Apichaya Kotaravivat

De-colonize Crusoe: the power of “writing back”

As the “suitable” meaning of “nation” is still controversial, the “nation,” especially, the English empire, has later been positioned as ‘ideology.’ According to Anthony H. Burch, nationalism “emerged as an ideology as a consequence of the French Revolution. Two hundred years after that revolution, it can be recognised, as the most successful ideology the world has ever known. Empires and other pre-national forms of political organisation have come to an end, save for one or two small remnants such as Gibraltar and New Caledonia. The whole land surface of the world, with the single exception of Antarctica, is now divided between the jurisdictions of nation states. The formal independence and equality of these states are recognised in international law and in the organisation of the United Nations and its agencies. In short, nationalism has triumphed.” (Birch 221) The idea of ideological nation seems to be parallel with the famous concept of Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Community.” He proposes “the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” (Anderson 5-6) He clarifies this notion by giving reasons that “Nation is an imagined community because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” Accordingly, “Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity / genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.” (Anderson 6) Anderson emphasizes that in fact, nation only exists in ideological term that is fals

e and unreal. The idea of forging the nation is quite similar to Raymond Williams

and Raphael Samuel. Williams states that “Nation is a term is radically connected

with “native.” We are born into relationship that is typically settled in a place. This form of primary and ‘placeable’ bonding is of quite fundamental human and natural importance. Yet the jump from that to anything like the modern nation-state is entirely artificial.” Samuel stresses on nation’s falsehood that “The idea of the nation, though a potent one, belongs to the realm of the imaginary rather than the real. It occupies a symbolic rather than territorial space.” (Samuel 16) The definition of English nation develops into a “grander” concept. As the empire expands, the neutral identification of English nationalism has become superior. Said’s critic claims that “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.” (Said 3) This collective hierarchical identity of English nationalism is rather universal: “On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-

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Oreintals; the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the later are none of these things.” (Said 49) The English’s construction of the empire also appears in Linda Colley’s “Britons: Forging the Nation.” Her book “shows in discussing what it treats as ‘objective’ factors in the forging of Britain during the period as against the incoherence and lack of serious theoretical interest it reveals when it comes (as it must) to a review of ‘subjective’ factors.” (Easthope 11) She brings up other components of the process of forging the nation that “the war, liberty and Protestantism encourages an impressive number of Britons to ‘make the step from a passive awareness of nation to an energetic participation on its behalf.” (Colley 371) The English empire and its colonialism are constructed by this idea and it is reflected in English way of thinking, manners and culture, for example, in their worldly known classic literature, Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is “an inaugural text in the English novel tradition. It is an early eighteenth-century testament to the superiority of rational civilization over nature and savagery, a text that foregrounds the developing British Empire’s self-representation through encounters with its colonial Others. (Kehinde 35) It is a story of how to build an empire, colonize the native and be successful with a superior status. Since “Africa and Africans are given negative images in Western books of geography, travels, novels, history and in Hollywood films about the continent,” (Kehinde 34) it would not be a surprise if this novel brings about a great deal of anger from the native people whose stereotypical image is “misrepresented” in this canonical work. As a consequence, the reaction of the native comes in the form of “writing back.” This kind of novel “proved very suitable to the needs of African writers who wanted to address colonial reality as they have experienced it. In their work, the novelists uprooted the myth that riches and power make the white man superior.” (Schipper 37-8) Salmon Rushdie’s “The Empire writes back with a vengeance” comprises the same intention. His book argues that postcolonial writing is imbued with nationalist assertion which involves the “Other” claiming itself as central and self-determining, by questioning the basis of European and British metaphysics. (Rushdie 336) Similarly, with the purpose to attack the Western biased value in Robinson Crusoe, several “writing back” works are released. For example, “the Wide Sargasso Sea” is a re-writing of the mad woman in the attic in “Jane Eyre.”These writers write back to the imperial centre “Since the culture and education of these writers was dominated by imperial rule, their first tendencies were toward imitating the literature they had learned.” (Ford 1)

In this essay, I would like to explore the context of Robinson Crusoe as a portrayal of English empire and a model of mythical empire, racism, and colonization. Also, I would discuss the 3 “write back” novels whose aim is to attack Robinson Crusoe which are Selvon’s “Moses Ascending,” Derek Walcott, the play “Pantomime,” and J.M. Coetzee’s “Foe.” My focus in this essay is to discover how these writers

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present their nation and nationalism as opposed with that in Robinson Crusoe and more importantly, how they challenge the English nation and bring the English’s former representation of themselves into question.

Gayatri Chokravorty Spivak, in similar to Homi Bhabha and Edward Said, “repeatedly emphasizes that the production and reception of nineteenth-century English literature was bound up with the history of Imperialism.” (Morton 111) Robinson Crusoe is a model of forging a nation. He portrays the myth of the empire, deals with mythical economics and politics as well as reflects religious ideology. He plays the role of a colonizer who is greatly influenced by the concept of English’s superior nationalism. The grandeur of this classical novel, “functions as an effective mode of deception, serving to engage the reader in a mental journey that merely resembles the experience of colonialism. (McInelly 3)

In order to explore the position of Crusoe’s white English colonizer in the novel, the personal attitude of Daniel Defoe might be useful at this place. According to Defoe’s presentation of “the English Gentleman,” he suggests that “(The English gentleman can) make the tour of the world in books, he may make himself master of the geography of the Universe in the maps, atlases and measurements of our mathematicians… He may go round the globe with Dampier and Rogers… He may make all distant places near to him in his reviewing the voiages of those that saw them… with this difference, too, in his knowledge, and infinitely to his advantage, viz. That those travellers, voiagers, surveyons… etc., kno’ but every man his share… But he receives the idea of the whole at one view.” (Gentleman 225-26)

The superior status of Crusoe is depicted in many ways. First of all, he makes up his own illusion that he is the “king” of the island. He is virtually “obsessed with reassuring himself that everything in his political world is his property and that everyone is properly subjected and completely under his control.” (McInelly 2) He makes himself the owner of the island, and everything should be under his control. He claims that: “I was Lord of the whole Mannor; or if I pleas’d, I might call my self Kind, or Emperor over the whole Country which I had Possession of. There were no Rivals. I had no Competitor, none to dispute Sovereignty or Command with Me.” (Defoe 86) His narcissism augments with the arrival of the Spaniard and Friday’s father. “My Island is now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in Subjects; and it was a merry Reflection which I frequently made, How like a King I look’d. First of all, the whole Country was my own meer Property; so that I had an undoubted Right of Dominion. 2ndly, My People were perfectly subjected: I was absolute Lord and Law-giver; they all owed their Lives to me, and were ready to lay down their Lives, if there had been occasion of it, for me. (Defoe 241) Moreover, there is also a distinction in the status presented between the Spanish and Robinson Crusoe. Although the Spaniard are portrayed to be in a better

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position than the native, “they are chosen to bear the brunt of the undeniable similarities between European and Carib… Crusoe’s self-sufficiency contrasts strikingly with the dependence of his Spanish counterparts on the native Caribs, thus validating the pre-eminence of Western civilization on a distinctly English model. ” (Hulme 200) As a matter of fact, the sources of Crusoe’s power are Western technology. It would be undeniable that, without his gun, he would not be able to “prove and assert his superiority and assume a new mantle of power. He is a “Master” who controls and thus can exploit his environment.” (Kehinde 37) However, he seems to possess the idea that his strength is from himself alone as he says: “my figure indeed was very fierce; I had my formidable Goat-skin Coat on, with the great Cap I have mention’d, a naked Sword by my side, two Pistols in my Belt, and a Gun upon each Shoulder. (Defoe 253)

Crusoe employs a great deal of the notorious racism of colonialism. The evidence of this would be most obviously proved by Crusoe-Friday relationship. The presentation of the characters Crusoe and Friday are greatly distinct. Crusoe “the Western European self is equated with futurity, vision, civilization, rationality, language and light. Conversely, the depiction of the non-European in the text is an absolute negation of the Other. The black is associated with pre-history, savagery, cannibalism, unconsciousness, silence and darkness.” (Kehinde 39) Crusoe’s negative judgement towards Friday initially shows in his attempt “world through the agency of language, and particularly… through a creative process of naming” (Novak 110) This is one of the first actions of racism and Crusoe’s self-portrayal of superiority since “Friday is so named to remind the native of the day on which Crusoe saved his life, and Friday’s first instructions are to call Crusoe “Master,” Once the titles and hierarchy are established, Crusoe proceeds to reshape much of Friday’s identity, a process that begins in earnest with instruction in Christianity and extends even to a meticulous concern with the native’s new (non-cannibalistic) diet.” (McInelly 7) Progressively, after he renames Friday and teaches him some English words in order to give him a position as a servant and makes him useful, he follows the notion of colonialism and converts Friday. His attitude towards Friday’s religious belief is shown in disgust and ignorance, which is “akin to the later imperialist missionaries’ attitude to the indigenous religions… He believes that his own (Western) God is the true God, and that he is doing Friday an invaluable service by converting him.” (Kehinde 37)

Apart from representing the Western’s narcissism and colonialism, Robinson could be read as a myth of economical and political success. Throughout the story, we could see how Robinson Crusoe performs his ‘ability’ in terms of economics and politics. He “participates alternately on both sides of the political-economic forces that polarized the world during the second half of the seventeenth century.” (McInelly 2) Crusoe transforms the island to be an agricultural area. He collects food with the labour of Friday. His political skill is manifested when he encounters

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with the English captain who “tests the capacity of the political dreamworld that Crusoe has constructed for himself and that has until that point defined him as a king.” (McInelly 8) It seems not to be difficult for Crusoe to persuade him to be his ally that is quite similar to England’s expanding empire. His ability is evidently contrast with that of Friday who is rather naïve. Crusoe “embodies Western mercantile capitalism, grounded in a colonial economy, through his money-making schemes (engaging in the slave trade, investing profits, hoarding gold on the island)… On the other hand, the natives, represented by Friday, are depicted as careless self-indulgent individuals who lack forethought or reflections. This is why the white man who has a life of reason, introspection and faith, intervenes, like the Almighty God, to civilize the savage Other.” (Kehinde 38) Crusoe’s embodiment seems to reflect Defoe’s traditional “English” attitude of colonialism. In Defoe’s “The Complete English Tradesman,” he comments that “We have not increased our power … by subduing the nations which possessed those countries, and incorporating them into our own, but have entirely planted our colonies, and peopled the countries with our own subjects, natives of this island and, excepting the negroes, which we have transported from Africa to America, as slaves to work in the sugar and tobacco plantations, all our colonies… are entirely peopled from Great Britain and Ireland… the natives having either removed farther up into the country, or by their own folly and treachery raising war against us, been destroyed and cut off. (Tradesman 219-20) His political and economical success, according to his belief, is a prof of God’s favour. Defoe has created a colonial model that employs mythical portrayal of an ideal colonial world. Crusoe who is “a common Englishman can become, in a limited capacity, a master, a king, and an emperor. Even more so than the national context, in which it was also occurring, the colonial sphere offers the “private man” a setting in which he can become extraordinary and powerful; and Friday, a cultural inferior, is the perfect companion to advance the self-image of a character who, in English society, would have been a nobody.” (McInelly 16) The story of Crusoe and his feudal relationship could be considered as an insult. Various native writers attack the prejudice of forming the empire. Walcott ironically comments on Crusoe’s myth that “My Crusoe, then, is Adam, Christopher Columbus, God, a missionary, a beachcomber, and his interpreter, Daniel Defoe. He is Adam because he is the first inhabitant of a second paradise. He is Columbus because he has discovered this new world, by accident, by fatality. He is God because he teaches himself to control his creation, he rules the world he has made, and also, because he is to Friday, a white concept of Godhead. He is a missionary because he instructs Friday in the uses of religion . . . . He is a beachcomber because I have imagined him as one of those figures of adolescent literature, some derelict out of Conrad or Stevenson . . . and finally, he is also Daniel Defoe, because the journal of Crusoe, which is Defoe's journal, is written in prose, not in poetry, and our literature, the pioneers of our public literature have expressed themselves in prose.” (Quoted in Hamner 81) The notorious Crusoe-Friday relationship, according to Homi Bhabha

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is a colonial mimicry and ambivalence: “Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say, that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference.” (Bhabha 86) Accordingly, this is the great influence why “writing back” is necessary, The native intends to present the work in order to fix their national image and challenge the mythical English empire. The first Crusoe’s “writing back” novel that I would like to discuss is Selvon’s “Moses Ascending.”

Selvon’s Moses Ascending is a challenge to the English ideology since it “enters critically into established (and existing) configurations of discourse and successfully destabilizes its universality, linearity and author/ity, without attempting to replace Crusoe’s hegemonic signifying authority with Friday’s (postcolonial) counter-hegemonic narrative.” (Chakraborty 53) Selvon’s attempt to undo his nation’s misrepresentation and question the English empire can be seen in the portrayal of culture versus nature, the civilized versus barbarian, knowledge versus innocence and the master-servant relationship.

In Moses’ mansion that is a parallel of Crusoe island, the culture of the native is not overpower by the Westerners. It might be said that in his mansion, the culture is ‘growing.’ Throughout the story, it can be seen that the multi-races in the house exchange each other’s cultures that contrast Crusoe’s disgust towards Friday’s tradition. His “island scape is a fluid space of becoming. Selvon transforms colonial encounter into a transformative field where identities are in the process of becoming. The critique of the “Robinsonade” motif of cultural icons being passed from white culture downward to natives is obvious as the novel challenges the dominant cultural norms of colonialist narratives.” (Chakraborty 58) The Western culture, in reality, does not take control of the natives but plays a part as a cultural factor in their lives. In the story, we could see Moses’ pleasure in British cooling and music influence. He often offers tea to his visitors and when Jeannie pays a visit at his house, he brightens up the atmosphere by playing London records of symphony orchestra. The cultural exchange also employs in the English who, through the narration, go to Indian shops to buy ingredients of Indian cuisine. As well as passing their culture to the Westerners, the natives in this novel are successful in maintaining. Instead of accepting European culture like Friday, “The immigrants’ realization that they are not accepted by the metropolis (white Britain) results in an effort to reclaim their suppressed Caribbean history and identity” (Chakraborty 60)

Moreover, Moses Ascending also brings a new definition of “civilization.” In Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe is the one who “civilizes” Friday, considering it as his “white-man’s burden.” Nevertheless, Moses who is a black man takes the duty to

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civilize Bob, the English. Crusoe’s fondness of knowledge is reflected in Moses who consider Bob’s illiteracy as “darkness.” He responds to it with abrupt reaction “Your ignorance reflects on me” (Selvon 138) and sends Bob to ESL schools. Besides, Moses tried “to convert him from the evils of alcohol” and “decided to teach him the Bible when I could make the time” (Selvon 111). “Here philanthropic generosity is reminiscent of the white man’s “duty” and “moral” obligation to impart ‘civilization’ to the native, i.e. ‘the white man’s burden,’ an alibi for legitimizing processes of exclusion, subordination, repression and inequality. (Chakraborty 61) Opposed to Bob’s inability to read and write, Moses is obsessed in writing his “memoir” with the hidden eager to publish it and have people read. It is quite satirical since the great Crusoe has “journal” but Moses composes “literature” (Selvon 112) which is “personal” and “intimate.” (Selvon 49) We later find out that Moses does not use “proper” English as he expects. Unintentionally, he has created a “voice” for his nation in the land of English empire. He uses the “Calypsonian’s dialect and form serves a dual purpose: it asserts and establishes the Caribbean voice and it successfully replaces the authoritarian voice and personal experience of one individual in Robinson Crusoe.” (Chakraborty 65) Furthermore, Moses’ friends are eager to originate their own voice. In the story, Galahad tells Moses: “Man Moses, you are still living in the Dark Ages! You don’t even know that we have created a Black Literature, that it have writers who write some powerful books what making a world realize our existence and our struggle” (50). In other words, Moses’ initial indifference of Black literature shows Selvon’s attention to encourage his people to carry on with their own culture and not to get over-influenced from the Westerners like Friday.

The master-servant relationship depicted in this novel is also striking. When Moses first came to England, he was racially discriminated. However, despite his skin color, his superior status is indicated by having his “lackey” a young Englishman, “a white immigrant named Bob from somewhere” in “the Black Country,” the “wilds” of England (Selvon 10, 38). The intertextualization of Bob and Crusoe’s Friday is embedded in this relationship. Robinson Crusoe introduces his “man Friday”: “never Man had a more faithful, loving, sincere Servant, than Friday was to me. . .” (Defoe 163). Similarly, Moses, Selvon’s black Crusoe, comments that Bob was “loyal and true,” “a willing worker, eager to learn the ways of the Black man. In no time at all he learns how to cook peas and rice and to make a beef stew” (Selvon 11, 10). Nonetheless, the relationship between Moses and Bob employs a deeper definition. And according to Moses and Bob’s consciousness, they are aware that their relationship as Moses says: “From now on we live like friends, not master and servant” and Bob asks “suspiciously,” “You mean I’ll have to start paying rent, don’t you?” (Selvon 132) Selvon has offered another context of relationship between the white and black men. Instead of the

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white Bob sacrificing as an utmost servant, their relationship comes in a beneficial terms that Bob serves him instead of paying rent.

Most importantly, Selvon challenges Crusoe’s invented status of a “king.” Moses who is the owner of the house gradually loses control of it and even his “Friday.” Selvon mimics Crusoe’s myth of hierarchy and creates complication between the one who is in control and under control. “Moses’ ascending (unlike Crusoe’s) cannot and does not lead to governorship of the island/castle but results in Moses finding himself back to the basement (now of his own house). Moses’ “mimicry” and incomplete inversions of Crusoe function to interrupt the normative fixity of colonial tropes. His failure to effectively master Crusoe’s tools leads the reader to an interrogation of the strategies of containment.” (Chakraborty 67) “Moses Ascending,” without mentioning Robinson Crusoe, attacks the ideology of the colonial myth by telling a realistic story of multi-raced people in England. Selvon has invented a new concept of “Englishness” and English “nationalism” as a hybrid community where members’ statuses are unstable; the culture is exchangeable and filled with diversity.

As Ford suggests that “The most direct form of this is the "rewrite," wherein the writer directly reworks a literary "classic," or an element thereof, to create a new text,” (1) it would give “the legacy of a colonialist education which perpetuates, through literature, very specific socio-cultural values in the guise of universal truth, it is not surprising that a prominent endeavour among colonized writer/artists has been to rework the European "classics" in order to invest them with more local relevance and to divest them of their assumed authority/authenticity.” (Helen, Tompkins 16) In Derek Walcott’s rewriting of Crusoe, “Pantomime,” he challenges the mythical English nationalism by various means. Jackson, who is a black servant in the play, embodies a great deal of intelligence with somehow overcome his white master, Harry. It also presents the inborn racism of Westerners and mimics the pride of their colonialism.

Throughout the play, the power of Jackson’s intelligence has overcome Harry’s successfully. He often uses clever words and makes the conversation wittily. For instance, as Harry asks him how he is, he answers: “Oh, fair to fine, with seas moderate, with waves three to four feet in open water,…” (Walcott 131) He imitates the Climatologists’ way of forecasting which is quite humorously brainy since the play is set on an island. Apart from that, he also criticizes racism without mentioning it directly. He says: “Except it ain’t going to be suicide. They go say I push you,” (Walcott 132) as a reflection of Westerners’ racism. Moreover, the famous reversed role in the play is a product from his challenge of racism. Without obvious intention, he implies his idea as he ignorantly says: “Mr. Trewe, you are a truly, truly stubborn man. I am not putting that old goatskin hat on my head and making an ass of myself for a million dollars, and I have said so already.” (Walcott

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133) As they reverse the role in the play within a play, he mimics Crusoe is several ways. He refuses to call his white savage “Friday” by renaming him “Thursday.” (Walcott 138)

In addition, Walcott challenges the Westerners’ inborn racism through the character, Mr. Harry, the resort owner. Despite Jackson’s distinct wit, Harry has constantly attempted to steal Jackson’s “creativity.” In the story, Jackson is gifted in singing Calypso. Harry, who is unable to do so, tries to exploit him. He says: “Tape. Repeat it, and try and keep it. That’s what I meant, you see?” and Jackson replied: “You start to exploit me already?” (Walcott 141) Harry is embedded with traditional colonialism idea that the natives are naïve, stupid and from a lower status. He looks down on Jackson’s ability and accuses him of possessing no creativity. He says: “You people create nothing. You imitate everything. It’s all been done before, you see, Jackson… You can’t ever be original, boy. That’s the trouble with shadows, right? They can’t think for themselves.” (Walcott 156) However, we could see his several attempts to present himself as a non-racist. He still sees himself as a superior although he claims that he’s “a liberal.” (Walcott 136) Possibly, his most racist performance is from the fact that he is unable to accept the play of role-reversal. Despite his first impression, he later dismisses the idea. This most clearly shows through his broken speech towards Jackson:

“He comes across this naked white cannibal called Thursday, you know. And then look at what would happen. He would have to start to . . . well, he'd have to, sorry . . . This cannibal, who is Christian, would have to start unlearning Christianity. He would have to be taught . . . I mean . . . he'd have to be taught by this - - African . . . that everything was wrong, that what he was doing . . . I mean, for nearly two thousand years . . . was wrong. That his civilization, his culture, his whatever, was . . . horrible.” (Walcott 126) “Harry's broken speech shows the difficulty he is having in comprehending the entire scope of his reversal concept. What he does accomplish is demonstrating that the biases he denies having are actually there beneath the surface.” (Ford 6)

Jackson is a representation of Selvon’s attempt to re-introduce his national identity. Jackson challenges the notion of knowledge and racism and mimics the Westerners’ portrayal of their empire’s ideology. Ironically, the play ends with Jackson’s success to rescue Harry and helps him forgive his wife of accidentally killing their son. In addition, Jackson also encourages his master who lacks artistic quality to create his own art. Therefore, “Harry projects upon Crusoe the stereotypical view of the colonizer; despite the natural beauty surrounding him he only pines for his homeland. Jackson gives to Friday feelings of social revolution and aspiration. Walcott expertly allows the audience to understand his characters' positions by watching the way that they act the roles.” (Ford 5)

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Finally, Foe is “a mode if fiction that explores the ideological basis of canonization, that draws attention to the existing canon, that thematizes the role of race, class, and gender in the process of cultural acceptance and exclusion” (Attridge 217) The main attack of the book to the “centre” would be the deconstruction of the Western narrative. In the story, Susan is a female protagonist who is the parody of Defoe’s Crusoe. Dissimilar to Crusoe, she has made the attempts to free Friday and bring “voice” to Friday. She may be regarded as an opposite character to Foe, the writer of her story who “wants to control the story of Susan and Friday; he is more interested in what will sell than the truth of the story. He finds the story lacking in exotic circumstances.” (Kehinde 51) Susan refuses to have her story made up which reflects “the values of the colonizer and those of the colonized…who try to free themselves from it.” (Kehinde 48)

Nonetheless, the core of the novel lies in Foe’s muteness. Apart from his appearance which Coetzee transforms him from a light-skinned Carib to a wooly-haired dark African in order to strengthen the issue of racism, Coetzee’s Friday’s tongue was cut out. He is “the child of his silence, a child unborn, a child waiting to be born and that cannot be born.” (Coetzee) His inability to speak is underlined by Spivak’s essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” She writes: “No place is created for the subaltern (raced) to speak, as colonialism’s narrativization of African culture effaces all traces of black’s voice. She believes that postcolonial critics should concentrate on articulating the margins and gaining control of the way in which the marginalized are represented; the postcolonial intellectual should also break with the paradigms of representation that promote antagonism between the First and Third Worlds. (Spivak 68) Friday’s silence “can be read as a symbol of the inexpressible psychic damage absorbed blacks under racist conditions.” (Penner 124) Friday expresses himself through music and dance that Susan is unable to interpret. Susan later tries to teach him to speak and write English and, in the middle of the lesson with Foe and her, Friday draws the pictures of walking-eyes on the slate but erases it as Susan is going to show Foe. Susan is eager to know the history that there is only Friday who knows and it will never be revealed until she can make Friday “speak.” However, the voice of Friday can never be spoken through Susan. Conceivably, “This is to suggest that the world’s harmony and true ‘progress’ will improve if there is mutual respect and cross-fertilization of ideas.” (Kehinde 51) Coetzee has created an African literature that brings up the matter of marginality. The novel is considered to be “Coetzee’s articulation of a strong desire for reciprocal speech from the victims of colonization, a cross-cultural dialogue… in the post colonial era, it is the task of African literature to reclaim that which has been misappropriated and to reconstruct that which was been damaged, even destroyed,” (Kehinde 52)

In conclusion, one of the most widely-read Western Robinson Crusoe possesses a great deal of English ideology and colonial concepts that “destroy the indigenous

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cultures and values (religion, language, dressing codes, etc) and supplant then with distorted and totally ambivalent versions.” (Kehinde 36) The novel denounces the colonized nations with its biased distorted idea that greatly devalue their nation identities. Not only “Writing back” this canonical work is a way to bring back their national pride and undo their worldly image, it is also a means to attack the empire’s mythical ideology and criticize the unjust colonialism.

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Walcott, Derek. “Pantomime.” Crosswinds: Anthology of Black Dramatists in the Diaspora. London: John Wiley & Sons, 1993. 130-161. Print.

Williams, Raymond. Towards 2000 . Virginia: the University of Virginia, 2008. eBook.

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