal experiences and condition, but her national status. These metaphors further nudge the reader toward understanding the story as, in part, a national allegory. Unfolding the Story Having overviewed the main thematic points of the novel schematically and synchronically, we might briefly consider part of the book’s sequential development. As already noted, the first sentence of the novel announces that a disease is killing the birches, “spreading up from the south” (3). This introduces the dual themes of ecological devastation and the invasion of Americanism, which (despite its name) is a sort of pan-­ human disease of unnatural violence. The narrator and her friends approach an “outpost” (3), marking a transition, roughly, between civilization and nature. This is Atwood’s version of the frontier. However, in this case, the frontier is to the north, not the west. (Atwood echoes the American phrase “Gateway to the West” through the sign “gateway to the north” [5].12) More importantly, Atwood is on the side of the wilderness, not civilization—­or the First Nations (putatively in harmony with nature), not the settlers (with their attempt to subdue nature). On the second page, the narrator introduces her boyfriend, Joe: “From the side he’s like the buffalo on the U.S. nickel,” part of “a species once dominant, now threatened with extinction” (4). Though Atwood is clear180  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

ly satirizing Joe’s self-­assessment, the connection with buffaloes, and the emphasis on their near extinction, are crucial for Joe’s eventual role as the father of her new child. The narrator recalls the metaphor later, when she decides that she is conceiving the new child. She explains that Joe “needs to grow more fur” (164). As already noted, she later identifies the new embryo as “the fur god with tail and horns” (187). As Gill and Sullivan (1992, 34) explain, “The buffalo is the most important animal in most midwestern and Plains” Native American nations. Particularly relevant to the (allegorical) conception is the fact that “many stories and ceremonies celebrate the buffalo’s generative powers.” For the Lakota, for example, “Buffalo is . . . responsible for the fertility of woman” (34–­35). It is worth mentioning that Joe’s art is significant here as well. He makes pottery. Though his work is strange and distorted—­seemingly expressive of violence—­it does potentially connect him with the long-­standing and diverse traditions of First Nations pottery (on which, see, for example, Huntington, Arnold, and Minich [2019]). The second page also introduces the enigmatic issue of whether the narrator has “a twin” (Atwood 1998, 4). Palmistry says so, but the narrator denies it. This may gesture toward the aborted child. Insofar as this is the case, Atwood may wish to suggest the relation between the European settlers and the First Nations people, who should have been joined in the past, and who will be joined in the new pregnancy at the end of the novel. Perhaps in keeping with this, she later characterizes her lost child as a lost “Siamese twin” (45). On the other hand, the image might also suggest a sort of twinning between Canada and the United States, a sort of denied or repressed siblinghood, which is certainly implied elsewhere in the novel. In any case, the United States and its military are introduced on the third page. The travelers pass a “pit . . . hollowed out” by “the Americans” for “rockets” (5), part of the unmentionable cooperation between these (twin) nations. David mechanically denounces the “Bloody fascist pig Yanks” (5). Later, we learn that David is the most Americanized of the group, the most infected with the disease spreading up from the south; a “copy,” an “imposter” or a mimic, with “second hand American spreading over him in patches, like mange” (153). We see it in his hypocritical assertions of liberalism, belied by his routine harassment of his wife. Atwood continues to introduce us to her main thematic concerns over

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the course of the following pages. On the fourth page we learn about Random Samples. One of the samples in the film is a house made of empty soda bottles. The colors of the bottles are used to form images that recall First Nations dwellings. But the difference is palpable. The “bottle villa” (6) is an unlivable oddity, a “random pimple” in Anna’s phrase (6). It is not a traditional home, suited to the environment and culture of real people. Soon, they come upon the stuffed moose family, the father in a “trench coat,” the stereotypical garb of a spy; the son with “a baseball cap, waving an American flag” (9)—­a perversion of nature by “civilization,” specifically Americanism, with its spies and flag waving. Early in the second chapter, the narrator tells us her thoughts about flags. It was during World War II, where “bombs and concentration camps . . . pain and useless death” were rationalized by “the leaders roaring at the crowds from inside their uniforms” (14). The uniforms hide and protect them by reducing everyone to a category, setting an in-­group against the faceless, implacable enemy. All the while, “flags [were] rippling in time to the anthems” (14). The narrator and her party leave behind the moose family, heading further north. Subsequently, the narrator sees “a roadside crucifix” (10). Jesus is an “alien god” (10) in this region, not one of the indigenous people’s deities. He contrasts with the “Indian posies” at the site where someone died in an automobile accident (10). Bulldozers and dynamite have uprooted trees (10). The suggestion is that the trees are not all that has been deracinated. Then there are the signs—­election campaigns, directives to “Drink Iced Coca-­Cola” and—­parallel with that—­t he anonymous aggression of “fuck you” (11). Even modern medicine is not spared in the narrator’s criticism of Americanism. She recalls her mother’s cancer. Her mother “must have been afraid they would experiment on her, keep her alive as long as they could with tubes and needles . . . and in fact that’s what they did” (17). Later, medicine is linked particularly with her abortion. It is also inseparable from torture. American military activities, the cia in South Vietnam and elsewhere—­these were enabled by medicine too. Moreover, the foundational work for this violent medicine was done in Canada, contracted out by the Americans, showing that Canada was indeed America’s twin, showing that, like David, it was patchy with secondhand American, like mange. Later, the narrator remembers “people isolated in a blank 182  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

room” (84). Later still, she reflects on how “they’ve discovered rats prefer any sensation to none” (112). As McCoy (2006, 32) explains, “the cia, in collaboration with university researchers, slowly identified three key behavioral components integral to its emerging techniques for psychological torture. At Montreal’s McGill University, the discovery, by gifted Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb, of the devastating impact of sensory deprivation became the conceptual core of the agency’s paradigm.” In 1958 Hebb stated that his research in this area concerned “brainwashing” and a colleague of his explained that “one of their main aims was ‘to measure the subject’s susceptibility to propaganda’” (41). In addition, the cia funded psychiatrist Ewen Cameron (also of McGill). Cameron studied the use of extended “sensory isolation” in producing a mental state in a patient that would facilitate attempts to “reprogram” him or her (see Lawrence [1987, 29]). (Both David and the narrator worry explicitly about cia infiltration; see Atwood [1998, 96 and 101].) The narrator characterizes her and virtually everyone’s response to this research, its use, and its consequences. She writes, “What to feel was like what to wear, you watched the others and memorized it” (112). All too often, we do not respond with natural feelings of human sympathy. Rather, we look to see how everyone else is reacting and imitate them. In this way, we all tend to be like David—­mimics, imposters—­or like the leaders, speaking to the world from inside our uniforms. We go along, think we should go along, whether it is the cia torture of Vietnamese or the dispossession of First Nations people (or, for that matter, David’s apparently liberal condemnation of sexual reticence as bourgeois and his harassment of Anna). Other national issues arise as the story continues. When the narrator meets her French neighbors she immediately finds herself in a situation where the politics of language are obtrusive, though unacknowledged. She comments that “if you live in a place you should speak the language” (22). The immediate context suggests the dominance of English in Canada. But the statement more harshly condemns Europhone Canada as a whole, both Anglophone and Francophone. The precolonial languages of the place have declined; some have been lost (see Cook and Flynn [2008, 326–­27]). Subsequent pages provide further hints about the relation of Europeans to First Nations peoples and cultures. Entering the (relative) wilderness,

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the narrator experiences “homesickness, for a place where I never lived” (Atwood 1998, 26). The place is both geographical and historical; her nostalgia is for a part of Canada now, and for the entire place as it was before the coming of European colonists. When the narrator says that “if you live in a place you should speak the language” (22), she adds that she does not live in this place, thus exonerating herself. In conjunction, the two quotations suggest that perhaps the nostalgia she feels a few pages later applies not only to the physical place but to a society in which she never lived. She elaborates on the nature around her, comparing the lake where they are staying to a spider (27). Gill and Sullivan (1992, 27) explain that the spider “appears often in Native American mythology.” They particularly stress the recurrence of Spider Woman, who “consistently plays dual roles of helper and one who is dangerous”; for example, for the Lakota, she is a “trickster.” In keeping with this, the narrator explains that the spiderlike “lake is tricky . . . ; people drown every year” (Atwood 1998, 27). She goes on to “remember” how her brother almost drowned, though she could not in fact remember this as she was not born yet. She imagines a fetus in its amniotic fluid, comparing it to “a frog in a jar” (28). The reader does not yet know about her abortion. But the image retrospectively connects her abortion with the insensitivities to nature that characterize modern, Western nations, insensitivities that she contrasts with First Nations’ practices. There may even be a more specific suggestion of modern, Western ecocide, hinting at forms of pollution that have some of their first observable consequences on frogs (see Thomson [2019]).13 Certainly, the place at which she has arrived is a refuge from European American civilization, as close to pre-­Columbian nature as she is likely to get. When she and her companions disembark, she explains that “it’s the first time . . . for years . . . we have been out of the reach of motors” (Atwood 1998, 29). When motors do arrive, they appear as a violent intrusion, driven by flag-­waving Americans. Before they even see the Americans, David comments that Canada “would be a neat country” if they “could only kick out the fascist pig Yanks” (35). But then, he asks, “who would be left?” (35) This is a relatively early hint that the difference between the Canadians and Americans is not as great as one might have thought. Again, they are twins. The point applies importantly to ecology. David goes on to say that Canada “is founded on the bodies of dead 184  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

animals” (36). He particularly emphasizes beavers (which also figure in a number of First Nations mythologies; see Gill and Sullivan [1992, 26–­27]). Soon after this, Atwood begins to fashion the narrator’s words to suggest that she and her story concern a nation and history—­even prehistory—­not only a person and biography. Her understanding of what happened to her father is “an archaeological problem,” requiring that areas be “excavated” (Atwood 1998, 43), an idea fitting for the fathers of the nation, not a biological father. Subsequently, she thinks of her mother who represents a time “ten thousand years” in the past, a kind of mythical—­ or archaeological—­mother of the people. But she also represents a time “fifty years” in the future (49). She adumbrates the social future, the possibilities for the new nation, perhaps drawing on ancestral, ecological wisdom (such as that of First Nations cultures). In between these references to her father and mother, she thinks of her child—­who, we later learn, was aborted. She says the child “was taken away from me.” She characterizes that “taking away” as the child being “exported, deported” (45). Since this was an abortion, the taking away was a taking out of her body. If taking out of her body is deportation, then it seems that she must be a nation. That is the implied metaphor. Just before she introduces the Americans in their motorboat, Atwood has the narrator explain how she “fished by prayer.” She did this because she “could pretend” the fish “were willing” to be caught and that they had “forgiven” her (61). Margaret Conrad (2012, 20) explains the general idea, writing that “a pre-­contact hunter”—­t hat is, a First Nations hunter prior to European colonialism—­“saw his achievement as the result of an agreement between hunter and the hunted” wherein “the prey presented itself to be killed.” The narrator’s statement about fishing by prayer is one of the very few points in the novel where Atwood appears to ironize the ecological left-­liberal attitude toward the sacredness of nature and toward the ecological traditions of Amerindians. Authors from Michael Mann (in The Last of the Mohicans) to Leslie Marmon Silko (in Ceremony) have taken up this aspect of Native American sensitivity to nature—­praying for forgiveness to the spirits of animals they have hunted and killed. Here, however, Atwood suggests that such prayerfulness is little more than a salve to one’s conscience. On the other hand, the practice does have one positive result. Other people “got more fish” (Atwood 1998, 61). Thus, despite the literal implausibility of receiving forgiveness

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from one’s quarry, having the idea that one should pray for forgiveness may still have ecologically beneficial consequences. In keeping with this, the narrator’s attitude is in direct contradiction with that of the Americans. For the Americans, everything is about power and about affirming the power of the in-­group, whether in prosecuting the war in Southeast Asia or in fishing. They roar through the lake in their “big powerboat,” “rocking” the narrator’s canoe, affirming their non-­Canadian Americanness with the stars and stripes planted both fore and aft. They will “blast off and scream around the lake . . . deafening the fish.” She imagines them “catch[ing] more than they can eat,” ignoring the simple ethical principle that killing is not justified for sport, but only for food. Tacitly recalling U.S. practices in Vietnam, the narrator imagines that they would use “dynamite” to bump up their numbers—­ showing that they could kill the most fish in the least time—­“ if they could get away with it” (63). (The tacit parallel here is with the U.S. military’s imperative, during the Vietnam War, to produce the highest possible body count of enemy “combatants” killed, though noncombatants were routinely included in the count; see Turse [2013, 42–­48].) As already mentioned, the ultimate exemplar of the Americans’ perfidy comes when the narrator and her friends discover a dead heron. The killing is pointless; the flesh is inedible (Atwood 1998, 117). The useless carcass is “strung up like a lynch victim” (118). Why? “To prove they could do it, they had the power to kill” (118). The killing of the heron recalls other acts of the Americans, already suggested in the novel, such as the destruction of the buffalo. In his overview of Kiowa history, James Mooney (2018) recounts one exemplary incident when U.S. soldiers engaged in “an indiscriminate slaughter of the buffalo.” He quotes a report that explains why; they slaughtered the buffalo “simply that they might boast of it.” Here, we begin to get a sense of Atwood’s innovative use of the animal model for out-­groups. Again, in thinking about people in an opposed identity group, we often draw on the animacy domain and view them as animals. Here, Atwood challenges not only this way of characterizing out-­groups (such as First Nations peoples) but this way of taking up an emotional stance toward nonhuman animals. As she explains shortly thereafter, “anything we could do to the animals we could do to each other: we practiced on them first” (Atwood 1998, 122). It is no ac186  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

cident that the heron is “strung up like a lynch victim” (118). Atwood means to recall the racial violence of white Americans against African Americans, suggesting the continuity in the treatment of humans and animals in this case as well. She goes on to comment on other cruelties of the Americans. For example, they trap loons in the boats’ propeller blades, shredding them. It was a “game.” They were “bored” after “the war” (122–­23). “The war” here could refer to World War II, which serves as background to many of the narrator’s recollections. But, when the book was published in 1972, it is almost certain to have made most readers think of the Vietnam War. Moreover, the cruelties engaged in by the Americans with the loon or the heron recall the war crimes of the United States in Southeast Asia, highlighted by the Winter Soldier Investigation of early 1971 (see Vietnam Veterans [1972]) or, before that, Bertrand Russell’s tribunal on war crimes in Vietnam (see International War Crimes Tribunal [1968] and Russell [1967]). For instance, one testimony at the Winter Soldier Investigation involved using a helicopter to blow a small boy about in a way reminiscent of the “game” with the loon in Atwood (see Vietnam Veterans [1972, 40]). But the Americans are not unique. On the same page where she refers to lynching, Atwood (1998, 118) reminds us that the birch trees are “doomed” due to the disease coming up from the south. The image suggests that Canadians too would be affected, had already been affected—­as shown most starkly by the collaboration with the cia. As we have seen, David is patchy with Americanism, despite his hatred of Americans. Indeed, that hatred is itself a sign of incipient violence; it is of a piece with his psychological cruelty toward his wife. When the narrator “wishe[s] evil toward” the Americans (125), it is—­as the phrasing suggests—­evil. She is showing signs of the American infection when she wants some cataclysm to “burn them, rip them open” (125). Indeed, she subsequently learns that the people who killed the heron were not Americans, but Canadians. She reflects that “they’d killed the heron anyway. It doesn’t matter what country they’re from . . . they’re still Americans.” This is one of the many points where the narrator—­and Atwood—­appear to suggest that Canada is not as different from America as it may like to pretend; they are, again, more like twins than like opposites. I am reminded of George Marshall’s (2014, 194) comment on the “thoroughly ungreen” government of Canada, violating ecological standards in large policies

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while simultaneously being one of the world leaders in urging its citizens to be environmentally sensitive in small, individual ways. In any case, when the narrator claims that these heron-­k illing Canadians are “still Americans,” she goes on to say that they are “what we are turning into” (Atwood 1998, 130). Or maybe even what Canadians already are—­ people (or perhaps people imbued with national in-­group bias, whether American, German, Aryan, Canadian, or something else). Later, she decides that what she hates is “the Americans, the human beings” (155). She hates the Americans as somehow being particularly prototypical or paradigmatic human beings. She thereby reverses the standard use of the animal model to denigrate out-­groups; here, it is rather the categorization as “human” that devalues a group. She goes on to explain why she hates human beings, telling us “they had turned against the gods” (155). In part, this tacitly opposes a standard feature of heroic emplotment. In this view, it is ultimately divine preference for the in-­group that guarantees victory for “us” over “them.” Atwood suggests that it is, rather, the wholesale rejection of reverence for life, the rejection of the sacred, that enables the unconstrained violence of the colonizing victors. Here, we return to the sanctity of nature and the (partially romanticized) view of First Nations peoples as well. Such unqualified (heroic) violence and its attendant cruelties would not occur “in those countries where an animal is the soul of an ancestor or the child of a god, at least they would have felt guilt” (129). Moreover, she links this irreverence toward nature directly with out-­grouping, when she explains that, for “the Americans” (the human beings afflicted by the disease of national and colonialist violence), “the only things worthy of life were human, their own kind of human, framed in the proper clothes” (129). The only value of anything outside the in-­group is as a means of “prov[ing] . . . they had the power” (118), as she says of the violence against the heron. Later, she identifies the heron, strung up by killers, with Jesus on the cross. In what strikes me as a genuine and profound religious observation—­despite the ironies of the surrounding passage—­she states that “anything that suffers and dies instead of us is Christ” (141). This in effect apotheosizes any part of nature that we kill even for food. It makes sense of praying to the dead animals, like some First Nations people. 188  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

A Nonnational Allegory? But, given the preceding analysis, does it make sense to see the novel as an anticolonial, national allegory? Wouldn’t the celebration of nationhood support something very much like the “Americanism” the novel seems designed to criticize? In fact, Atwood’s novel might be more aptly referred to as an anticolonial, nonnational allegory, for just that reason. More exactly, for the purposes of the novel, it might be better to think of the land as North America, rather than dividing it into the United States and Canada. Put differently, we might begin with a conception of place that is perhaps closer to that of the Amerindian peoples, a sense where there are broad differences in who uses what land and how, but without precise borders and strict ownership, without separating the land into this nation and that nation—­and a fortiori without separating it into metropole and protectorates. This is in keeping with the narrator’s implied vision of the future. On her vision quest—­draped in a blanket, like some Native Americans during cold weather, and waiting to become a buffalo herself, waiting “until the fur grows” (182) and she can wander the land without (fraudulent) passports—­she first tries to learn what the spirits want. She will follow their “rules” (181), and they will restore nature. One of the first things she learns is that the spirits “can’t be anywhere that’s marked out, enclosed,” like the penning in of cattle, the fencing in of buffalo, but also like the geographical definition of nations and empires. The spirits “are against borders” (186). That is the possible future. So, what happens if we imagine the place as borderless? There are still Americans. But the Americans should not be thought of as a nation. They are a propensity, an inclination—­the will to power, as Nietzsche called it. They want to own, to dominate. They establish nationhood based on ownership and domination—­of nature, of other people. They put on their uniforms and rig up their powerboats and deafen the fish and study how to torture Vietnamese. But being a U.S. citizen does not make you an American in this sense. And being a citizen of Canada does not prevent you from being one. The disease is spreading up from the south. Citizens of Canada conceal their Americanness with friendly gestures and saying the right words. But it is still there. It is true that Amerindians of the United States, like young men fleeing the draft to Vietnam, sometimes took refuge in Canada (see, for ex

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ample, Dunbar-­Ortiz [2014, 165]). But European Canadians took over the land, like their cousins to the south. Indeed, it is important to stress that the European Canadian relation to First Nations people was far from ideal. To take one example, as Shackleton (2007, 85) points out, “it was not until the astonishingly late date of 1960 that Canadian Natives received the right to vote.”14 When the narrator recalls her childhood, she can think of only one First Nations family. Where were the others? She explains that “the government had put them somewhere else, corralled them” (Atwood 1998, 85), put them in a corral, like animals, imposing borders. The one family she saw tried to pick berries. In a land where their ancestors had lived prosperously, they would seek for a bush that the white people had missed. It was not for fun or for a treat, a hobby of making jam. It was a source of income; “once . . . we passed two of the children standing by the side of the road with tin cans of blueberries for sale” (86). The subnational divisions of the nation, as well as the dominant, colonizing group’s history of violence—­and the broad historical amnesia of this group about that violence (analogous to the narrator’s amnesia about her abortion)—­are summarized in the narrator’s conclusion about these children hawking their few fruits: “It never occurred to me till now that they must have hated us” (86). So, we begin with the idea of one, borderless place. In that place, we find Americans (whether from the United States or from Canada), men and women who strive to establish societies based on possession, with its precise carving up of space, and domination, with its displays of gratuitous violence (such as the killing of the heron). Atwood suggests that both activities are fundamentally violations of nature—­parceling it up and walling it off; killing it, not for food but to display that one can kill. In addition to the Americans, we also find First Nations traditions of reverence for nature—­t hough we find very few First Nations people themselves, beyond the couple of (putatively) hostile children and their family. While there are Native Americans all over in a work such as The Last of the Mohicans (despite the apparent suggestions of its title), there are almost none here.15 Perhaps having actual First Nations people would have made it impossible to idealize their traditions. After all, Amerindians too can be greedy for power, domineering, senselessly violent—­in short, “American.” Atwood needed the tradition to be pure, unsullied by the humanity of the people involved. 190  Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue

At the end of her vision quest, the narrator’s fellow travelers return. They are not like her, with her blanket and identification with the lost buffalo. They do not even have their natural integument, covered instead with “fake skins.” And what are these “fake skins”? They are “flags” (190), signs of nationhood. Her nakedness is, then, a visionary rejection of flags. She goes on to explain her relation to the land, a land that has rejected borders: “I don’t own it, nobody owns it” (190–­91). I take it that this is, roughly, the narrator’s—­and Atwood’s—­vision for the future. As it is not nationalist (and not colonialist), Atwood’s vision of the future is not, ultimately, a Canadian vision only. It is Canadian merely in positing a counterforce to “Americanism” as a sort of cultural colonialism (the idiosyncratic sense given the idea in this novel). The new nation is not simply opposed to the United States. It is, rather, an alternative to any national divisions, an alternative of a boundaryless connection with nature that would allow First Nations people and the descendants of European (and non-­European) settlers to live together without one colonizing the other, or destroying the land that they share with one another and with other creatures. As stated, this all seems to be a standard form of utopianism, romantic antimodernism (on which, see for example Arvidsson [2019, 69–­70]). There is certainly a goodly amount of that in this story. However, in keeping with its postmodern narrative techniques and unreliable narration, the novel also complicates that romanticism with irony, and with realism. At the end, the narrator knows that her vision for the future (even vague as it is) will not be realized anytime soon. First of all, she retreats from the Amerindian mysticism, perhaps because the effects of psychotropic mushrooms have worn off. She knows that there will be “no gods to help me now.” Indeed, the spirit world has become “questionable,” even “theoretical” (Atwood 1998, 195). In practical terms, she will go “back to the city” and face “the Americans.” She hopes that they can be “stopped without being copied” (195). The phrase, “without being copied” is crucial. The obvious way to stop possessiveness and violent domination by one group is by engaging in one’s own possessiveness and violent domination—­substituting the rule of David (“If we could only kick out the fascist pig Yanks . . . this would be a neat country”) for that of the Americans. But that would just be another form of Americanism, no better (perhaps worse).

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The final chapter begins, “This above all, to refuse to be a victim” (197). The obvious way of interpreting this is as a feminist comment. But it also suggests that those opposing a nationhood of greed for wealth and lust for power should not simply give in to the aggressors. But what should they do? Her hope lies in the fantastical child, the birth of a new nation, or rather a new society that is not a nation. Her vision quest put her in touch with “the distant past” (197). She knows now that the newly conceived child is “no god.” She concedes that there may not even be a new embryo (197). But if there is any possibility of such a conception, it lies in the “potential” of “untraveled paths” adumbrated by her journey to “the distant past” (197). Again, this allegory of self-­realization takes up and transforms the epilogue of atonement (or suffering). That genre treats events following the in-­group’s heroic victory. The heroes of that victory realize the terrible immorality that was necessary for their victory. They commonly undertake some sort of atonement, suffering deprivation and social estrangement before returning to their home society, which has been elevated to a utopia by the victory and the atonement. In Surfacing, the narrator’s vision quest takes up events after the European settlers have defeated the (out-­grouped) First Nations peoples. The narrator/Canada in some degree recognizes the crimes that this involved and the need for penance. Moreover, the penance does point toward the establishment of a utopia. However, the utopia does not reaffirm the military victory but rather repudiates it, calling for the revival of the defeated peoples and their culture, and the rejection of the very idea of a nation that might define and dominate a national out-­group, thus the rejection of the very conditions that make colonialism possible in the first place.

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7

Minor Genres Revenge in Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment,” Crime in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, and Seduction in Dinabandhu Mitra’s The Indigo Planting Mirror

As noted in chapter 1, the three minor genres recur in colonial contexts in more or less standard, prototypical forms, sometimes in allegorical versions. However, they appear infrequently enough that it is not clear what (if any) uses of these genres are standard or at least common in addressing colonialism. In this chapter, I consider one example of each genre, addressing colonialism as such, the way people emplot colonialism, or both. Perhaps the most striking instance of this is Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment,” which presents us with a complex ethical dilemma related to what is in effect a case of revenge. For the criminal investigation genre, I turn to Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Bamako, which focuses on the economic crimes of neocolonialism, drawing our attention to the motivating function of both artistic and legal appeals to emotional response. The Indigo Planting Mirror (as it is sometimes translated)—­in part, a seduction or sexual assault story—­is a very influential nineteenth-­century Bengali play, which suggests some of the moral complexity of cultural resistance to colonialism. Finally, in chapter 1, I mentioned the possible existence of a spiritual realization genre. Though I have not been able to examine this possibility at any length, the cross-­cultural recurrence of a genre along these lines seems plausible enough to merit mention. In connection with this, I turn very briefly to R. K. Narayan’s The English Teacher, which can be partially understood as manifesting this genre structure. Revenge: Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment” Having written that Tagore treats revenge and colonialism as ethical issues, I should make a few comments on what I have in mind when refer 193

ring to ethics, colonialism, and revenge. First, it is important to highlight the difference between the particularistic interests that drive revenge and the general principles that we support for producing the best society, a society where people can flourish. Since at least the time of Aristotle a range of writers have suggested that such flourishing involves not only prosperity but the cultivation of one’s capacities, which are not only physical, intellectual, and aesthetic but also include the “excellences” of “moral virtue,” in Thomas Nagel’s (1972, 252) words. These principles concern such matters as political organization and the nature of the legal system. This is the area where movements for social change operate, including anticolonial movements. When we wish to address individual mistreatment in the context of social well-­being, we are likely to contrast private, monadic revenge with either solidaristic movements for social change or with a systematic legal system. Indeed, the most famous literary treatment of the rejection of revenge is Aeschylus’s Eumenides, in which a social policy of revenge is replaced by a legal system that ends the previously uncontrollable spirals of violence due to private vendettas. More precisely, law addresses the problem of how to deter violence, specifically the (as yet uncommitted) violence of potential future offenders; even when treating a past crime, the overarching purpose of the legal response is to reduce the likelihood of such a crime occurring again in the future.1 In contrast with law, revenge addresses how one might appropriately reestablish emotional equilibrium, when that equilibrium has been disrupted by the harm to oneself done by another party. There are, then, three main differences between law and revenge. Law is commonly (1) future-­oriented, addressing (2) fear over possible harms to (3) anyone considered a legal person; revenge is (1) past-­oriented, addressing (2) rage over harms to (3) oneself (harms to oneself include harms inflicted on attachment objects, that is, loved ones). Since revenge addresses different issues than law, recourse to law is not necessarily a satisfactory response to situations that would be likely to trigger a revenge response. Since a revenge response is personal, it involves a personal choice. Personal choices are the area in which ethics enters, for an ethical decision is a decision about what we will do in certain cases where we have a choice. I have argued elsewhere that ethical evaluation operates principally to guide us in making decisions that are specifically against our self-­interests (see chapter 1 of Hogan [2022a]). Clearly, 194  Minor Genres

being against one’s self-­interest is not a necessary nor even a sufficient condition for a choice to be ethical. The point is simply that ethical evaluation can make a difference to our behavior only in those cases where it contradicts our self-­interest. After all, if doing the right thing is simply a matter of doing what we want egocentrically anyway, then we don’t really need any ethical reason or ethical motivation to do it. Suppose I am in a situation where I am inclined to take revenge. I may abandon my desire for revenge or I may not. When I abandon that desire, we commonly say that I have “forgiven” the person who wronged me. As Martha Nussbaum (2016) stressed in Anger and Forgiveness, this may involve subjecting the other person to a humiliating display of subordination or otherwise asserting one’s status superiority. Moreover, in that case, Nussbaum is correct that such “forgiveness” amounts to an attenuated form of revenge. It also commonly manifests a debilitating form of out-­grouping, moral out-­grouping (on the more or less dehumanizing consequences of moral out-­grouping, see Morton [2011, 309] and Hogan [2022a, 260–­70]). On the other hand, I believe Nussbaum goes too far in objecting to forgiveness generally. First of all, forgiveness need not involve any particular display or even attitude of moral or other superiority. One need not even formulate the thought that “I forgive . . . .” Rather, one may return to a routine way of interacting with the person, a way of acting that is no longer affected by the incident that would have provoked revenge.2 But what exactly does it mean to say that one’s attitude is no longer affected by the incident? As a first approximation, we might take it to mean that one’s trust in the person is restored or that one does not react to him or her with the same degree of distrust that was initially provoked by the incident. Note that this formulation allows for a couple of relevant variables. It allows that we are not all equally trusting. Jones’s “normal” degree of trusting or distrusting may be very different (much more trusting, or much less) than Smith’s. Perhaps more importantly, this allows for degrees of forgiveness in allowing for degrees of trust. If Jones and Smith are a couple, Jones may largely forgive Smith’s single act of infidelity but may trust him slightly less than before. It would be surprising if trust, and thus forgiveness, were not in some degree affected by the target’s behavior. Specifically, it would appear that trust could not possibly evolve with a functional benefit of social cooperation if trust were un

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affected by untrustworthy behavior. But, given this, what reason do we have to forgive at all? Why, for example, would Jones forgive Smith, thus trust him again, at all? (Though it is not typically the case, these problems do arise in large, political contexts deeply relevant to colonialism—­ most obviously in connection with truth and reconciliation processes, such as those in South Africa.) I take it that this functionality is the reason that remorse is so important for forgiveness. Remorse is an aversive emotion. If someone feels remorse for a type of action (e.g., attachment betrayal), that remorse serves as an incentive not to engage in such action again. Of course, faced with strong emotion elicitors of other sorts (e.g., sexual desire), the person’s apprehensions regarding the future experience of remorse may prove too feeble to prevent subsequent betrayal (e.g., sexual infidelity). But the trustee’s current remorse at least suggests the possibility that he or she will resist betraying one in the future. (Again, this need for the trustee’s remorse may be manipulated by the truster and used to demean the trustee. However, that is not inevitable, and does not alter the functional importance of remorse.) Suppose, then, that the “betrayer,” the one who inspires one’s desire for revenge, is not remorseful or shows only belated signs of remorse with little sense of the degree of his or her moral transgression—­what does one do then? It would be foolhardy to forgive fully and restore trust. But does that mean one’s choices are only a matter of taking revenge (and thus potentially doubling the crime by repeating it) or making oneself a “doormat” for the other person to abuse—­thereby facilitating subsequent harm, not only of one’s future self but of others also? To consider this, we need to look back at revenge. To take revenge is necessarily to cause pain to the target of one’s vengefulness. This is typically done by following the lex talionis, demanding an eye for an eye. If we repudiate causing this sort of pain to the betrayer, is there no other option? As soon as we consider the question, the answer becomes obvious. There is a sort of pain that we generally believe the perpetrator should feel, even when we have forgiven him or her completely, that is, the sort of pain we have just been considering—­remorse or guilt. Fostering a sense of remorse or guilt in the betrayer is an obvious alternative to either repeating the original crime or being naively trusting, thereby encouraging recidivism. 196  Minor Genres

But then just how does one foster a feeling of guilt on the part of the target? As discussed in chapter 1, we may understand the feeling of guilt as an empathic response to another person’s pain insofar as we are responsible for that pain. Given this explanation of guilt, there are three obvious methods. The first is increasing the target’s understanding of his or her responsibility for the victim’s suffering. The second is enhancing his or her empathic sensitivity to the victim (e.g., by altering his or her interpersonal stance). The third is increasing the salience of the victim’s pain, especially insofar as this results from the betrayer’s actions. Cultivating a sense of remorse on the part of a potential trustee can be either manipulative or simply camouflaged psychological violence. However, it is sometimes a valid and valuable response to the empathic and moral obtuseness of a person one would wish to trust but cannot reasonably trust. Indeed, this returns us to politics, connecting it with ethics through the practice of harming oneself to reform someone else—­a practice with a long history in a number of traditions, including India, where it was taken up and systematized as a political tactic by Mahatma Gandhi. (On the long-­standing Indian practice of the hunger strike specifically, see R. Pandit [1968, 723–­26].) Gandhi’s non-­harming (ahiṃsā) was a way of awakening the empathy of the colonizers, cultivating their feelings of guilt, in order to lead them to feel that they could no longer bear to subordinate and exploit India, and thereby to make their pain at the suffering they caused overwhelm their joy at the material gains it produced. This is, in effect, the way a young Rabindranath Tagore (2005) used the revenge structure in his 1893 story “Punishment,” well before Gandhi gave these ideas a more concrete application in practical politics. The story of “Punishment” is as follows. Two peasant laborers, Dukhiram and his younger brother, Chidam, are living with their wives, Radha and Chandara, on the edge of destitution. One day, in a fit of rage, Dukhiram kills his wife Radha. When someone learns of Radha’s death, Chidam—­hoping to protect his brother from execution—­blurts out that his own wife, Chandara, is the murderer. Chandara is, of course, outraged at this cruel violation of what she took to be a genuine attachment bond, as well as the simple immorality of the lie. In keeping with this outrage, she refuses to have any further connection with Chidam. Despite all this, she goes along with the false testimony. Indeed, she takes Chidam’s plan a step further. Chidam tells her to say that Radha had attacked her and

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that she slew Radha in self-­defense. But, when interrogated, Chandara denies that Radha in any way provoked her violence. So, just what is going on here? The narrator (and perhaps the implied author) attributes this to abhiman, wounded pride, which often manifests itself in mere spite. This is undoubtedly part of the motivation that would lead someone to act like Chandara. But it is not merely abhiman. Rather, in taking upon herself the full burden of the crime, Chandara is refusing to engage in morally objectionable acts of the same general sort she would be condemning and she is thereby encouraging a sense of remorse in her husband and brother-­in-­law. More exactly, Chandara’s acts are ethically and politically exemplary to the extent that she refuses to cooperate with the commission of harm, except in the one case where the injustice harms her.3 This is relevant to our purposes because the crucial, determining factors in the case include British colonial presence and its consequences, though—­as is typical in Tagore’s stories—­these are relegated to the story’s background rather than highlighted. Writing in Bengali, in a privately published journal, Tagore necessarily envisioned an educated, Indian readership. This oriented the ethical and political points stressed in his writings. Specifically, Tagore repeatedly sought to oppose social hierarchies based on identity categories of caste, race, religion, sex, and so on. In keeping with this, he constructed his literary works in such a way as to discourage hierarchizing identifications, which he appears to have seen as a primary source of immoral behavior. Given his readership, he had no need to stress the crimes of colonialism. Indeed, emphasizing those crimes could all too easily foster a sense of moral superiority on the part of his readers. This would be a problem for two reasons. First, it would enhance an identity-­based hierarchy. Second, and more importantly, it would in all likelihood reduce the sensitivity of his readers to the crimes of their own society, such as the sexism and patriarchal oppression that pervaded Indian culture (like so many other cultures). Of course, Tagore did not wish to encourage the opposite tendency either, the colonialist celebration of British tradition above Indian tradition. Thus, he did not omit colonialism from consideration; it was, after all, deeply relevant to moral reflection on social conditions and their possible improvement. But he did tend to place it in the background, stressing instead the moral problems for which Indians themselves bore primary responsibility. In 198  Minor Genres

this way, Tagore’s stories do not treat colonialism in the usual manner. But this more indirect way of addressing colonialism—­integrated with social self-­criticism and a focus on personal, ethical choice—­arguably make them all the more valuable for our study. In exploring ethical—­and, ultimately, political—­issues in this particular story, we first need to consider the attribution of guilt to Chandara. As Dukhiram is clearly guilty and Chandara innocent, why does Chidam blame Chandara? This is a painfully clear case of sexism, an almost complete devaluing of women, who are reduced simply to an outgroup with whom Chidam has, at that moment, no empathic relation. Speaking as if his wife were not a unique human being but rather a mere instrument, like a tool used in farming, like the knife his brother plunged into Radha, he explains, “If I lose my wife I can get another, but if my brother is hanged, how can I replace him?” (128). This is combined with another, prior form of out-­grouping, in this case connected with a sexual double standard. Specifically, Chidam views Chandara as an instrument for establishing and/or maintaining his social honor. Recently, in fact, he felt she had evidenced too much freedom of movement (though far less than his own) and had responded with threats (“I’ll break every bone in your body” [130]) and actual violence, as he “grabbed her by the hair, dragged her back to the room and locked her in” (130). Indeed, he was so distressed with her having exhibited any degree of autonomy that, despite apparently genuine feelings of attachment, he “once or twice wondered if it would be better if she were dead” (130). Given this, Chandara has quite rightly lost any trust in Chidam. Why then would she acquiesce in his lie? To answer this question, it is useful to consider the situation in which Chidam has placed Chandara. If she tells the truth (and it is accepted as the truth), then it is virtually certain that Dukhiram will be executed (and Chidam may be punished as well). Thus, Chidam has put her in the position of having life or death control over Dukhiram. If she chooses his death, moreover, she is in part treating him instrumentally as a means to her own acquittal. One might reasonably respond that this is not really parallel to Chidam, since Dukhiram is in fact guilty and Chandara innocent. That is true, of course. But it is also true that they are parallel in contributing substantially to someone’s death. The problem is intensified by the fact that, as a (junior) sister-­in-­law, Chandara has culturally strong ethical obliga

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tions—­a form of kuladharma or “familial duty”—­to Dukhiram (and, of course, strong obligations to her husband also). In addition, general principles of “universal duty” (sādhāraṇadharma) adjure ahiṃsā, the refusal to cooperate with the infliction of harm, a duty that would clearly be violated by handing Dukhiram over the executioners (on the varieties of dharma, see O’Flaherty [1978], Parekh [1989], and Doniger with Smith [1981]). (Of course, Dukhiram and Chidam have grossly violated kuladharma and sādhāraṇadharma. But ethical imperatives are not like contracts. The fact that someone has failed in his or her moral behavior toward me does not in and of itself mean that I no longer have ethical obligations toward him or her.) In addition, Chandara would not be handing Dukhiram over to a perfectly neutral body of objective, well-­intentioned, and competent judges. She would be handing over her brother-­in-­law to the legal system of the colonial authorities, with their well-­k nown biases. Indeed, those biases were particularly salient at the time when Tagore was writing this story. Only a few years earlier, a group of British soldiers had murdered an Indian and were exonerated (see Wiener [2009, 128–­29]). The murder was “by no means without precedent in British India” (129) and gave rise to an extensive “controversy” that challenged the very idea that the colonial rulers adhered to the “rule of law” (Wiener 2009, 129; see 159 and 188 on differences in both legal status and in such discretionary practices as sentencing). The legal biases included the ideological rationalization of colonial domination as a “civilizing mission.” That mission in turn encompassed a sort of European feminism or pseudo-­feminism, according to which, Indian culture devalued women’s lives. This was illustrated by the practice of satī, which the colonizers outlawed, even while creating a situation that increased its frequency (see Nandy [1980, 1–­3]) and engaging in sexist mistreatment of women throughout their own institutions and cultural practices in England.4 Thus, if Chandara told the truth, she would be turning over her elder brother-­in-­law to a biased court system and possibly reinforcing colonialist stereotypes about Indian culture and the ideology of British colonialism as a civilizing mission. Needless to say, I am not claiming that we should imagine Chandara thinking all this explicitly. Rather, I take it that a woman in her situation would intuitively find it repugnant to hand Dukhiram over to the police. She need hardly recognize anything more than the simple fact that, when “po200  Minor Genres

lice charged into the village . . . [b]oth the guilty and the innocent were equally afraid” (Tagore 2005, 128). Chandara’s situation appears even more morally vexed when we consider the murder itself. This is not because Radha was in any way responsible for Dukhiram’s attack but because Dukhiram’s own circumstances were in some ways responsible, and he had no control over those circumstances. Dukhiram faced the imminent danger that his crops would be lost as “most of the grain-­fields” were “flooded” (125). In consequence, “The paddy needed to be cut before the sandbanks were washed away” (126). Even supplementary food sources were at risk, as “roots of mango and jackfruit trees” sat unsteadily “on the slipping bank” (125). This food insecurity is particularly significant when one recalls the range of British colonial policies that virtually guaranteed regular and severe famines in India (see, for example, Wolpert [1993, 267–­68] and Kennedy [2016, 28]). At this moment when it was particularly crucial that Dukhiram and Chidam needed to attend to their crops, should they wish to avoid food insecurity, even potential starvation, “a bailiff had come from the [landlord’s] office and forcibly engaged the two brothers” (Tagore 2005, 126). They were conscripted into the landlord’s service, through the hated practice of begar, compulsory labor.5 To make matters worse, Dukhiram and Chidam were not given remuneration that would in any degree compensate for their economic losses. Indeed, they were “paid mainly in insults and sneers” for their “toil and humiliation” (126). It was a situation almost designed to produce shame, particularly given that Dukhiram’s self-­ evaluation would presumably have been a function of his ability to fulfill his duties as a man, a husband, and a father. The insecurity about food, the demeaning social superiority of the landlord, the bailiff, and others (repeated experiences, intensified on that day, but not limited to it), and other, related factors would have fostered a deep sense of shame, and, alternating with that shame, a sense of rage at its cruelty and injustice. Then, he returns home, hungry as well as humiliated, and asks about dinner. Radha’s words must have felt to him like a knife, as she taunted him, saying, “Where is there food? Did you give me anything to cook? Must I walk the streets to earn it?” (126). Of course, Radha too was suffering from most of the same anxieties. I do not wish to blame her. However, this pointed attack on Dukhiram’s male identity, with its strong implication that he is so inadequate—­so dishonorable—­that he would drive

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his wife to prostitution was virtually the worst possible thing she could have said at that time, just what would most enflame his shame and rage. (This is not only a male identity concern; it involves attachment sensitivity as well. Though it is trivial in contrast with murder, Radha’s taunting comments do suggest a sort of attachment betrayal—­an emotive disloyalty—­and in context one could reasonably expect Dukhiram to interpret them that way.) If Chandara were to denounce Dukhiram, she would be pursuing her self-­interest by supporting a process whereby Dukhiram would receive all the blame for this terrible act. The landlord, the bailiff, the colonial legal officials, the administrators who insulted and humiliated him—­none of these would bear any of the blame, though without their acts, the crime never would have occurred. Of course, they received no blame for Chandara’s supposed crime either, which is one reason why I would say that it is best to tell the truth in this case. But, again, the ethical choice here is different for Chandara, since the case involved significant self-­interests on her part. Put simply, to tell the truth would (arguably) be an act of self-­serving cooperation with exploitative and biased structures (including those of colonialism), a (vengeful) violation of universal dharma and of familial dharma, as well as an attachment betrayal—­ in short, everything she found horrifying in the original crime, even if much diminished. (I should stress again that none of this is persuasive for me; I would still strongly advocate Chandara telling the truth. But for me the choice would be between two types of state-­sponsored homicide, that of innocent Chandara and that of guilty Dukhiram. In contrast, for Chandara, the choice is between her own life and that of someone else—­in effect, suicide versus homicide, indeed a sort of fratricide.) But what about her sister-­in-­law? Why doesn’t Chandara go along with Chidam’s plan to blame everything on Radha? After all, if someone is dead, what difference does slander make to him or her? But not everyone believes that the dead are simply dead, and many people who are alive appear to have a keen interest in being admired after they die. Moreover, even if the dead do not care, it seems likely that their still-­living relatives would care—­including the eighteen-­month-­old son that Radha left behind (and who would have had to live with the thought of his father murdering his mother if Chandara had opted for truth-­telling). In this way, Chandara slandering Radha—­answering “Yes,” rather than “No,” 202  Minor Genres

to the questions, “Did she attack you first?” and “Did she ill-­treat you?” (131)—­would be in some ways parallel to Chidam slandering Chandara. It too would give rise to “a stigma that could never be obliterated” (131). It too would lead to “friends and companions . . . shudder[ing] with embarrassment, fear and contempt” (131). (In addition, it may not have worked, given the evidence. In that case she would have created in people’s minds a doubt about Radha’s propriety without any benefit.) Given Kant’s stress on truth as an apparently preeminent value (see Kant [1981, 63–­67]), it may seem that Chandara is anti-­Kantian in her ethics. But I do not believe that is right. Indeed, I see her as, in a sense, more Kantian than Kant. One way of thinking about the difference between deontology (e.g., Kantianism) and consequentialism (e.g., utilitarianism) is as follows. For a consequentialist, the morally right action in a given situation is the action that will provide the best outcome (e.g., the greatest happiness), given how other people probably will act in the situation as it unfolds in reality. For a deontologist, in contrast, the morally right action in a given situation is the action that would come closest to creating the morally ideal society if everyone followed the principle instantiated in that action. A distinction of this sort is usually thought of only as ethical, but it clearly has political consequences as well, including consequences for colonialism. Tagore presents us with one way of thinking about moral protest, a way that rejects identity-­based hierarchies (whether colonialist or anticolonial) and repudiates cooperating with systems of violence or hiṃsā (such as the colonial system). Tagore’s implied alternative seeks instead to foster—­often through one’s own suffering—­a feeling of compassionate remorse based on a recognition of one’s own culpability (as with Dukhiram and Chidam). As such, it prefigures forms of anticolonial activism in later years, most famously Gandhian ahiṃsā. Indeed, Tagore went further than Gandhi in this direction, to the extent of criticizing Gandhi’s program as too violent in its divisiveness and emphasis on relations of power (see S. Sharma [1994, 94–­95]). In the terminology of ethical philosophy, then, Tagore’s response to colonialism (or to social reform more generally) favored an idealized, deontological ethics over more pragmatic, consequentialist assessments. His development and instantiation of the revenge prototype provide us with at least some hints as to how such views may be oriented by and also reconfigure this narrative prototype.

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Criminal Investigation: Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako Abderrahane Sissako’s 2006 film, Bamako, tells two stories. One is a, so to speak, inverted romantic story—­the separation of two lovers, Chaka and Melé, with Melé returning to her home and Chaka dying via suicide. From a different perspective, this is the attenuated story of the investigation of a crime. The crime is the theft of a gun, which establishes a degree of suspense regarding not only who took the weapon but what he or she will do with it. (Chaka uses it to shoot himself.) The other story in the film, the story to which the bulk of the screen time is devoted, is a criminal trial, which (rather surreally) takes place in a courtyard of some ordinary people’s home in Mali. The trial concerns whether the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are guilty of imposing destructive neocolonial policies on Africa. The international financial institutions (and their Western backers) are almost certainly guilty as charged. Piketty (2020, 693) discusses the “pauperization of the poorest states in recent decades, particularly in sub-­ Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia,” noting that “the poorest states in the world became poorer in the period 1970–­2000” (693). He explains this broadly by reference to the financial difficulties of the newly independent nations, which themselves derived principally from the “unusually rapid liberalization of trade, which was in part imposed by the rich countries and international organizations during the 1980s and 1990s” (694–­95). Though its conclusions are (by and large) correct, the film—­like actual legal proceedings—­appeals to the viewers’ emotions in order to foster our agreement, rather than setting out the most logically and evidentially rigorous arguments. This may be surprising, as we generally think of the criminal investigation genre as more logical and more evidence-­based than the apparently emotion-­dominated alternative of revenge. But that particular contrast may be mistaken. The film begins at dawn. Chaka is walking through some sort of construction site, presumably on the outskirts of Bamako. Sissako cuts to Melé in their home, applying makeup before a mirror. The film cuts again. It is brighter now, and we see the guard checking peoples’ entry to the compound where (we subsequently learn) Chaka and Melé live and where the trial will take place. We enter the courtyard and find the residents going about their ordinary lives as the trial proceeds in their midst. 204  Minor Genres

I take it that this serves to make salient the partial connection and partial disjunction between the lived reality of African people and the larger, political and economic issues at stake in arguments over the nature of economic policies advanced by global financial institutions. Thus, in the course of the film, we will see young mothers with their children, young men hoping to gain employment, religious devotees, the severely ill, and others. As Kellogg (2007) observes, “At different times, a wedding and a funeral pass through the courtyard.” While lawyers, economists, and intellectuals are debating globalization and the “structural readjustments” of neoliberalism, African people live the effects of economic policies. Our attention is drawn particularly to Melé leaving for work and being observed, perhaps wistfully, by Chaka. (We do not yet know who these two are or what their relationship might be.) An old man, Bamba, who we later learn is a griot, walks to the witness stand, explaining in an African language (of southern Mali; Levine [2012, 152]) that it is not good to leave unspoken the words that form in your heart. Presumably, there are only a few people in the audience who understand him. The court officials speak in French. They communicate with him through a translator. As a number of critics have suggested, the incomprehension of those present metaphorizes the absence of ordinary people’s “voices” in the political debates that determine those very people’s future.6 Indeed, it suggests that their language itself has no place in the debates, even among those who advocate for ordinary Africans. Those debates unfold entirely in European languages, thereby limiting who can have a voice in the debates. After the title shot, we see a wedding photo of Melé and Chaka. We hear Melé singing, then cut to her performing in a bar. It is now night. While the music continues, another cut returns us to her home where Chaka sits with their sick daughter. The music ends as Melé returns to their home and expresses concern over her young daughter’s fever. She receives a call from her mother and tells her she is returning to Senegal. This sequence introduces several concerns of ordinary Africans. First, as to the child, the parents’ worry over her fever adumbrates the statistic, cited subsequently in the film, that five million African children will die of malarial fever in the next year. The song sung by Melé is “Naam” by Christy Azuma and Uppers International. The speaker in the song’s lyrics asks about the durability of power (specifically, whether it is eter

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nal) and explains that she or he is going to the palaces of various chiefs and meeting with various African ethnic groups.7 Though the lyrics are difficult to make sense of in detail (at least through a translation and given my lack of relevant knowledge), the general relation to the film seems clear enough. Like the speaker in the lyrics, the filmmaker is meeting with a range of African peoples. The filmmaker and these witnesses, lawyers, and others are not meeting at the palaces of local chiefs, but they are meeting to consider the role of, so to speak, global, economic “chiefs.” More precisely, they are addressing the issue of whether power relations can be altered (i.e., whether they are eternal). Regarding Chaka, we learn later that he is staying home with the child because he is unemployed, unemployment being a widespread problem in Africa and one connected with neoliberal economic policies. Chaka’s name—­reminiscent of the celebrated Zulu political and military leader—­ adds irony to this condition; it suggests a striking difference between the possibilities for success or advancement open to Africans outside colonialism as opposed to those operating within the constraints imposed by colonialism and neocolonialism. Though the Zulu leader was not Malian, this also may remind viewers of the military history of Mali prior to the colonial period, a history associated with such revered figures as Sunjata, the hero of a renowned Malian epic (for an introduction to the epic tradition surrounding Sunjata, see David Conrad). (Naming the character Chaka, rather than Sunjata might serve in part to generalize his relevance to sub-­Saharan Africa, rather than confining it to a single country.) A small, positive implication of this change in status is that it suggests that power is not eternal (as Melé’s song asks). It can change for African chiefs; therefore, it can also change for European, neocolonial “chiefs.” In the course of the film, we also learn that Chaka is teaching himself Hebrew in the hope of snagging a job at the Israeli embassy when one opens in Bamako. This most obviously suggests a degree of desperation in its apparently fanciful character. However, it may also suggest that Chaka has Jews as a model for Africans in that they established a successful, autonomous state after a period of inconceivably devastating persecution. The possibilities here might still seem remote, but Israel may at least suggest the possibility of overcoming current conditions. (Of course, Israel is far from an ideal model, given the condition of Palestinians. A full inter-

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pretation of Chaka’s aspiration would presumably have to take this into account as well.) Finally, Melé’s announcement that she will return to Senegal suggests that she and Chaka are separating. We never learn fully why this is the case. It has something to do with his unemployment and their financial condition. About three-­quarters of the way through the film, we learn that Chaka had judged the worst consequence of neoliberal policies to be the “destruction of the social fabric.” This destruction clearly includes the “ruined families” lamented by the prosecuting attorney (played by William Bourdon). The failure of Chaka’s marriage is a case of this sort. Returning to the chronology of the film, the following scene begins with the routine activities at the compound, presumably the next morning. Once again, ordinary proceedings and the legal process are interconnected in space, metaphorically suggesting the cause and effect relation between the policies imposed by the imf and World Bank, on the one hand, and the daily lives of real people, on the other. For example, Melé takes a plastic bucket to collect water from a common tap, in order to bathe (rather than, say, walking into a private shower in her home). Before the trial begins again, Sissako anticipates one theme of the trial—­the extent to which current economic failures in Africa are due not to the (neocolonialist) policies of international (Western) financial institutions but to corruption in Africa itself. This is the view represented by the defense attorney, Roland Rappaport. The film largely rejects it, but not entirely. Sissako indicates that primary responsibility is with the (coercive) neoliberal policies of the lending agencies. But he does suggest that corruption is part of the problem as well. He does this by several means, including the surprisingly sympathetic representation of (the somewhat bumbling) Rappaport (a point stressed by Kellogg). Indeed, Roland Rappaport is played by the very sympathetic Roland Rappaport [sic], a French lawyer whose anticolonial credentials include defending Algerian separatists and serving as president of the Movement against Racism (see Robert-­Diard [2017]). (Of course, the real Rappaport is not supporting the arguments of his fictional persona, but the fact that he is acting the role is likely to elicit positive feelings from left-­wing viewers familiar with his work outside the film.) In any case, the theme of corruption is introduced more simply and straightforwardly when the guard



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refuses to allow a journalist into the trial unless he hands over a bribe. Of course, the guard is clearly impoverished, lacking even a proper uniform, so his corruption is hardly the cause of African poverty; it is more plausibly understood as a consequence of poverty. The day’s proceedings begin with a lawyer for the prosecution, played by the Senegalese lawyer and activist Aissata Tall Sall. She explains that there is a great discrepancy between the percentage of African nations’ budgets devoted to social services (e.g., health, education, and infrastructure) and the percentage devoted to servicing national debt. For the former, the figures she cites range from 4 percent to about 13 percent. The repayment of debt, in contrast, ranges from 36 percent to 40 percent. The latter is, of course, due to the policies of the international financial institutions on trial. She asks the first witness to comment. This witness is played by Aminata Traoré, a former minister of culture and tourism for Mali.8 She states that the policies of the international financial institutions are predatory but that local, African elites are “complicit” with the institutions in that they enable to implementation of the predatory policies. Subsequently, the defense objects that the g8 (Group of Eight Industrialized Nations) had recently forgiven 60 percent of the debt.9 Traore replies in part that what African nations need is an infusion of money and the relief of some percentage of debt does not provide that. Rappaport, in turn, responds that it is contradictory to say that debt repayment is impoverishing Africa but that reducing the payments would not help African economies. Traore counters by an appeal to a sort of affective experience; she is living in Africa (and, by implication, Rappaport and others are not). Somehow, the appearance, attitude, and self-­presentation of the actors make this appear to be an effective response. Unfortunately, it really is not. What is true in her response is that living in the midst of people’s suffering makes it hard to believe that the human cost is in any way justified by the appeal to contractual obligations. But that does not mean that there is no difference between having to pay x billion dollars and having to pay 40 percent of x billion dollars. (Of course, one could respond that, in the current situation, a reduction in debt payments would not reverse pauperization but merely slow its progress.) Rappaport goes on to ask if she would agree that, since the world is now unalterably open, we cannot turn back but can only try to make globaliza208  Minor Genres

tion better—­for example, by extending International Labor Organization standards. Traoré maintains in response that the world is not open; for example, Black people are driven from their homes by neoliberal policies but then denied entry into countries where they could earn a decent living. This is true, and effective, but does not in fact respond to Rappaport’s question. The problem is that they are using “open” in two different senses. The question means simply that national economies are irreversibly interconnected; they are not self-­sufficient but reliant on exchange with other nations. Traore’s response, in contrast, refers to “open” in roughly the sense of welcoming, greeting the people of other nations with open arms, so to speak. Here, again, Traoré may appear to win the argument because she appeals to people’s suffering, which affects the viewer emotionally, whereas Rappaport’s question addresses the emotionally neutral topic of the exchange of commodities. It is important to note that she might have responded successfully to Rappaport by disputing the governing rules of international exchange—­including the false, but common, presumption that such exchange is now free or unconstrained (on constraints that benefit the wealthy countries, see Chomsky [1992, 144]; see also Parenti [2003]). One consequence of considering this exchange in detail is that we become more likely to see that the rhetorical force of the anti-­neocolonial case relies, at least at times, on emotional appeals rather than logically valid and empirically well-­supported arguments and analyses. This is presumably no less true in other genres. However, it is particularly striking in this case, due to the prominence of argument and analysis, and the articulation of the emotional appeals as if they were arguments and analyses. It is also striking because it is perfectly well possible to formulate logically forceful and empirically well-­grounded arguments and analyses on behalf of the prosecution (i.e., against the neocolonial institutions). The stress on emotional appeals, then, is not imposed on the filmmaker or speaker but chosen by him or her. To reinforce this point, Sissako cuts from Traore’s testimony to a young witness, Madou Keita, to whom the guard refuses admission. It is already clear that this refusal is loosely parallel to the way that wealthy countries turn away economic refugees at their borders. Should this parallel appear strained, it turns out that Keita is bearing witness to precisely the terrible sufferings of refugees who cross the desert to gain

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access to opportunities for a better life only to be refused and turned back at the border. Shortly after Keita is turned back from the entrance, the court goes into recess and we see the ordinary lives of ordinary people once again. These scenes include a bedridden man, suffering from some wasting illness (possibly aids). One young girl, perhaps six years old, is holding a much younger girl, who is crying, perhaps due to hunger or perhaps due to illness (her runny nose may suggest some virus). The older girl tries to comfort the baby by singing “Naam” to her. The pathos of the scenes and the appeal the viewers’ empathy, though tempered and not melodramatic, are nonetheless clear. Following the recess, we find Keita at the witness stand. He tells the story of his trip with refugees, how they were denied entry into other countries and many perished in the desert. The story is not unrealistic; nor is it confined to Africa, as a look at the southern border of the United States indicates (see, for example, Guardian [2019] on the situation in 2019). Haunting images of men walking through the distortive, scorching air of the Sahara illustrate his tale, which is accompanied by Oumou Sangaré’s elegiac “Saa Magni,” a lament over the death of Amadou ba Guindo, a Malian musician who was her collaborator and friend. Keita explains that, of thirty that set out, ten managed to return. A middle-­ aged, working class, African woman interrupts the proceedings, pointing out the irreconcilable differences in background that separate the lawyers and judges, on the one hand, from the refugees on the other. She seems to be suggesting that, although Keita’s testimony has been translated, it has been met with little genuine understanding. After the testimony, it appears that Keita’s passport is confiscated. The plight of such refugees is wretched and should move us. Indeed, one can reasonably argue that it should outweigh the putative benefits of neoliberal policies. It makes sense to argue that the benefits neoliberalism produces cannot compensate for this sort of suffering. But it still should be an argument. The point here is that legal trials—­not only the trial in Bamako, but it seems trials generally—­do not face us with an unbiased set of explicit and systematic claims that we can consider reflectively. Note that such claims would not be emotionless. They would draw on compassion and fellow-­feeling. But they would do so explicitly

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and for all sides, rather than relying on tacit appeals that are not easily available for self-­conscious evaluation. The court adjourns for the night. Chaka practices his Hebrew. One family watches television, which is airing a “film within the film,” involving one easily recognizable executive producer of Bamako (actor Danny Glover) as well as the film’s director (Sissako). It is some sort of parodic Western, in English and French. What is more important, the storyline is (as far as I can tell) little more than a series of violent acts and equally violent retributions for those acts, all apparently without justification or even explanation of this cycle of revenge and counter-­revenge. In addition, it is all developed with Brechtian ironic distancing, reminiscent of the violence in some of Godard’s films. The point appears to be in part a matter of criticizing cultural imperialism in the globalization of arts and entertainment, as well as the perpetuation of violence. The next morning, Melé announces to Chaka that she is leaving. He says that she will have to go without their daughter. This is part of the slow, elliptical exposition of the disintegration of their marriage. Their estrangement is another concrete illustration of the harms of colonialism. In its breaking of attachment bonds, it also constitutes an important affective appeal to the viewer. Just after learning of the dissolution of Melé and Chaka’s marriage, we witness a wedding procession wending its way through the proceedings. It is accompanied by a griotte. This serves in part to remind the viewer of the tradition of verbal art among the Bambara and other ethnolinguistic groups in the region, and thus perhaps of the perversity of imitating the clichés of, say, the American Western. The next witness speaks rather broadly about the deleterious effects of neoliberal policies. He asserts that African societies were prosperous prior to colonialism. An African attorney defending the imf and World Bank criticizes this as an idealization. Both he and Rappaport maintain that the fault is with the African societies themselves. Again, emotionally, the film seems to side entirely with the witness. Moreover, the witness is largely correct. But it seems unreasonable to put all of the blame on the financial institutions, almost entirely exonerating African governments, and also to acknowledge no weaknesses in the precolonial societies. A moment of particular empathic force in this testimony comes when the



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witness explains that, deprived of social programs covering such needs as health care, when an African becomes seriously ill, he or she is likely to die, unless he or she is independently wealthy. Sissako cuts to the bedridden man with the wasting illness. The witness speaks effectively, developing powerful metaphors for the consequences of neoliberal constraints on African societies. This is probably what he needs to do in the context of an adversarial confrontation. Indeed, the point holds not only for legal trials but for political contests as well, such as elections. However, these affective appeals, it would seem, should supplement the establishment of facts and plausible explanations, not replace them. Again, the latter are not opposed to affective appeals; they are simply different. Reason and emotion are not in conflict; they simply operate in different areas. Reason contributes to understanding one’s situation and possibilities; emotion, to one’s inclination to sustain or change that situation and, if one opts for change, which possible alternative one will pursue. The next scene takes us to a Christian church and the congregation celebrating Jesus. It appears to suggest the Marxist view that religion is the opium of ordinary people,10 the addictive drug that temporarily relieves people of the despair associated with seemingly inalterable exploitation. Though it is a bit reductive, the Marxist idea does seem to fit the petition of Chaka and others in the congregation: “Lord, change my life.” The neoliberal control of colonized peoples’ wealth, healthcare, and so on, would seem to make prayer as likely to transform their existence as any other activity. As already suggested, there is a recurring concern in the film about the inability of those in authority to hear the voices or understand the testimony of the colonized. The next witness is a former schoolteacher. He simply waits silently on the witness stand before turning and departing, still silent as he leaves the courtyard, apparently in despair of accomplishing anything. With the next witness, Sissako addresses emotion directly. William Bourdon, a French lawyer, noted particularly for his defense of victims of globalization, asks her what she feels about the wasted funds, lost patrimony, and ruined families. She responds that she feels “shame,” “rage,” and “compassion.” These are, of course, emotions we have stressed from the beginning. There is shame due to denigration, the disgust one sens212  Minor Genres

es in other people’s attitudes (e.g., in racism); there is rage that alternates with shame; and—­perhaps most importantly—­there is compassion that one feels for other people experiencing the same sort of degradation. In the subsequent exchange, this witness recounts some deleterious consequences of the privatization of railroads in Mali. At this point, it is Rappaport who engages in irrelevant appeals to emotion. Specifically, he asks if it is really plausible that the World Bank wishes to deprive Malians of the railroad. But, of course, that is irrelevant. What it wants is privatization. The argument is that the World Bank pushes its privatization not because it hurts people but simply without taking that harm into account. Of course, Rappaport’s appeal is not terribly effective, primarily as he calls for empathy with an institution (and, indirectly, well-­off people who might feel insulted by a claim that no one has made or intended), rather than with individual, impoverished people. The following scene returns us to the story of Melé and Chaka. Melé is dancing with another man, though she appears deeply unhappy with the situation. Back at home, Chaka continues to practice Hebrew, appearing no less discontented. The Hebrew sentences he is repeating suggest that he and Melé are looking for something in the wrong place. Perhaps they are looking for something missing in their lives and, instead of looking for the cause in each other, should be looking at their encompassing social and economic conditions. The next morning, a young man, presumably a journalist, is interviewing Chaka. He recounts how Chaka had earlier said that the worst consequence of neoliberal “structural adjustment” was the destruction of the social fabric. The audience can now see that the story of Melé and Chaka is an illustration of just this point. Unfortunately, he explains, the tape recording of that earlier interview was lost. He therefore asks Chaka to repeat what he had said. Here, Sissako makes explicit a theme that was strongly suggested before. Specifically, Chaka declines, explaining that there is no point because “no one will listen.” (Of course, Sissako cannot completely agree with this idea or there would be no point in making the film, since no one would watch it. There must at least be some exceptions.) The defense now has its chance to rebut the accusations. Rappaport begins by reiterating that the international financial institutions do not desire the increase in child mortality or the decrease in life expectancy rightly complained of by the witnesses—­an irrelevant point, as already

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noted. He goes on to blame these problems on corruption in African administration. It seems clear that corruption is not the primary problem, but it is also not irrelevant or trivial. Indeed, a comprehensive response to the problems of underdevelopment in Africa and elsewhere will need to take this into consideration—­though without making it the main focus. Rappaport goes on to adjure his audience to attend to tackling the problems that everyone shares, such as environmental devastation, rather than focusing on what divides us. This, too, is an emotional appeal, and—­like most of what Rappaport says—­makes some sense. But humane policies regarding debt and efforts to halt the destruction of the planet need not be mutually exclusive. Moreover, as is obvious, it is easier to set aside issues of planetary inequality when one is in the group that has benefited from inequality, rather than the group that has suffered. It is at this point that Bamba stands up and speaks the words that have been filling his heart. Specifically, he delivers a poetic diatribe that is untranslated, again suggesting the absence of people’s voices in the deliberations that determine their futures—­even the most articulate voices, the voices of the griots, who have the task of recording both the past experiences and the future hopes of their people. After Bamba finishes, Bourdon delivers his closing remarks. His speech is emotionally effective, with its imagery of prison and guard dogs, its metaphor that the prescriptions of the neoliberal institutions turn out to be for poison rather than medicine, and so forth. After recapitulating the horrible statistics on life expectancy, child mortality, and so on—­statistics accepted, and accepted as horrible, by the defense—­he turns from purely emotive appeals to explanation. He quite reasonably links the degradation of African quality of life to the cycle produced by debt. He also responds to the defense’s argument that the neocolonial institutions do not want Africans to suffer and die. These institutions are, rather, simply working to extend a form of capitalism that has no concern about the well-­being of the population generally. He goes on to say that the cost of the war in Iraq could have provided potable water for all of Africa and treatment of all African aids patients with generic drugs.11 He ends with a call to the court to enable the pursuit of utopia by judging the defendants guilty and sentencing them to the service of humanity, rather than to the service of capitalism—­a call that is admirable in some ways but in other ways a mere bromide, amounting to a hopelessly vague assertion of good intentions. 214  Minor Genres

The final argument is left for Aissata Tall Sall, who develops the problem of “the vicious cycle of debt.” It is important to point out that the problem isolated by Sall is not confined to Africa during the early 2000s and in relation to structural adjustment. It has operated for centuries as a tool of coercion, a means of controlling supposedly independent governments. As Piketty (2020, 225) puts it, colonial powers frequently “disciplined” disobedient colonies “with coercive debt strategies.” In Morales’s (2022, 43) words, “throughout the world, debt is employed as leverage that allows wealthier countries to extract concessions from poorer ones.” For example, the burden of debt hobbled Haiti from the 1820s to the middle of the twentieth century (see Piketty [2020, 217–­20]), undermining many of the gains achieved by Haitian independence. Similarly, Piketty points to the European, military imposition of debt on Qing dynasty China, explaining that “the Qing were forced to raise taxes to repay the Europeans and eventually to cede more and more of their fiscal sovereignty, following a classic colonial scenario of coercion through debt” (376). As Morales (2022, 43) explains, practices of this sort have been “repeated in the 21st century through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the European Union in order to sustain a capitalist hegemony over most parts of the globe.” More recent examples would include Puerto Rico. Writing in 2022 Morales explains that “the debt crisis in Puerto Rico” has resulted from such practices as making the island “a dumping ground for US manufactured goods” (43; i.e., a captive market) and more generally extracting wealth from the colony. In sum, “Puerto Rico’s debt was a means to reassert US dominance over the island,” that is, to allow “its original colonization to have an afterlife in the form of this debt” (43). In the film, Sall explains that neocolonial political economy based on debt underwrites the privatization of health care and the resulting outcomes—­such as forty-­t wo thousand deaths from cholera in a few months of 2005, though cholera is “a medieval disease that was thought to have been eradicated.” She goes on to make a related point about the destructive consequences of neoliberal education policies. From here, she turns to emotional appeals, particularly drawing on attachment themes. In a striking case, she allegorizes Africa to a grieving widow. This turn to attachment themes tacitly recalls Chaka’s statement about the devastating consequences of neoliberalism on human relationships

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and prepares us for the concluding sequence. We see Chaka and his daughter playing at home, but their play is somber, mirthless. Sissako cuts to Melé singing at a club, but tears roll from her eyes as she sings. As we cut between Melé and Chaka, we see him speak soundlessly to the young girl, then hold her beneath the wedding portrait. Once the child is asleep, Chaka leaves. As already noted, over the course of the proceedings, a police officer has been investigating the theft of a gun. Snippets of the investigation turn up at various points in the course of the film. I assume most audience members are like me in assuming that the gun has been stolen for revolutionary or criminal purposes. We now learn that Chaka has taken the pistol in order to kill himself. The film concludes with Chaka’s funeral, with Melé’s grief as a widow giving concrete particularity to Sall’s metaphor for the effects of neocolonialism.12 These effects include countless cases of this sort—manslaughter, if not murder. Most of the funeral is shown as if filmed without sound, recalling again the unheard victims of neocolonialism. The Seduction/Assault Story and The Indigo Planting Mirror Though relatively little known outside Bengal, Dinabandhu Mitra’s Nil Durpan, Indigo Planting Mirror (in Gupta 1972, 1–­102) has had enormous impact in Bengal and elsewhere. Its publication in 1860 followed the revolutionary uprising of 1857 by only a few years. The play treats the brutal practices of European indigo planters as well as “the partiality of various Magistrates in favour of Planters” (James Long, qtd. in Gupta [1972, 3]), thus the economic and political consequences of colonialism. In doing so, it reflects the anger that triggered the indigo boycott of Bengali peasants (1859–­1860), “the first labor strike by Indians against British management” (Wolpert 1993, 246–­47). An English translation appeared already in 1861 (Gupta 1972, v) and translations into other languages appeared subsequently. The play was “widely read” (xl), and, due to its political impact, it has been called “the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of Bengal” (xxxiv). As such, it “brought a great national awakening in India” (iil). (It also has a prominent place in literary history. As Gupta explains, “With Nil Durpan the public stage in Bengal came into existence in 1872” [1xc]). The play suggests a broad historical narrative of a sort that is common in anticolonial writings, where the precolonial society—­which probably was more affluent than it became under colonialism—­is idealized into a 216  Minor Genres

perfect society. Thus, one of the main heroes of the story, Sadhu, states that “this land was the kingdom of Rama before Indigo was established” (“the kingdom of Rama” is idiomatic for the perfect society). But now, it has been reduced to beggary and “famine has come upon the land” (Gupta 1972, 14). Famine is particularly relevant because food production dropped substantially during the colonial period due to the substitution of inedible cash crops for food crops (see Wolpert [1993, 246–­ 47]), the resulting soil depletion, the time commitments required for indigo cultivation, the loss of wealth (needed to purchase food that one does not grow oneself), the reservation of food for the colonial government (188), and various other aspects and consequences of British policy. These factors made recurring famines almost inevitable. This large, partially implicit narrative of decline from utopia is often sacrificial. In this play, it frames more limited sequences of events, which fall into two prominent story lines. Historically, peasant cultivators did not simply agree to grow indigo. They recognized the dangers involved in shifting to the crop and had to be coerced into doing so, often quite brutally (see Gupta [1972, lxxiii]). The main narrative of the play addresses the, so to speak, dialectic of coercion and resistance taking place between the planters and the peasants, with the intervention of (Indian) landlords and (British) administrators. In terms of the mistreatment of peasants by landlords, Mitra’s depictions appear to have been historically accurate; a commission of inquiry, established in response to the 1859–­1860 indigo strike, found a pattern of violations of precisely the sort set out in the play (ixl). It is also important to point out that the play serves to set Indians (both peasants and landlords) against British (both planters and government officials), rather than setting socioeconomic classes against one another. As this suggests, the (European) planter versus (Indian) peasant conflict extends to at least some of the Indian property-­owning classes, with one family in particular setting out to help the peasants, in part by arguing their case in court. Unfortunately, the biases of the system and the unscrupulousness of the planters condemn such efforts to failure. (On the legal biases, see Gupta [1972, lxxxii–­l xxxiii]; on the history of the legal system in British India, see Wolpert [1993, 199–­200], for later developments, consistent with such bias, see ibid., 257.) In this storyline almost all the sympathetic characters end up dead. However, there is no reason to believe

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that these deaths necessarily constitute a redemptive sacrifice that will lead to the eventual triumph of Indians. Or, rather, there is no direct and literal reason to believe this. There are, however, some allusive hints. Again, the large emplotment of the narrative imagines the precolonial period as a utopia. Among Hindus, this utopia is mythologically identified as the Rāmarājya or rule of Rāma, an incarnation of the supreme deity, Viṣṇu. Sadhu makes the connection with Rāma explicitly in the passage quoted above. The incarnation of Rāma is recounted in the Rāmāyaṇa, which tells to story of the war between Rāma and the demon king Rāvaṇa. Mitra alludes to this story repeatedly in the course of the play. Though the connections are more compelling to the degree that they are specific to the sacred epic, their emotional force and thematic consequence are often clear from his representation of the demonic quality of the colonizers. For example, he has one character state that “when I have entered on this Indigo profession, I have thrown off all fear, shame, and honour; and the destroying of cows, of Brahmans, of women and the burning down of houses are become my ornaments” (Gupta 1972, 17; cow slaughter and the murder of priests [Brahmans] are crimes treated with particular spiritual horror in Hinduism). Elsewhere, one of the planters recapitulates the point, giving it a circumstantial (rather than dispositional) explanation. Specifically, he states that “we Indigo Planters, are become the companions of Death. Right in our presence our men have burnt down villages. Women died in the fire with babies at their breasts, Have we ever shown any compassion? Can our Factories remain, if we have pity?” (54). This association of India with Rāma and the British with Rāvaṇa—­a version of the usual association of “our” side with God—­does convey the positive or empowering implication that the former will necessarily triumph in the end. More importantly for our present purposes, in the Rāmāyaṇa, Rāvaṇa’s evil is manifest particularly in his abduction of Rāma’s wife, Sītā, an incarnation of the goddess Lakṣmī. According to the “Uttarakāṇḍa” or final book of Vālmīki’s (1981–­82) canonical version of the epic, Rāvaṇa is unable to rape Sītā, due to a curse (see chapter 26); this allows the preservation of the goddess’s chastity. Ultimately, she is rescued by her husband, Rāma, aided by his ally, Hanumān. This is, of course, an embedded sexual assault narrative, in an abbreviated form. (Though it does not include a seduction or rape, it has the same social consequences. In Rāma’s 218  Minor Genres

kingdom, Sītā is widely believed to have had sexual relations with Rāvaṇa, leading Rāma to exile and abandon her—­precisely the fate that victims of seduction seek to avoid in pursuing their violators in seduction/assault narratives.) This gives us the main part of the second prominent story sequence of the play. In this sequence, Kshetramani is abducted by one of the planters. The story does not derive solely from the Rāmāyaṇa but also has sources in the behavior of the planters. As Gupta (1972, viiil) points out, “the character of Kshetramani was true, but her name in the drama was imaginative. Indeed, Kshetramani of the drama was nobody but Huramani, a peasant girl, who, in flesh and blood, was known as one of the beauties of Nadia. The girl was kept in the bed chamber of Archibald Hills.”13 Like Sītā, Kshetramani insists on her chastity and her complete loyalty to her husband. Unlike Sītā’s case, there is no obvious reason why the planter—­a man named “Mr. Rogue”—­does not assault her. However, my guess is that the obvious parallel with the Rāmāyaṇa makes this restraint plausible for most Indian viewers. Or perhaps we are to infer that he simply delayed too long, so that Nobin and Torapa have time to rescue her, like Rāma and his ally, Hanumān. On the other hand, without a clear reason for Rogue’s apparent restraint, there may be some possibility that audiences would imagine Rogue to be less heinous than he is. Probably in part for that reason, Mitra takes up another motif of the seduction/assault narrative—­the woman’s pregnancy—­to make Rogue still more detestable. In this case, of course, given that he does not rape her, Rogue does not impregnate Kshetramani. Rather, she is already pregnant by her husband. Striking her in the stomach, Rogue causes her to miscarry and subsequently die. The miscarriage serves most obviously to extend the tragedy and thus the condemnation of colonial domination. It is worth noting that Mitra recruits the seduction/sexual assault plot and its exemplary instantiation in the Rāmāyaṇa not only for anticolonial purposes but also for rather culturally conservative purposes. Specifically, at various points, the play at least appears to endorse caste hierarchies, the idea of caste pollution (thus untouchability), and satī—­ though it may also endorse ahiṃsā, a traditional value more compatible with political progressivism. As to caste, one of the characters explains that the difference between good and evil whites is a function of their own implicit caste. (Birth caste in the Hindu system is a result of kar

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ma or the accumulated merit or demerit of past lives. In consequence, it is arguably consistent with karma that whites could accumulate demerit and be born with the putatively “low” tendencies of low caste people, even though the social status of caste is not recognized as such in British culture.) Specifically, Sabitri says, “The Indigo Planters can do anything. Then why do I hear it generally said, that the Sahebs [whites] are strict in dispensing justice. Again, my son Bindu Madhab speaks much in praise of them. Therefore I think that these are not Sahebs; no, they are dregs (Chandal [Untouchables]) of Sahebs” (Gupta 1972, 27). Conversely, the character who works to facilitate the planters’ sexual exploitation of Indian women, berates herself, stating, “How detestable is this, that for the sake of money I have given up my caste” (38). Khetromani herself, though certainly fearful about sexual assault, seems at least as fretful over violating caste restrictions. Thus, she refuses water from Rogue, and explains, “Being a Hindu girl how can I drink water from a Saheb’s pot?” (55). Even her objections to sexual assault itself refer to caste, as she laments, “If you touch me I shall be an out-­caste” (55). There is only one passage relevant to satī, but it is arguably even more straightforward than the references to caste taboos. This reference occurs when Soirindri, the wife of one of the play’s main tragic heroes, announces, “I am going to die with my husband; do not oppose me, my brother-­in-­law” (Gupta 1972, 100; note that Soirindri’s statement implies that, at least in her case and perhaps more generally, satī was voluntary, not coerced, however implausible this may be). The play does not give us any reason to question her sincerity or the ethical consistency of the act. It is also suggestive that the brother-­in-­law, Bindu Madhab, is the character who praised British administrators (27, as just noted). In context, this may suggest that the brother-­in-­law shared the view of the “sahebs” that satī should be prevented and may even partially undermine his praise of their administration. One point on which some politically progressive readers (including myself) may agree with Mitra—­beyond his opposition to British colonialism, the criminal behavior of the planters, and the biases in the British legal system—­is his opposition to retributive violence by the oppressed. After they have rescued Khetromani, and violence is no longer necessary to protect her, Nobin refers to Rogue and asks his accomplice, Torapa, “What is the use of beating him? We ought not to be cruel, be220  Minor Genres

cause they are so” (57). This view is consistent with Hindu tradition—­ and in that sense conservative—­in that it manifests a commitment to sādhāraṇadharma or “universal dharma,” which prominently includes ahiṃsā, nonviolence or non-­harming. At the same time, as Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated later, it may be not only ethical but effectively anticolonial as well. In short, Mitra’s play embodies an effective criticism of colonialism. It recruits the disgust associated with the sexual assault genre to motivate action to oppose and remove the colonial authorities who not only take the land but also defile the women of the nation. At the same time, Mitra uses the disgust elicited by the genre to advance a conservative agenda that values traditional Indian practices, some of which are at best highly morally problematic from the viewpoint of most readers today. A Note on Spiritual Realization: R. K. Narayan’s The English Teacher The spiritual realization genre begins with one or more of the goals defining the other genres. These goals come to be recognized by the protagonist as either unreachable or as ephemeral (as when the aged parents face death after they and their children are reunited in the family separation genre). Due to their ephemeral quality, the goals of the other genres cannot be taken as definitive means to the achievement of happiness. In consequence, the protagonist seeks some spiritual goal, which may be an enduring solution to his or her dissatisfactions. In a colonial context, this solution is most obviously found in an abandonment of colonialist attitudes (e.g., mimeticism) and an embrace of indigenous spiritual traditions. This embrace typically involves some form of spiritual realization. There is a broad division between forms of realization that have an external source (typically, a divine revelation), as in Christianity or Islam, and forms that have an internal source, as in Vedāntic Hinduism or Buddhism. This is precisely what we find in R. K. Narayan’s The English Teacher. (As already pointed out, I noticed the apparent recurrence of this genre only a couple of years ago; see Hogan [2022a, 146–­48]. My proposal of such a cross-­cultural genre is therefore still tentative.) More exactly, Narayan’s 1945 novel concerns, obviously enough, an English teacher. He is a young man, very much in love with his wife, with whom he has been united, thus fulfilling the romantic goal. Though

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he teaches English literature, he has at best an ironical attitude toward “open[ing] the eyes of Indians to the need for speaking and writing correct English” (Narayan 2006, 422), particularly given the fact that the English men and women who hold this view do not, for the most part, have even slight familiarity with “any of the two hundred Indian languages” (422). Indeed, he does not even appear to be motivated principally by fondness for the literature of the colonial power. As he explains, he did not teach King Lear “out of love for [his students] or for Shakespeare but only out of love for myself. If they paid me the same one hundred rupees for stringing beads together or tearing up paper bits every day for a few hours, I would perhaps be doing it with equal fervour” (428–­29). On the other hand, unlike his wife, he has no strong attachment to the spiritual practices of Indian tradition, either. Then his wife contracts typhoid and dies. This faces him with the ephemeral quality of human life, and thus of the happiness resulting from attachment bonds or romantic love. As he reflects to himself, “There is no escape from loneliness and separation . . . . A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false” (600). Seeking to preserve his spouse’s life, he had put his faith in Western medicine. When she dies, he cannot help but see the limitations of Western science even in its most apparently beneficial form. In his grief, he seeks relief through Indian spiritual traditions, in part because those had been accepted by his wife (and despite the fact that his wife’s and mother-­in-­law’s mystical exertions had no beneficial effects either). In the storyworld of the novel, he actually comes to communicate with the spirit of his wife. This leads him to “great inner peace” (607), which is the usual emotive goal of Vedāntic spirituality, which is to say, the spirituality taught in the foundational Hindu texts of the Upaniṣads. As, for example, the Śvetāṣvatara Upaniṣad explains, someone attains “unending peace” when he or she achieves spiritual realization (4.11 and 4.15, in Olivelle [1996, 260]; see also Zimmer [1990, 375] on “śāntam” [peace]). That realization occurs when one recognizes that each apparently individual soul (or ātman) is in fact the absolute godhead (brahman). Finally, that oneness of all individual souls is often metaphorized by the union of Śiva and Śakti, the cosmic principles whose fusion iconically represents that “ultimate reality” through the androgynous figure of the Ardhanārīśvara (in Grimes’s [1996, 96] phrase; on the union of Śiva and Śakti, see Grimes [1996, 53] on 222  Minor Genres

the Ardhanārīśvara; see also Feuerstein [2000, 31–­32] and B. N. Pandit [1991, 15]). In keeping with this, the narrator meditates on his wife as a yogi might practice concentration (dhāraṇā [Grimes 1996, 112]) or meditation (dhyāna [116]) on brahman; indeed, he reflects that, like the metaphysical absolute, his “wife was everywhere” (Narayan 2006, 582). At the end, he discovers “immutable joy,” that is, joy not subjected to the vicissitudes that trouble the emotion-­defined goals of cross-­cultural story genres. This joy results when “the boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved” (609), as occurs with the realization of the unity of all souls, the fusion of Śiva and Śakti. As to the relation between all this and colonialism, these experiences also inspire him to give up his teaching of English and to affirm his Indian identity. He explains that “I could no longer stuff Shakespeare and Elizabethan metre and Romantic poetry for the hundredth time into young minds and feed them on the dead mutton of literary analysis and theories and histories, while what they needed was lessons in the fullest use of the mind,” that “fullest use of the mind” being precisely what his experiences suggest was the result of spiritual practices. Moreover, these were specifically Indian practices; thus, he goes on to say that “this education had reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage” (602, though he soon repudiates this excessive condemnation of Western culture). He will spread his knowledge to others through the alternative educational program he decides to take charge of at the end of the novel. Just as the heroic genre tends to bear on political colonialism, this genre focuses on cultural colonialism. It suggests a particularly internalized form of cultural anticolonialism, one that might, ideally, pervade one’s ordinary life, but one that is also unlikely to be militant or even confrontational, as exemplified in the (default) form of anticolonialism associated with heroic emplotment.14



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8

Afterword A Note on the Psychology of Stories and the Psychology of Colonialism

In the preceding chapters, I have set out an account of colonialism and stories. Along with the introduction, they develop descriptions and explanations of colonialism that I hope are correct and illuminating. When I say “illuminating,” I mean that I hope that the descriptions and explanations, insofar as they are correct, are not simply obvious. I say, “insofar as they are correct,” because unfortunately we often feel that claims are obvious when they are in fact false. This is particularly likely when we cannot articulate an algorithmically well-­specified account of the general connections (e.g., causal sequences) that we posit to explain some observed phenomena, that is, when we cannot spell out with precision just how to get from the initial or input conditions to the final or output conditions.1 The problem in these cases is not so much the obviousness, or pseudo-­obviousness, but what we might call the algorithmic opacity of the account. In the preceding chapters, the problem of algorithmic opacity is, I believe, most likely to arise in relation to the precise way in which narrative structures combine with political, economic, and cultural conditions in our thought about and response to colonialism. There are well-­k nown ways that researchers following out a research program work to improve theories, such as by refining the data and further clarifying the conditions that a theory needs to explain. Developing greater algorithmic transparency is equally important. I cannot claim to have fully resolved this problem in the case of affective narratology. However, in this afterword, I will try to advance our understanding of how story structures and colonial conditions might interact—­and, perhaps even more importantly, how they almost certainly do not interact. In relation to this, I hope also to advance our understanding of some 224

related issues such as racism, which is clearly central to colonialism. Another way of putting the issue is—­under what conditions is it reasonable and productive to examine a phenomenon such as colonialism under the category of narrative? I turn to this question in the final section. Stories and the Imagination of Colonialism Probably the first thing to say here is that the relation between story structure on the one hand and understanding, motivational response, and action on the other is not unidirectional and deterministic. In other words, we are not simply condemned to passively understand and then mechanically act in accordance with the construals and preferences guiding any given story structure. This point is particularly clear in Tagore’s very unusual use of the revenge structure, but it bears in some degree on all the works we have considered. First of all, there is variability in just what structures are involved in any given response. The conditions in which we think, feel, and act are highly complex and open to many different emplotments, though admittedly some story structures bear more obviously on a given set of conditions than do others. Even so, Jones may think of a situation principally in terms of romantic stories that downplay identity categories and stress individual affiliation and free choice. For the same conditions (modulated of course by some differences in individual experience), Smith may think in heroic terms, heavily emphasizing identity categories and in-­group standing, valuing the abandonment of individual preference insofar as this does not contribute to the supremacy of the in-­group. Moreover, even with the same broad, genre categorization, we may map our experiences onto the structure very differently. Smith and Doe may both respond to a situation in heroic terms but identify different groups as the in-­group and the out-­group, seeing different events as invasion or restoration. Additionally, we are not confined to the prototypical forms of the genres but may alter them in light of historical events, individual aspirations, and so on. Indeed, we are not confined to these genres but may emplot events in countless other ways. Still, it is important not to overstate the case here. To use Piaget’s (1971, 4 and 8n3) terms, we are not forced by the iron laws of psychology to assimilate our experiences to preexisting story structures. However, we are also not freely accommodating prior structures to every nuance of our experience, reshaping the stories as if they have no impact on our thought Afterword  225

and feeling, which are, rather, guided solely by the things themselves. Even Tagore’s treatment of the revenge structure shows this. Chandara’s guilt-­inducing response to betrayal goes well beyond a salutary provocation of compassionate remorse leading to reparation and future ethical commitments. It is driven by the rage of betrayal and seeks to hurt her husband durably, even at the cost of her own life. Once stated, it is probably obvious that the relation between story structures and political, economic, and cultural conditions is not deterministic in either direction. It is a banal observation that both must have some effect on the resulting thought, feeling, and action. But this observation becomes less banal to the extent that the nature and extent of their interaction can be specified. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any simple, uniform rule here. It goes little beyond the idea of interaction to say that there are both top-­down and bottom-­up effects linking story structures and experiential particulars. But it is perhaps a bit more informative to draw a simple distinction. On the one hand, there are object properties that increase the likelihood of drawing an observer’s attention and leading him or her to encode features of the target (i.e., to process them cognitively) and to store the experience in memory. But there are also features of the observer that foster attention, etc. To take a simple example, anyone is more likely to attend to and remember someone suddenly shouting something at a party; the unusual volume of the utterance give it an intrinsic salience. However, if someone nearby says “Hogan” in an ordinary, conversational tone, I am more likely to notice this than if he or she says “Jones” or “Doe.” The fact that my name is “Hogan” makes the utterance particularly salient for me. Once I encode something, I may anticipate possible consequences for the event. Again, a number of factors enter here. If I hear Jones shout something, I may anticipate conflict or, say, entertainment, depending on just what Jones says (“How dare you!” versus “Ladies and Germs, I mean, Gents!”), what I think of Jones (old and kindly versus young and belligerent), and so on. The operation of narrative structures in understanding and responding to colonialism proceeds along similar lines. Due to the conditions themselves and one’s personal inclinations and sensitivities, one implicitly selects some features from experience and not others. Among these experiences and dispositions, there are some that favor a particular genre. For example, the prominence of famine is likely to make 226  Afterword

the sacrificial genre more prominent. On the other hand, independent of the features of the world in which one lives, one may be particularly sensitive toward the sorts of event or experience that would enter into one genre more readily than another. For example, as noted earlier, I have been particularly inclined toward romantic and family separation stories, but not heroic stories. This seems to be why, when I was in high school and had very little political awareness, I was strongly in favor of gay marriage—­though, at the time, this was an almost unheard-­of position, at least among anyone I knew. I wasn’t thinking of rights or of sexual morality. I was simply thinking that if two people are in love, they ought to be able to live together, visit one another in the hospital icu, and so on. Once a particular genre becomes activated in our thought regarding a particular condition or series of events, it begins to make some aspects of the target more salient, fostering attention and encoding. In this process, the genre may disambiguate events or experiences that are equivocal. This disambiguation is often connected with our anticipation of possible future events. For example, discussing audience response to movies, Nöel Carroll (1999, 30–­33) notes that the genre of a film gives rise to “criterial prefocusing,” which does just this. Thus, we understand and respond quite differently to a young woman walking alone at night when it occurs in a murder mystery than in a romantic comedy. The point is not confined to cinema, or fiction. It occurs routinely in ordinary life, though the genres that implicitly serve to emplot our experiences. Of course, the genres are generally not so influential as to actually go against any plausible account of experience. But we often have only a restricted sense of what is plausible and what is not. For example, we are often stymied by targets that extend beyond any individual’s experience, so that the only experience at issue is simulated. We often let our simulations be guided by the “instructions” given by stories (as Elaine Scarry [1999, 244] has pointed out). This can occur not only with fiction, but when stories are claimed to be true as well. A good example is Donald Trump’s recruitment of the usurpation sequence of the heroic genre to assert (contrary to all the evidence) that the 2020 election was fraudulent and thus caused the usurpation of the supposedly legitimate governing hierarchy. Indeed, we often fail to draw reasonable inferences about plausibility even from our own remembered experiences. As Daniel Schacter (1996, 8) has Afterword  227

pointed out, “even the seemingly simple act of calling to mind a memory of a particular past experience—­what you did last Saturday night or where you went on your first date—­is constructed from influences operating in the present as well as from information you have stored about the past.” When an event or series of events unfolds in a way that is contrary to expectations—­expectations such as those given in a prototype—­we may or may not misperceive the event. However, we are more likely to recall it as being more prototypical than it was, even if perceived it (relatively) accurately to begin with. This regression to the prototype, as we might call it, occurs with a range of phenomena (see Richard White [1992, 156]). For example, when shown a picture of whites and Blacks on the subway, in which one of the whites is holding a weapon, then asked about the scene later, some test subjects report that a Black person had the weapon (see Loftus [1980, 39]; see also Douglas [1997, 19]). In keeping with this, readjustment toward prototypical events and relations occurs with our memory of stories as well. (See the section on “Making a Story One’s Own” in Oatley [2011].) The same or closely related points apply to our emotional responses, not only our cognitive processing. Admittedly, the emotional effect of stories is probably less a matter of story structures per se than of the way these structures are particularized. Even so, this particularization can manifest general patterns which are at least in part affective. For instance, the propaganda of colonialist writers can adopt various sorts of heroic emplotment, sometimes cartoonishly increasing the moral stature and/or physical power of the characters. This has arguably occurred in the United States and certainly inflects emotional response. As Jeet Heer (2021, 7) points out, President George W. Bush’s “rhetoric about ‘evildoers’” recalls “the pulp bluster of fictional champions like Batman.” He goes on to argue that “it’s hardly an accident that the superhero genre came to dominate Hollywood in the era of the forever wars. Nor is it a coincidence that a demagogue could then rise to the presidency thanks to a public primed to fall in love with vigilante saviors. ‘I am Batman,’ Trump told a young boy at an Iowa campaign event in 2015. All too many voters agreed” (Heer 2021, 8; for an extended and detailed treatment of the topic, see Hirsch [2021]). 228  Afterword

Race, Racism, and Stories To explore these issues a bit further, it may be valuable to focus on a more specific topic. Given its central function in colonial ideology and its pervasive importance in society today, racism seems to be an ideal choice. I say this in part because much of the groundwork for my analyses of colonialism was laid by the research of social psychologists and social neuroscientists working on race, and some of this work has been challenged in ways that bear productively on the present study, and even on the concerns raised by this afterword. More exactly, racism may seem to be a topic unrelated to the issue of story genre, as just discussed. However, I believe that some objections to research on implicit racism actually suggest the value of bringing story genre into the discussion. Once this is done, we find our understanding of implicit racism enriched; in consequence, the objections to the idea of implicit racism appear even less cogent than they did before. The first issue that faces us when discussing racism is—­just what is race supposed to be? It is commonplace to observe that there is no such thing as race, but that doesn’t help. After all, people think of it as something. As Wacquant (2022) points out, a common way of dealing with the question is to treat race vaguely as something along the lines of ethnicity. But, as Wacquant also indicates, there are consequential differences between thinking about and responding to, say, the Irish as ethnically different and thinking about and responding to them as racially different (78). Moreover, the point holds across cultural traditions (69–­70). In our, social psychological terms, race is an identity category closely related to nationality, and even more closely related to ethnicity, but not identical with either. We may think of identity categories as having differentiating features. These features do not present necessary and sufficient conditions but prototypical characteristics, which may be more or less central to the distinctive nature of a particular identity category. What counts as a differentiating feature depends on the type of identity category we are considering. National identity categories are centrally defined by a group’s relation to a geographical place and a leadership hierarchy; it also often involves common ancestry. An ethnic group is defined by a common ancestry typically manifest in a common language at some point in history. All members of the ethnic group need not speak Afterword  229

the language today. But at some point their ancestors shared a language. For example, one is French if one’s ancestors were French speakers and shared ancestry with other French speakers of the time, even if one does not speak French oneself. A race is also defined by ancestry. But it concerns an ancestry that is considerably more distant than that of ethnicity. There are different ways in which such ancestry may be defined. An obvious possibility is to claim that a race’s defining ancestry extends all the way back to the origins of humanity, with no overlap across races. This is the “polygenetic” view, according to which each “race” (e.g., Asian, Black, and white) had an entirely distinct ancestral origin. Whether or not someone self-­ consciously holds a polygenetic view, race may be distinguished from ethnicity by a criterion of this sort.2 As Sapolsky (2017, 372) has pointed out, race involves “pseudo-­speciation.” When truly treating a person as another race, not merely another ethnicity, one in effect responds to him or her as one responds to a member of another species. This carries with it an idea of the target group sharing some sort of internal essence, which may be misrepresented in any given individual’s outward form (on this as a general feature of species categorization, see section 2.1, subsection d, of Choi [2016]). This species character also suggests a default interpersonal stance, such as fear; this is often, as with regard to predators, a fear of being eaten, which may give one reason for the strange obsession of many European colonialists with cannibalism. Such (pseudo-­)speciation also carries with it expectations about intelligence, repulsion at the idea of sexual relations between members of the in-­group and this out-­group, and other attributions and feelings. Unlike races, ethnicities are subspecies types. They broadly conform to the putatively essential features of the encompassing pseudo-­species (i.e., race) but may qualify those features in various ways. When a group—­most obviously and most readily, an ethnicity—­comes to be tacitly understood as a (pseudo-­)species, it makes more sense to refer to that group as “racialized.” Note that the (liberal colonialist) childhood model for out-­groups does not really allow for racialization or any race-­ethnicity division, since the out-­group “children” are understood on the model of human age groups. Here as in many other aspects of the human mind, we may draw a distinction between explicit processes and contents, of which we are 230  Afterword

consciously aware, and implicit processes, which operate outside of conscious awareness. Typically, both have behavioral consequences, but the impact of the latter is far stronger and more widespread. To use an example that I have used elsewhere, we commonly have a false view of how we form regular plurals in speaking English. We do not simply add “s.” We add the sound [s] after unvoiced nonsibilants (cat/cats), [z] after voiced non-­sibilants (dog/dogs), and [ǝz] after sibilants (bush/bushes). It is the implicit rule that governs our speech, not the explicit one. On the other hand, sometimes we follow explicit rules (e.g., when we decide rigorously to avoid splitting an infinitive [as here], rather than to occasionally permit it [as here]). The same type of distinction may be found in racism. Thus, whites and Blacks have explicit and implicit beliefs about each other, as well as explicit and implicit attitudes toward one another. As a number of writers have pointed out, these beliefs and attitudes, like other beliefs about and attitudes toward species and pseudo-­species, may be displaced by individuating information (see Holland et al. [1986, pp. 219, 221]). My guess, however, is that such displacement is relatively easy to reverse, with individualized members of the out-­group easily returned to the default categorization. For example, suppose a white person views an individual Black acquaintance and an individual white acquaintance as upstanding. I imagine it takes much less to lead him or her to change and view the Black acquaintance as criminal than it takes to lead him or her to change and view the white acquaintance as criminal. Indeed, this is largely what gives rise to stereotype threat, “the concern that one’s performance or actions can be seen”—­thus interpreted, evaluated, and explained—­“through the lens of a negative stereotype” (Shapiro and Aronson 2013). Much research in social psychology has gone into exploring the nature, extent, and consequences of implicit bias, including racism. This research has shown, for example, that test subjects generally identify a gun more quickly in relation to a Black person than in relation to a white person (for an overview of experiments treating this and related issues, see Kahn and McMahon [2015]). Presumably, the process leading to this result is something along the following lines. The test subject sees a Black person. This activates a range of associations, including gun violence. The pre-­activation of the idea of gun violence means that the idea of a gun is “primed” and thus more readily accessed when one wishes to identi Afterword  231

fy what the (Black) person is holding. It is well known that priming facilitates such identification. Researchers have quite reasonably suggested that such implicit processes contribute to many cases where police shoot Blacks. Invoking such processes, then, goes some way toward explaining the discrepancy between police shootings of whites and Blacks. (Explicit racism is clearly important also. Indeed, it probably deserves more attention, particularly given the general taboo on admitting explicit racism today. Though such a taboo is in general salutary, it does in all likelihood make it more difficult to identify cases of explicit racism.) In a 2022 issue of the prestigious journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Joseph Cesario has argued against the invocation of implicit bias in explaining the disproportionate killing of Blacks by police, the underrepresentation of Blacks in high-­paying professions, and so on. Cesario makes a number of arguments to this effect. Fundamentally, all the arguments are based on the fact, presumably denied by no one, that the experimental conditions are not accurate to the ecology of real life. (For example, these conditions might involve video-­game simulations where a test subject must “shoot” or not “shoot” a Black or white suspect.) Some degree of such inaccuracy is always present when one creates artificial situations in order to isolate and test specific variables and hypotheses. This problem requires the expansion of testing to treat other variables, in the hope that the research will collectively present us with a more ecologically valid picture. Researchers have in fact undertaken this task, though perhaps less often than would have been ideal. Specifically, they have sought to design studies that link implicit racism more directly with the real behaviors they wish to explain, such as police shootings. For example, Hehman, Flake, and Calanchini (2018, 397) explain that “the implicit racial biases of White residents” in a given area “predict disproportionate regional use of lethal force with Blacks by police.” More precisely, “Though the implicit prejudice of Whites is sufficient to significantly predict disproportionate lethal force [. . .], the strongest predictor of lethal force was the regional implicit stereotypical association between Blacks and weapons.” This directly connects the prevalence of implicit racism with police shootings. (Though it partially dissociates the racism from the individual police officers, suggesting broader, sociological explanations for the way the implicit racism operates. For example, the social prevalence of 232  Afterword

implicit racial biases may result in an increased frequency of conversational references to Blacks and weapons, such that it becomes more likely that a particular connection—­e.g., between Blacks and weapons—­was activated recently when a police officer faces a Black suspect with a cell phone, or more simply it may affect the way white residents report possible crimes or perceived dangers.) Similarly, Payne, Vuletich, and Brown-­ Iannuzzi (2019, 11694) point out that “aggregate measures of implicit bias, such as national, state, and county-­level averages, are robustly associated with such outcomes as racial disparities in health,” “infant health,” “police shootings,” and “gender disparities in stem fields.” Moreover, if the usual experimental situations are unnatural, so too are those preferred by Cesario (2022). Cesario shows that the usual experiments do not give the test subjects prior information about the suspect (e.g., his or her race) or the situation (e.g., whether or not a weapon appears to be involved), whereas the police officers would have such information in real-­life cases. Moreover, such cases would unfold over longer periods of time—­minutes or more, rather than a few seconds, say. But experimental scenarios do not place the test subject in the sort of danger that may be faced by real police officers in a crisis situation. The forced choice of shooting or not shooting quickly serves in part to compensate for the fact that the subjects being tested are not at risk. The idea is that they should be forced to make a shooting decision before they have the chance to modulate their spontaneous response, since they would be far less likely to undertake such modulation in circumstances of genuine risk. A more leisurely experiment would lose this compensatory value. Another artificiality of the research preferred by Cesario is a matter of the time being too limited rather than too extended. A police officer or a test subject might very well inhibit an impulse to shoot when he or she sees a Black person with some shiny object in his or her hand. But it is well-­established that, following the inhibition of racist behavior, there is a “rebound” period of increased racist behavior (see Kunda [1999, 344–­ 45]). This is probably something that can and should be tested for directly. But, until that occurs, it seems unreasonable to focus on situations in which test subjects can modulate responses and to simply extrapolate from those, ignoring the likelihood of rebound effects. Again, at least prima facie, it seems likely that currently predominant experimental para Afterword  233

digms, which do not allow time for modulation, would be more accurate than designs that allowed for modulation but not rebound. As should be clear, I do not find Cesario’s general argument at all compelling—­quite the contrary. However, he does raise some suggestive points that happen to have direct bearing on our concerns. Specifically, there are some conditions in which studies do not appear to show the results we might ordinarily have expected. I would like to take up one of these in order to consider what it might suggest for understanding implicit racism and narrative. Specifically, Cesario (2022, 6) reports that, in video simulation experiments, “placing [Black and white] targets in . . . dangerous backgrounds completely eliminated racial bias in the [test subjects’] decision to shoot.” What could possibly cause this change? First of all, I suspect that the change is not precisely what Cesario states. The research suggests that there is no net bias. This can result from an absence of bias altogether, but it would be odd if giving a location in and of itself did away with the implicit biases that are present just before that location is given. It seems more plausible to hypothesize that biases are present on both sides and result in parallel behavior toward the two groups. The dual biases could be conceived of in terms of intersectionality. (Intersectionality refers to the ways in which different sets of identity categories alter biases, rather than merely adding them together. For example, biases against gay Black men are not merely a combination of biases against gay men with biases against Black men.) To take a clearly tendentious example, to illustrate the point, suppose we specify the location of the disturbance as a violent, African American slum in a big city. It seems likely that, for many white Americans, this will not radically change their associations for a Black person. However, it seems reasonable to assume that most white people envision a generic white person in a peaceful, middle-­class suburb. If so, then being told of a white person in, say (violence-­plagued) Compton, is likely to lead them to implicitly imagine this white person very differently, specifically as a type of white person who would go to Compton or even live there. This account is testable as it predicts that responses will change again if, say, white people are specified as having gotten lost on the way to Disneyland (rather than driving to Compton to score some crack). For our purposes, however, the crucial point is not simply that this does not debunk research on implicit bias. The crucial point, rather, is 234  Afterword

that this is all a matter of narrative. Narratives involve characters, events (including of course actions), and scenes or material and social circumstances. To explain a story, we need to address all three. One thing that Cesario’s argument shows is that the same point holds for thinking about and responding to race. Racism and colonialism too are best understood in relation to these three, interacting constituents of stories. Indeed, our understanding of a character is always a matter of dispositions and circumstances, though we often differ in the degree to which we stress one or the other. Moreover, the dispositions we project onto others are most often the product of our ideas about identity categories, particularly those at the level of (pseudo-­)speciation. In some cases, the ideas are generated by way of models—­animacy (in the case of [pseudo-­]speciation), age, and so on. The point is directly related to police shootings of Black Americans. For example, as Fuentes, Ralph, and Roberts (2022, 34) note, “white officer Darren Wilson persuaded a St. Louis County grand jury not to indict him for murder after killing 18-­year-­old Michael Brown Jr. in part by testifying that Brown ‘looked like a demon.’” Wilson was relying on the animacy model, which encompasses both subhuman animals and superhuman devils. Finally, Hehman, Flake, and Calanchini (2018, 393) distinguish prejudice as “a valenced evaluation (e.g., good, bad) of a group” from stereotypes as a set of “mental associations between a group (e.g., Blacks) and attributes (e.g., threat).” The former is an interpersonal stance that establishes who are heroes and who are villains in a story. The latter often suggests the likely genres. It is, then, this entire narrative complex that enters into implicit bias, in this case a person’s thought about and response to colonialism and its racisms, both in literature and in the world. Of course, in police shootings and similar situations, we are dealing with briefer sequences—­single episodes, rather than the encompassing trajectories of stories in our various genres (to take up the terminology of Hogan 2011a). However, the implicit emplotments that yield these trajectories appear likely to be of the same sort. Indeed, broad emplotments through story categorization may be in some ways less easily modulated than the episodes that have been so widely researched in studies implicit racism. Treating as they do sequences of much greater temporal extent, and being less commonly recognized as cognitive and affective biases, the genres may be in a sense more inexorable once triggered. On the other hand, they also appear to Afterword  235

be less uniform in their specification (e.g., in how we map in-­groups and out-­groups onto the characters in a particular situation). For this reason, they may be more diverse in their consequences and more malleable to context (even if harder to modulate once specified). Again, they involve complex processes of both assimilation and accommodation. To gain a greater understanding of these processes and their effect, we clearly need further empirical research, both qualitative (e.g., literary) and quantitative and experimental. We are beginning to gain some understanding of these highly consequential cognitive and affective operations, but there is also a great deal of further work to be done.

236  Afterword

Source Acknowledgments

An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “The Sacrificial Emplotment of National Identity: Pádraic Pearse and the 1916 Easter Uprising,” Compaso: Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology 5, no. 1 (2014): 25–­43; I am grateful to the editors of Compaso for permission to reprint this essay. An earlier version of chapter 4 was published as “Postcolonial Humor, Attachment, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer,” in Cognitive Media Theory, ed. Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham (New York: Routledge, 2014), 196–­213; it is reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, a division of Informa plc. I am grateful to the University of Connecticut for the sabbatical leave during which I drafted much of this book, to Sue Kim for her expert editing of the Frontiers of Narrative series, and to the two readers for the press.

237

Notes

Introduction 1. In a range of earlier publications, I have articulated my views on social identity, the operation of emotion systems, and other topics that define the theoretical underpinning of the following analyses. I have therefore avoided summarizing those ideas yet again. I do, however, give brief accounts of some key concepts where they appear. 2. Most recent treatments of emotion and postcolonial literature appear to draw on affect theory rather than affective science. This is unfortunate as affect theory tends to be unclear about the processes that define an emotion episode, the functions served by an emotion, or really almost anything about the main elements isolated by affective science. For example, Bede Scott is one of the most astute interpreters of emotion and postcolonial literature. But he develops his insightful analyses not so much because of but rather despite his use of affect theory. Thus, he treats emotion as both vaguely social and vaguely individual. In a sense, he is right that, say, shame is both individual and social. But that observation does not really tell us anything unless we spell out how this is possible. For example, shame functions to produce a certain sort of behavior in society; moreover, its eliciting conditions involve a sense that other people find one disgusting. Clearly, then, shame is both social and individual. But the way it is both social and individual is important. Trust is social in involving one’s view that another person—­the trustee—­is competent and benevolent. But that is not social in the same way that shame is social. Moreover, there are not simply “social rules that govern our emotional behavior,” rules that we can “resist” (Scott 2019, 8). There are complex expressive or communicative outcomes that are partially within our control, but partially not; there are variable actional outcomes of an emotion that serve to alter or sustain that emotion, and so on. Scott’s phrasing here may serve well enough to structure the literary analyses he undertakes so well. But they are too loosely formulated to count as a theory of emotion. (Again, this is not a criticism 239

of Scott but rather of a general approach to emotion that is common in literary study.) 3. In-­groups are sets of people with whom one shares an “identity category,” which is to say, a category label and its criterial properties. Typically, that label refers to one’s race, ethnicity, religion, or something else socially considered to be “essential.” However, the shared property may be trivial and arbitrary (e.g., having an odd or even penultimate digit in one’s social security number). Even then, it creates in-­group versus out-­group oppositions and generates emotional, evaluative, and other biases (see Duckitt [1992, 68–­69] and Hirschfeld [1996, 1]). 4. Pearse’s influence was not confined to Ireland. For example, Elkins (2022, 303) points out that, in Bengal, “Pearse and his martyrdom during the Easter Rising of 1916 . . . emerged as iconic: revolutionary pamphlets urged Bengalis to ‘read and learn the history of Pearse—­the gem of young Ireland and you will find how noble is his sacrifice.’” 5. Elkins acknowledges that genuine commitments to some liberal values differentiated British colonialism from fascism. Thus, she writes (2022, 431) that “British imperialism showed itself to be both repressive and emancipatory. As much as it obfuscated colonial violence and exploitation within the civilizing mission’s discourse, it did, at times, illuminate injustice, even if accountability was hard to come by.” Part of my difference from Elkins here is simply a matter of the level at which we address this issue. Elkins is concerned with colonialism as a system, which has various, contradictory aspects. I am concerned with psychology, and thus with the individual people whose attitudes and behaviors constitute, so to speak, the constituents of those contradictory systemic aspects. 6. On Atwood’s concern with Canadian national identity, see for example Wynne-­Davies (2010). 7. Despite this, Atwood has been criticized as a “nationalist . . . perpetuating an essentialized (white) Canadian character” (Shackleton 2007, 89). One complaint about Atwood is that she in effect removes Native Americans themselves from the nation. As Bannerji (2000, 115) puts it, Surfacing “follows a literary and artistic tradition” in which “indigenous peoples are either not there or are one with the primal, non-­human forces of nature.” (Fortunately, the view that Amerindians are disappearing or have already disappeared is overly pessimistic. As E. Tammy Kim [2019, 28] explains, “In 1890, the US census counted fewer than 200,000 Indians; today, more than 5 million people identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, and an additional 1.2 million as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. We’re still here.”) In response, Kapuscinski (2007, 116) 240 

Notes to Pages 7–10

argues powerfully that “it is perhaps more accurate to read the general absence of living Native characters as a critique of Canada’s oppositional politics and its brutal history of colonialism and erasure. In other words, what Bannerji in her critique fails to address is the potential for textual absence to argue on behalf of the absent and the possibility that the poignant omission of living Natives in Surfacing is an attempt to draw attention to, rather than overlook, the atrocities endured by indigenous populations.” (For an overview of some of the main critical approaches to the novel, see chapter 2 of Tolan [2007].) In keeping with this, I believe that Wilson (2006, 179) is right to characterize the novel as “postcolonial.” On the other hand, there is a degree to which Atwood tacitly accepts the view of Amerindians as “symbols of wisdom, beauty, peace, and nostalgia,” a view that “permeate[s]” “popular culture” today (Bird 1999, 61) and that is problematic in its own way. 8. Colonies and colonialisms are clearly of many sorts. It should be obvious that I have tried to give some sense of this diversity in my choice of focal texts. Specifically, I give extended attention to three African works (two by authors of African ancestry, one by an author of European ancestry; two Anglophone, one Francophone), three Indian works (two in Bengali, one in English), one work from a “New World” settler colony (Canada), one from a colony in Europe (Ireland), and—­as these are all well-­known colonies—­one work from an unusual or unexpected colony (Japan). I have also sought to expand that literary diversity through the brief references to a much larger set of works (extending, for example, to Elizabethan England and Yuan dynasty China). This is, of course, all in addition to the diversity of genres and emotions embodied in the works. 1. Colonialism, Emotions, and Narrative 1. On the components of “emotion episodes,” such as eliciting conditions, see chapter 3 of Hogan (2018). 2. In fact, the point about loyalty is true generally, though I suspect it is intensified in colonial situations. Specifically, people tend to condemn actions that do not favor the agent’s in-­group. As Marilynn Brewer (2017, 102) summarizes, “Research indicates that laypersons . . . view ingroup favoritism as normative . . . and that they reveal implicit preference for an ingroup member who discriminated in favor of fellow ingroup members over one who behaved in a fair, egalitarian way.” 3. Given these observations, it is unsurprising that shame has been treated in some detail by other authors examining postcolonization literature and related bodies of work, such as American minority literature. For a celebrated

Notes to Pages 11–15  241

account that is quite different from the approach adopted here, see Fetta (2018). 4. The shame-­rage cycle is sometimes treated in the context of terrorism arising in a colonial and/or racist context (see Stern [2003, 32–­62], and Ray, Smith, and Wastell [2004]). For example, Shortland (2021, 53) cites research that connects acts of terrorist violence with “feelings of shame and rage in the preceding weeks.” 5. This definition merely expands that given by a number of researchers in affective science. For example, Parker and Thomas (2009, 216) explain that, in empirical research, guilt “hinged on (a) an empathic awareness of and response to someone’s distress and (b) an awareness of being the cause of that distress.” 6. Interpersonal stance is one’s empathic or nonempathic orientation toward another person’s emotional experiences; it commonly varies with identity group categorization, such that we have a parallel, empathic stance toward fellow in-­group members and a nonparallel, nonempathic stance toward people we class as out-­group members. The aggression of the Arab toward Meursault’s friend could itself be interpreted in part as an outcome of shame-­based anger, due to the friend’s liaison with the man’s sister, though it is also plausibly explained as the empathic result of the friend’s mistreatment of that sister. 7. Unlike many writers, I do not believe that objectification itself is a problem. Problems arise from objectification that is not modulated by concern for the other person’s subjective experience, goals, interests, and so on. But that topic requires separate treatment. 8. The relation between disgust and attachment is complex (for discussion, see Hogan [2011b, 75n8, and works cited therein]). 9. We may consider a particular literary work to be very good, even though it doesn’t provide a good instance of what constitutes a story. For example, we may consider Waiting for Godot to be an excellent work and a Hollywood superhero-­saves-­the-­world blockbuster to be aesthetically execrable, but still consider the latter to be a better example of a story. To paraphrase a critic’s witticism, Waiting for Godot is a play in which nothing happens—­ twice (the joke refers to the play’s two-­act structure). In contrast, plenty happens in the blockbuster. 10. On the evidence for the cross-­cultural recurrence of the first three genres, which includes European, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and, to a lesser extent, sub-­Saharan African, Aboriginal Australian, and Native American cases, see Hogan (2003). On the other genres, see Hogan (2011a).

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Notes to Pages 16–26

11. In her “introduction” to her anthology, African Love Stories, Ghanaian novelist Ama Ata Aidoo (2006, viii) referred to such cross-­cultural genres when she wrote that “Africa, like all other regions of this earth, has been, and is, full of great love stories.” She asserted in addition that there are “only three human tales” constituting “serious literature,” the others being “our quest for and worship of the Creator, and politics” (vii). The first (“love stories”) is clearly the romantic genre, while the last suggests the heroic. The religious genre seems closely related to the sacrificial genre, though the precise nature of this genre in Aidoo’s view is less clear. Finally, she connects the recurrence of these genres in part with cross-­cultural emotions, noting that “emotional naivety or pain and bewilderment are universal” (xiii). (I should stress, however, that I do not view all stories as falling into one or another of my categories.) 12. Examples of the close connection between essence pride and heroic emplotment are ubiquitous. For example, Weldemichael (2013, 18), notes that “the founding Indonesian President Sukarno repeatedly condemned Dutch imperialism, only to glorify the imperial past of precolonial commercial empires of Majapahit and Srivijaya as essential cornerstones of an independent Indonesia.” He goes on to point out that “Ethiopian rulers prided themselves on being kings of kings and imperial majesties.” 13. See, for example, Cammarota (2011). (I am grateful to David Cabeceiras for this reference.) Cammarota’s main arguments (e.g., that Hollywood films almost entirely obscure the contribution of the countless nonwhite activists who are responsible for the vast majority of progress against colonialism and racism) are both valid and important. However, one may recognize this fact and still acknowledge that different films have different purposes and different degrees to which they are (or are not) complicit with white savior ideology. (Cammarota is also right to criticize what used to be called the “romantic anti-­modernism” that guides the representation of non-­European societies. In fact, Avatar is deeply affected by this form of pseudo-­celebratory stereotyping.) 14. In chapter 4 of The Culture of Conformism (2001), I have argued that when people respond to out-­group members as inferior in qualities and rights, they need to draw on some model to justify and to specify this subordination. There are a few common domains from which people commonly draw such models. These include the relatively simple domain of health (where the in-­group is healthy while the out-­group is ill and in some cases contagious), as well as the more complex domains of animacy and age. Animacy includes various subhuman (e.g., animal) and superhuman (e.g.,



Notes to Pages 26–28  243

demon) models. Age includes models that characterize out-­group members as children or as aged and declining. 15. On attachment to the land (or place attachment), see Panksepp (1998, 407n93). 16. Though his aims are different from those of the present chapter, Donald Wehrs’s (2008) learned discussion of “moral intuitions” (75), “male aggressivity” (82), and related topics bears directly on this treatment of the novel’s genre (see Wehrs [2008, 75–­100]). 17. For a discussion of some complexities of the Biafran War—­complexities that almost certainly have some parallels in more standard cases of colonialism and anticolonialism—­see Heerten (2013). 18. Such genuine patriotism would be a matter of feeling genuine attachment love for the nation (see, for example, Barlow, Sherlock, and Zietsch [2017, 230]), in Richard’s case a feeling bound up with attachment love for a person, Kainene. 19. In Aidoo (2006, 149–­53). 20. In Aidoo (2006, 22–­33). 21. In Aidoo (2006, 1–­21). 22. On attachment style, see, for example, Waters, Weinfield, and Hamilton (2000) or, more recently, Holland and Roisman (2010). 23. Another case may be found in my grandfather’s anticolonial, Marxist novel, Camps on the Hearthstone (published in Dublin in 1956; see Hogan [1999b]). 24. The name does not allude to the U.S. Phoenix Program, as the novel predates the program by more than a decade. 25. For insightful analyses of the novel’s relation to “Orientalism” (or what I would rather characterize as its liberal colonial ideology), and of the relation between Orientalism and criticism on the novel, see chapter 4 of Lisa Lowe’s (1991) Critical Terrains. 26. A variant of this genre may be found in abduction stories, such as Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa’s (1899; 1996) Umrao Jan Ada, in which a young girl is stolen from her home and sold into prostitution. However, such an abduction is typically not a story structure but a motif that contributes to other story structures. For example, Umrao in Ruswa’s novel is kidnapped as part of a minor character’s revenge story. The kidnapping, in turn, begins Umrao’s family separation story. 27. As this suggests, the film is far more sympathetic to the Palestinian lover than to the Israeli lover. I was therefore surprised to learn that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called for a boycott of the film and did so in a way that “criminalizes the filmmaker” 244 

Notes to Pages 30–48

(Quer 2020, 74). The complaint is that the film normalizes Israeli colonialism. It seems clearly false that the film represents the treatment of Saleem as “normal” in the sense of being acceptable. It does, however, treat Israeli Jews as people (as it clearly should) and it does criticize the Palestinian Authority (which it presumably also should), though not nearly as much as it criticizes the Israeli military and intelligence services. 28. Needless to say, specific versions of such adjudication—­such as trials in a criminal court—­are culturally particular. In the modern period, however, the framing of evaluation in terms of court proceedings has become very widespread, largely through the dissemination of Western legal proceedings due to colonialism. 2. Idealized Sacrifice 1. Lyons (1973, 370) infers that the author of the proclamation was Pearse. 2. Practical identity, as I use the phrase, refers to the set of memories, skills, dispositions, and other elements of a person’s affective and cognitive psychology that combine with circumstances to yield the person’s thoughts and actions (see chapter 1 of Hogan [2009]). In contrast, categorial identity is the label one accepts as defining one’s identity and those of others. Thus, categorial identification, not practical identity, defines in-­and out-­groups. Note that, as used here, categorial identity does not imply any particular sort of shared practical identity. For example, labeling oneself “Irish” does not mean that one speaks the Irish language. 3. In Understanding Nationalism (2009), I argue that the properties just listed contribute to which identity category becomes more definitive for us. Some categories are more obvious or unavoidable in certain contexts (salience); some regularly have consequences for the distribution of goods and opportunities in a given society (functionality); some are hard or impossible to change (durability); some define one’s identity against a single outgroup (opposability); some are more integrated into our emotional lives (affectivity). The categories that are more salient, functional, enduring, affective, and dichotomous tend to be more prominent individually and socially. 4. Kiberd (1995, 211) notes that Pearse “equated patriotism with holiness” and connected the “kingdom of God” with the “kingdom of Ireland.” 5. This and subsequent quotations from Pearse’s plays refer to volume 2 of his Collected Works (1924). 6. Edwards (1978, 232–­33) notes that the play suggests political self-­doubt on Pearse’s part. 7. Indeed, even Moses was not allowed to see God’s face (Exod 33:20); on the revelation of God’s name to Moses, see Exod 3:13–­14.

Notes to Pages 49–69  245

3. Ambivalent Sacrifice and Allegorical Love 1. The need for intergroup reconciliation did not begin with the Mau Mau revolution. It was part of the condition of the colony, which did not develop historically as a culturally unified society but (like so many other African nations) was carved out more or less arbitrarily by European colonial powers. It is no accident, then, that in the 1920s a political newspaper edited by Kenyatta bore the title Muigwithania (The Unifier, or The Reconciler; see Maxon and Ofcansky [2000, 126]). But the problem became far more acute with the Mau Mau revolution/civil war. 2. In the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica (2020) article on “Protectorate.” 3. On possible sources for this rather obscure name, see Barnett and Njama (1966, 53–­54). 4. Ngũgĩ to some extent idealized the klfa. For example, Maloba explains that Ngũgĩ attributed social policies to the klfa, such as establishing socialist egalitarianism, that were in fact missing from their program (see Malobe [2012, 68–­69]). He also rather downplayed their violence, making it appear wholly different from that of the British, when its main difference was simply that the British had no right to be there in the first place (though see Narang [2000] for an account of the klfa that is more in keeping with Ngũgĩ’s representation). 5. Robson recalls a number of despised colonial officials in Kenya; for an important, historical exemplar, see Elkins (2005, 54) on Ian Henderson. 6. Ngũgĩ realistically gives Mugo multiple motivations. For example, at one point he learns that he will receive a reward if he betrays Kihika (thus extending the parallel with Judas). In connection with this, he considers the benefits of such a windfall (see Ngũgĩ [1967, 192]). But fear is clearly primary. Indeed, when he reports on Kihika to the District Officer, we are told “he did not want the money” (195). 7. I use “orthodox” and “reactionary” to refer to different ways of responding to the traditions that are socially considered to be one’s own. An “orthodox” adoption of a cultural practice, as I use the term, is knowledgeable and develops from serious and sustained engagement with one’s culture. In contrast, a “reactionary” adoption is superficial, often stereotypical, and results from a reaction against a “foreign” culture. For example, someone who seriously studied Sanskrit philosophical treatises might be appropriately orthodox (even if his or her conclusions were unusual). In contrast, I would term reactionary someone who asserts his or her adherence to Hindu metaphysical ideas without serious study, but rather based on stereotypes derived in some degree from colonialist sources. 246 

Notes to Pages 75–81

8. The animacy domain is the source domain for cognitive models that characterize members of out-­groups as subhuman or superhuman (e.g., as animals or as demons), as opposed to the age-­grade domain, which identifies out-­groups with humans, either superannuated adults or, more commonly, children. 9. The even more objectionable District Officer Robson is also linked with Kurtz, when he refers to Africans as “brutes” (182). Moreover, when Mugo tells Mumbi that white people are devils (179), he goes on to recall the words of an African tortured by British colonial administrators. The tortured man explains his situation with these words: “I . . . looked into an abyss and deep inside I only saw a darkness I could not penetrate” (179). The phrasing suggests Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Given common criticisms of Conrad’s novella, one might reasonably interpret this allusion in the following manner: when Conrad thinks he has discovered the “heart of darkness” in supposed African “primitiveness,” it is actually on display in the practices of European colonialism. On the other hand, given Ngũgĩ’s enthusiasm for Conrad (see Nazareth [2012, 165]), it seems more reasonable to infer that the tortured African and Conrad actually meant the same thing. (For an interpretation of Conrad’s novella that is consistent with this view, see chapter 3 of my What Is Colonialism? [2024]). 10. In Zimbardo’s experiment, ordinary people came to behave cruelly when they were simply assigned the role of “guards” in the experimental, improvisatory fiction of a prison (see Zimbardo [2007]). 11. This is consistent with the observations of critics on the relative evenhandedness of Ngũgĩ’s treatment of individuals on different sides. For example, Ogude (1999, 25) points out that “if in the later texts Ngugi seems to isolate patriots from traitors, in A Grain of Wheat the line between the two is blurred.” 12. This criticism of Mugo’s execution is reinforced by Ngũgĩ’s allusion to General China through the character of General R(ussia) as the driving force behind the execution. As Ngũgĩ and Micere Mugo (1976, 34) note in the course of their Trial of Dedan Kimathi, General China ended up cooperating with the British (see also Barnett and Njama [1966, 330]). Given R’s antagonism toward Karanja in the novel, and his pursuit of revenge assuming Karanja was guilty, it is ironic that China’s associate, Karanja, was convinced by China’s cooperation with the British to cooperate with the British himself—­only to be hanged anyway (see Anderson [2005, 233–­34]). 13. It may seem that Mau Mau revolutionaries endangered only whites. However, they killed roughly eighteen hundred Black Africans, though only about one hundred white settlers (Elkins 2005, xvi). Of course, the number of Black Africans in Kenya was nearly two hundred times that of whites

Notes to Pages 81–91  247

during the period (Anderson 2005, 9). Thus, white settlers were killed at a significantly higher rate. 14. Ngũgĩ’s criticism of Mugo’s execution has been noted by a number of critics; see, for example, Bewes (2011, 118). 15. Alternatively, we may see the assassinations of colonialists, such as Robson, as permissible forms of purgation, which is then confined to members of the out-­group. In other words, by this interpretation, the novel is opposed only to purgation of Kenyans, not of the British. 16. This rebirth of the newly independent society is of course consistent with Ngũgĩ’s use of Christianity, as Govind Sharma (1979b) indicates in his nuanced interpretation. 17. For a more wide-­ranging treatment of rain and water imagery in the novel, see Jabbi (2000). 18. Govind Sharma (1979a, 302) points out that “Ngũgĩ’s outlook is deeply influenced by the two great traditions of thought, Marxism and Christianity” and Ogude (1999, 91) notes that he “appropriate[es] both Agikuyu and Christian mythology.” 19. The following chapter begins by reporting that the rain “did not break into violence” (Ngũgĩ 2012, 220). I take this as a comment not on Mugo or his fate but on the fact that independence did not lead to the widespread bloodshed predicted by some (see, for example, 158–­60). 4. Family Separation and Reunion 1. Gender reassignment surgery makes this more elective than formerly, but the point here is not that one’s sex is absolutely fixed, though it has been quite fixed in the past and it remains very difficult to change, both anatomically and socially. 2. I have argued elsewhere (see Hogan [2000, xix]) that “postcolonial” is a misleading term and is more appropriately replaced by “postcolonization.” I would now say that “postcolonization” applies most felicitously to the condition of people after the onset of colonialism, since it marks their changed situation. However, a stance implies some sort of transformative response to the condition. I have, somewhat reluctantly, adopted “postcolonial” in this case because the term does suggest such a response. However, it is important to note that, in my usage, the term does not carry an implication of resistance. Collaborationist mimeticism constitutes a postcolonial stance in my sense, no less than revolutionary resistance or different forms of syncretism or hybridity. 3. Empathy is an important but also controversial quality for writers in postcolonial studies. The most influential writer on literature and empathy to248 

Notes to Pages 94–102

day is Suzanne Keen. I urge readers to consult her 2010 book, Empathy and the Novel, on the debatable issues surrounding empathy, in a postcolonial context and elsewhere. 4. The suggestion is only that attachment should increase concern and thus empathic effort. Attachment by itself would not necessarily increase empathic accuracy. 5. Indeed, a similar point holds for the colonizers, who are not merely jingoistic or simply greedy but also uncertain or conflicted, at least sometimes. Indeed, the two ambivalences are not unrelated for, as Gopal (2019) has so forcefully argued, British resistance to colonialism was itself in part inspired by the resistance of colonized people. 6. The point is most salient in relation to the traditionally oppressed classes of colonized societies. For example, in his autobiography, the Dalit (formerly, “Untouchable”) writer Hazari (1951) alternates between anger at British administrators for their sometimes murderous behavior toward Indians and anger at many Indians for their oppressive, caste-­based practices. 7. Mimeticism is the adoption of foreign culture in a way that is not learnèd and does not result from serious engagement but is commonly based on clichés. For example, a fellow who does a bad job of imitating European formal clothing—­a recurring, parodic figure in some colonial literature—­ would be an obvious case. 8. On right-­hemisphere processing in puns and jokes, see Hogan (2008, 116–­ 17 and citations). 9. Humor in Ozu has been treated by other critics, though in a very different theoretical context. For a complementary discussion of the comic in Ozu, see Bordwell (1988, 151–­59). 10. Speaking generally, Richie (1974, 206) notes that “Ozu’s criticism, always oblique, was never stern.” The point applies well to his postcolonial stance humor. 11. This criticism in turn suggests a broader criticism of the Japanese “family-­ stem system,” in which “the eldest son” had a dominant position with respect to “all branch families” (Bordwell 1988, 36). This is only one of many examples of how Ozu does not support traditional patriarchal structures, despite the common reading of Ozu as a conservative (see, for example, chapter 19 of Mellen [1976]). 12. I place the word “modernization” in scare quotes because I find it generally to be an ill-­defined concept, most often used to mean Westernization—­as if Western practices are necessarily modern. 13. Critics seem not to have recognized the importance of this attachment bond in the film, or in Ozu’s work generally. Thus, Mellen (1976, 256) says

Notes to Pages 104–133  249

that Noriko “consents” to marry a man “whom she clearly does not love,” largely because the only alternative is “serfdom.” By “love” here, she seems to have sexual passion in mind. It is difficult to say whether two such restrained and decorous people would provide any overt signals of sexual passion, so it is far from clear that “passion between these two seems inconceivable” (256). But, more importantly, the more enduring aspect of love is attachment. In that sense, it seems clear that there is love here—­a more important sort of love than the kind Mellen believes to be missing (perhaps incorrectly). On the other hand, Mellen is right that Ozu does not develop this romantic story in the clearly sexual way that is so common in both western and Japanese traditions (as exemplified, for example, in The Tale of Genji). In connection with this, it is also worth remarking that some critics believe that Ozu presents us few cues to “mental states” of his characters, thus making it “difficult to . . . determine how a decision has been arrived at” (Bordwell 1988, 71). In fact, I believe that Ozu gives us many indications of the feelings and motivations of his characters. But we are likely to miss those cues if we are not attentive to the relevant emotion systems—­ crucially, attachment—­and the implications of associated story genres. 14. Indeed, the use of English language here and elsewhere could just as easily be taken as defying the norms of Japanese militarism. As Hirano (1992, 16) points out, in 1940, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs prohibited “the uses of foreign words” in movies. 5. Disfigured Heroism 1. On the general idea of such disfiguring, see chapter 6 of Hogan (2016). The name “fractured” alludes to the “Fractured Fairy Tales” that some of us enjoyed watching as children. I will return to the idea of disfigured or fractured stories in the following chapter. 2. Unless otherwise noted, citations of Coetzee refer to Waiting for the Barbarians. 3. Given Joll’s legal function in imperial society, it is worth noting that sunglasses, from China, served from the start not only to protect the eyes but to conceal information which the eyes might reveal. Specifically, “Judges used them during court proceedings to hide their facial expressions” (Torquay Museum, Collections Spotlight, Chinese Sunglasses, accessed June 4, 2024, http://​www​.torquaymuseum​.org​/​explore​/​collections​-spotlight​/​ explorers​/​chinese​-sunglasses). Wu (2014, 55) makes this point also, though in the context of a very different interpretation of the novel.

250 

Notes to Pages 135–145

4. For example, Elkins (2002) makes it clear that British colonialists depicted Afrikaners as politically retrograde for their own, colonialist purposes. Thus, she writes that “when the South African War broke out in October 1899, the British government justified it not in self-­interested economic terms but rather as a conflict against a xenophobic and racist Boer Republic that deployed illiberal principles” (115). The British combined this with anti-­Afrikaner racism, as for example in the case of the administrator who judged Afrikaners to be “semi-­civilized,” a “dirty, careless lazy lot,” and “primitive in the extreme” (quoted in Elkins [2002, 118]). 5. McCoy (2006) points out that in the yearlong battle for Algiers, “French Soldiers arrested 30 to 40 percent of all males in the city’s Cashbah and subjected most of them to brutality.” They demonstrated that, in rare (and clearly undesirable) circumstances, torture “can produce some useful intelligence,” but that is only through “mass torture of thousands of suspects, some guilty, most innocent” (198). Moreover, even then, the value of the information is limited due the precautions taken by the revolutionary organization (200). 6. To put the point differently, I agree with critics such as Laura Wright (2006, 80) that there is “a kind of blindness that results in a failure of the sympathetic imagination” here. But I do not believe it is caused by a real inability to understand the girl. In Wright’s terms, I believe, rather, that the Magistrate’s idea that he suffers from such an inability itself inhibits the empathy that he would otherwise be perfectly capable of feeling. Or, rather, I agree with Jennifer Wenzel’s way of phrasing the idea (1996, 65); it is the “sense of otherness” that “allows torturers to ignore the pain of their victims.” The Magistrate is initially disoriented by his cognitive commitment to the girl’s otherness, which does not fit his spontaneous, parallel interpersonal stance toward her. 7. Other critics have noticed something along these lines, but usually in a (roughly) poststructuralist context, rather than a context of empirical psychology (see, for example, Marais [2011, 65–­66]). 6. Allegory and the Heroic Epilogue 1. There is also a suggestion that Anglophone settlers have had a restrictive relation to Francophone settlers. This points toward the tripartite homology: Americans/Anglophone Canadians//Anglophone Canadians/Francophone Canadians//Settler Canadians/First Nations Canadians. The connection merits further examination but would take us beyond the main focus of the present chapter.



Notes to Pages 151–167  251

2. The quest may also be thought of as an instance of a spiritual enlightenment narrative, if we take this to be another cross-­cultural story structure. I will return to this possible genre briefly in the following chapter. 3. Much after writing this, I happened to reread my former teacher Northrop Frye on allegory in Anatomy of Criticism (1957). He distinguishes between “continuous allegories, like The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Faerie Queene” and “free-­style allegories” (91) in which “allegory may be picked up and dropped again at pleasure” (90). Fortunately, the novels by Atwood and Ngũgĩ postdate Frye’s book; otherwise, I probably would have found myself inadvertently repeating his remarks on them as well. 4. Scholars treating Canadian national identity commonly refer to the ways in which First Nations culture has contributed to Canadian national identity. For example, Margaret Conrad (2012) notes that “Canada’s indigenous peoples have contributed greatly to the development of Canada.” She goes on to quote one writer’s view that Canada is actually a “Métis civilization” (3). Atwood’s view in Surfacing is, roughly, that Canadian civilization had not really succeeded in being a mixed civilization as the European side was, she suggests, greatly overvalued and the First Nations side greatly undervalued. Atwood’s assessment is more obviously consistent with such historical developments as the 1876 Indian Act, which aimed to segregate First Nations people and, in later revisions, denied them “the right . . . to perform traditional ceremonies” (1998, 155). On the other hand, laws such as this never prevented cultural influence from proceeding anyway. 5. Unsurprisingly, critics have recognized the importance of the sacredness of nature in the book, particularly in relation to ecological concerns. For example, Hengen (2006, 80) writes that “this novel stands as a powerful testament to the sacredness of all life forms.” 6. For an example of the sort of academic paper Atwood has in mind—­ with location numbers, stick figures, photographs, and attempts at interpretation—­see Noble (1968). Noble also refers to vision quests in connection with this artwork. 7. Critics have noted the spiritual quest in the novel, but not always with a clear connection to First Nations’ traditions. For example, Christ (1976, 327) develops the theme with little attention to Amerindian people or culture, referring only to “tribal and ancient peoples.” 8. The idea of special ecological sensitivity among First Nations peoples is commonplace among Left liberal writers. For example, Manjapra (2020, 51) writes that “for the English settlers, the land was an inert object that merely received the labor of the cultivator.” He continues, “This contrasted with Indigenous notions” that “the earth was Mother” and “the fish and animals 252 

Notes to Pages 167–176

were kin.” See also Hormel (2020), who links Amerindian ecological sensitivity with gender issues. 9. Unsurprisingly, the idea here fits some aspects of psychoanalytically influenced postcolonial theory (cf. Leela Gandhi [2019] on “the silences and ellipses of historical amnesia” [7] and “the therapeutic agency of remembering” what has been “submerged” [9]). 10. As Daniel Schacter (1996, 8) explains, “the seemingly simple act of calling to mind a memory of a particular past experience—­what you did last Saturday night or where you went on your first date—­is constructed from influences operating in the present as well as from information you have stored about the past.” In consequence, our recollections can change a great deal (see, for example, 105–­6). Indeed, sometimes we in effect make up our memories. For example, “creating visual images may lead us to believe that we are remembering an event even when the incident never happened” (23). 11. Perdue and Green (2010) indicate that the depletion of buffalo was more complex. It did result from the European, colonial invasion of North America. But Amerindians killed many buffalo for hides as well (see 70–­ 71). More generally, Margaret Conrad (2012, 14) notes that there was “routine overkilling of species” even “before European contact.” 12. Or, rather, Atwood echoes Edmonton’s and other Canadian cities’ echoes of the slogan. 13. Frogs also figure in some Native American myths (see Gill and Sullivan [1992, 94]), but there does not appear to be any special connection with Atwood’s use of the image in this case. 14. On the other hand, it may be relevant to note that, at least in the colonial period, the crimes were principally Anglo-­Canadian. As Perdue and Green (2010, 37) explain, “French traders, politicians, and officers more likely learned Native languages, respected tribal ceremonies, generously gave gifts, and behaved politely. Most important, few French colonists encroached on Indian lands.” 15. As noted in the introduction, Atwood has been criticized for this absence. Again, I do not believe that this is a valid criticism of Surfacing. However, it is worth noting that this objection, however unfair regarding Atwood, bears on important aspects of colonialism. Barker, Rollo, and Lowman (2017, 155) list a range of serious violations of First Nations peoples’ civil rights, constituting criminal violations of First Nations’ autonomy, rationalized for example by the government’s “right” to relocate whole populations of First Nations’ reserves. It seems likely that the most common and strongest motive for this degree of governmental control was land appropriation

Notes to Pages 176–190  253

(e.g., for roads, railways, or agriculture [155]). As should be clear, the case for the appropriation of land is strongest when there are no people who might claim the land as their own. As Barker, Rollo, and Lowman (2017, 159) put it, settler colonialism is “supported in the first instance by perceptions of a terra nullius (empty land).” That perception, in turn, is allowed by the idea that there are no indigenous people around. (The point is not at all confined to North America. See Will Jackson [2017, 233] for a parallel rationalization of colonial land appropriation in Africa.) Barker, Rollo, and Lowman (2017) also stress that this perception and the associated appropriation of land by settlers are not a relic of the distant past. They point out that, due to technological developments related to “energy extraction,” the Canadian Northwest “has become a site of focused settler colonization from the 1970s up to the present.” During this time, “hundreds of thousands of settler Canadians have been drawn to the area” (159). 7. Minor Genres 1. I realize of course that many people advocate a retributive account of justice rather than a preventive account. However, that does not affect my contention here. My point is simply that virtually everyone would seem to agree that it is crucial for a legal system to strive to reduce future violations. This does not mean, for example, that punishments should be determined solely by reference to deterrence. 2. For a more extended discussion of anger and literature, including postcolonization work, the reader may wish to consult Sue Kim’s (2013) On Anger, perhaps the most influential treatment of anger and literature after Nussbaum’s writings. 3. This is not to say that I would encourage anyone to behave like Chandara—­I would not. Specifically, it leaves aside the practical issue of deterrence (from murder and from bearing false witness), which is (arguably) not ethical per se, but is the key social issue for the narrative, even if ethics is the key personal issue. 4. As Major (2007, xv) has pointed out, “Even at the height of its occurrence sati was an exceptional act.” Mani (1998, 2) has argued influentially that, though it was “an exceptional . . . practice,” it “emerge[d] in the West as a potent signifier of the oppression of all Indian women” and thus “became an alibi for the colonial civilizing mission.” 5. “Bailiff ” may be misleading here; the Bengali suggests that the landlord simply sent an employee. In this particular case, the begar may or may not be directly connected with the British. (I am grateful to Tushar Das for these points.) In any case, it was enabled in particular forms by the colonial 254 

Notes to Pages 194–201

legal system and, as Piketty (2020, 340) notes, “the British made extensive use of forced labor in India”—­as Tagore’s readers would surely be aware. 6. For example, Kellogg (2007) comments on Bamba’s later, untranslated recital, writing that this constitutes “a commentary, perhaps, on what it means to say something that no one will ever care enough to take the time to understand.” 7. I am very grateful to my former student, Suzanne Ondrus, as well as David Bazie and Christabel Yeboah for their efforts to help me understand this (untranslated) song—­and to Sia Gana for undertaking a translation of the lyrics. 8. See “Aminata Traoré,” Casa África, accessed November 7, 2022, https://​ www​.casafrica​.es​/​en​/​person​/​aminata​-traore. 9. See Zachary Laub, “The Group of Eight (g8) Industrialized Nations,” Council on Foreign Relations, accessed November 7, 2022, https://​www​.cfr​ .org​/​backgrounder​/​group​-eight​-g8​-industrialized​-nations. 10. See the introductory section of Karl Marx’s Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), available at https://​www​.marxists​.org​/​ archive​/​marx​/​works​/​1843​/​critique​-hpr​/​intro​.htm. 11. More generally, the Costs of War project at Brown University calculates the cost of twenty years of the war on terror as $8 trillion since September 2001 (“Costs of the 20-­Year War on Terror: $8 Trillion and 900,000 deaths,” Brown University, September 1, 2021, https://​www​.brown​.edu​/​news​/​2021​ -09​-01​/​costsofwar). A United Nations publication from around the time of Sissako’s film estimated a yearly cost of $2.5 billion above then-­currently available funds for the provision of adequate water and sanitation to sub-­ Saharan Africa (see Dovi 2007). That comes to less than 1 percent of the war on terror’s $400 billion per year. 12. For a detailed analysis of the funeral scene, albeit from a very different theoretical perspective, see James Williams (2019). 13. The spelling of the name varies in the course of the text. To minimize confusion, I will keep to this spelling throughout. 14. Surprisingly, many critics seem to have missed the anticolonialism of Narayan’s work. Such writers have been ably corrected by Alam (2002). 8. Afterword 1. More technically, we have an algorithmic account when we have fully specified processes, structures in which the processes operate, and contents on which the processes operate—­ideally programmable on a computational device—­so that we can proceed from the input to the output through a specific sequence of steps involving only these processes, structures, and contents.

Notes to Pages 205–224  255

2. This is broadly in keeping with the cross-­cultural, hierarchical organization of folk biology into “(at least) three levels: a ‘generic species’ category . . . , a superordinate category of biological domains . . . , and a subordinate category of species varieties” (Fessler and Machery 2012, 506). Fessler and Machery go on to explain that “people believe that membership in a biological kind is associated with the possession of a causal essence,” which is to say, “some . . . properties that define membership in the kind and cause the members of this kind to possess” essence-­defining, “kind-­typical properties” (507).

256 

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Abbas, K. A., 41 abduction narratives, 244n26 abhiman, wounded pride, 198 Aboulela, Leila, 38–­39 Abrahams, Peter, 41, 152 accommodation, 236 accomplishment pride, 14–­16, 26–­27 actions: and affective narratology, 4; and bad faith, 142; and consequentialism, 203; and emotion(s), 14, 17, 19, 20, 24; and group identification, 154; and loyalty, 241n2; and practical identity, 245n2; and remorse, 196–­98; and story structures, 2, 225 Adeaga, Tomi, 37–­39 Adichie, Chimamanda, 32, 35–­36 adjudication, 49, 245n28 admiration, 16, 100 adventurers, 1–­2 Aeschylus, 44, 194 affective appeals, 211–­12 affective biases, 235–­36 affective science, 3, 100, 170, 239n2, 242n5 affective volatility, 166 affect theory, 4, 239n2 Africa and neocolonialism, 204–­16. See also Bamako (film)

African Love Stories (Aidoo), 243n11 African National Congress, 162 Afrikaners, 151–­52, 251n4 aggression, 16, 20, 23, 165, 182, 242n6 agricultural devastation, 57, 95–­96 agricultural imagery, 57 agro-­pastoralists, 150 ahiṃsā, 197, 200, 203, 219–­21 Aidoo, Ama Ata, 40–­41, 243n11 Alayan, Muayad, 46–­48 algorithmic opacity, 224, 255n1 alienation, 20, 106, 131, 176–­77 allegory, 41–­46; and affective narratology, 5–­6; and attachment themes, 215; cognitive-­affective treatments of, 172; and colonialism, 29, 168–­ 70; and continuous allegories, 252n3; and disfigured stories, 168–­ 72; in Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons, 29; and free-­style allegories, 252n3; and historical allegory, 176; and national allegory in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, 172–­ 80; and national allegory in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, 87–­88; and nonnational allegory in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, 189–­ 91; and reading postcolonial

273

allegory (cont.) works as national allegories, 100; and romantic allegory in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, 87–­ 93; tendencies of, 171–­72. See also genres The Allegory of Love (Lewis), 6 ambivalence(s), 24, 100, 105, 106–­9, 163, 249n5 American Declaration of Independence, 81 Americanism, 177, 180–­83, 187, 189–­91 Americanness, 186 Amerindians, 168, 174–­76, 185, 189–­91, 240n7, 252nn7–­8, 253n11 analogy, 170 Anatomy of Criticism (Frye), 252n3 ancestral origin, 30, 162, 230 ancestry, 229–­30 Anderson, David, 76 anger, 24, 100, 107, 130, 141, 154 Anger and Forgiveness (Nussbaum), 195 Anglicanism, 25 Anil’s Ghost (Ondaatje), 48–­49 animals/animacy domain, 88–­89, 142, 158, 163–­64, 179–­81, 186–­88, 235, 243n14, 247n8, 252n8 anticolonialism: and anticolonial activism, 31–­32, 61, 203; and anticolonial nonnational allegory, 189–­92; and attachment feelings, 135–­38; and cultural anticolonialism, 223; and heroic narratives, 27, 64, 161–­62; and movements for social change, 194; and nationalist anticolonialism, 30–­33; in romantic narratives, 34–­35; and sacrificial narratives, 93–­94, 166 anticolonial nationalisms, 53

274  Index

anticolonial writings, 139, 216–­21 anti-­prototypical work, 178–­79 apartheid, 39–­40, 151 Apartheid South Africa, 151, 153, 162 assassinations, 93, 248n15 assimilation, 236 associative elements, 172 atonement, 192 atonement narrative, 30, 167–­68, 178–­79 attachment alienation, 131 attachment betrayal, 196, 202 attachment bonds, 249n13; and attachment feeling(s), 40, 51, 113, 121, 126, 133, 135–­37; breaking of, 211; and caregiving, 103–­4, 129; and colonial cultural hegemony, 111; and consumerism, 129, 135; and emotion(s), 21–­23; and the epilogue of suffering, 30; and family separation and reunion narratives, 50–­52; and happiness, 222; and humor, 112, 113–­20, 130; and humor in occupied Japan, 111; inhibitions on, 133, 137; and mirth, 98, 104–­5; and nature and intimacy, 177; and reward dependency, 159; and romantic love, 36, 39, 98; and secure attachment, 133–­34; and the threat-­defense sequence of the heroic plot, 164–­65 attachment loss, 50, 128 attachment love, 98, 133 attachment sensitivity, 202 attachment themes, 215–­16 attitudes, 24, 100, 159, 213, 231 Atwood, Margaret. See Surfacing (Atwood) Augusteijn, Joost, 73

authoritarian colonialism, 141–­42, 144–­47, 151, 153–­55, 158 autonomy, 32, 38, 57, 94, 108, 142, 167, 199, 253n15 Avatar (film), 27–­28, 243n13 Azanian People’s Organization, 162 “bad” colonialism, 135–­36, 140–­41 bad faith, 141–­43, 145, 157 Balewa, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa, 18, 51 Bamako (film), 48–­49, 204–­16 Bandele, Biyi, 35 Bannerji, Himani, 240n7 “barbarians,” 143–­49, 150–­52, 158–­59, 160–­66 Barker, Adam, 253n15 begar, compulsory labor, 201 behavior, 183, 195–­96 Behavioral and Brain Sciences (journal), 232 benevolence, 22–­23, 103–­5, 109, 137, 141, 239n2 Bengal, 216 Bertrand, Eloïse, 83 betrayal: and attachment betrayal, 196–­97, 202; and emotional trust, 23; and fear, 79, 84; and Kihika and Mugo, 79–­80, 84, 85, 86, 94, 246n6; and political betrayal, 59; and revenge narratives, 226; and romantic narratives, 42–­43, 87 Bewes, Timothy, 15 Biafran War, 32–­33, 36, 50, 244n17 biases, 14, 48, 163, 200, 217, 220, 233–­ 35, 240n3 Biko, Steven, 153 birth caste, 219–­20

“birth of a nation” metaphor, 55, 87–­ 90, 170, 179, 192 Black Africans in Kenya, 247n13 Black identity, 40 blame or negative valuation of the self. See shame blood sacrifice, 56 borders, 189–­91 Brewer, Marilynn, 241n2 British colonialism: and Afrikaners, 151–­52, 251n4; as a civilizing mission, 200; and derivative colonialism, 32; and difference in colonial policies, 140; and fascism, 240n5; and food insecurities, 201; in India, 217–­21; and individual relationships, 35; and intercommunal violence, 44; in Kenya, 75–­78; in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, 79–­83; and revenge in Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment,” 198; and subnationalism, 34 Brown-­Iannuzzi, Jazmin, 233 buffaloes, 179–­81, 189–­91, 253n11 Bunyan, John, 171, 252n3 Burger’s Daughter (Gordimer), 17, 152 Burning Grass (Ekwensi), 18 Cacioppo, John, 24 Calanchini, Jimmy, 232, 235 Cameron, Ewen, 183 Cammarota, Julio, 243n13 Camus, Albert, 19–­20 Canada. See First Nations people; Surfacing (Atwood) Capital and Ideology (Piketty), 3 capitalism, 214 caregiving, 103–­4, 129 Carroll, Nöel, 227

Index  275

Cashin, Sheryll, 36 caste hierarchies, 219–­20 Castle, Barbara, 78 categorial identity, 245n2 categorial opposition, 58 Catholicism, 25, 65, 68 causal sequences, 84, 224 celebratory mirth, 104–­5, 138 Cesario, Joseph, 232–­35 “change of course” doctrine, 140–­41, 146–­47 Changes: A Love Story (Aidoo), 40–­41 Cheeseman, Nic, 83 childhood or childhood model, 21–­22, 28, 50–­52, 98, 101–­4, 135, 230. See also family separation and reunion narratives; other people’s children child mortality, 213–­14 China, 152 cholera, 215 Chomsky, Noam, 140–­41 Christ, Carol, 252n7 Christianity, 25, 61, 64–­65, 70, 76, 221, 248n16 cia, 153, 183, 187 civilization, 143–­46, 182 “civilized,” 143–­45 civilizing mission, 200 civil liberties, suspension of, 77, 145 coercion, 215–­17 Coetzee, J. M. See Waiting for the Barbarians (Coetzee) Coffey, T., 55 cognitive-­affective method, 170–­72 cognitive biases, 235–­36 cognitive component of racist ideology, 16 cognitive effects of the colonial division of in-­groups and out-­groups, 106

276  Index

cognitive incomprehension, 166 cognitive science, 3–­4, 170. See also affective science collaborationism, 65–­66, 107–­8 collective guilt, 17–­18, 31, 154–­55, 167 collective punishment, 77 collective remorse, 31 collective shame, 19–­20, 155 colonial authorities, 200 colonial domination, 31, 94–­95, 141, 146, 200, 219 colonial governments, 77, 90 colonialism: and affective naratology, 4–­6; and allegory, 168–­70; and authoritarian colonialism, 141–­42, 144–­47, 151; and colonial cultural hegemony, 111–­12; conditions of, 192; and cultural colonialism, 223; as derivative, 50; economic and political consequences of, 216; and emotion(s), 13–­25, 27–­51, 99; and the epilogue of suffering, 29; and erasure, 240n7; and famine, 58–­59; and First Nations people, 172–­92; and heroic and romantic genres in Coetzee, 166; and humor, 105–­8; and indigenous peoples, 162–­63; and Japanese colonialism, 124–­38; J. M. Coetzee’s critique of, 139–­43; and loyalty, 241n2; Native American resistance to, 152; and neoliberalism, 212; and paternalism, 88; and precolonial society, 216–­18; psychology of, 4; and racism, 229–­36; and revenge narratives, 193–­203; and romantic narratives, 36–­43; and sacrificial narratives, 93, 95–­ 96, 227; and sensitivity and inclination, 103; situation and attitude of

writers after, 100; in South Africa, 150–­53; and spiritual realization narratives, 221–­23; and stories, 1–­3, 27–­52, 225–­28; and story structures, 224–­25; and U.S. military occupation of Japan, 108–­11; and view of colonized people as children, 154, 158, 230, 247n8. See also British colonialism; nationalism colonial occupation, 56, 75, 110 comedic stances, 102, 105, 111, 136; and comic condition, 107–­8 comedy, 26, 98, 109–­10 comic response, 104 “The Coming Revolution” (Pearse), 60 commercial art, 174, 177 commodities, 129, 136, 209 commodity fetishism, 129, 136 Communist Party of South Africa (cpsa), 152 compassion, 154, 158, 212–­13 competence, 22–­23, 103 complicity, 155 conception, 169, 177–­78 Conrad, Joseph, 247n9 Conrad, Margaret, 175, 185, 252n4, 253n11 consequentialism, 203 conservative colonialism, 219–­21 constitutional conferences (Kenya), 78 constitutional nationalists (Ireland), 59–­60 consumerism, 126, 129, 135 continuous allegories, 171 contradictory emotions, 24 cooperation, 24, 49, 87, 107, 161, 181, 195–­96, 202–­3, 247n12

corruption, 207–­8 Costa-­Gavras, 48 Costs of War project, 255n11 CPSA, 152 criminal investigation narratives, 26, 44–­45, 48–­49, 86, 168, 204–­16 Critical Terrains (Lowe), 244n25 critical versions of the genres, 32, 54 cross-­cultural genres, 4–­5, 52, 55, 74, 193, 221–­23, 243n11 cruelty, 145, 158 culpability, 155 cultural anticolonialism, 223 cultural colonialism, 121, 124, 135, 191, 223 cultural conditions, 115 cultural difference, 125–­28 cultural imperialism, 211 cultural integration, 176 cultural syncretism, 179 The Culture of Conformism (Hogan), 243n14 custodial deaths, 153 danger, 104 Davidson, Donald, 169 debt, 214–­15 decorum, 145 degradation, 173, 213–­14 de-­heroicizing, 163, 166 dehumanization, 149, 156 democratic egalitarianism, 139–­40 deontology, 203 dependent colonial population, 82 deprivation, 36, 179–­80, 183, 192 derisive humor, 102–­5 derivative colonialism, 32, 43, 50 desire, sexual, 13, 22, 33, 45, 126 desire and disgust, 21–­22

Index  277

desire for revenge, 43, 85, 195–­96 desire for social domination, 62, 65 Diabate, Naminata, 15, 97 Dingane, 150 diplomacy, 165–­66 direct intuitive understanding, 15 discontinuous allegory, 171–­72 disease model, 149 disfigured narratives or stories, 142, 165–­66, 167–­72, 179, 250n1 disgust: and affect theory, 239n2; and collective guilt, 155; and communal disgust, 37; and desire, 21–­22; and essence or whole-­self emotions, 14–­15; and neoliberalism, 212–­13; and other-­directed emotions, 20–­22; and purgative sacrifice, 31, 54; and race and racism, 36; and responses to colonialism, 2–­3, 107; and sexual assault narratives, 221; and shame, 16 displacement, 231 dispositions, 235 distant past, 192, 253n15 distrust, 36–­40, 98, 195 diversity across individual works, 45, 241n8 dominant groups, 17–­18 Dower, John, 108, 110, 126 drought, 54, 95–­96 Early Summer (Ozu), 5, 98–­138; and attachment, 98, 103–­5, 111–­13, 115–­16, 118–­20, 126, 128–­38; and colonialism and humor, 99, 105–­8; as family separation and reunion narrative, 98, 111–­13, 127–­28, 133, 137; feminist elements in, 113; and humor in occupied Japan, 108–­11;

278  Index

and laughter, 101–­5; and mirth, 98–­ 99, 102–­5, 106, 111, 112, 136, 138; and other people’s children, 112–­13, 118, 132–­38; plot and overview of, 113–­ 38; and postcolonial stance humor, 100–­101, 112; and the postcolonization condition, 99–­101; as romantic tragicomedy, 112–­13; and westernization, 118–­26, 129, 134–­37 Easter Uprising, 55–­61, 70–­73 ecological devastation, 180 Edwards, R., 245n6 Ekwensi, Cyprian, 18 Elkins, Caroline, 240nn4–­5, 251n4 Emergency Regulations of 1953 (Kenya), 77 Emmet, Robert, 60 emotion(s): in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, 212–­15; and actions, 14, 17, 19, 20, 24; and attachment, 98; and colonialism, 13–­25, 27–­51, 99; and colonialism and humor, 106–­8; of colonized people, 100, 153–­60; and cross-­cultural genres, 4, 223; and emotional appeals, 204–­ 16; and emotional consequences of political allegories, 172; and emotional difference in attitude, 142; and emotional norms, 19–­20; and emotional responses, 21–­22, 26, 53, 85, 100, 115, 193, 228; and equilibrium, 194; and essence or whole-­ self emotions, 14–­15; and identity categorization, 14–­15, 21–­25; in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, 153–­60; and mood-­repair, 111; in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, 84–­97; and reader’s responses, 2–­3; and reason, 212; and

sacrificial narratives, 54, 97; and stories/story structure, 25–­52, 53–­ 54, 84–­97, 168–­72 emotional trust, 23, 41 empathy, 248n3; and benevolence, 136; with colonized people, 141–­42; and empathic sensitivity, 102–­5, 153–­54, 197; and enhanced empathy, 104; across identity divisions, 112; inhibition on, 106, 111, 113, 117, 138, 251n6; and interpersonal stance, 19–­21, 158, 251n6; motivation for, 155, 159; and mutual empathy, 30; and neoliberalism, 210–­13; and sacrificial narratives, 97; and scapegoats, 54; and self-­empathy, 111; and spontaneous empathy, 106, 157. See also guilt empire builders, 1–­2 engagement of readers, 26 English colonialism, 24–­25 The English Teacher (Narayan), 221–­23 enhanced empathy, 104 envy, 158 ephemeral quality (happiness goals), 52, 221–­22 epidemic disease, 31, 57 epilogue of suffering, 28–­31, 167, 178–­ 79, 192. See also atonement narrative equality, 139–­40 errors, 100, 101, 105–­6 essence or whole-­self emotions, 14–­16 essence pride, 14, 26–­27 essence shame, 16 estrangement, 111, 176, 192, 211 ethics, 24, 132–­33, 145, 193–­203, 254n3 ethnic cleansing, 162 ethnic groups, 229–­30

ethnicity, 229–­30 ethnoracism, 151 Eucharist, 67–­69 The Eumenides (Aeschylus), 44, 194 Euripides, 28 Euro-­American colonialism, 41, 124 European Canadian and European American society, 176 European feminism, 200 European indigo planters, 216–­21 European Modernist painting, 124–­26 exemplification, 48–­49 explicit processes and contents, 230–­31 explicit racism, 232 exploitation, 141–­42 The Faerie Queene (Spenser), 24–­25, 171, 252n3 Fage, J. D., 97 Fagunwa, D. O., 28–­31 failure shame, 26–­27 fairness, 24 familial attachment bonding, 177 familial prestige, 120, 134–­36 family separation and reunion narratives, 5, 26, 36, 50–­52, 98–­138, 168–­69. See also Early Summer (Ozu) famine, 31, 33, 54, 57, 58–­59, 95, 201, 217, 226–­27 Fanon, Frantz, 3–­4, 21 fascism, 240n5 “father of the nation” idiom, 88, 170 fear: of abandonment, 151; and attachment insecurity, 98; and authoritarian colonialism, 141, 145–­46; and betrayal, 79, 84; and classes of object, 22; and family separation and reunion narratives, 137; and law

Index  279

fear (cont.) and revenge, 194; as motivation, 246n6; and pseudo-­speciation, 230; in sacrificial narratives, 29; and story structures, 2; and suspicion, 22 female circumcision, 76 feminist elements in Early Summer, 113 fetishism, 21 fetishism of commodities, 129, 136 Fiedler, Leslie, 42 film, 227 First Nations people, 167, 172–­92, 253n15; and art, 173–­76; and colonialism, 172–­92; and degradation, 173; dispossession of, 183; ecological sensitivity of, 176, 252n8; and the epilogue of suffering, 178–­79; and mythology, 184–­85; and national identity, 252n4; and nature, 173–­78, 180, 184–­85, 188, 189–­91, 252n5; and repressed history, 177–­78; and seduction narratives, 172–­73; and settlers, 181, 191–­92, 252n8, 253n15. See also Surfacing (Atwood) Five Minutes of Heaven (film), 44–­45 Flake, Jessica K., 232, 235 Fletcher, Angus, 85 Fletcher, Eileen, 78 flourishing, 194 Follow the Rabbit-­Proof Fence (Garimara), 51 food insecurity, 201 The Forest of a Thousand Daemons (Fagunwa), 29–­31 forgiveness, 93, 157, 159, 185–­86, 195–­96 Forster, E. M., 27, 42–­43, 49 fractured narratives. See disfigured narratives or stories

280  Index

France in Algeria, 153 freedom, 76–­77, 89 friendship, 22, 42 Frijda, Nico, 15 frogs, 253n13 Frye, Northrop, 5, 252n3 Fuentes, Agustín, 235 Fugard, Athol, 51 future, 185, 189–­91 Gaelic League, 58 Gandhi, Mahatma, 31, 95, 197, 221 Garimara, Nugi, 51 gender equality, 116–­18, 125 gender reassignment surgery, 248n1 General China, 85, 247n12 generalization, 135–­36 genres, 26, 225, 235–­36. See also specific types of narratives or genres Ghosts (Pearse), 59 Gikonyo character, 82–­84, 86, 87–­93 Gikuyu, 80, 89–­91, 95, 97 Gill, Sam, 174–­75, 181, 184 globalization, 205–­12 goal pursuit, 13, 25–­26 Goldberg, Denis, 153 “good” colonialism, 135–­36, 140–­41 Gopal, Priyamvada, 107, 249n5 Gordimer, Nadine, 17, 152 A Grain of Wheat (Ngũgĩ), 74–­97, 171; characters and their stories in, 74–­75, 78–­84; and colonial land policies, 77; Europeans in, 81–­82; Gikonyo character in, 82–­84, 86, 87–­93; Karanja character in, 82–­84, 85–­86, 87, 91–­93, 97, 247n12; and Kenyan colonial history, 74–­78; Kihika character in, 75, 76, 79–­80, 84, 85–­86, 91, 93–­96, 246n6; love

triangle in, 74, 86, 87, 93; Mugo character in, 79–­81, 85–­86, 89, 93–­ 98; Mumbi character in, 81, 82–­93, 95–­97, 247n9; national allegory in, 87–­88; revenge narrative in, 85–­ 86; romantic allegory in, 87–­93; romantic narrative in, 86–­93; sacrificial narrative in, 74, 86–­87, 93–­97; seduction narratives in, 86–­87; stories and emotions in, 84–­97 “Graveside Panegyric on O’Donovan Rossa” (Pearse), 57, 60 Great Hunger of 1845–­50, 58–­59. See also famine Green, Michael, 174, 253n11, 253n14 Greene, Graham, 41–­42 grief, 5, 28, 43, 50, 98, 103, 137, 216. See also empathy; family separation and reunion narratives guerrilla warfare, 152 guilt: and collective guilt, 17–­18, 31, 154–­55, 167; and empathic responses, 159, 197, 242n5; and the epilogue of suffering, 28; and reader’s responses, 2; and reparative action, 157; and revenge narratives, 196–­ 99; and sacrificial narratives, 96–­ 97; and shame, 16–­21; and traumas caused by colonial conflict, 45 Gupta, Sankar Sen, 216–­20 Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 18, 82 Haiti, 215 Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie), 32, 35–­36 Hani Setsuko, 113, 132–­33 happiness, 52, 221–­22 Harambee, 75, 84, 87, 97 Hardin, Russell, 22–­23

Hazari, 21, 249n6 Head, Bessie, 28 Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 247n9 Heath, Peter, 6, 41 Hebb, Donald O., 183 Heer, Jeet, 228 Hehman, Eric, 232, 235 Hengen, Shannon, 252n5 heroic narratives: and anticolonialism, 223; and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, 35–­36; and colonial conditions, 53–­54; and identity categories, 225; and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, 160–­66; and Ken Saro-­Wiwa’s Sozaboy, 32–­33; and nationalism, 53, 97; and Pádraic Pearse’s The King, 61–­64; and Pádraic Pearse’s The Master, 64–­66; and Pádraic Pearse’s The Singer, 66–­73; and pageants, 61; and particularization, 228; and pride, 26–­28, 53, 243n12; prototype of, 26–­28; and romantic narratives, 139–­43; and sacrificial narratives, 32, 93; usurpation sequence of, 227 heron, killing of, 177, 186–­88, 190 Hindu tradition, 218–­21, 246n7 Hirano, Kyoko, 250n14 Hirschbiegel, Oliver, 44–­45 historical allegory, 176 historical repression, 176–­78 Hola Camp Affair, 78, 81, 85 The Home and the World (Tagore), 41 Home Guards, 77–­80, 84, 91–­92 Hood, Gavin, 51 Hosain, Attia, 28 hostility attribution bias, 23 Howe, Stephen, 1–­2

Index  281

humiliation, 102, 106, 131, 164, 166, 201–­2 humor: and affirmation of identity categories, 136; and attachment, 115, 120, 137; as child-­centered, 112; and colonialism, 105–­8; and drama, 129–­30; and feminist elements, 113; and laughter, 101–­5, 117; and postcolonial stance, 99–­101; and postcolonization condition, 99–­101; and stereotypes, 134–­35; and U.S. military occupation of Japan, 108–­ 11; and women, 113; and Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer, 99–­138 humorous condition, 102 Husaini, Sa’eed, 83 hypermasculinity, 21 identity-­based antipathy, 155 identity-­based hierarchies, 198, 203 identity-­based remorse, 154–­55 identity-­based shame, 155 identity categorization, 245n3; and animacy, 186–­87; and communication of feeling, 172; and culture, 111; and differentiating liberal from authoritarian colonialism, 154–­55; and emotion(s), 14–­15, 21–­25; and the epilogue of suffering, 30; and heroic narratives, 142, 225; and interpersonal stance, 242n6; and postcolonial stance humor, 112; and race and racism, 229, 235; and romantic narratives, 38–­40, 225; and social hierarchies, 198; and transcendence of intergroup differences, 166. See also in-­groups; out-­groups ignorance, 141, 148

282  Index

immorality, 144, 192, 197–­98 imperialism, 113, 140–­41, 167 implicit bias, 231–­36 implicit racism, 229 implied author, 143–­46 inclination, 103 inconsistencies, 172 India, 197–­201, 216–­23 indigenous peoples, 16–­20, 40–­41, 154, 158, 161–­63, 221, 240n7, 252n4, 253n15. See also traditional cultural practices indignation, 23–­24, 26–­27, 48 individual/group distinction, 13–­18 individuals, 22 information-­processing, 170–­72 in-­groups, 240n3; anger against, 154; and anti-­prototypical work, 178; and attachment, 113; bias towards, 188; and cognitive effects of the colonial division of, 106; criticism of social hierarchies within, 110; and effects of colonialism, 49; and emotion(s), 15, 20; and the epilogue of atonement, 192; and heroic narratives, 26–­27, 160; and humor in occupied Japan, 111; and identity categories, 14, 225; and interpersonal stance, 230, 242n6; and laughter, 103–­5; and loyalty, 241n2; and mirth, 106; and the postcolonization condition, 100, 108; power of, 186; and purgative sacrifice, 54; and race and racism, 163; and romantic narratives, 37; and sacrificial narratives, 31, 57, 97. See also out-­groups inhibition, 101–­5, 106, 110–­11, 113, 132, 137–­38, 163, 233

“innocent homosexual” bonds, 42 insensitivity, 19–­20, 177, 184 Insurgent Empire (Gopal), 107 intergroup relations, 21, 35–­36, 40, 42, 45–­47, 142, 166, 246n1 interiority, 157 international financial institutions, 204–­14 interpersonal stances, 19–­23, 103, 141, 149, 158, 230, 242n6 interracial romance, 22, 27, 36–­37, 39, 160, 173 intersectionality, 234 intimacy, 176–­77 intrinsic pride, 16 intrinsic shame, 16 intrinsic value, 14, 16 invasion, 145, 160–­61 invasion/defense sequence. See threat-­defense sequence Iosagan (Pearse), 61 Ireland, 54; and the Easter Uprising, 55–­61, 70–­73; and Irish colonial politics, 55–­59; and religion, 25; and sacrificial nationalism, 59–­73. See also Pearse, Pádraic Ireland since the Famine (Lyons), 58 Irish Volunteers, 56 ironic distancing, 211 irony, 191, 206 Israel, 206 Ito, Tiffany, 24 Jameson, Fredric, 5, 100, 169–­70 Japan, 106–­38; and colonial conditions, 107; and cultural tradition, 115–­17; family-­stem system, 249n11; and fetishization of filial piety, 115; and humor, 106, 108–­11; and Japa-

nese colonialism, 127–­28, 135; and Japanese militarism, 136, 250n14; and U.S. military occupation of after World War II, 108–­11, 126, 135; and westernization, 118–­26, 129, 134–­37; and women, 113, 116. See also Early Summer (Ozu) Japanese Americans, 162 Jesus, 56–­59, 60–­61, 67–­72 Jews, 206 Jì Jūnxiáng, 43–­44 Kakkar, Nitin, 34 Kalank (film), 35 Kantianism, 203 Kaplan, E. Ann, 145 Kapoor, Raj, 41 Kapuscinski, Kiley, 240n7 Karanja, Karani, 85, 87 Karanja character, 82–­84, 85–­86, 87, 91–­93, 97, 247n12 Kellogg, Alex, 205, 207, 255n6 Kendi, Ibram X., 163 Kennedy, Dane, 75, 78 Kenya, 247n13; and “birth of a nation” metaphor, 87–­90; colonial history of, 74–­78; and martyrdom, 95–­96. See also A Grain of Wheat (Ngũgĩ); The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (Ngũgĩ and Mugo) Kenya Land and Freedom Army (klfa), 76–­84, 90–­92, 246n4. See also Mau Mau oath of loyalty; Mau Mau revolution Kenya Land Commission, 76 Kenyan independence. See Kenyan Uhuru Kenyan Uhuru, 78, 80, 83–­84, 88–­93, 94–­96

Index  283

Kenyatta, Jomo, 75–­78, 88–­90, 95, 246n1 Khuda ke liye (In the Name of God) (film), 34–­35 Kiberd, D., 245n4 kidnapping, 244n26 Kihika character, 75, 76, 79–­80, 84, 85–­86, 91, 93–­96, 246n6 Kikuyu population, 75–­78, 83 Kilmorna (Sheehan), 56–­57 Kim, Sue, 254n2 Kimathi, Dedan, 49, 78, 79 The King (Pearse), 61–­64 Kinoti, Hannah Wangeci, 80 Kiowa Indians, 186 klfa. See Kenya Land and Freedom Army (klfa) kuladharma or “familial duty,” 200 land claims, 76–­77 laughter, 99, 100, 101–­5, 106, 111, 115, 117 law and revenge, 194 legal biases, 200 legal system and law, 49–­50, 194, 245n28, 250n3, 254n1 L’Étranger (Camus), 19–­20 Lewis, C. S., 6 liberal colonialism: and authoritarian colonialism, 145, 147, 151, 153; and decorum, 145; and ignorance, 148, 157; and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, 140–­43, 161; and pity, 21; and view of colonized people as children, 81, 148, 230 liberalism, 181 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte), 31–­32 284  Index

life expectancy, 213–­14 Literature and Moral Feeling (Hogan), 52, 75 love stories, 5, 13, 40, 98, 179, 243n11. See also romantic narratives love triangle, 41–­45, 74, 86, 87, 93, 169 Lowe, Lisa, 244n25 Lowman, Emma Battell, 253n15 loyalists, 46, 77, 87, 92 loyalty, 241n2 LTTE, 31–32 Lukács, 5 Lyons, F., 55–­58, 60, 245n1 MacDonagh, Thomas, 55–­56 Major, Andrea, 254n4 male identity, 201–­2 Mangal Pandey: The Rising (film), 28 Mani, Lata, 254n4 Manjapra, Kris, 252n8 Mannoni, Octave, 82, 83, 88 Mansoor, Shoaib, 34–­35 Manyika, Sarah Ladipo, 36–­37 mapping, 170–­7 1 Marianism, 25 Markandaya, Kamala, 28 marriage, 22, 37–­38, 87, 115, 120–­24 “Marriage and Other Impediments” (Adeaga), 37–­38 Marshall, George, 187 martyrdom, 55–­57, 61, 95–­96 Marxist concepts, 100, 106, 129, 212 The Master (Pearse), 64–­66, 71 Mau Mau oath of loyalty, 77, 80, 82–­ 83, 91, 93 Mau Mau revolution, 75–­84, 88–­93, 96, 246n1, 247n13 Maxon, Robert, 75, 77, 81 Mazrui, Ali, 50

McCoy, Alfred, 183, 251n5 McGill University, Montreal, 183 Mehta, Ketan, 28 Mellen, Joan, 5, 249n13 memory, 176–­80, 226, 228, 253n10 Messianism, 55–­60 metaphors, 55, 57, 60, 88, 96, 169–­70, 180, 181. See also allegory Midnight’s Children (Rushdie), 99, 171 militant resistance, 77 military conflict, 32, 64, 160 mimeticism, 221, 248n2, 249n7 Mine Boy (Abrahams), 41, 152 Ministry of Health and Welfare (Japan), 132 minor genres. See criminal investigation narratives; revenge narratives; seduction narratives mirth, 98–­99, 102–­5, 106, 111, 112, 136, 138 Missing (film), 48 Mitra, Dinabandhu, 216–­21 modeling, 170 modern colonialism, 1, 139 “modernization,” 129, 249n12 modulation, 163, 233–­34 “Modupe” (Manyika), 36–­38 Mongol rule, 44–­46, 50 mood repair, 111 Mooney, James, 179, 186 moral behavior, 193–­203 Morales, Ed, 215 moral obligations, 17–­18 “The Mother” (Pearse), 67 motivational orientation of the postcolonization condition, 100 motives, 141–­42, 158–­59 Mugo, Micere Githae, 49, 247n12

Mugo character, 79–­81, 85–­86, 89, 93–­ 98, 246n6, 247n9, 248n19 Mumbi character, 81, 82–­93, 95–­97, 247n9 My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Tutuola), 18 Nagel, Thomas, 194 national allegory, 87–­88, 100, 172–­80 national groups, conflicts between, 165–­66 national identity, 30, 56–­58, 64–­65, 135, 252n4 national independence. See Kenyan Uhuru nationalism: and activism, 60–­61; and allegory, 170; emplotment for, 53; and the epilogue of suffering, 28–­ 30; and heroic narratives, 97; Irish conceptions of, 58–­59; and Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, 167–­68; and religion, 56–­57; as sacrificial, 59–­73, 93–­94 nationality, 229 National Party (South Africa), 151 national redemption, 63, 65, 72 nation and romantic allegory, 87 nationhood, 32, 61, 69, 170, 189–­92 Native American mythology, 184 Native American religious movements, 179–­80 Native American resistance to colonialism, 152 Native Americans, 190 nature, 173–­78, 180, 184–­85, 188, 189–­ 91, 252n5 Nectar in a Sieve (Markandaya), 28 neocolonialism, 48–­49, 124, 204–­16 neoliberalism, 205–­16

Index  285

new colonialism, 42 new nation. See “birth of a nation” metaphor New Testament, 156–­57 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 171–­72. See also A Grain of Wheat (Ngũgĩ); The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (Ngũgĩ and Mugo) Nil Durpan, Indigo Planting Mirror (Mitra), 216–­21 Noble, William, 252n6 nostalgia, 109 The Notebook (Kakkar), 34 Nussbaum, Martha, 195 objectification, 242n7 O’Connor, Sinéad, 58 Ofcansky, Thomas, 75, 77, 81 Ogude, James, 94, 247n11, 248n18 Ojibwe, 173 Oliver, Roland, 97 Omeros (Walcott), 41 On Anger (Kim), 254n2 Ondaatje, Michael, 48–­49 oppression/oppressed, 17–­18, 39, 71, 198, 249n6 Orientalism, 4, 244n25 Osaragi Jirō, 133 other people’s children, 112–­13, 118, 132–­38 other people’s emotions, 15, 19–­20, 155, 239n2. See also disgust other people’s selves and actions, 17–­ 18, 20, 203, 213 out-­groups: and the age-­grade domain, 243n14, 247n8; and the animacy domain, 88–­89, 186–­88, 243n14, 247n8; and assassinations of colonialists, 248n15; and cogni-

286  Index

tive effects of the colonial division of, 106, 247n8; and the disease model, 149; and disfigured narratives or stories, 178; and effects of colonialism, 49; and emotion(s), 15, 20–­23; and empathic response, 103; and health domain, 243n14; and heroic narratives, 160; and humor, 104–­6; and humor in occupied Japan, 110–­11; and identity categories, 14, 225, 240n3; and interpersonal stance, 230, 242n6; and moral out-­grouping, 195; and penitential sacrifice, 31; and the postcolonization condition, 108; practical activity with, 38; and practical identity, 245n2; and purgative sacrifice, 54, 93–­94; and race and racism, 159, 231; and romantic narratives, 37; and sexism, 159, 199. See also First Nations people; in-­groups Owen (Pearse), 61 Ozu, Yasujiro. See Early Summer (Ozu) pain: and actions, 17, 20–­21; and family separation and reunion narratives, 50–­52; and humiliation, 164; and opposition to colonialism, 154; and revenge narratives, 196–­97; and spiritual realization narratives, 52; witnessing of, 148–­49. See also torture Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, 244n27 The Palm-­Wine Drinkard (Tutuola), 18 Pan-­Africanist Congress, 162 Paradise (Gurnah), 18

Parker, Stephen, 242n5 parliamentary nationalists (Ireland), 63–­66 Parnell, Charles Stuart, 59 A Passage to India (Forster), 14, 27, 42, 49 passion, 5 passion play, 61 past, 180 paternalism, 76, 88, 134 patriarchy, 136 patriotic bloodlust, 144, 161 Payne, B. Keith, 233 Pearse, Pádraic, 54–­73; “Graveside Panegyric on O’Donovan Rossa,” 57–­58; influence of, 240n4; The King, 61–­64; The Master, 64–­66; and patriotism, 245n4; and political self-­doubt, 245n6; and the proclamation of the Irish Republic, 55–­56; and sacrificial nationalism, 59–­61; The Singer, 66–­73 penance, 157, 192 penitential sacrifice, 31–­33, 54, 72–­73, 94, 97 Perdue, Theda, 174, 253n11, 253n14 perfect society, 217 perpetrators, 154 personal choices, 194–­95 personal experiences, 97 personification, 85 Petals of Blood (Ngũgĩ), 93 Phoenix program, 152, 244n24 Piaget, Jean, 225 Piketty, Thomas, 3, 49–­50, 204, 215, 254n5 The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 171, 252n3 Pilkington, Doris, 51

pity, 21, 158 Plunkett, Joseph, 55 police shootings of Black Americans, 232–­35 political allegories, 171, 172 political attitudes, 97 political organization, 194 The Political Unconscious (Jameson), 170 polygenism, 230 popular culture, 1, 240n7 possessiveness, 191 postcolonial critics, 3–­4 postcolonial stance, 99–­101, 112, 248n2 postcolonization, 48–­49, 51–­52, 99–­ 101, 105, 107–­8, 111, 136, 248n2 poverty, 208 power, 186, 203, 205–­6 practical identity, 57–­59, 245n2 precolonial society, 216–­18 pre-­independence factionalisms, 75, 84 prejudice, 235 pride: and abhiman, wounded pride, 198; and accomplishment pride, 14–­16, 26–­27; and colonialism, 14–­16, 154; and contradictory emotions, 24; and cross-­cultural genres, 4; and essence pride, 14, 26–­27; and heroic narratives, 26–­28, 53, 243n12; and intrinsic pride, 16; and reader’s responses, 2; and sacrificial narratives, 33, 57, 65, 97 privatization, 213–­15 prosperity, 109 Prospero and Caliban (Mannoni), 82 protectorates, 76, 189 Protestant Christianity, 25

Index  287

pseudo-­feminism, 200 pseudo-­speciation, 230–­31 psychological aspects of colonialism, 3–­4 psychological repression, 176 Puerto Rico, 215 “Punishment” (Tagore), 193–­203 puns, 110 pure allegory, 171 purgative sacrifice, 31–­33, 54, 72–­73, 93–­97, 248n15 Qing dynasty China, 215 Qiu Hu Tries to Seduce His Wife (Shi), 45–­46 A Question of Power (Head), 28 The Quiet American (Greene), 41–­42 race and racism, 16, 21–­25, 36, 39–­40, 150–­53, 163–­64, 187, 213, 225, 229–­ 36, 251n4 rage: and collective shame, 155; and dependent colonial populations, 82; and heroic narratives, 26; and law, 194; and other people’s emotions, 19–­20; and purgative sacrifice, 54; and revenge narratives, 43, 226; and the shame-­rage cycle, 16, 43, 201–­2, 212–­13, 242n4; and traumas caused by colonial conflict, 44; and trust, 23, 43 Rajamouli, S. S., 35 Ralph, Laurence, 235 Rāma mythology, 218–­19 Rāmāyaṇa, 218–­19 realism, 191 reason, 212 reciprocity, 159 Reformation, 25

288  Index

refugees, 209–­10 religious identity categories, 58 religious intolerance, 65 remorse: and collective shame, 19; and compassionate remorse, 203, 226; and cross-­cultural genres, 4; and heroic narratives, 70–­7 1; and identity-­based remorse, 154–­55; and penitential sacrifice, 31, 54; and reparation, 157; and revenge narratives, 196–­98; and romantic narratives, 166 renewal, 65 reparative action, 157 The Reports on Sarah and Saleem (Alayan), 46–­48 repression, 176–­78 resentment, 100, 103, 107 resistance, 100, 107–­8, 164–­65, 193, 248n2, 249n5 retribution, 43, 254n1 revenge narratives, 26, 43–­45, 85–­86, 193–­203, 225–­26, 244n26, 247n12 reverence for nature, 190 reward dependency, 159 Richie, Donald, 249n10 right-­hemisphere language processing, 101 ritual, 178 Roberts, Dorothy, 235 Rollo, Toby, 253n15 romantic antimodernism, 191 romantic love, 33–­34, 36, 98, 115, 159, 222. See also attachment bonds romantic narratives, 26; anticolonialism in, 34–­35; and betrayal, 42–­43, 87; and cross-­cultural genres, 4–­5; and heroic narratives, 139–­43; and identity categorization, 38–­40,

225; and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, 139–­43, 163–­66; and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, 74, 86–­93; prototype of, 33–­43; and remorse, 166. See also intergroup relations; interracial romance; love stories romantic tragicomedy, 112–­13 Ross, Robert, 150 rrr (film), 35 Rushdie, Salman, 43–­44, 99, 171–­72 Russell, Bertrand, 187 Ruswa, Mirza Muhammad Hadi, 244n26 sacrality of art, 175 sacredness of nature, 174–­75, 185, 188, 252n5 sacrificial narratives: and anticolonialism, 93–­94, 166; and colonialism, 93, 95–­96, 227; and cross-­cultural genres, 4, 26; and emotion(s), 54, 97; and Irish colonial politics, 55–­59; in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, 74, 86–­87, 93–­97; and penitential sacrifice, 31–­33, 54, 72–­73, 94, 97; and pride, 33, 57, 65, 97; prototype of, 31–­33; and purgative sacrifice, 31–­33, 54, 72–­73, 93–­97; and sacrificial nationalism in Pádraic Pearse, 59–­73; and sacrificial tragicomedy, 53–­54; violence in, 96 Said, Edward, 3 saints, 2 Sapolsky, Robert, 230 Saro-­Wiwa, Ken, 32–­33 Sartre, Jean-­Paul, 140–­41 Sathe, V. P., 41

satī, 200, 219–­20 scapegoat, 54, 64, 72 Schacter, Daniel, 227–­28, 253n10 secure attachment, 133–­34 seduction narratives, 26, 45–­47, 86–­87, 169, 172–­73, 177, 216–­21 self-­consciously plotted allegory, 171–­72 self-­conscious stance, 107–­8 self-­criticism, 111 self-­defense, 148 self-­directed humor, 110–­11 self-­empathy, 111 self-­interests, 134–­35, 194–­95, 202 self-­sacrifice, 32, 52, 58, 63, 67, 71, 94, 109 self-­understanding, 158 Sen, Amartya, 59 sensitivity, 102–­5, 153–­54, 185 separation of parents and children. See family separation and reunion narratives separation of two lovers, 204–­16 settlers: and emotion(s), 19–­20; and First Nations people, 181, 191–­92, 252n8, 254n15; and Francophone settlers, 183, 251n1; and heroic narratives, 53, 161; and land claims, 76–­77, 161, 253n15; and Mau Mau revolutionaries, 247n13; and nationalism, 167; and nature, 180; and nomads, 150–­52; and racist ideology, 16; and slavery, 81. See also colonialism sexism, 198–­99 sexual assault narratives, 216–­21 sexual desire, 13, 22, 33–­34, 45–­47, 126, 196 sexual harassment, 126, 133, 154, 167

Index  289

sexual infidelity, 196 sexuality, 125–­26 sexual relations, 21–­22, 42–­43, 86, 92, 156, 180, 230, 249n13 Shackleton, Mark, 190 Shaihu Umar (Balewa), 18, 51 Shaka, 150 Shalimar the Clown (Rushdie), 43–­44 shame: and affect theory, 239n2; and betrayal, 43; and collective guilt, 155; and collective shame, 19–­20, 155; and colonialism, 15–­21; and communal disgust, 37; and contradictory emotions, 24; and cross-­cultural genres, 4; and economic insecurity, 201–­2; and the epilogue of suffering, 29; and essence shame, 16; and failure shame, 26–­27; and heroic narratives, 26–­27, 53, 164; and humor, 102; and identity-­based shame, 155; and identity categorization, 242n6; and intrinsic shame, 16; and neoliberalism, 212–­13; and postcolonization literature, 241n3; and redemption through sacrifice, 71; and responses to colonialism, 2–­3; and sacrificial narratives, 97; and the shame-­rage cycle, 16, 43, 201–­2, 212–­13, 242n4; and spontaneous empathy, 157; and status shame, 16, 19–­20, 26–­27, 29 Shanti (Shezi), 39–­40 Sharma, Govind, 248n16, 248n18 Shaw, George Bernard, 57 Sheehan, Canon, 56–­57 Shezi, Mthuli, 39–­40 Shi Junbao, 45–­46 Shortland, Neil, 242n4 Shree 420 (film), 41 simulations, 84, 160

290  Index

sin and redemption, 59–­60 The Singer (Pearse), 66–­73 Singh, Khushwant, 17 Sissako, Abderrahmane, 204–­16 situation and attitude, 99–­100 slander, 202–­3 slavery, 18, 81 Smith, Roland, 25 social change, 119, 194 social cooperation, 24, 38, 107 social devastation, 18, 31, 32–­33, 54, 94 social esteem, 14–­16 social hierarchies, 18, 81, 100, 102, 110, 142, 198 social identity, 17, 20–­21, 27, 37, 39–­41, 239n1 social psychology, 3, 229–­32 social self-­criticism, 38–­39, 51, 199 social services, 208 “Something Old, Something New” (Aboulela), 38–­39 Sommer, Doris, 34, 39 sorrow, 100 source domain, 170–­7 1 South Africa, 149–­53, 158, 160–­62. See also Waiting for the Barbarians (Coetzee) Southeast Asia, 186–­87 sovereignty, 57–­59, 64 Sozaboy (Saro-­Wiwa), 32–­33 species categorization, 230–­31, 256n2 Spenser, Edmund, 24–­25, 171 spider, 184 spiritual practices, 179–­80 spiritual realization narratives, 52, 221–­23 spontaneous instantiation of an error, 101–­2 squatters, 77

Stanford prison experiment, 82, 247n10 status shame, 16, 19–­20, 26–­27, 29 Stephens, James, 56 stereotypes, 21, 37–­38, 134–­35, 200, 231–­32, 235, 246n7 Sternberg, Robert and Karin, 23 stories/story structure, 13; and affective narratology, 4–­5; and characters, 78–­84; and colonialism, 1–­3, 27–­52, 225–­28; and emotion(s), 25–­52, 53–­54, 84–­97, 168–­72; and nationalism, 53; and race and racism, 229–­36; and responses to colonialism, 1–­3, 27–­52. See also specific types of narratives or genres Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 51, 157 structural adjustment, 213–­15 subjective experiences, 19, 21, 24, 242n7 subnationalism, 34, 40, 50, 190 suffering, 54, 56–­57, 102–­5, 197, 208–­10 Sullivan, Irene, 174–­75, 181, 184 Summertime (Coetzee), 151 Sunlight on a Broken Column (Hosain), 28 superiority, 15, 21, 28, 151, 158, 195, 198, 201 Surfacing (Atwood), 167–­92, 240n7; and Americanism, 177, 180–­83, 187, 189–­91; art in, 172–­77; and disfigured narratives or stories, 167–­72, 179; and the epilogue of suffering, 167, 178–­79, 192; and national allegory, 172–­80; and national identity, 252n4; and nonnational allegory, 189–­92; outline of the thematic structure of, 176; sequential development of, 180–­88; and submersion, 175–­77

suspicion, 22 sympathy, 183 taboos, 21, 220, 232 Tagore, Rabindranath: and revenge structure, 225–­26. See also The Home and the World (Tagore); “Punishment” (Tagore) target domains, 170–­7 1 terrorism, 79, 242n4 Thagard, Paul, 170–­72 Thomas, Rebecca, 242n5 threat-­defense sequence, 53, 57, 160, 164–­65 Tomasello, Michael, 24 torture, 32–­35, 78, 80, 153, 155–­57, 182–­ 83, 247n9, 251nn5–­6 traditional cultural practices, 57–­59, 89–­90, 109–­10, 117–­20, 190, 221–­22, 229, 246n7, 249n11. See also vision quests; westernization tragedy, 25–­26, 98 Train to Pakistan (Singh), 17 traitors, 160 traumas caused by colonial conflict, 44–­45 Trial of Christopher Okigbo (Mazrui), 50 The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (Ngũgĩ and Mugo), 49, 247n12 Trojan Women (Euripides), 28 Trump, Donald, 227–­28 trust: and affect theory, 239n2; and attachment bonds, 22–­23, 159; and attachment insecurity, 98; and benevolence, 22–­23, 103; and family separation and reunion narratives, 137; and love triangles, 41, 43; and revenge narratives, 195–­200; and romantic narratives, 36–­37, 40; and

Index  291

trust (cont.) secure attachment, 133–­34; and seduction narratives, 45; and trustworthiness, 149 truth, 23, 45, 146–­48, 199–­203 Tsotsi (film), 51–­52 Tutuola, Amos, 18 typologies, 5 Umrao Jan Ada (Ruswa), 244n26 underprivilege, 109 Understanding Nationalism (Hogan), 245n3 unemployment, 206–­7 United States: in Afghanistan, 153; and colonialism in the New World, 152; and heroic narratives, 53; and imperialism, 35, 167; United States military, 181; in Vietnam, 153 unity, 93 “universal duty” (sādhāraṇadharma), 200, 221 University of Cape Town, 153 unreliable narration, 191 Upaniṣads, 222 U.S. military occupation of Japan after World War II, 108–­11, 126, 135 usurpation-­restoration (heroic) narrative, 44, 53, 160–­66 utilitarianism, 203 utopianism, 178–­79, 191–­92, 217–­18 Vālmīki, 218 value(s): assigned to the in-­and out-­ group societies, 178; of different marital conditions, 121; and in-­ group bias, 188; of interracial romantic love, 36; and liberal values,

292  Index

240n5; social esteem and intrinsic, 14–­16; and truth, 203 Varman, Abhishek, 35 Vastokas, Joan, 173 victory, 192 Vietnam, 152, 182–­83, 186–­90 Vietnam War, 186–­87 villains, 26, 235 violence: in Abderrahane Sissako’s Bamako, 211; and Americanism, 180; and connections between memory and history, 178; in the heroic narrative, 188; and identity categories, 40; and insensitivity, 177; and racial violence, 187; in revenge narratives, 194, 197–­99, 203; in sacrificial narratives, 96; and subnationalism, 190 vision quests, 167–­68, 172–­80, 189–­92, 252n6 Vuletich, Heidi, 233 Wacquant, Loïc, 229 Waiting for the Barbarians (Coetzee), 27, 139–­66; film version of, 164–­66; heroic story structure of, 160–­66; and historical reference, 149–­53; and liberal emotions, 153–­60; thematic orientation of, 143–­49 Waiyaki, 94–­95 Walcott, Derek, 41 war on terror, 255n11 warrant chief, 83 wealth, 48, 91, 94–­95, 129, 192, 209–­10, 212, 215, 217 Wehrs, Donald, 244n16 Weiss, Gordon, 31–­32 Weldemichael, Awet Tewelde, 243n12

Wenzel, Jennifer, 251n6 westernization, 118–­26, 129, 134–­37 Winter Soldier Investigation, 187 witnessing, 145, 148–­49 women, 21, 81, 113, 116, 121–­26, 156–­57, 199–­201, 220–­21, 254n4

Wright, Laura, 251n6 Wu, Wenquan, 250n3 The Zhào Orphan (Jì Jūnxiáng), 43–­44 Zimbardo, Philip, 82, 247n10 Zulu, 150

Index  293

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