TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND TEXTUAL THEORY

Session Six

Søren Hattesen BalleEnglish

Department of Culture and Identity

Agenda

Introduction: the summary assignment for today and next time

Introduction: today’s session Presentation:

cultural studies, postcolonial studies, postcolonialism

magic realism

Class room discussion: Salman Rushdie, ”The Prophet’s Hair” (1981) the thematic functions of postcolonial and magic

realist elements in Rushdie’s story

Narrative: literary studies vs. cultural studies

the literary text vs. the cultural text high literature vs. products of popular

culture, mass culture, media culture, consumer culture, minority culture

autonomous aesthtic whole vs. ’signifying practices’ (of modern culture): meaning, identity, representation, and agency

complexity, beauty, insight, universality, value vs. the functioning of cultural productions/the construction of cultural identities

Narrative: literary into cultural studies

the literary text studied as a cultural ’signifying practice’ (just like any other cultural object)

the literary text expresses or represents culture vs. the literary text creates or constructs culture

culture is the source or cause of literary representations (foreground < background) vs. culture is the effect of literary representations (foreground > background)

the literary text has an ideological or politcal funtion the literary text as oppressive or subversive (of

oppressive cultural forms)? the relevance for postcolonial literatures: English

language and literature as expressions of colonialism

Narrative: the postcolonial situation

Former colonies are independent and free of colonial rule (postcolonial)

However, former colonies remain dependent politically, economically, socially, ideologically, linguistically, aesthetically, etc. (neo-colonial)

Thus, former colonies are hybrids, mongrels, and in-betweens (post-colonial)

Narrative: coping with the postcolonial situation Ngugi vs John Agard and Rushdie

Ngugi Return to ’harmony’ by transcending

colonial alienation and embracing your original culture and language (Gikuyu)

”Language carries culture …(2538)

Narrative: coping with the postcolonial situation Ngugi vs

John Agard and Rushdie John Agard: embracing the languages of

the colonised (West Indian Creole, British Guiana) and the coloniser (the Queen’s English). Writing broken English is an attempt at breaking English linguistically, aesthetically, politically, etc…)

Narrative: coping with the postcolonial situation Ngugi vs John Agard and Rushdie

John Agard, ”Listen Mr Oxford don” (1985)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywy-Tthdg7w

Narrative: Coping with the postcolonial situation Ngugi vs

John Agard and Rushdie

Rushdie: Embracing English as a global language (”The English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago”(2541)), but chutnifying it, spicing it up according to how it is used.

Narrative: Salman Rushdie and ideas of multiplicity, pluralism, and hybridity

 ‘My’ India has always been based on ideas of multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity: ideas to which the ideologies of the communalists are diametrically opposed. To my mind the defining image of India is the crowd, and a crowd is by its very nature superabundant, heterogeneous, many things at once. (2852)

Narrative: Ethnic,cultural, ideological, political linguistic, aesthetic variety, diversity, and

difference

Multiplicity vs. uniformity Pluralism vs. essentialism, nationalism Hybridity vs. purity Heterogeneity vs. homogeneity

Jean Rhys, ”The Day They Burned the Books”

Creole identity A story about colonialism Images of colonialism

Narrative: magic realism

”These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as materials derived from myth and fairy tales” (Abrams)

Salman Rushdie, ”The Prophet’s Hair” (1981)

Is "The Prophet's Hair" a work of magic realism or postcolonialism or both?

Elements of realism, of magic? Why and how are they used?

Elements of postcolonialism: multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity. Why and how are they used?