Colonialism

Dear Readers,

Right now I’m taking a class called Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures, and we use this literary theory book called Colonialism/Postcolonialism by Ania Loomba. I wasn’t too sure what "colonialism" and "postcolonialism" were before I took the class, but now I sort of know what they mean.

Colonialism means moving to a different place and viciously exploiting the resources, human and non-human, you find in your new home. Christopher Columbus, Hernando Cortez, pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving, and others are all considered colonizers. Pretty much anybody from the British Empire who went to other parts of the world (Latin America, India, Australia, wherever) and displaced the indigenous people are considered colonizers.

Postcolonialism, from what I understand, is a fancy-schmancy term that means colonialism is dumb.

One of the assigned books for the class was A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. It’s about Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean Sea that was under British rule for a really long time. Now Antigua is a huge tourist attraction. Here are some excerpts from the book:

“You came. You took things that were not yours, and you did not even, for appearances sake, ask first…. You murdered people. You imprisoned people. You robbed people. You opened your own banks and put our money in them…. There must have been good people among you, but they stayed home. And that is the point. That is why they are good. They stayed home.” (page 35)

It’s clear from this quote that Kincaid wishes that Columbus and the other explorers had never come across the ocean to the Americas at all. She thinks that they all should have stayed in the Old World, in Europe, and minded their own business at home. Kincaid expresses her rage at colonists:

“Nothing can erase my rage- not an apology, not a large sum of money, not the death of the criminal-for this wrong can never be made right, and only the impossible can make me still: can a way be found to make what happened not have happened?” (page 32)

But Kincaid doesn’t just point the finger at all the old-time colonizers from the British Empire- she hates modern colonizers too. And she says that modern colonizers take on the guise of tourists. She says that the only reason tourists come to Antigua is to get sick pleasure out of comparing themselves to all the poor black servants who run the hotels, run the resorts, and sell souvenirs. Kincaid writes, “…when tourists turned up they could buy all those awful things that tourists always buy, all those awful things they then take home, put in their attics, and their children have to throw out when the tourists, finally, die.” (p. 48)

Now you know the gist of the book.

Why does that book bother me so much? Why am I writing about it? (Because right now I’m upset.)

In a way I feel guilty for the sins of my ancestors. I’m experiencing white guilt. Even if it wasn’t my literal blood-related ancestors who killed Native Americans and had slaves, it was still my metaphorical ancestors who committed those crimes against humanity- it was the people of my particular race, culture and geographic origin.

The ideology driving the class, the textbook we use, and probably the whole field of postcolonial studies rails against the idea that one culture can be better than another culture. And by better I mean… hmmm… I guess I mean having more happiness and material prosperity and being closer to the Truth with a capital T.

Postcolonial studies tends to rail against the triple C's (Christianity, Capitalism, and Caucasians). My class is about how Europeans have asserted their own culture over other cultures through violence, religion, literature, and political actions. And in some ways, I’m getting the message that I, Telemoonfa, am a colonizer. I am colonizer because I am a beneficiary of colonialism, because I live on land that used to belong to the Native Americans, because I own property and plan on continuing to participate in capitalism, and because I tend to vote for politicians who wear cowboy hats.

I’m also a colonizer because I believe that my culture, especially my Mormon culture, is really really really good. I root for the home team. I have national pride. I love the pledge of allegiance and the Constitution and Mitt Romney. Does that make me a colonizer? Maybe.

Maybe I shouldn’t take these things I’m learning so personally. I’m just tired of being accused of doing something wrong, that I’m hurting people.

One of the things that bugs me is that in one way, a lot of my classes reject the idea of absolute morality. You know, they say other cultural practices are just as good as mine, and they say that I have no right to judge other cultures and feel morally superior to them. On the other hand, in a way my professors have a definite position on what’s right and wrong. My classes make it clear that the subjugation of women and other minorities is wrong. But wait- isn’t the subjugation of women a cultural practice? I thought all cultural practices were equally OK?

I’ve never been educated or enlightened enough to understand where morals come from, if not from God.

I cannot understand the idea of an innate biological human “goodness,” without first understanding that we are all children of our Heavenly Father, and that we lived as spirits before we were born, and that, in the words of Yoda, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

OK, back to the thing that I originally wanted to write about in the first place. In my textbook, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, the author, Ania Loomba, says a lot of things that I don’t care for about Muslims and America and other things. On page 213, Loomba writes,

“Since the events of 11 September 2001, the so-called global war on terror, and the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, it is harder than ever to see our world as simply ‘postcolonial’.”

I’d like to discuss the rhetoric that Loomba is using here. Notice that she writes, “The events of 11 September 2001,” instead of, say, “the terrorist attacks of 9/11,” or even “the Muslim extremist attack on America spearheaded by Osama Bin Laden which killed thousands on September 11th 2001.”

Next, notice that she writes, “the so-called global war on terror.” Why did she have to throw that “so-called” in there? What does the term “so-called” do to the noun phrase that follows it? If I say, “I’m a so-called student,” that would lead others to think, “Hmmm… there’s something not completely studious about Telemoonfa. Maybe he’s not serious about his studies. Maybe he’s freeloading off rich parents who pay for his education.” I remember there was a TV show titled “My so-called Life” and it was about a teenager who was not satisfied with her “life”. You get my point. By throwing “so-called” in there, Loomba was mocking the war on terror, suggesting that it wasn’t serious, that it wasn’t legitimate.

Finally notice that Loomba writes, “The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq,” instead of the more neutral term “the Iraq War” or the more patriotic term, “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

The bias (maybe I should call it a liberal bias) of our class’s book doesn’t stop there. Loomba continues,

“As the New American Empire develops, openly and shrilly advocated by policy-makers, politicians, and academics within the US and elsewhere, it is more urgent than ever to think about the questions of domination and resistance that have been raised by anti-colonial movements and postcolonial studies worldwide.”

Wait a minute. Did you hear that? The New American Empire? What is that? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that term before I took this class I’m taking now, but there it is, the New American Empire. It’s like my professor, Ania Loomba, and a lot of other people view America as an imperialist country, bent on global domination.

Loomba also writes in a pretty biased way about Islam. She says that “… Islam is commonly understood as more prone to fundamentalist appropriation (and to misogyny) than any other religion. However, other religious groupings (such as the Hindu right in India or the Christian right in the United States) are equally culpable on both counts.” Wait a minute. Islam and the Christian right in the US are equally culpable of misogyny? I doubt that. I think women suffer much more under fundamentalist Islam than they do under fundamentalist Christianity.

Sigh… there are other parts of the book that upset my Christian American conservative attitudes, but you get the point.

But hey I got my revenge though. Ha ha ha. On a whole bunch of the pages of Colonialism/Postcolonialism, I wrote, right at the top of the page, “this whole book sucks” and “Loomba likes to fart.” That way when I sell the book back to the college bookstore at the end of the semester, the next person who gets it next will see exactly what I thought of the book. Ha ha ha!

Alright, that’s enough.

Sorry if this blog post came off as angry. I really do like people, generally. People I know in real life usually think I’m a nice guy. Why just today I had a very nice chat with my neighbor.

I like to tell myself that my anger is holy wrath or righteous indignation, but my anger is probably more like an immature hissy-fit over things that don’t really matter too much in the long run. I think I have some good points though. And after all that postcolonial stuff I get in college, I have to let off a little steam. See you later.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa