Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts

Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts
Cross/Cultures
Readings in Post/Colonial
Literatures and Cultures in English
Edited by
Bénédicte Ledent
Delphine Munos
Co-founding editors
†Hena Maes-Jelinek
Gordon Collier
†Geoffrey Davis
volume 213
asnel/GAPS Papers
asnel Papers appear under the auspices of the
Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien (gaps)
Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies
Cecile Sandten GAPS President

Chemnitz University of Technology
volume 23
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/asne

Ideology in Postcolonial
Texts and Contexts
Edited by
Katja Sarkowsky and Mark U. Stein
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: ©Felipe Espinoza Garrido and Caroline Koegler.
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Names: Sarkowsky, Katja, editor. | Stein, Mark, 1966- editor.

Title: Ideology in postcolonial texts and contexts / edited by Katja Sarkowsky
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Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts—an Introduction 1

part 1
Postcolonialism and Ideology
1 Ideologiekritik—a Critique 15
Michael Freeden
2 “A Crude, Empty, Fragile Shell?”—Postcolonial Consciousness in an Era

of Global Capitalism 30
Laura Chrisman
3 The Market as a Dimension of Practice—Commodification, Ideology,

and Postcolonial Studies 43
Caroline Koegler
part 2
Ideology in Postcolonial Contexts
4 Haggling and Postcolonial Phonological Constructs in Nigeria 59

Taiwo Soneye
5 Standard Language Ideology Revisited—the Case of Newscasters in

St. Vincent and the Grenadines 86
Eva Canan Hänsel
6 Imagining Pasts, Writing Lives—Familial Narratives, Memory, and the

‘Ideological I’ in Imbi Paju’s Memories Denied 106
Andreas Athanasiades
vi Contents
7 Promoting the Exotic?—the Ideological Mechanisms of Literary

Prizes 127
Simon Rosenberg
part 3
Continuities, Complications, Critique
8 Reflections of Lusáni Cissé—Imperial Images and Sentient

Critique 147
Lars Eckstein
9 The Ambivalence of the Veil in Contemporary British Culture 162

Ana Sobral
10 Crime and the Censor—the Production and Reception of Crime Fiction

in Apartheid and Post-apartheid South Africa 182
Elizabeth le Roux
11 National Allegories in the Age of Globalization—Prologue to an

Analysis of Contemporary Canadian Young Adult Fiction 204
Mavis Reimer
12 Bone to Bone, Spirit to Spirit—Sovereign Matriarchy, Asian/Indigenous

Relations, and the Work of Directed Re-membering 223
Larissa Lai
Index 259
Figures
4.1 “Now” in the phonology of haggling in Nigeria 66

4.2 Nigerians’ intonation of now as a plea or an appeal (fall-rise-↖↗) 66
4.3 British intonation of now (Falling tune╲) 66
4.4 Better in Nigerian Pidgin Accent (Not necessarily comparative) “You
no be better man” means you are not a good man 69
4.5 Is this blue or black? (Text 11) 71
4.6 You are putting it on scale? (Text 2) 71
5.1 Rates of realizations of prototypical American variants 93
5.2 Rates of monophthong realizations of the vowel in words of the goat
and face sets as well as rates of word-initial voiced TH stopping 96
5.3 Rates of back and rounded realizations of the vowel in words of the
strut and nurse sets as well as rates of the realization of word-final
(-ing) as [ɪn] 96
7.1 Standard procedure of the Booker Prize 134
8.1 Lusáni Cissé, 1916, digital archive of the Frobenius Institute 150
8.2 and 8.3 Lusáni Cissé, 1916, analogue print, in exhibition catalogue Gefangene
Bilder 152
8.4 and 8.5 Lusáni Cissé, 1918, in Josef Weninger, Morphologisch-anthropologische
Studie, Tafel xxxviii 154
8.6 Detail of fig. 8.2, reflection in the iris of Lusáni Cissé, 1916 158
Tables
5.1 Background information on the newscasters 90

5.2 Overview of the variables analyzed and their American and Caribbean variants
as well as alternative variants 91
5.3 Mean percentages of realization of American variants 93
5.4 Mean percentages of realization of Caribbean variants 95
7.1 Properties of the three most popular British book prizes 131
Notes on Contributors
is Adjunct Lecturer in English at the University of Cyprus. He has published
book chapters with various colleagues as well as articles in the Journal of Post-
colonial Studies, Auto/Fiction, the Journal of Mediterranean Studies and Indi@
Logs among others, on a range of topics such as desire, sexuality, memory and
postmemory, life writing and trauma, Islamic fundamentalism, and postcolo-
nial identity in Hanif Kureishi’s work. He is currently working as a contributor
in Brian Bergen-Aurand and Andrew Grossman’s upcoming Encyclopaedia of
Queer Cinema.
Laura Chrisman
is Nancy K. Ketcham Endowed Chair of English at the University of Washing-
ton, where she teaches African, black diaspora, and postcolonial studies, as
well as modern literatures in English. Her publications include Postcolonial
Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism
(Manchester UP, 2003) and Rereading the Imperial Romance: British Imperi-
alism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner and Plaatje (Oxford
UP, 2000). Edited and co-edited publications include “The Rendez-Vous of Con-
quest”: Rethinking Race and Nation (Lawrence and Wishart, 2001); Postcolonial
Theory and Criticism. Essays and Studies, volume 52, 2000; (with Benita Parry);
Transcending Traditions: Afro-American, African Diaspora and African Studies
(Special issue of The Black Scholar, 2000, with Farah Griffin and Tukufu Zu-
beri); Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (Harvester, 1993,
with Patrick Williams). She is currently preparing a book on transnational rela-
tions between black South Africa and black America in the late 19th- and early
20th- centuries.
Lars Eckstein
is Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Pots-
dam. He is the author of The Making of Tupaia’s Map, with Anja Schwarz (jph,
2019), Postcolonial Literatures in English, with Anke Bartels, Dirk Wiemann and
Nicole Waller (Metzler, 2019), Reading Song Lyrics (Brill, 2010), and Re-Member-
ing the Black Atlantic (Brill, 2006). Among his edited works are Remembering
German-Australian Colonial Entanglements, with Andrew Hurley (Routledge,
2020), Postcolonial Justice, with Anke Bartels, Dirk Wiemann and Nicole Waller
(Brill, 2017), and Postcolonial Piracy, with Anja Schwarz (Bloomsbury, 2014). He
is co-spokesperson of the rtg minor cosmopolitanisms.
x Notes on Contributors
Michael Freeden
is Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Oxford. His books include The
New Liberalism (1978), Ideologies and Political Theory (1996), The Political The-
ory of Political Thinking (2013) (all Oxford University Press), Conceptual His-
tory in the European Space (co-edited with W. Steinmetz and J. Fernández-Se-
bastián, Berghahn, 2017), and In Search of European Liberalisms (co-edited with
J. Fernández-Sebastián and J. Leonhard, Berghahn, 2019). He is the founder-ed-
itor of the Journal of Political Ideologies. He has been awarded the Sir Isaiah
Berlin Prize for Lifetime Contribution to Political Studies by the UK Political
Studies Association, and the Medal for Science, Institute of Advanced Studies,
Bologna University.
Eva Canan Hänsel
is a research assistant at the chair of variation linguistics in the English Depart-
ment at wwu Muenster, where she earned a B.A. and an M.Ed. in English and
Spanish. Currently, she is working on a PhD thesis on English in secondary and
tertiary educational institutions in Grenada. Her research interests include va-
rieties of English with a focus on Caribbean Englishes, English in education
and news media, as well as language attitudes.
Caroline Koegler
is Assistant Professor of British Literary and Cultural Studies at wwu Muen-
ster. She is author of Critical Branding. Postcolonial Studies and the Market
(Routledge 2018) and, with Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Deborah Nyangulu and
Mark Stein, co-editor of Locating African European Studies: Interventions-Inter-
sections-Conversations (Routledge 2020). Other current publications include
“Queer Home-Making and Black Britain. Claiming, Ageing, Living” (Interven-
tions, 2020), “Follow the Hatred: The Production of Negative Feeling in Emily
Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847)” (NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, forthcoming),
the special issue “Writing Brexit: Colonial Remains” (Journal of Postcolonial
Writing; with Marlena Tronicke, Pavan Malreddy, forthcoming), and Law, Lit-
erature and Citizenship (DeGruyter; co-edited with Jesper Reddig, Klaus Stier-
storfer, forthcoming).
Larissa Lai
is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at the
University of Calgary, having been Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature at
ubc (2007–2014). She is author of novels When Fox Is A Thousand (Press Gang,
1995; Arsenal Pulp, 2004), Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen, 2002) and The Tiger Flu
(Arsenal Pulp, 2019); poetry books Sybil Unrest (with Rita Wong; LINEbooks,
Notes on Contributors xi
2008; New Star, 2013), Automaton Biographies (Arsenal Pulp, 2009), and Iron
Goddess of Mercy (forthcoming Arsenal Pulp, 2021); and a monograph, Slant-
ing I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s
(wlup, 2014).
Elizabeth le Roux
is Associate Professor in Publishing Studies at the University of Pretoria. She
is co-editor of the journal Book History, and author of A Social History of the
University Presses in Apartheid South Africa (Brill, 2016) and A Survey of South
African Crime Fiction, with Sam Naidu (ukzn Press, 2017). Her history of the
anti-apartheid publisher Ravan Press will shortly be published by Cambridge
University Press.
Mavis Reimer
is Professor of English and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Win-
nipeg. She was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Young People’s Texts and
Cultures from 2005 to 2015 and serves as a director of the Centre for Research
in Young People’s Texts and Cultures. She has published widely in the field of
texts for young readers, including the co-edited volumes Girls, Texts, Cultures
(with Clare Bradford; Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015) and Seriality and Texts for Young
Peoples: The Compulsion to Repeat (with Nyala Ali, Deanna England, and Mela-
nie Dennis Unrau; Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Simon Rosenberg
worked as teaching and research assistant at the Institut für Buchwissenschaft
& Textforschung. From 2016 to 2020 he was Akademischer Oberrat at the Eng-
lish Department of wwu Muenster, taking on teaching and administrative
duties of the vacant chair of book studies. He has published articles on the
Women’s Prize for Fiction (2018), the authority of typography (2012, 2016) and
has co-edited the liber amicorum Material Moments in Book Cultures (2014)
with Sandra Simon. He is the author of the monograph Book Value Categories
and the Acceptance of Technological Changes in English Book Production (2020).
Ana Sobral
is Assistant Professor of Global Literatures in English at the University of Zu-
rich. Her publications include articles and book chapters on rap and poetry
in the Global South, Islamic feminism, the performative aspects of the Arab
Spring, and the links between popular music, migration and cosmopolitanism,
as well as the monograph Opting Out: Deviance and Generational Identities in
American Post-War Cult Fiction (Brill, 2012).
xii Notes on Contributors
Katja Sarkowsky
is Chair of American Studies at Augsburg University. Her research focuses on
literary citizenship studies, life writing, and Indigenous literatures in Canada
and the United States. Her publications include the monographs AlterNative
Spaces: Constructions of Space in Native American and First Nations Litera-
tures (Winter, 2007) and Narrating Citizenship and Belonging in Anglophone
Canadian Literature (Palgrave, 2018) as well as the edited volumes “Cranes on
the Rise”: Metaphors in Life Writing (De Gruyter, 2018) and Nachexil/Post-Exile
(with Bettina Bannasch, forthcoming).
Taiwo Soneye
is a Professor of English Language at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria.
She teaches phonology, phonetics and applied linguistics and researches iden-
tity, voice and ideology in the pronunciations of English, Pidgin and Nigerian
Indigenous languages. She has authored and co-authored several works includ-
ing, ‘We just don’t even know’: The Usage of the Pragmatic Focus Particles Even
and Still in Nigerian English, English World Wide (2013) and “A Review of David
Jowitt’s Nigerian English.” Folia Linguistica. 53(2), (2019). She is the founder of
the Association of Phoneticians and Phonologists in Nigeria (appn).
Mark U. Stein
is Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies at wwu Muenster (ptts.
wwu.de) where he runs the National and Transnational Studies programme.
His research interests include diaspora, transnational, and postcolonial studies
with a focus on phenomena such as porosity and translocation in Anglophone
cultural production. Publications include the monograph Black British Liter-
ature: Novels of Transformation (2004, Ohio State UP), and, ed. with Susheila
Nasta, The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing (cup 2020), ed.
with Tobias Döring, Edward Said’s Translocations (Routledge, 2012), ed. with
Lyn Innes, African Europeans (Wasafiri, 2008), and, ed. with Susanne Reichl,
Laughter and the Postcolonial (Rodopi, 2005).
Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts—an
Introduction
Since its earliest usage, ‘ideology’ has been a heavily contested term. Initially
emerging in the context of the French Revolution, referring to Destutt de Tra-
cy’s “science of ideas” (1796), the meaning of ‘ideology’ shifted when Napoleon
Bonaparte used it in a political context to disparage his opponents as ‘the ide-
ologues’ (cf. Porter; Freeden Ideologies and Political Theory). While its meaning
fluctuated throughout the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels (1840s) like-
wise employed a critical notion of ideology—as ‘false consciousness’—which
would later prove influential for the Frankfurt School. But among Marxist in-
tellectuals, the meaning of the term has not always been entirely negative: An-
tonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and his critique of economism are a
crucial contribution to a Marxist theory of ideology (see Mouffe 1979). For
Louis Althusser (1970), it is ideology that “interpellates” individuals as subjects.
For both Gramsci and Althusser, ‘ideology’ is clearly bound to the preservation
of oppressive class structures but both also allow for its integrative function
(Freeden Ideologies and Political Theory 19). Despite such differentiation, the
term has retained its negative connotation of ‘close-mindedness’ in everyday
parlance; calling a political opponent ‘ideological’ continues to be a wide-
spread attempt at discrediting political enemies. More recently, the concept of
ideology has itself come under scrutiny from a range of disciplinary locations.
This not only entails the proposition of the “end of ideology” (see Bell) and, in-
deed, the notion of a post-ideological age (e.g. Fukuyama). Slavoj Žižek point-
edly rejects post-ideology as a “cynical, ‘sober’ attitude that advocates liberal
‘openness’ in the matter of ‘opinions’ ” (Žižek 15) and suggests that post-ideo-
logical claims finally underscore the heightened efficacy of ideology (17).
While such meta-critiques of ideology as a concept have thus gained cur-
rency, the criticism of specific ideologies remains a powerful analytical ap-
proach; however, both approaches tend to reproduce notions of ‘ideology’ as
a distorting conception of social realities. Terry Eagleton distinguishes rough-
ly between two lineages of ideology, one “preoccupied with ideas of true and
false cognition,” the other “concerned more with the function of ideas with-
in social life than with their reality or unreality”; both, he argues, have found
resonance in Marxist conceptions (3), and, it might be added, postcolonial
studies. With a slightly different emphasis, Robert Porter notes that analyses
2 Sarkowsky and Stein
of ideology (both of the concept ‘as such’ and of specific manifestations) tend
to fall in either of two categories: those that allow for a pre-ideological stand-
point from which to criticize ideological structures and those that hold that all
standpoints are necessarily ideological (12). The first variant—exemplified for
Porter not only by an orthodox Marxist understanding of ‘false consciousness’
but also by Habermas, Žižek, and Deleuze—conceptualizes ideology as con-
traposed to a notion of the un- or pre-ideological real; in the second—Porter
uses Ricœur and Freeden as examples—ideologies are inevitable frameworks
that, as Freeden has it, “map the political and social worlds for us. We sim-
ply cannot do without them because we cannot act without making sense of
the worlds we inhabit” (Freeden Ideology 2). From this perspective, while not
every framework is ideological by default, ideology as a framework provides
an important matrix to understand the world and “enable collective action
in furthering or impeding the goals of a society” (Freeden “Ideology” 14). It is
this enabling of collective action that distinguishes ideological from non-ide-
ological frameworks, an understanding that, in addition to a Marxist notion of
ideology, has also found its way into postcolonial and cultural studies, e.g. as
proposed by Lawrence Grossberg, who points to ideology “as broader systems
of beliefs, ideas and attitudes that have direct implications for political com-
mitments and actions” (177; see also Rosenberg in this volume).
Connected to this juxtaposition of the ‘ideological’ and the ‘real’ is another
distinction crucial for postcolonial debates: the distinction between those con-
ceptions that see ideology as necessarily repressive and as an instrument of a
ruling class or group to uphold a status quo to its advantage (through econom-
ic relations, institutions, etc.) and those that regard ideology as a phenomenon
that exists in marginalized as well as hegemonic groups; in short, the specific
relation between ideology and power. In light of his own conceptualization of
ideologies as “ubiquitous forms of political thinking,” Freeden points out that
as such they “are inevitably associated with power, though not invariably with
the threatening or exploitative version of power” (Ideologies and Political The-
ory 22–23); more broadly, ideologies legitimize or delegitimize the distribution
of power within and between societies (Freeden in this volume, p. 22). In this
assessment of a generalized understanding of the relation between ideology
and power across the different notions of ideology, there is a rare overlap be-
tween Freeden’s position and Terry Eagleton’s. “The force of the term ideolo-
gy,” argues Eagleton, “lies in its capacity to discriminate between those power
struggles which are somehow central to a whole form of social life, and those
which are not” (8). If this capacity distinguishes ‘ideology’ potentially from the
concept of ‘discourse,’ it nevertheless does not resolve the issue of the means
by which such distinctions become or fail to become effective.
It can be stated fairly safely that in postcolonial studies there is a strong ten-
dency to regard ideology as a form of manipulative distortion that serves to up-
hold and perpetuate oppressive power structures between and within societies
and cultures. Criticisms of both colonial and post-independence ideological
formations have played a central role and linked the field to similar theoretical
developments in, for example, cultural studies, feminist studies, and Marxist
criticism as well as more recently in the critique of settler ideology in Indig-
enous studies. However, the deconstruction of colonial ideologies and their
political and cultural manifestations have also met with criticism from with-
in and outside the discipline, as the ideological foundations of the field itself
have come under scrutiny. As Robert Young asked in his editorial to the launch
issue of Interventions over twenty years ago: “Is postcolonialism a critique or is
it itself an ideology, and if the latter, what are the ideologies of post-colonial
writing, whether literary, cultural, or critical/theoretical?” (5) This key question
is far from settled and touches upon one of the central aspects of an otherwise
highly multifarious debate about ideology: the critique of specific ideologies
(understood mostly as hegemonic) and the analytical scrutiny of ideology/ide-
ologies (understood as manifestations of a ubiquitous political form). Much of
postcolonial studies’ engagement with ideology/ideologies has been a critique
of specific ideologies (imperial, colonial, settler, etc.) in a long-standing tra-
dition of identifying, unmasking, and criticizing power structures—forms of
Ideologiekritik, as Michael Freeden critically discusses this type of approach in
the opening chapter of this volume. Linking Ideologiekritik to critical discourse
analysis (and hence to colonial discourse analysis), Freeden argues that they
both aim at “uncover[ing] and identify[ing] distortions and misrepresenta-
tions that undermine the autonomy, personhood, and social cohesiveness of
individuals in society” (p. 15 in this volume). While as a tool of ethical criti-
cism it clearly has had a “powerful and productive impact in sensitizing us to
the overt and hidden assumptions that percolate into the social and ideational
environments in which we are located,” the narrow understanding of ideolo-
gy as harmful distortion also in Freeden’s view fails to recognize ideologies as
indispensable to political thought and “contributes to distorted social analysis
and blocks out much of the complexity of the world and our thoughts about
it” (p. 16 in this volume).
Freeden’s criticism of Ideologiekritik raises important questions for post-
colonial studies that reflect on two crucial lines of conceptual disagreement
regarding ideology discussed above: ideology as a distortion of a generally
perceivable reality vs. ideology as an indispensable framework for interpret-
ing a reality that cannot be accessed from a ‘neutral’ position; and ideology
as a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful vs. ideology as a ubiquitous
form of political thinking also underlying resistant thought and action by

marginalized subjects and groups. ‘Settler ideology,’ ‘colonial ideology,’ or ‘ne-
oliberal ideology’ serve as widely used shorthand for oppressive structures in
postcolonial criticism; ‘postcolonial ideology,’ however, is used—if at all—by
those critical of postcolonial theory and practice. Freeden’s criticism is cer-
tainly warranted in the sense that postcolonial critics who at times rely too
strongly on such established shorthand thereby contribute to a perpetuation
of a seemingly easy understanding of ideology as ‘false consciousness’ and as
necessarily oppressive; the gesture of critique as a form of (or, put polemically,
a replacement for) political action—a charge Julie Peters has brought against
the law and literature movement and that applies to some manifestations of
postcolonial criticism as well—is certainly part of the field. But as Rahul Rao
shows in his contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (2013)
that is also cited by Freeden, the development of postcolonial theory can be
productively understood as a history of ideological struggles, prominently
between Marxist conceptions and post-structuralism. Referencing Anne Mc-
Clintock’s and Neil Lazarus’ fundamental critiques of postcolonialism as ex-
amples, Rao identifies a shift from postcolonialism’s ‘post’ as ‘past’ to ‘post’ as
‘anti’ and hence how “a periodizing or historical term has become an ideolog-
ical concept” (271). In this light, the broad definition of postcolonialism pro-
moted by Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin in their influential The Empire Writes
Back (1989) and the ensuing discussion are indications for what Rao calls a
“ ‘fight’ between postcolonialism and its ideological antagonists” (271). While
this does not identify postcolonialism as a rigid and closed ideology, it clearly
classifies postcolonialism as an ideological framework, however heterogene-
ous in its specific manifestations.
What do these debates mean for postcolonial analyses and critiques of pow-
er structures within and across societies? What do they imply for inquiries that
regard themselves as part of a struggle for global justice? How much hinges,
theoretically and politically, on a juxtaposition of the ideological and the
non-ideological and hence on the possibility of a ‘truer’ position from which
to criticize oppressive structures? As the contributions to this volume clearly
bear out, the current engagement with ideologies and ideology in postcolonial
studies is itself highly diversified and while it retains a strong focus in post-
colonial studies, this engagement is not exclusively focused on Ideologiekritik.
Analyses of ideological formations—even where they tend to understand ide-
ologies as oppressive and distorting—do take into account their complexities
and malleability; also, very much resonating with Young’s question cited above
and Rao’s take on the issue, postcolonialism has become an object of critique
as ideology.
In light of this diversification of the discussion, section one of this volume,

Postcolinialism and Ideadology, focuses on the complex relation between
postcolonialism, postcolonial theory, and conceptualizations of ideology. Mi-
chael Freeden’s contribution “Ideologiekritik: A Critique” already referred to
above, criticizes postcolonialism’s historically strong understanding of ‘ideol-
ogy’ in its focus on the exposure and deconstruction of oppressive structures
such as imperialism, colonialism, or racism in a larger context of Ideologiekritik
and critical discourse analysis. While such critique “has had a powerful and
productive impact in sensitizing us to the overt and hidden assumptions that
percolate into the social and ideational environments in which we are locat-
ed” and thus also “serves as an ethical tool to combat marginalization, aliena-
tion, exploitation, unjustifiable inequality, or cultural domination” (p. 16 in this
volume), the underlying assumption about ideologies as smoke screens that
can be dissolved to see the ‘true nature’ of human power relations on which
such critique rests severely limits the understanding of ideologies as compet-
ing manifestations of political thought. Discussing what he considers seven
central misconceptions about ideology, Freeden urges scholars and activists to
take ideologies seriously as “an integral feature of political thought and think-
ing, an ineluctable aspect of social life” (p. 28), a stance that he regards as ab-
solutely central if the pervasive power of such thought and thinking is to be
grasped in all its complexity, specificity, and consequences.
In “ ‘A Crude, Empty, Fragile Shell?’ Postcolonial Consciousness in an Era of
Global Capitalism,” Laura Chrisman revisits the publication of Colonial Dis-
course and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, the first collection of seminal texts
in postcolonial studies, which she co-edited with Patrick Williams in 1994.
Highlighting her agenda for this volume as a “critical intervention, one that
offered a materialist counterweight to the dominant post-structuralist strains
of postcolonial theory, crystallised in what was then widely termed the “Holy
Trinity” writings of Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak” (p. 30 in
this volume), Chrisman reflects on the ideological concerns of the volume to
retrace more strongly materialist (as well as nationalist) traditions in postco-
lonial thought. Asking “in what ways have postcolonial critical practices, texts
and ideological contexts changed since 1992 [the year of Aijaz Ahmad’s land-
mark materialist critique of postcolonialism, In Theory]? Have culturalist and
idealist models of post-structuralism receded, or transmogrified? Are material-
ist approaches still part of the ideological periphery?” (p. 32), Chrisman draws
on the field’s journals to trace developments in postcolonial theory and its
diversification, that is, the shifting prominence of poststructuralist approach-
es to postcolonialism and the increasing eclecticism of theoretical concerns,
before discussing the ongoing impact of Fanon’s thought on postcolonialism
and what Chrisman identifies “as a movement away from the rigid temporal di-
visions that have structured postcolonial studies” (p. 37), given the increasing
prominence of Black transnational studies to the field.
In the third and final contribution to this section, “The Market as a Dimen-
sion of Practice: Commodification, Ideology, and Postcolonial Studies,” Caro-
line Koegler discusses the relation of Postcolonial studies to the terms ‘capital-
ism’ and ‘commodification’. Postcolonial studies scholars, she argues, tend to
use both terms analogously to ‘ideology’ “in popular parlance, where calling
something ‘ideology’ instantly discredits an idea or practice without further
examination” (p. 47). Juxtaposing capitalism and commodification to notions
of incorruptness, naturalness, and authenticity, they implicate these terms in
a number of taken-for-granted binary oppositions which effectively consigns
the former to a position of ethical and epistemological inferiority vis-à-vis
postcolonialism. Such largely unexamined discursive manoeuvres, continues
Koegler, rest on an implicit and basically romantic understanding of the mar-
ket as opposed to individual autonomy and creativity—and since Romanti-
cism have implied the dilemma of reconciling commodification’s vilification
with postcolonial critics’ reliance on the market to disseminate their own
ideas. Against this background, Koegler suggests a modified understanding of
commodification and the market that applies postcolonial critics’ deconstruc-
tion of binaries and of naturalized power structures to its own conceptual us-
age of such terms by understanding them with regard to their valorisation and
branding functions as part of an academic debate.
While section one thus focuses on overarching theoretical questions re-
garding the link between postcolonialism and ideology, section two, Ideology
in Postcolonial Contexts, focuses on ideological formations that manifest them-
selves in very specific postcolonial contexts, highlighting the potential conti-
nuities between colonial and postcolonial ideologies. In her chapter “Haggling
and Postcolonial Phonological Constructs in Nigeria,” Taiwo Soneye analyses
‘haggling’ as a practice in a multilingual context in which language choice and
accent have significant ideological implications for identity formation. Asking
about the relation between British English and Nigerian indigenous languages,
the specific manifestations of accents and their functions, the expressed ideol-
ogies, and the function and deployment of multilingual resources in haggling
for the construction of postcolonial identities, Soneye looks at audio-recorded
negotiations between thirty-four buyers and sellers in south-western Nigeria.
“Nigerian Spoken English in haggling,” she concludes, “has very little connec-
tion with its roots, which is the bequeathed British English. Although English is
very much in the domain of haggling in Nigeria, it is the English that is garnished
with the rhythm of its indigenous languages and saturated with the beats of
home-grown pidgin as seen in the texts on haggling” (p. 74). While ‘sounding
English’ was once an advantage, this is no longer the case, she concludes.
Eva Canan Hänsel’s contribution “Standard Language Ideology Revisit-
ed: The Case of Newscasters in St. Vincent and the Grenadines” explores the
question of language standard in a specific postcolonial context in terms of
the very idea of a standard as an ideology, with “group-based ideologies in turn
shap[ing] individual speakers’ attitudes to different language varieties” (p. 86).
The discussion of whether in the anglophone Caribbean there is a tendency
towards national standards or rather towards a Caribbean Standard English
has also raised questions regarding the role of American and British English
respectively as norm-providing varieties in these developments. Hänsel inves-
tigates spoken Standard English in news casting in St. Vincent and the Gren-
adines (svg), asking whether “newscasters in svg use a fairly homogeneous
standard accent” and whether they “strive for a fairly homogeneous standard
accent” (p. 89). Based on telephone interviews with Vincentian newscasters,
Hänsel comes to the conclusion that there is both a high tolerance towards
different accents among the newscasters and, given tourism and television, a
surprisingly low influence of American English on Vincentian newscasters and
a comparatively low authority of both American and British English generally.
In the following chapter “Imagining Pasts, Writing Lives. Familial Narratives,
Memory, and the Ideological “I” in Imbi Paju’s Memories Denied,” Andreas Atha-
nasiades takes a different approach to the question of ideology. In the context
of a broader discussion about the applicability of postcolonial theories to the
study of literatures produced in the context of post-Soviet decolonization pro-
cesses, Athanasiades analyses the depiction of trauma and post-memory in
Imbi Paju’s Memories Denied (2009, orig. 2007), the account of her mother’s
experience under Estonia’s occupation first by Nazi and then by Soviet forces
and her deportation to a labour camp in Siberia. The text, he argues, provides
a complex example of individual, transgenerational, and collective identity
formation. Drawing on Sidonie Smith’s and Julia Watson’s concept of the ‘ideo-
logical I’ (2010) as a discursively available narrative position that complements
the historical, the narrating and the narrated I in autobiographical writing,
Athanasiades proposes “that not in spite of, but because of the unpredicta-
bility and unreliability of an “I” which is informed by past memories through
projective fantasy, one can open a space of possibilities, hitherto uncharted,
to understand the beginnings, real and fictional, of the text and the lives as-
sociated with them” (p. 106). These spaces, as he sets out to show, provide no
definitive autobiographical truths but highlight the fragmentary character of
both experience and memory. As such, these spaces are not merely individual
but potentially open to those of Paju’s generation.
If the previous chapters each focus on a specific national context (Nigeria,

svg, Estonia), the final contribution in this section considers the ideological
implications of international literature prizes. In “Promoting the Exotic? The
Ideological Mechanisms of Literary Prizes,” Simon Rosenberg analyses the
mechanisms governing the selection of literary prizes with a specific focus on
the Man Booker Prize which is not only the most prestigious UK literary award
but, significantly, is closely intertwined with Britain’s colonial past and postco-
lonial present. Building on David Grossberg’s broad definition of ideology as
an expansive system of beliefs and attitudes (not false consciousness), Rosen-
berg argues that “ideological frameworks of literary prizes can be, and usually
are, exploited in a way that may conflict with the perceived official goals of the
prize: promoting literature exclusively on aesthetic grounds” (p. 129). Taking a
view on literary prizes informed by Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field, he
highlights the de facto social, representative, and cultural and political func-
tions of literary prizes. Identifying a shift towards, in Graham Huggan’s terms,
the ‘postcolonial exotic’ in the Man Booker Prize, Rosenberg not only gauges
the symbolic capital for the prize-winners but also analyses marketing strate-
gies deployed not only in the wake of the prize’s long and short lists but also
in response to controversies surrounding the selection process. While literary
merit is clearly not irrelevant when it comes to the Man Booker, this contribu-
tion embeds selected examples from the prize’s more recent past in processes
of market consideration and their ideological implications.
While the chapters of the second section focus on manifestations of ideol-
ogy in specific regional and historically post-colonial contexts as well as their
impact on transnational circulation, section three, Continuities, Complications,
Critique, expands the nexus of postcolonial ideology and thereby further high-
lights the complexities of ideological formations in postcolonial constellations.
The explorations range from palimpsestic readings of colonial photography
to considering veiling as potentially both ideological practice and individual
resistance; from aesthetics as ideology to the popular as political; from genre
ideology to home as ideological construct; to, finally displacing colonial settler
ideology by grounded, matriarchal, creative and metaphorical engagement.
In the opening chapter, Lars Eckstein heads to Wünsdorf, outside Berlin,
in order to visit the site of Germany’s very first mosque, only to find that the
ongoing construction of a refugee reception camp has all but obliterated its
traces. During World War i, on the grounds of Half Moon Camp, the mosque
had been part of Germany’s strategy to placate its c. 4.000 predominantly Mus-
lim pows from French and British colonies in Africa and Asia, aiming to turn
colonial battalions against their respective colonizers, thereby to foment an-
ti-colonial rebellion against their rivals upon the prisoners’ release. Following
the “affective surge across colonial and historical differences” and an “enchant-
ed agency” of a colonial photograph, “Reflections of Lusáni Cissé—Imperial
Images and Sentient Critique” engages with the powerful and enduring reflec-
tions of the imprisoned Cissé in the archives of colonial photography and the
ideological work to which these images have been put. Proposing sentient cri-
tique as a way of accounting for the ongoing magic of the imperial image, this
chapter underscores the wide range of epistemic positions—and the possi-
bility of movement across them—as opposed to ideological closure: “Sentient
critique must acknowledge and appreciate a plurality of epistemic positions
across the colonial difference in the spirit of postcolonial justice, even while
promoting and sustaining a community across that difference, an open com-
munity that is inherently political, yet operates beyond the need for singular
ideological identification” (Eckstein, p. 159 in this volume).
The next chapter seeks to open up and pluralize the significations of the
cultural practice of veiling. In “The Ambivalence of the Veil in Contemporary
British Culture,” Ana Sobral carefully reads representations of veiled Muslim
women in contemporary UK literature and culture, heeding the contexts of
production, performance, and reception. Aided by Miriam Cooke’s neologism
Muslimwoman, a concept that draws attention to the erasure of complexity by
an identification co-created externally by non-Muslims as well as Muslim men
and that meshes gender and religion, Sobral points to the instrumentalization
of Muslim women for political and ideological purposes. Gauging the scope
for resistance in cultural production, she finds modes of emancipation offered
in and through the texts and performances she analyses—by Monica Ali, Leila
Aboulela, and the rap duo Poetic Pilgrimage. In distinct ways, celebrating hy-
bridity, subverting the cliché of the oppressed Muslim woman, claiming and
acclaiming the veil as a source of liberation, these texts defamiliarize the trope
of the Muslimwoman, constructing diverse ways of being a Muslim woman in
the West.
Given their potential for exploration and social critique, the following chap-
ter considers popular fiction generally and crime fiction specifically as sites of
ideological contestation. According to Gramsci, culture “is the sphere in which
ideologies are diffused and organized, in which hegemony is constructed and
can be broken and reconstructed” (Forgacs 216 qtd. in le Roux 182 in this vol-
ume). With a focus on South Africa and the function of censorship, a practice
that here dates back to the 1700s, Elizabeth le Roux analyses crime fiction pub-
lished both during and since apartheid, finding that titles critical of apartheid
were sometimes published if their ‘highbrow’ nature seemed to insulate them
from broad readership. She examines the regime’s ideological stance against
crime fiction and the continuities and discontinuities of this position, with a
focus on Wessel Ebersohn’s apartheid and post-apartheid work. Critical of the

conventional highbrow/lowbrow divide and of the politics vs. aesthetics bi-
nary, she suggests that it is the cultural embedding of crime in popular fiction
which makes the genre valuable; it tells the critic about the publishing industry
and the market, about readers and society at large. Though sales and popular
appeal are vital, le Roux warns that to disregard “political aspects of popular
fiction in favour of the aesthetic is in itself an ideological position” (p. 182 in
this vol.), arguing that a focus on the publishing and reception of crime fiction
can move us beyond the normative judgements of both the censors and the
literary critics.
The next chapter unravels the implications of the high number of homeless
children represented in Canadian Young Adult (ya) narratives published since
the 1990s. Mavis Reimer demonstrates how the genre constitutes a productive
site for engaging, challenging, and transforming metaphorical discourses of the
nation in the context of globalization’s condition for subjecthood. Her “Nation-
al Allegories in the Age of Globalization” draws on Fredric Jameson who noted
in The Political Unconscious that inasmuch as models of narrative genre allow
readers “to register a given text’s specific deviation from them,” genre-based
criticism can and must gauge “the more dialectical and historical issue of this
determinate formal difference” (Jameson 113 qtd. in Reimer in this vol. p. 205–
206). In ya fiction, home conventionally signifies at different levels, not just as
plot element and narrative trope but also home as nation. The “world of the
novel” is “in principle an analogue of the nation” (Culler 23 qtd. by Reimer p. 218
in this volume), inviting and potentially enabling readers to become insiders,
as Jonathan Culler suggests with reference to Anderson’s Imagined Community.
However, under globalization, “identity and belonging become detached from
the national home,” Reimer writes (p. 218 in this vol.). Home in crisis no longer
fulfils readers’ genre expectations and the potential for lateral identification of
the imagined community is disrupted, both of which have consequences for
the production and reproduction of the nation. The chapter concludes that this
corpus of texts not only points to current family dysfunction and failing social
safety nets but also renders visible a nation undergoing a profound challenge to
finding its “new being-in-the-world” in an age of globalization.
Larissa Lai’s chapter concludes section 3 and the entire volume, exploring
matriarchal principles in relations between Asian Canadian and indigenous
inhabitants of Turtle Island (North America, here Canada specifically); she ad-
vocates the reception of Asian/Indigenous cultural work in conversation, “in-
terrelated rather than comparative” (p. 224 in this vol.). Lai specifically engages
with Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua’s “argument that people of colour are
settlers and must be accountable for that subject position” (Lai p. 223 in this
vol.). In “Bone to Bone, Spirit to Spirit: Sovereign Matriarchy, Asian/Indige-

nous Relations, and the Work of Directed Re-membering,” Lai then performs
criticism as “Chinese Canadian literary/critical written storytelling” enacting
“a kind of literary nationalism, not in the sense of producing ‘the best of all
that has been thought and said’ in my culture or connecting my storytelling to
‘blood and soil.’ Rather, in recognizing the experiential, sedimented cultural
specificity of my being, I seek a kind of metaphoric antidote for the historically
and nationally specific cultural violence I have inherited. This is a creative act,
a critical act, and an act of directed memory” (Lai p. 256 in this vol.). This claim
for nationalism and for sovereignty re-valences both concepts poetically in the
process. Her response to Lee Maracle and sky Lee takes up cultural channels
among women instead of following the logic of state-to-state relationships. Fa-
vouring what she terms a “contingent nationalism,” Lai advocates—and prac-
tices—“literary, critical and creative thinking” (p. 256).
The contributors to this volume, addressing a range of different materials
from their various disciplinary locations, impressively demonstrate the pro-
ductive uses to which concepts of ideology are put in postcolonial texts and
contexts. While most of the contributions do engage in Ideologiekritik in some
form and highlight the normativising and often oppressive character of ide-
ological formations, they nevertheless also show the importance of a self-re-
flexive and self-critical assessment of approaching such formations. This not
only avoids conflating ‘ideology’ with ‘false consciousness’ but also seeks to do
justice to the complexity of ideologies as important manifestations of political
thought that need to be taken seriously if they are to be understood and, if nec-
essary, effectively countered. Acknowledging the specificity of positionality is
key in postcolonial theory; and it serves as a reminder that there is no ‘out-
side’ beyond epistemological frameworks. The critique of ideological mani
festations takes place within a complex constellation of competing notions
of how social, political, and cultural structures work, a constellation in which
each position is in itself potentially ‘ideological,’ but in which these notions
also compete in a highly asymmetrical field of power relations. Not only is the
study of ideology instructive for postcolonial studies; postcolonial studies, in
turn, also contribute important insights to the study of ideology.
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the contributors for their commitment to
the volume and their patience; much gratitude goes also to Ljubica Samard-
zic and Taimi Schalle for their diligent copy-editing, to both Sara Fedrich and
M. Faiq Lodhi for carefully checking quotations, and to M. Faiq Lodhi for pro-
viding the Index.
References
Bell, David. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 1950s. 2nd ed.
Harvard UP, 2000.
Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction. Verso, 1991.
Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Clarendon
P, 1996.
Freeden, Michael. Ideology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2003.
Freeden, Michael. “Ideology and Political Theory.” Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 11,
no. 1, 2006, pp. 3–22.
Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. 2nd ed. Free P, 2006.
Grossberg, Lawrence. “Ideology.” New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and
Society, edited by Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, Black-
well Publ., 2005, pp. 175–178.
Mouffe, Chantal. “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci.” Gramsci and Marxist Theory,
edited by Chantal Mouffe, Routledge, 1979, pp. 168–204.
Porter, Robert. Ideology: Contemporary Social, Political and Cultural Theory. U of Wales
P, 2006.
Rao, Rahul. “Postcolonialism.” The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by
Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears, Oxford UP, 2013, pp.
271–289.
Young, Robert. “Ideologies of the Postcolonial.” Interventions, vol. 1, no. 1, 1998, pp. 4–8.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Introduction: The Spectre of Ideology.” Mapping Ideology, edited by
Slavoj Žižek, Verson, 1994, pp. 1–33.
pa rt 1
Postcolonialism and Ideology
∵
c hapter 1
Ideologiekritik—a Critique
Michael Freeden
The study of ideology still remains a controversial and unsettling area of de-
bate and scholarship. Above all, persistent antagonism to the phenomena it
is thought to embrace has all too frequently exiled it to the periphery of rep-
utable research or positioned its detractors as unremitting disparagers of the
social and cultural damage inflicted by certain ideas. Its most salient expres-
sion, particularly on the European mainland, has been through the coining of
a phrase—Ideologiekritik—to denote a sphere of mainly hostile intellectual
and scholarly activity. The grammatical structure of the German language
combines two separate concepts into a word that resists separation into its
distinct components, with the consequent loss of finesse and discernment,
as well as the building up of prejudgement. Indeed, combining the two con-
cepts in such a manner should itself be interpreted as an ideological prac-
tice, creating an a priori bias against other conceptualizations of ideology,
or other forms of investigating it. Specifically, Ideologiekritik typically iden-
tifies a mismatch between modes of thinking and the real world, caused by
socio-economic relations generated preponderantly by capitalist modes of
production.1 Unfair, oppressive and hence ethically unsustainable manifesta-
tions of power both inside a society and by means of colonial enterprises are
singled out in an endeavour to expose and then eliminate them. Indeed, as
Rahul Rao has noted, “there is some irony here in that while postcolonialism,
as it emerged in the work of its leading practitioners under the sign of coloni-
al discourse analysis, began as a tool for the analysis of ideology, its professed
normative commitments have made it available as an object for ideological
analysis” (271–272).
Ideologiekritik thus latches on to postcolonial studies as well as to critical
discourse analysis in order to uncover and identify distortions and misrep-
resentations that undermine the autonomy, personhood and social cohesive-
ness of individuals in society. Inasmuch as all ideologies are attempts to com-
pete over the control of political language, texts, utterances and visual stimuli,
as well as material practices, become the focus of attention. For proponents of
1 For some representative analyses see Adorno; and Geuss.

16 Freeden
Ideologiekritik, they all carry a strong probability—to say the least—of distor-
tion, falsehood and partiality.
Regrettably, Ideologiekritik is more of a constraint on, than a facilitator of,
our understanding of ideologies. It is supposed to remove the smokescreens of
manipulated and disjointed views of the world and reveal that world as it is.
That will enable individuals and societies to correct defective and malicious
social practices obscured by the current and past thinking patterns they cre-
ate and ostensibly legitimate. Instead, Ideologiekritik contributes to distort-
ed social analysis and blocks out much of the complexity of the world and
our thoughts about it. Undoubtedly, Ideologiekritik has had a powerful and
productive impact in sensitizing us to the overt and hidden assumptions that
percolate into the social and ideational environments in which we are located.
Not least, it serves as an ethical tool to combat marginalization, alienation,
exploitation, unjustifiable inequality or cultural domination—ends it shares
with its cousin, critical discourse analysis. And if, in the Marxist framework,
being conditions consciousness, it reveals the quality and morality of the ideas
to which we subscribe as dependent entirely on the wholesomeness of social
and material relationships. But those worthy aims cannot simply be achieved
by labelling ideologies as the bogeymen, the perpetrators of warped beliefs, or
the operational arm of the bourgeoisie, and they may be further impeded by
an exaggerated negativity about human experience. In short, the concept of
ideology is split between its dismissal as a harmful practice and recognition of
its centrality to political thought and action.
Ideologiekritik was not the first approach to assume a derogatory position
towards ideology. Significantly, Napoleon had already belittled the original
“ideologues” as appealing to a metaphysics of first causes detached from hu-
man nature and from history. But his, tellingly, was a reaction to Antoine Des-
tutt de Tracy’s attempt to establish ideology as a science of ideas. Hence the
emergence of ideology as a scholarly tool for understanding human thought
preceded its debunking. Significantly, also, Napoleon condemned the notion
of ideology—as yet applied to a method rather than a type of political lan-
guage—not for distortion but for its pretentious aspiration to the rank of a
positivist science through over-abstraction (Mannheim 72–74; Lichtheim 5).
If Napoleon thought ideology was insufficiently scientific, the grand tra-
dition of Ideologiekritik denied it any scientific status altogether. It was not
over-abstraction that concerned them, but the absence of truth. Yet it is in-
escapable that action-oriented political ideas, serving to promote, criticize or
oppose public policy and sharing some identifiable features, or family-resem-
blances, do exist. And if they exist, the task of students of society and polit-
ical theorists is to take them seriously. It is not good enough to pursue only
Ideologiekritik—a Critique 17
normatively attractive, let alone ‘true,’ options if one wishes to understand the

social world. And that is precisely what Marx and Engels did not do. They con-
tributed to the tendency of Ideologiekritik, as well as of vernacular usages of
ideology in political discourse, particularly in the cut and thrust of political
debate and in political journalism, to ignore some of the most fundamental as-
pects of ideology. Consequently, in its exclusionary perspective Ideologiekritik
has perpetuated seven misconceptions about ideology.
1. Ideologies are false or distorted consciousness: There is a world of difference
between some of the characteristics of ideologies and falsehood or distortion.
For Marx and Engels, German philosophers, even socialists, “have abandoned
the realm of real history and returned to the realm of ideology,” in which they
“fabricate some fantastic relationship” removed from material conditions as
they should, and will, be (47, 94, 119). Engels famously wrote that “Ideology is
a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with
a false consciousness.” To generalize about the invariably distortive nature of
ideology in current forms of abstracted consciousness is to imply the possi-
bility of undistorted consciousness once ideology is anchored in real human
relationships. But no external empirical standard of reality exists for the es-
tablishment of such pure embeddedness of thought in ‘actual life-processes.’
Those who have claimed to possess the key to such knowledge in the social
and human sciences unsurprisingly turn out to have competing versions of
such truths. Yet multiple truths immediately acquire the features of ideological
contests. Ideologies certainly are simplifiers, but that is a cultural and psycho-
logical necessity in conveying and interpreting both facts and interpretations.
Ideologies provide maps of the social and political terrains that they address,
and maps are unquestionably stylized abbreviations, both in scale and in the
representation of the worlds they reflect. Although of course ideologies may
be, and have been, manipulative, unreasonably biased, instruments of polit-
ical action, that is not their whole story, nor is it inevitable. Their analysis as
failing to convey social truths and reality decenters their far more patent value
as containers of meaning, without which the social world cannot be decoded.
2. Ideology will wither away: The assertion that ideology has an end, and
presumably also a beginning, has sustained a fundamental optimism among
ideology-detractors. If the phenomenon of ideology was born of a catastrophic
discrepancy between the means of production and the relations of production,
if ideology is a non-material equivalent of the material alienation of human
beings from themselves, each other and their environment, and if ideology is
synonymous with partial consciousness, the elimination of impoverished hu-
man relationships and the abolition of alienation of human beings from them-
selves and others will ipso facto negate the warped thinking that springs from
18 Freeden
that most dehumanized of human conditions—capitalism (Marx 97; passim).

In that unique but misguided sense socialism or communism are promoted
both as non-ideological in content and post-ideological in time.
Significantly, one did not have to be a Marxist to assert the imminent end of
ideology. That particular thesis was espoused in the 1950s and 1960s for reasons
that were bred within the framework of a capitalist logic. The very success of
capitalist societies, so went the argument, produced prosperity and consum-
er-oriented societies that would set ideological strife aside. In an ironic twist
on Marxist theories of ideology, the end of ideology proponents maintained
that economic convergence—with its similarity of living conditions—would
render the kind of total ideological conflict of the interwar years superfluous.2
Not least, the chimera of social and political consensus was prominent in wel-
fare state discourse and policy. Indeed, end of ideology arguments now largely
emerge not from the left but from conservative circles, from people hostile to
what they think are superimposed social blueprints detached from reality, or
overarching attempts to reconstruct society in the face of its ‘natural’ and ‘or-
ganic’ heritage and continuities.
However, ideological convergence—assuming that it existed, which it never
did—does not equate to ideological termination. Confluence does not annihi-
late; it consolidates. It narrows the differences between some ideological posi-
tions even when significant distinctions remain. For even were we to assume
that different ideologies merged into one, that would still be one ideology. Only
the model of ideological conflict between two warring sides—a known histor-
ical occurrence but nonetheless not the norm of ideological configurations—
would hold that the end of ideological conflict meant the end of ideology: the
end of contextualized and preferred views of the social and political world,
the end of social imagination, the end of prescribing specific policies designed
to implement certain collective arrangements (Freeden Ideologies 17–19). Cur-
rently many observers argue that so-called neoliberalism has reached globaliz-
ing proportions, sweeping aside any ideological differences that stand in its
way. What such conclusions ignore is that the rise of economically-assertive
groups operating in ostensibly unencumbered competitive conditions of a free
market is itself a mythologized and highly exaggerated ideological viewpoint.
Moreover, it takes place within culturally and socially specific circumstances
that cut it down to size, restrict its range, and play out within very different
regulatory governmental systems. The strange thing, rather, is the persistence
2 A major exponent of that view was Daniel Bell, in his The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion
of Political Ideas in the Fifties.
and tenacious hold of neoliberal discourses, frequently obscuring a far more

complex state of affairs. Stickiness, oversimplification and wishful thinking are
of course unavoidable and often pivotal features of ideologies.
3. Ideology is a monolithic, undifferentiated term: Throughout the history of
the word, both critics and users of ideology have chiefly employed it in the sin-
gular. Of course, the singular form is generally an apt one for a concept. There
are many variants of liberalism, meriting the term ‘liberalisms,’ but there is
one broad family, however loose, that can be referred to under the umbrella of
liberalism. With ideology the issue is more complicated for two reasons. First,
because the diverse usages of ‘ideology’ are not just sub-variants of a more
inclusive phenomenon. They point in very different directions and are to some
extent mutually incompatible. That comment runs as a Leitmotif throughout
this text. Second, and more specifically, there is a logic to employing ideolo-
gy in the singular among Marxists and Ideologiekritik exponents. It relates to
their complete lack of interest in the minutiae of that kind of thinking as a
type, focusing as they do on the strong case they claim to make for expunging
it simpliciter. For those who regard ideology as a pejorative epiphenomenon it
follows that there is no need to delve into its arguments, to unfold its reason-
ing, or to distinguish among different ideological families. As ideology serves
only one purpose, why waste time and energy on the small print if the entire
text is superfluous and about to be discarded? Post-Marxists adopt a rather dif-
ferent view, as in the Laclau and Mouffe version. For them ideology performs
an articulatory role, holding disparate elements together, forging flexible social
identities that create a temporary unity (see Laclau and Mouffe). The disrup-
tive and antagonistic role of ideology is understated in all those approaches,
the (unsustainable) assumption being that ideology supports a power system
rather than also defying it.
In contradistinction to the above, the morphological analysis of ideologies
supports very different conclusions (see Freeden “Morphological Analysis”).
Building up from the micro to a differentiated macro, its modus operan-
di is to investigate ideologies, not ideology, underscoring the multiple, fluid
and constantly changing nature of the components that combine in ideolo-
gies-formation. The morphological approach commences by postulating the
concept as the basic ideological unit. Crucially concepts themselves consist
of competing conceptions, and none of those conceptions is uncontroversial
or incontestable. In other words, there is no correct way of defining a concept
or, as Walter Bryce Gallie put it, concepts are essentially contested (see Gal-
lie). Thus the concept of equality, present in so many ideological families, may
indicate mathematical identity, similarity, shared metaphysical or theological
worth, equality of opportunity, of need or of merit. It cannot indicate all those
20 Freeden
conceptions simultaneously—indeed, some of them are incompatible with

others—and therefore, in each working definition, some conceptions have to
be abandoned. The choice as to what to retain or omit is logically arbitrary,
but culturally and contextually of huge significance. Thus, one variant of the
concept of liberty may stress the capacity for reflective autonomy, another for
monadic independence, a third for developing individuality, and a fourth for
arbitrary action.
‘Ascending’ from the conceptions of a concept to the concept, the third
level—central to a comprehension of ideologies—comprises a cluster of
concepts. For concepts never exist in monadic form; they always interact, in-
tertwine and cut across other concepts that inhabit their proximity. Whereas
the singular concept of ideology suggests a mass whose internal structure is
irrelevant, the morphological view involves two moves: the plastic interre-
lationships that obtain within a concept, allocating different weight to each
component; and the field of intersecting concepts that constitute an ideology
and that combine its conceptual profile—in part durable, in part shifting—
in a plethora of competing arrangements. In that sense the pluralization of
the notion of ideology offers a decisive additive to a set of quasi-contingent
patterns in which each concept contained by the ideology in question adopts
certain meanings from among a possible range, and then the relations among
the concepts themselves exhibit varying degrees of relative durability or mal-
leability, but never closed fixity. All ideologies need to decontest the essen-
tially contested, and hence indeterminate, meanings their concepts exhibit;
otherwise no decision could ever be made, even though decontestations are
ephemeral and may not stand tests of time and space. That identifies them
as strategies designed to manage the inherent pluralism, even messiness, of
political ideas in any society. Once we appreciate ideologies as pliable patterns
changing at variable speeds, encompassing a series of fluctuating conceptual
relationships, and reflecting temporal and spatial contingencies and parochi-
alisms, the permanent, if patterned, differentiation of ideologies emerges as
the key to their understanding (Freeden Ideologies 55–91). Ideologies may then
be seen as continuously rearranging and redistributing the significance of the
complex socio-political ideas they process.
4. Ideologies should be unmasked, not decoded: Destutt de Tracy’s endeav-
our to the contrary, the insistence on ideologies as deliberately deceptive has
been a significant anchor point in 20th century scholarship on the topic. No
more is that evident than in the analysis of propaganda, defined by the Ox-
ford English Dictionary as “the systematic dissemination of information, esp.
in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of
view” (“Propaganda”). Often, that is linked to a massive state machinery that
pushes an official line in order either to mobilize the subjects of a polity or to

hold them in check. Indeed, for many members of a state that is the experi-
ence of government with which they are most familiar. Much critical discourse
analysis (cda) identifies such processes as far subtler and far more diffuse.
According to its practitioners, ordinary language at all levels of articulation
is suffused with unrecognized biases, social stereotypes and the denigration,
marginalization or exclusion of certain groups. Whereas the notion of ideology
as propaganda or manipulation has lent it much of its pejorative reputation,
as yet another expression of ‘dirty-hands’ politics, cda begins with pervasive
“grass-roots” instances that are commonly ingrained in speech and text. The
purpose of these explorations is to demonstrate the prevalence not necessarily
of partial thinking arising out of Marxist-type alienation but of the partiality
and one-sidedness that popular culture contains, especially on issues of race,
gender and disability.3 In both cases, however, a scholarly ‘exposé’ culminates
in unmasking or, at least, in rendering certain ideas and preconceptions pub-
lic, thus opening the way for a restorative critique devised to clear away the
debris of prejudice and misrepresentation. In some approaches to unmasking,
such as Slavoj Žižek’s—inspired by Lacanian psychoanalysis—the mask is not
peeled off to disclose the true face, but to uncover further masks, the removal
of which in turn reveals a void, the ‘unfaceable.’ In that sense, ideology fulfils
the psychological need of papering over the terrifying unknown.
All that is bypassed by understanding the study of ideology as a decoding
enterprise; bypassing not in the sense of being dismissive but in the sense of
posing an entirely different set of questions on which investigating ideologies
can focus. The scholar now dons the mantle of a curious social scientist, not
that of a disapproving ethicist or a philosopher confronting fundamental so-
cial malaise and disruption, and not that of a Marxist bent on demystifying
dissimulative conduct. If we foreground examining human practices, and
thought-practices, if we ask what work they perform in constructing our views
of the world, it matters not whether they be ‘true’ or ‘false.’ Moreover, all-too
often what is considered to be true is contextually contingent. Decoding is an
act of piecing together meaning from among a larger pool of what speech-
acts, ideas, artefacts, public spectacles and so on, might signify. Here the an-
thropologist Clifford Geertz’s reference to the drawing of social maps becomes
central. Maps are vital for orientation and navigation, without which human
beings lack a compass and points of anchorage through which to make sense
of their social environments. Maps, like ideologies, are simplifiers; and maps,
3 For notable examples see Van Dijk; and Wodak.

22 Freeden
like ideologies, are normally considered authoritative for their holders, even
though they may occasionally fail you, lead you astray, and have to be replaced.
The study of ideologies, then, involves the practice of decoding. But there
is a crucial difference to decoding a map. The reality that a map attempts to
symbolize is fixed, or changes slowly and incrementally and usually, in the
short run, imperceptibly. But ideologies do not contain a single code—or
truth—that is there to be unlocked or deciphered. They offer up a multiplicity
of codes, each of which reveals a diverse pattern. To an extent it all depends on
what the analyst of ideologies focuses, a chief distinction being that between
what ideologies do and what they are. Ideologiekritik, as well as the related
Marxist approach to ideology, also offer a specific interpretation: What ideol-
ogies do is to distort, conceal, manipulate or falsify. What ideologies are is of
lesser or no concern to critical theorists, unless one singles out their form—in
the Marxist tradition as a social and ideational partition that screens reality
from the correct human perception and disregards their content; or unless
their content is pronounced to be misleading and frequently harmful, as in the
cda tradition. But there are influential alternatives to the decoding of ideol-
ogies both as function and as substance. In their functional mode, ideologies
play indispensable political roles, irrespective of whether these are central to
the concerns of ethical and philosophical analysis. They mobilize and recruit
support or opposition to political bodies and movements; they integrate or
decouple the cohesion that societies evince; they rank priorities for political
action; they provide legitimacy or delegitimacy accounts of the distribution
of power; they serve as a mechanism through which social order or disorder is
handled and promoted; and they offer collective visions that inspire, animate,
disturb, or shock their consumers.
cda is noteworthy for examining the details and particulars of language
when applied to social issues. In analyzing discourses and texts it focuses
on the control of contexts, on the way issues are categorized, on metaphors,
repetition, the choice of topics, styles and modifiers, on illustrations and
photographs, and on absences. Clearly, ideologies can be approached from
all those perspectives, using the various tools that cda places at the dispos-
al of researchers. But ideologies, lest we forget, are chiefly forms of political
thinking and they consequently demand methods of decoding appropriate to
that domain of human practices. We can understand ideologies as part of an
accumulative—and disrupted—set of traditions that stretches across social
radicalism, liberalism, conservatism and the totalitarianisms of the right and
the left. We can understand them as aggregations of grass-roots opinions that
can be classified on the basis of psychological dispositions. And we can in-
terrogate them as complex conceptual amalgams of the units that make up
political thought. That latter approach involves a different, morphological,

kind of micro-analysis.
5. Ideologies are dominant or hegemonic power structures: In one version of
ideology, it is superimposed by those who control and monopolize social and
political power. In classical Marxist understandings, the ideas of the dominant
class, the bourgeoisie, become tools through which to dominate and oppress
the proletariat, not least by means of naturalizing and normalizing social and
economic practices that benefit the rulers and further their capitalist inter-
ests. In another version, closely associated with the name of Antonio Gramsci,
ideological hegemony is not simply an up-down phenomenon but a complex
amalgam of cultural goods, partly produced by intellectuals (wielding a very
different power to that of the state, namely one of articulating thought within
a ‘social bloc’), and partly a seemingly spontaneous creation of subordinate
groups applying their ‘common sense.’ Its hallmark is a co-ordinated and uni-
fied hegemonic force, the outcome of diverse social and ideational practices
and moral and cultural norms in which most people participate (see Gramsci).
Unquestionably, ideologies are forms of power. But that observation comes
with two major caveats. First, they are not merely forms of power—that would
be to impoverish a rich set of thought-practices. Ideologies are extraordinary
means of human communication, of social imagination and of collective
commitment to and engagement with the world. Second, power is not only
domineering, oppressive or stultifying, nor is it simply imposed externally on
subalterns. Power is ubiquitous and it is indispensable. A society, indeed a hu-
man relationship, bereft of power is in a state of collapse and paralysis. Pow-
er is not limited to the domains of suppression, force, manipulation and vio-
lence. It equally, perhaps more commonly, entails enabling, facilitating, doing,
acting, accomplishing, organizing, making something happen that otherwise
would not occur. In feminist discourse the concept of empowering is close-
ly associated with successfully claiming autonomy and taking possession of
one’s own life. In particular, ideologies are instances of language—oral, writ-
ten and visual—and whatever else languages are, they are also expressions of
power. Beyond the roles that class, gender or ethnicity play, which all relate
to the exercise of power through language, power resides universally in lan-
guage, though its concrete manifestations differ from case to case. Language
has an impact both on the utterer and the recipient; it is an attempt to make
a difference. That attempt may fail, in which case it becomes an unsuccessful
exercise of power, or it may have unintended consequences, in which case the
desired effect is replaced with an alternative one. All this is especially perti-
nent to ideologies, because they are action-oriented types of language that aim
at preserving, changing or criticizing social and political arrangements. Power
24 Freeden
in language adopts the forms of persuasion, emotional appeals, threats and the
particular cadences of rhetoric that enjoy cultural resonance in a given society
(Freeden Political Theory 277–309).
There is however little to suggest that societies host patently dominant or
hegemonic power structures. First, the theory of hegemony overlooks the in-
ternal fissures, fractures and divergences that are constantly in play. Ideologies
are far more fragmented and vulnerable than Marx or even Gramsci suggest-
ed—after all, theories of class and alienation tend to draw broad brushstrokes
deriving from dualist methodological origins and, as noted above, eschew the
minutiae as irrelevant to the arguments they marshal. Even outside the Marxist
family of ideas, there exist theories of consensus, of co-ordination and of com-
promise that iron out the profound differences that still obtain in a movement
of convergence, and that ignore the distinction between an external rhetoric
of agreement and the rhetorics of variance applied internally to home popula-
tions. Indeed, theories of hegemony themselves carry ideological import and
intent, as they have recourse to a worldview in which the order provided by
hierarchy and the maldistribution of power are unfortunate manifestations of
a fundamental human disorder.
Second, most societies and cultures are sites of incessant competition and
positioning among different ideological standpoints, which confront each oth-
er in a continuous succession, even a melee, of rising and falling power rela-
tionships. As the tempo of political discourse has dramatically increased, part-
ly as a result of mass media, digitalization and ‘spin’ and the short life accorded
to political memoranda, policies and programmes, ideologies have become
the equivalent of ‘fast-food’ with a limited shelf-life. The role of grand theory,
constitutionally endemic to conventional ideologies and associated with some
of the pioneering individuals who helped to shape them, has been largely re-
placed by slogans, soundbites and simplistic messages generated by profes-
sional and technical experts in communication alongside socially informed
and active intellectuals in universities and the field of journalism. Although
Gramsci was aware of the multiple sources that came together in the making
of an ideology, this view of ideologies is looser, more pluralist and disjointed,
and identifies a number of social elites that participate in their creation and
dissemination.
6. Ideologies are deliberate and conscious ideational constructs: Clearly, ide-
ologies possess a large degree of intentional design, functioning as suggest-
ed solutions to socio-political challenges. Within political party systems they
offer overt choices among Weltanschauungen and policy alternatives. In gen-
eral, their leading texts constitute a body of political arguments that can be
employed on a comprehensive social scale, though more modest ideological
debates and perspectives always exist at the margins of public discourse.

But—as cda has emphasized—ideologies also operate at unconscious, qua-
si-conscious and unpremeditated levels. That is at least as significant a feature
of ideologies as their overt articulation and dissemination, and it indicates,
contra those who regard ideologies as instruments of dominating power, that
ideologies exhibit a notable lack of control over the messages they convey.
That occurs mainly on two levels. The one has to do with what Paul Ricoeur
has brilliantly called the surplus of meaning. The messages transmitted by a
writer, speaker or artist contain elements unintended by and invisible to them.
The language we emit includes components of which we are unaware, yet may
be plainly discernible to others. When Machiavelli wrote about beating and
ill-using Fortuna because she was a woman, he intended to advise princes on
how to master their fates, but today the misogyny involved in that analogy
overrides any other impact that advice might have. That, one may assume, was
not Machiavelli’s intention, but the surplus and core meanings are now inter-
preted by some as reversing their roles. When Marx wrote about the dangers of
human alienation from nature, he was concerned with the re-humanization of
people through their optimizing of resources that could aid their flourishing,
and he was pursuing a holistic understanding of interactions with various en-
vironments, social as well as natural. But he has been interpreted by ecologists
as superimposing human labour on nature, as seeing nature as instrumental
to human beings and the object of mastery by them, inasmuch as material
progress was central to the 19th century mind-frame—although the rawness
of that viewpoint may be unintentional.
The second level is familiar to literary critics: no author can control the re-
ception of the text or artefact they produce. If ideologies are often fragmented
and fragile clusters of ideas loosely held together when generated, this is all the
more evident in their path to consumption. Some components of an ideology
are picked up, others discarded, and others again are lost. Ideologies undergo
constant de- and re-contextualization, even at the same place and time. They
are misunderstood, vulgarized, recrafted, elaborated on and open to contin-
uous interpretation. That is of course the great strength of ideologies—their
adaptability ensures longevity and social relevance. Ossified and rigid ideolo-
gies will crumble and disintegrate, whereas those open to reinterpretation may
have a better chance of survival. That is not to suggest that all interpretation is
advantageous or successful, but plural consumption at various levels of social
communication is the norm rather than the exception in the life of ideologies.
To lay emphasis on the unintentionality of ideologies is a very different
matter from claiming that they have covert, underground lives where manip-
ulation and subterfuge can operate unhindered. For it is their unconscious
26 Freeden
existence that often shields them from deliberate falsification. Some analysts
of ideology argue that invisibility is a symptom of the naturalization of an ide-
ology, its ‘self-evidence,’ and that is accordingly a mark of its insidiousness. Ob-
viously, unconscious or culturally internalized messages may be unpalatable
and harmful, but they may equally be attractive, attesting to styles of civilized
deliberation or to implicit norms of mutual respect or of public commitment,
without the author(s) being aware of the implied predisposition.
7. Ideologies are abstract, doctrinaire, and dogmatic: In common parlance, in
the language of politicians and of journalists—and regrettably, of quite a few
academics as well—the characterization and investigation of ideologies have
fallen victim to a number of clichéd misconceptions and stereotypes. A par-
ticular species of the family of ideologies, one that is far from representative,
has been expanded to pertain to the genus in toto. Many factors may account
for that. One is the prejudice that people engaged in so-called worldly affairs
entertain against intellectualization, against experimenting with ideas, and
against generalized and overarching theorizing about the human condition.
Another has been the view that radical ideas emerge from the political left and
are aimed at subverting the social order, offering unrealizable and potentially
dangerous dreams, as distinct from the professed down-to-earth practicality of
the conservative centre-right who—as it insists—does not ideologize at all but
is firmly rooted in experience. One typical manifestation of that view is the pe-
culiar expression ‘the facts speak for themselves.’ Facts, notwithstanding, are
completely silent; it is their interpreters who impose ‘voice’ on them!
Conspicuous in that category of arguments is the hackneyed contrast be-
tween ‘ideological’ and ‘pragmatic,’ as if so-called pragmatic policies are bereft
of ideological content. When someone labels a proposal or policy as pragmatic,
they usually mean instrumental, utilitarian, result-oriented, practical or lack-
ing a guiding principle. But the choice among the ‘practical’ paths of action is
channelled through ideological predilections in the broad sense: a preference
for speed, or for the quick exercise of authority, or for economic viability, or a
respect for authoritative solutions. In addition, all “pragmatic” social policies
make decisions that relate to social justice issues and to prioritizing certain de-
mands ahead of others—in short, invoking the typical political and ideological
practices of ranking and future-orientation. The opposition between ideology
and pragmatism results, once again, from the association of ideology with an
inflexible adherence to ideas, irrespective of their applicability to concrete sit-
uations. It overlooks the gradation of ideological intensity that characterizes
all ideologies.
A third explanation for the putative association of ideologies with doc-
trinaire ideational intransigence is historical. Twentieth century European
political thinking was traumatically fashioned by interwar experiences as a re-

sult of which a specific model of ideology became dominant. The dual assault
of fascism and communism on democratic culture and practices cast a shad-
ow over future expectations of what characterized ideologies. Totalitarian, or
at least total, in their embrace, demanding complete allegiance, obdurate in
their precepts and consequent policies, directed by a monopolistic and elitist
political party ostensibly representing the true social will, wedded to myths
of superiority, and applying terror and coercion—that paradigm of ideology
caused not only horrific concrete damage to those affected, but intellectu-
al and scholarly damage to the survival chances of subtler and omnipresent
forms of ideology. Alternatively, the term ‘isms’ is often used disparagingly. The
“triumph of the isms” (Golob vii), as one historian called it, reifies the image of
a large scale and rather uniform conflict between self-contained Weltanschau-
ungen. A residue of that narrow and partial view of ideology was resurrected in
the “end of ideology” debates of the 1950s and 1960s, discussed above, in which
ideology would be eliminated through shared technologies and living styles.
The producers and purveyors of ideology were also accorded special attention.
An ideologist is usually a proponent of an ideology, or a member of the group
formulating one, although in its older connotation it can still signify a specula-
tor or someone over-wedded to theorizing impractically. An ideologue, howev-
er, is a dogmatic and uncompromising proponent of an ideology (“Ideologue”),
usually employed in a pejorative sense.
The error of those approaches derives from the unwillingness of many an-
alysts, commentators and ordinary-language users to recognize that ideology,
like all linguistic and ideational constructs, exhibits semantic fluidity and di-
versity. Ideologies are often directly related to the domain of political parties,
implying a one-to-one relationship between party and ideology, rather than
acknowledging that ideologies are generated far more saliently in extra-party
discourses and that political parties, far from being the ideological vanguard,
simply make up the rear, reflecting broader ideological changes emanating
from the intelligentsia, the press, certain professional groups, and the everyday
vernacular—as usual in different modes and languages of expression. Even
more significantly, the common tendency to assign clear boundaries to ide-
ologies, demarcating, say, liberalism from socialism or conservatism, seriously
underplays the porousness and intertwining of the concepts that comprise any
ideology, indicating the sharing and overlap that characterize those permeable
fields. In recent years truncated ideological positions have proliferated, their
incompleteness and impermanence bolstered by the thirst of the media for
accelerated change, by the splintering of political views and their frequent
recombination in fleeting coalitions of mutual support, as witnessed by the
28 Freeden
many incarnations of populisms of left and right, or by the way environmen-

talism cuts across older ideological families. For many, that is the ‘new normal.’
The morphology of ideologies, as noted above, allows for such multiple com-
binations and interpretations, for rotating and mutable sets of political ideas
that belie the existence of immutable and rigid doctrines.
Ideologies are no sideshow but an integral feature of political thought and
thinking, an ineluctable aspect of social life. Both scholars and practitioners
need to get comfortable with that notion and embrace it as normal, intrigu-
ing and illuminating. That will contribute significantly to the quality of un-
derstanding and of research we can apply to our experiences of the political
world, and it will enrich the interaction among all disciplines concerned with
the life of the mind in a social context.
References
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund. “Cultural Criticism and Society.” Prisms, translated by

Samuel and Sherry Weber, mit Press, 1967, pp. 17–34.
Bell, Daniel. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. Col-
lier Books, 1962.
Engels, Friedrich. “Letter to Franz Mehring,” 14 July, 1893, Marxists.org, www.marxists.
org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm. Accessed May 14, 2019.
Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford
UP, 1996.
Freeden, Michael. “The Morphological Analysis of Ideology.” The Oxford Handbook
of Political Ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc
Stears, Oxford UP, 2013, pp. 115–137.
Freeden, Michael. The Political Theory of Political Thinking: The Anatomy of a Practice.
Oxford UP, 2013, pp. 277–309.
Gallie, Walter Bryce. “Essentially Contested Concepts.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, vol. 56, 1955–6, pp. 167–198.
Geertz, Clifford. “Ideology as a Cultural System.” Ideology and Discontent, edited by Da-
vid Ernest Apter, The Free Press, 1964, pp. 47–76.
Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of a Critical Theory. Cambridge UP, 1981.
Golob, Eugene O. The “Isms”: A History and Evaluation. Harper & Brothers, 1954.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from Prison Notebooks, edited by Quentin Hoare and
Geoffrey Newell Smith, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971.
“Ideologue.” OED Online, Oxford UP, www.oed.com/view/Entry/91015?rskey=iTmL-
fO&result=1#eid. Accessed May 14, 2019.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Verso Books,
1985.
Lichtheim, George. The Concept of Ideology and Other Essays. Vintage Books, 1967.
Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
Marx, Karl. Selected Writings, 2nd ed., edited by David McLellan, Oxford UP, 2000.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, edited by Christopher J. Arthur,
Lawrence & Wishart, 1974.
“Propaganda.” OED Online, Oxford UP, www.oed.com/view/Entry/152605?rskey=c8h0r-
B&result=1#eid. Accessed May 14, 2019.
Rao, Rahul. “Postcolonialism.” The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by
Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears, Oxford UP, 2013, pp.
271–289.
Van Dijk, Teun A. Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, 2nd ed., Sage
Publications, 2011.
Wodak, Ruth. The Discourse of Politics in Action. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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so, 1994, pp. 1–33.
c hapter 2
“A Crude, Empty, Fragile Shell?”—Postcolonial

Consciousness in an Era of Global Capitalism
Laura Chrisman
It is now over 25 years since the publication of Colonial Discourse and Postco-
lonial Theory: A Reader, which I co-edited with Patrick Williams.1 That volume
was the first anthology of postcolonial studies. That the book has remained
continuously in print, and circulates widely as a research and teaching re-
source, suggests that it retains intellectual currency in the twenty-first centu-
ry. In considering the concerns of this volume, a retrospective glance at the
ideological concerns driving our anthology’s production may provide further
perspective on our present moment, and what future may await us.
The project had a number of intellectual and pedagogical objectives, some
set by the publisher Harvester Wheatsheaf, some by my collaborator Patrick
Williams and myself. My personal goal was not only to create a textbook but
also to make a critical intervention, one that offered a materialist counter-
weight to the dominant post-structuralist strains of postcolonial theory, crys-
tallised in what was then widely termed the ‘Holy Trinity’ writings of Edward
Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. I wanted to expand beyond the-
oretical perspectives that construed imperialism as primarily an exercise of
epistemological, cultural, or social domination. Such perspectives bracketed
or occluded its exploitation of labour and raw resources, production of new
markets and proletariats, and its dynamics of capital accumulation. The Read-
er accordingly published not only representative articles by Said, Bhabha and
Spivak, but also accounts, by Aijaz Ahmad, Dennis Porter, Anne McClintock,
Ania Loomba, Vijay Mishra, and Bob Hodge, that highlight the material condi-
tions in which ideologies come into being, and consider what is lost when such
conditions are hidden from the horizon of knowledge production.
Our attempt to diversify the field took a number of directions. One was ge-
ographical. Both literary and theoretical academic discussion up to that point
had largely centred on ‘the Orient’ as a matrix for social and cultural produc-
tion. Accordingly, we supplemented the model of Orientalism, and analysis of
1 See Williams and Chrisman.

“A Crude, Empty, Fragile Shell?” 31
South Asian cultural production, in our inclusion of materials generated by

and focused on African, Caribbean, Latin American, black British, and black
American experience. The diversification was disciplinary too; alongside prac-
titioners of literary theory and analysis, we included sociologists (Chandra
Talpade Mohanty, Anthony Giddens, Stuart Hall, and Paul Gilroy), cultural an-
thropologists (Arjun Appadurai), and film theorists (Teshome Gabriel).
We included creative writers who also published non-fictional works of
theory—Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Aimé Césaire, and Léopold Seng-
hor. As this reveals, we sought to diversify not only geography, and discipline,
but also historical reach by respecting a generation of activist thinkers who
emerged to prominence in the mid-twentieth century, during and shortly af-
ter formal decolonization. In addition to these luminaries, we represented this
generation by works from Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. I considered it
crucial to signal that the critical theorisation of European domination did not
begin with Said’s 1978 Orientalism. That earlier generations, mostly operating
outside of the academy, often within anti-colonial political movements, had
already created an enormous archive, and intellectual resource, for the un-
derstanding of colonialism, nationalism, and decolonization, that was large-
ly overlooked within the academy as insufficiently ‘theoretical,’ or dismissed
on the erroneous grounds of its irrelevance to contemporary global social
configurations.
Many of the anthology’s earlier generation of contributors were socialists or
Marxists with a strong investment in the liberatory possibilities of nationalism.
Not that there was any uniformity in their views. Demonstrating the heteroge-
neity of anticolonial era thought was also part of my agenda. Thus I selected
both Ngugi and Achebe’s contrasting, yet equally nationalist, arguments re-
garding the political, aesthetic and psychological significance of African use of
European languages. Similarly, I sought to situate Fanon’s ambivalent account
of culture’s relationship to national liberation alongside Amilcar Cabral’s in-
sistence on national culture as not only an instrument but also a stimulus for
political transformation. Against the growing institutional disparagement of
nationalist movements and cultures as all uniformly essentialist, dominatory,
and exclusionary, as well as routine allegations of Marxism’s reductive econo-
mism, I wanted to alert students to the existence of more varied approaches to
these phenomena, that had largely emerged from within the foment of social
liberation movements themselves.
That political activism engendered the work of such theorists was itself part
of the Reader’s argument. There was a further argument embedded here: that
political resistance, not only of the past, but also (by implication) of the pres-
ent moment, from within the metropoles as well as the ‘peripheries’ of the
32 Chrisman
global South, regularly accompanies imperial and neo-colonial exploitation,

pushing them into crisis and, at times, defeat.
I should add that the Reader was by no means the first publication to cast a
materialist eye on the dominant tendencies of this newly established field. Be-
nita Parry’s pathbreaking essay “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Dis-
course” had appeared in 1987, five years before our anthology.2 Aijaz Ahmad’s
In Theory was a book length interrogation that came out in 1992.3 By 1998, Arif
Dirlik and E. San Juan, Jr., among others, had published major books of critique
that also developed alternative, materialist formulations of postcoloniality as
a phenomenon.4
So, we might ask, in what ways have postcolonial critical practices, texts and
ideological contexts changed since 1992? Have culturalist and idealist models
of post-structuralism receded, or transmogrified? Are materialist approaches
still part of the ideological periphery?
I will not offer any firm answers, merely a few observations, contentions,
and suggestions. Looking at the contemporary metrics of postcolonial jour-
nals can only get one so far, but does offer interesting food for thought. I have
consulted the listing of ‘most frequently read articles’ from three Routledge
journals that are prominent in Anglophone postcolonial academia: Interven-
tions, Postcolonial Studies, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing (formerly known
as World Literature Written in English). The last has a more exclusively literary
focus, while Interventions and Postcolonial Studies are broader in their discipli-
nary reach. From this evidence, which is based on scholarly practices over the
last three years, it looks as if Bhabha, Spivak, and Said continue to occupy a
significant place in postcolonial cultural and social studies but that in literary
studies, their function may be more uneven and less pronounced.
Their possible attenuation in literary studies is suggested by the most heav-
ily read article from Postcolonial Writing (an article that has had over 3,500
views). Its author is Peter Morey, and his focus is on Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 nov-
el The Reluctant Fundamentalist.5 (It is worth noting that this same novel is
the subject of several other highly read articles also, published over the last
six years). Morey’s references include no writings by Spivak, Bhabha, or Said.
Neither does the majority of the other nineteen most read articles from this
journal. In fact, as a whole they give rather more attention to trauma studies
theorists such as Cathy Caruth; trauma and terrorism are generally the most
2 See Parry.
3 See Ahmad.
4 See Dirlik; San Juan.
5 See Morey.
recurrent topics of literary concern. That the presence of Spivak, Said, and
Bhabha in postcolonial literary studies may be thinning is also suggested by
the 2013 volume Locating Postcolonial Narrative Genres, edited by Walter Goe-
bel and Saskia Schabio.6 That book’s index makes no mention of Bhabha, lists
only three references to Spivak, has fewer than ten references to Said, and rath-
er more to Frantz Fanon.
The articles that top the ‘most frequently read’ lists of Postcolonial Studies
and Interventions provide an interesting contrast. These articles stage dialogues
between postcolonial studies and other cognate fields. In Interventions, the top
ranking article by Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, “Between Subalternity
and Indigeneity,” places Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” in critical conver-
sation with American Indian studies, and focuses more on points of contrast
than convergence.7 That American Indian theorisations of indigeneity emerge
from contemporary conditions of overt colonization, both local and national,
is a critical difference with which the authors are concerned. The Journal of
Postcolonial Studies published Gurminder K. Bhambra’s article “Postcolonial
and Decolonial Dialogues,” as recently as December 2014.8 By May 2015 the
article already had over 2,400 views, placing it above even Spivak’s own 2006
article “Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular.”9 Bhambra
explains and juxtaposes the work of Said, Spivak, and Bhabha with that of the
coloniality/modernity theorists Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, and Maria
Lugones. He develops an even-handed overview that concludes with an affir-
mation of Said and Bhabha as deconstructors of European narratives of uni-
versalism. These two articles by Byrd/Rothberg and Bhambra indicate that the
one-time ‘Holy Trinity’ retains a substantial academic presence. However, it is
also significant that both of these pieces engage postcolonial theorists within
a comparative and dialogic perspective. The currency of Bhabha, Spivak, and
Said is now, it appears, assuming a more relative value, that stations them as
major interlocutors rather than as all-powerful authorities.
However varied the evidence and its interpretability, it is safe to conclude
that the postcolonial fields—both literary and cultural—have become consid-
erably more eclectic in their critical concerns, and in their theoretical sources
and resources, than was the case when Patrick Williams and I produced our
Reader. To that extent our desire to diversify the conceptual constituents of the
field beyond the equation with three thinkers has been handsomely realised.
6 See Goebel and Schabio.

7 See Byrd and Rothberg.
8 See Bhambra.
9 See Spivak.
34 Chrisman
What I want to consider now is how far the radical work of Frantz Fanon has
penetrated into contemporary postcolonial studies. It would appear that the
Fanon of The Wretched of the Earth circulates far more widely than he did in
the late 1980s and early 1990s, when such thinkers as Bhabha, and Stuart Hall,
recognized only the Fanon of Black Skin, White Masks, and pressed that text
into postmodern service. The 2004 translation by Richard Philcox, of Wretch-
ed, featured a foreword “Framing Fanon” by Homi Bhabha. While I welcome
this renewed interest in Fanon’s book and applaud its accessibility in a more
accurate translation, I am inclined to characterise this particular edition as less
an acceptance, and more a revision, of Fanonian materialism.
Indeed, Bhabha recasts Fanon’s revolutionary socialism as a gentle call for “eq-
uitable development,” that has influenced “social institutions committed to debt
relief … reformist bodies that seek to restructure international trade and tariffs,
and democratize the governance of global financial institutions”; the legitimate
heirs of Fanon become, in Bhabha’s view, “ngo s, human rights organizations, in-
ternational legal or educational bodies” (xviii). Fanon’s insistence that capitalism
is “incapable of allowing us to achieve our national and universal project … Cap-
italist exploitation, the cartels and monopolies, are the enemies of the underde-
veloped countries,” his contention that “the wealth of the imperialist nations is
also our wealth … Europe is literally the creation of the Third World” ([translated
by Philcox] 55–6, 58), is purged, by Bhabha, of its militancy. Fanon becomes the
proponent of a liberal “civil society” whose humanism involves prioritizing the
psycho-affective realm over that of economic development (Bhabha xviii-xix).
Despite Bhabha’s regard for Fanon’s insights into “psycho-affectivity,” he
presents Fanon as fundamentally misguided in advocating violence as an em-
powering force of psychological and political liberation, be it with regards to
the particularity of Algerian decolonisation (Fanon’s particular concern) or in
general. To advance this view, Bhabha gives as much weight to Algerian in-
ternecine violence as he does to French anti-Algerian violence, presenting a
theoretical corrective in the guise of historical contextualisation (xxiii-xxxiv).
Bhabha concludes that violence offers not the praxis of self-actualisation but
merely “a mirage” that cannot “slake [the dispossessed]’s thirst” (xl).
More extreme in his instrumentalization of Fanon for an agenda radical-
ly at odds with Fanon’s own is Paul Gilroy, in his 2004 book Between Camps
(published in the USA with the alternative title of Against Race). Gilroy’s work
attacks what he sees as the prison house of racial and nationalist thinking, ar-
guing instead for a planetary humanism.10 He enlists Fanon to this end. Fanon
10 For a fuller discussion of Gilroy’s use of Fanon, see Chrisman, ‘The Vanishing Body of
Frantz Fanon in Paul Gilroy’s Against Race and After Empire.’
was indeed a humanist, but he sought to create the conditions for a new and
international humanity through socialist revolutionary nationalism, one of the
“camps” that Gilroy condemns. New humanity’s creation, for Fanon, rests upon
the rejection of “Western” culture and values:
[During decolonization] … when the native hears a speech about West-

ern culture he pulls out his knife—or at least he makes sure it is with-
in reach. The violence with which the supremacy of white values is
affirmed … mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when
Western values are mentioned in front of him … and vomit[s]‌them up.
(Fanon 4311)
The termination of European influence is a necessary condition for the birth

of a global humanity:
It is a question of the Third World starting a new history of Man … So

comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions,
and societies which draw their inspiration from her … For Europe, for our-
selves, and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must
work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man. (Fanon 315-316)
Fanon’s conclusion notwithstanding, Gilroy construes his agenda as calling for:
The institution of an anticolonial and nonracial universalism [that] …

reveals his links to the modern political traditions of the Western world …
His words articulate a reminder that between the fortified encampments
of the colonizers and the quarters of the colonized there were other loca-
tions. These in-between locations represent … opportunities for greater in-
sight into the opposed worlds that enclosed them. (Gilroy 70-71; emphasis
added)
Gilroy removes Fanon from the colonized “camp” to an intermediary location

from where he mediates each “camp” to the other.
Gilroy removes Fanon from his ideological mooring within anti-colonial
nationalism. What is more, he borrows Fanon’s own language to affect this re-
moval and denounce Fanon’s erstwhile home, when he argues that:
11 This and the following quotations from Wretched of the Earth are drawn from the
Constance Farrington translation (Grove Press, 1963). This was the translation that was
current when Gilroy prepared his book.
36 Chrisman
Inside the nation’s fortifications, culture is required to assume an artifi-

cial texture and an impossibly even consistency. The national camp puts
an end to any sense of cultural development. Culture as process is arrest-
ed. Petrified and sterile, it is impoverished by the national obligation not
to change but to recycle the past continually in an essentially unmodified
mythic form. Tradition is reduced to simple repetition. (Gilroy 84)
It is powerful and lyrical rhetoric. Compare it to Fanon’s own condemnation

of colonialism:
The colonial situation calls a halt to national culture in almost every field
… By the time a century or two of exploitation has passed there comes
about a veritable emaciation of the stock of national culture. It becomes
a set of automatic habits, some traditions of dress and a few broken-down
institutions. Little movement can be discerned in such remnants of cul-
ture; there is no real creativity and no overflowing life. The poverty of
the people, national oppression and the inhibition of culture are one and
the same thing. After a century of colonial domination we find a culture
which is rigid in the extreme, or rather what we find are the dregs of cul-
ture, its mineral strata. The withering away of the reality of the nation
and the death-pangs of the national culture are linked to each other in
mutual dependence. (Fanon 237, 238)
Gilroy borrow Fanon’s own nationalist phrasing to reposition him into an

anti-nationalist domain. For Fanon, only revolutionary nationalism can over-
come the social morbidity that concerns him and Gilroy alike. It confers upon
national culture the same mutability and vitality as the political struggle for
nationhood itself: “The struggle for freedom does not give back to the national
culture its former value and shapes; this struggle which aims at a fundamental-
ly different set of relations between men cannot leave intact either the form or
the content of the people’s culture” (Fanon 245–246).
The contentious revisionism of Bhabha and Gilroy is only one contempo-
rary response, however, to colonised-era writers and activists. The twenty-first
century has generated many others. Postcolonial scholarship and theory of the
new millennium has made visible a wide range of nineteenth-, and twenti-
eth- century intellectuals and creative writers critically engaged with colonial
modernity, racism, and imperialist capitalism. This is in many respects exactly
what our Postcolonial Theory Reader hoped to facilitate.
This scholarship has not simply brought neglected thinkers to light. It
has also articulated new ways to conceptualise the historical framework of
postcolonial analysis. I see this as a movement away from the rigid temporal
divisions that have structured postcolonial studies. With this new work, the
absolute ‘epistemic’ demarcations between ‘modern/colonial’ and ‘contempo-
rary/postindependent’ epochs appear to be losing or at least sharing ground
with other understandings of modernity, and globalisation, as operating across
a long twentieth-century. See, for example, Philip Zachernuk’s Colonial Sub-
jects: an African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas, which explores over a centu-
ry of South Nigerian thinkers from 1840 through to political independence, as
they debate and contest an evolving colonial modernity.12 Olakunle George’s
Relocating Agency: Modernity and African Letters is another example, that, like
Zachernuk, explores early West African anti-colonial writers—whom he pre-
sents as simultaneously, and inextricably, theorists and artists--but continues
his fascinating enquiry into the post-independence moment.13
Or, to take an example from South Africa, Jennifer Wenzel’s book Bullet-
proof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond charts the
ways in which the “great cattle killing” phenomenon of 1856–57—a millenar-
ian expression of black South African self-regeneration through ostensible
self-destruction—has provided an intertext and metaphor for modern black
liberationist expressive cultures within South Africa and in the diaspora, at
different political moments, over the last 150 years.14
An expanded spatial understanding of anticolonial agency accompanies
this historical reconceptualisation. Postcolonial studies largely, in the twen-
tieth century, concentrated its energies on two axes of power: that of the set-
tler coloniser and colonised; and that of the imperial metropole and colonial
periphery. The twenty-first century sub-field of black international and trans-
national studies—of particular interest to me—owes a large debt to Gilroy’s
model of the Black Atlantic, which has encouraged scholars to think beyond
European colonial governments and imperial metropole as the only centre to
which the colonised writes back, or as the primary matrix of nationalist cul-
tural identity formation. Now scholars are highlighting the dynamic relation-
ships with other colonised or racialised populations, and social movements,
as a constitutive feature in the subjectivities, and political cultures, of modern
black anti-colonialism.
This is the thrust, for instance, of such impressive work as Michelle
Stephens’ Black Empire. The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean
12 See Zachernuk.
13 See George. As a side note, George’s book contains one of the best critiques of Bhabha and
Spivak that I have come across.
14 See Wenzel.
38 Chrisman
Intellectuals in the United States, 1914–1962 (2005), which focuses on the writ-
ings of Marcus Garvey, CLR James, and Claude McKay, and Ifeoma Nwank-
wo’s Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identi-
ty in the Nineteenth-Century Americas (2005), which considers such writers
as Frederick Douglass and Mary Prince in the wake of the Haitian Revolu-
tion.15 And it is the intellectual foundation of Brent Hayes Edwards’ widely
lauded The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black
Internationalism.
And yet there is an unnecessary ideological restriction to these new stud-
ies. That is their reification, even essentialisation, of transnationalism as the
only arena of social liberation; the suggestion that the primary contribution of
these anti-colonialist thinkers is their crossing of national boundaries. Brent
Hayes Edwards, for instance, begins with a persuasive argument about the
political potency of black anti-colonial periodicals, contending that “black
periodicals were a threat above all because of the transnational and anti-im-
perialist linkages and alliances they practiced: carrying ‘facts’ from one colony
to another, from the French colonial system to the British, from Africa to the
United States” (9).
His discussion slides, subtly, into an unqualified affirmation of imperial
metropoles, as the crucial zone of black transnationalism and intellectual lib-
eration. The empire is still writing back to the imperial centre, but this time,
to other diasporic intellectuals who have elected to base themselves within it.
Edwards avers that “the metropolitan situation allowed contacts and collab-
orations that would have been ‘unthinkable’ in the colonial world … In this
sense, these many moves ‘across boundaries’ (from colony to metropole, from
one colonial system to another) were the real threat to colonialism, which is a
discourse articulated first of all as singular and inescapable” (242).
Having reinstated the metropole as the only proper hub of liberation, Ed-
wards dismisses the project of national self-determination. He suggests that
“black internationalism is not a supplement to revolutionary nationalism, the
‘next level’ of anti-colonial agitation. On the contrary, black radicalism nec-
essarily emerges through boundary crossing--black radicalism is an interna-
tionalization” (243). The sentences segue from internationalism to radicalism
before conflating the two. Border crossing is always-already radical, and black
radicalism can only qualify as such in an international metropolitan arena.
Rather than supplement anti-colonial nationalism, black internationalism
supplants it.
15 See Stephens; Nwankwo; Edwards.

Elsewhere I have criticised categorical anti-nationalism in postcolonial, and

black Atlantic, studies, as an essentialism that refuses to differentiate between
the plethora of nationalisms—bourgeois, anti-colonial, subaltern, ethnic, im-
perialist, revolutionary, patriarchal—that have historically emerged and struc-
tured different social structures, subjectivities, and expressive cultures.16 As
Aijaz Ahmed suggests, in In Theory, “whether … a nationalism will produce
a progressive cultural practice depends … upon the political character of the
power bloc which takes hold of it and utilises it, as a material force, in the pro-
cess of constituting its own hegemony” (102). And as Fanon warns, a potential-
ly progressive anti-colonial nationalism can easily become the instrument of
neo-colonial capitalism if it does not transition from an exclusively nationalist
to social and economic consciousness, that is, function as a means, not an end,
of human liberation.
Instead of recognising the mutable potential, and frequently contradictory
practices, of anticolonial nationalism, Edwards casually peppers his erudite
book with formulaic ideological assumptions, and, like Gilroy, deploys a sim-
ple binaristic thinking that makes transnationalism and nationalism mutually
exclusive, almost Manichean oppositions.
I have been exploring how far the materialist and historicist ideological con-
cerns of the Postcolonial Theory Reader have been met over the last twenty-odd
years of postcolonial studies, and suggesting that the results are uneven. New
millennial articulations, and critical applications, of transnationalism are not
necessarily any more helpful than those of hybridity, so popular in the twenti-
eth-century, were, in providing postcolonial studies with the means to develop
intellectually complex, rigorous cultural analyses.
One important area of investigation that Patrick Williams and I did not an-
ticipate, and probably should have, concerns what is now loosely termed the
history of the book: the critical study of postcolonial print cultural production,
commodification, and insertion into the literary prize industries. The inno-
vative analyses of the production of Anglophone postcolonial literature as a
capitalist commodity have opened the door to the theoretical and archival ex-
ploration of the linkages between capitalist production of postcolonial culture
and its production of other commodities (such as oil) through global extrac-
tion of raw resources and its exploitative organisation of wage labour. And if
these connected systems of production, and consumption, are now receiving
academic attention, so too are the ways in which literary forms—such as the
novel—and styles—such as ‘magic realism’—are themselves intertwined with
16 See Chrisman, “Nationalism and Postcolonial Studies.”

40 Chrisman
imperialist articulations of political economy. Postcolonial critics are starting

to engage in a more Jamesonian enquiry as to how literary texts register global
capitalism as a representational dilemma, in style, and subject matter, oblique-
ly and directly offering commentary and insight into the modernity in which
they partake.
I am thinking here, for example, of Jennifer Wenzel’s suggestive article
“Petro-magic-realism: toward a political ecology of Nigerian literature.”17 I am
thinking also of the Warwick Research Collective (WReC) and its individual
members Sharae Deckard, Neil Lazarus, Benita Parry, Pablo Mukherjee, Nick
Lawrence, Steve Schapiro, and Graeme McDonald, who separately and togeth-
er are publishing in this area.18 Central to their theorisation is the late works
of Marx, and the writings of Trotsky, that posit capitalism as a modern world
system predicated on combined and unequal development. The literary object
of WReC’s concern is world literature, rather than postcolonial literature, but
the questions that they pose, the methodologies they engage, may also be har-
nessed within a postcolonial framework.
WReC and Wenzel are still in the minority as practitioners of an approach
that takes seriously the capitalist dimensions of colonial and postcolonial aes-
thetics, one which conjoins micrological and macrological perspectives. This
is so even where the literary material makes it almost impossible to ignore the
thematics of capitalism—as is the case in Ayi Kwei Armah’s mid-century novel
The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born. Armah’s critique of postcolonial seduc-
tion by the “gleam” of consumerism, epitomised in the Atlantic Caprice hotel
and assorted imported commodities, has not escaped critical notice. Yet such
notice typically fixes only on these objects whose significance is signposted
by the author. The resulting critical engagement mirrors the logic of reifica-
tion by isolating and fetishizing those commodities, divorcing them from the
complex network—local and global—of capitalism that Armah so subtly
maps. The meaningfulness—and alienation—of labour can more fruitfully be
traced to the many examples that Armah provides, from prostitutes to steve-
dores to latrine cleaners to the protagonist himself, a government employee
whose administrative work for the national railway system generates at once
loneliness and utopian potential, seen in the beautiful coloured charts of train
services that he reconfigures daily, and in the morse code through which he
shares personal communication with anonymous employees stationed in the
hinterland. That Armah has a global understanding of Ghana’s neocolonial
17 See Wenzel.
18 See Sharae Deckard et al.
economy—and a dialectical sense of its positive transformability—is suggest-

ed by his understated but recurrent investment in the recreational spaces of
the beach, the port as the nexus for capitalist commodity export and import,
and in boats themselves as corrupt commodities and potential vehicles for the
development of a new global humanity. That same dystopian/utopian, mate-
rial and ideological global understanding informs Armah’s use of the radio,
through which black American, Congolese, and “dirge like” European organ
music flow, and frame the social relationships of his alienated characters.
Are we to conclude, then, that the critical consciousness of postcolonial
studies is becoming, in Fanon’s phrase, “a crude, empty, fragile shell?” His ex-
pression, of course, is directed at the deformation of national consciousness
when it becomes an instrument of neocolonial capitalism rather than the
means to create a new international humanism. On the whole, postcolonial
studies is heading in the opposite direction, towards more inclusive, and ex-
pansive, humanistic practices, increasingly attuned to the material conditions
that inform and structure cultural and intellectual production. What we must
be wary of, however, is the continued ability of old, idealist, orthodoxies to ap-
propriate and subvert the gains of the twenty-first century; the threat of stasis
in the face of dynamic transformation.
References
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. Verso, 1992.

Bhabha, Homi K. Foreword: Framing Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz
Fanon, Grove Press, 2004, pp. xii–xli.
Bhambra, Gurminder K. “Postcolonial and Decolonial Dialogues.” Postcolonial Stud-
ies, vol. 17, no. 2, 2014, pp. 115–121.
Byrd, Jodi A., and Michael Rothberg. “Between Subalternity and Indigeneity.” Interven-
tions, vol. 13, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–12.
Chrisman, Laura. “Nationalism and Postcolonial Studies.” The Cambridge Companion
to Postcolonial Literary Studies, edited by Neil Lazarus, Cambridge UP, 2004.
Chrisman, Laura. “The Vanishing Body of Frantz Fanon in Paul Gilroy’s Against Race
and After Empire.” The Black Scholar, vol. 41, no. 4, 2011, pp. 18–30.
Dirlik, Arif. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism.
Westview Press, 1997.
Deckard, Sharae, et al. as Warwick Research Collective. Combined and Uneven Develop-
ment: Towards a New Theory of World-literature. Liverpool UP, 2015.
Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of
Black Internationalism. Harvard UP, 2003.
42 Chrisman
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington, Grove
Press, 1963.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Richard Philcox, Grove
Press, 2004.
George, Olakunle. Relocating Agency: Modernity and African Letters. suny Press, 2003.
Gilroy, Paul. Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. Routledge, 2004.
Goebel, Walter, and Saskia Schabio, editors. Locating Postcolonial Narrative Genres.
Routledge, 2013.
Morey, Peter. “ ‘The Rules of the Game Have Changed’: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant
Fundamentalist and Post‐9/11 Fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 47, no. 2,
2011, pp. 135–146.
Nwankwo, Ifeoma. Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational
Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas. U of Pennsylvania P, 2005.
Parry, Benita. “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse.” Oxford Literary
Review, vol. 9, no. 1–2, 1987, pp. 27–58.
San Juan, Jr. E. Beyond Postcolonial Theory. St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Spivak, Gayatri C. “Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular.” Postcolo-
nial Studies, vol. 8, no. 4, 2005, pp. 475–486.
Stephens, Michelle. Black Empire. The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intel-
lectuals in the United States, 1914–1962. Duke UP, 2005.
Wenzel, Jennifer. Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anti-Colonial Prophecy in South Africa and
Beyond. U of Chicago P, 2009.
Wenzel, Jennifer. “Petro-magic-realism: toward a political ecology of Nigerian litera-
ture.” Postcolonial Studies, vol. 9, no. 4, 2006, pp. 449–464.
Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, editors. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial
Theory: A Reader. Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. Columbia UP, 1994.
Zachernuk, Philip. Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas. U of
Virginia P, 2000.
c hapter 3
The Market as a Dimension of Practice—

Commodification, Ideology, and Postcolonial
Studies
Caroline Koegler
In her introductory section to The Postcolonial Cultural Industry. Icons, Markets,

Mythologies, and reflecting on her own relationship with the market and the
“postcolonial cultural industry,” Sandra Ponzanesi poses the following ques-
tions: “Where do I position myself concerning the operations of the cultural
industry: as a critical outsider capable of perceiving its deceit and seduction,
or as a consumer and active participant in the meaning making of objects cir-
culating in the global circuit?” (46) She continues:
If we want to position ‘the postcolonial cultural industry’ as inspired by

Adorno, but as having moved along more interconnected and sophisti-
cated principles of production and consumption—which are no longer
based in clear-cut, top-down ideological models nor in easily identifiable
operations and locations of resistance and subversion—where do I stand
and what is the added value of defining the ‘postcolonial cultural indus-
try’ as separate, somewhat distinct and unique from cultural industries in
general? (Ponzanesi 46; my emphasis)
The first part of this quote sees Ponzanesi pit two opposite conceptions of in-
tellectual work against one another: The formulation “a critical outsider ca-
pable of perceiving its deceit and seduction” picks up on a long tradition of
left-wing criticism, from the enlightenment to the Frankfurt School, in which
the critic’s position is considered to be autonomous. With “a consumer and
active participant in the meaning making of objects circulating in the glob-
al circuit,” Ponzanesi indulges a postmodern framework in which the critic’s
position is one of automatic complicity in a multiplicity of forces and powers.
Dissatisfied with this binary, and honouring the existence of more diversified
models, Ponzanesi inquires: At a time when claims to critical autonomy, resist-
ance, and subversion seem increasingly implausible, where do critics stand? If
44 Koegler
critics are, somehow, implicated in processes of production and consumption,

what kinds of value do they produce?
In raising these questions, Ponzanesi employs a good dose of irony—not
unlike Graham Huggan in his seminal Postcolonial Exotic. Marketing the Mar-
gins. While Huggan speaks, for example, of an “exoticist machinery” (262),
Ponzanesi invokes some dramatic biblical language. In the immediately
preceding passage, Ponzanesi has summarised Huggan’s approach in the fol-
lowing terms: “Even though Huggan presents a sceptical scene for postcolo-
nialism and its entangled future with capitalism, there is a chance to escape
the devilish pact” (46; my emphasis). In combination with her formulation
“deceit and seduction,” “devilish pact” evokes images of heaven and hell in
which a sexualised devil seduces critics into taking a bite of the rotten fruit
of commodification. It thus emerges that Ponzanesi’s “critical outsider, capa-
ble of perceiving [the cultural industry’s] deceit and seduction” can be read
as an idealised Jesus-figure who will clear the temple of literary and cultural
criticism by turning the tables on its “cultural brokers.”1 Thus ironically dis-
tancing herself from the autonomy/complicity binary, and also joining Sarah
Brouillette in rejecting Huggan’s deflection of “guilt” onto a generalised “global
reader” (Ponzanesi 45),2 it seems that Ponzanesi is aiming for a more straight-
down-the-line approach in which the critic is acknowledged as actively navi-
gating “the postcolonial cultural industry,” participating in “added value” (46)
production. If we pursue this strand of thought further—in contrast to Pon-
zanesi who swiftly turns to her main concern: an analysis of literature and
literary writers—we must pose the following questions: What is the interre-
lationship between postcolonial critique and commodification? Is it possible
that the autonomy/complicity binary, ironically conceded by Huggan and
Ponzanesi, points to a larger, unresolved, and in many ways now-crystallising
epistemological-cum-ideological struggle in the field, as critics are realising
that the programmatic notion of distance toward commodification and the
market is untenable? If the notion of such distance is becoming brittle, then
how does postcolonial critique incorporate commodification and the market
as a dimension of practice?
1 “Cultural brokers” is a term used by Huggan to paraphrase Kwame Anthony Appiah’s sugges-
tion that there is “a relatively small-scale, western-style, western-trained, group of writers
and thinkers who mediate the trade in cultural commodities of world capitalism at the pe-
riphery.” See Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic. Marketing the Margins, viii, and Appiah, “Is the
Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?”
2 Brouillette makes this succinct argument in Postcolonial Writers and the Global Literary
Marketplace, p. 17.
The Market as a Dimension of Practice 45
1 The Value of Commodification
At the beginning of such an investigation, it is necessary to inquire into com-

modification’s multiple discursive constructions, functions, and indeed values.
The term commodity, on which the much more recent concept of commodi-
fication is based,3 is defined by Karl Marx as something that is attributed ‘ex-
change value’ (Capital). This is a type of value that is not representative of a
thing’s inherent value, which would correspond to the amount of (physical)
labour spent in its production (‘labour-theory of value’). In immediate contrast
to value as produced by the natural, breathing body of humanity, commodities
are presupposed by Marx to be symptomatic of alienation and exploitation.4
Both Marx’s understanding of ‘commodity’ and his labour-theory of value are
thus built on the notion of naturalism, where authenticity is attributed to a val-
ue that reflects the investment of human bodies whereas alienation, artifice,
and fetishism5 are attributed to the idea of a value that arises in commerce.
Clearly, this position exhibits strong commonalities with the Romantics who
reacted, like Marx, with distaste toward industrialisation and the rise of tech-
nology (see Soper 29–30). For example, in their poetry and other writings,
both Dorothy and William Wordsworth spell out their desires for a nature and,
indeed, for a human condition unspoiled by economy and technology—an
‘original state’ of being (see e.g. Robinson 82).6 In their celebration of natu-
ral bodies, both Romantic poetry and Marx’s labour-theory of value represent
something of a continuation of the myth of the Garden of Eden, a space in
which natural bodies can roam uninhibited by the greed and lusts that have
long been attributed to commerce, including commodity fetishism.
The imaginative power of these conceptions, of capitalism and commerce
as forms of corruption that undermine and destroy (human) nature, remain
highly current. Both commodity and commodification are frequently posited
3 The first record of ‘commodification’ in the oed is from 1975. See Oxford English Dictionary
Online, “commodification.”
4 See e.g. the section “The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret” in Marx, Capital. Vol-
ume 1, pp. 163–177, and “Estranged Labor” in Marx, The Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts
of 1844.
5 See “The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret.”
6 These notions also come out in travel writing, such as in Dorothy Wordsworth’s writings
about a trip to Scotland. See Bohls, and Duncan, pp. 167–177. In trying to protect ‘nature,’
Wordsworth was also politically active, repeatedly writing letters to the Board of Trade and
making personal statements against the project of building a trainline in the Lake District.
See Hall, pp. 85–114. For commonalities between Wordsworth and Marx, and more generally
Wordsworth’s position toward what is now called ‘commodification,’ see Simpson.
46 Koegler
in an overt binary against nature, and this occurs not only in general pub-
lic discourse but also in Postcolonial Studies. A prominent example of the
former is the definition of commodification in the Oxford English Diction-
ary: “The action of turning something into, or treating something as, a (mere)
commodity; commercialization of an activity, etc., that is not by nature com-
mercial.” (“Commodification”; my emphasis). This definition contains three
intriguing aspects: First, “turning something into” sets up a binary distinction
between an original state and a transformed state, between being and becom-
ing, where a particular action or process is needed to produce the commodity
state. I will later ask whether this binary distinction holds. The second aspect
is a value judgement. The insertion of the qualifier “mere” indicates that, by
‘becoming’ a commodity or entering the commodity state, something is de-
graded and reduced in value. This logic is significant as it sets up the idea of
two different, competing frameworks of value: One is based on the notion of
an inherent or essential value; the other is based on the notion of an artificial,
de-authenticated value. Clearly, the former conception is presented as more
valuable than the latter. The third aspect is the nature/commerce binary con-
tained in the definition: Commodification means a “commercialization of
an activity, etc., that is not by nature commercial.” Not only does this bina-
ry imply that commodification ‘denaturalises’ but also, that ‘to commodify’
might be an action that is itself unnatural, and itself degrading. In this way,
superiority is located in the concept of an essential value (which is based on
the notion of an inherent goodness and natural qualities) whilst inferiority
is located in the concept of commodification (which is associated with com-
merce, corruption, and the perversely unnatural). As would be expected from
a classic essentialist definition, these two conceptions of value are presented
as mutually exclusive.
Whilst Ponzanesi’s concept of “the postcolonial cultural industry” and her
question of its “added value” (46)7 rather uniquely suggest that commodifica-
tion and commerce might indeed not be categorically corrupt and degrading,
these binary notions of value remain highly influential in postcolonial dis-
course. As Robert Young has prominently claimed:
Postcolonialism resists all forms of exploitation (environmental as well

as human) and all oppressive conditions that have been developed
solely for the interests of corporate capitalism. It challenges corporate
7 See my initial quote from her study The Postcolonial Cultural Industry: Icons, Markets,
Mythologies.
capitalism’s commodification of social relations and the doctrine of in-

dividualism that functions as the means through which this is achieved.
(Young Postcolonialism 113)
Here, postcolonialism is situated in direct opposition to capitalism and com-

modification, in a framework in which a personified “corporate capitalism”
‘commits’ the act of commodifying “social relations.” “Social relations” seem to
represent authentic and highly valuable ties between human beings which are
under direct threat from “the doctrine of individualism,” “doctrine” indicating
an artificial construct rather than a natural existence. Functioning as a marker
of something that is categorically negative, “corporate capitalism,” its deeds
and doctrines, are placed as postcolonialism’s categorical opponent and Other.
Young’s personification of ‘capitalism’ is individualising (the system ‘acts’ like
an individual), whilst it simultaneously turns a diverse multiplicity of lives,
practices, and organisations into one dehumanised, homogenous, and obscure
conglomerate. Finally, this is a naturalised construction and relation, as Young
takes the negative qualities of “corporate capitalism” and “commodification”
for granted—they are naturally negative—and they are thus entities to which
postcolonialism is equally naturally opposed. In sum, Young can be seen as de-
ploying ‘capitalism’ and ‘commodification’ as one might use ‘ideology’ in popu-
lar parlance, where calling something ‘ideology’ instantly discredits an idea or
practice without further examination. This is usually done from a position of
assumed epistemological superiority, whose artificiality ‘ideology’ effectively
conceals. In Young’s usage, ‘capitalism’ and ‘commodification’ obtain the same
discursive function: Based on a claim of self-evidence, the application of these
terms facilitates a blanket rejection whilst simultaneously producing a sense
of moral high ground. Thinking back to Ponzanesi’s initial consideration of
“added value” (46), it is clear that Young is effectively trying to generate value
for the idea of postcolonialism and those associated with it. Young thus en-
gages in the commodification of commodification, a practice in which the idea
of commodification is turned into a site of symbolic capital accumulation. In
this configuration, ‘commodification,’ though painted as inherently degrading,
acquires exchange value as it becomes Young’s vehicle of amassing symbolic
capital for “postcolonialism” and its critics—a case of supreme irony.
2 The Impact of Commodification
The concept of commodification thus frequently attains a double function,

in postcolonial discourse but also more broadly. Commodification serves not
48 Koegler
only as a signifier of particular practices, processes, or frameworks of value;

in its essentialised definition as something unnatural, corrupt, and degrad-
ing it also obtains a strategic function that serves distinction processes and
symbolic capital accumulation. As further scrutiny also reveals, these two
functions and their discursive powers are upheld by a range of Enlighten-
ment dichotomies. Considering a list of such dichotomies—subject/object,
mind/emotion, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, public/private, and
economic/non-economic—it becomes clear that it is in particular ‘econom-
ic/non-economic’ that doggedly persists in attempts at distanciation from
‘commodification.’ This is unexpected as many of the dichotomies that have
informed and complemented the dichotomy of ‘economic/non-economic,’
such as ‘public/private,’ ‘male/female,’ and ‘nature/culture,’ have long been
questioned. In other words, it seems that ‘commodification’ frequently
triggers distinction practices whose figurative designs draw direct links to
the past.
Like the negative and essentialised treatment of ‘economy’ itself, strategic
distanciation from economic motivations has a long history. It can be ob-
served even, or perhaps particularly, in contexts in which practice depends
very much on commerce, which is true not least of Young’s fairly highly com-
mercialised format Postcolonialism. A Very Short Introduction in which he
makes the statement quoted above. To also take Romanticism once more as
an example, when Romantic poetry emerged in celebration of ‘nature’ (not
economy), the very same Romantic poets jostled for both monetary and sym-
bolic capital in the emerging literary marketplace of the eighteenth centu-
ry. Here, ‘original genius’ was a high-impact brand narrative8 that facilitated
claims to intellectual property whilst simultaneously expressing a distance
from the economic realm.9 In other words, in rewarding notions of inspi-
ration and ‘nature,’ Romanticism’s discursive economy promoted figurative
distance from ‘the economic’ as a source of symbolic capital accumulation,
8 In Critical Branding. Postcolonial Studies and the Market, I define ‘brand narratives’ as pow-
erful narratives that are told of the self, one’s group, or others, and that function as inter-
ventions in what I call symbolic valuation regimes (performativities of valuation structured
by discursive conventions). Brand narratives reinforce and potentially also modify valuation
regimes, which will vary across different social and cultural contexts. Brand narratives are
often, though not always, condensed narratives that (strategically) reduce specific contents
to a series of symbolically powerful images.
9 As Brouillette has suggested, commercialism functioned as “a negative subtext for a variety
of romantic-era works.” Indeed, for Brouillette, “romantic-era literature is thought to have
been the first to express a systematic denial of the economic motivations for authorship.” See
Brouillette, pp. 104–107.
which translated into notions of authenticity and credibility and thus into
higher numbers of published volumes and monetary capital. This success is
indicative that at least some Romantic writers navigated ‘commodification’
and ‘commerce’ rather efficiently, not only expressing ‘natural’ inspiration
but also resonating with readers’ desires for an epistemology removed from
‘commerce.’
Both symbolic and monetary success remain frequent rewards of ‘commod-
ification’ whenever it is utilised to stress an epistemological and moral dis-
tance between those who wield the term and those things or people to which
it is applied. In the context of Postcolonial Studies, ‘economic/non-economic’
has been diversified into a more nuanced set of dichotomies, such as:
Commodified Humane/Natural
Corrupt Pristine/Pure
Determination Autonomy/Resistance
False consciousness Right consciousness
Capitalism/Commodification Postcolonialism
These dichotomies are frequently utilised to keep ‘the economic’ at arm’s

length, safeguarding the notion of critical autonomy even as both ‘commod-
ification’ and ‘critical autonomy’ become sites of commodification. Whilst
therefore practically implausible, it is also possible to see why this discursive
practice remains an appealing one. Not only symbolically profitable, it has also
been reassuring to think that critical distanciation is possible in the first place,
and the reason for this lies in postcolonial critique itself: ‘Capitalism’ and ‘com-
modification’ have so long been treated as absolute metaphors signifying an
essential monstrosity rather than concrete human practices, that distanciation
becomes a self-preserving move. The monstrosity needs to be kept in check;
it must either be excluded from the subject and become abject, or it must be
domesticated, both of which are attempts at control. These attempts, however,
are bound to fail. The relevant dichotomies have to be continually reinforced
in an effort to veil the actual omnipresence of commodification in discourse
and human practice, inside and outside of academia. I would therefore like
to suggest that attempts at situating ‘capitalism’ or ‘commodification’ outside
of academia, or outside of Postcolonial Studies, are primarily symptomatic of
a continuous haunting, as critics struggle to sustain an image of scholarship
whose foundation is questionable.10
10 See also my introduction to Critical Branding. Postcolonial Studies and the Market.
50 Koegler
There are several consequences of treating ‘capitalism’ and ‘commodifica-

tion’ as such absolute metaphors. First of all, any actual inquiry into scholars’
own entanglement in commodification or ‘the market’ (a term I prefer over
‘capitalism’), is discouraged. Identification with an abject monstrosity is some-
thing that few critics enjoy. It makes sense then that, where the relationship
of postcolonial critics and the market is discussed against all the odds, critics
such as Ponzanesi and Huggan find it necessary to employ irony. In the absence
of an overt rejection of ‘capitalism,’ and instead in the presence of acknowledg-
ment of critics’ own entanglement in “market forces” (Huggan 12), irony offers
a distanciation from the utterance in which this relationship is described. In
these discussions, then, irony functions as a mechanism that deflects some of
the implications of this acknowledgment. Therefore, whilst both Huggan and
Ponzanesi crucially render visibility to critics’ inextricable relationship with
commodification and the market, they also (if perhaps unintentionally) give
voice to the discomfort triggered by the uneasy idea of these crossovers and
their closer investigation.
A second consequence is the complication of interdisciplinary projects
between scholars active in the field of Postcolonial Studies and scholars
that are situated in fields that are more closely associated with the concept
of ‘economy,’ including Business Studies and Political Economy. In their es-
say “Managing Postcolonialism,” published in Anna Bernard et al.’s What
Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say, Mrinalini Greedharry and Pasi Ahonen
tackle this uneasy disciplinary relationship and make the case for intensify-
ing the cooperation between postcolonial critics and scholars from Organi-
sation and Management Studies. This, they suggest, will enrich postcoloni-
al critics’ understanding of their own positionality in the institutional and
organisational contexts of Postcolonial Studies that is increasingly market-
ised. In carving out their own positions, the authors register the following
concerns:
[I]‌t bears emphasizing again … that a turn to management and organiza-

tion perspectives is not a turn to managerialism or a backhanded way of
slipping the objectives of neo-liberal management of higher education
into humanities research. We emphasize this because our experience
presenting these arguments to various audiences in the humanities sug-
gests that humanities scholars persistently understand any discussion
of management and organization as inevitably aligned with the neo-lib-
eral discourse that informs the structural changes many of us experi-
ence on a daily basis in our institutional work lives. (greedharry and
ahonen 59)
Greedharry and Ahonen describe here their experience with Humanities au-
diences and the automatic assumptions that they encounter regarding their
disciplinary backgrounds (Ahonen is a Management scholar; Greedharry is in
Literary and Cultural Studies). These assumptions situate Management and
Organisation Studies as monoliths that are considered, if anything, as sources
of corruption for the Humanities and their ‘naturally’ more refined and more
ethical approaches. Aggravated by recent ‘structural changes’ in the university
landscape, scholarship from Business Schools is rejected as spurious, a reaction
which, if applied to literature, would mean that literature should be dismissed
in its entirety because books have been used for demagogic purposes. It is in-
deed astonishing that few scholars in Literary and Cultural Studies are aware
that Business Schools tend to harbour not only mainstream U.S. American Man-
agement approaches but also a range of heterodox fields that can range from
Critical Management Studies (who are already working with postcolonial theo-
ry) to Feminist and Islamic Economics. For the specific context of Postcolonial
Studies in which Greedharry and Ahonen are publishing their essay, the addi-
tional problem is that critics seem quite happy not only to sustain images of a
homogenously evil ‘capitalism’ or ‘commodification,’ but also the idea of corrupt
and homogenously ‘right-wing’ disciplines. At a Postcolonial Studies conference
in Birmingham a few years ago, I attended a session in which the presenter jok-
ingly asked: “Do you know any right-wing postcolonial critic? I don’t” which was
followed by a round of appreciative laughter. Management and Organisation
Studies would of course be understood as ‘right-wing’ and thus unfit for post-
colonialists, which has continually been Greedharry and Ahonen’s experience.
In an effort to refrain from calling such assumptions and reactions ‘ideolo-
gy,’ I will instead suggest that a deconstruction of the dichotomies listed above,
and indeed of the concept ‘capitalism,’ is much needed in Postcolonial Stud-
ies. ‘Capitalism’ continues to be used as the marker of a fetishized exotic, and
one that is exceptionally powerful: Not only does it situate entire groups, or-
ganisations, and practices as morally corrupt, unnatural, and driven by a false
consciousness, but it also continues to invite problematic assumptions about
people and their scholarly and/or moral integrity. In therefore trying to reach
beyond the framework of ‘capital,’ I will suggest in the following section a mod-
ified framework and terminology.
3 Commodification and the Economy of Discourse
To reach beyond the ‘naturalism’ of commodification/nature dichotomies,

it is necessary to think about how processes of valuation intersect with
52 Koegler
epistemology. This is why, in Critical Branding. Postcolonial Studies and the

Market, I develop Foucault’s concept of an “ ‘economy’ of discourses.” Fou-
cault’s usage of ‘economy’ remains vague, signalling that discourses’ “intrin-
sic technology, the necessities of their operation, the tactics they employ, the
effects of power which underlie them and which they transmit—this, and
not the system of representations is what determines the essential features
of what they have to say” (Foucault 68–69). Notable is that Foucault does not
clarify the status of the economic in his conceptualisation, and that by us-
ing single inverted commas (“ ‘economy’ ”) he marks ‘economy’ both as dis-
placed in his theory of discourse and, possibly, as having a metaphorical (rath-
er than properly theorised and directly applicable) function. Adaptations of
Foucault’s ‘discursive economy’ terminology have built on the metaphorical
dimension (speaking for example of “investments” in statements and their
“dividends”; see e.g. Campbell 7), but have remained similarly unspecific.11
In Critical Branding, I seek to shed new light on the role of economy (par-
ticularly branding and the market) in human practice in general and post-
colonial studies in particular, and conceptualise what I call ‘the market as a
dimension of practice.’ I go beyond figurative usages of ‘economy’ in discourse
theory, instead defining discourse as already imbued with valorisation/deval-
orisation. I suggest the term ‘valuation regimes’ for those discursive structures
that produce not only particular valorisations and devalorisations according
to specific discursive conventions, but also a “performativity of valorisation/
devalorisation,” i.e. valorisation/devalorisation as the foundation for a per-
formative market (Koegler 53). In this context, commodification becomes a
“social process, enabled through language” and “a discursive mechanism that
produces value judgments.” Ultimately, it is in and through commodification
and branding that statements, ideas, and identities; behaviours and emotions;
academic fields and ideologies; are produced—are rendered visible and sali-
ent—in the symbolic economy of discourse.
This understanding of the market as a dimension of practice also builds
on Arjun Appadurai’s concept of “commoditization”12 which he outlines in
11 Campbell writes: “Some statements and depictions come to have greater value than oth-
ers … For in a discursive economy, investments have been made in certain interpretations;
dividends can be drawn by those parties that have made the investments; representations
are taxed when they confront new and ambiguous circumstances; and participation in
the discursive economy is through social relations that embody an unequal distribution
of power” (7).
12 ‘Commodification,’ not ‘commoditisation,’ is emerging as the more commonly used
term, which is why I choose it. See for example the recent interdisciplinary branch of
Law and Culture Studies for theorisations of “commodification theory.” Carol M. Rose,
his classic essay “Commodities and the Politics of Value.”13 Appadurai rejects
what he perceives as an “overdrawn series of contrast” between “[g]‌ifts, and
the spirit of reciprocity, sociability, and spontaneity in which they are typi-
cally exchanged” and commodity exchange (11). He takes issue with dichoto-
mies such as “market exchange” vs. “reciprocity,” suggesting that they “parody
both poles and reduce human diversities artificially” (13), particularly given
that a long-term perspective frequently reveals not “disinterestedness” but a
“calculative dimension” in human practice (11, 13). Appadurai then establishes
a series of hypotheses: opening up Marx’s focus on commodities as products of
(human) production, he suggests that anything can take the “phase” of a com-
modity (6–13). Further, he repudiates the determinism of the Frankfurt School
by positing commodity exchange as an open-ended social practice, based on
a process of continuous (re-)creation and negotiation of meaning. Finally, he
moves beyond common perceptions of commoditisation as routed in Western
capitalism and positions commoditisation and commodity exchange as having
emerged in different cultural contexts (11–12).
While I have endorsed Appadurai’s deconstruction of essential binaries be-
tween, for example, the notion of ‘the market’ and the idea of ‘reciprocity,’ and
while I have also welcomed his decidedly diversifying approach, I have also
suggested that Appadurai’s hypotheses are too focussed on a commodifica-
tion of things (Koegler 55). Even where Appadurai focuses on how human-be-
ings are turned into commodities (he refers to women who become part of a
marriage transaction) (15), this is presented as an objectification of subjects.
By contrast, I have suggested that commodification functions at a much deep-
er level, structuring human sociality through (embodied) interactions and
transactions in symbolic circuits (Chapters 2, 49–79, & 5, 117–153). Differently
put, commodification goes hand in hand with epistemology. In performativ-
ities of valorisation and devalorisation, human interactions and transactions
arise not least as symbolic exchanges, triggered and/or policed by valuation
regimes. Thus producing embodied experiences, behaviours, and emotions;
social spaces and situations; ideas and concepts, commodification can neither
be limited to processes of objectification, nor does it apply only when there
is a perceivable “calculative dimension.” While it is true that people may en-
gage in commodification in overt and intentional ways (e.g. when promoting
themselves and/or their convictions; their backgrounds or academic fields),
“Afterword: Whither Commodification?” in, Rethinking Commodification: Cases and

Readings in Law and Culture, p. 403.
13 Again, see my study Critical Branding for a more fleshed-out discussion on which the
following argument is based.
54 Koegler
a “calculative dimension” implies a level of intentionality that is frequent-

ly absent from social interaction. In other words, as a discursive mechanism
and social practice, commodification is not always a consciously employed
strategy. However, whether conscious or not, the effects and outcomes of
commodification are necessarily diverse and potentially uneven. Whilst
there is of course room for negative repercussions, such as exploitation or
alienation, the effects of symbolic exchanges can also be positive where they
inspire increases in respect or trust, love or friendship, because reciprocal
valorisation—valorisation that is returned—strengthens social and emotion-
al bonds.
My understanding of commodification and the market as performative
challenges the dichotomies listed in the previous section to a considerable ex-
tent. It suggests that whether scholars are ‘conferencing,’ launching their ideas,
or trying to secure jobs, whether they consider themselves as individuals or as
parts of collectives, commodification plays an important part in realising pur-
suits, ranging from career goals to political goals and to moral claims. Young, in
the statement quoted above, seeks to valorise ‘postcolonialism’ by distancing it
(and by implication himself) from ‘capitalism’ and ‘commodification.’ He thus
seeks a profitable symbolic exchange to the advantage of ‘postcolonialism’ and
ultimately attempts to brand ‘postcolonialism’ as a crucial scholarly as well
as activist project. This has wider applicability: Regardless of specific goals or
motivations, successfully and at times strategically navigating the economy of
discourse, and engaging in commodification and self-commodification, are
necessities, both within and beyond Postcolonial Studies.
4 The Market as a Dimension of (Postcolonial) Practice
Taking up again Ponzanesi’s initial question—“Where do I position myself

…?” (46)—it is clear that academic scholarship and commodification are in-
timately bound up with one another. In academia, as in other areas of en-
gagement, valuation regimes produce value judgments, commodification, and
self-commodification, branding and self-branding, and as such structures and
strategies of empowerment and disempowerment. Postcolonial Studies can
squarely be placed in this framework of the market, not only because the field
thrives—as ultimately any successful political and scholarly project does—
through valuation practices, branding, and symbolic capital accumulation,
but also because it has functioned very successfully as “a revalorisation and
rebranding project, intervening in and countering colonial and neo-colonial
valuation regimes in which racial, cultural, and gender hierarchies have

moulded perceptions of others, producing them as others” (Koegler 56; em-
phasis in the original). Indeed, as I stress in Critical Branding, it is an historic
achievement that Postcolonial Studies has encouraged meta-reflection on and
resistance against (neo-)colonial regimes of valuation, calling into question
the legitimacy of these regimes as natural orders, and endeavouring to engi-
neer their collapse. These struggles have not been detached from valuation,
from commodification and branding, but have rested on these practices and
structures as central pillars of political strategy. They have not been conduct-
ed from a position that is (morally) superior to or autonomous from the mar-
ket, but through intimate negotiations of the market’s various productions,
normativities, and performativities—negotiations through which powerful
ideas must first of all emerge to make their mark in the symbolic economy
of discourse. Whilst Postcolonial Studies has frequently been critiqued and
questioned, a process through which it has grown and matured, the field has
also continually been turned, and very legitimately so, into a site of commod-
ification. Critics, Young in particular (see Young “Postcolonial Remains”), have
sought to valorise the field in meta-discursive debates and, given its historical
importance, for good reasons. In other words, Postcolonial Studies’ multiple
agendas have prospered, have found their pathways of publication and pro-
motion, with and through the market as a dimension of practice. This is a rela-
tionship made up of confluence and intimacy, rather than of essential differ-
ence, and this relationship is in great need not only of acknowledgement but
also critical interrogation. This is true of any field, but particularly for those
fields that advertise critical self-awareness and self-reflection as central to
their ethico-political foundations, something for which Postcolonial Studies
has often set the standard. In sum, my suggestion is to question the dichot-
omies, essentialisms, and ideological barriers that have been erected around
the idea of economy, and to engage critically with the market’s diverse prac-
tices and effects that proliferate in Postcolonial Studies and through which
Postcolonial Studies itself proliferates. After all, markets arise inside and not
outside of representation, and they are symptomatic of social relations be-
tween people. Social relations and commodification are not, as Young would
have us believe (Postcolonialism 113), mutually exclusive; neither is commodi-
fication inherently problematic. This means that we need to de-link the con-
cept of the market from both Marxism and a narrow sense of commerce, in
which commodification relates only to things, objectification, and alienation,
or indeed to institutions such as companies, corporations, or departments. It
means understanding the market as a dimension of practice.
56 Koegler
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C. Williams, New York UP, 2005, pp. 402–428.
Simpson, David. Wordsworth, Commodification, and Social Concern: The Poetics of Mo-
dernity. Cambridge UP, 2009.
Soper, Kate. What is Nature. Culture, Politics, and the Non-Human. 1995. Blackwell, 2004.
Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2003.
Young, Robert. “Postcolonial Remains.” New Literary History, vol. 43, no. 1, 2012, pp. 19–
42. Muse, muse.jhu.edu/article/477476. Accessed June 24, 2015.
pa rt 2
Ideology in Postcolonial Contexts
∵
c hapter 4
Haggling and Postcolonial Phonological Constructs

in Nigeria
Taiwo Soneye
1 Introduction
Haggling is an essential type of discourse which occurs in everyday life of the

Nigerian people and strongly impacts their linguistic climate (Alo and Soneye
44). However, phonological research of social situations such as haggling is
uncommon. Investigating the day-to-day language use in economically-com-
pelling situations such as haggling could enable a robust process of defining
postcolonial notions especially within the ambience of the new Englishes.
The purpose of this essay therefore is to assess the “legacy of connection”
(Said 282) between the bequeathed British English and the Nigerian indige-
nous languages, including Nigerian Pidgin. The research sets out to examine
issues on Nigerian English accent, the ideologies that hagglers express and
their deployment of multilingual resources in the construction of postcolo-
nial identities.
1.1 Haggling as Social Discourse

Haggling is a process of price formation through which both buyers and
sellers negotiate and eventually establish acceptable prices. It is the normal
method among the Yoruba, a constant cause of brawling in Igbo markets, and
a perpetrator of folk ethics ideology in Dahomey (Uchendu 37–39). Haggling
over prices of goods and services is an essential part of Nigerian life. It is an
age-long phenomenon in human societies that is increasingly assuming new
dimensions in English as a Second Language (esl) environments. Nigeria, by
composition, is multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic. Its market set-
tings are often very unique, with robust interactions among the indigenous
languages, the Nigerian Pidgin and the English language. Terence Frederick
Mitchell described the language of haggling as one “that expresses: thoughts,
emotions, conveys information, (and) influences behaviour in others” (165).
Researchers in different contexts have enunciated the discourse strategies
such as euphemism, cajoling, flattery, flirting, code-mixing, code-switching,
honorific, and face and politeness strategies often employed in haggling in
60 Soneye
multilingual settings (see Ayoola; Moseri; Alo and Soneye). But research has
paid very little attention to the relevance of accent in the process of buying
and selling.
Some authors have examined haggling from the economic, political and
sociological perspectives. These writers variously expressed the requisite (ver-
bal and non-verbal) skills required of the shrewd buyer such as thoroughly
examining goods and services, consulting with by-standers and surrogate buy-
ers or sellers, pretending to be king and wearing disdainful expressions while
examining wares (see Metraux; Underwood; Uchendu). Efurosibina Adegbija’s
work on language choice and use in Nigerian markets (Multilingualism) was
quite enriching. Despite this, studies on how hagglers in multilingual settings
like Nigeria employ phonological features such as accents to construct or ne-
gotiate identity are still scarce. This is the gap that the current study intends
to fill.
1.2 English and Postcolonial Identity Construction in Multi-ethnic

Nigerian Markets
In consonance with the notions of some scholars on postcolonialism, Nige-
rians perhaps are beginning to see issues of accents differently, with their
survival (interest) coming first. Robert Young observed that “postcolonialism
offers you a way of seeing things differently, a language and a politics in which
your interest comes first” (2). The emerging language phenomena, some of
which will be discussed in subsequent sections of this study, attest the no-
tions of Young, and John McLeod, about postcolonialism. According to the
latter, “there is no singular postcolonialism … postcolonialism can be pro-
ductively articulated in different ways … it can describe a way of thinking,
a mode of perception, an aesthetic practice …” (4). Several issues, especially,
economic and political, are beginning to impact the use of English accents in
Nigeria with emerging peculiarities that suggest a redefining of identity in a
postcolonial era.
Nigeria’s contact with the English language (English-based pidgin), began
in the 17th century with trading along its shores. Later, with the British con-
quest and colonisation, the language became the conquerors’ influential code
that Nigerians strove to speak. Ayo Bamgbose described English as the lan-
guage with “non-equal opportunity … discriminator … a minority language for
all practical purposes” (322). On the English language in Nigeria, Efurosibina
Adegbija said “it is the language of a powerful Nigerian elite” (15). At the time
of his writing, Nigerians made deliberate effort to equate the British accent. He
said further that “there is a love-hate attitude towards the English language in
Nigeria” (21). The author did not expatiate on this, but a reader could deduce
Haggling and Postcolonial Phonological Constructs in Nigeria 61
from subsequent chapters what the “love-hate attitude” means. For instance,
on haggling, Adegbija said:
Language solidarity at the market … is … the easiest strategy for obtaining

a seller’s mercy for the pocket … To speak the educated variety of Nige-
rian English in many markets … could often easily result in commercial
exploitation … English largely occupies the back seat in the Commercial
domain … to speak English … functions in a separatist role … which also
to many “market people,” implies being rich … English occupies a last
position as far as conveying or establishing ethnic solidarity through lan-
guage in the market goes … (Adegbija 80–82)
A lot has happened to the English language in Nigeria since its inception
via trade and colonialism. The colonial history of conglomerate Nigeria, her
multi-ethnic nature and the emerging globalisation effects have occasioned
discourses on identity (Oni et al.). The relationship between English and the
Nigerian indigenous languages across educational, ethnic, regional and cul-
tural strata has continued to elicit new discoveries after Adegbija’s observa-
tions, more than a decade ago. For instance, there has consistently been an
increase in the number of Nigerian children who, though not having gone be-
yond the shores of Nigeria, have English as their first language (L1) (see Son-
eye and Ayoola). This set of Nigerians (some of whom were interviewed for
this research) haggle over bus or taxi fares, cobblers’ fees and hair-do prices
to mention a few. Besides, among the Nigerian youths, Nigerian Pidgin rath-
er than their mother tongues, is fast becoming the language of socialisation,
especially with the growth of hip-hop music (see Akande) and stand-up com-
edies. Christine Ofulue described the steady influence of Nigerian Pidgin on
identity creation. She stated that: “Nigerian Pidgin … has slowly developed
into a variety that is an integral part of Nigerian socialisation. It participates
in the process of creating identity … Nigerian Pidgin has come to be used to
resolve identity conflicts by not identifying the user with any particular eth-
nic group” (123).
One of the reasons for the growth and acceptance of Nigerian Pidgin among
the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated etc. might be the
uniqueness of its accent. Language choice is crucial to socialisation but accent
seems much more crucial. Sara Abercrombie in Meagan Hoff’s study enunciat-
ed the strength of accent when she stated that “when we speak, we communi-
cate more than the sum of our words. Interlocutors give and interpret informa-
tion including ethnic and cultural affiliations through those first syllables and
sounds of an utterance” (1).
62 Soneye
Ethnicity and accent play pivotal roles in Nigeria’s economic domain, where
prices of goods and services are unendingly negotiated. The relationship be-
tween ethnicity and identity has been of interest in several studies (see Jen-
kins; Miller; Bartimole). William B. Gudykunst and Karen Schmidt described
phonological features as integral for listeners to be able to gather information
and categorise speakers. For Nigerians, accent and language choice are vital
tools for purchases. English is domiciled within several indigenous languages
in Nigeria. Some authors quoted that Nigerian indigenous languages are about
between 200 and 396 (Bamgbose), some speculated between 400 and 450 lan-
guages (Adegbija) and some 505 (Grimes and Grimes) with about 250 ethnic
groups. Little wonder that English in Nigeria is said by various scholars to have
been domesticated, indigenised, acculturated and nativised (see Gut; Jowitt;
Simo-Bobda). Interestingly though, no known linguistic study to date has sys-
tematically investigated or considered identity creation and its relationship
with language accents in Nigerian markets.
Today, what we now have as Nigeria is a conglomeration of several (ethnic)
groups with diverse cultural and linguistic orientations. Inya-A. Eteng described
“Nigeria as the brain child of British colonialism” (38–39). He quoted Rupert
Emerson as having concluded that Nigeria is “a notoriously precarious lumping
together of peoples of separate identities” (39). He also noted that there has
been a steady growth and consolidation of communal allegiances and sociocul-
tural identities among various ethnic groups in pursuit of competing material
values, since the 1950s. Language and in particular accent, have been integral to
the consolidation of these communal allegiances in pursuit of material gains.
The strong desire of several Nigerians within and immediately after coloni-
alism to speak English like the British colonisers, seems to have faded. One of
the reasons responsible for this might be the interference syndrome character-
istic of second language learners, that often occasion acculturation discussed
in Munzali Jibril’s “Regional Variation in Nigerian Spoken English” and Ayo
Banjo’s “Towards a Definition of Standard Nigerian Spoken English.” However,
the aspect that has been largely unresolved is the conscious attempt of Nigeri-
an speakers of English to decolonise their speech despite the several decades
of near-native English phonology in our classrooms. This spoken variety of
English that is in close contact with one’s ethnic and cultural affiliation is re-
garded by some as “degenerate” (Anchimbe and Anchimbe 13) but this descrip-
tion seems to be politically motivated. According to Karuvannur Puthanveettil
Mohanan: “Mimicking the accent of some other community or social class is a
symptom of the desire to be viewed as belonging to that community or social
class. The rejection of rp as the model in classrooms … is a symbolic rejection
of British colonialism” (112).
1.3 Research Questions

This study emphasises linguistic issues that fall within its purview and these
will be considered in subsequent sections. In particular, the study intends to
answer four main questions which are as follows:
(1) What connections exist between the bequeathed British English and the
Nigerian indigenous languages, including Nigerian Pidgin?
(2) What are the features that mark Nigerian English accent in hagglers’
rendition?
(3) What are the ideologies that hagglers express?
(4) How do hagglers’ deploy multilingual resources in the construction of
postcolonial identities?
2 Data and Research Methods
The primary data comprised an audio-recorded spoken corpus of 2,000 words

of negotiations among 34 buyers/sellers (12 spoken texts) in 3 markets in
3 states located in southwest Nigeria, namely Lagos, Ogun and Osun States.
One of the markets, by virtue of its location, services about 25,000 university
students and staff. Previous data and speech items of selected artisans such
as taxi drivers and their customers were also employed. Non-structured inter-
views were conducted with about 15 willing buyers and sellers (apart from the
initial 34) to elicit information on the choice of language and accent usage in
haggling. Participant observation and expository genre like personal testimo-
nials were also used. Some of the recordings were surreptitiously done to pre-
vent the truncation of interactants’ negotiations. The majority of the hagglers
have acquired at least secondary school education. Their ethnic orientations
include Igbo, Efik, Hausa, Edo, Igbira and Yoruba and their ages fall between
18 and 60. The conversations were annotated and analysed, using wasp ver-
sion 1.54; the 2013 model designed at University College London was adopted
for the comparison drawn between British and Nigerian pronunciations. The
study included both auditory and instrumental analyses.
3 Findings and Discussion on Findings
3.1 The British English Adverbial “Now” /nɑʊ/ in Nigerian Market

Discourse
Syllable prominence and unique accentuation of adverbials constituted pe-
culiar culture markers of Nigerian market discourse. The word now in British
64 Soneye
English is often regarded as a discourse marker. It is one of the eleven discourse

markers examined by Deborah Schiffrin, and Siobhan Chapman and Christo-
pher Routledge. Now in British English means “at the present time/moment” to
express command, request, or admonition or to introduce an important point
or indicate a transition (as of ideas). Its phonological features are that the pitch
rises then falls, [↗↘], with a vocalic element that is a closing diphthong /ɑʊ/.
“Now” in Nigerian English variety that is spoken by both the educated and the
non-educated Nigerians means much more than this, as exemplified in the ex-
cerpt (Text 6) below:
Text 6: (A buyer and a seller haggling over the price of a pleated skirt)
buyer: This pleated skirt here, how much is it?
seller: erm … just pay me one-five
buyer: Ha ha madam, why now, this skirt ke? Please take eight
hundred
seller: ha ha haba! That is too low now, I no fit sell am for 800, ha ha
customer why are you doing like this now
buyer: Madam now, a beg (Madam please, I beg) okay how about
like one thousand?
seller: A no see am buy like that, a beg give me one-three (I didn’t
buy at that price, I beg give me one thousand and three)
buyer: madam take one-two
seller: A no fit collect one-two my sister (I can’t sell at the price of
one thousand-two hundred naira)
buyer: E gba one-two now (accept one-thousand-two hundred naira,
please)
seller: my sister bring am one-three (My sister bring one thousand
and three hundred naira)
buyer: madam e joo now, one-two-fifty (Madam please accept one
thousand and two fifty naira)
In Text 6, above, now is used as a plea or an appeal, especially by the buyer to

entreat the seller to sell the goods. In all six cases, the pitch rises rather than
falls, even when it was not intended to be a question. In British English the
pitch rises and falls except when it acts as a question. Figure 4.1 shows the
percentages of usage and the extended meanings of now in Nigerian English.
The pitch height of now as an appeal is displayed in Figure 4.2 and Figure 4.3,
respectively. It is not likely that the hagglers’ use of now with a different mean-
ing is borne out of the presence of similar lexical items in their indigenous
languages. “Naa” in Yoruba represents a definite article, as in “omo naa” (the
child), and it has a level tone. Its acoustic measurement does not resemble that
of now as used by the hagglers. “Na” is very common in pidgin and its meaning
is often dependent on the sentential or grammatical context. This word, Na, is
highlighted in Texts 1, 11 and 12 below:
Text 1:
seller 1: Na your word make hungry, dey come o (It is your word that
made me hungry, begin to come)
buyer 1: Obilo na my paddy (spoke loudly to the person on phone)
(Obilo, is my friend) Obilo na your paddy dey here! (Obilo, it
is your friend that is here)
Text 11:
seller 2: Na eight-five, last (eight thousand five hundred naira is the
last price)
buyer: This woman na so you be? (This woman, is this how you are?)
seller 1: Na dollar make me be like that (It is the dollar that has made
me be like that)
Text 12:
seller 1: This one na two-two-X (This size is double extra-large)
buyer: But all of them na slim fit (But all of them are slim fit)
It suffices to say that there is yet neither an acoustic nor syntactic evidence
that suggests that na in Nigerian Pidgin influences the pronunciation or sty-
listic usage of “now” in Nigerian spoken English. The empirical and spectro-
graphic analyses (Figure 4.1 & Figure 4.2) reveal the stylistic usage of now in
Nigerian market discourse. The meaning of the English word now as used in
market discourse has extended meanings. For instance, in 2 (17%) out of the 12
recorded texts now signalled shock, anxiety or frustration. Only within 3 texts
(25%) was now used strictly in the British sense, while in 7 (58%) out of the 12
texts recorded, hagglers used now as an entreaty, a plea or an appeal.
3.2 Pidginising English in the Nigerian Markets

Some hagglers speak in tones that repudiate the fixed binary theories which
stabilise meaning and representation (Hall 397) of “the poor and the rich” or
the educated and the uneducated. This happens often when Nigerians are an-
gry or excited. Five interviewees on the current study were of the opinion that
the ‘daintiness’ of English, especially the British English, cannot sometimes
bear the weight or import of discourse like Nigerian Pidgin (see section on pt
2 of this study). The personal testimonials (henceforth pt) vividly attest the
existence of this phenomenon.
66 Soneye
f igure 4.1
“Now” in the phonology of haggling in Nigeria
f igure 4.2
Nigerians’ intonation of now as a plea or an appeal (fall-rise-↖↗)
f igure 4.3
British intonation of now (Falling tune╲)
Personal testimonial (pt) 1:

(A university student haggling with a taxi driver over taxi fare in Edo state,
Nigeria)
commuter (hailing): Taxi /taksi/ Ogborikoko? (Daintily with a
rising tone – Indicative of a question and re-
taining /k/ in the pronunciation of taxi like a
native English speaker)
taxi driver: 500 naira
commuter: Wetin? (What?) Ogborikoko? (Pronounced
with level tone and syllable isochronous,
as is characteristic of Nigerian indigenous
languages)
taxi driver: Oh-gbo-ri-kho-kho na 500 naira, but O-gbo-
ri-ko-ko na 30 naira (The driver mimicked a
native English user’s pronunciation in the
first and pronounced the second with promi-
nence on every syllable the way the indigenes
of the town pronounce the name of the place)
Certain (menial) jobs, such as trading and driving taxis, have been categorised
by some Nigerians as belonging to the uneducated or the less educated, while
the white-collar jobs are believed to be undertaken by the educated. Recent
happenings in Nigeria corroborated by this empirical analysis have proven
that university graduates in Nigeria have taken to commercial activities such
as trading (in not-so-elegant-shops and environments) just to survive. They
seem to be angry with those, who to them, seem to pose that they do not un-
derstand or speak English very fluently, especially with a near-native accent.
Text 10 below was recorded in Lagos, in the area known as Balogun-Idumota,
the heart of economic transactions. In this area, sometimes, one can find as
many as four sellers in one shop and a minimum of two, usually the Igbo peo-
ple, hence the designation of such as Seller 1 and Seller 2) as exemplified in
Text 10 below:
Text 10: (2 Igbo clothes sellers/2 Yoruba buyers)

buyer 1: You can hear Yoruba (You understand Yoruba?)
seller 1: I am not deaf, I can hear
buyer 2: small time we go dey see orisirisi
(Soon, we will begin to see strange behaviours)
buyer 1: naa only skirt I want (It is only skirt that I want)
seller 1: sebi you wan take am abi? (Do you really want to take it?)
68 Soneye
buyer 1: I’m talking of a matching colour

seller 1: Talking to Seller 2 (in Igbo)
buyer 2: Your wife dey try as you dey tight face (Your wife must have
endurance as you are frowning)
seller 1: A beg na money A need (please, it is money that I need)
In Text 10 above, there were two buyers indicative of the long-standing practice
of buyers often requiring escorts to commercial areas. The reason for this might
be because they are not skilful in pricing and they also speak the educated va-
riety of English. Even when such buyers attempt to “decolonise” their English,
sellers still see them as the rich and the educated to be exploited. Buyer 1 in
Text 10, attempted speaking the Nigerian Pidgin in order to develop a rapport
with the sellers but seller 1, perhaps, wanted to prove that he was also educated
with the collocation of “hear” with “deaf” (I am not deaf, I can hear). Buyer 1
could not sustain the interaction in pidgin, so relapsed into educated Nigerian
English, “I’m talking of a matching colour” (especially in the accent that made
the two sellers to immediately use a coded message in Igbo); they seemed to
have said “this one is rich, she is Oyinbo” (well-read). Utterances indicative of
the need for survival, money and not a flowery language like English, are high-
lighted. Seller 1 said to the buyers “A beg na money A need” (Please, it is money
that I need).
The pronunciation of “money” in the final utterance of Seller 1 in Text 10
above, is neither an equivalent of the British English pronunciation of “money”
/mʌnɪ/ nor like the Nigerian English variety /mɔːni/. It was the Nigerian Pidgin
pronunciation. The difference is not just the absence of the vocalic element
/ʌ/ which is also not present in the Nigerian indigenous languages’ systems or
the inability of educated Nigerians to equate the stress isochronous nature of
the word. The pronunciation of the word money in pidgin signifies a conscious
accentuation that is indicative of the seriousness of the subject matter. The
pronunciation of such words has assumed secondary connotation in Nigeria.
Some of these are explained further in pt 2:
pt: 2 (two hagglers arguing over a damaged or fake product, pre-

viously purchased from the seller’s shop and the buyer now
requesting a replacement)
buyer: Please give me a better (comparative) one (spoken in educat-
ed Nigerian English- native like accent)
seller: Oga, na the one wey dey be dat (Sir, that is the available one)
buyer: (angrily) Then bring my money
seller: (despitefully) Money? Money? (Hissed)
buyer: You no be better man! (You are not a good man), (buyer left
in anger)
The first “better” in line 1 of pt 2 was pronounced the near-native British

way by the buyer; with prominence only on the first syllable. The buyer also
pronounced “money” in a similar way. However, the buyer’s final utterance
(in Nigerian Pidgin) and pronunciation of the word “better” revealed the
import of his infuriation. Both syllables of the bi-syllabic word [bett-er] in
“You no be better man” were pronounced with prominence, but the second
syllable, louder [be-ta] and rising instead of falling, as in British English.
Surprisingly, 60% of the buyers fall within the youth category of between
age 20 and 30 and 50% of that population supported the view that the stress
pattern of English disyllabic words as in better/ˈbetə/, matter/ˈmætə/ and
sister/ˈsɪstə/ are unable to bear the weight of our economic space (business
transactions). Better and matter in the hagglers’ utterances that could be re-
garded as Nigerian Decolonised Pronunciation (ndp) are explained via wasp
in Figure 4.4, below:
In this sense, the pitch height is significant and the vocalic elements elon-
gated with prominence on both syllables but louder pitch on the second sylla-
ble instead of the stressed/unstressed pattern of the British better with prom-
inence only on the initial syllable. Twenty-eight out the thirty-four hagglers,
that is, 82% of the entire participants used English in their transactions. But
they did not sound British. Two more features are also worth discussing in this
study. These are hagglers’ use of declarative tone instead of interrogative tone
and the preponderant use of interjections which are likely to be exclusively
Nigerian.
f igure 4.4
Better in Nigerian Pidgin Accent (Not necessarily comparative) “You no be better
man” means you are not a good man
70 Soneye
3.3 Hagglers’ Yes/No Questions (Rising Pitch in British English but

Falling or Declarative Tone in Nigerian English)
In this section, the highlighted utterances were the interrogatives which the
hagglers used as declaratives. In British English certain interrogatives end on a
rising tune [↗], rather than on a falling [↘] tune. In Nigerian Pidgin however,
interrogatives can be produced with a level or falling tone, without a rise in the
final tune as in “Se you don give am the money?” (Have you given him the mon-
ey?). This feature has wider implication for meaning in Nigerian discourse.
Nicholas Asher and Brian Reese opined that “aspects of phonology relevant to
interpretation include final tune and nuclear pitch accent” (5).
Text 1: ( negotiations among 4 interactants – 2 Igbo clothes sellers and 2

Yoruba buyers)
buyer 1: Do you have round neck? (Seller presents goods)
buyer 1: Is this the only one you have?
Text 2: (Grocery shop: Hausa seller/Yoruba buyer)

seller: Is not too much? Walahi is too much. All this one for
three-fifty?
buyer: You are putting it on scale?
Text 7: ( Two hagglers- a Yoruba suits seller and a Yoruba buyer)

seller: Which one sir? Italian or Dubai?
buyer: How much is Italian or Dubai?
Text 11: (Two Igbo suit sellers/ one Yoruba buyer)

buyer: Is this blue or black?
Below in Figure 4.5 is the pitch track for the question “Is this blue or black?” The
question was asked during negotiations (Text 11) by a Yoruba suit buyer with
the final tune on “black” falling instead of rising.
Also, in Figure 4.6 below is the pitch track for the pitch accent of a Yoruba
meat buyer who was asking the meat seller if he would weigh the meat for which
they had already negotiated a price. If it were in standard British English, the
final tune on scale would be a rise instead of a fall. There is absolutely no room
or reason for sounding educated or worse still, British, in the Nigerian market.
3.4 Phoneme Deletion: an Attempt to Pidginise or Indigenise English?

There is a preponderant use of a non-native English variety that bears little or
no semblance with the educated variety of Ayo Banjo (“Towards a Definition”)
f igure 4.5
Is this blue or black? (Text 11)
f igure 4.6
You are putting it on scale? (Text 2)
even by the educated hagglers. Some of these features have been said to exist
in Nigerian English variety. One of them is the deletion of the final consonant
especially in triple coda consonant cluster words (see Gut; Bobda; Soneye and
Ayoola). In the excerpts below (Texts 5, 10 and 11), the highlighted word “wan”
is pidgin, which means “want” in English.
Text 5: (A Hausa Barbecue operator/Yoruba buyer)

buyer: A wan suya, a wan suya, give me tasting naa (I want suya,
I want suya, give me some to have a taste)
seller: Which one? How much you wan pay (How much do you want
to pay?)
buyer: This one?
seller: How much you wan pay (How much do you want to pay?)
72 Soneye
buyer: tell me now, how much you wan make I pay? (Tell me please,
how much you want me to pay) A go tell you how much a get.
(I will tell you how much I can afford to pay)
Text 10: 2 Igbo clothes sellers/2 Yoruba buyers

buyer 1: na only skirt a wan (I want only skirt)
seller 1: sebi you wan take am abi? (You really want to have it, isn’t it?)
Text 11:
buyer: En na de money for welcome you wan take now!
(Yes, it is the money for the welcome that you want to take now)
Another observed phenomenon as regards phoneme deletion which charac-

terises the discourse of haggling is the reduction of certain diphthongs. It was
observed during an interview session with some of the hagglers that they have
excellent ability to articulate the diphthong /ɑɪ/ but would not, as that would
give their pidgin expression an educated English flavour. Hagglers, generally, do
not think it is expedient to pronounce “I” as /ɑɪ/. They rather would say /ɑ/ as
we have in Text 1 and Text 2. However, in Text 4, the hagglers spoke English rath-
er than pidgin and were able to pronounce a diphthongal “I” /ɑɪ/. All through
the speeches as exemplified in Texts 1 and 2, below “I” /ɑɪ/ was consistently
pronounced as /a/, when hagglers used pidgin. However, when hagglers used
Nigerian English, as exemplified in Text 4 “I” was pronounced as a closing diph-
thong rather than as a monophthong. The diphthong /ɑɪ/, seems the easiest
of the eight English diphthongs for Nigerian English speakers to articulate. It
is common in Hausa language and not complex for Igbo and Yoruba people to
articulate. However, any attempt to glide in pidgin will make the accent sound
English rather than indigenous. This does not seem desirable to hagglers!
Text 1:
seller 2: Se make A call Obilo (Should I call Obilo?)
Text 2:
seller 1:
A come from Kaduna to make money o. A no get wife, you fit
give me? (I came from Kaduna to prosper, I don’t have a wife,
and could you give me one?)
Text 4:

buyer: 200 naira per one; if I want to buy about fifty of that sachet, I
hope there will be discount
seller: Yes, I can give you discount, fifty will be two thousand, five
hundred naira so far as you are buying fifty, I can sell it at the
rate of hem … two-thousand two-hundred
buyer: Thank you ma. I will contact you later
seller: Okay you are welcome
There were other phoneme deletions in words like vex /veks/ and six, /ѕɪκѕ/
in which the voiceless velar plosive /k/ was not pronounced, also expensive /
ekspentsɪʋ/ pronounced as /espensɪf/. Such deletions provide Nigerian Pidgin
with its flavour and ease of articulation.
Results from the interviews revealed that some of the hagglers had acquired
the educated variety but chose to speak differently as a persuasive strategy and
identity negotiation gimmick. This might be for the purpose of ensuring rea-
sonable bargaining and ethnic neutralisation. This perspective was corrobo-
rated by Mungai Mutonya, who discussed the attitude of the L2 speakers of
English in “Language Attitudes towards African Englishes.” The author wrote
that “in Nigeria … speakers who like to speak like L1 speakers of English are
considered snobbish” (7). In a separate non-structured interview I conducted
with 15 buyers (all university undergraduates) and all students taking courses
in my department, 13 of them, that is 87%, are of the opinion that a near-native
accent is to be totally avoided to prevent exploitation; 6 of them, that is 40%,
said those who speak a L1-like variety in the market are “fake.” Four of them,
about 27%, said English was their L1 and Yoruba and Edo their L2. Out of the
fifteen persons, 10, that is 67%, prefer and actually speak Nigerian Pidgin flu-
ently in other to shield their identity as belonging to the learned group. Four
of them were of the opinion that it is easier to express oneself very freely in
pidgin instead of bothering about grammaticality or dainty pronunciations.
Surprisingly, some of the pidgin words used during haggling such as “bros”
(Text 3) and “anti” /ant/ were once in the English language lexicon. Bros used
to be the plural form of brother (soul brother), often used informally as a term
of address in 1938.1 The deletion of /h/ in “how are you” [a.wa ju] for [hau ə ju]
was also observed.
3.5 Exclamations and Interjections that are Exclusively Nigerian and

African
The infiltration of certain expressions into formal discourses is significant.
Prominent among these expressions are interjections and exclamations. The
1 See Merriam-Webster 2006 for details.

74 Soneye
presence of such expressions wades off any ambivalence in recognising the

variety of English we speak as Nigerian English or African English. Examples
of interjections that belong to native English origin are Alas! Ouch! Phooey!
Ugh! Oh! What! These expressions, even though indicative of emotional out-
burst, do not have equal loudness, pitch height and prominence in discourse
like the ones observed in this study. Interjections such as ha ha, ah! Haba!
(Text 1), Kai! (Text 2) and Chai! (Text 6) indigenised the discourse as being
African.
4 Conclusion
This study has considered the connection between the bequeathed British
English and the Nigerian indigenous languages, including Nigerian Pidgin. The
research has also examined features of the Nigerian English accent and the at-
tendant ideologies that hagglers express. The observations from this research
are that Nigerian Spoken English in haggling has very little connection with its
roots, which is the bequeathed British English. Although English is very much
in the domain of haggling in Nigeria, it is the English that is garnished with
the rhythm of its indigenous languages and saturated with the beats of home-
grown pidgin as seen in the texts on haggling. The relic of the greatest legacy of
the British to Nigeria, rp pronunciation, is no longer in the “phonology class-
es,” as Olusegun Victor Awonusi observed in “The Social Vicissitudes of rp …”
stating that rp is more than 100 years obsolete (2–5) and it is itself evolving.
There seems to be a widely acceptable ideology that non-native speakers
that strive to sound English stress their pockets and compromise their identity.
Sounding English was once admirable but is no longer desirable. Even if it is
desirable, it is no longer attainable because the town (the markets) rejects the
English language accent that the gown (citadels of higher learning) strives to
acquire. Yet the town (market) is the practical and consistent context for the
application of the text (language).
Appendix
Text 1: ( 4 interactants: 2 Igbo clothes’ sellers and 2 Yoruba buyers)

buyer 1: Do you have round neck?
seller 2: Is it three- in-one or singlet?
buyer 1: How many? Seller 2: Is it three-in-one or what?
seller 2: one-thousand five hundred naira

buyer 1: Oye ko gba one thousand now, yes (You ought to accept, one
thousand naira, please, yes)
buyer 2: like underwear round-neck, like the Police, en (yes) now
seller 2: This is three-in-one, a sey one-five (This is the three-in-one
singlet, I said, one thousand and five hundred naira)
buyer 1: Ah ah now (Really! Please!)
buyer 1 & buyer 2: How much is the last price? (What is the last
price?)
seller 2: Okay bring one-four (okay pay one thousand and four hun-
dred naira)
buyer 1: Assuming Obilo is around, I would give him nine hundred
naira
seller 2: Se make a call Obilo (Should I call Obilo?)
seller 2: Uncle, ah eh! Ebi ti pa mi o (Uncle ah! Eh! I am hungry)
buyer 1: Why? Go eat now, (Then, go and eat) (“now” signalled frustra-
tion or shock in this context, not a plea) ah ah! Sister you de
eat? (Sister, you are eating?)
seller 1: na your word make hungry dey come o (It is your words that
are making me hungry)
buyer 1: En! (Yes) there is food at your side
seller 2: How much do you want to pay?
buyer 1: We have nine hundred with us. Is this the only one you have?
So sister let’s talk now … (So sister, let us talk please) Seller
2: unless you want single
buyer 1: (to Seller 1) Oga o-o ye ko gba one thousand and Obilo naa
my Paddy
(Master, you ought to accept one thousand and Obilo is my
friend)
seller 1: (speaking with seller elsewhere- spoke in Igbo)
buyer 1: eleyi make sense (This one is okay) (speaking to Buyer 2)
buyer 1: What of this one? (to Buyer 2)
seller 1: one-five
buyer 2: Ah ah everything na one-five (What? Everything is one thou-
sand five hundred naira)
seller 2: (Spoke Igbo with someone on Phone)
buyer 1: Obilo na my paddy (Obilo is my friend) (spoke loudly to the
person on phone) Obilo na your paddy dey here! (Obilo it is
your friend that is here)
76 Soneye
buyer 1: (to Seller 2) You talk Ibo now, I hear 500, you don talk lie, sebi
you understand Yoruba? O gbo Yoruba (You spoke Igbo now,
I heard 500, you have lied, you understand Yoruba.)
seller 2: A no hear (I don’t understand)
buyer 1: You hear, (You understand) na Yoruba guys we be, (We are
Yoruba boys) Give me my change, en-en this girl na Yoruba,
we go come back come marry You (This girl is Yoruba, we are
coming back to marry you)
seller 1: A don marry, a be the wife (I am married, I am the wife of Obilo)
buyer 1: En-en (Really?) When Obilo come tell am say he fuck up, he
did something like dis e no tell me, (When Obilo returns tell
him he messed up to have gotten married without inviting
us) okay, bye-bye o
Text 2: (4 interactants: 1 Hausa grocery seller with S2 & 2 Yoruba buyers)
buyer: Sebi you don say make we pay 350 now? (Haven’t you asked
us to pay three hundred and fifty naira, now?)
seller: Walahi! Mama no do this (Swearing in Hausa language)
(Mama, don’t do this)
buyer: We have already say we go pay three-fifty, now (We have said
we would pay three hundred and fifty naira, please)
seller: all this one for three-fifty?
buyer: Is not too much Seller: Is not too much? Walahi is too much
buyer: If you take us as customer we go come back o, (seller weigh-
ing the grocery) Aha! You still want to weigh it, (laughs) you
are putting it on scale?
seller: Kai customer, gasikiya customer, walahi customer you don
langaress me (What! Customer, have mercy, customer)
buyer: We don …? (not understanding the seller’s expression)
seller: Walahi! You don langaress me (Indeed, you have cheated me)
buyer: We don’t like you? (Not understanding the expression “langa-
ress,” sought clarification)
seller: You don..; langaress me (You have cheated me)
buyer: We don …? (still seeking clarification)
seller: langaress me (Cheated me) (A new expression known only to
the seller)
buyer: We don langaress you? Which one be langaress?
seller: You don langaress me as in, you don cheat me
buyer: We don langaress you (all laughed heartily) Na wa o, so you
no get garlic?
(So you don’t have garlic?)
seller: Walahi, garlic don finish (Indeed, garlic is exhausted)

buyer: So, when will you get, today is Saturday (so will it be available
today or tomorrow?)
seller: Tomorrow be Sunday, may be Monday (Tomorrow is Sunday,
perhaps on Monday)
buyer: How much is our money now? Three-fifty? (How much are
we paying now? Three-fifty?)
seller: Walahi, your mouth sabi (Indeed, you are eloquent)
buyer: (to Seller 2) you no even talk, oya give us change (You have
been quiet, alright, let’s have our change)
buyer 2: im be cashier (He is the cashier)
seller: (spoke Yoruba to the other seller)
buyer: So you understand Yoruba Seller: A understand, die-die-(I
understand, very little) you know die die Alhaji for Abuja (Do
you know little-by-little Alhaji in Abuja?)
buyer: That be a place for Abuja? You don get wife?
seller: A come from Kaduna to make money o, A no get wife, you fit
give me (I came from Kaduna to prosper, I don’t have a wife;
could you give me one?)
buyer: Shine your eyes now! (Be vigilant please) (Laughed heartily)
okay bye-bye
Text 3: (2 interactants: seller and buyer (both Yoruba))

buyer: E rora sir (Greetings Sir) Seller: Bros take am for 7 (talking to
another buyer)
seller: e ku se (Well done), (to substantive buyer) e ku African Re-
public (Greetings in African Republic)
buyer: e lo ni extension box (How much is this extension box)
seller: Nine-fifty Buyer: A a fifty naira tan. Mi o ni to one thousand
lowo o, kile le se fun mi? (What? A whole fifty naira? I don’t
have up to one thousand naira on me, what assistance can
you render to me?)
seller: Bros, oja won ni jare (Brother, it is just that products are
expensive)
buyer: But se original ni sa (but I hope it is original)
seller: a o wa pa, (Ah! It is excellent)
buyer: se ko gba six-fifty (What about paying six-hundred and fifty
naira?)
seller: Ko gba eight-ninety, mo ni ke mu ni nine hundred (I won’t sell
it for eight hundred and ninety naira, I have asked you to take
it for nine hundred naira)
78 Soneye
buyer: E lo ni hot plate yen, se olori spring, ni abi olori flat (How
much is that hot plate? Does it have spring or is it flat?)
seller: Gbogbo nkan ti won, won import oja mo (all things have be-
come expensive, no more importation of goods)
Text 4: (2 interactants: Yoruba buyer/Yoruba seller)

buyer: Good morning ma
seller: Good morning, welcome
buyer: How much is your chin-chin?
seller: We have two type-the one in sachet and the one in bottle
buyer: How much is the one in sachet and the one in bottle?
seller: 200 per one
buyer: 200 naira per one; if I want to buy about fifty of that sachet,
I hope there will be discount
seller: Yes, I can give you discount, fifty will be two thousand, five
hundred naira so far as you are buying fifty I can sell it for the
rate of hem … two-thousand, two-hundred
buyer: thank you ma. I will contact you later
seller: okay you are welcome
Text 5: (2 interactants: A Hausa barbecue operator/Yoruba buyer)

buyer: Mallam how you dey o (Mallam, how are you?)
seller: Am fine o (I’m fine)
buyer: A wan suya, a wan suya, give me tasting naa (I want suya
(2ce), let me taste it, first)
buyer: Ah this one sweet o, Mallam, how much you go sell all this one
for me, (Oh! This is tasty, how much will you sell all of this?)
seller: Which one, how much you wan pay? (How much do you
want to pay?)
buyer: This one Seller: How much you wan pay? (How much do you
want to pay?)
buyer: Tell me now, how much you wan make a pay? A go tell you
how much a get; How much is this one last, make a dey go joo
(Tell me, please, how much you want me to pay. I will tell you
what I can afford to pay, and I will leave, please)
buyer: Mallam se you know say you even vex me self (Mallam, are
you aware that you vexed me?)
seller: A no sey you don vex that day (I know that you were angry
that day)
buyer: A vex o (I was angry, yes)
seller: A go collect two-fifty from you (I will sell for you at two hun-
dred and fifty naira)
buyer: Me a no get two-fifty o (For me, I don’t have two hundred and
fifty naira)
seller: How much you get? Se you go buy 200 naira (What can you
afford? Will you buy for two hundred naira?)
buyer: Se e no gree hundred naira ni (Won’t you agree to one hun-
dred naira?)
seller: My daddy no de sell cow (My father does not sell cows)
buyer: (laughs) Your daddy no dey sell cow? Mallam a dey come
make I reach SUB first. (Your father doesn’t sell cows? Mal-
lam, I will come back later, I want to visit SUB)
Text 6: (2 interactants: Yoruba dress-seller/Yoruba buyer)

buyer: Good afternoon madam
seller: Good afternoon o
buyer: How are you? Seller: am fine (I’m fine)
buyer: This pleated skirt here, how much is it?
seller: Erm … just pay me one five
buyer: Ha ha madam, why now, this skirt ke, please take 800 hun-
dred (What! Madam, why the high price, for this skirt? Please
accept eight hundred naira)
seller: ha, ha, haba! That is too low now, I no fit sell am for 800, ha
ha customer (What! Really! That is too low please, I can’t sell
it for eight hundred naira. What! Customer) Why are you do-
ing like this now? (Why are you pricing like this, now?) (The
“now” being an expression of feigned shock)
buyer: Madam now, a beg. Okay how about like 1,000 (Madam,
please I beg. Okay, how about paying within the range of one
thousand naira?)
seller: A no see am buy like that, a beg give me one-three (I didn’t
buy at that price)
buyer: madam take one-two
seller: A no fit collect one-two my sister (I can’t accept one thousand
two hundred my sister) Buyer: E gba one-two, now (Accept
one thousand two hundred, please)
seller: my sister bring am one-three (My sister bring one thousand
and three hundred)
buyer: madam e joo now, one-two-fifty (Madam please, please, one
thousand, two hundred and fifty)
80 Soneye
seller: Ha-ha, ha-ha customer you wicked o, e fe koba mi ni (Really!

Customer you are indeed wicked, do you want to get me into
trouble?)
buyer: chai madam, e sa yaari si one-three yii sha (What! You are
bent on selling at one thousand, three hundred)
seller: bring am, a beg (Bring it, I plead)
buyer: Okay
Text 7: ( 2 interactants: Yoruba suit seller/Yoruba buyer)

buyer: good morning madam
seller: Good morning sir
buyer: I want to buy suit
seller: Which one sir? Italian or Dubai?
buyer: How much is Italian or Dubai?
seller: Italian suit is N20, 000 and Dubai is N18, 000
buyer: Eh! (What!) It is costly
seller: Are you hot in this country? (Have you just arrived in this
country?)
Text 8: 2 interactants: Shoes and bags’ Yoruba seller/Yoruba buyer

buyer: E kasan ma se aje wa, mo f e ra sanda ni (Good afternoon Ma,
hope business is fine? I want to buy sandals)
seller: kini size yin? (What is your size?)
buyer: (she picks a pair of shoes)
seller: shoe yen o le size yin (that pair of shoes cannot size you)
buyer: kilo de (Why?)
seller: cut shoe ni (it is a cut shoe)
buyer: e je kin wo sandal yen, e jo e bami mu (let me try that pair of
sandals, please help me to bring it)
seller: O match e, kilo de te koko lo ra bata ke to ra purse, purse o
ni soro bata gan lo ye ke wa (It matches, why don’t you buy
shoes before buying a purse, it isn’t difficult to buy shoes)
buyer: o ya e je ka soro price bayi (Okay now, let us talk about the
price)
seller: three-five ni
buyer: Ha mummy!
seller: e wo shoe ti e n bere yen ko din ni 15,000 (that shoe you are
pricing isn’t less than 15,000
buyer: E mi naa ti ri sugbon e ni ko le size mi (I have seen it but you
said it won’t size me)
seller: quality lo matter, three-five ni eyi te mu (quality is the most

important factor, the one you have picked is three thousand
five hundred naira)
buyer: kini price bata yi last (what is the last price of this shoe)
seller: E lo si complex ni be yen, won ma ta fun yin ni owo to won
buyer: mo ti p emo de fe bayin ra
seller: nkan ti won, (things are now expensive) dollar ti won (dollar
is now expensive)
buyer: mummy ko si owo ni ta (Mummy, there is no money in town)
seller: e se mu oni two-five (Why don’t you take the one for two
thousand five hundred naira?)
buyer: rara (No)
seller: dollar won (dollar is expensive)
buyer: Mo ma waun ra nkan lowo yin (I patronise your business
regularly)
seller: oya e mu (okay, take it)
buyer: o da e se (Okay thanks)
Text 9: 3 interactants: Hausa onion seller/Yoruba buyers

buyer: This one – how much?
seller: 25- four hundred, 25 this one, three hundred
buyer: Chai Malam! (What Malam!) 25 this 400, 25 this one 300 Eh,
ah ah malam, Alubarika, 500 (appealing to the Islamic be-
lieve by the word “Alubarika”)
seller: last 700 (The last price is seven hundred naira)
buyer: Alubasa ti won ni? (Onions are now expensive?)
buyer 2: ko won, alabosa ti de (It is not expensive, onions are now
available in the market)
seller: one-two, one-two
buyer: Malam wetin now? Malam, why this at this time? (Now, express-
ing shock) Malam alubarika, you no know customer? (Appeal-
ing to the seller’s religious belief) (You do not know a customer)
seller: O ya pay, one three, a know customer (Okay pay one thou-
sand three, I know you are a customer)
Text 10: 4 interactants: 2 Igbo clothes sellers/2 Yoruba buyers

buyer 1: You can hear Yoruba (You understand Yoruba) Seller 1: I am
not deaf, I can hear
buyer 2: small time, we go dey see orisirisi (Soon, we would witness
different attitudes)
82 Soneye
buyer 1: na only skirt a want (I want only skirt)

seller 1: sebi you wan take am abi? (You really want to have it, isn’t it?)
buyer 1: I’m talking of matching colour
seller 1: Talking to S2 (surrogate seller in Igbo)
buyer 2: Your wife dey try as you dey tight face (Your wife must be
patient as you keep frowning and unfriendly)
seller 1: If you look my eyes na im bi say you go dey do mistake, I dis-
agree with you? (If you consider my facial expression you will
be mistaking. Did I disagree with you?) You no know wetin
dey my mind (You do not know what is on my mind)
buyer 2: A dey give your wife kudos (I commend your wife)
seller 1: A beg na money I need (Please, it is money I need)
buyer 1: As you don put your face for up na im be say make I dey run
(Since you are frowning, it means I should take my leave)
Text 11: 3 interactants: Igbo suit sellers/one Yoruba buyer

buyer: Is this blue or black?
seller 2: This is black skirt
buyer: Is black, black and white
seller 2: Do you want navy blue?
buyer: Yes navy blue is fine
seller 2: This one is navy blue, is it for you?
buyer: Is for me (It is for me)
seller 2: Is forty-four already (It is size forty-four that you requested)
buyer: Ah ah? So you know my size before you bring it, (What! So
you knew my size before you brought it)
seller 2: Is by the grace of God
buyer: You be prophetess? (Are you a prophetess?) What is em your
wholesale price?
seller 2: Wholesale price? … eight-five last
buyer: Eh! Abasi mbo! En wetin? What is the matter? (What! God
have mercy) (in Efik language). What! For what?
seller 2: Se me? (Me?)
buyer: Why e dey expensive like that? (Why is that expensive?) We
no dey for Christmas now? (This is not the Christmas time,
please). What is the last price?
seller 2: Eight-five
buyer: six-five wholesale price, a no buy one (I am not buying only one)
seller 1: There are some for six-five, some eight-five
buyer: What is the last?
seller 1: Eight-five
buyer: E be like you no wan sell (It seems you do not want to sell)
seller 2: Ah ah no be me welcome you? (What! Isn’t it I that welcomed
you?)
buyer: En na de money for welcome you wan take now! (Yes, It is the
money for the welcome that you want to take now)
seller 2: Na eight-five last
buyer: Ah what is the matter now? What! (What is the matter,
please?) Hun this woman na so you be? Oh! This Woman is
this how you are? (Addressing seller 1)
seller 1: Naa dollar make me be like that O (It is dollar (Foreign ex-
change) that made me to be the way I am, now) (Buyer pays)
seller 1: Thank you ma!
Text 12: 4 interactants: 2 Igbo shirts sellers/2 Yoruba buyers

seller 1: This one na two-two-X (double extra-large), if you want am
100 pieces … (This is a double extra-large size, if you need 100
pieces …)
buyer 1: But all of them naa slim fit, naa baba shirt A dey look for
(They are all slim fit, I want the ones for older people)
seller 1: But i big well well, (But it is very big) make I loose am make
you see, if I oose am sef you go even say make I give you ex-
tra-large (Let me unfold it and if I do, you would want to buy
single extra-large sizes)
buyer 1: No, the person wey that person tall reach e no dey inside this
shop and as he tall na im he huge, so e dey difficult for me to
get (No, the person, for whom the purchase is being made, is
very huge, no such persons in your shop, presently)
seller 1: Mummy, see, A no..
buyer 1: The one wey A buy, e no fit button the … (The ones I bought
earlier, were very difficult to button up)
seller 2: The person wey that person reach is not … (The person for
whom you are purchasing the shirt is as huge as …)
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c hapter 5
Standard Language Ideology Revisited—the Case

of Newscasters in St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Eva Canan Hänsel
1 Introduction1
As James Milroy argues, a variety of a language becomes a standard variety

first and foremost because of ideological beliefs that speakers hold about this
variety, such as the conviction that the standard variety is inherently more cor-
rect than other varieties and that it should be maintained against corruption.
All ideological positions about the standard variety are fundamentally based
on the supposed existence of this variety and taken together they form the
standard language ideology (Milroy 133–134, 139). These group-based ideolo-
gies in turn shape individual speakers’ attitudes to different language varieties.
In addition to the ideological basis for the emergence and preservation of the
norm, Milroy also identifies a structural characteristic of a standard variety
that goes hand in hand with the standard language ideology, which is invari-
ance of form: “standardization merely requires that one, and only one, of them
[different variants] should be accepted” (133) so that the outcome of this impo-
sition of uniformity is an ideally homogeneous standard. While in actual prac-
tice, especially in spoken language, this ideal is never achieved, codification
and other language maintenance practices, such as the reliance on authorities,
may slow down the process of change and encourage the continued pursuit of
uniformity.
During Britain’s rule, Standard British English served as the fairly homoge-
neous norm in the British colonies. Independence and a growing sense of a
national identity, however, have led to an increased awareness of a national
standard of English in many large postcolonial countries, where efforts of cod-
ification are made and an emphasis is put on homogeneity (Schneider Post-
colonial English). For the anglophone Caribbean, many studies have reported
1 This contribution was written while the author was employed in the project “Translocality
in the Anglophone Caribbean: Regional, Global and Transnational Aspects in Standards of
English” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Founda-
tion) - DE 2324/1-1; principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Dagmar Deuber.
Standard Language Ideology Revisited 87
first evidence for national standards that are emerging in the two largest island
countries by population size,2 namely in Jamaica (e.g., Mair; Irvine “A Good
Command”) and Trinidad and Tobago (e.g., Deuber and Leung; Leung). These
studies are based on the description of spoken and written English in formal
situations by educated speakers as well as on the analysis of attitudes. While
they take the nation state as their point of departure and detect national
endonormative tendencies, many of them also raise the question of wheth-
er the situation of standards in the Caribbean is developing toward national
standards or rather toward a Caribbean Standard English, which might have
(national) sub-varieties as was proposed by Richard Allsopp. Moreover, many
studies highlight the powerful role of foreign norm-providing varieties com-
peting with and shaping local standards, particularly American English, which
is said to have become a more important contact variety than British English
today (Mair 58). Generally, American English currently seems to have a con-
siderable effect on usage (e.g., Bruckmaier and Hackert), while British English
is still more popular in attitudes toward Standard English (e.g., Westphal 327).
So far, Standard English in the smaller anglophone Caribbean countries
that have around 100,000 inhabitants or less has hardly been considered in
linguistic research. Despite being sovereign nations, these states face “the en-
during problem of small states, their chronic dependency” (Grenade 183–184)
due to their size and resource limitations and thus they rely more than larger
countries on cooperation. Moreover, they are constantly exposed to a multi-
tude of foreign varieties of English through tourism and the media. In view of
these circumstances, it appears that preconditions for the emergence of na-
tional standards are not met as easily as in larger countries that possess greater
self-reliance in fields such as the media and education and where influences of
multiple foreign norm-providing varieties are comparably lower. Dagmar Deu-
ber and Eva Canan Hänsel’s corpus study of American influence on Caribbe-
an newspaper English confirms this hypothesis as it found similar tendencies
among the newspaper data of three small Eastern Caribbean states (Dominica,
St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and that of Jamaica
in terms of grammar and lexicon. However, it also detected that the written
standard varieties in the small anglophone Caribbean states were much more
susceptible to American influence with regard to spelling than the Jamaican
one, which lead to a high degree of heterogeneity in spelling (see Deuber and
Hänsel). This result also indicates that influence of foreign norm-providing
2 With 2.95 million inhabitants, Jamaica is the largest anglophone Caribbean island country,
followed by Trinidad and Tobago with a population of 1.22 million. (Central Intelligence
Agency).
88 Hänsel
varieties seems to be even stronger in the small anglophone Caribbean coun-

tries than in the large ones (Baker and Pedersen 72).
The aim of the present study is to shed a first light on spoken Standard
English in the context of one of the small Caribbean countries by focusing on
newscaster accents in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (svg). svg is an island
chain in the south of the Eastern Caribbean. With about 103,000 inhabitants
and a total landmass of 389 km2, svg is one of the very small independent
countries of the Eastern Caribbean (Central Intelligence Agency). As is typi-
cal of the anglophone Caribbean, English based Creole varieties (Vincentian
Creole, Bequia Creole)3 exist side-by-side with Standard English and there is
a measure of variation in between these two poles (Prescod A Grammatical
Description 21). Standard English is the official language in svg and it is main-
ly acquired in the education context, while the Creoles, which are popularly
often considered to be a broken form of English, are the varieties of everyday
communication. In recent years, the Creole varieties of svg have received con-
siderable attention in the research literature, most notably in Paula Prescod’s
edited volume on Language Issues in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. While
most research concentrates on syntax and morphology, first descriptions of
the sound inventories of the Creole varieties of St. Vincent and Bequia have
been provided by Paula Prescod (A Grammatical Description 40–62) and An-
drew Partridge, respectively. To date, there has been no description of the pro-
nunciation of Standard English in svg. Prescod emphasizes that Creole has
been gaining prestige and that it has been entering contexts that formally re-
quired the use of Standard English (A Grammatical Description 21). Neverthe-
less, Creole continues not to be accepted in certain contexts.
Newscasting is one of these contexts that are a stronghold of the standard
variety in the Caribbean (e.g., Westphal 317). It is important to bear in mind
that newscasts are only one domain of Standard English and that language use
in other domains such as the education context may differ (Deuber and Leung
310–311). However, it is instructive to analyze standard accents in newscasts,
as “in many countries, the language of broadcast news is regarded as the em-
bodiment of standard speech” (Bell 29). The accents of newscasters, therefore,
are seen as a point of reference for English in formal contexts by others in the
linguistic community.
This study takes Milroy’s definition of a standard variety as a starting
point for the investigation of spoken Standard English in newscasting in
3 Vincentian Creole is spoken on St. Vincent, with almost 99,000 inhabitants the largest island
of svg, and Bequia Creole on Bequia, with about 5,000 inhabitants the second largest island
of the country.
svg. It addresses the following two guiding research questions: (1) Do news-

casters in svg use a fairly homogeneous standard accent? (2) Do the news-
casters (and/or their tv and radio stations and audiences) strive for a fairly
homogeneous standard accent? If so, for which one? As the first question
focuses on usage and the second question concentrates on attitudes, both
the structural and the ideological properties that are characteristic of a
standard variety are considered. Methodologically, the structural compo-
nent is approached by means of an auditory accent analysis of the accents
of seven newscasters who read the news on the radio and on television in
svg. A quantitative analysis of the realizations of ten pronunciation varia-
bles sheds light on the degree of homogeneity of Standard English in this
context. Moreover, it illuminates the possible influence of American Eng-
lish and the usage of Caribbean variants. As individual attitudes toward lan-
guage are affected by collective ideological positions, attitude research can
be used as “one set of methodological options for studying language ideol-
ogies” (Garrett 35). Therefore, the ideological component of Standard Eng-
lish in Vincentian newscasts is approached through telephone interviews
that were conducted with five of the seven newscasters. This direct method
of attitude elicitation with overt questions that ask for rather “conceptual”
notions of accents is used to portray language-ideological structures that
are present in the community of newscasters in svg (Coupland and Bishop
85). In the following, both research questions are addressed individually in
consecutive sections.
2 Accent Analysis
2.1 Data
The data for the accent analysis was compiled from recordings of news-
casts from three Vincentian broadcast stations: a tv station, a partly govern-
ment-funded radio station, and a private radio station. The news programs
on these channels all cater to the same audience and all speakers who read
the news on these channels were included in the data. Background informa-
tion on the seven newscasters is summarized in Table 5.1 below. Recordings
of the newscasts were made between January and May 2014; however, one
of the tv newscasts dates back to November 2013. The radio newscasts were
recorded live via internet stream and the tv newscasts were recorded from
the video-sharing website YouTube (www.youtube.com). Each recording is
between six to eight minutes in length, which amounts to approximately 1,000
word tokens per newscaster.
90 Hänsel
table 5.1 Background information on the newscasters
Speaker tv/Radio station Age Gender
1f radio (partly government-funded) 50 female

2m tv 50–59 male
3f radio (partly government-funded) 30–39 female
4f tv 40–49 female
5m tv 30–39 male
6m radio (private) 23 male
7f radio (private) 20–29 female
2.2 Method
The recordings were transcribed orthographically and all words except prop-
er names, place names, and most function words, were coded for selected
consonantal and vocalic variables.4 The vocalic variables are represented as
John C. Wells’ lexical sets. Only those consonantal and vocalic variables were
considered for the analysis that have differing realizations in British English
(Received Pronunciation, rp), American English (General American, GenAm),
Vincentian Creole, and other Caribbean varieties. Of these, nine high-frequen-
cy variables that occurred at least 20 times per speaker were chosen for the
analysis in order to allow for a quantitative treatment of the data.5 The conso-
nantal variables are intervocalic (t), postvocalic (r), voiced word-initial (th-),
and word final (-ing). The vowels that are analyzed belong to the lot, face,
goat, nurse, and strut lexical sets. Additionally, although less frequent, the
bath variable was included in the analysis, because it is typical of American
English in contrast to Caribbean varieties.
The variables were grouped into those that have variants characteristic of
American English and those that have distinctive Caribbean realizations.6
4 Only those function words that contained voiced (th-) were considered in the analysis.
5 Overall, for each speaker there were only few tokens belonging to the mouth and down
lexical sets as well as tokens that have voiceless (th-), which is why these three variables that
have distinctive Caribbean pronunciations (mouth: [ɔʊ]; down: [ʌŋ]/[ɒŋ]; voiceless (th-):
[t]‌) were not included in the analysis. Consonant cluster reduction/retention was also not
included in the analysis as the reduction of word final /t/ and /d/ preceded by an obstruent
also appears in metropolitan varieties of English, including bbc English (See Deterding).
6 British variants were not regarded separately in this study. As British English was the variety
that was transplanted to the Caribbean in colonial times and can be expected to have served
as the norm during the stable colonial period, it is difficult to decide whether a pronunciation
table 5.2 Overview of the variables analyzed and their American and Caribbean variants as well as
alternative variants
(1) variables with typical American variants (2) variables with typical Caribbean
variants
variable American vs. alternative variable Caribbean vs. alternative

variant variant(s) variant variant(s)
intervocalic (t) [t̬] (flapped) vs. [t]‌ face [eː] vs. [eɪ]
postvocalic (r) [r]‌ (rhotic) vs. [ø] goat [oː] vs. [oʊ]/[əʊ]
bath [æ] vs. [ɑː]/[a]‌ voiced (th-) [d]‌ vs. [ð]
lot [ɑː] vs. [ɒ] strut [ɔ] vs. [ʌ]
nurse [ɔː] vs. [ɜː]
(-ing) [ɪn] vs. [ɪŋ]
The Caribbean realizations are typical of various Caribbean Creoles but have
also been described to be a possible variant in the standard accents of English
in Jamaica and/or in Trinidad and Tobago (see Devonish and Harry; Youssef
and James). Therefore, although the variants appear in many Creole varieties,
the use of these variants cannot be equated with using Creole variants. How-
ever, it is likely that some variants are more accepted in the standard than
others.
In the auditory analysis, for each variable, the author of this article decid-
ed whether a newscaster used the American or Caribbean variant or whether
they opted for an alternative variant. Table 5.2 displays the American and Car-
ibbean as well as the alternative variants for each variable.
As the accent analysis relied on auditory judgments, an inter-rater agree-
ment test and an intra-rater reliability test were carried out in order to check
for consistency of perception. In the inter-rater agreement test, about ten per-
cent of each recording were listened to and analyzed independently by anoth-
er researcher, trained in discriminating Caribbean accent features. Overall, the
two analyses agreed in the perception of 85 percent of all analyzed tokens. In
a separate session, the author of this study analyzed the same sample again in
order to confirm that the perception was stable at different points of time. The
first and the second analysis agreed in 91 percent of all cases. As agreement
is an instance of adherence to the British standard or the usual realization of the vowel in a
Caribbean standard whose sound inventory has to date not been described.
92 Hänsel
was above 80 percent in both tests, reliability of perception can be assumed

(Clopper 190).
2.3 Results
2.3.1 Variables with Typical American Variants
Among the variables that were analyzed, there were four with a variant proto-
typically associated with American English. These variants are the realization
of /r/ in postvocalic position, flapped /t/ in intervocalic position before un-
stressed vowels, as well as the realizations of the lot vowel as [ɑː] and of the
bath vowel as [æ].7 While all of these variants are typical of American English
and throughout this article will be called ‘American variants,’ it cannot be as-
sumed that the use of these variants is actually a result of American influence
as some of the variants are shared with other varieties. Accordingly, only a high
degree of co-occurrence of all of these variants in one accent might be consid-
ered indicative of an orientation toward American norms.
In the Caribbean, full rhoticity is found in Barbados, while semi-rhoticity
is characteristic of Guyana (Wells 570). Jamaican English is also semi-rhotic,
while Jamaican Creole is non-rhotic (see Rosenfelder). The varieties of the
Eastern Caribbean, including Vincentian Creole and Trinidadian English and
Trinidadian Creole, have been described as /r/-less (Aceto 294; Prescod A
Grammatical Description 40; Youssef and James 330). Flapped /t/s are gener-
ally not characteristic of the Caribbean but have been described for the Ba-
hamas (Schneider “Synopsis” 393) and variably for the Turks Islands (Aceto
300). The vowel in words of the bath set is usually realized as the open front
vowel [a]‌in Caribbean varieties, including in the Creoles of svg (Prescod A
Grammatical Description 49; Patridge 132) and the Englishes of Trinidad and
Tobago (Youssef and James 328) and Jamaica (Devonish and Harry 267). In
Tobagonian Creole, however, it coincides with the rp variant [ɑː] (Youssef
and James 331). Words of the lot set have different realizations in the Car-
ibbean, ranging from [ɔ > ʌ > ɒ] in English in Trinidad and Tobago, and [ɑ]
in Tobagonian Creole (Youssef and James 328), over [ɔ] in Jamaican Creole
(Devonish and Harry 267), to [ɑ] and [ɒ] in Barbados (Blake 316). Prescod
transcribes words of the lot set in Vincentian Creole with [a] (A Grammati-
cal Description 42).
For all four variables, mean percentages of realization of the American
variant were calculated, which are displayed in Table 5.3. Overall, American
7 Today, the vowel in words of the trap set also differs between GenAm and rp, where it is
realized as [æ] and as [a]‌, respectively. However, it has not been included in the analysis as
the American variant [æ] is shared with traditional rp (Upton 239–241).
table 5.3 Mean percentages of realization of American variants
variable: American variant mean percentage of realization of the

American variant and standard deviation
postvocalic (r): [r]‌(rhotic) 14.1 % (sd=27.7)

lot: [ɑː] 14.1 % (sd=20.5)
intervocalic (t): [t̬] (flapped) 12.7 % (sd=16.1)
bath: [æ] 11.1 % (sd=20.7)
f igure 5.1
Rates of realizations of prototypical American variants
variants appeared very infrequently in the data. The standard deviation indi-
cates that the American variants were not used to the same degree by the sev-
en newscasters.
Figure 5.1 provides an overview of how frequently the variants that are as-
sociated with American English were used by the seven newscasters, who are
roughly grouped by age with speakers 1f and 2m being the oldest speakers and
speakers 6m and 7f being the youngest. Generally, the diagram does not dis-
play a uniform picture. Different American variants were used to different de-
grees by the different speakers.
The least number of American variants was found in the accent of speaker
1f. She did not use any American variants, except for one rhotic pronunciation.
Speaker 7f, in contrast, had rhotic pronunciations in 77 percent of all possi-
ble instances. However, all other American variants hardly ever appeared in
her accent. In the accents of speakers 2m, 3f, and 4f, American pronunciations
94 Hänsel
occurred very infrequently. American variants were more numerous in speaker

5m’s accent. However, the use of American realizations was confined main-
ly to the use of rhotic pronunciations (in 50 percent of all instances) and to
the realization of bath as [æ] (in 56 percent of all instances). Thus, only two
American variants appeared in his accent. All four American variants co-oc-
curred in speaker 6m’s accent, who used the American realization of the four
variables in 20 to 58 percent of all possible instances. The co-occurrence of all
four American variants might indicate that speaker 5m is at least partly orient-
ed toward an American norm.
2.3.2 Variables with Typical Caribbean Variants

Six variables that have distinctive Caribbean variants were chosen for the anal-
ysis: word-initial voiced th stopping, monophthong realizations in the face
and goat lexical sets, a back and rounded vowel [ɔ(ː)] in words of the strut
and nurse sets, and the realization of word-final (-ing) as [ɪn].
Voiced th stopping, i.e. the realization of the rp and GenAm interdental
fricative [ð] as the stop [d]‌, is a pronunciation that is found all over the an-
glophone Caribbean and that is the usual pronunciation in Caribbean Creoles
(Schneider “Synopsis” 394). Variation between the voiced interdental fricative
and the stop realization has been reported for English in Trinidad and Tobago
and Jamaica, where the stop realization is not stigmatized in formal contexts
(Youssef and James 328; Irvine “Contrast and Convergence” 15).
While diphthongal realizations in words of the face and goat sets as [eɪ]
and [əʊ]/[oʊ], respectively, are the usual realizations in rp and GenAm (Wells
141, 146), in the Caribbean, these realizations are very rare. In many Creole vari-
eties of the Eastern Caribbean, the vowel in words of the face and goat sets
are pronounced as the half-close front monophthong [eː], and as the half-close
back monophthong [oː], respectively. An exception is Jamaican Creole, which
has down-gliding diphthongs in words of the face and goat lexical sets ([ie]
and [uo]) (Devonish and Harry 260). However, the monophthong realization
is the norm in Jamaican English as well as in English in Trinidad and Tobago
(Devonish and Harry 267; Youssef and James 328). The face vowel in Vincen-
tian Creole and Bequia Creole has been described as slightly diphthongized,
i.e. as [eː] with a minimal upglide (Prescod A Grammatical Description 43, 48;
Partridge 138).
rp and GenAm correspond substantially in the realization of the vowels
in the strut and nurse lexical sets. In the strut set, both use [ʌ], a “rela-
tively short, half-open or slightly opener, centralized-back or central, unround-
ed vocoid” (Wells 132). The vowel in words of the nurse set is the long un-
rounded mid-central vowel [ɜː] that is usually r-colored or followed by /r/ in
the American variety (137). In many Caribbean Creoles, however, the vowels in
both lexical sets are pronounced with a rather back and rounded vowel close
to the position of [ɔ]. In Vincentian Creole, too, the vowels in the strut and
nurse sets are produced at a central-back position (Prescod A Grammatical
Description 43; 48). Such a pronunciation of the strut vowel is common also
in Jamaican English, while it is not strongly associated with English in Trini-
dad and Tobago, where the strut vowel corresponds with rp [ʌ] (Deuber 14).
The back and rounded pronunciation of the vowel in the nurse set is rare in
English in both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (Devonish and Harry 267;
Youssef and James 328). Leung reports that the back and rounded realization
of the vowel in the nurse set is highly stigmatized in Trinidadian English (49).
The alveolar realization of (-ing) as [ɪn] in unstressed word-final syllables
is a typical feature of Caribbean Creoles. This pronunciation is not restricted
to the Caribbean and found in many varieties of English around the world in
casual speech; in rp and GenAm, however, it is pronounced as [ɪŋ], which is
why it qualifies for an inclusion as a Caribbean variant. Youssef and James de-
fine (-ing) as a variable with “little social or stylistic stability” (330) thus not
explicitly including or excluding it from the standard variety.
For all variables, mean percentages of realization of the Caribbean variant
were calculated (see Table 5.4). Figures 5.2 and 5.3 show the percentages of re-
alization of the Caribbean variants. Figure 5.2 comprises those variables whose
percentages of realization of the respective Caribbean variants were above the
median (goat, face, and voiced word-initial (th-)) and Figure 5.3 encompass-
es those variables whose percentages of realization of the Caribbean variants
were below the median (strut, word-final (-ing) and nurse).
table 5.4 Mean percentages of realization of Caribbean variants
variable: Caribbean variant mean percentage of realization of the

Caribbean variant and standard deviation
goat: [oː] 61.6 % (sd = 30.8)

face: [eː] 51.7 % (sd = 32.1)
voiced word-initial (th-): [d]‌ 36.4 % (sd = 28.5)
strut: [ɔ] 21.1 % (sd = 13.8)
(-ing): [ɪn] 14.7 % (sd = 17.2)
nurse: [ɔː] 5.1 % (sd = 9.0)
median = 21.5
96 Hänsel
f igure 5.2
Rates of monophthong realizations of the vowel in words of the goat and face
sets as well as rates of word-initial voiced th stopping
f igure 5.3
Rates of back and rounded realizations of the vowel in words of the strut and
nurse sets as well as rates of the realization of word-final (-ing) as [ɪn]
Overall, Caribbean pronunciations appear much more frequently than

American ones. The monophthong realizations in words of the goat and
face sets in particular are widely used in Vincentian newscasts.8 So are stop
realizations of voiced word-initial (th-), which are on the whole less frequent
8 Considering that the Creole varieties of svg have a slightly upgliding vowel in words of the
face set, the number of face diphthongs in the present sample is surprisingly low even
though the author of this article classified all face vowels that had only a slight upglide as
the diphthong [eɪ]. Future research should clarify on the status of the face vowel by means
of an acoustic analysis.
but still a prominent feature of the newscaster accents in the sample. While
monophthongs in the face and goat sets are usually realized to similar de-
grees by each individual newscaster, the degree of use of th stopping tends not
to correlate with the use of face and goat monophthongs. The realization of
the strut vowel as [ɔ] is overall less frequent but is still used in 15–46 percent
of all cases by six of the newscasters. The realization of (-ing) as [ɪn] is quite
rare and [ɔː] in words of the nurse lexical set is hardly ever used except by
newscaster 6m. It is remarkable that those features that were described as be-
ing the norm (face and goat monophthongs) or generally accepted (voiced
th stopping) in Standard English in Trinidad and Tobago and in Jamaica are
also used to a high degree in the Grenadian newscasts. The realization of
strut as [ɔ], which is a possible variant of Jamaican English but is uncommon
in English in Trinidad and Tobago and the realization of (-ing) as [ɪn], which
was neither associated with the standard nor with the Creole in Trinidad and
Tobago, appear less often. The pronunciation of words of the nurse set with
[ɔː], which is highly stigmatized in Trinidadian English, hardly ever occurs in
the data. In this respect, it appears that the accents of Vincentian newscasters
align with Standard English in the larger Caribbean countries.
A comparison of the individual newscaster accents reveals that the accents
are also not homogeneous with regard to Caribbean features. Speaker 5m used
the fewest Caribbean variants. He did not produce any monophthongs in the
face set nor did he display any of the Caribbean pronunciations displayed
in Figure 5.3. The highest number of Caribbean realizations was found in the
accent of speaker 7f, who consistently used face and goat monophthongs
and voiced th stopping and who also used the Caribbean strut variant in
almost half of all possible instances. Newscaster 6m’s accent was character-
ized by a rather low incidence of face and goat monophthongs and a quite
high degree of voiced th stopping. The reverse is true for speaker 1f, who used
monophthongs in words of the face and goat sets in about half of all cas-
es but hardly ever produced stop realizations of voiced interdental fricatives.
Generally, Caribbean features were used to different degrees by the different
newscasters.
2.3.3 A Uniform Accent Among Newscasters in svg?

Overall, there was a high degree of variation between the accents of the seven
newscasters. Two accents clearly stood out. Newscaster 7f’s accent was char-
acterized by a high incidence of Caribbean pronunciations paired with a high
degree of rhotic pronunciations. Speaker 5m’s accent comprised very few Car-
ibbean variants and combined pronunciations that are typically associated
with British and American English accents, thus forming a foreign-influenced
98 Hänsel
accent that does not adhere to one specific foreign model. An orientation to-
ward American norms can be suspected for speaker 6m, in whose accent all
four American variants appeared to a considerable degree. In contrast, almost
no American-associated variant was found in 1f’s accent. Although both 6m’s
and 1f’s accents included Caribbean pronunciation features, their inclusion re-
vealed further differences between the two accents as 6m tended to produce
th stopping, while 1f used monophthong realizations in the face and goat
sets. The accents of the other three newscasters, 2m, 3f, and 4f, differed mainly
in the frequencies of realization of a variant; the inventory of employed pro-
nunciations was largely the same for all three speakers.
It is remarkable that the analysis uncovered a substantial degree of het-
erogeneity between the accents of the seven newscasters based on only ten
pronunciation variables. An inclusion of lower frequency variables, especially
those with salient variants, might lead to an even stronger contrast between
the accents.
3 Telephone Interviews
3.1 Method
Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with five of the seven
newscasters (speakers 1f, 3f, 4f, 5m, and 6m) in May 2014 in order to obtain a di-
rect assessment of practices at the different news stations and of the newscast-
ers’ overt attitudes toward different accents in the field of newsreading as well
as their assessment of the audiences’ attitudes. The interviews ranged between
12 and 30 minutes in length. They followed a pre-determined set of questions
and follow-up questions, which allowed for comparability while also giving the
newscasters space to relate freely. Four guiding questions and follow-up ques-
tions that all newscasters were asked will be discussed below, namely:
(1) Did you receive any pronunciation training? If so, what did that training
focus on?
(2) When reading the news, do you pay particular attention to a pronuncia-
tion feature? If so, to which one?
(3) Do you have a preferred accent for newsreading? If so, which one?
(4) Could you imagine someone with a foreign accent reading the news at
your station? If so, with which accent? Would this trigger reactions by the
audience? If so, what would these reactions look like?
In order to find out whether the newscasters strive for a homogenous stand-
ard accent, different questions were asked that targeted the issue of norm-ori-
entation. The purpose of the questions was to reveal the newscasters’ own
preferences concerning accents in newsreading as well as the tv or radio sta-

tions’ and the audiences’ preferences as perceived by the newscasters. More-
over, the questions were asked to find out whether the newscasters speak in
a particular way because of requirements of the tv stations or other author-
ities and what pronunciations the news presenters deem unacceptable in
newscasts.
3.2 Results
Generally, the newscasters had received some but not extensive formal pro-
nunciation training. Speaker 1f said that when she started working as a news-
caster in the 1990s, she was expected to model her accent according to that of
bbc newscasters, which she also still considers the norm at her radio station
today.9 Speakers 3f and 6m were hired among other things because of their
“good pronunciation.” Only later on did they take part in media training, which
in the case of speaker 3f focused on diction and breathing. Speaker 6m was
taught that newscasters in the Caribbean should have a, what he called, “trans-
atlantic accent” that is understood throughout the region as well as in Great
Britain and North America. The newscasters 4f and 5m both had worked in
Barbados for some time, where they took part in courses on speech delivery
and pronunciation. While speaker 5m recounted that his course concentrated
especially on the pronunciation of foreign words and names, speaker 4f said
that the purpose of her training was for her to adapt to Bajan pronunciations.
She stated that some of the pronunciations that she was taught in Barbados
still stick with her to the present day, such as the rhotic pronunciation of party.
These last two newscasters, 5m and 4f, were the only ones who specified a
particular pronunciation feature which they consciously monitor when pre-
senting the news. Speaker 4f said that she focuses on pronouncing the voiceless
interdental fricative as [θ] instead of [t]‌and gave the example of pronouncing
fifth as [fɪfθ] instead of [fɪft]. Speaker 5m said that he makes a conscious ef-
fort to pronounce “final consonants.” Both pronunciations that are avoided, i.e.
voiceless th stopping and consonant cluster reduction, are associated with the
Creole varieties. In Alison Irvine’s study on Jamaican English, both the voice-
less interdental fricative [θ] and the production of the word final phonological
consonant cluster [nt] were characterized as salient variants that index the use
of Standard English (“Contrast and Convergence” 19). Possibly, these variants
are also salient markers of Standard English in svg. Generally, there seem to be
9 Note that while her accent included Caribbean variants and was therefore not identical to a
bbc accent, speaker 1f consistently did not use any American variants.
100 Hänsel
only few pronunciation features that are monitored consciously and these are
consonantal variants that are strongly associated with the Creole.
Speaker 1f was the only newscaster who had a clear preference for a particu-
lar accent in newscasting. She preferred the bbc accent, which she called a
“universal standard.” Moreover, she disliked the American accent as “the Amer-
icans are a little too excited, the British are more sober.” All other newscasters
were generally not set on a particular accent that they favor in newscasting.
All of them said that they listen to a variety of newscasts from different coun-
tries (mainly from the UK and the US) and that the accent is not important
as long as it is “standard” and “understandable.” Speaker 6m emphasized that
he is generally not fond of listening to Creole on the radio, while newscaster
5m recounted that he sometimes switches into Creole in entertainment news
on the radio but not in tv newscasting, where the use of Creole would not
be accepted. He also related that he likes to listen to the radio from different
places in order to take over bits and pieces of accents and melt them into one
“international accent.”
When asked whether they could imagine a presenter with a foreign accent
reading the news at their station, speaker 1f stated that as the Caribbean coun-
tries are fairly closely connected, with much movement between the coun-
tries, people in the Caribbean tend to accommodate each other’s accents.
Moreover, they are used to the news being read in different Caribbean accents
via news portals such as Newslink that connect the territories belonging to
the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. She maintained, however, that
an American accent would initially trigger unfavorable reactions from the au-
dience and that it would require an adjustment period. She also reported that
there had been a presenter with a British accent who read the news at her sta-
tion for some time. Speaker 3f also mentioned this speaker and reported that
the accent was appreciated by the audience. Speakers 3f and 4f maintained
that, assuming Standard English is spoken in an understandable manner,
different accents are quite readily accepted in the news in svg. Speaker 6m
mentioned that foreign accents can be heard at his radio station and that cur-
rently a news presenter at his station is from Guyana. He said that her foreign
accent initially prompted both appreciative and dismissive reactions from the
audience. He stated that in general, listeners are very interactive at his radio
station and that while there is “no official watch-dog agency, people do call
when we slip up.”
On the whole, the newscasters were generally tolerant toward a variety of
accents in newscasting. The only important condition was that these accents
were standard accents. Based on the description of pronunciations that news-
casters 4f and 5m consciously monitor when reading the news, this could mean
that the accents should not include pronunciation variants that are strongly
associated with the Creole.
4 Conclusion and Implications
This study has used Milroy’s definition of a standard variety as a starting point
for the investigation of spoken Standard English in newscasting in svg, com-
bining an investigation of usage and attitudes. The results of the auditory
accent analysis suggest that there is no uniform standard accent among the
newscasters under study. Given that people in the anglophone Caribbean are
strongly exposed to American English accents through both tourism and tel-
evision, the degree of American influence found in the Vincentian newscasts
was surprisingly low. A possible norm orientation toward American English
was suspected only in the accent of one of the youngest speakers. Pronuncia-
tions associated with the Creole were much more frequent; however, different
newscasters used different Creole accent features to different degrees.
The telephone interviews revealed that the newscasters are generally very
tolerant toward a variety of accents provided that they are standard accents.
With the exception of the oldest newscaster interviewed, who named the bbc
accent as the norm, all other newscasters did not strive for compliance with
one individual pronunciation model. The standard that newscasters in svg
deem acceptable for newscasting in their country is therefore for the most part
not associated with any particular regional accent. The newscasters empha-
sized the necessity to accommodate different accents in the Caribbean and
highlighted that the accent has to be understood by different speakers. While
newscaster 1f favored the use of British English for this purpose, which she
described as a “universal standard,” newscasters 5m and 6m preferred a “trans-
atlantic” or “international” accent, respectively.
The present findings from the context of newscasting in svg contribute
to the issue of whether endonormative national standards are developing in
the small Caribbean island countries. With regard to usage, it appears that in
newscasting, there is presently no pronounced orientation toward a national
norm given the high degree of heterogeneity of the accents. One has to bear
in mind that spoken language is always less homogeneous than written lan-
guage. Still, if there was indeed a common norm—whether endonormative
or exonormative—shared by the newscasters, a higher degree of homoge-
neity would have been expected, considering that in newscasts language is
read, highly monitored, and not spontaneous. The apparent heterogeneity of
newscaster accents corresponds to Deuber and Hänsel’s findings for written
102 Hänsel
Standard English in three small Caribbean islands including svg, where there
was substantial inconsistency in the use of spellings. Moreover, like Deuber
and Hänsel’s corpus study, this accent analysis has also revealed some regional
tendencies in that those Caribbean variants that have been described to be the
norm in the standard accents in Trinidad and Tobago and in Jamaica were the
most frequent Caribbean variants in the Vincentian data as well.
It has become evident that with the exception of speaker 1f, the news-
casters did not deliberately target one specific foreign pronunciation model.
Therefore, individually, both British and American English were less of an
authority than expected. The most important criterion for an accent accept-
ed in newscasting was standardness of the accent. Thus, the newscasters de-
fined the standard in relation to the Creole. This finding also sheds light on
the standard language ideology as defined by Milroy. Without a doubt, the
newscasters were immersed in the standard language ideology. In the inter-
views, all newscasters emphasized that an accent had to be standard in order
to qualify as an accent suitable for newscasting in svg. Two of the newscast-
ers additionally mentioned that the use of Creole in newsreading would not
be acceptable. However, as mentioned above, they did not target a specific
standard accent but rather defined the standard negatively by distance to
the Creole.10 This negative definition of the standard variety opens up the
doorway for variation as in this case there is not one form that is inherently
more correct and should be used, which would lead to homogeneity, but rath-
er there is a form that is inherently incorrect and should be avoided thereby
leaving “considerable room for variation provided that the pronunciation is
not ‘too Creole’ ” (Deuber and Leung 309). In conclusion, in the context of
very small postcolonial countries that are exposed to a multitude of varie-
ties of English, Milroy’s definition of the standard language ideology could be
complemented with regard to the structural properties of a standard variety
as follows: Standard language ideology can also exist without the imposition
of invariance of form provided that the different co-existing variants are not
salient variants of a variety that is stigmatized in contexts that require the use
of Standard English.
10 See, e.g., Deuber and Leung 309; and Irvine, “A Good Command” 68; but cf. Guyanne
Wilson. Wilson argues that it is not distance to the Creole alone that determines whether
an accent feature is considered standard as in her study on choral singing in Trinidad
some features were considered to be standard that are also features of Trinidadian Creole.
For Jamaica, Irvine has suggested that some pronunciation variants are more indicative of
indexing the use of Creole than others, which is supported by the findings of the present
accent analysis (Irvine, “Contrast and Convergence”).
This study constitutes a first approach to spoken Standard English in svg.

While it does not provide evidence for a homogeneous endonormative stand-
ard in newscasts in svg, it is possible that such a local norm exists in differ-
ent domains that are associated with the use of the standard language, such
as the education system (Deuber and Leung 310–311). Future research should
therefore focus on the description of and attitudes toward standard varieties of
English in different contexts. Moreover, in order to detect whether the present
findings are indicative of the small Caribbean islands in general, more compar-
ative studies of small and large Caribbean islands should be conducted.
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c hapter 6
Imagining Pasts, Writing Lives—Familial

Narratives, Memory, and the ‘Ideological I’ in Imbi
Paju’s Memories Denied
1 Introduction
During the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Imbi Paju’s mother, Aino, along with
her sister, Vaike, were sent to a Siberian gulag in 1948, where they spent six
years until their release in 1954; from that story, an author was born and a per-
son was created. Through storytelling, the traumatic events the two sisters
witnessed during that period were transmitted to Aino’s daughter as a child,
which were then internalised and surfaced as text in her 2006 memoir, Memo-
ries Denied. Paju’s text constitutes an attempt to come to terms with this dread-
ful past through listening and writing her mother’s memories and exposing
readers to the mother’s trauma not directly, but indirectly through imagina-
tive narration. The present article approaches the psychosocial implications
behind the writing of Memories Denied by Imbi Paju, about her mother’s mem-
ories during the Soviet occupation, which constitutes a personal account of
understanding a sense of herself as an author and as a person, and an Estonian
collective identity, within a post-Soviet space which is read as a postcolonial
space in its right. The hypothesis in exploring identity formation is that not in
spite of, but because of the unpredictability and unreliability of an ‘I’ which is
informed by past memories through projective fantasy, one can open a space
of possibilities, hitherto uncharted, to understand the beginnings, real and fic-
tional, of the text and the lives associated with them. The presupposition is
that the concept of memory is not merely a passive retrieval from a past life
not experienced; rather, I approach the concept of memory here as a complex
apparatus which allows the subject to re-imagine the space and time it hails
from, infusing imagination into factual autobiographical elements.
This approach is based on two theoretical pillars: Marianne Hirsch’s notion
of “postmemory” put forward in “The Generation of Postmemory” (2008),
which highlights how traumatic experiences are transmitted from the first
to the second generation in such a powerful way, that the latter perceives the
memories in their own right (1), in a sort of “secondary” or transgenerational
Imagining Pasts, Writing Lives 107
trauma being transferred through stories told from parents to children. More-
over, I follow Sidonie Smith and Julie Watson’s approach of life writing and
memory in Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives
(2010) which understands the ‘Ideological ‘I’ as mobile positionalities of the
self, with memory being a process in which the remembering subject actively
creates the meaning of the past, as opposed to merely replicating it. The ‘ide-
ological I,’ for them, is the notion of personhood which is culturally available
to the narrator when he/she tells the story, and which is “at once, everywhere
and nowhere in autobiographical acts” as the “ideologies of identity constitu-
tive of it are so internalised (personally and culturally) that they seem natural
and universal” (Reading Autobiography 62). In that, such an ‘ideological I’ is
not limited to the level of the text alone but it reflects cultural, social and ide-
ological implications behind any life writing text, informed by the need for
self-representation.
In the light of these thoughts, Paju’s text will be treated as indicative of an
‘ideological I’ which might explain why she thought, acted and wrote the way
she did. Memories Denied is approached as a piece of life writing as opposed
to using the term autobiography, as the former is a broader term which allows
room for the inclusion of anything that might affect the understanding of a
life; imagination included. Indeed, moving away from the more traditional,
white, western, male, Eurocentric notion of autobiography, we can approach
text and subtext as more inclusive of the complexity and heterogeneity of per-
sonal and/or collective life. Such complexity is approached keeping in mind
what Smith and Watson wrote about the teller of the story who becomes “in
the act of narration, both the observing subject and the object of investigation,
remembrance and contemplation” (Reading Autobiography 1). Memories De-
nied arose from Paju’s need to understand what happened to her mother and
her nation during that time; the author then is the present ‘I’ that speaks about
another traumatised past ‘I’ that she is trying to understand, which at the same
times reflects a contemporary ‘we.’
Life writing is approached, then, as “a moving target, a set of shifting self-ref-
erential practices that, in engaging in the past, reflect on identity in the pres-
ent” (1). In other words, it is argued that cultural memory, insofar as it is man-
ifested as life writing including the re-imagination of violent pasts through
“remembering” traumatic events such as war, deportation, colonialism and
so on, is undoubtedly a significant marker of identity formation. Aino Paju’s
traumatic memories of the Soviet past, her arrest and deportation to the Si-
berian gulags by the Stalinist regime, as well the way in which these trans-
ferred memories became words and informed her daughter’s identity forma-
tion process, while meeting political and ideological needs at the same time,
108 Athanasiades
is the broad examination scope of the present article. Given that, as Smith and
Watson argue, feminist writers have used autobiographical forms to show how
the personal is political in authorising their political critiques of women’s sub-
jection by appeal to personal experience, the resilience and persuasiveness of
autobiographical writing as cultural critique is underlined. This happens with-
in the framework of the “emergence of a heterogeneous welter of conflicting
positions about subjectivity and the autobiographical” (36–37), gesturing at
the same time towards an empowering history, within which national identity
formation and life-writing narratives are closely interconnected.
2 Memory, Self and the Postcolonial
It has been argued that the concept of memory is associated not just with life,
but with individuals’ and communities’ transcendence of life and their desires
for immortality (Bradford 3). Indeed, one way in which one can begin to un-
ravel the implications behind personal and collective identities alike, is to en-
gage in a sort of archaeology of subjectivity, a process through which one goes
through familial conduits of remembrance to ‘excavate’ an ‘I.’ Such a procedure
implies a form of digging through the previous generation’s self-constitutive
memories, which necessitates an appropriation of ancestral memories. The
convoluted understanding of a self that can arise out of such a process, is em-
phasised not only by the parents’ desire to preserve their memories through
their children, but also through the latter’s need to understand their selves
through them.
Going through such a process, however, is anything but smooth, given the
unreliability of memory and the danger of the past becoming a burden one
carries for life. Smith and Watson argued that memory fails, as “the authority
of the autobiographical … neither confirms nor invalidates notions of objective
truth; rather, it tracks the previously uncharted truths of particular lives” (Read-
ing Autobiography 16). Moreover, they underlined that “[m]‌emory is thus the
source, authenticator, and destabilizer of autobiographical acts … remember-
ing involves a reinterpretation of the past in the present” (22). The issue is how
this reinterpretation is approached. If one merely translates lamentable histo-
ries of the past into the present, which is what a nationalistic rhetoric would do,
then this can be dangerous, in that racist, violent and oppressive pathologies
of the past can be repeated. What is more, such a traditional approach of writ-
ing about the self and past traumas is inadequate to “describe the extensive
historical range and the diverse genres and practices of life writing, not only
in the West but around the globe” (Smith and Watson Reading Autobiography
3). If one offers a new look into re-interpreting the past which led to the crea-
tion of present selves though, especially pertaining to a traumatic event, then
questions of belonging can be answered differently. This is true as the anar-
chic nature of the subsequent ‘I’ can gesture towards new understandings of
individual, familial, collective and even national formations, away from fixed
histories of the past which claim to know what is ‘true,’ as
the emphasis of reading shifts from assessing and verifying knowledge

to observing processes of communicative exchange and understanding.
It redefines the terms of what we call ‘truth’: autobiographical writing
cannot be read solely as either factual truth or simple fact. As an inter-
subjective mode, it resides outside a logical or juridical model of truth
and falsehood. (Smith and Watson Reading Autobiography 17)
It is also true that the scope of examining narratives of life has expanded to in-
clude individual stories. With a special focus on memory, life writing has shift-
ed towards perspectives that are comparative and interdisciplinary, reflecting
at the same time the representations of a ‘life’ in a variety of modes. Specifical-
ly, it is at the intersection of life narratives and (cultural) memory that aspects
such as multidirectional memory, postmemory and transnational memory
highlight the fluid, complex and dynamic processes at play. Such an approach
follows at the same time the more recent understandings of life writing, that
acknowledge the importance of its imaginative, personal and fictional compo-
nents, theorising a different approach on how the personal ‘I,’ because of all its
flaws, is important to the collective ‘I’ in that its imaginative qualities inform
lived experiences. If this is not the case, then, as Dominick LaCapra argued,
the consequent exclusion of personal aspects on behalf of the author such as
empathy, can lead to the “phenomenon of numbing in trauma” (39–40). The
truth is that historiography in reading and writing the self, as opposed to a life
writing approach, cannot comprehensively deal with trauma. This is true as its
factual nature by definition excludes emotions, as well as all remembered or
imagined experiences.
Such ideas were backed by many scholars, including Helga Schwalm (2014)
who argued that the notion that autobiography negates the coexistence of fact
and fiction is a philosophical assumption; rather, both are narrative provisions
of lived experiences (see Schwalm). Smith and Watson have also reflected on
the verge of fact and fiction: “How do we know whether and when a narrator is
telling the truth or lying? And what difference would that difference make? …
Truth from whom and for what? Other readers, the life narrator, or ourselves?”
(Reading Autobiography 12) At the same time, Susie Thomas puts forward that
110 Athanasiades
any kind of life writing is selective and subjective and therefore, fictional (188).
So, the crux of it all is, how we, as artists, individuals, scholars, sons and daugh-
ters, allow memory to inform our selves. It is my view that life writing is inev-
itably constructive and imaginative both in nature and as a form of textual
self-fashioning, blurring generic borderlines, despite narrating the life of a real
person. It could be argued then that some of the conflicts associated with re-
defining identity are due, at least in part, to the exclusion of aesthetic elements
such as imagination or empathy. What happens then when the life under scru-
tiny is inextricably intertwined with a collective imaginary and a traumatic
past that was never actually experienced? To answer this question, we have
to assume a new approach vis-à-vis the psychological processes behind the
forming of an ‘I’ which is so complex, anarchic and, therefore, full of potential,
so that a new sense of humanity can emerge, and hitherto untapped literary,
social, cultural and geopolitical aspects can be understood. The hypothesis is
that approaching life writing as in need of imagination, gestures towards the
ways in which personal, unreliable memories can inform a collective ‘I’ which
entails hope for the future of narrators and narrated alike, in providing new
answers to questions of belonging, that truly reflect the complexity of identity.
Embedded in such a hope, it is also argued that such an examination of
Paju’s Memories Denied, can point to a more engulfing postcolonial critique
as strokes across cultures, times and spaces are drawn, which comprise a dif-
ferent, compelling alternative to the examination of Western colonisation
processes. As the repeated tragedy of a single family through the retelling of
stories becomes a national tragedy deeply rooted into a fragmented, European
narrative, the reading and writing of Paju’s maternal memories challenges the
Soviet politics of destroying memory, intimacy and family ties in the name of
a superior, supposedly stable sense of identity. Such a dynamic approach of
the subaltern subject “writing back,” challenging established norms and try-
ing to dictate their own terms of belonging, makes Paju’s writing a challenge
to factual autobiography which is, according to Smith and Watson, a “generic
practice forged in the West … complicit in the West’s romance with individ-
ualism” (Women, Autobiography, Theory 28), and consequently, the dominant
order is unsettled and narratives of resistance against the dominant, cultural
‘I’ arise. What allows us to bring trauma theory and postcolonial theory to-
gether as applicable to post-Soviet writing is, I argue, the issue of transgen-
erational trauma. Familial post-memory can serve as a theoretical tool for
going through such a process towards realising an ‘I,’ as there is the danger
of the memories of the first generation can overlap and be internalised by
the second generation’s very own. Post-memory, then, is effectively the link
between two consecutive generations, more often than not having to do with
the individual and the collective traumas of the older generation. This trauma
is relived and remembered through narrated stories, with the younger genera-
tion then being overwhelmed by the creative power of these stories. It makes
sense then that such a process of ‘remembering,’ especially when it has to do
with a collective trauma of epic proportions, such as the Holocaust, World
Wars or the Soviet occupation in former communist countries, seems to be
a definitive marker for understanding an individual and a collective ‘I.’ Smith
and Watson argued that
[m]‌emory is a means of ‘passing on,’ of sharing a social past that may

have been obscured, thereby activating its potential for reshaping a fu-
ture of and for other subjects. In sum, acts of personal remembering
are fundamentally social and collective. (Smith and Watson Reading
Autobiography 26)
In that, the focus of the present article is on how Paju “imagines” a past, a
mother, an Estonia and an exile, as well as on how these affect her personal and
artistic development. In doing so, her scholarly project transforms this imagin-
ing of a past never experienced as an integral part of who the author is today.
Quoting Milan Kundera who states, “the struggle of man against power is the
struggle of memory against forgetting,” Edward Lucas, in his preface to Memo-
ries Denied, says that in the Baltic States, “the small voices speaking quietly of
traumatic memories are drowned out by the discourse of big neighbours to the
west and east” (15). However, that does not make them any less important and
the issue is how one brings to the forefront these experiences and analyses the
trauma behind such small voices.
How can one consider the post-Soviet space a postcolonial one though? It is
true that one of the ‘strong weaknesses’ of postcolonial theory has always been
its auto-critical nature. This paradox has enabled critics to identify the short-
comings of the field, ranging from its geographical coverage to the semantic
shortfalls of the term itself.1 At the same time, through the identification of
these gaps, the discipline of postcolonial studies has proven its adaptability
and ability to examine such inadequacies, which enables its continued rel-
evance. The present article’s lines of thought will be unravelled within such
a gap, as this has been identified by David Chioni Moore in “Is the Post- in
Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?,” where the idea of a sense of post-Soviet
sense of postcoloniality is analysed, an idea which authors such as Chernetsky,
1 See Shohat 1992, McClintock 1992 and Huggan 1993, among others.
112 Athanasiades
Condee, Ram and Spivak have also picked up, examining thus a new horde of
possibilities and directions of postcolonial theory.
If we approach the East as being South then, like Moore says, and the
post-Soviet space as a postcolonial one, new paths for interpreting trauma and
the past and identity open up. Indeed, just like postcolonial spaces, nations
such as the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) among others,
were subjected to brutal Soviet domination; thus, the term ‘postcolonial’ can
reasonably be applied to formerly Soviet-controlled regions post-1989 (Moore
115). This is possible as one theorises across and beyond the limiting geopoliti-
cal and social nexus which is what pertains at the same time to life writing, in
the sense that such spaces are inclusive of the second generation’s identity for-
mation process, vis-à-vis the traumatic memories passed down from the Soviet
past to the post-Soviet/postcolonial present. The question to be asked, then, is
whether these new postcolonial hermeneutics can add anything to life writing
studies which until recently have relied on juggernaut markers such as race,
gender and class. It is therefore extremely difficult to theorise silence because
it is more often than not explained as an absence of dialogue. However, it is
argued that such a focus on ‘non-normative’ postcoloniality in the post-soviet
space of Estonia, can assist in the creation of an ‘I’ that is personal, collective,
ideological and historical at the same time, which at the same time opposes
the ‘monopoly’ of colonial activity by the West. At the same time, it is also
argued that such a new epistemological approach vis-à-vis what is considered
a postcolonial space, can remedy the externally or internally forced silence
of issues such as memory, traumatic past and oppression, especially vis-à-vis
identity formation of subsequent generations, of a part of the space that came
to be known as the Second World.
What is more, remembering that nations are, to use Benedict Anderson’s
term, ‘imagined communities,’ the postcolonial aspect comes to the forefront,
given the problematic nature of a homogenising national identity. National
rhetoric based on a Manichean drive of ‘us and them’ is inevitably selective
and excludes the ‘other,’ whomever or whatever that may be; thus, by under-
lining the different ways in which Paju’s memoir can be approached, it is my
belief that myths of national identity can be challenged through the creation
of a space of infinite possibilities for understanding the self. Thus, the political
context is defined by my reading of the post-Soviet space, within which Pa-
ju’s memoir was written, as a postcolonial one. In fact, in the wake of the rise
of postcolonial studies in the 1980s, renewed interest in the work of women
who were multiply colonised around the world, sparked a series of scholar-
ly work, among which Smith and Watson’s De/Colonizing the Subject (1992),
which mapped emergent literatures and rethought women’s subjectivities at
diasporic sites around the world. In looking at the different manifestations of ‘I’
in Paju’s work, the present work follows along similar lines, as it is argued that
such a unique coming together of these different theoretical approaches can
create imaginative possibilities in answering questions of belonging. In other
words, by intentionally including what has been excluded or alienated based on
national or personal rhetorics which excluded the imaginative from life writing,
a possibility arises for re-imagining the self both for the author, the memory
of her mother, but also for a collective, Estonian identity and conscience. This
is true insofar as personal and imaginative life-writing pieces can be read as a
collective politics of remembering, alluding to Soviet-era victims ‘writing back,’
re-acquiring their voices and their narratives in the process. In other words, the
relationship that exists between subjectivity and the act of writing about it is
explored “posing questions about how women, excluded from official discourse,
use autobiography to ‘talk back,’ to embody subjectivity, and to inhabit and in-
flect a range of subjective I’s” (Smith and Watson Life Writing 16).
Moore argues that at some point or other throughout human history, al-
most all inhabited land on the planet has been colonised, while people perpet-
ually moved, displaced—often violently—or migrated (111) and consequent-
ly what we mean by ‘postcolonial’ is notoriously hard to define. It is argued
though that it might help the breadth of postcolonial studies if it is allowed
a larger scope rather than limiting it within western thinking, without at the
same time expanding it so much that it becomes all-encompassing and hence
vague, depriving it thus of any real critical capability. It is my belief that in
examining postcoloniality, one needs to have a widened scope, especially if
one considers that it adheres more to a set of characteristics, evident in liter-
ary production, which greatly surpasses any kind of limiting geographical or
linguistic contexts. Thus, the contention is that despite obvious differences,
certain characteristics are shared between post-Soviet and postcolonial spac-
es, which are examined today in this article: strife between a powerful empire
and a subjugated land, desire for independence and post-liberation processes
torn between mimicry and originality. In that sense, there is a space which has
been excluded from the geopolitical examination of postcolonial studies: the
post-soviet sphere (Moore 111).
What is underscored then, are the possibilities and power of representing
individual and collective histories differently than a traditionally historical
piece of work, precisely because of its infusion with individual consciousness.
It is underlined that it is extremely important to focus on the traumatised and
appropriated space of modern-day Estonia through examining the identified
trajectories of the identity formation process of children. In that I go against
the perceived lack of objectivity stemming from the inclusion of the self in
114 Athanasiades
such processes, in terms of what fuels an author’s desire to write his or her self.
It is argued that the narrative representation of the author’s reality can assign
meaning to the melancholic isolation and unspeakable traumatic experiences
and, in that, the acts of writing and reading, are portrayed as a combination
of personal account and intertextual aesthetic experiences that can help deal
with past traumatic events through a gendered conduit of experience. Where
then do we situate Paju and her people’s social existence in terms of personal
storytelling? We need to remember that “located in specific times and places,
narrators are at the same time in dialogue with the processes and archives of
memory and the expectations of disparate others” (Smith and Watson Reading
Autobiography 18), and also that this kind of ideological ‘I’ is not bound by tex-
tual limits, but it goes on to echo cultural, social and political characteristics,
informed as they are by the need to understand notions of the self.
3 Reading and Writing Maternal Traumas
In representing traumatic events and in transforming such storytelling about

conflicts, war and forceful displacement into textual art, a space of possibili-
ties is created, one that pertains to exploring the intersection of imagination
and memory in such a way that we can materialise a more ethical and pro-
ductive stance towards the negotiation of political and national differences,
away from nationalistic approaches that merely translate regretted histories
of the past. It can be argued that the inevitable unknowability, this anarchic
and chaotic nature created when infusing collective imaginaries with autho-
rial and individual consciousness points to new ways of being and highlights
hitherto hidden aspects of the process of dealing with wounds left by tragedy.
Adding to Hirsch’s idea, Michelle Balaev says that contemporary trauma theo-
ry maintains that trauma generates a “speechless fright that divides or destroys
identity. This serves as the basis for a larger argument that suggests that iden-
tity, at least partly, is formed by the intergenerational transmission of trauma”
(149). I read trauma then, as a person’s emotional response to an overwhelm-
ing event that disrupts previous ideas of an individual’s sense of self and the
standards by which one evaluates society; such a process is of an unmistakably
transgenerational nature, albeit with different effects on and implications for
the affected generations. The literary trauma theory explored by critics such
as Kali Tal or Cathy Caruth, considers the responses to traumatic experience,
including cognitive chaos and the possible division of consciousness, as an
inherent characteristic of traumatic experience and memory. The idea that
traumatic experience pathologically divides identity is employed by literary
scholars as a metaphor to describe the degree of damage done to the individ-

ual’s coherent sense of self and the change of consciousness caused by the
experience. In looking at strategies of historicising the personal and person-
alising the historical then, we must tread at the intersection between fictional
and factual modes of narration and at the relationship of a generation to the
personal, collective and cultural trauma of the generations that came before,
as the former ‘remembers’ only by means of stories, images and behaviours.
Such an approach constitutes a recognition of the way in which memories are
built on a sense of fantasy that is used as a retroactive auxiliary for filling in
voids arising when one tries to narrate reality. The realisation becomes then,
that there is not any ‘true’ sense of self which can be exhumed, as all sense of
self is necessarily narrative and hence, permeable, endlessly being informed by
the narrator and his/her imagined experiences.
There are complex connections between the imagined and lived experi-
ences of trauma in Memories Denied, as the autobiographical narrator’s (re)
constructions of the past are inextricably tied to that of her mother’s, in that
Paju does not deny her mother’s memories in order to survive, but dwells in
them. Paju then seems to construct a self and a persona in large part by digging
through the self-constitutive memories of her mother. However, she does not
unearth a self which is not hers. On the contrary, what informs her identity
formation is the psychological process of ‘digging’ itself, which means re-im-
agining the space she hails from and re-appropriating her mother’s traumatic
memories. This is what makes Memories Denied an intriguing example of how
individual consciousness and collective imaginaries are mutually dependent
and intertwined in a complex process of informing the self.
In an attempt to answer questions of belonging within the framework of
considering the postcoloniality of post-Soviet spaces, the focus is on the psy-
chological processes identified in Paju’s memoir, triggered by the storytelling
of her mother, which functions as a transcultural memorial form, facilitating
thus the articulation of a new possibility for articulating the self. Comparative
familial history can then function as an apparatus for inter- and intra-gener-
ational exchange, as it can provide possible answers to convoluted questions
of belonging. I argue that Paju’s exploration of her relationship with her
mother, and her negotiation of her past and her complex identities, manifest
within what Hirsch calls a “transgenerational transmission of trauma” (103).
This transmitted traumatic experience is passed down to the next generation
through the mother’s storytelling. The younger generation then remembers
and appropriates trauma through the stories of older generations which are so
powerful that the recipients create images of the past that they then appropri-
ate as their own; such a process entails a risk though, identified by Hirsch: to
116 Athanasiades
have the traumatic memories of someone else displace and replace your own
(107). The challenge is to avoid the liability of accessing traumatic past through
post-traumatic memory in a way that might erupt in the present and inhibit
reconciliation between past and present selves; on the contrary one must try to
incorporate these memories in ways that ensure that they complement instead
of overlap each other.
Aino Paju had just turned eighteen when she started experiencing the
shocking events of the Nazi and the Soviet occupations, as she was branded an
enemy of the state. Imbi says that she could not get over what the regime said
about her mother, after being sent to the labour camp, as in Aino Paju’s kgb
file, she was labelled as “a mother of bandits” (128). One of Imbi’s recollections
from her childhood included a plywood suitcase with which she often played
with, filling it with doll clothes and toys. It was the same suitcase that her moth-
er had carried on a “summer’s day in 1954 as she stepped off the train that had
brought her back home from a place 1,500 kilometres away in Russia. She was
then 24 years old, having spent 6 years in a forced labor camp in Archangelsk
oblast” (128). Aino was released during the amnesty period which followed
Stalin’s death in 1953, having been labelled as someone “behaving in a hostile
manner” against the Soviet Union as a young girl. Mother “had survived amid
the terror, although death had often been too close” (128), while her own moth-
er Helene and her mother’s sister Heldi and her children Pille and Helve had
also been deported to Russia in 1949. Aino’s passport bore the stamp ‘Enemy
of the People’ making it hard for her to find work. Upon her release from the
camp, Aino signed a promise to keep silent about what she had experienced
there. As soon as she returned home, Aino had to register with the Soviet se-
cret security service at the time (nkvd, the People’s Commissariat of Internal
Affairs), and she was forbidden to leave by sea, as the Soviet Union placed stra-
tegic importance to such places (128).
Despite the vividness of the trauma, it is made very clear in the text that
it was very difficult for Aino to talk about her past, and consequently for her
daughter to write about it, given that the repression of traumatic memories
has always been a method of self-defence for victims. Even though, in Aino’s
words, nothing forbade her from talking about those times, she just did not
want to: “Life has taught me to be cautious. I don’t want to reveal everything.
There are things that may be better left untold” (Paju [Film]; 00:01:32-00:01:45,
emphasis added). Even though Imbi Paju understood how important dealing
with the past was, as she says that in order not to forget the Estonian spir-
it, “we must know how to remember ourselves” (128), for a long time she was
unable to engage directly with her past, just like her mother was incapable or
unwilling to do so with her own past, as “silence became a part of our identity
[which] was passed on to the following generations” (64). Thus, by beginning

to notice what is not there, then, Paju writes herself: “Even today, young peo-
ple … rarely know the stories of their predecessors” (64). The past has always
“signified a nearness of death, and she [the mother] wanted to escape it” (291).
This is the mindset of many people even today in Estonia, where many people
simply want to forget and do not wish to talk about the traumatic events of the
past. However, such a denial might be what is keeping Estonians tied to what
they are desperately trying to forget. Maybe then, the way to move forward is
to deal with that trauma.
It is interesting to note here that Aino Paju never explicitly goes into detail
as to what she and her sister went through during their time at Archangelsk
oblast. The narrator and the readers are asked to fill in the gaps so to speak, as
to what actually happened in Stalin’s gulags. At first, this might seem as if she
does not or cannot, explicitly utter what has happened to her, thus repressing
her memories. However, on deeper reflection, one might see that Aino chooses
to deliberately not go into detail, thus raising the audience’s importance from
passive receiver to active contributor, while also elevating the textual medium
into something much more important than a mere record of events. This ability
the author grants to the audience to add to the story through imagining, speaks
to the previously mentioned collective approach to identity formation as well
as to how everyone can participate in the making of an ‘I’ through a narrative
representation that truly reflects the collective ‘we.’ In other words, Memories
Denied is not just a book; rather, it is a work-in-process of an uncontextualised,
collective performance. The actors who are asked to carry it out, are those who
experienced the trauma, those who listened to the stories, those writing about
it and the ones reading about it. One can argue that such a multifaceted and
inclusive approach lifts the fear that silenced an entire nation, as it allows for
a dual kind of imagination to come into play: one by her daughter, the master
of the text, as to what her mother went through and what that means for her
identity, and one by the audience who are trying to understand themselves as
post-Soviet Estonians carrying their parents’ trauma with them. This is one of
the strong points in Paju’s work, as it does not assume a ‘this is what happened’
or a ‘this is what I was told happened’ approach, but one more along the lines
of ‘this is what it has been alluded to, make up your own minds.’ This invitation
to the readers to partake in the making of a self-defining text is very important
as Paju fictionalises her own ‘reality,’ asking the readers to partake in the read-
ing of her and their identity. Her work is at the same time, a work about the
nation as much as it is about one family, building on the artistic self-realisation
that the boundaries between the artistic and the personal selves, fiction and
facts, imagination and reality, are indeed blurred.
118 Athanasiades
It is made clear then that the collective, post-Soviet trauma pertains to an

unreliable memory and sense of remembering but also, to a sense of vulnera-
bility and guilt on behalf of the survivors. Throughout the Soviet occupation,
those who had survived the forced labour camps, either kept those painful
memories to themselves out of shame for what they went through or because
they survived, or out of fear for retribution. When they did share, they did so
with their immediate families, keeping the most horrifying details to them-
selves: “Fearing renewed persecution and hoping to conceal the fact that they
were marked, they remained silent” (Paju 23). What is more, the belief that
Communist ideology was a good thing, prevented people from reconciling
that notions with the horrors of forced labour camps; hence, such utteranc-
es were seen with disbelief and even hostility, making the person speaking
even more vulnerable. In Imbi Paju’s words: “I did not know that my mother
was suffering from something called remembering” (25); at the same time, she
admits her failure to grasp the full meaning of her mother’s use of the word
‘frightening.’ The trauma in this case lies between remembering and forgetting
and its potentials for transmissibility and translatability comes from the mem-
oir of her daughter which makes the trauma public, which itself constitutes
a direct break from the national rhetoric of silencing ‘embarrassing’ parts of
history and the past, pertaining to a socially-driven desire to keep quiet in
order to avoid reliving the past, a process that Paju calls “socially designed
amnesia” (23).
So, the author interviews people who experienced the Soviet occupation,
along with her mother, who have a first-hand account of the Stalinist terror,
as well as researchers and academics on the subject. Paju asks questions such
as what happened, how and why. She also touches upon the survivors’ guilt. It
is important to note that these interviews are not presented verbatim; rather,
the author takes the information and weaves it with her own memories from
her mother, thus creating a patchwork of memories, collective and individual,
where the ‘truth’ pertains to how every person remembers certain events. It is
through Imbi’s narration then, that the reader is exposed to her mother’s, and
indeed the nation’s trauma from the past, as the tragedy of one individual, one
family, is set against the backdrop of historical events that affected an entire
country:
As a child I often couldn’t sleep because my mother had nightmares and

cried out for help in her sleep. The horrors of her dreams were Stalin’s
forced camps and the Soviet soldiers who threatened her life. In those
nightmares, she never made it back to her mother. The nightmares stirred
me as a child. It was then that the scenario for this story began to form
in my mind. Forced labour camps and death camps penetrated my subcon-

scious through my mother’s nightmares. (Paju [Film]; 00:02:20-00:03:00,
emphasis added)
As indicated by the added emphasis then, such horrible maternal memories

were transmitted to and internalised by Imbi, disturbing her in a way that
seems to have added a sense of fragmentation in her quest for a self. In con-
sidering how to deal with the ghosts of her past and elucidate the implications
behind the internalisation of such a sense of pain, Paju started researching
her mother’s past along with the history of her country, while attempting to
assume a place in her mother’s memories through her own imagination. The
burden of the past became, thus, compelling and, as she examined her rela-
tionship with her mother, the author relentlessly questioned and commented
on the ghosts that reside there.
Thus, as Paju became aware of her mother’s pain, she felt like she had to do
something about it:
It is a universally humane response for children to take care of their par-

ents when they are suffering. My book was born of a child’s pain and love
for her mother and Estonia, the place of my roots … Memories Denied is
a weave of recollections; a piece of European subconsciousness. These
memories are hidden in dreams, which upon waking people hold inside
and then proceed to pass on through invisible threads to younger gener-
ations and those around them. Or they are present in dreams which were
born of the painful experiences of loved ones. (Paju “About Imbi Paju in
English”)
The fact that the mother eventually does talk about the past, and her daughter
writes about it, constitute a direct challenge to the system. Such a sense of
hope is visually underlined in the film Memories Denied, where there is a scene
where Aino and Vaike, dressed in white, walk around the house and eventually
go through a hole in the cellar, where they hid from the Soviet troops so many
years ago. In going back into the dark hole, they relive the past and emotions
run high—to the extent that they need to hold each other’s hands. However,
the stark contrast of white penetrating the blackness of the hole, gestures to-
wards a sense of optimism; same with talking about and working through trau-
ma. It is certainly hard for victims to recall and relate to their past traumatic
experiences; indeed, suffering is extremely hard to translate and make sense
of. However, if it is transmitted, it can be dealt with, exactly because the victim
has not refused to acknowledge it.
120 Athanasiades
Leena Kurvet-Käosaar argues that one must ‘work through’ trauma instead
of buying into the national rhetoric of making it unsayable and, hence, un-
thinkable. Paju navigates away from this denial of thought, in part, by effective-
ly re-imagining official history as she infuses it with individual consciousness,
underlying at the same time the necessity to share and translate such traumat-
ic affect. It is my contention that the elevation of the importance of imagina-
tion as an alternative reality in Memories Denied, highlights that very process
of visualising realities that, in turn, can inform identities that help overcome
prescribed silences. It is this confrontation with the past which allows Imbi
Paju to draw a telling sociological picture of herself and her generation, writ-
ing the memoir to understand how it all happened, while wanting something
to endure from her mother’s life. This is something that could create a new
sense of continuity and essentially a new kind of self in re-thinking a silenced
era by giving voice to it, which has hitherto engulfed her mother and denied
her possibility to work through trauma. Paju says that even when it seems that
everything has vanished into silence, the feelings are still there, “present as
if in a dream and, given the opportunity, finally revealing themselves to the
descendants of the survivors to take the chaos of history and mould it into
continuity, aided by the work of memory” (75). Thus,
writing the past … transforms … thoughts into a sacred ritual, a cleansing

force. This cleansing force must be accomplished before collective memo-
ry perishes without blossoming into an act of global creativity … before giv-
ing future generations the opportunity to take responsibility. (Paju 61–62)
Such an approach gestures towards a genealogy of belonging as the excava-

tion of the self-constitutive memories of the previous generation can be both
a blessing and a curse, as Paju must dig deeply into her past with the danger
of having its traces and legacies determine elusive boundaries pertaining to
questions of belonging. But Paju knows that it is crucial to know how history
is realised through writings that mediate the past and reflect the present at
the same time, with a “unique interweaving of truth and fiction, fabrications
and actuality” (103); in that, her artistic persona becomes tightly bound to her
personal life. As she fictionalises her own lived experiences in her memoir, she
also incorporates traditional autobiographical elements, including pictures of
herself, her mother and her relatives. Thus, the reader partakes in the mak-
ing of the text—and consequently of the self—through everyone’s reading of
these non-textual elements and the spaces they create. It seems then that Paju
interweaves her fiction, her lived experiences and her imagination into a fam-
ily photo album of sorts, inviting her audience to read her as an embodiment
of her work. Paju’s matriographical trauma goes beyond an iconographical

representation of her (and her country’s) body, both as figuration and as an
embodied, authorial spectre, infused as it is with fantasy and the unwritten.
Memories Denied is not just about unearthing a hidden ‘I’ then, but about the
realisation that one can represent and shape the world by imaginatively taking
part in (trans)forming -given- realities. For example, the various references to
“The Singing Revolution,” the spontaneous mass night-singing demonstrations
at the Tallinn Song Festival grounds, serves to paint a sonic and visual image of
Estonian appropriated space, thus illustrating her generation’s cultural milieu.
In that sense, Memories Denied is, in fact, a künstlerroman, marking as it does
the road to maturity of an author who realises that her artistic gesture of writ-
ing the memoir is what will allow her to grow and understand her personal and
authorial self alike. This approach also reflects the writer’s multifaceted identi-
ty and offers evidence for the experiences to which she lays claim. For Gayatri
Spivak, representation is both political and aesthetic, with the two being inex-
tricably intertwined; such an aestheticisation of performativity can provide a
background for change since a space of possibilities is created (253).
4 New Routes, New Hopes
John McLeod, borrowing the terms from Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, wrote that
powerful possibilities emerge when one substitutes the rigidity of roots with
the freedom of routes (215). This is what Paju does with her memoir, arduous-
ly using fragments of her familial memories which appear removed from her
own, to forge new ways into the future. Paju truly seeks to grasp her gener-
ation’s lack of direct knowledge about the previous generation’s trauma and
turns this realisation into something powerful, which challenges the rigidity of
national rhetoric vis-à-vis notions such as identity and home. What Paju does,
in other words, is to give voice to what was hitherto silent, unsayable, temporal,
un(re)presentable and inaccessible. Finding a sense of personal and collective
identity in such way entails, inevitably, a clash between artistic and personal
capacities. But at the same time, it is within the spaces created by this conflict
that a new, more inclusive sense of belonging can be imagined, which is what
we see in Memories Denied. Paju’s identity is narratively constructed in such
a way that it is inextricably intertwined with that of her homeland and as the
story of one becomes the story of many, strong claims to representation and fe-
male agency of individual and collective identities alike are laid out. Thus, the
textual interpellation of spaces, identities and times, underlines the possibil-
ities the new generation has for an imaginative transformation of post-Soviet
122 Athanasiades
and postcolonial individual and collective identities alike. This idea of a trans-
formed space constitutes, ultimately, an imagined ‘other’ Estonian space, one
that is constructed largely through imagination. Of course, the unreliable, tem-
poral nature of memory, in relation to actual experience necessarily entails
questions and implications, as nationhood seems to be redefined from within.
Nevertheless, such revisiting of the past marks its emergence as a powerful
signifier and as an imagined space of potentials.
It is true that life writers must negotiate their ideological, cultural, historical
and political ‘I’ in a way that their self-representation reflects a collective ‘we.’
This collectivity is made up of multiple and fluid subjectivities and, thus, man-
ifestations of culture, history, politics and ideology. “The idea of nationhood is
materialised from within the subjects” (Reading Autobiography 64); and this is
reciprocal: the collective is informed by the individual as much as the latter is
informed by the former; the same goes for reality and imagination, the factual
and the fictional. It is a challenge to traverse such terrain; but this path also
offers a new way to understand the complexity of the process in which one
should allow tradition and the past to influence his/her sense of being. The ‘I’
in life writing is the multiple result of an extremely complex journey which,
as alluded to before, if it is not freed from the shackles of roots, can only go to
one direction. If it is, however, the routes in front of it are diverse. This is what
Memories Denied does, looked at from the perspective put forward in the pres-
ent article, which also goes on to create an active audience who might be urged
to tell their own story and unravel the implications behind their own politics
of remembering.
Indeed, Memories Denied shows us exactly how the tragedy of an individual
family repeated over and over gradually becomes a national tragedy, a part of
the collective but interrupted European narrative, silenced by the occupations
and practical politics, given that the weakening and destroying of memory, of
intimacy and of family ties was one of the goals of Sovietization. Imbi Paju
calls her story an “untold story of all Estonian society, a story of sadness, ar-
bitrary power and images of violence—a puzzle” (25). It seems odd to argue
that she speaks for all Estonians or that she embodies an essentialised identity.
However, she does draw a recognisable portrait of them, which enables their
possibilities for transformation and permits a new kind of identity to move
beyond limiting ideological insights pertaining to traditional notions of under-
standing concepts such as nation. This reflection about identity and its borders
gestures towards the permeability of the artist’s boundaries and the circularity
that characterises her, and her relationship with their environment, since Paju
seems to understand that she is made up of others but also that she is not
constituted by them; thus, by exposing these others, she exposes the different
facets of herself. By the end of the memoir, we understand that this construct-
ed sense of ‘Estonianness’ is a complex entity in a world where the self can
exist only if it is contingent and faltering, which therefore requires aesthetic
strategies that can evoke fragmented subjectivities that, in turn, manifest dis-
continuity and displacement. Paju’s purpose in writing Memories Denied may
very well have been an attempt to lay to rest the ghost of her country’s Soviet
past without completely forgetting it. Whether she is successful and if so, to
what extent, remains to be seen. For instance, Paju writes that the dead are
silent and the living are intimidated; however, the very fact that she embarks
on a journey of restoring and reimagining memory, negates this point, which
may also point to the realisation of the unbelievable complexity of the task she
has undertaken, which is also why, as it was previously mentioned, she asks the
help of the audience to contextualise the traumatic events she writes about.
Parallel to shifting notions of national identity, traumatic past and migra-
tory experience then, it seems that everything becomes memory, one that
serves as a substitute for real experience when reality fails. Thomas argues
that from a Freudian perspective, it matters little whether an event actually
happened; what is important is what the fantasy reveals about the subject’s
unconscious desires (190). The use of imagination to fill in certain gaps passed
down through postmemory can help the children’s generation to dictate their
own terms for belonging. Such a view of life writing suggests that one is not
necessarily caught in a space of inbetweenness defined by past and present.
Rather, they can occupy both spaces at the same time or neither all the time.
Such an empowering realisation, I argue, permits subjects to avoid being de-
fined by others who see them through the lens of traditional understandings.
Ultimately, Paju’s memoir suggests the totality of the subject’s experience in its
inclusion of the imagined and experienced lives of objects, people, and com-
munities. In this way, Memories Denied can be approached as a testimony of
past and present generations, as well as a nod to those to come. A new kind of
identity emerges then, one that challenges dichotomies such as either/or and
uncertainties such as inbetweenness, by opening up a space of possibilities for
transformation. Hirsch argues that the current generation’s connection to the
past is actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projec-
tion and creation (107). This is the case in Memories Denied as Paju’s psycho-
logical processes explained here, are what enable her and her readers to re-im-
agine the connections between the personal, collective and cultural trauma of
the generations that came before, and the generations that follow, as well as
their shared connections.
Paju says that the maternal images “have rooted themselves into my memo-
ry and given rise to new visions. It is as if I can re-create times long past through
124 Athanasiades
her stories” (61). Indeed, the memoir ends fully cognisant of the enigmatic and
complex interactions of identity, politics, present and past. It is at the cross-
roads of past and present then, dead and living, and as everything seems to
be dissolving into memory, that Paju realises that she has walked along the
shadowy and convoluted paths of memory, “seeking to understand the past,
its emergence, the attempts to re-interpret it and the interruptions that have
plagued it … charting a lost identity” (326). In that, she hopes to offer hope
for the future, leading towards a more humane culture of history through a
re-assessment of the truth, given that the “consequences of … traumatic mem-
ory carry over into at least the third generations, causing bizarre and unantic-
ipated metamorphoses” (328). A re-charting of the territory of identity begs
the hypothesis then that this identity is not occupied solely by a single sub-
ject’s current circumstances, but by memories and voices from a different past,
thereby ‘worlding’ (to use Spivak’s concept) a post-Soviet liminal space where
the subject can be an imagining—and imagined—entity with agency to carry
on becoming. As this writing is concentrated on somebody else’s story, in this
case the mother’s, it also becomes the story of (an)other. Out of her mother’s
stories, Paju has created a story of the past, “imagining around their imagina-
tions” to borrow Hanif Kureishi’s expression (238) who embarked on a similar
journey with his memoir My Ear at His Heart (2005). In hindsight it seems that
the mother’s stories have dissolved into the child’s myths and, perhaps, the
mother would not be happy with what her life stories have become. Howev-
er, this is the fate of parents: to become their children’s myths and memories.
Within such an intricate intertwining of fantasy and reality, at the crossroads
of past and present, and as everything seems to be dissolving into memory,
Paju reads and writes, remembers and imagines, and invites us to imagine, try-
ing to understand a fractured self through an imagined life both for her and
her homeland.
In a way that gestures towards the essence of postcolonial writing Paju,
in her own right, ‘writes back’ in the face of the autobiographical hegemony
and challenges dominant narratives by infusing her imagination of what the
lost space and time she hails from might have been, into a text about her own
life, her mother’s life and the lives of her fellow Estonians. The tragedy of an
individual which is re-translated into the present and re-imagined into text,
progressively becomes a collective, national tragedy of a marginalised literary
place which has been historically silenced by Stalinist politics. In appropriat-
ing and re-interpreting her mother’s memory, Paju gains agency then, by being
able to speak up for herself, reclaiming her right to define herself. It is very
hard to talk about unresolved issues in the past and try to understand them in
the present; the price Paju has to pay is the ‘sacrifice’ of the mother figure. It is
true that Paju deals with her mother’s memories selfishly: she uses them to un-
derstand her own self without her mother’s consent. More often than not, life
writers read their parents’ stories as personal truths, re-inventing themselves
as authors and people through incorporating the fictional into the factual, the
biographical into the historical, and the individual into collective imaginary.
It is possible then, for such tensions between the historical and the subjec-
tive, the post-Soviet and the postcolonial, the imaginative and the experiential
‘truth’ and fantasy to be addressed, in that they create gaps within which the
self can move freely.
For Paju and her generation, then, the past and imagined spaces and events
are but a memory and, therefore, largely unknown, flowing through gendered
memory lanes. An accomplished sense of identity that brings together past
and present, is nothing if not fragmented and anarchic. Reading identity in
such a way points to the chaotic nature and constant mobility of self and iden-
tity and Paju seems to have turned the unreliable nature of memory as her
most influential, equally pervasive in her life, ideological ‘I.’ Hence, the process
of writing the self in Memories Denied becomes inextricably intertwined in
expressed desires which fuel the passion of author and reader alike and ele-
vate the importance of the presence of individual consciousness and imagina-
tion in life writing. Such a realisation gestures towards a promising approach
of text and context alike, where the aim is not an unattainable and elusive
sense of ‘truth.’ Instead, the different shifting possibilities of individual lives,
provides new access to histories, lives, selves and spaces whose true nature
is exposed: fragmented, interactive, uncategorisable, in transit, always in the
making, multiple and, as such, full of potential.
References
Balaev, Michelle. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic, vol. 41, no. 2, 2008, pp.
149–166.
Bradford, Vivian. Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again. Penn
State UP, 2010.
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” Poetics Today, vol. 29, no. 1, 2008,
pp. 103–128.
Kureishi, Hanif. My Ear at His Heart. Faber and Faber, 2004.
Kurvet-Käosaar, Leena. “Inquiries into Trauma and History in Imbi Paju’s Memories
Denied.” Wordpress. imbipaju.wordpress.com/leena-kurvet-kaosaarinquiries-in-
to-trauma-and-history-in-imbi-paju%E2%80%99s-memories-denied/. Accessed
February 14, 2016.
126 Athanasiades
LaCapra, Dominick. History and Memory after Auschwitz. Cornell UP, 1998.

Lucas, Edward. “Edward Lucas: Preface.” Memories Denied, translated by Tiina Ets, Like
P, 2006.
McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester UP, 2000.
Moore, Chioni David. “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a
Global Postcolonial Critique.” PMLA, Globalizing Literary Studies, vol. 116, no. 1, 2001,
pp. 111–128, www.jstor.org/stable/463645. Accessed October 22, 2015.
Paju, Imbi. “About Imbi Paju in English.” Imbi Paju—Memories Denied. Wordpress, im-
bipaju.wordpress.com/about/. Accessed November 8, 2015.
Paju, Imbi. Memories Denied, translated by Tiina Ets, Like P, 2006.
Paju, Imbi. Memories Denied. YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=s19NpxOrk7Y. Ac-
cessed January 26, 2017.
Schwalm, Helga. “Autobiography.” The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Hühn,
Peter et al, Hamburg U, 2014. www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/autobiography. Ac-
cessed December 13, 2015.
Smith, Sidonie, and Watson, Julia. Life Writing in the Long Run: A Smith and Watson
Autobiography Studies Reader. Michigan Publishing, U of Michigan Library, 2016.
quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9739969. Accessed July 3, 2018.
Smith, Sidonie, and Watson, Julia. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life
Narratives. 2nd ed., U of Minnesota P, 2010.
Smith, Sidonie, and Watson, Julia, editors. Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. U
of Wisconsin P, 1998.
Spivak, Chakravorty Gayatri. “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives.”
History and Theory, vol. 24, no. 3, 1985, pp. 247–272.
Thomas, Susie. “Hanif Kureishi’s My Ear at His Heart: When a Writer is Born, a Family
Dies.” Changing English, vol. 13, no. 2, 2006, pp. 185–196.
c hapter 7
Promoting the Exotic?—the Ideological

Mechanisms of Literary Prizes
Simon Rosenberg
1 Introduction
On October 14, 2014, it was announced that the winning novel of the 2014 Man
Booker Prize was Narrow Road to the Deep North by the Australian author Rich-
ard Flanagan. The novel tells the story of an Australian who was a prisoner of
war during the construction of the so-called ‘Death Railway’ during the Second
World War. The announcement of the 2014 winner was eagerly awaited, even
more than usual, because for the first time in its history, the Booker Prize had
changed its entry requirements: Since its inception in 1969, eligibility for the
Prize had been limited to authors with UK or Commonwealth citizenship. In
2013, it was decided that beginning in 2014, every original novel in English is
eligible as long as it is published in Great Britain. Many people in the British
literary establishment were sceptical about this decision. Critics expected a
dominance of American writers and feared a blurring of the demarcation be-
tween the British Booker Prize and the American Pulitzer Prize (Bury). The
fact that an author from a country with a British postcolonial background won
against two American (Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler) and two British
writers (Howard Jacobson and Ali Smith) at least briefly calmed critics. In
fact, the choice for the 2014 winner was unambiguous, at least when taking
the comment of Anthony C. Grayling, the chair of judges, at face value: “Some
years, very good books win the Man Booker Prize, but this year a masterpiece
has won it.”1
The 2015 shortlist, announced in September of that year, was praised for
reflecting the diversity of writing in English. On the other hand, some jour-
nalists labelled this diversity as too good to be genuine. Indeed, the mixture
was remarkable in terms of nationality, age and sexuality: two UK authors,
1 Grayling’s comment was made after the announcement of the Prize and is quoted on the
cover of the hardback edition published after the award. Not surprisingly, this quote is still
heavily used to promote the novel, for example on the dust jacket of the hardcover edition,
by online book shops or the publishing house website.
128 Rosenberg
one of them with Indian background, two US authors, one with Hawaiian
background, one author from Jamaica and one from Nigeria. The youngest
author was 28, the oldest 73, and two authors openly queer. It is also note-
worthy that two independent publishers, One and Oneworld Publications,
were nominated. In comparison to previous shortlists, this was a very unusu-
al combination.
In October 2015, Marlon James was revealed as the winner of the Man Book-
er Prize with his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. The Man Booker Prize
website explains the decision of the judges:
A Brief History of Seven Killings retells the near mythic assassination

attempt through the myriad voices—from witnesses and FBI and CIA
agents to killers, ghosts, beauty queens and Keith Richards’ drug dealer—
to create a rich, polyphonic study of violence, politics and the musical
legacy of Kingston of the 1970s. (“A Brief History of Seven Killings”)
Even though Jamaica is part of the Commonwealth of Nations, and therefore

has been eligible for the Prize since 1969, this was the first time a Jamaican
author had won it, a fact that was constantly emphasized by the media (Cain).
The following years, however, witnessed two US winners of the Man Booker
Prize in a row, a development which seemed to justify the critics’ fear and ul-
timately led to 30 publishers urging the prize organizers to reverse the change
(Cain). More interestingly, though, this seems to be a deviation from a devel-
opment the Booker Prize has witnessed since the 1980s: promoting novels set
in South Asia and/or authored by South Asian writers.
In the literary field of cultural production literary prizes are not awarded by
impartial agents (Bourdieu The Rules of Art).2 Prizes potentially enhance the
visibility of author, novel and, usually to a lesser degree, the publisher. Gen-
erally, sales figures of the winning novel as well as of the author’s previous
novels rise significantly. But the prize itself and the institution(s) behind it may
profit as well, albeit less visibly so. This chapter addresses some of the essential
mechanisms that underlie the cultural practice of awarding literary prizes. It
focuses on the (Man) Booker Prize specifically, not only because it is the UK’s
most prestigious award and garners extensive international interest, but also
because of its complex history which closely connects the prize to Britain’s
colonial sugar production in Guyana and the postcolonial repercussions this
2 Further page references are in the main text. See also Bourdieu and Randal Johnson, The Field
of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature.
Promoting the Exotic? 129
has until today. Due to its significant cultural influence, the Booker has been
able to promote novels which fall under Graham Huggan’s definition of the
“postcolonial exotic”:
[It] marks the intersection between contending regimes of value: one

regime—postcolonialism—that posits itself as anti-colonial, and that
works toward the dissolution of imperial epistemologies and institution-
al structures; and another—postcoloniality—that is more closely tied to
the global market, and that capitalises both on the widespread circula-
tion of ideas about cultural otherness and on the worldwide trafficking
of culturally ‘othered’ artifacts and goods. (Huggan 28)
According to Huggan, the postcolonial has become decidedly commodi-

fied, turning an anti-colonial project into marketable assets (31). Not only
authors and publishers have benefitted from this development, the Booker
Prize and its sponsors have profited too.3 Consequently, this chapter argues
that ideological frameworks of literary prizes can be, and usually are, ex-
ploited in a way that may conflict with the perceived official goals of the
prize: promoting literature exclusively on aesthetic grounds. ‘Ideology,’ of
course, is a problematic term, partially because of its negative connota-
tions based on Marx and Engels’ definition, where ideology was seen as a
belief system based on distorted perceptions due to capitalistic production
conditions (Strasen 279). This chapter uses the more general definition of
ideology offered by Lawrence Grossberg in New Keywords: “ ‘Ideology’ can
also refer to broader systems of beliefs, ideas and attitudes that have direct
implications for political commitments and actions. […] Such uses tend to
treat ‘Ideology’ as a relatively neutral term, since all sides can be said to have
an ideology” (177). Grossberg stresses though that the term still has a pejo-
rative quality: “[I]‌deology is opposed to ‘fact,’ ‘logic,’ ‘reason,’ ‘philosophy,’
and even ‘truth.’ It is always the other side—and never one’s own—that
has an ideology” (177). This reading of ideology expresses a specific value
system inherent in the prize that influences decisions concerning the jury,
shortlists and winners. At the same time, it stresses the awareness of this by
observers of the prize.
One indicator for the growing importance of the postcolonial exotic within
the Man Booker Prize are the nationalities of shortlisted and winning authors,
3 Academic interest in book prizes is not a new phenomenon. A good overview of methodolo-
gies, the relevance of research concerning literary prizes and the role of book studies in this
field is offered in Claire Squires, “A Common Ground? Book Prize Culture in Europe.”
130 Rosenberg
which this chapter looks at in more detail. Based on Bourdieu’s ideas of the
literary field of cultural production and capital (as well as Göran Bolin and
John Thompson’s respective interpretations),4 this chapter will first introduce
literary prizes in general before specifically addressing the Booker Prize with
its history. Following the ideas of the monograph Economy of Prestige by James
English, controversies are of vital importance for prizes since they generate
media attention and therefore various forms of capital. Hence, the following
section briefly deals with prize controversies, before it addresses the role of the
Booker promoting postcolonial content.
2 Literary Prizes
Prizes are everywhere. Every conceivable achievement of mankind, from

“outstanding contributions in world peace” to “best kissing scene in a movie,”
seems to have some sort of prize, if not several. Universities praise their best
master theses and dissertations; television broadcasters honour their funniest
comedians; food companies give prizes to “best food photographer of the year”
and so on. The ubiquity of prizes has also led to ironic prizes like the Raspberry
Award, the so-called anti-Oscar, which is annually awarded to particularly dis-
appointing achievements in movie-making. Ironic prizes also exist within the
publishing industry. For example, Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North
was also shortlisted by the Literary Review for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction
Award. However, it eventually lost to Ben Okri’s The Age of Magic (“Ben Okri
Wins”). Rather fittingly, James English labelled the first chapter of his Economy
of Prestige “Prize Frenzy” and argues that because of the steep rise of prizes in
the last decades, prizes can also be seen as a “contamination of the most pre-
cious aspects of art” (English 2–3).
Literary prizes are especially ubiquitous. In Germany alone, it is estimated
that over one thousand of them are awarded every year (Hübner).5 Of course,
these prizes differ in many respects. They can be categorized by prestige fac-
tors like their tradition, their geographical reach (regional, national or interna-
tional), the prize money, the lavishness of the award ceremony, the winners’
4 Thompson offers a succinct interpretation of Bourdieu’s ideas of “capital” in his introduction

to Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. 2nd ed. and Bolin
discusses Bourdieu’s field of cultural production in his Value and the Media: Cultural Produc-
tion and Consumption in Digital Markets.
5 Burckhard Dücker and Verena Neumann consider 700 a more realistic estimate in their Reg-
ister mit einer Einführung: Literaturpreise als literaturgeschichtlicher Forschungsgegenstand.
prestige and the attention paid by the public and the media. Three of the most
popular prizes in Britain are the Man Booker Prize, the Costa Book Award and
the Women’s Prize for Fiction. All three prizes differ in these respects:
table 7.1 Properties of the three most popular British book prizes
(Man) Booker Prize Costa Book Awards Women’s Prize for

Fiction
Est. 1968 Est. 1971 Est. 1996

Original work of Five book award Original full-length
fiction in English categories: novel, first novel, novel written in
children’s book, poetry, English
and biography—one of the
winning books is awarded
book of the year
Published in English Authors must have been Female author of any
in Great Britain resident in the UK or Ireland nationality published
(until 2013, citizen of for at least six months in each in the UK in the
Great Britain or the of the previous three years preceding year
Commonwealth)
gbp 50,000 gbp 5,000 Book of the gbp 30,000
year: gbp 25,000
“Fiction at its finest” “most outstanding books of “celebrates
the year” excellence, originality
and accessibility in
women’s writing”
The Man Booker is the oldest of the three prizes, offers the highest prize
money and focuses exclusively on novels, with no limitation on the authors’
gender or residency. The catchphrases further indicate that the Booker is about
literary quality and less about readability.
Literary prizes are sociocultural processes which have three main func-
tions: 1) a social function which supports and honours authors (that is, eco-
nomic, social and symbolic capital), 2) a representative function for both the
awarding institution and the laureate, and 3) a cultural and political function
to promote and support the language and literature of a specific region and
cultivation of specific genres. Consequently, German sociologist Friedhelm
Kröll offered the appropriate definition: “Literary prizes are manifestations
132 Rosenberg
of patronage under the conditions of a (highly) developed literary market”

(145).6
Literary prizes can be discussed profitably with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory
of the literary field of cultural production, which is characterized by a high-
ly dynamic structure consisting of processes of interaction and competition
for certain positions within the field. The spectrum of literature in the literary
field ranges from autonomous literature (almost no audience and no econom-
ic profit; ‘art for art’s sake’) to heteronomous literature (literature created for
the mass market and hence primarily for economic profit) (Bourdieu The Rules
of Art 121–127). The most important agents in the literary field are authors, pub-
lishing houses, the book trade in general, libraries, newspapers, educational
institutes and readers. Literary prizes can also be very important processes that
act as agents within this field for authors. With their highly (symbolically) rit-
ualized staging, they can, and usually do (depending on the prestige), enhance
the author’s social, economic and cultural capital.7
Every institution offering literary prizes has a dynamic relationship with
the field of literary and cultural production. Rewarding a novel in such a way
has an integrative function (e.g. creating a new canon such as ‘Booker win-
ners’) but at the same time also a decidedly differentiating function with re-
spect to the competition. However, in order for a novel to be eligible for a
prize, the authors and/or their works must fit into a specific requirements
profile: the laureate has to win the attention of the institution by a special
contribution (meaning his or her work). Then, a consensus must be found be-
tween the work of the author and the values and ideologies of the institution
that awards the prize. This is necessary as not only the author is honoured,
but also the value orientations of the institution and its ideologies are hon-
oured at the same time. Put differently, every recognition and honour of an
author precedes the staged self-image of the institution that awards the prize.
For this reason, prize-giver and prize-winner are part of an interdependent
relationship.
3 The (Man) Booker Prize
The Booker Prize was founded in 1968 to rival the French Prix Goncourt
with funding from Booker-McConnell Ltd, a food shipping and wholesaling
6 My translation.
7 For Bourdieu’s concept of different capitals, see Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,”
Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education.
company that had for decades run the sugar industry in the British colony
of Guyana. Booker-McConnell developed an interest in literature when the
company purchased the rights to the works of then very popular authors like
Agatha Christie and James Bond-creator Ian Fleming. However, in 2000, the
company was purchased by the British supermarket chain Iceland, which sold
off the literary assets and also withdrew from supporting the Prize. Two years
later, in 2002, the Prize was sponsored by Man Group plc, nowadays one of the
largest hedge fund managers worldwide.8 Since 2020, the Prize is sponsored
by the charity foundation Crankstart (Flood, “Silocon Valley Billionaire Takes
Over”).
According to its own policy, the Booker Prize is simply given to “the best
novel in the opinion of the judges.” No further criteria are stated. The aim is
said to increase the reading of finest quality fiction and to attract the intelli-
gent general audience. This can ultimately affect the literary field in various
ways. For example, rewarding the author of a highbrow novel with a prize that
creates general awareness via media attention entails a struggle that propels
the novel from the autonomous side of the literary field towards a more heter-
onomous place (Bourdieu The Rules of Art 141–146). However, it is also possible
that an author known for heteronomous literature is gaining esteem through
the cultural capital of the literary prize and, therefore, his or her work is forced
more towards autonomous literature. If this happens too often, the respective
prize may be in danger of losing its cultural capital and its position within the
literary field. Thus, it is necessary for every agent within the literary field of
cultural production to be aware of the complex mechanisms that are behind
the awards.
The standard procedure of the Booker Prize runs as follows: each year,
five judges are chosen following recommendations from the Booker Prize
Foundation Advisory Committee, which also advises on any changes to the
rules. The Booker judges usually come from a wide range of disciplines, in-
cluding critics, writers and academics, but also poets, politicians and actors.
British publishers can submit between one and four titles from their au-
thors to be considered for the Prize, depending on the number of longlist-
ed books in the previous four years.9 The longlist called ‘The Booker’s Doz-
en’ is created next. By September, the judges agree on a shortlist of the best
8 A very good summary of the history of the Man Booker Prize is offered by Luke Strongman
in the introduction of his published PhD thesis The Booker Prize and the Legacy of Empire,
vii-xxiii.
9 For detailed information on the procedure of the Booker Prize and its current entry require-
ments, see “Rules and Entry Form.”
134 Rosenberg
six novels of the year. The final winner is usually announced in October. All
shortlisted authors receive a cheque for £2,500 and a designer-bound copy of
their respective novel. The winner receives a further £50,000, although the re-
ward used to be significantly lower and has been raised several times. A less
known rule, however, is that publishers and authors alike must also agree to
several mandatory contributions concerning publicity. This entails, for exam-
ple, making the book available as an e-book in the event of being longlisted
and authors should be available for award ceremonies. More interestingly,
though, if a novel is shortlisted, the publisher agrees to pay gbp 5,000 for ‘gen-
eral publicity’ and again further gbp 5,000 if the novel wins the prize. In this
case, cultural capital certainly comes at a(n) (economic) price.
f igure 7.1
Standard procedure of the Booker Prize
Fulfilling one of the objectives of the Prize—to encourage the widest pos-
sible readership for the best work in literary fiction—the winner, and also the
shortlisted authors, usually witness a decisive increase in visibility and book
sales. Marlon James was no exception: British news sites like the Daily Mail,
The Guardian, BBC News or The Telegraph reported immediately. American
sites like The New York Times, Huffington Post or CNN instantly reported as well.
What is even more noteworthy: non-English speaking countries like Spain,
France, Germany, Italy and Portugal seemed as interested in the winner as
the Anglophone world, though the novel had not yet been published in their
respective languages. Although their reports were usually less extensive, still
they deemed it important enough to report on the Booker winner.10
A look at the sales figures reveals the economic impact of the Prize, the
so-called ‘Booker bounce’: within one week after the announcement of the
longlist, James’s novel was sold 512 times. Before the shortlist was announced,
A Brief History of Seven Killings had been sold 6,700 times in both paperback
and hardback. Until the award ceremony, it had sold 12,200 copies and occu-
pied position 264 on the official UK Bestsellers. One week later, it jumped to
position seven with over 23,000 copies sold (“Official UK Bestsellers” 8). From a
commercial standpoint, however, the ‘Booker bounce’ was not as pronounced
as with previous winners such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (published 2009;
974,892 volumes sold), Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger (2008; 557,111) or Mantel’s
Bringing Up the Bodies (2012; 540,483) (“Man Booker Prize Winners” 11). This,
however, is part of a general development that was described in 2018 as “the
Booker Bounce has gone flat.”11 That year’s shortlist noted the lowest sales since
2000 (Jones 5). But the Booker Prize does not only have a direct economic
effect on the winning novel. More importantly, Marlon James ceased being a
mere author—on October 13th he became a ‘Man Booker winning author’ and
his previous two novels were immediately upgraded with stickers.
Not only winning the award makes a difference, even a place on the longlist
can enhance book sales and the reputation of both author and publisher.12
This status is usually exploited by paratextual elements like stickers fixed to
the cover that stress the books’ literary quality to potential buyers. A promi-
nent example is Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World, one of the first American
novels longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. But references to the Booker Prize
take different forms and Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen takes this practice
one step further: not only marked as “shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize,”
its blurb also carries an endorsement by the 2013 Booker Prize winner Elea-
nor Catton. In this case, her Prize-enhanced position within the literary field
was used to strengthen her credibility for judging good literature. Finally, even
10 See, for example, “Littérature: le Jamaïcain Marlon James lauréat du Man Booker Prize,” or
Carlos Fresneda.
11 However, in 2019 Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other experienced an impres-
sive spike and sold almost 6,000 copies in the five days following her win of the Booker.
Within these few days, the award effectively more than doubled the novel’s lifetime
sales: just 4,000 copies had been shifted during the preceding five months since publi-
cation. Co-winner Margaret Atwood’s already-bestselling The Testaments, sequel to The
Handmaid’s Tale, sold 13,400 copies in the five days following her win, and had sold over
191,000 copies before the Booker (Flood, “Bernardine Evaristo Doubles Lifetime Sales”).
12 The longlist of the Man Booker Prize is only published since 2002.
136 Rosenberg
translations of Booker Prize winning novels usually refer to the Prize. Clearly,
the status of belonging into the Man Booker sphere is certainly exploited at an
international level as well.
4 Ceremonies and Controversies
Award ceremonies themselves warrant critical attention. Not only do they af-
fect and reflect the prestige of the respective prize; they are also an opportu-
nity to witness the processes of prestige being enhanced. Bringing together
essential agents within the literary field, they reveal demarcations between
highbrow and popular literature and they disclose interfaces of the literary
with other fields.
Award ceremonies are highly ritualized and staged events, based on the
ideas of the awarding institution, and tend to be designed for television and
broadcasting. They consist of several acts of interactions between the institu-
tion, the winner and the interested public. The media functions as a multiplier
of attention. The standard formula of award ceremonies consists of welcom-
ing, laudatory and acceptance speeches and are usually complemented with
further elements like musical interludes, dinner etc. (Dücker, et al.). This pro-
cedure is commonly accepted and any break with this order is immediately
noticed and thus reconfirms the norm. This implies that any deviation cre-
ates awareness through media interest, albeit to different degrees. Acceptance
speeches usually draw the most attention. This is the moment in which the
exchange of cultural capital takes place. Especially here, any deviation from
the norm is noted. Being aware of this heightened attention, some winners use
the opportunity for political statements. For example, Patricia Arquette gave a
passionate speech about equal pay for women in the film industry when she
won an Oscar in 2015 (Needham and Carroll).
Most controversial, however, is the rejection of prizes. Marlon Brando re-
fused to accept the Oscar in 1973 in protest against poor treatment of Native
Americans in the film industry and had Native American actress Sacheen Little-
feather read out a statement on his behalf (“Marlon Brando”). Jean-Paul Sartre
famously declined the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, as he wanted to avoid
being politically exploited by the Nobel Foundation and thereby strengthened
his artistic integrity (“Jean-Paul Sartre”). A German example from 2008 illus-
trates how an acceptance speech can develop into a disaster for the hosting in-
stitution, in this case German television channel zdf. In his speech, renowned
literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki first mentions other, more prestigious
prizes for which he had been grateful, only to reject the ‘Founders’ Honorary
Award’ of the Deutscher Fernsehpreis for his key role in the popular literature
programme he co-hosted for many years. He insisted that he did not belong
among the previous prize-winners in this award category, complained about
the tedious ceremony and finally praised rival television stations for offering a
programme superior to the nonsense (“Blödsinn”) which the zdf stood for in
his view. Clearly, in this particular case, the exchange of cultural capital did not
proceed as expected (Müller).
The Booker Prize is almost famous for its controversies: during his accept-
ance speech, 1972 winner John Berger protested against Booker-McConnell’s
colonial history. He blamed Booker-McConnell’s 130 years of sugar production
in the Caribbean for the region’s modern poverty and donated half of his (then)
£5,000 prize to the British Black Panther movement (Jordison “Looking Back”).
In 1994, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, one of the judges of that year, called the win-
ning novel How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman a disgrace because of its
excessive use of strong language and distanced herself from the jury’s decision
(Jordison “Booker Club”). Perhaps the most discussed controversy took place
in 1980, when Anthony Burgess refused to attend the ceremony unless he could
be guaranteed a win. He could not, and his rival William Golding triumphed
with his novel Rites of Passage. This controversy certainly helped the Booker
Prize to become more prestigious since two of the most prominent members
of the British literary elite were competing for it (Todd 445–447).
The British media is watching every Booker development closely. And more
often than not, they seem to anticipate devaluing developments concerning
the Booker Prize. Indeed, it is not uncommon for former Booker judges to crit-
icize the judgement procedure. The most aggressive comment came from A. L.
Kennedy, who called the award “a pile of crooked nonsense.” According to Ken-
nedy, winners were always determined by “who knows who, who’s sleeping
with who, who’s selling drugs to who, who’s married to who, whose turn it is …
I read the 300 novels and no other bastard [on the panel] did” (qtd. in Moss).
A much bigger concern was discussed in 2011, when the literary establishment
feared a devaluation of the Booker Prize within the literary field. According
to the critics, the shortlist only consisted of novels that were “too readable.”
And indeed, the novels seemed to be more accessible than previous shortlists
(Massie). One publisher, who wanted to remain anonymous, stated that “the
consensus does seem to be that the Booker this year is a bit of a shambles …
Basically, the whole thing needs to be an utter snob fest, otherwise how is it dif-
ferent from the Costas?” (Flood “Booker Prize Divides”). This clearly suggests
that it is important for prizes to set themselves apart from other awards.
The Booker Prize organizers, however, shrug away such controversies and
even use them as publicity. The 2013 brochure even quotes Mark O’Connell’s
138 Rosenberg
comment in The New Yorker: “There’s a peculiar circularity at the heart of its

cultural significance. It’s important because it’s controversial, and it’s con-
troversial because it’s important” (O’Connel).13 The Booker Prize definitely
caused controversies when it became apparent that it seemed to favour nov-
els with some sort of postcolonial content. Considering the Booker’s past,
a very specific ideology of atonement seemed to be at work: making up for
its past.
5 Promoting the Exotic?
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children winning the Booker in 1981 can be seen
as a breakthrough not only for Rushdie but also for the international visibility
of Anglophone South Asian novelists more generally. The Booker Prize seems
to have played a major role in that development. Since Rushdie’s victory, In-
dian-born authors have appeared more frequently on the shortlist, often with
works directly addressing the topic of British colonialism from a critical per-
spective.14 Including figures for 2016, 136 shortlisted authors were British, 27
Irish and 17 Canadian. Only five authors were Indian, three British Indian, two
Indian-born Canadian, one Sri Lankan-born British and one Indian-American.
Except for Anita Desai, who was first shortlisted for Clear Light of Day in 1980,
no other authors from the subcontinent or its diasporas were shortlisted be-
fore 1981 (“Backlist”).
Some newspapers were suspicious about the Booker Prize’s alleged prefer-
ence for novels with postcolonial connections. Indeed, it can be argued that
colonial power structures and attitudes still reverberate within the Man Book-
er Prize. The growing commercial success of South Asian writing in English
was explained by its ‘exotic’ features rather than literary merit (Dwivedi and
Lau 1). Given the commodification of Anglophone Indian literature, Tabish
Khair commented that “the best thing that can happen to Indian writing in
English today is if it runs out of well-meaning British patronage” (Khair). If the
inclusion of postcolonial literature reflects positively on a Prize which thereby
becomes associated with an open-minded attitude towards writers of colour
and attains a progressive image, then this inclusion can potentially be seen
13 The 2013 Man Booker Prize brochure is available online: themanbookerprize.com/

sites/manbosamjo/files/files/Man%20Booker%202013%20Booklet.pdf (accessed 14
February 2017).
14 Huggan’s Postcolonial Exotic is regarded as a seminal work on this topic and offers a more
extensive analysis.
as instrumentalizing this field. Moreover, the value which is being bestowed

upon novels and authors is controlled by a British institution whose commit-
tee used to consist mainly of the white British establishment. As James English
has pointed out, this seems rather blatantly reminiscent of “old patterns of
imperial control over symbolic economies and hence over cultural practice it-
self” (English 297–298). Huggan also recognizes ongoing imperialist motives
and claims that exoticism has shifted “from a more or less privileged mode
of aesthetic perception to an increasingly global mode of mass-market con-
sumption” (Huggan 15). In other words, what may have started out as a clear
ideological conviction of aesthetic quality has also gained the quality of an
economic asset.
An intriguing example of this shift is 2006 winner Kiran Desai with her
novel The Inheritance of Loss.15 The novel is set in Kalimpong, Darjeeling. It
addresses Indian domestic conflicts, rejection and admiration of the English
way of life, the hardships of living in Kalimpong and the accusation that its
population was becoming too English and had forgotten the traditional ways
of Indian life. Pre-publication reviews were mixed, but after its publication
most reviews were favourable. When the novel was published in Britain by
a Penguin imprint (it had previously been published in India and the USA),
it almost simultaneously appeared on the longlist of the Booker Prize. From
then on, the book gained visibility and economic success. Its victory was liter-
ary world news and it was talked about internationally in major publications.
Up until this point, this example merely shows that the Booker Prize, with its
enormous prestige, has the power to control access to worldwide literary mar-
kets. However, this time, its high visibility backfired. Since the Booker winner
automatically witnesses huge promotion and attention, the novel underwent
meticulous inspection concerning its contents. As a result, criticism suddenly
started to rise from India, especially from Kalimpong. The inhabitants felt that
they were misrepresented and accused Desai of being unable to offer an au-
thentic account of their culture. Reports of protests and threats of book burn-
ings appeared in the Indian press and a newspaper quoted a protester labelling
the novel as racist (Allington 131).
This criticism not only attacked Kiran Desai, but also the Booker Prize by
asking how a British committee from the upper ranks of society could judge the
authenticity of a novel that takes place in India. The threatened book burnings
in India were not only directed against the book or its author, but also against
15 For a detailed summary of this example, see Daniel Allington, “Kiran Desai’s The
Inheritance of Loss and the Troubled Symbolic Production of a Man Booker Prize Winner.”
140 Rosenberg
the people who praised and awarded it for its so-called authenticity.16 In other
words, this example made the transition of postcolonial contents towards a
simple economic asset transparent and criticized the apparently still existing
British colonial power structures in the shape of the Man Booker Prize.
6 Conclusion: “The best book in the opinion of the judges”?
In 2013, Edward St Aubyn published his novel Lost for Words, which, in essence,
is a satirical comment about the world of literary prizes, if not about the Book-
er Prize itself. The fictional look behind the curtain addresses many clichés
concerning the Booker as well as unprofessional behaviour on many levels.
Judges belong to a small privileged class and most are overburdened by the
number of books they have to read. They ridicule their fellow judges for their
literary tastes and are more concerned with mundane problems. The expect-
ed climax of the novel is the winner of the (fictional) Elysium Prize. Praised
for being a postmodern multimedia masterpiece, it turns out to be a text that
entered the Prize purely by accident; it is an Indian cooking book. The exotic
quality of its ingredients obviously generated enough well-founded reasons for
it to be rewarded (Enright).
St Aubyn’s novel points to some important issues concerning the validity
and mechanisms of literary prizes. The act of rewarding a novel is about mak-
ing it visible. It is also about values and ideologies. While the institutions that
award prizes share their cultural capital with the winners, they simultaneously
expand the scope of their value orientations with every new ceremony. Its au-
thority and ideology should be reaffirmed with every winner. The Booker Prize
is no exception. One cannot help but notice that the Booker Prize seemed to be
reliant on both colonialism (its connections to the sugar industry in Guyana)
and globalization (funded from 2002 until 2019 by one of the largest hedge
fund managers worldwide). By shortlisting more novels and authors from for-
mer British colonies since 1981, it has sought to appear progressive, open-mind-
ed and self-conscious of its colonial past, when in fact it can be argued that so-
called exotic elements were merely used as a mass-market phenomenon that
could be exploited. It is important to note that only UK publishers can make
submissions. Ultimately, this reduces the possible submissions in number as
16 Huggan claims that terms like “authenticity” or “resistance” are commercially exploited
within a “larger semiotic system” within the postcolonial exotic. Huggan, Postcolonial
Exotic, xvi.
well as content. British publishers function as gatekeepers of ideas as they de-

cide which books are deemed appropriate for the award.17
With the revised 2014 entry requirements, it will be interesting to follow
the upcoming Booker celebrations. The first US winner was celebrated in 2016
(after as many as six shortlisted US authors in only three years), receiving the
attention everyone expected.18 The following year saw the second US winner
in a row, which, interestingly, did not have the usual impact on sales in the
US: “Just 48% of sales of Lincoln in the Bardo were generated after it won the
Man Booker, compared with [2013 winner] The Luminaries which saw its sales
increase 12-times from 4,553 to 56,393” (“Publishers Urge” 19). A development
that seems to prove that the arguments of the critics of the rule change.
Doubtless, the media will find flaws in future shortlists, be they too read-
able, too Indian, too American, or too diverse to be truly reflecting the best
suggestions for the Booker. Prizes like the Booker may offer good recommen-
dations every now and then, but prizes are always subject to unacknowledged
mechanisms and they reflect the ideologies of key agents and institutions
within the literary field. Therefore it is always doubtful whether a Prize is pure-
ly rewarding the literary quality of a literary text. Having accumulated much
cultural capital over the decades, the Booker has cemented its strong position
within the literary field. It can therefore ask for a substantial amount of money
from shortlisted and winning publishers to finance marketing, which further
enhances visibility and in turn perpetuates its position of arbiter and gate-
keeper. The claim that the Booker Prize is always awarded to the “best novel in
the opinion of the judges” is a half-truth at best and it should be amended in
the following way: “after serious consideration of ideological mechanisms of
the literary field.” The debate about reversing the 2014 eligibility change and
to exclude US authors once more flared up again after the Booker’s sponsor
change in 2018 and that certainly underscores the degree to which literature
prizes are influenced by ideology.
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18 See, for example, Tim Masters.
142 Rosenberg
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pa rt 3
Continuities, Complications, Critique
∵
c hapter 8
Reflections of Lusáni Cissé—Imperial Images and

Sentient Critique
Lars Eckstein
On the last sunny October weekend in 2015 I decided to cycle from my home
in Berlin to the small town of Wünsdorf some 40 kilometres south of the city.
I was hoping to see the remains of the first mosque that was built on German
soil, consecrated 100 years ago, in July 1915. I read in the papers that the foun-
dations had been discovered during construction work in July, and excavated
by archaeologists from Berlin’s Freie Universität over summer. The mosque
was not just any mosque. It had been the landmark of a prison camp during
the First World War. Half Moon Camp (Halbmondlager) in Wünsdorf was
established in late 1914 to accommodate around 4,000 colonial prisoners of
war from the armies of the Entente. They were West and North Africans,
Afghans and Indians, most of them of Islamic faith. The wild idea behind
Half Moon Camp which mainly held prisoners from the British and French
colonies, and its neighbouring Weinberg Camp, which mainly held Russian
Tartars, was to win over its inmates for the confederate cause of the German
and Ottoman Empires. It is to this end that the Germans built the mosque.
They initially treated their prisoners well by standards, offered Islamic in-
struction together with political propaganda, distributed a biweekly news-
paper published in several languages titled Al Dschihad, and hoped to send
their captives back as proper germanophiles who would start anti-colonial
revolts in their native lands. The camp was an attraction. I was in a way cy-
cling down the same trail that thousands of weekend visitors trod 100 years
earlier: My mother’s grandparents who lived in nearby Potsdam may well
have been among those who came to marvel at the people of colour behind
the fences, in the same way that they would have visited Völkerschauen and
colonial spectacles.
When I got to the place, though, the excavation site was gone. The place
was deserted except for a group of some 20 migrant builders having coffee.
They kindly asked me to leave the construction site, and told me they knew
nothing of any mosque. Back on the road I hit upon an elderly lady, the only
148 Eckstein
other person I saw in town. She told me that the excavation is indeed gone,
and what is now built on the site of the former mosque is to be part of a
refugee camp, designed to become a dependency of the only central recep-
tion camp (Erstaufnahmeeinrichtung) in the State of Brandenburg. The 2015
Wünsdorf camp is destined to accommodate the growing numbers of refu-
gees arriving via the Balkan route, most of whom, incidentally, begin their
journey in former colonies of the Entente. Why that new construction she
did not know; after all, Wünsdorf is full of empty buildings, the lady argued.
The town is most famous for its convoluted military history: The first bar-
racks were built in 1910; Wünsdorf served as headquarters of the Reichswehr
during the First World War; after the mosque was torn down in 1930, the
Nazis constructed a panzer shed in its place, dug a system of bunkers, built
more barracks, and used the parade ground to train their Olympic athletes
for the 1936 games. After the war the Russians took over to install their mil-
itary headquarters in East Germany. They declared Wünsdorf a forbidden
area, relocated the local population, and moved in 30,000 Russian forces
in 1953. They moved out again in 1994 to leave a ghost town full of toxic
waste and scrap ammunition. Wünsdorf has not structurally recovered yet.
In May 2015, it hit the national news after two young men attempted to burn
down a barrack designated for refugees shortly after the plans for the new
Camp were announced. There is a civil alliance in the district confronting
hate crimes and welcoming refugees; yet most local politicians are in denial
of any traces of structural racism.
The excavation of the foundations of Germany’s very first mosque thus
dug deep through convoluted layers of history; and it is no surprise, perhaps,
that the remains of 1915 were speedily covered up again. All that is left now is
a street name, and an information board at the entrance of ‘Moscheestrasse’
with an historical photograph and some basic information. And there is an
interconfessional graveyard, some two kilometres from the former site of
Half Moon Camp, hidden away in the Brandenburg forest. 988 inmates of
Half Moon and Weinberg Camp were buried here between 1915 and 1919.
Only the section of the graveyard for soldiers from the British colonies was
restored after the Russians left by the Commonwealth War Grave Commis-
sion and reopened in 2005 as the Zehrensdorf Indian Cemetery, with new
stones for 206 Indian soldiers. Without any stones for the French and Rus-
sian sections, the rest of the graveyard resembles a shady park; at its cen-
tre, a memorial stele lists the names of all those whose death in the Camps
was documented. It was here, in that deserted forest glade, on a ridiculously
beautiful and golden autumn Saturday, that I felt some of the affective traces
of 1915 still at work.
Reflections of Lusáni Cissé 149
The reason why I set off on that day to see the remains of the mosque and
Half Moon Camp in the first place was a photograph. I had come across it al-
most exactly a year earlier for the first time. I was invited to speak at a confer-
ence in Dakar on 19th- and 20th-century photography in Africa, without really
knowing too much about the topic. In my desperation, I typed in “African co-
lonial photography” in Google Images, and one image, the one that ultimately
brought me out to Wünsdorf, somehow stood out from all the other thumbnail
sized pictures popping up on my screen (see figure 8.1). The black and white
frontal shot of a young African man inexplicably affected me, calmly holding
my gaze, and strangely throwing it back. When the photograph materialised
full screen on the webpages of The Guardian in London, I was stunned. I was
looking at the face of a man entirely unknown to me, yet at the same time
disconcertingly familiar, a face suggestive of an intimacy that is at the same
time deflected and foreclosed, just as the eyes are partly shaded by a reflexion
of light. I was especially affected, I suppose, by the vivid material presence of a
life that is at the same time an absence: an absence which materialises in the
photographic grain, relative lack of depth, and the black-and-white contours
which highlight the image’s status as an historical representation, yet which
also paradoxically effect its mimetic realism in the presence. In other words,
I felt haunted by the image, by a trick of light for which I had no rational expla-
nation. I was struggling with an enchanted agency in what by all means should
have been a fully disenchanted object in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Rather than shrugging it off as would have been my first instinct, I decided to
somehow deal with it.
But how to think and write about this enchantment and its uncanny rela-
tional pull in a more reflexive way? And how to work it into a critical materialist
reading of the colonial archive in which the photograph would have circulat-
ed? For of course I expected to find images in my search that are dramatically
ideological: images that are informed by radically asymmetrical relations of
power, images that are staged in the interest of Empire, that travelled in the
services of imperial propaganda or racist science. The enchanting pull thus al-
most felt like a betrayal: It seemingly bracketed a proper political response that
attends to the image’s discursive frames in order to demystify and deconstruct
its colonial ideology. It seemingly displaced political critique with presuma-
bly pre-discursive affect and apolitical (re)mystification. This dilemma forms
the starting point of this essay. It is about coming to terms with the imperial
image of the young African I encountered: to explore ways of deconstructing
the colonial ideologies that are underwriting the representation, yet without
150 Eckstein
f igure 8.1
Lusáni Cissé, 1916, digital archive of the
Frobenius Institute
disavowing the affective surge across colonial and historical differences. What
I am interested in, ultimately, is a sentient mode of postcolonial critique, a
critique which does not foreclose what Michael Taussig refers to as the “sym-
pathetic magic” of the representational objects it studies.
It was not difficult to find out more about the young African. What I did not
expect was that it would take me so close to home; not to the realms of co-
lonial Africa, as I had assumed, but to the very grounds of Half Moon Camp
south of Berlin, just a three-hour cycling trip away. The photo on the pages
of The Guardian belonged to the coverage of an exhibition which opened in
September 2014 at the Historical Museum in Frankfurt (Main). It was titled
“Captured Images” (Gefangene Bilder). At its centre were larger than life re-
productions of portrait photographs of ten West and North African men, all
taken on the grounds of Half Moon Camp. The images were uncovered from
the photographic archive of Frankfurt’s own Frobenius Institute on occasion
of the First World War centenary, as part of an exhibition project devoted to

the intimate entanglements of colonial propaganda, science, and the Great
War. The exhibition, and the exhibition catalogue were a revelation. Next to a
wealth of information about Half Moon Camp, they gave me more images of
the young African man.
To begin with, these were two alternative prints of the same image that so
struck me (see figures 8.2 and 8.3). The Guardian article obviously took its re-
production from the Frobenius Institute’s digital archive. I found it difficult,
at first, to recognise the face so familiar to me in its digital form in either the
catalogue print, or in the exhibition context where the image was mounted in
large scale, before backlighting, to stunning effect. Professionally reproduced
with contemporary analogue technology from the original negative, the sharp-
ly added contrast, grain, and depth of these prints not only changed the man
almost beyond my recognition, perhaps by deflecting attention away from the
gaze by a surplus of available grain and detail. They also foreground the repro-
duction process itself, and support the framing of the image as an artistic, rath-
er than ordinary object. For me they, paradoxically, perhaps, take away some
of the traces of life that the flat digital copy seems to maintain. It is the digital
copy that I therefore still prefer to think with. Yet the more consequential reve-
lation was the fact that the image did not stand alone; that it is only one half of
a pair, and not just any pair: a mug shot pair—one full frontal, and one profile
shot. With this realisation at last, ideology kicked in with a vengeance.
It should not have come as a surprise. I had known a thing or two about
Half Moon Camp and its darker sides before I hit upon the photograph and
the exhibition in Frankfurt, mainly through conversations with Britta Lange, a
Berlin-based cultural historian who has done extensive research on the lega-
cies of the camp. Her research was integral to the Halfmoon Files project, which
includes a highly acclaimed documentary film of the same title directed by
Philip Scheffner which premiered at the 2007 Berlinale, and a sound and video
installation curated by Scheffner and Lange. The film and exhibition intricate-
ly expose some of the haunting medial traces of Half Moon Camp inmates, and
explore the uncanny entanglements of colonialism, new media technologies,
and the sciences. For the original ideological idea of the prison as a breeding
ground for would-be anticolonial revolutionaries in the services of the German
Reich only lasted so long: When the more obvious unlikeliness of the project
transpired, a new set of interests in the inmates came to the fore. Already in
early 1915, German universities and academics began to put pressure on the
government to gain access to the readily available ‘human material’ conven-
iently gathered at their doorstep to pursue different types of anthropological
research. And the authorities soon gave in.
152 Eckstein

f igures 8.2 a nd 8.3 Lusáni Cissé, 1916, analogue print, in exhibition catalogue
Gefangene Bilder
One of the first to be allowed entry to the Camp, building on his excellent
contacts to Berlin’s political elite, was Leo Frobenius. Frobenius, a self-made
anthropologist who at the turn of the century developed the concept of a ‘cul-
tural morphology’ underwriting different ‘culture areas’ (Kulturkreise) across
the globe, a concept that would later influence Oswald Spengler, had just re-
turned from a secret mission to Abyssinia in the name of the Kaiser. He was
to instigate a rebellion against the British-Egyptian dominance in Sudan, yet
without receiving the necessary papers by the Italians in Massawa returned to
Berlin looking for other ways of promoting his mission. Half Moon Camp must
have given him the idea to put together a propaganda volume rallying against
the forces of the Entente and their treatment of colonial soldiers in particular,
which he titled Der Völkerzirkus unserer Feinde. Published in 1916, it presents a
wide array of photographs of colonial prisoners of war to support claims that
the Entente treated their imperial regiments inhumanely and wasted them as
cannon fodder. The volume contains the frontal shot of the young African man
that so struck me, subtitled “Senegalschütze aus dem Sudan, nördlich Kolo-
nie Goldküste.”1 It seems unlikely that Frobenius took the photograph on the
1 “Senegal rifleman from Sudan, north of Gold Coast colony” (my translation).
grounds of Half Moon Camp himself, or that he specifically commissioned it in

1916; still, the negative slide, together with the profile shot and the images of the
other Africans that were exhibited 98 years later in Frankfurt somehow found
their way into his personal collection. The ideological work to which Frobenius
put the photograph in the propaganda volume is as ambivalent as Frobenius
himself, whom the likes of Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire hailed as the
harbinger of a new image of Africa, while others, among them Wole Soyinka,
challenged that same image as thoroughly racist. Der Völkerzirkus denounces
the injustices of colonial exploitation in the War; yet by attacking Britain in
particular as “the greatest animal trainer [Dompteur]” in a perverse menagerie
of ‘exotic’ aliens (Frobenius 3), it also effectively dehumanises the colonial sol-
diers. The images of Arabs and Africans are staged specifically for a German
audience in a racist spectacle; on the one hand to evidence the cross-cultural
degenerations of the enemy, yet on the other to scare Germans of that same
degeneration, calling to protect their women and daughters against an immi-
nent racial invasion.
It is odd in this context that the director of the Frobenius Institute should
insist that the photographs on display at the Frankfurt Historical Museum
were not conceived “to display types of ‘races’ or ‘people’,” but that they were
shot with the explicit purpose to “show personalities” (Kohl 8; my trans.). That
the opposite is much more likely is strongly supported by the fact that all West
African men in the series (as opposed to the representations of North Africans)
come as mug shot pairs: one frontal and one profile shot. The arrangement of
standardised frontal and profile photographic portraits was first used by the
anthropologist and criminologist Alphonse Bertillon in the 1880s. It served as
a key documentation in Bertillon’s morphometric system, a system he devel-
oped by measuring the physical proportions of the inmates of Le Santé Prison
in Paris, as a means to reliably document and (re)identify criminal individuals.
The anthropometric mug shot pair was almost immediately adopted, though,
by physical anthropologists, and here it was no longer used to identify individ-
uals, but specifically to document the characteristics of racial types.
European anthropology at the time was deeply divided over the question
whether mankind had one singular origin (monogenesis), as most famously
promoted by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, or several origins
(polygenesis), as most infamously promoted by Arthur de Gobineau and his no-
tion of a divine racial inequality between Aryans and two other, inferior ur-rac-
es, one ‘yellow,’ and one ‘black.’ In order to gather empirical evidence for their
theories, anthropologists systematically exploited the European imperial ma-
chine to ‘collect’ as much anthropological ‘material’ as possible; Berlin’s muse-
ums and collections alone still hold an estimated 10,000 skulls today, gathered
154 Eckstein

figures 8.4 a nd 8.5 Lusáni Cissé, 1918, in Josef Weninger, Morphologisch-anthropologische
Studie, Tafel xxxviii
from colonial battle fields, burial grounds, prison camps and shipped to Germa-
ny in the decades before the First World War. It is easy to see how excited Ber-
lin’s anthropologists must have been about Weinberg and Half Moon Camp in
this context. Felix von Luschan, first professor of anthropology at the Charité,
secretary of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, and
an ardent advocate of the monogenetic paradigm wrote in 1917: “We have in our
prison camps an immense amount of representatives of the different races, of
all parts of the earth and all colours ever observed in man. A visit in some of
these camps is just as profitable for the expert as is a voyage round the world”
(2; my trans.) Von Luschan regularly visited Half Moon Camp to document lan-
guages on Edison wax cylinders, to take plaster casts of human heads, and to
systematically measure body surfaces of the colonial prisoners of war. And he
invited his scientific peers to come to Berlin to do the same: among them, fel-
low Austrian Rudolf Pöch, head of the Viennese Anthropological Commission,
and an ardent believer in the polygenesis of human races.
Pöch and his assistant, Josef Weninger, readily followed the invitation and
went to work with rigour, first in Wünsdorf from August 1917, then, in the fi-
nal years of the War, in Romania, to where those inmates of Half Moon Camp
were transported who suffered under the Northern climate. As part of their
Reflections of Lusáni Cissé155
encompassing raciological documentation, they photographed the young Afri-

can a second time, in 1918, in a Camp in Turnu Mǎgurele in Romania (see figures
8.4 and 8.5). Again, the images come in an anthropometric setup, if this time
taken under standardised laboratory conditions rather than outdoors, using ar-
tificial light, the head fixed by a small metal strut, the body naked. Ideologically,
though, there are more continuities than differences between both sets of imag-
es, those in Frobenius’s collection and those taken by Pöch: Both are designed in
the conventions of the day for displaying particular racial types, for objectifying
them in a normalised system, and fixing them in an imperial taxonomic order.
Weninger published Pöch’s set of images of the young African next to other
biometrical photographs taken in prison camps in his 1927 Habilitationsschrift
Eine morphologisch-anthropologische Studie. The study purports to empirical-
ly underscore the polygenetic paradigm; it proposes a minutely detailed ra-
cial taxonomy in-between ‘primitive forms’ and the ‘European type,’ based on
nearly 100 morphometric criteria of the face. The man in the image clearly lost
weight; to me, he neither resembles the man in the digital print of the 1916
image I had first encountered, nor the man in the analogue prints of the same
negative used in the Frankfurt exhibition and catalogue. It is an irony hard to
bear that it is through the racist documentary rigour of Pöch that his name and
identity have been preserved, dutifully recorded in Weninger’s study next to
the minute catalogue of morphometric proportions: He is listed as Lusáni Cis-
sé, a farmer from the Cercle Dédoungou in what is today Burkina Faso, Catho-
lic, unmarried. He was 26 years old when Pöch and Weninger dealt with him
(cf. Riesz).
What does all this mean when imperial images like the portrait of Lusáni Cissé
begin to travel, often in unforeseeable ways, beyond the storerooms of coloni-
al archives; in exhibitions like the one in Frankfurt; in volumes like the exhi-
bition catalogue; and not least across viral space, from the digital collections
of the Frobenius Institute to the webpages of the Guardian and beyond? The
question I am grappling with is whether such travels really have a capacity to
liberate imperial images from their racist framings and strategies of objecti-
fication, from the unrelenting taxonomic order of their imperial conception,
and from the physical, the psychological, and the epistemic violence built into
them. Whether exhibiting these images anew, as I do in this essay, really breaks
what Adorno called “the catastrophic spell of things” in his “Portrait of Walter
Benjamin” (232), or whether it, as Britta Lange fears, merely “adds yet another
156 Eckstein
layer to that spell” (101; my trans.). And if this ethical conundrum were not
enough: What about my own initial and presumably uncritical response to the
image of Lusáni Cissé, this experience of an inter-subjective, affective surge
strangely carrying across the colonial difference and 100 years of convoluted
history? After all that I found out about the photograph, it felt imperative to
know how that spell possibly relates to the catastrophic spell of racist and fas-
cist history that Adorno intimates; to know whether there is inevitable com-
plicity, or whether there is a potential for postcolonial critique. To come to
terms with such questions in more reflexive ways, I had to come up with some
kind of conceptualisation of the affective capacities of imperial photographs
like the portrait of Lusáni Cissé; and I found Taussig’s Benjaminian reflections
on the “sympathetic magic” of mimetic objects extremely helpful to think with
in this context. Let me begin, however, by addressing some of the medial and
material dimensions of photography more generally which would have affect-
ed my encounter with its reflections.
Photographs are the output of mimetic machines which create visual sem-
blance. Their most radical intervention into the history of representation is, of
course, that they do so without human interference into the core mimetic pro-
cess which is essentially a chemical reaction, even if photographs are always
staged and discursively framed, and thus invariably ideological. From the ear-
liest beginnings of photography, viewers have struggled with a destabilisation
of representational authority and agency, a destabilisation which crucially fed
into associations of photography as ‘magical.’2 If, as expressed in the Greek et-
ymology of the word, it is the light itself—rather than a human hand—which
does the drawing, agency in photography turns into something fairly liquid
and uncannily relational. Put differently, it remains essentially unclear “what
exactly happens between subject, object, and machine” when a photograph is
taken; and it remains ultimately unpredictable which messages “seep into” it
(Krüger 3; my trans.).
2 European philosophies of the photograph have been riddled by its ‘spectral’ propositions,
ranging from spiritualist convictions that photography allows portraits of the dead transmit-
ted through ether and manifested in ectoplasm, all the way to Roland Barthes’s meditations
in La chambre claire, who described the photograph as an “ectoplasm of ‘what-has-been’: nei-
ther image nor reality, a new being really, a reality one can no longer touch” (Barthes 87). The
indexical quality of the photograph as a direct imprint from the real, and its temporal ambi-
guity as a presence of the past have persistently fed into conceptions of a sympathetic magic
which ties together, in perception at least, photographic subject and object, self and other,
life and death. Marxist critiques of the disenchantment inherent in photographic technol-
ogies such as by Walter Benjamin do not fundamentally question this magic, either; rather,
they tend to see it displaced by capitalist dissemination and mass reproduction.
Despite the radically asymmetrical relation of power between the pho-

tographer and Lusáni Cissé on the grounds of Half Moon Camp in 1916, and
despite the ideological frames which invariably aimed at objectively fixing
him (be it in propagandistic orders or raciological taxonomies), the imperial
authority of the image is undercut by this dissemination of agency. In other
words, while the conventional sense is that what the viewer is looking at is a
photograph by an imperial German photographer of Lusáni Cissé, in a more
technical sense, what they are looking at is also an image by Lusáni Cissé of
Lusáni Cissé. It is perhaps easier to accept this idea if one attends to a barely
visible detail, a light drawing which materially seeped into the image: For on
the irises of Lusáni Cissé, there is a miniature reflection of the photograph-
ic machine, of the photographer, and the grounds of Half Moon Camp (see
figure 8.6).3 The imperial gaze of ideological fixation is intriguingly refracted
in the photographic process, and literally thrown back upon the colonial ap-
paratus. The reflections of Lusáni Cissé thus effectively blur the boundaries
between representational subject and object, between self and other, already
in the moment of historical representation. One hundred years later, I sup-
pose, my own gaze at the photographic reproduction is similarly challenged
by this relational pull and dissemination of agency. This argument must not
be misunderstood: I am not claiming any emancipatory representational
powers for Lusáni Cissé. It is vitally important to resist, as Britta Lange warns,
the desire to discursively “heal” the objectified victims of imperial science;
that it is our task, rather, to come to terms with the fact that the physical,
psychological and epistemic injustices of colonial violence cannot be healed
(Lange 101). What I am arguing instead is that the dissemination of agency
in the photograph may challenge our own habits of relating to and ordering
the world. That it feeds into our perception of the photograph as something
uncannily animated; as a relational representation which undercuts that con-
ceptual hallmark of modernity: the duality of subject and object, self and oth-
er, mind and matter, life and death.
My central proposition is that we might acknowledge the sympathetic mag-
ic in images like the portrait of Lusáni Cissé as an initial step towards decolo-
nising our own epistemic relations to the world; that we might value the reflec-
tions of Lusáni Cissé as an occasion to interrogate the ways in which we access,
3 Peter Steigerwald, who reproduced the image for the Frankfurt exhibition and was struck
to discover this additional “level” telling “a small story on a few millimetres of an old pho-
tographic negative,” finds in this a reflexion of the collaborative discipline required from
both photographer and photographed to meet the complex technical demands of the photo-
graphic machine in 1916 (Steigerwald 55).
158 Eckstein
f igure 8.6
Detail of fig. 2, reflection in the iris of
Lusáni Cissé, 1916
process, store, and share sensorial data more generally. This would entail that
we reflexively question the ways in which our habits of managing and ordering
perceived differences are still entangled in the joint trajectories of coloniality
and modernity; and to perhaps develop alternative practices of relation. This
project is not at all at odds with, but crucially builds on a thorough critical ma-
terialist reworking of the past; it is not about ‘healing’ past injustice, but pro-
jected towards epistemic dispositions in the present and future. Even though
I have used the first person plural in this paragraph, I guess it really needs to
start with the ‘I’; with a reflexion about how I myself have been discursively
shaped in my dispositions toward world, including those of body and affect
which, following a trajectory from Spinoza to Judith Butler, I assume to be al-
ways already political (cf. Eckstein and Wiemann).
So let me begin with myself: Following Michael Taussig’s explorations
in Mimesis and Alterity, I speculate that the photograph of Lusáni Cissé so
haunts me because it resists possessive appropriation by my senses in the
ways I have come accustomed to by the joint avenues of the Enlightenment
and commercial capitalism; that it affects me because it refuses to be ac-
cumulated in the “bank of the Self” as private property, “quantifiable,” as
Taussig puts it, “so as to pass muster at the gates of new definitions of Truth
and Accountability” (Mimesis and Alterity 97). Put differently, the mimetic
faculty of the photographic machine propels me out of a relation to my Self
prescribed for me by scientific modernity: out of a “paranoid, possessive, in-
dividualized sense of self severed from and dominant over a dead and non-
spiritualized nature” (97), and into a more volatile sense of relational being,
if only momentarily, a sense of being that overcomes the dualism of self and
other entrenched, not least, by the taxonomic ordering function of imperial
discourse. Partly against Taussig, I argue that appreciating this charge does
not entail having to buy into the philosophical propositions of a primitivist
animism: The kind of sympathetic magic I am interested in in mimetic ob-

jects like the photograph of Lusáni Cissé does not speculate about how the
mimetic correspondence between material copy and historical original, be-
tween signifier and signified allows us to reach across that difference, as in
the concept of the fetish. I take no interest in questions about how we might
access, or even affect, the figure of Lusáni Cissé across history or the colonial
difference, be it in the spirit of harm or healing. Rather, I would like to frame
the magic of the imperial image in the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s notion of
“sentience”: as a non-possessive, non-accumulative, non-dualistic and em-
bodied way of perceiving the Other which “tak[es] us outside of ourselves”
(Taussig Mimesis and Alterity 97).
I thus propose that the charge and challenge of the reflections of Lusáni Cissé
is their capacity for depropriation. I take this term from Marcus Boon, who
draws on a trajectory from Karl Marx and Hélène Cixous to Giorgio Agamben
and Mahayana Buddhism to position depropriation against the concept of
appropriation, both imperial and subaltern, and thus against a dialectic dual-
ism that progressively enters world into the realms of property and belonging.
Boon anticipates reservations against the notion of depropriation in postco-
lonial discourse, especially from a subaltern perspective: “that to let go of a
claim of belonging is to lose everything, made all the more traumatic since
this would repeat the violent appropriation of colonization” (144). Sentient
critique in the spirit of depropriation must continue, therefore, to self-reflex-
ively interrogate privilege and power, hegemony and different local frames of
speaking, even while insisting that the self is not bound by the logic of appro-
priation and belonging. Sentient critique must acknowledge and appreciate a
plurality of epistemic positions across the colonial difference in the spirit of
postcolonial justice, even while promoting and sustaining a community across
that difference, an open community that is inherently political, yet operates
beyond the need for singular ideological identification. As Marcus Boon puts
it: “Depropriation means to allow a movement to happen, to allow a different
relation between beings to open up, because that is how the world is changed,
i.e. through transformative mimesis” (144).
How to write this depropriating charge? Taussig, in his fictocritical med-
itation on “The Corn-Wolf,” calls for a “Nervous System writing” in this con-
text, for writing which breaks out of the managerial ordering functions of
generic academic discourse, for a critique which encounters and counters
160 Eckstein
the excess of imperial violence that is built into imperial images like that
of Lusáni Cissé, not by “giving the Nervous System its fix, its craving for or-
der,” but rather by finding ways of “cutting across and deflecting those vio-
lence-stories” in writing that is “apotropaic,” or counter-magical: writing that
demystifies, yet “implies and involves reenchantment” as the only strategy
to “break the catastrophic spell of things” (Taussig “The Corn-Wolf” 32, 33).
That reenchantment, as I read it, is not a license to be obscure. Rather, it
foregrounds that critique itself is an experiment in “transformative mimesis,”
caught up in genealogies of knowledge and power which it cannot escape,
yet can attempt to turn reflexive in its own modes of narrative. Part of this is
to make room, I suppose, in writing, for that nervous ‘sentience’ in the reflec-
tions of Lusáni Cissé, and open up to its volatility rather than foreclosing it;
to appreciate its charge as already critical in itself in the institutional orders
of a capitalist world system, rather than denouncing it as deflecting from
materialist critique.
Yet writing, surely, is not enough. Writing can only be an extension of a larg-
er sentient practice in the spirit of depropriation, a depropriation which, to
insist with Marcus Boon again, allows “a movement to happen” across and be-
yond ideological difference, by allowing “a different relation between beings to
open up” (144). Back in that forest glade again, on that graveyard for the dead of
Half Moon and Weinberg Camp, I am struck at how powerfully the reflections
of Lusáni Cissé still speak across a century of history: toward that new camp
that is being built on the grounds of Germany’s first mosque; toward the racist
mob that will march past my apartment backing on Germany’s largest syna-
gogue in Berlin two weeks later, on the 9th of November, rallying loudly against
refugees and the ‘Volksverräter’ (traitors of the people) who let them in; toward
the necropolitical militarisation of the Mediterranean; yet also toward a grow-
ing and thoroughly diverse community of beings who collectively engage in
“practices that render things unownable [sic]” (Boon 136) by the taxonomic
border regimes of race, religion, nation or empire.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. Prisms, translated by Samuel and Shierry Weber, Spearman, 1967.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Fontana, 1984.
Boon, Marcus. “Depropriation: The Real Pirate’s Dilemma.” Postcolonial Piracy: Media
Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, edited by Lars Eckstein and
Anja Schwarz, Bloomsbury, 2014, pp. 135–147.
Eckstein, Lars, and Dirk Wiemann. Introduction: Towards a Cultural Politics of Pas-

sion. The Politics of Passion: Reframing Affect and Emotion in Global Modernity, edit-
ed by Lars Eckstein and Dirk Wiemann, Lang, 2013, pp. 7–31.
Frobenius, Leo. Der Völkerzirkus unserer Feinde. Eckart, 1916.
Kohl, Karl-Heinz. Vorwort. Gefangene Bilder: Wissenschaft und Propaganda im Ersten
Weltkrieg, edited by Benedikt Burkhard in collaboration with Céline Lebret, Histor-
isches Museum Frankfurt, Michael Imhof, 2014, pp. 7–8.
Krüger, Gesine. “Zirkulation, Umdeutung, Aufladung: Zur kolonialen Fotographie.”
NCCR Mediality Newsletter 9, 2013, pp. 3–11.
Lange, Britta. “Die Kriegsgefangenen als Untersuchungsobjekte: Krieg, Ausstellung,
Wissenschaft.” Gefangene Bilder: Wissenschaft und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg,
edited by Benedik Burkhard in collaboration with Céline Lebret, Historisches Mu-
seum Frankfurt, Michael Imhof, 2014, pp. 94–101.
Riesz, János. “Afrikanische Kriegsgefangene in der deutschen Propaganda.” Gefangene
Bilder: Wissenschaft und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Benedik Bur-
khard in collaboration with Céline Lebret, Historisches Museum Frankfurt, Michael
Imhof, 2014 pp. 58–71.
Steigerwald, Peter. “Den Feind im Auge.” Gefangene Bilder: Wissenschaft und Propagan-
da im Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Benedik Burkhard in collaboration with Céline
Lebret, Historisches Museum Frankfurt, Michael Imhof, 2014, pp. 54–57.
Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. Routledge, 1993.
Taussig, Michael. “The Corn-Wolf: Writing Apotropaic Texts.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 37,
Autumn 2010, pp. 26–33.
Von Luschan, Felix. Kriegsgefangene: Ein Beitrag zur Völkerkunde im Weltkriege. Ein-
führung in die Grundzüge der Anthropologie. Reimer und Vohsen, 1917.
Weninger, Josef. Eine morphologisch-anthropologische Studie, durchgeführt an 100 we-
stafrikanischen Negern, als Beitrag zur Anthropologie von Afrika. Verlag der Anthro-
pologischen Gesellschaft, 1927.
c hapter 9
The Ambivalence of the Veil in Contemporary

British Culture
Ana Sobral
In November 2014, the German news magazine Focus published an issue titled
Die dunkle Seite des Islam (“The dark side of Islam”) on the then new threat
posed by the fundamentalist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (isis). The
cover featured a close-up shot of a brown-eyed woman wearing a niqab and
looking directly into the camera in a hostile way.1 In a similar vein, a 2009 cam-
paign of the Swiss right-wing party svp (the Swiss People’s Party) against the
construction of further mosque minarets in the country included a controver-
sial poster depicting the Swiss national flag with a series of minarets strate-
gically placed over it and a woman fully covered with a chador and niqab in
the foreground. As critical observers noted at the time, the minarets closely
resembled missiles, thus subliminally establishing a connection between the
veiled woman and the threat posed by the projectiles (Bachmann).2 Both, Fo-
cus and the svp campaign, used a similar technique of associating a covered
Muslim female figure with danger: her mind and her emotions are impen-
etrable, her gaze defying. She is, in short, the embodiment of the ‘dark side’
of Islam in the Western imagination. The veil itself symbolizes this message,
functioning as a divide between the Western and Muslim cultures. While these
examples constitute more patent examples of Islamophobia, a cursory look
at some of the leading debates, campaigns and publications on Muslims in
Europe in the past years would suggest a veritable fixation with the figure of
the oppressed Muslim woman3 one that dates back to the period of European
1 www.focus.de/magazin/archiv/jahrgang_2014/ausgabe_45. Accessed January 21, 2016.

2 On the svp campaign see also Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist
Discourses Mean.
3 For a more detailed discussion of the media coverage of Muslim communities in general and
Muslim women in particular in the UK media, see Paul Baker, Costas Gabrielatos and Tony
McEnery, Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British
Press, especially pages 197–229; and Katy Sian, Ian Law, and S. Sayyid. “The Media and Mus-
lims in the UK.”
The Ambivalence of the Veil in Contemporary British Culture 163
colonialism,4 but which has intensified dramatically since the 9/11 attacks on
the World Trade Centre.
The way representations of Muslim women become instrumentalized for
political and ideological purposes has been encapsulated in the term ‘Mus-
limwoman,’ coined by Islamism scholar Miriam Cooke. As a single word, the
term is meant to evoke a “singular identity” that indicates insurmountable cul-
tural differences (Cooke “Deploying the Muslimwoman” 91). Gender and reli-
gion become blended, leading to an elimination of “national, ethnic, cultural,
historical, and even philosophical diversity” from public discourse (91). Cooke
concludes: “As women, Muslim women are outsider/insiders within Muslim
communities where, to belong, their identity increasingly is tied to the idea
of the veil. As Muslims, they are negotiating cultural outsider/insider roles in
Muslim-minority societies” (91). The Muslimwoman thus becomes the expres-
sion of a number of tensionsbetween the West and Islam and between inside
and outside. Significantly, “neo-Orientalists” (Cooke), i.e. more extreme West-
ern critics of the veil, as well as fundamentalist Islamists both tend to deploy
the figure of the Muslimwoman to further their own radically divergent ideo-
logical aims. The veil becomes the most easily identified symbol of these ten-
sions. The recent debates about the rights of Muslim women to wear the hijab
in Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK further illustrate this.
In Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, Robert Young devotes a chap-
ter to the veil as an item steeped in ambivalence. As Young argues, how we
interpret a woman’s decision to wear the veil has much to do with our own po-
sition as observers. Hence, “a reading from outside will always tend to impose
meanings from the social space of the viewer” (89). Young addresses a Euro-
centric reading of the hijab as a combination of essentially negative or dispar-
aging features. Veiling can be interpreted as an expression of modesty, which
places the woman in a submissive roleshe is perceived as passive, as the victim
of a patriarchal system that cages and oppresses her. For this reason, the veiled
woman quickly becomes a target for Western ideas of assistance and direction.
To illustrate this point, Young refers to the so-called “Battle of the Veil,” which
the French colonial government initiated in Algeria during the War of Inde-
pendence from 1954 to 1962 (85–86). More recently, we can recall the way poli-
ticians in the US and the UK co-opted the discourse of women’s rights to justify
the military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, known as ‘Operation Enduring
4 Cf. Mohja Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque;
Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction; Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon, The
Production of the Muslim Woman: Negotiating Text, History, and Ideology.
164 Sobral
Freedom.’5 While Femen’s polemical campaigns against the veiling of Muslim

women, which have involved undressing in public as well as protests to defend
women’s right not to wear the veil, cannot be compared to large-scale inter-
national military campaigns, the ideological assumptions behind the work of
this radical feminist group resembles the interventions mentioned before.6
A typical representation of Self and Other along binary opposites is at play
here: the observer assumes the position of a knowing and active subject, while
the observed is relegated to the position of a subaltern, muted and essentially
constructed object.
In their introduction to gender studies from a postcolonial perspective, In-
derpal Grewan and Caren Kaplan argue that particular traditions and practices
such as “sati, seclusion, footbinding, veiling, arranged marriages and female
circumcision” have been consistently used in Western discourse as evidence
of the so-called “barbarism” of the non-Western world (55). At the same time,
the existence of a “global patriarchy,” as postulated by some feminists, would
assume that all women in the world suffer from the same forms of oppression
and require the same remedies. Grewan and Kaplan conclude that Western
feminism has actually often been instrumentalized as a means of supporting
an imperial Western outlook that imposes cultural standards and norms on
others. As Young points out, for many Muslim women the choice to wear the
veil rather indicates their allegiance with non-Western communal values, as
well as highlighting their social status within their own community (89). In
order to look beyond the surface of appearances, then, Young urges us to con-
sider the “situational questions” involving specific cultural practices and the
“local meanings” that those practices assume in each context (88).
Using these debates as a foil, I will examine different ways in which the
veiled Muslim woman has been depicted and perceived in contemporary Brit-
ish literature and culture. Based on selected case studies, I will probe the ten-
sion between the cultural context in which specific texts and performances are
produced to begin with, and the complex context-specific questions and local
meanings that the veil itself evokes in these works. The figure of the veiled
Muslim woman offers itself as a productive source of critical reflection on cul-
tural production and reception in the UK, precisely because the veil itself is a
5 Cf. Corinne Fowler, “Journalists in Feminist Clothing: Men and Women Reporting Afghan
Women during Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001.”
6 On Femen and ongoing debates about feminism, see Karina Eileraas, “Sex(t)ing Revolution,
Femen-izing the Public Square: Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Nude Protest, and Transnational Fem-
inist Body Politics”; Salam Al-Mahadin, “Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Making (Non)
sense of FEMEN’s Ethico-Aesthetics in the Arab World.”
shifting signifier, depending on the author’s (and publisher’s) intentions, the

audience that consumes the product, and the wider reception of the work in
the public sphere. Additionally, the very political and social context of pro-
duction and reception of a given work will influence the way an ambivalent
symbol such as the veil can be read. Relying on a selection of influential novels,
a television film and performance poetry, I address on the one hand precisely
the variety of positionalities expressed by the veil, while on the other exam-
ining the homogenizing pressure that “reading[s]‌from the outside” (Young)
can exert.
1 Boundaries of Freedom
A fitting case to open this examination is Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2004), which
achieved considerable popularity upon its UK publication, also being adapted
to cinema in 2007. The novel tells the story of Nazneen, a humble woman from
a small village in Bangladesh, who moves to London after an arranged mar-
riage to an older Bangladeshi émigré. She ends up living in Tower Hamlets, an
area known for its large Bangladeshi community, where the well-known multi-
cultural hub of Brick Lane is also located.
Nazneen is essentially depicted as a typical subaltern Muslimwoman7: from
an early age she is taught to obey and keep quiet. “If God would have wanted
us to ask questions, he would have made us men,” her mother tells her (Ali 80).
She prays five times a day and tries to stave off any thoughts of unhappiness by
reading or reciting the Quran. Although not particularly fond of her husband,
she strives to be a good and obedient housewife. However, Nazneen is now in
London even though she does not speak a word of English and she is continu-
ally exposed to another way of lifeand by implication to other models of fem-
ininity. Gradually, Nazneen’s dissatisfaction with her life seeps to the surface
and manifests itself in the form of sartorial questions:
The sari which seconds ago had felt light as air, became heavy chains (…).
Suddenly, she was gripped by the idea that if she changed her clothes her
entire life would change as well. (…) If she wore trousers and underwear,
7 I will be using ‘Muslimwoman’ as a single term to refer to Miriam Cooke’s notion explained
above. This strategically reductive notion of what it means to be female and Muslim differs
from the more neutral expression ‘Muslim woman’ (as two separate terms), because it al-
ready attributes a series of meanings to the experiences of female Muslims, namely subservi-
ence, oppression, and silence.
166 Sobral
like the girl with the big camera on Brick Lane, then she would roam the
streets fearless and proud. (…) For a glorious moment it was clear that
clothes, not fate, made her life. And if the moment had lasted she would
have ripped the sari off and torn it to shreds. (Ali 277–278)
The language in this passage is typical of the way Ali depicts her protagonist’s
feelings of oppression. Much emphasis is put on containmentwith the sari it-
self becoming the symbol of physical and mental subjugation. Liberty is here
associated with a markedly Western style of women’s clothing; the “girl with
the big camera on Brick Lane” best embodies a spirit of freedom, as she is not
only unencumbered by sartorial dictates, but also clearly assumes the position
of a fearless explorer of her neighbourhood’s gendered space.
The passage is furthermore relevant because it was partially quoted in a
promotional campaign by the Book Trust in London in 2008, entitled “Get
London Reading.” Using street art and interactive maps, the campaign aimed
to encourage Londoners to spend more time reading books by presenting pas-
sages from novels dealing with specific streets and spaces in London. Thus,
walking around Brick Lane, people would stumble upon the following passage
from Ali’s novel sprayed on the pavement using stencils technique: “If she wore
trousers and underwear, like the girl with the big camera on Brick Lane, then
she would roam the streets fearless and proud.”8 Taken out of context, as the
stencil graffito inevitably does, the passage inspires us to read the implied pro-
tagonist’s situation as one of patent imprisonment. The “she” in the quotation
is clearly not like the “girl” wearing trousers. Given the ethnic and cultural
makeup of the East End, which has accommodated London’s largest Bangla-
deshi population,9 the reader of the stencil may be led to assume that “she” is
possibly an Oriental woman, one who is clearly lacking the “fearlessness” and
“pride” of the Western(ized) “girl.”
Although we can presume that Ali herself had little to do with the Book
Trust’s decision to quote this particular passage from her novel, the fact is that
her depiction of Nazneen as being disadvantaged because of her clothing in-
spires such binary readings of ‘Western’ freedom and ‘Eastern’ containment
of women. This constitutes a prime example of the way our reading of the
Muslimwoman as a singular identity can be strongly encouraged by a specific
8 For a picture of the stencil, see keithmansfield.co.uk/2008/05/12/get-london-reading/. Ac-

cessed March 9, 2017. For more information on the Book Trust campaign, see www.booktrust.
org.uk/programmes/get-london-reading. Accessed March 9, 2017.
9 Cf. Stephen Shaw and Sue Bagwell, “Ethnic Minority Restaurateurs and the Regeneration of
‘Banglatown’ in London’s East End.”
contextin this case the celebration of a London street by a local cultural cam-
paign that appears to be aimed mainly at readers with a ‘Western’ background.
Did the situational question of Nazneen as a female Muslim immigrant from
Bangladesh influence this reading? In effect, the novel essentially explores the
imprisonment of Nazneennot only through clothes as in the above case, but
also through detailed description of spatial restraint, be it in the bedroom, the
kitchen, the living room, even in the tower blocks as a whole. In sum, Nazneen
is fundamentally portrayed as un-free. The plot strongly suggests that it is her
devotion to her culture and traditions that keeps her from achieving happi-
ness. Eventually Nazneen starts an affair with a younger Bangladeshi man, who
happens to also be a devout Muslim. This is the point at which her own sense
of imprisonment becomes more palpable to the protagonist, who acts as fo-
calizer throughout the entire narrative. Ali portrays her protagonist’s environ-
ment as a suffocating nest filled with rules and expectations from which she
can only break free by transgressing boundaries. Nazneen does find a balance
eventually: she ends the affair but also manages to separate from her husband,
who returns to Bangladesh. In the novel’s last scene we see her putting on a
pair of ice skateswhich Nazneen has from the beginning associated with the
foreign British host culturewhile wearing a sari. In multicultural London, this
hybrid lifestyle is celebrated as a solution to cultural isolation.
Here we see the relationship between context and textual production/re-
ception at play. As suggested aboveand highlighted by the Get London Reading
campaignBrick Lane’s implied reader appears to be a Western(ized) individu-
al who identifies with the image of London as a multicultural space. To over-
come the tension between the reader’s and the character’s distinct situational
questions and local meanings, the author turns the sari itself into a malleable
signifier. It is firstly perceived by Nazneen as a means of imprisonment, but
only so long as she associates it with the larger oppressing rules of her religion
and culture. Once she is able to overcome these mental and cultural shack-
les, the sari can be liberating and in fact re-adapted to a new context, such
as the British skating ring.10 While the novel provides closure by celebrating
the emancipation of the protagonist, it simultaneously reinforces the image
10 It should be noted that several female characters in the novel articulate their agreement
or disagreement with more traditional Muslim views by the way they dress. The range
goes from women who adopt a totally Western style and despise any form of veiling as
a means of oppression, to women who don the veil, and even eventually the burqa as
an expression of loyalty with their community. The lines are sharply drawn between the
West and the Other. Nazneen tries to straddle both worlds, and that constitutes her main
conflict.
168 Sobral
of the Muslimwoman. The narrative starts with the assumption that Nazneen
is un-free, and ends with the implication that it was London’s Western-style
multiculturalism that liberated her. In other words, had she remained compli-
ant with the precepts of her faithespecially the condemnation of adulteryshe
would have remained locked in, isolated in the tower blocks, and suffocated by
the traditional sari. It is precisely because her liberation seems to be so close-
ly associated with her committing adultery that Nazneen can be so easily re-
duced to a Muslimwoman: she is fully defined by her religion, which dictates
the confines within which she can move.
Perhaps because it places its protagonist so squarely within an apparent cul-
tural clash between conservative Islam and the multicultural West, Ali’s novel
was received with very mixed emotions. While the British press and audienc-
es in general celebrated Brick Lane for its depiction of a community that had
hitherto remained largely mysterious to the Western readership, the Bangla-
deshi community was partially outraged.11 Some members of the community
demonstrated particularly against the film adaptation of the novel, accusing
it of spreading “lies, slander, cynicism” (Lea and Louis).12 These audiences felt
that Ali had depicted their community in a simplistic, negative and clichéd
manner. As Maswood Akhter puts it, the book became a “defining caricature
for all Bangladeshi Muslims” (98). This, some argued, would only serve to
please white stereotypical representations of South-East Asians. In the con-
text of post-9/11 UK, when debates about the purported lack of integration of
immigrants with Muslim background were on the rise,13 Ali’s celebration of
Nazneen’s budding hybridity could be interpreted as a pressure on immigrants
to abandon (some of) their own local meanings in order to adapt to the norms
of Western society. Taking on the implied reader’s “view from the outside,” Ali
proposes a happy conjunction between immigrant and host culture as a way of
liberating the Muslimwoman embodied by Nazneen.
It is crucial to highlight the impact that the very debates about multicul-
turalism in the wake of 9/11 may have had on Ali’s depiction of Nazneen as
fundamentally oppressed by her cultureas well as influencing the divided re-
ception of the novel. A look at a novel published before 9/11, which equally fo-
cuses on a female Muslim immigrant to the UK, may serve here to illustrate the
possibility of advancing a different perspectiveone that in fact questions the
11 On the reception of Monica Ali’s novel see A.F.M. Maswood Akhter, “Politics of Right to
Write and Monica Ali’s Fiction.”
12 See also Sean McLoughlin, William Gould, Ananya Jahanara Kabir, and Emma Tomalin,
Writing the City in British Asian Diasporas, p. 61.
13 I will address this point in greater detail below, in my discussion of the film Yasmin.
Muslimwoman as a valid identity. Sudanese-born and UK-based author Leila

Aboulela has been one of the leading voices in upholding Islam itself as a major
foundation of (female) identity. Aboulela has been generally celebrated for her
‘insider’ depiction of Muslim cultures in the West as well as in the Arab world.
One of her more celebrated novels is her debut work, The Translator (1999),
which revolves around the experiences of Sammar, a young Sudanese widow
working as a translator of Arabic at a Scottish universitywhere she eventually
falls in love with her employer, Rae, a Scottish expert on Islam. The drama here
is that, in spite of being very sympathetic towards Islamic culture and religion
in a time of already rising Islamophobia in the West, Rae is a non-Muslim. And
so their love cannot be consummated.
In spite of the apparent similarities between Aboulela’s and Ali’s plotsthe
Muslim woman tempted to break boundaries to fulfil her desiresThe Transla-
tor offers a more celebratory and ultimately empowering image of the Muslim
woman. At no point does the protagonist feel suffocated by the local meanings
of her religion, as Brick Lane seems to suggest. Quite the opposite: Islam offers
her a solid frame through which she can interpret her experiences and regulate
her life far away from home. This begs the question about the implied reader
of The Translator in contrast to Brick Lane. Aboulela’s novel has been read both
as a depiction of the inner life of a Muslim woman for a non-Muslim audience,
as well as a narrative of personal journey that is beyond religion and cultural
affiliation, and can thus be positively received by both Muslim and non-Mus-
lim readers.14 Whichever way one chooses to receive it, The Translator indis-
putably foregrounds the protagonist’s Muslim background, which constitutes
her very sense of self. At the same time, British culture itself is relegated to the
background, against which the exceptionality of the protagonist can be drawn
more clearly.
In spite of her strong faith, Sammar is often willing to stretch the bound-
aries of her religion because of her feelings for Rae: she even speaks openly
about her desire to marry him and the impossibility of doing so because of
his status as a non-Muslim. Her decision to leave Scotlandand thus also Rae-
shows determination; and in this sense, although she ultimately ‘submits’ to
the rules of her religion (returning to the meaning of ‘submission’ carried by
the word ‘Islam’), she does not appear submissive. Nor is the issue of unveiling
ever open to debate in the narrative, quite the opposite: by complimenting it
14 On the reception of Aboulela’s novel, see C.E. Rashid, “Academia, Empathy and
Faith: Leila Aboulela’s The Translator.” On the interpretation of the novel as a personal
journey rather than a postcolonial politically tinged narrative, see Shirin Edwin, “(Un)
Holy Alliances: Marriage, Faith, and Politics in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator.”
170 Sobral
as being “secretive,” Rae highlights the seductive potential of the veil. In order
to access the object of his desire, Rae must himself submit to the rules of Islam.
The couple are granted their happy end when Rae finally converts, not solely
because of his love for Sammar, but also because of his love for Muslim culture-
and implicitly for Allah himself. The novel suggests an inverse integration: the
Western “Orientalist,” as one of the characters labels him, ends up adopting the
faith of his beloved, while she retains full allegiance to her culture.
For Miriam Cooke, authors like Aboulela are in fact instrumental as a coun-
ter-force to the general image of the Muslimwoman: “Muslim women authors
are articulating new ways of being strong religious and gendered persons.
They want their readers, like the men in their stories, to come to terms with
newly empowered women who live their sexuality, their sex, and their reli-
gion in sometimes unexpected ways” (Cooke “Deploying the Muslimwoman”
94). The Translator complicates a number of stereotypical assumptions about
Islam, not only through the way Sammar lives her religion, but also through
the inclusion of many dialogues about the Quran, aspects of religious prac-
tice and a critique of the Western tendency to reduce Muslims to the role of a
threatening Other.
In these two novels, Islam is used differently in order to explore the agency
of womenin Ali, Islam constitutes a constraint, in Aboulela a liberating force.
My reading of Brick Lane and The Translator contrasts two distinct images of
a Muslim woman: whereas Ali relies more on a stereotypical Eurocentric no-
tion of the Muslimwoman whose gender and faith ultimately entail her impris-
onment, Aboulela foregrounds Islam itself as a source of personal fulfilment
and freedom. Ali thus seems to suggest that feminism can only be expressed
through a general rejection (or overcoming) of Muslim traditions, whereas
Aboulela tends to lean more towards an Islamic version of feminism that tries
to empower women from within the traditionsa topic I will return to below. It is
crucial here to recognize also the special context of the characters themselves,
and thus the situational questions they are confronted with. Both women were
actually raised in a non-Western contextNazneen in Bangladesh, Sammar in
Sudanand immigrate to the UK as young adults. This plays a significant role in
their relationships to both their culture of origin and the host culture. There is
a clear sense of ‘home’ permeating these stories, and that ‘home’ is vehement-
ly not the UK. Indeed, we could say that the dilemma both characters face is
whether they can make the UK their new home, and what implications that
has for their identities. The novels offer very different answers to that dilem-
ma: while Nazneen’s adherence to the local meanings of Bangladeshi culture
fail to support her in the new environment of multicultural London, it is pre-
cisely Sammar’s insistence on the local meanings of her Sudanese upbringing
that ends up being rewarded. This either-or perspective on Islam and freedom
constitutes a recurring topic in articulations of female Muslim identity in the
UK, as my next case studies illustrate.
2 A Shifting Signifier
Generally speaking, second-generation immigrants face a different set of con-

cerns from the ones outlined above for the characters of Nazneen and Sammar.
Born and raised in diasporic communities, they tend to develop a more am-
bivalent sense of belonging as they position themselves between two cultures.
Hence, Stuart Hall concludes that immigrant communities are in fact the ones
that live “in translation” (see Hall): they not only move between different lan-
guages, but must also translate and negotiate between the home and the host
culture, and between the traditions and expectations of their parents and their
own experiences. Studying the identity formation and articulation of young
British Muslims, sociologist Claire Dwyer found that many interviewees did
not identify with being British because they were routinely exposed to racism.
At the same time as they may feel rejected by the host culture, second-gener-
ation immigrants are frequently under pressure from their parents to uphold
the values and traditions of their culture of origin. In diasporic communities
this is reinforced by the practice of what Dwyer calls “community policing”
(479), whereby especially women tend to become objects of public scrutinyby
relatives, neighbours, acquaintances. Significantly, clothes are a very impor-
tant aspect in this monitoring behavior of the community. As Dwyer puts it,
dress becomes an “overdetermined signifier for the identity of young British
Muslim women” (481), and particularly what second-generation women wear
becomes an indicator of their loyalty to the host or the home culture.
These issues form the narrative backbone of the British film Yasmin (2004)
by the director Kenneth Glenaan and scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy. It follows
the duplicitous existence of the protagonist, Yasmin, who changes her clothes
according to the context in which she moves: at home in a community of Pa-
kistani immigrants, she wears traditional Muslim outfits including the hijab;
when she leaves for work in a typical northern English community, she chang-
es to Western clothes, most markedly represented by blue jeans. Yasmin’s iden-
tity is seriously split: she feels estranged from her father, an Imam in the Mus-
lim community, and she struggles to be accepted by her Western co-workers.
Yasmin clearly rebels against many of the principles of her family’s culture: she
drives a convertible, refuses to attend service at the mosque, and on several
occasions defies her father’s authority. However, she does not fully integrate
172 Sobral
into English culture, either: she does not drink alcohol (although she pretends
to do so to feel accepted by her coworkers), she is an active member of her
Muslim community and sticks to many of the norms of interaction practiced
within it, and she ultimately respects her father in spite of disagreements. Yas-
min even agrees to marry a distant cousin from Pakistan, though she keeps it
strictly official and refuses to change her lifestyle for him. In short, the film pre-
sents us with a fragmented character. Her days are neatly regulated between
the moment she drives away from her community to work and changes into
a Western woman, and the moment she drives back home and turns into a
Muslim woman. The change takes place on a hill overlooking the small com-
munity, where Yasmin takes off and later puts back on her veil. The convertible
also changes between lowered top and raised top depending on the context in
which she moves.
We see here already two important stages in the transformation of Yasmin.
In what appears to be an act of emancipation, she rejects the veil when she
moves in a British context The film images suggest that this corresponds to a
sense of release, as she drives away in the convertible, listening to loud dance
music. A second stage involves the somewhat more reluctant adoption of the
veil when she moves within her community, mainly because of the expecta-
tions of her father and of neighbours in general. In fact, several scenes show
the neighbours practicing “community policing” in Dwyer’s terms, as they
keep an attentive eye on everything that happens in each household and also
between the home and the street. The most intriguing and challenging stage,
however, is the third, when Yasmin opts to wear the hijab in both the British
and Pakistani contexts and in fact becomes a pious Muslim. This remarkable
transformation deserves a closer examination.
After establishing the character’s dilemma, the film goes on to show how the
aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre changes the
lives of everyone within Yasmin’s communityincluding herself. These chang-
es can be summed up under the heading of Islamophobia. In effect, Islamo-
phobia was formally recognized as a type of discrimination by the UN only
days prior to 9/11but after this date it was seriously enhanced. As Chris Allen,
chairman of the Religions in Britain Research Organisation, observed, after the
attacks on the World Trade Centre there was a great tendency in Western me-
dia to generalize all Muslims, and to promote the binary ‘with us or against
us’ view that indirectly justified Islamophobia by identifying a threat against
Western societies and identities (see Allen).15 In 2006, a report by the eumc
15 See also Tahir Abbas, “After 9/11: British South Asian Muslims, Islamophobia,
Multiculturalism, and the State.”
(European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia) observed that Mus-

lims had become more “vulnerable to manifestations of prejudice and hatred
in the form of anything from verbal threats through to physical attacks on peo-
ple and property” (8). Furthermore, anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic expressions
had become more extreme, explicit and tolerated. In short, 9/11 had functioned
as a catalyst for fear by reaffirming and renewing prejudices against an ‘enemy
within.’
This negative construction of Muslims is central in Yasmin. After the 9/11 at-
tacks, we see the protagonist, her family and her community being cornered by
State security forces and rejected by the English community. Yasmin becomes
a victim of bullying at the hands of her coworkers, her house is brutally raided
by the police, her husband and she herself are eventually arrested on the sus-
picion of terrorism (because they made routine phone calls to Pakistanas Paki-
stani immigrants tend to do), and as a result of police harassment, her younger
brother eventually joins a fundamentalist Islamic group preaching jihad.
Yasmin’s last attempt to become integrated into the English community
sees her donning a sexually explicit blouse, wearing make-up and, possibly for
the first time, drinking large amounts of alcohol at a pub. In spite of, or per-
haps because of this attempt to play the stereotypical Englishwoman, she ends
up once again being ridiculed and rejected by her coworkers. By mimicking
the perceived Western standards of femininity, Yasmin only highlights the gap
between her and her coworkers. We could say that, in a way, her coworkers are
reacting precisely to the subversive potential of mimicry identified by Homi
Bhabha16 drawing even clearer distinctions between themselves as ‘Western-
ers’ and Yasmin as the Muslim ‘Other.’ For her coworkers, she must remain es-
sentially a representative of the Muslim community, which is collectively held
responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This point is made clear to the protagonist at
the pub, when she is asked to “apologize” for the terrorist act in the name of
her community. In Yasmin we see then the non-Muslim community forging a
local meaning that associates Muslims with terror and responds to in-between
individuals such as the protagonist with rejection. In fact, by doing so, Yasmin’s
co-workers actively reduce her to the single identity of the Muslimwoman, i.e.,
an individual whose identity is fully dictated by religion, even if they do not
apply stereotypes of the oppressed Muslim to her.
Shortly after this experience, Yasmin and her husband are arrested and in-
terrogated. In prison, Yasmin is given the Quran to read, and seems to expe-
rience a radical turn. She starts praying at home, wearing traditional Muslim
16 Cf. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 121–131.

174 Sobral
attire even when moving among the English and frequenting the Mosque. On
the surface, then, she appears to transform into the figure of the Muslimwom-
an. And yet, it is important to highlight how the film avoids precisely this trap
by rooting Yasmin’s decision not in pressure from her own Muslim community
(which would amount to oppression) but in a political decision of sorts.
If we return to the opposing key topics discussed when looking at the novels
by Ali and Aboulela, we can clearly see that Yasmin has undergone a shift in
her perception and experience of Islam, precisely because her identity as a
British Muslimwhich could be regarded as the situational question that has
determined her fragmented selfno longer seems to apply. Yasmin’s decision for
the veil can be seen not only as a matter of faith, but also as a political state-
ment and an act of solidarity with her community, which has been forcefully
marginalized by external events. The film suggests that the radicalization of
Muslims in Europe cannot be detached from the rise of Islamophobia. Which
begs the question: who is actually failing at integration here?
Apart from its critical perspective on the difficult relationship between Mus-
lims and non-Muslims in Britain, the film also succeeds in providing a nuanced
look at the female protagonist’s bond with her culture, including religion. At
no point does Yasmin’s return to a more devout practice of Islam appear to be
a surrender or a sign of a weak will. Indeed, she even divorces her husband
after deciding to become a practicing Muslim. Thus she retains a strong sense
of self, of her wishes and her rights, and avoids the reductive identity of the
Muslimwoman. The film manages to decouple the notion of women’s rights
from a narrow understanding of feminism as a strictly Western ideal. This is
even more obvious in the final example I wish to present here.
3 Symbol of Emancipation
Sukina Douglas and Muneera Rashida perform as Poetic Pilgrimage, a duo of

rappers, spoken word artists and feminist activists. They have so far released
two mixtapes with songs that focus on their own experience as young Muslim
women, in the UK and in the world at large. They also perform poetry on stage,
organize cultural events, and give workshops on themes such as “21st Century
Muslimah.” A documentary film about Poetic Pilgrimage, called Hip Hop Hija-
bis (directed by Mette Reitzel), was screened in 2015 on Al Jazeera.
Sukina and Muneera are second-generation immigrants themselves. Both
children of Jamaican immigrants, they were born and raised in Bristol, and
converted to Islam in 2005. Even though they have adopted many precepts of
Islam, they have manifestly refused to be contained by the narrow frame of
the Muslimwoman. In fact, one of their main goals has been to counter the
notion of Islam as a misogynistic religion, precisely by celebrating the power
of women within Islam. This comes across clearly in the spoken word poem
“Aborted Daughters,” performed by Sukina Abdul Noor.17 The speaker positions
herself in opposition to a certain manifestation of Islam, whose validity she
questions. The treatment of women as inferior, and their banishment from the
public sphere are perceived as actual violations of the precepts of Islam, and
so the poem, the performance itself becomes a manifesto against the so-called
“thieves” who have given Islam a bad name. The speaker permits herself to
make such bold statements because she sees herself at the centre of a regener-
ation of Muslim faithas the final stanzas of the poem indicate:
We –
We represent a new generation
Who crave true revelation
Brave enough to face the revolution
And it is my humble mission
To use these words as a form of activism
And I am indifferent to the opinions of men and evil women
Who thought that our presence, our purpose and our plight may cause
offence
No offence but
We didn’t go through slavery
We didn’t go through the Civil Rights,
We didn’t go through Apartheid or race riots
For my voice to be kept quiet
(…)
La ilaha illallah Muhammadur resulullah
I believe there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His messenger
Of this faith I am a member
And only to Allah do I surrender
Ameen
It is worth discussing these lines in terms of the local meanings that are evoked
and negotiated by the speaker. Apart from the strong association between
17 Poetic Pilgrimage, “Aborted Daughters.”

176 Sobral
revelation and revolution, which clearly gives Muslim faith a political dimen-
sion, what is notable here is also the very inclusive ‘We’ that appears in this
final stanza. Slavery in the New World, the Civil Rights movement in the USA,
the Apartheid and race riots in South Africaall these become part of the speak-
er’s background experience. It is to this wide and effectively translocal com-
munity of victims of oppression that she adds her voice. Even if some Muslims
suffered all these forms of oppression, these are not exclusively Muslim expe-
riences. And that is precisely the point. The speaker uses her faith to pledge
allegiance to political movements bent on fighting racism. Thereby she also
shifts the audience’s attention to wider issues that concern not only Muslim
communities, but many other groups as wellin the West and in the world at
large. We could call this a form of Muslim cosmopolitanism that counters
more widespread notions of Islam as a hermetic, exclusivist religion.18
In the closing lines of the poem the speaker actually performs a Shahada
(or ‘testimony’) on stage. These words are recited by Muslims as a common
statement of faith, and are proffered by converts when they officially embrace
Islam. By closing the poem with these words, and by highlighting her faith in
Allah only, the speaker questions the authority of anyone who may oppose her
stance. In a way, she grants herself ultimate authority by aligning herself with
God. The gesture is of course highly dramatic, and it makes more sense if we
read it against the foil of Islamic feminism.
As Cooke has pointed out, this form of feminism results from the diffusion
of ideas and perspectives through electronic media, education and moderni-
zation. Particularly the ability to connect with other women across national
boundaries has created among Muslim women a transnational sense of be-
longing and resistance. According to Cooke, Islamic feminists have a “double
commitment: to a faith position on the one hand, and to women’s rights both
inside and outside the home on the other” (“Multiple Critique” 93). They form
alliances worldwide and promote the formation of a new community. And yet,
their emphasis remains on religious identity.
In her book Women Claim Islam, Cooke argues:
It is important to note that acquiescence with traditional gender roles

and behavioural expectations at one moment does not necessarily con-
tradict resistance at anotherand sometimes even the samemoment.
Drawing on the symbolic capital provided by the Qur’an and Traditions,
18 On the cosmopolitan outreach of Islam, particularly in the form of the ‘ummah’ (the inter-
national community of Muslims), see especially Miriam Cooke and Bruce B. Lawrence,
“Introduction.”
or the authenticated sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad that

form the basis of Islamic law, some Muslim Arab feminists are examining
the gendered formation of Islamic epistemology. They do not question
the sacrality of the Qur’an, but they do examine the temporality of its
interpretations. (Cooke xi)
We can see a similar attitude in the performances of Poetic Pilgrimage. The way
they present themselves on stage wearing the hijab, their tendency to quote or
refer to passages and names from the Qur’an, but also their commitment to
a larger community that transcends a more narrow perception of Islam pro-
vide a fitting example of Islamic feminism as a “contingent, contextually deter-
mined strategic self-positioning,” as Cooke puts it (Women Claim Islam 59). We
see here at play once again the local meanings and situational questions that
according to postcolonial gender studies are so important to consider when
addressing women’s experiences and attitudes beyond the parameters estab-
lished by the West. Poetic Pilgrimage are the product of a global culture: they
have experienced migration in many forms (from their Afro-Caribbean ances-
tors to their parents’ move to the UK), they have opted for a specific religious
identity without subscribing to the more conservative interpretations of its
scriptures, and they use their performances to link up different experiences
of subalternity based on gender, colonial, political or economic domination.
Their performances refuse to fit into neatly delimited categories such as the
oppressed Muslimwoman, the Western feminist, or even the multicultural
Briton. By extending their loyalties beyond national, cultural and religious
boundaries, they emphasize that local meanings can be continually negotiat-
ed according to shifting situational questions and different contexts, without
endangering their sense of self or even their belonging to a specific community
(the poem’s “We”).
4 Conclusion
Focusing on the Muslimwoman, a trope that features prominently in contem-

porary Islamophobic discourse and which itself can be traced back to the co-
lonial era, this chapter has explored different representations of female Mus-
lim figures in contemporary British culture. My aim has been to illustrate the
extent to which contemporary cultural products engage with the reductive
notion of the Muslimwoman as defined by Miriam Cooke, and the modes of
emancipation offered by these different texts. These range from Ali’s celebra-
tion of a Western image of multiculturalism to Poetic Pilgrimage’s framing of
178 Sobral
Islam as a cosmopolitan political project. The authors and artists studied here
offer radically different ways of perceiving Muslim female characters in the
West; the way they frame these characters depends on the specific questions
that are addressed and on the context of their production, performance and
reception.
While Monica Ali uses the trope of the un-free Muslimwoman to essentially
celebrate hybridity (encapsulated in the moment when the protagonist steps
into the skating rink wearing a sari), Leila Aboulela subverts the very notion of
an oppressed Muslimwoman by presenting a strong-willed female character
whose devotion to Islam is rewarded in the end. Ali’s and Aboulela’s works
present distinct approaches to questions of immigration and integration. In
the film Yasmin, the dichotomy between the West and its Muslim other is fore-
grounded in the context of the aftermath of 9/11 in Britain, which forces all
characters to reevaluate the local meanings they attribute to Muslim culture
and rituals. The female protagonist ends up with a more political understand-
ing of the value of the veiland thus, ironically, the very act of veiling becomes
a means of positioning herself against the stereotypical image of the Mus-
limwoman forced upon her by mainstream English society. A similar attitude
is explored by the rappers and poets Poetic Pilgrimage, who use their public
image as Muslim female performers to challenge a number of stereotypes con-
nected to the Muslimwoman and propagated both by conservative Muslims
and more prejudiced Western audiences. In a proud gesture reminiscent of
Yasmin’s adoption of the veil towards the end of the eponymous film, Poetic
Pilgrimage present the veil as the very source of women’s emancipation. At
the same time, the rappers and poets also promote a transcultural notion of
Islam, forging bonds with other oppressed groups in the history of Western
colonialism and imperialism, who have experienced slavery, racial segrega-
tion in the USA and Apartheid. This is an effective means of countering the
tendency to isolate the Muslimwoman as the manifestation of a ‘backward’
culture and faith.
If there is one unifying aspect to all of the above-mentioned examples, it is
that these cultural products are not only firmly set in a Western context, the
UK specifically, but that they directly address audiences in the West. In this
sense, although Islam and more specifically the Muslim female figure are at the
centre of these representations, the underlying theme is in fact the complex
interconnections between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West. Indeed, the
acute concern about the veiled Muslimwoman that permeates Western culture
at present attests essentially to the ongoing influence of a specifically West-
ern discourse about the veil. This is important argument was made by Leila
Ahmed as early as 1992. According to her, by embedding the veil so strongly
within “geopolitical discourses” during colonialism, Western culture itself pre-

pared the ground for the veil’s “emergence as a symbol of resistance.” In that
sense, the veil as expression of otherness is both a construct of the West and a
confirmation of the “hegemonic diffusion of the discourses of the West in our
age” (Ahmed 304).
Despite the more extreme attempts in both Western and Islamic circles to
separate the West from Islam and to proclaim the existence of an unbridgeable
chasm between them, both cultures are inextricably entwined. The Muslim
woman (here markedly as two separate terms), as a complex figure who finds
expression in different contexts and situations, offers a particularly striking
way of engaging with the discourses of the West because her representation
highlights how those discourses are being negotiated and transformed by
globalization.
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c hapter 10
Crime and the Censor—the Production and

Reception of Crime Fiction in Apartheid and
Post-apartheid South Africa
Elizabeth le Roux
1 Introduction: Popular Fiction and Ideology
Crime fiction, some say, is “printed trash and poisonous scum” (Cronjé et al.
66), and readers need to be protected from it. Such views, prevalent since the
birth of this genre in the 19th century and continuing into the 21st century,
show that the reading of popular fiction attracts strong moral judgements. In
spite of shifts in social mores and dominant values, popular fiction remains a
site of ideological contestation. Crime fiction in particular holds an ambiguous
social position, and has done since its first tentative experiments. On the one
hand, it is considered formulaic and lowbrow, but on the other hand it has
been produced by many very gifted and celebrated authors. It is both intensely
localised and yet portable between languages, settings, periods and cultures. It
is profit-driven and sales-focused, but also capable of complex social critiques
and analysis. And it has been condemned by critics and censors in powerful
positions, but remains immensely popular and widely read. To ignore the po-
litical aspects of popular fiction in favour of the aesthetic is in itself an ideo-
logical position.
The reflection and reproduction of ideology in popular fiction, as Stuart
Hall notes, refers to “the mental frameworks—the languages, concepts, catego-
ries, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation—which different
classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out
and render intelligible the way society works” (26). Hall based his theories of
ideology on Antonio Gramsci’s views of hegemony, which he defined as the re-
lations of domination which are not visible as such, and yet reflect and support
the dominant social values: “ ‘Culture’ in Gramsci is the sphere in which ideolo-
gies are diffused and organized, in which hegemony is constructed and can be
broken and reconstructed” (Forgacs 216). This way of thinking about popular
culture has been profitably applied to popular fiction, to examine how such
fiction both replicates and supports “a whole view of the world, one shared by
the people who become the central audience to buy, read and find comfort in
Crime and the Censor 183
a particular variety of crime fiction” (Knight 2). A key angle for approaching
popular or ‘formula’ fiction is thus to examine “the coding of ideologies within
the general ideological system which operates in society” (Birch 95).
According to the conventions of the genre, crime fiction privileges authority
and order; it reveals how the state sees, and talks about, crime. For instance,
is crime being seen as random and external or pervasive and endemic? Does
it disturb a pre-existing state of equilibrium, or is it rather a symptom of so-
cial chaos? The conventions of the genre thus echo (and at times disrupt) the
dominant social ideologies, but significantly how we (as authors, readers, and
critics) view crime and criminals says something about our ideologies and
how power is distributed in our societies. Most analysts agree that the pre-
dominant ideology in popular fiction is that crime symbolises evil, and must
be condemned and stamped out to preserve the established social order. In
traditional crime fiction, the detective is portrayed as an authority figure who
puts things right, while the crimes committed are depicted as detached from
their social context (this makes the criminal a deviant, and not the product of
a specific social milieu) (Cavender 85–86). Moreover, this is seen as a natural
belief: “The crime genre obscures its penchant for order and control behind a
style so realistic that its ideology seems natural and appropriate” (81). But this
is in fact a repressive ideology, that seeks to blame ‘crime’ for a variety of social
ills, and to pin hopes for a better future on catching criminals. In fact, some
critics have argued that crime fiction is inherently conservative, that “detec-
tive fiction helps interpellate its readers into conformity with the hegemony
of white, male, middle-class values in Western capitalist-industrialist socie-
ties” (Rzepka 21). More recent crime fiction, and its analysis, links crime more
closely to the social order from which it emerges. From this perspective, crime
fiction is often seen as questioning the social order and authority, and situat-
ing these in very specific contexts rather than portraying them as universal.
Indeed, this cultural embedding of criminal activities, it is argued, is precisely
what makes crime fiction from such a wide range of contexts popular through-
out the world: they are not seen as universal or outside of their time and place;
and thus “what is useful about such culturally embedded works is what they
tell us about the book trade, the market place, the reading public and society
generally” (Sutherland 3).
This contribution will examine crime fiction within a very particular cultur-
al and social context: that of South Africa, during the period of the apartheid
government. In such repressive contexts, the ideological stance of the ruling
elite and its dominant values become easier to discern than in more fluid social
situations. Moreover, an ideological debate around the role and value of crime
fiction was quite intense in apartheid South Africa, and elements of the main
184 Le Roux
ways of thinking about crime fiction can still be traced to seemingly aesthetic
debates about crime fiction today. In this essay, I will examine the ideological
stance taken against crime fiction by the apartheid authorities, which can be
seen most clearly in studies of so-called “undesirable” literature from the 1950s
and the censorship or banning of works. I will then compare the ideological
shifts in the work of an author who spans both the apartheid and post-apart-
heid periods, Wessel Ebersohn, before concluding with an assessment of the
continuing appeal of the highbrow/lowbrow divide. Why, in the 21st century, is
there still recourse to such binaries and a continued dismissal of crime fiction
as ‘trash?’
2 Censorship in South Africa
The political sanctions associated with government censorship form part of

the wider context of knowledge production as well as publishing. As far back
as the 1700s, the Dutch authorities in the South African colonies prevented
publications that they considered subversive, while a century later the Brit-
ish authorities suspended publications for contravening a stipulation “not to
publish material of a political nature” (Oliphant 111). The early censorship of
newspapers and incidence of state intervention, as Oliphant points out, set
the pattern for the future. He argues that, “[t]‌hroughout the history of South
Africa, and with different degrees of intensity, the State would intervene to
safeguard the interests of minority rule” (111). This element of state (and mi-
nority) security remained a significant pillar of the dominant ideology until
the end of the apartheid period.
Other important ideological elements revolved around concepts of morality
or obscenity. The first South African censorship legislation may be found in the
Obscene Publications Act (1892) of the Cape of Good Hope, which aimed “to
prevent the Sale or Exhibition of Indecent or Obscene Books, Pictures, Prints
and other Articles” (1). In an echo of what was to come, the Act did not cre-
ate an enforcing body but rather established powers of search and seizure: the
Resident Magistrate could authorise any “constable or police officer to enter
in the daytime” into any house, shop, room or “other place,” using force where
necessary, and to “search for and seize” any indecent or obscene publications
found. Further legislation, controlling the importing and distribution of pub-
lications, supported this authority. Before Union in 1910, each of the colonies
making up South Africa was governed by its own legislation in this regard.
This legislation was followed in 1931 by the Entertainments (Censorship) Act,
which aimed “to regulate and control the public exhibition and advertisement
of cinematograph films and of pictures and the performance of public enter-

tainments,” evidently in response to the distribution of new media channels
and formats. The Act also created a Board of Censors with powers to approve
or reject films. Ellison Kahn (286) notes that “[l]‌ittle use was made of the stat-
utory powers to suppress locally-produced books or other publications.” How-
ever, because this Act focused on the control of films and public entertain-
ment, rather than publications, it was later felt that it should be expanded, to
find ways and means of combating “the evil of indecent, offensive or harmful
literature” (286).
After the nationalist government came to power in 1948, and began im-
plementing the policies of separate development now known as apartheid,
the notion of controlling publications that contravened the dominant moral
values was raised again. A commission was thus established in the 1950s to
investigate the matter, under Professor Geoffrey Cronjé of the University of
Pretoria. Cronjé—a sociologist and criminologist who became notorious for
his justifications of apartheid—was tasked with investigating the output and
reception of what were termed “undesirable” publications. The members of
the Cronjé Commission examined the state of “indecent, offensive and harm-
ful literature” in South Africa—which they later combined under the term
“undesirable” in their 1957 report. Their analysis of locally produced books
between 1935 and 1957 revealed a number of “undesirable” elements that con-
travened the norms they assumed to be generally acceptable. Cronjé would
argue in this report that “[t]‌he publishing of undesirable literature amounts
to nothing else than abuse of the freedom of publication—for the benefit of
the publisher concerned, but to the detriment of the community” (20). This
shows a clear concern for the moral decay associated with the reading of cer-
tain kinds of books.
As Peter McDonald (25) notes, the Cronjé Commission was particularly
concerned about the undesirability of thrillers and crime fiction: they argued
that, “[t]‌he overwhelming majority of undesirable novels belong to the catego-
ry which could be termed tales of suspense, namely, the detective or murder
novel or story of villainy, or, in other words, the ordinary thriller” (Cronjé et al.
110). Indeed, according to their analysis as many as 26.8% of the titles sold in
South Africa in 1951 could be classified as “mysteries” (20), although the au-
thors comment with apparent relief that only a small amount of the “depraved
filth” found in mysteries and pocket books was actually published in South Af-
rica because local publishers could not compete financially with publishers in
the US and Britain.
This commission and its ideological attitudes should be set against the
background of the paperback revolution of the early 20th century. This ‘new’
186 Le Roux
format imported many of the traditions of pulp magazines—affordability, low

production values, and lurid covers—and was aimed at a mass audience to
make money for the publisher. This kind of popular fiction or pulp generally is
seen as a genre of
imaginative reading matter distinguished by mass production, afforda-

bility, an intended audience of common as opposed to elite readers, a
dependence on formula and genre; and pulp as a literature aimed at the
pleasure centers of the reader, primarily concerned with sensation and
escape, variously intended to excite, astonish, or arouse. (Server xi)
These ‘American-style’ stories spread rapidly to Britain and Australia, among

other English-language reading markets, as well as to South Africa. The Cron-
jé Report describes—and deplores—the American model being replicated in
South Africa, and suggests that the importing of American paperbacks was
creating a reading public for similar literature in South Africa (111). As a result,
they conceded, there is “money certainly [to be] made out of printed trash
and poisonous scum” (66). And there is indeed evidence that such works sold
widely in South Africa and were extremely popular among readers, not least in
public libraries (see e.g. Clark 198).
But it was not only the censors who shared this ideology that posited a sim-
plified relationship of direct influence between texts and readers and who were
troubled by this concern with the apparent dangers of popular fiction. Cultural
studies theorists such as Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams have been
described as promoting working-class culture even while displaying a “strong
bias towards literature and literacy and an equally strong moral tone”; Hoggart
in particular saw the working class being undermined by a “Candy Floss World”
of “thrills and cheap fiction which was somehow bland and sleazy” (Hebdige
360). In South Africa, writers from the opposite side of the political spectrum
apparently also shared an ideological concern with the degrading effects of
popular fiction. For example, Jack Cope, a Marxist critic and writer, writing in
The Guardian in 1951 saw literature as having a high moral purpose. He thus
saw contemporary fiction as registering moral decline (“decadence”) and he
deplored the disappearance of ‘positive’ characters. Instead, the figures occur-
ring most often as the subjects of fiction were, in his words, “thieves, scoun-
drels, police sleuths, prostitutes and sexual perverts” (qtd. in Sandwith 204).
There is little place for the ambiguity or even complexity of popular fiction in
such an approach and it places little agency in the hands of ordinary readers,
who are reduced to “consumers.” The dangers of crime fiction, it seems, were
sufficient to draw together an uneasy ideological alliance among otherwise

sworn enemies—even if they may not have realised it themselves.
3 Banned Books
The Cronjé Commission’s 1957 report was instrumental in shaping apartheid-era

censorship legislation, in terms of which books could be banned post-publica-
tion and removed from bookshelves. The vast majority of these were interna-
tional titles; the kinds of American books that were regularly banned in South
Africa under the Customs Acts were mostly crime novels and thrillers. A few ex-
amples show the kind of work that was of concern to Cronjé and the Commis-
sion on Undesirable Publications. The first was a group of “tough gangster writ-
ers” like Mickey Spillane, Nat Karta, Ace Capelli or Nick Perelli. For instance,
almost all of Perelli’s works in the 1950s were banned in South Africa on moral
grounds. One example is A Blonde for Burial, published in the US in 1952 and
banned in South Africa in 1956. Perelli was not, in fact, the name of an actual
author, but a pseudonym for a group of authors working for the publisher Tem-
pest, and later the imprints Scion and Milestone—it was a series or brand name
created by the publisher as a vehicle for its mass consumption crime fiction.
Lad Panek suggests that “it was a form that proliferated from the top down: peo-
ple in the publishing industry decided to write and publish detective stories
rather than detective stories rising from independent writers” (55). Publishers
like Scion regularly came under fire in the US for portraying obscenity, violence
and ‘gangsterism’ in their works, and destruction orders were issued against
their books, leading to a loss of sales and thus revenue. But, with sales of 25,000
to 40,000 copies of a single title within a very short period of time, the so-called
“mushroom” or “gangster” publishers continued to commission streams of sim-
ilar work (Holland). The Perelli example shows that the publisher should not
just be seen as an intermediary between writer and reader; rather, the publisher
plays a highly interventionist role in commissioning and creating books and in
matching writers and texts with readers.
A second example of books banned is the kind of pulp fiction written by
James Hadley Chase, Jack Iams or Vin Packer. This consisted of somewhat vio-
lent murder mysteries, with a good helping of sex. Vin Packer (the pseudonym
of Marijane Meaker) is somewhat of an anomaly, as her popular crime novels
were considered psychologically dense and well-received critically: it is argued
that “Her probing accounts of the roots of crime are richly detailed snapshots
of their times, unconventional, intensely readable, and devoid of heroes,
188 Le Roux
villains, or pat solutions” (Lovisi 36). Nonetheless, her works were all banned
in South Africa, probably largely due to their combination of crime and sexual-
ity. Packer was wont to include lesbian scenes in her works, which cannot have
been popular with the conservative ethos of the South African censors.
The even more violent and sexualised work of a few black genre publishers
was also, inevitably, banned in South Africa, with the result that few locally
have read classics of the African-American pulp genre such as Donald Goines
or Iceberg Slim. Race ideologies, in other words, drastically limited the depic-
tion (or acceptance of the depictions) of non-white characters—a clear exam-
ple of the abstract ruling ideology being expressed in concrete terms through
the censorship boards. Attempts at subverting this ideological stricture had to
be downplayed, subtle and often ironic. As Maureen Reddy (4) has noted of
crime fiction in the United States, there is a great deal that “significant absenc-
es can tell us about the ideology at work in popular fiction.” The “significant
absence” of black crime fiction in South Africa has only really begun to be filled
since the end of the apartheid era.
These “pulp” novels were not considered trash in South Africa alone, espe-
cially after the highly publicised trials of Hank Janson in 1954 in the USA:
Gangster novels were poison in the new climate. Popular writers like
Ace Capelli, Duke Linton, “Griff,” Brett Vane, Nat Karta, Nick Perelli—
mostly house names used on sex-and-violence novels of dubious quali-
ty—were consigned to the obituary desk. When publishers did produce
crime thrillers, the covers, language and action were toned down com-
pared with what had gone before. Wives, servants and fourteen-year-
old schoolgirls looking for thrills would have to get them elsewhere.
(holland 217)
This quote is not intended itself to make a value judgement, but to indicate the
prevailing patronising and disapproving attitudes towards mass-market crime
fiction. Notably, as the quote shows, such mass-market crime fiction was being
produced for exactly the marginal audience that the dominant elites sought to
protect through legislation and control—women, the working classes, and the
youth. In South Africa, this protectionist stance was extended to the so-called
“non-white” population as well.
How did local publishing houses position themselves and operate in this
context? The consequences for South African authors and publishers only
arose some decades later, after the translation of the recommendations of
the Cronjé Commission into legislation. From this report and the ensuing de-
bate on what was “undesirable,” emerged the first apartheid-era censorship
legislation, the Publications and Entertainment Act, No 26 of 1963. The Act

created a Publications Control Board, which had the authority to prohibit “un-
desirable” publications. Analysts have noted that the two main targets of cen-
sorship were obscene and political publications, although the literature tends
to highlight political factors (see e.g. Du Toit 1981; Hachten and Giffard 1984).
They also note the unsophisticated approach to banning by the Board, espe-
cially in the decade between 1963 and 1974, when “the authorities appeared
to select targets on the basis of title keywords such as ‘black’, ‘socialism’, and
‘revolt’ ” (Merrett 7). In effect, the Board used intellectuals and other “expert”
witnesses to legitimise their determination of what was undesirable and what
was not, augmenting the “juridical interpretation of canonical judgements,”
with supposedly “objective” laws of aesthetics; to discriminate permanent val-
ue from the ephemeral and the worthless (Ross 227). In terms of the 1963 Act
and the revised 1974 Act, popular fiction fell foul of the provision of being
found “indecent or obscene or … offensive or harmful to public morals.” But
in addition, the forms to be filled in by Publications Control Board included
direct reference to the undesirable nature of crime fiction (Publications and
Entertainments Act):
2. References to pages on which appear passages considered to be inde-
cent, obscene or objectionable in terms of the Act.
(a) Crime and the technique of crime
(b) Lawlessness, murder and sadism
(c) …
This would appear to suggest that the majority of crime fiction titles may have
been banned, on the basis that they appeared to promote “undesirable” ele-
ments of lawlessness. However, decisions about crime fiction appear to have
been inconsistent. This was even more marked after the revision of the legisla-
tion in 1974, which introduced more leeway for the censors to consider literary
merit when assessing potentially undesirable titles. Peter McDonald notes:
Their [the Publications Control Board’s] belief that mass-market genre

fiction was not literature, for instance, which influenced their decisions
to ban novels by Wilbur Smith (Heinemann), John Gordon Davis (Mi-
chael Joseph), and Stuart Cloete (Collins) on moral grounds, also in-
formed their rulings against anti-apartheid political thrillers like Wessel
Ebersohn’s Store up the Anger (Gollancz, 1980) and Andrew McCoy’s The
Insurrectionist (Secker, 1978). (McDonald 117)
In other words, the division between highbrow and lowbrow literature was in-
consistently applied, although that was the framing for such decisions.
190 Le Roux
An analysis (using Peter McDonald’s database, Jacobsen’s Index of Objec-

tionable Literature, and the Beacon for Freedom of Expression website) of the
crime fiction titles published in English in South Africa or by South African
authors during this period shows that few local crime writers were actually
banned or censored. Even in Afrikaans, which was the main source of con-
cern for the Cronjé Commission, as it was being “infiltrated” by the American
models, little of what was locally published was actually banned, even if some
titles were found to be “undesirable” in terms of Cronjé’s survey. Various au-
thors had their titles submitted for consideration by the Board, usually either
by Customs or the book trade, but some escaped with no bannings at all. Don-
ald Swanson’s The Freedom Killers (Peter Davies, 1961) was banned in 1961 (i.e.
prior to the new 1963 Act being enacted), although this ban was lifted in 1985.
Swanson, better known as a film producer and director, wrote a collection of
short stories, Highveld, Lowveld and Jungle, which was published by Dassie
Books in 1956, and featured a story titled “Murder in the Game Reserve.” The
Freedom Killers was published in London rather than South Africa, probably
because of its subject matter—the blurb describes it as “a tense story of racial
and personal tensions in South Africa, raw, shocking, at times brutal and yet
entirely probable.”
As mentioned by McDonald, Andrew McCoy’s The Insurrectionist (Secker
& Warburg, 1979) was banned on both moral and political grounds, and con-
demned in the government mouthpiece The Citizen as “a blueprint for black
revolution” (Posner). His African Revenge of the following year (Secker & War-
burg, 1980) was also banned. The latter title’s banning was lifted as late as 1989,
but an age restriction was imposed (no under 18s could read the novel). But his
previous novel, Atrocity Week (Sphere, 1978), was not banned, and nor were his
later novels. The publishers tended to promote the violence and brutality of
McCoy’s works as a selling point, and it should be pointed out that they were
not particularly critical of apartheid policies.
During the 1980s, some of Colin Ainsworth Sharp’s titles (published by WH
Allen) were banned, although all were considered. Ainsworth Sharp wrote
thrillers similar to those of Wilbur Smith, but while a title like Birthright (1982)
was passed, Borderline (1983) was banned just the following year. Similarly,
most of David Stone’s novels were banned (such as A New Friend, which even
the blurb described as “racy,” Corgi, 1965), while some were passed. The Ca-
nadian author John Peter’s Along that Coast (1969), a love story and murder
mystery set in South Africa, was banned, probably because of its unflattering
references to National Party supporters; as were Peter Driscoll’s The Wilby
Conspiracy (Macdonald 1972) and Pieter Niesewand’s A Member of the Club
(described on the blurb as “a chilling and prophetic novel of apartheid’s last
stand,” Secker & Warburg, 1979), while other titles by the same authors escaped
the censor’s hammer.
One of South Africa’s most acclaimed crime writers, James McClure, left the
country in protest against the apartheid government’s policies. His first novel,
The Steam Pig, was published by Gollancz in 1971 and won the Gold Dagger
award. The cover of the first edition highlights the author’s authority and au-
thentic voice: his “unique position” to describe “verismo police procedure” in
apartheid South Africa. This work nonetheless escaped banning, in spite of be-
ing somewhat critical of the security forces. In fact, only one of McClure’s nov-
els was banned—The Sunday Hangman (Macmillan, 1977)—probably because
it discussed capital punishment and prison conditions, while “the paperback
edition … was banned because the publisher foolishly included on the cover
words to the effect that it was a stinging indictment of the apartheid system”
(Lockwood 441). McClure traced his inspiration to write crime fiction to the
“neutrality of the crime story” and the potential to reach a wide audience (180).
In spite of this attempt at neutrality, international reception of McClure’s work
focuses on his socio-political critique: “McClure has chosen the vehicle of the
mystery novel, more exactly the ‘police procedural,’ to examine the effects of
prejudice upon his native land” (Lockwood 440). This implies the use of crime
fiction as a vehicle for social protest, precisely because “the mystery novel
reaches a wider and largely different audience than ‘political’ novels such as
those of Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, and André Brink” (441). Ravan Press, Da-
vid Philip and Ad Donker, some of the best-known oppositional publishers, all
produced works of crime fiction, while Gollancz in London was also associated
with progressive and anti-apartheid publishing. Thus, even though commenta-
tors like Green (209) suggest that the detective story was not “a viable form of
oppositional writing,” this genre was also used for the purposes of social com-
mentary. This example supports the view that mass culture is not automatically
either progressive or conservative, and that it need not be stereotyped as such.
Some of these crime writers whose work was not banned include Jon Bur-
meister, Joy Packer, and the queen of local crime fiction, June Drummond.
Drummond considered herself a liberal, but tended to steer clear of politics
in her novels. She says her first novel was “anti-apartheid in a mild, beginner-
ish way” and believed that that was why it appealed to Victor Gollancz, who
supported the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles. “But,” she went on,
“publishers switched off on Africa for a long time; they felt that critics and
readers heaved a sigh when they picked up a book about apartheid” (qtd. in
Von Klemperer). A number of these novels dealt with apartheid only in a con-
textual sense—it was the background against which a crime was committed,
not an ideological framework for the fictional themes.
192 Le Roux
Thus, if we look at all the titles censored and those not censored, there seem
to be few elements or commonalities that can be extracted to show why certain
titles would have been censored rather than others. The ideological elements
that the censors considered were not consistent, but these included aspects of
morality, sensationalism and state security, as well as a more inchoate sense of
the power of the authorities being called into question or mocked. Lurid cover
art, it appears, often resulted in a decision to ban a certain title on the grounds
of morality. The title may also have played a role. Criticism of police procedure
usually led to censorship on the grounds of state security or political motiva-
tions. But there are few discernible patterns. In later years, as the censorship
legislation adapted and the people in charge changed, a number of the books
that were originally banned had their bans lifted. This reflects a wider shift
to the mainstream of all forms of pulp fiction, or a greater acceptance of the
values of popular fiction by the broader society. Many crime fiction books have
been re-issued with new, non-pulp covers, reflecting a broader readership.
A key strategy used by publishers, and indeed book reviewers, was to endorse
the literary quality of a work by downplaying its political elements (as David
Schalkwyk has shown).
4 Crossing Lines and Periods: the Case of Wessel Ebersohn
An interesting example when examining ideologies in crime fiction is that of

Wessel Ebersohn, whose work straddles both ideological divides and the his-
torical periods of the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. Because Ebersohn
published books in both periods—with a hiatus of about twenty years in be-
tween—it is interesting to consider whether there have been shifts in the ideo-
logical angles of his characters and themes, as well as the reception of his work.
The initial reception of Ebersohn’s work may be assessed in its treatment by
the censors. His first novel, the thriller A Lonely Place to Die, was published by
Gollancz in London in 1979, and his second, The Centurion by Ravan Press in
Johannesburg just a few months later. These seem to have evaded the censors’
attention, with the paperback edition of A Lonely Place to Die only being con-
sidered by them in 1981, after two more contentious works appeared—Store up
the Anger (1980) and Divide the Night (1981). The latter was banned because of
its detailed depictions of torture at the hands of the Security Police. This work
upended dominant views of race and justice, by making the killer an elderly
white man and his victims innocent—and sympathetically portrayed—black
people. The work was unbanned on appeal, with the board finding that the
novel “would not undermine relationships or lead to animosity between white
and black” (qtd. in “Board Lifts Ban”), although there was some lingering con-
cern about references to sexual excitement during the scenes of torture.
While Ebersohn is best known for his crime fiction novels featuring prison
psychiatrist Yudel Gordon, he also published a few other stand-alone novels.
One of these, Store up the Anger, was banned upon publication by Gollancz in
1980. This was noteworthy because the South African edition had not yet ap-
peared from Ravan Press—it was still being printed for local distribution. Since
the plot of Store up the Anger deals with the death of a black liberation leader,
Sam Bhengu—the name’s similarity to Steve Biko was not accidental—at the
hands of the security police, a banning was probably inevitable. Indeed, the
novel was found to contravene several sections of the Publications Control Act,
including being offensive to public morals, bringing a section of the communi-
ty into ridicule and contempt, harming race relations and for being prejudicial
to the security of the state. It was criticised for being biased and “non-literary”
with its basis in reports on Steve Biko’s death in detention. Store up the Anger,
according to this view, “could not be defended as literature [… it] was danger-
ously seditious because it ‘cold-bloodedly’ used the ‘criterion of fictionality’ to
disseminate ‘propaganda’ ” (McDonald 80). However, John Dugard, appealing
against the banning order before the Publications Appeal Board, argued: “It
is clearly not a work of non-fiction. It is a novel dealing with fictitious char-
acters. The fact that some of them may resemble real persons, and that the
situation may resemble a real situation does not deprive it of its qualities as a
work of fiction. It is an historical novel in the best tradition” (qtd. in Stoffberg
48). After this appeal, the work was unbanned, as the appeals board felt it was
likely to attract a popular readership, but that it was not of a direct and incit-
ing nature. However, the cover artwork for both editions was still considered
undesirable. The local, Ravan Press cover at first featured a work by artist Paul
Stopforth, of a naked man, but this was replaced with a text-based cover, with
no illustrations. The artwork for the paperback Penguin cover in 1984 was also
considered undesirable, as an incitement to black anger. This ruling was also
overturned on appeal.
While McDonald argues that Ebersohn’s work may have been banned be-
cause it was not seen as “literature,” his work was extremely well-received in-
ternationally, and he is seen as one of the more “literary” and accomplished of
South African crime writers. His descriptions of landscapes, for instance, are
often lyrical interludes within his texts, pauses within the plots. With some of
his work falling foul of the censors, it seems clear that the ideological stance of
Ebersohn’s writing must be considered primarily anti-apartheid. Various char-
acters in his work are anti-apartheid activists, while the main “detective,” the
psychiatrist Yudel Gordon, observes the workings of the apartheid state from a
194 Le Roux
stance at some remove from the mainstream—he is an English-speaking Jew-

ish character, and thus not part of the “closed circle” of Afrikaners. Ebersohn
uses a variety of characters to represent various perspectives in the apartheid
era, but these are always filtered to the reader through Gordon’s somewhat crit-
ical eyes. Gordon is also shown as berating himself when his own prejudices
emerge, both in terms of racial and gender politics (although little attention
has yet been paid to Ebersohn’s potentially problematic treatment of gender).
Ebersohn’s work has thus largely been received in terms of a “sustained cri-
tique of the laager mentality, the ideology and the criminal activities of the Se-
curity Branch” (Davis 188). However, while Ebersohn’s works do critique apart-
heid ideologies, this is not always done in a clear-cut way. Linda Stoffberg (47)
argues that his fiction is “deeply engaged in the historical circumstances of its
production,” and he thus portrays various apartheid situations as normal. Part
of the ambiguity arises because of the portrayal of the police, who are good
and bad, and sometimes both at the same time. It has been suggested that
crime fiction was not widely written in South Africa under apartheid because
of the difficulties in depicting the police as the keepers of order and seekers of
truth and there is an expectation that we should find more widespread use of
amateur sleuths. But there were in fact a variety of fictional police detectives
(James McClure’s Kramer and Zondi for instance), while Ebersohn’s psychi-
atrist works for the prisons system and closely alongside the fictional Cape
Town Central Investigations Bureau. Freek Jordaan, Gordon’s closest associate
in the police, is depicted as a good man even when his loyalties to Afrikaners
appear to hamper his ability to solve a violent crime. This balanced ideological
view was very important to Ebersohn, as John Dugard, appearing for the ap-
peal for Store up the Anger, argued: “Neither side is depicted as perfect—both
elements are treated critically. The book presents a balanced picture of the
struggle between imperfect authority and imperfect revolutionary forces” (qtd.
in “Banned Book”). The refusal to moralise was lauded at the time, but in the
post-apartheid context it is sometimes considered tacit support for the apart-
heid government—a reflection of changing ideologies and how they affect the
ways in which readings can change over time.
In Ebersohn’s work, Yudel Gordon’s response to living under apartheid is
ambivalent and some would say problematic (from Divide the Night):
He would have admitted it to no one but himself, but something with-

in [him] was quickened by being part of the apartheid society. He loved
the stimulation of it, the threat of the police, the excitement of vis-
its like this one, the troubled presence of Soweto, there was much that
would not exist in any more sophisticated society that contributed to
giving Yudel’s experience of life a sharpness that in a truly free country

it would have lacked. He hated the system under which he lived with its
attendant exclusiveness and injustices, but he would have lived nowhere
else. (E bersohn 136)
In addition, Ebersohn’s depiction of criminals is complicated: “In Ebersohn’s

work the murderer is frequently not the social misfit who temporarily destabi-
lises society (as is the case in traditional detective fiction) but conversely is often
a political insider who, through murder, seeks to maintain what is ultimately a
corrupt status quo” (Stoffberg 28–29). The banality of his evil characters was
commented upon: “Overseas critics have been more struck than we would be by
the fact that Ebersohn’s security policemen are neither ciphers nor Machiavelli-
an masters, but rather little men with little names” (Bryer 13). In other cases, the
identification of the murderer upends expectations, especially in cases where
it is quickly assumed that a black man must be responsible for the murder of a
white man, or that that man’s murder must be related to his involvement in a
racist gang (both of which situations arise in A Lonely Place to Die, but where the
murderer—a woman—turns out to have been far more personally motivated).
Another departure from the conventions of crime writing may be seen in Eber-
sohn’s refusal to provide a neat resolution for the crimes depicted—even when
identified, the murderer seldom faces what might be called justice, while others
remain wrongfully accused or suffer terrible consequences simply because they
cannot support the status quo. This upending of expectations is significant, be-
cause it suggests a subversion of the power dynamics of the times.
Importantly, this complexity has been retained in Ebersohn’s post-apart-
heid novels, which still feature Gordon as the detective—The October Killings
(2009), Those Who Love Night (2010) and The Top Prisoner of C-Max (2012), as
well as the e-book A League of Geniuses (2016). But in the newer set of novels
he has been joined by a young black woman, Abigail Bukula, who herself falls
into the category of amateur detective as a lawyer in the justice department.
The characterisation of Bukula is not always successful, but it is interesting to
note Ebersohn’s attempt to include an interracial detective duo in the newer
books in his series. The crimes in these novels are not, as before, products of
the general pathology of society, but are more often motivated by crimes com-
mitted in the apartheid era, often by people who are now in positions of pow-
er. The works show some inclination to support the post-apartheid ideology
of the “rainbow nation,” although they are highly critical of the government
and especially of affirmative action. Those Who Love Night expands the setting
to include Zimbabwe and parallels are drawn between the two countries and
the continuing impact of the past on the present—in a review, the novel is
196 Le Roux
described as being “committed in its anatomy of the unending legacy of apart-

heid” (“Those Who Love Night”).
Can we say that Ebersohn’s work has always been ideologically complex,
then? Or is his critique of the new government, just like the old one, the re-
sult of a conservative view of society and its potential for transformation? The
ideological ambivalence of this case underlines the fruitful space for debate,
subversion and unsettling of dominant social discourses that crime fiction
opens up.
5 Ideological Debates: a Return to the ‘Genre Snob’ Debate
Another kind of ideological positioning emerges when we consider crime fic-

tion: that of the critics themselves. Edgar Allan Poe, often considered the fa-
ther of modern crime and detective fiction, experienced a clear disjuncture in
the reception of his works by critics, on the one hand, and by readers, on the
other: he was critically acclaimed, but not immediately popular with a mass
audience. Nowadays, the opposite view is more prevalent, as crime fiction is
regularly dismissed as “lowbrow” or “genre fiction,” in spite of receiving huge
popular acclaim and sales: “Endemic to the … literary world-view is a rooted
dismissal of genre writing—that is to say, popular literature—and a firm belief
that any notion of ‘cultural production’ and serious aesthetics are incompati-
ble” (Worpole 5). While the rise of cultural theory may appear to have broken
down the distinctions between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” culture, the argu-
ment continues to be made that genre fiction is “lowbrow.” Popular fiction of
all kinds is often seen as inauthentic, and its consumers continue to be seen
as consumers of trash and passive victims of ideologies promoted by mass
culture.
In other words, crime fiction and other forms of popular fiction are often
considered inferior, of little importance and even disposable. There are on-
going debates about the value of mass culture as opposed to elite culture. But
Cronjé and his ilk, in contrast, certainly did not trivialise popular fiction. This
is because they considered the “likely readership” as a central factor when con-
sidering the potential impact of a text. The censors seemed to argue that qual-
ity and quantity are irreconcilable—a potentially subversive text was safer if
it was only expected to circulate among a limited audience, and in particular
a limited audience of educated people. Texts reserved for a limited readership
were thus considered ‘safer’ than mass-market fiction, which was considered
dangerous and significant because it could potentially reach such a large num-
ber of readers. In contrast, the commonly accepted view nowadays appears to
be that popular fiction is of less importance because of its widespread popu-

larity and apparent adherence to generic norms, while works of great literary
fiction are more significant even if they reach only a small, highly educated
readership. The difference is linked to both the aesthetic and political purpos-
es of writing:
Literature—even when its authors are published by Random House or

Harper Collins or any other huge conglomerate in Australia—maintains
a rhetorical distance from the world of commerce and the commodity
form; while popular fiction sits happily right in the middle of the mar-
ketplace … [literature] is often claimed as politically progressive, while
popular fiction by contrast is rendered conservative, even reactionary.
(gelder 116)
Michael Birch reacts against this tradition by examining the ideological ambi-
guities of so-called formula fiction as a form of cultural production. Nonethe-
less, and even as studies of popular culture and popular fiction have become
more nuanced, a value-based notion of what is “genre fiction” and what is “lit-
erary fiction” (what has high or low symbolic capital, as opposed to economic
capital, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms) remains common.
In South Africa this debate has recently re-emerged in what has come to be
called the ‘genre snob’ debate. The key question seeks to balance commercial
imperatives with aesthetics. So we find commentary of this sort:
Detractors see crime fiction straddling the imperatives of artistic mer-

it and commercial success, and their trenchant question is: how can a
literary category that relies on voyeurism, graphic violence and hyper-
bole be afforded the status of an academic object of enquiry, alongside
‘great’ literature, particularly in the South African context, where crime is
a scourge and justice a thorny notion? (naidu 126)
There has also been criticism of “Mike Nicol’s decision to abandon high-lit-
erary interrogations of the history of apartheid violence and the agonies of
transition in favour of writing popular crime fiction” (Titlestad and Polatinsky
260). Such a description implicitly suggests that the value of “high literature” is
ranked higher in terms of legitimacy than “popular crime fiction,” revealing an
ongoing adherence to the binary of “popular” vs “elite” forms of fiction.
Why has this binary distinction reared its head again, twenty years into
the post-apartheid era? Anneke Rautenbach has provided a historicised and
well-reasoned summary of the discussion and raises the important issue of
198 Le Roux
readership. It may be that the debate has been resuscitated because contem-
porary critics are raising seemingly aesthetic concerns that in fact still retain
an ideological dimension. This may be seen in the fact that these points of
view—of crime fiction as either dangerous or trivial, primarily because it
appeals to a wide readership—are not in fact entirely opposed. Rather, both
depend on a certain perception of readers. And readers, after all, are what de-
termine aesthetics, as well as value, as David Dorsey points out: “In referring
to any particular aesthetic, I mean the syndrome of factors within a work of
art which govern the audience’s perception of and appreciation of the work”
(qtd. in Dorsey 7). The Cronjé Report had a simplistic view of the reader as
a passive consumer of literature, and reiterated the need to protect readers,
and especially allegedly vulnerable groups such as women, “non-whites” and
children. For instance, it argued: “If a child’s taste is formed by love and crime
comics, he or she will continue to crave lurid, unreal, violent, and sexy material
in print” (Cronjé et al. 51)—and this danger of “moral disarmament” (70) was
to be guarded against by any means. In particular, the Commissioners found
(arguing that it was a “tenable scientific finding”) that certain types of undesir-
able publications were more conducive to crime than others, by encouraging
contempt for the law and the police, and a taste for brutality and violence.
Another danger of “undesirable literature” was that it could undermine the po-
sition of the “European” in South Africa: “As the torch-bearer in the vanguard
of Western civilization in South Africa, the European must be and remain the
leader, the guiding light, in the spiritual and cultural field, otherwise he will
inevitably go under” (148). The test for what was undesirable was based on the
Hicklin rule, which defined material as obscene if it tended “to deprave or cor-
rupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose
hands a publication of this sort may fall.”
Cronjé based much of his argument about the possible degrading effects
of bad literature on the work of Frederic Wertham. Wertham was a psychia-
trist, who claimed in the 1950s to be able to “prove” that violent comic books
“caused” crime and delinquent behaviour, especially among the young. But his
work has long been dismissed in the scientific community: “Wertham’s meth-
ods were anecdotal; he had no control groups; and he mistakenly relied on
correlations as proof of causation. But his assertions resonated with a public
eager for answers to concerns about crime” (Heins and Bertin). This argument
clearly had no actual links to audience research or to studies of the reception
or impact of books, despite Cronjé using it for that purpose. Significantly, the
“cultural depravity” deplored by Cronjé and the censors is not much different
from that criticised by F.R. Leavis in The Great Tradition and by other literary
critics. And, crucially, this argument is still in circulation today.
While support for the moral imperative of great literature has waned, we
still find an assumption that popular fiction implies the passive consumption
of mass-produced narratives—what Jonathan Rose (394) calls “treating mass
audiences as herds of pathetic sheep.” For instance, Titlestad and Polatinsky, in
criticising Mike Nicol’s decision to start writing crime fiction, set up a distinc-
tion between texts that promote one or the other kind of reading:
A ‘writerly’ novel (in the terms Barthes elaborates in S/Z), which compels
the reader into active engagement, which makes the reader an agent of
historical meaning, is replaced by a ‘readerly’ one, in which all that is re-
quired is passive consumption. Readerly texts, one must recall, are always
in the service of the status quo. (Titlestad and Polatinsky 269)
But the assumption that crime fiction is an essentially passive, conservative

medium appears unfounded. As can be seen in the case of Wessel Ebersohn
discussed above, his work was not more conservative or less subversive sim-
ply because it fell into a specific genre. Most academic criticism of literature,
whether popular or literary fiction, is focused on the aesthetics of the text and
its seemingly intrinsic qualities rather than the ways in which texts are actu-
ally read and circulated. The South African (and increasingly, international as
well) audience for crime fiction is wide and diverse. Moreover, while none of
the non-fiction genres of politics, history or true crime is as large as the crime
genre in terms of sales, there is a significant overlap in terms of audience. This
may imply that readers seek crime fiction or thrillers not only for their escapist
value, but also for the social commentary which has become inherent in the
genre. Leon de Kock remarks on the “economy of prestige” in which writing op-
erates, and says that, “A lot of people who are sympathetic to crime-fiction feel
that it is underrated, that it is regarded as ‘genre,’ and a kind of schlock, when
it actually does more. Crime-fiction allows you to traverse society across and
down” (Chetty). As Janice Radway has shown for another commonly derided
form of popular literature, the romance, readers engage with these genres at a
variety of levels. Thus, “the reader of popular fiction is actively involved in the
making of him- or herself” (McCracken 17).
Thus, although an elite notion of what is ‘genre fiction’ and what is ‘liter-
ary fiction’—going back to the Cronjé Report and finding its roots in Leavisite
thinking—and a concern with what has high or low symbolic capital—as op-
posed to economic capital—remains common in the South African context,
this opposition is in fact redundant. So-called ‘formula’ genres attract some of
the most significant authors as well as varied readerships. Moreover, it is redun-
dant because the political and the aesthetic are always entangled, and because
200 Le Roux
popular literary genres have a particularly important role to play in fleshing out
the critical discourses that underpin a democratic society.
6 Concrete Realities
In the face of strong opposition throughout the apartheid era, when popular
fiction generally and crime fiction specifically were considered “undesirable,”
crime novels were produced in increasing numbers for a growing readership.
During this time, the labels of “crime fiction” and “politically engaged” novels
were considered mutually exclusive, although there are clear overlaps. In the
post-apartheid period, there is a new willingness on the part of publishers to
showcase previously marginalised voices and to reach out to previously unex-
plored audiences in the literary marketplace.
This is not simply an academic argument between, on the one hand, those
who argue for a division between the highbrow and the lowbrow (or the literary
and the popular) and, on the other, those who see the distinction as arbitrary
because it ignores the influence of the social context, of popular audiences and
their preferences. The former was a literary ideology that was translated into a
political ideology and in these hands and under the specific circumstances of
the apartheid state, it had very real consequences for real people.
Literary critics do not like to think of such concrete realities, of the commer-
cial aspects of publishing, nor of the production of fiction as labour. But fic-
tion is not the only (or even the most important) segment of publishing. And
considering authors as labourers, publishers as manufacturers, books as com-
modities in the marketplace and readers as active consumers does not have to
imply “the final collapse of cultural values in the face of relentless consumer-
ism and the bitter exigencies of mass production” (Worpole 15). Crime authors
such as Deon Meyer can balance both commercial success and literary awards,
and a focus on the publishing and reception history of crime fiction can move
us beyond the normative judgements of both the censors and the literary crit-
ics. This reminds us that ideologies of aesthetics are also political questions.
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c hapter 11
National Allegories in the Age of Globalization—

Prologue to an Analysis of Contemporary Canadian
Young Adult Fiction
Mavis Reimer
For the past decade, one of my critical projects has been to document and to
study the implications of the widespread interest in representations of home-
less child subjects in texts of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centur
ies. These collections of texts include texts directed to young people as well as
texts about young people directed to adults. From textbooks about the urban
homeless and refugees designed for primary and secondary classrooms, to a
collection of international films about street kids, to the media and social me-
dia accounts of the Occupy movement, young readers and young people inside
texts have repeatedly been confronted with the imperative to ‘go homeless.’1
While the texts work within different genres and modes, all, I have argued, can
be read within the semantic field of globalization and the theoretical vocabu-
laries of subject formation entailed by globalization. In working and rework-
ing my understanding of the grounds on which the meanings of these texts
are built, I frequently return to a group of Young Adult narratives published in
Canada after 1990, as I do here. In the essay that follows, I tease out the ways
in which the genre of children’s literature—and Canadian children’s literature
specifically—provides a productive site for using and challenging metaphori-
cal discourses of the nation and transmuting them into new figures to account
for contemporary conditions of ‘being-in-the-world.’ In the course of doing so,
I summarize arguments I have made in other contexts; if these arguments have
been published, I point readers to those sources for further reading.
1 The Genre of Children’s Literature
Children on the move animate narratives for young people. In The Pleasures of
Children’s Literature, Perry Nodelman and I argue that the generic pattern of
1 For my discussions of the international films and the Occupy movement as texts about
homelessness, see “On Location” and “ ‘It’s the kids who made this happen.’ ”
National Allegories in the Age of Globalization 205
stories for young people is a circular journey, in which a central character who
is coded as a child leaves home in search of an adventure or is pushed out of an
originary home by the behavior of powerful adults; journeys to an unfamiliar
place; and, after a series of exciting and dangerous experiences, returns home.2
Children’s literature is not the only kind of text that uses this circular-journey
structure: indeed, that this is the generic pattern of the form marks its origins
in and continuity with the oral forms of classical and folkloric Western Euro-
pean literature. As David Morley, paraphrasing Iain Chambers, observes, “The
classical sense of home was that of the place from which the hero ventures
out, and which supplies the constant domestic anchoring place to which he
[sic] will return, at journey’s end” (211). Home provides the envelope for the
journey; in Chambers’ words, the journey itself always “confirms the point of
departure, secured in the presumption of eventual homecoming” (37). A gen-
re, as Sonja Foss explains, is a collection of texts that share themes, forms, and
organizing principles, shared features that are “called forth” by the “percep-
tion of conditions” within specific situations (226). Tracing the conventional
story of children’s literature, then, is a first step toward asking the question of
what conditions have called forth a specific assemblage of characteristics and
toward noticing the variations of particular narratives from the expected pat-
tern, variations that, when repeated, become subgenres or genres in their own
right. As E.D. Hirsch puts it, “The generic conception serves both an heuristic
and a constitutive function” (78). In the case of narratives for young people, to
give just a few examples, ‘family stories,’ popular in the decades of the twenties
and thirties of the twentieth century, feature a group or corporate character in
the place of the child protagonist, as in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Ama-
zons series; girls’ books, popular at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of
the twentieth century, often start with the arrival of an orphaned or otherwise
unhomed girl at a place which she makes into home over the course of her
story, as Anne Shirley does in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series;
and school stories typically mark the separation of school from home in dra-
matic and, even, oppositional terms, but often end, nevertheless, by suturing
school lessons to home values, sometimes recoding ‘home’ as nation in this
resolution, as Thomas Hughes famously does in Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
In his chapter on genre criticism in The Political Unconscious, Fredric
Jameson notes that, because paying attention to generic narrative models al-
lows readers “to register a given text’s specific deviation from them,” generic
criticism raises “the more dialectical and historical issue of this determinate
2 See, in particular, the chapter entitled “Children’s Literature as Repertoire,” 184–217.

206 Reimer
formal difference” (113). Paying attention to formal differences directs readers

to consider “changes in the historical situation which block” the full replica-
tion of the generic pattern; prompts a search for “substitute textual formations
that appear in its wake” and for the “historical ground … in which the original
structure was meaningful”; and makes visible the “constitutive relationship of
forms and texts to their historical preconditions” (133). In the case of children’s
literature, the “historical preconditions” for the invention of the genre impor-
tantly include the development of the idea that childhood is sufficiently differ-
ent from adulthood to require that children be addressed as a separate group.
While all genres, as Jameson observes, “are essentially literary institutions, or
social contracts between a writer and a specific public, whose function is to
specify the proper use of a particular cultural artifact” (92), children’s litera-
ture uniquely is named for the public to which it is directed rather than the
identity or location of the writer who produces it, making manifest the consti-
tutive character of this historical precondition. Scholars of childhood studies
generally accept the broad outlines of Phillipe Ariès’ argument that, as Sha-
ron Stephens summarizes it, “the development of the modern conception of
childhood as a separate life stage emerged in Europe between the fifteenth and
eighteenth centuries, together with bourgeois notions of family, home, privacy,
and individuality” (5).
Children’s literature as a genre distinct from schoolbooks, however, did not
begin to be widely produced and distributed until the end of the period in
which this idea of childhood was developed—specifically, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, according to literary historian Harvey Darton (1). While
there is agreement that the invention of a particular form of childhood was
the necessary precondition for the invention of children’s literature, there is no
consensus in the field—indeed, comparatively little scholarship—about the
salient conditions of the “historical ground” of the 1740s during which the form
originally appeared and became meaningful. Nevertheless, some promising
lines of interpretation seem clear: the literary institution of children’s litera-
ture is imbricated with the idea of the nation;3 the form arises in the period
of early capitalism and responds to the new economic and social conditions
inaugurated by this shift;4 and there is a generic interest in the dichotomy of
public and private spaces5 and, more generally, an understanding of place as
carrying and holding meaning. The “multiscalar” idea of home, to borrow Ali-
son Blunt and Robyn Dowling’s resonant description of the concept (6), which
3 See, for one example of this argument, Gillian Brown’s The Consent of the Governed.
4 See, for example, Andrew O`Malley`s The Making of the Modern Child.
5 See, for example, Carolyn Steedman’s Strange Dislocations.
is both origin and destination in the generic narrative, is one of the manifes-
tations of the generic commitment to meaningful places. Indeed, both ‘genre’
and ‘home’ are concepts that resonate with what Chambers calls the haunting
desire for “the closed comfort of the stable same” (34).
2 The Failure of Generic Form
The new millennium has seen an increasing number of narratives for young
readers internationally that fail to replicate the terms of the generic pattern.
Since the 1990s, narratives about child subjects on the move in which the cen-
tral characters do not settle at the conclusions of their stories have proliferated
around the world: these children might be tourists and travelers, if the narra-
tive is working within the terms of fantasy and adventure (including comic
misadventure); immigrants, refugees, or exiles, if the narrative is set within
geopolitical contexts, whether contemporary or historical; or street kids, foster
kids, runaways, or ‘throwaways,’ if the narrative is working within (or against)
the subgenre of domestic realism that continues to dominate in the field of
young people’s texts. In a number of the narratives, many kinds of unsettled
young people appear, suggesting that these categories are overlapping rather
than discrete conceptualizations. The narratives typically close not with a re-
turn home for the young protagonists, but with them remaining—literally or
metaphorically—homeless, or, at best, contingently housed, at the end of their
stories. Following Jameson, I assume that the widespread failure to replicate
the generic structure of children’s literature raises the issue of what changed
historical conditions might account for this failure and prompts a search for
substitute textual formations that have appeared in the system. I assume, too,
that the generic reformulations are worth studying closely for what they sug-
gest about the significance of the determinate new conditions and about the
possibilities of response to them.
In documenting the generic failures, searching for substitute formations,
and seeking to understand the “perception of conditions” that have “called
forth” these new responses, I focus on Canadian adolescent, or Young Adult
(ya), fiction. My focus on ya narratives is a response both to the importance of
this subgenre in the contemporary marketplace for young people’s texts and to
its historical origins. ya fiction now accounts for a plurality of the print pub-
lications in the field in Canada and in North America generally. It was recog-
nized and instituted during the decades following the Second World War and,
according to Roberta Seelinger Trites, could not have become codified until
the postmodern period, because it assumes an understanding of people “as
208 Reimer
socially constructed subjects rather than as self-contained individuals bound

by their identities” and is preoccupied with a “questioning of social institu-
tions” (16). My focus on texts produced in Canada was, in the first instance,
a pragmatic choice, because the publication, circulation, and prizing systems
for children’s literature historically have been national systems, often tied to
the curricula or interests of public or state schools. Understanding ideology
as both a set of material practices and a set of explanations for those prac-
tices, as poststructuralist Marxists after Louis Althusser have taught us to do,
however, I also recognize that such a pragmatic choice is inseparable from the
interpretative and political choices I have made. Further, while the translation
and circulation of young people’s print texts across international borders is
limited, the study of children’s literature is an international field and has been
so for at least a century, with the result that texts of other national cultures to
which scholars pay attention—traditionally, texts that reach the status of chil-
dren’s classics, but, more recently, also popular texts of series fiction—become
visible on the international stage. My speculations about the significance of
the ‘homeless’ texts were shaped by these contexts of reception, too, so that
I expect that the conclusions I reach here might also be relevant to literatures
beyond that of Canada.
3 Writing and Reading Allegory
The book that startled me into the recognition that something unprecedented
was happening in Canadian ya fiction and that I needed a new reading strate-
gy to understand it was Martine Leavitt’s 2004 novel, Tom Finder. The narrative
opens with a series of sentences marking the undoing of Tom’s identity as he
moves toward the urban core of Calgary:
Tom had forgotten who he was. Something had happened to him, but
that was the first thing he forgot … He forgot if he had a friend … he for-
got if he’d ever passed Tadpoles, and if he’d ever known what you say to a
girl when you like her … he forgot what his mark was on his last spelling
test, and if he knew what it felt like to get punched in the face, and what
his mother looked like. By the time the shops were shadowed by the high
downtown towers, he’d forgotten his last name. (Leavitt 9)
The trajectory of the narrative follows Tom’s attempts to piece together clues
about who he is. He does this by recording what he observes to be true about
himself from his fragmentary memories and from the responses to him of
people on the street and in the public park where he sleeps, and by trying to
decipher the significance of the notes about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart he
finds in the notebook in his backpack, especially in relation to the advertise-
ment of an upcoming local production of The Magic Flute on the pen he finds
in his pocket. He sees himself as “making himself up, inventing the story of
himself,” a process he believes has performative power (57): the story he in-
vents includes loving, wealthy parents who are frantically searching for him.
This “story of himself” unravels when his memories flood back during a perfor-
mance of Mozart’s opera. He finally remembers that his mother is a “lucky al-
coholic,” lucky because she is treated “like a pet” by her violent boyfriend Bruce
(125), who reserves most of his rage for Tom. It was because of a particularly
brutal beating at Bruce’s hands, Tom remembers, that he ran away from home.
Tom returns to his old neighbourhood and to the apartment block where he
once lived with his mother and Bruce, but he neither enters the building nor
stops to look at it. He knows as soon as he finds it that he no longer belongs
here and chooses rather to run past, “on his orbit back to the Core” (126). The
novel ends with Tom still living on the streets—specifically, sitting on the curb
of a public street writing down the stories of his homeless friends—a place
that is coded as ‘home’ for him in the narrative.
This ending registers as a block to the full replication of the generic pat-
tern of children’s literature rather than being merely a variation of it, in part
because the ending explicitly refuses the conventional closure of home: “This
was home, but he didn’t belong,” Tom realizes when his mother’s apartment
building comes into view on his return (126). The ending also refuses the en-
closure of home, leaving the central character out in the open, on a public
street, rather than inside, in a private domestic space or in an institutional ap-
proximation of a domestic space. The narrative organization of the closing of
the story, in which subplot and main plot are brought together, also implies
that Tom chooses the streets as home. The subplot concerns Tom’s quest to
find another young man who has run away from home, a quest he is given by
Samuel Wolflegs, the young man’s grieving father. The penultimate chapter of
the novel closes with Samuel’s grateful acknowledgement that Tom, to whom
he has earlier given the name of Finder, has succeeded in his assignment: “You
can go home now, Tom Finder,” he said gently, “Go home” (139). The final chap-
ter opens with the narrator’s observation, “Tom sat down on the curb” (140),
the metonymical displacement of “home” with “curb” implying that Tom has
responded to Samuel’s imperative by going home to the street.
These deviations occur at the levels of story and narrative discourse. But the
coherence of this stretch of the narrative also relies on an absent cause—the
history of the colonization of Canada. Although Samuel Wolflegs is explicitly
210 Reimer
identified as a “First Nations father” only in the back cover blurb, he is coded
as Aboriginal for readers who know the Canadian context from the time that
Tom (and readers) first glimpse the “big man with black and silver braids,” “a
big, brown, pitted face,” and “a fringed leather jacket with beads on the fringes”
who is praying on the bank of the river in the park (13). Within the context of
the settler nation of Canada, the metonymical recoding of street as home by
an Aboriginal father is a symbolically powerful act: while knowledge of the
dispossession of First Nations and the appropriation of the land by European
immigrants is often repressed in Canadian texts for young people, the desire
to become native to their place also informs many of these texts, sometimes
explicitly as a theme in the story but often implicitly in “the political uncon-
scious” manifested symptomatically in the discourses of the texts.6 Samuel’s
symbolic power is confirmed at the level of story by the fact that his calling
Tom “A Finder” (15) is a felicitous instance of performative naming, unlike
Tom’s own “story of himself,” and at the level of narrative discourse by the ep-
igram taken from the Mozart intertext that heads the chapter in which Sam-
uel sends Tom home: “What joy it will be, if the gods remember us” (136). In
Leavitt’s narrative, then, the invocation of the foundational national question
of territory invites a reading of the narrative closure as a morally authoritative
refusal of the settled terms of home and a substitution of the place of home-
lessness for the place of home for the central White male character.
In the Canadian context, reading nation as home is an interpretative strate-
gy widely assumed and sanctioned, as the first line of the English version of the
national anthem makes evident: “O Canada, our home and native land.” But the
linkage between homes as simultaneously domestic and national is resonant
at many locations other than that of Canada. Rosemary Marangoly George,
for example, points to the discourses of British imperialism—specifically the
context of British India—as the origin of the notion of “home-country” (3).
Australian postcolonial theorist Ghassan Hage observes that nationalist prac-
tices are enabled by the “structure of feeling” that constitutes the “homely im-
aginary,” a structure built on “the key themes of familiarity, security and com-
munity” (40). Within days of the events in New York on September 11, 2001, the
U.S. government established a cabinet position to coordinate the operations
6 I have made a detailed argument, for example, that this is the work of Janet Lunn’s Shadow
in Hawthorn Bay (1986) in “Homing and Unhoming: The Ideological Work of Canadian Chil-
dren’s Literature” in Home Words. See also Perry Nodelman’s chapter, “At Home on Native
Land: A Non-Aboriginal Canadian Scholar Discusses Aboriginality and Property in Canadian
Double-Focalized Novels for Young Adults,” in the same volume of essays. “Political uncon-
scious” is a reference to Jameson’s seminal work on symptomatic reading.
of American defence organizations under the heading of Homeland Security.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm uses the German term Heimat to refer to the col-
lective understanding of home as public space, and Heim or the French chez-
moi to refer to the “essentially private” conceptual space of belonging (67). For
Hobsbawm, the private meaning is the literal meaning, while the public mean-
ing is “a social construction” (67). The Oxford English Dictionary, however, lists
home as entering English through the Teutonic languages of northern Europe
already carrying with it such collective meanings as world, village, homestead,
dwelling, and safe dwelling, with the private meanings accruing to the term
through later usages. In contemporary English, it is precisely because the pub-
lic and private senses are conflated in one word that home is not only an aurat-
ic term but also can signify simultaneously at multiple scales.7
Indeed, home might be thought of as a mediating term that allows for the
transcoding of public and private experiences. Reading home can be under-
stood, then, as allegorical reading in the broad sense of the etymological mean-
ing of allegory: allegory is directly translated as “other speaking,” a speaking
which, as Jeremy Tambling notes, takes place in a public place, “a place of as-
sembly, the agora, the marketplace” (6). While Tambling does not point to this
connection, it seems that the question of the public and the private is already
implicated in allegory—in the possibility of concealed significances, other
meanings, enriched meanings, or the “split between the surface meaning and
what is underneath” (6). The congruence between the practice of allegory and
the meanings of home, arguably, makes home a privileged site for allegorical
encodings and decodings.
If home can be allegorized as nation, country, village, or another collectively
produced safe place, then to what concealed significance, under-meaning, or
other public meanings does its lack—homelessness—point? Reading contem-
porary Canadian short stories beside the analysis of social scientists and politi-
cal theorists, Diana Brydon proposes that the salient valence now for attempts
to reimagine home is globalization, because globalization “has implications
for how tropes and territories are understood in every dimension of human
activity” (34). As Brydon’s comment suggests, theorists of globalization have
taken up a wide range of metaphors of home and homelessness as they seek
to document the porous borders between nation-states in the age of digital
communications and the global marketplace, and to imagine the supranation-
al subjects wanted for the project of globalization. Michael Hardt and Antonio
7 I have discussed the auratic meanings of home for the study of children’s literature in detail
in “Discourses of Home in Canadian Children’s Literature,” the introduction to Home Words.
212 Reimer
Negri, for example, argue that “the irresistible and irreversible globalization of
economic and culture exchanges” that characterize the new form of Empire
that now “governs the world” (xi) takes “[c]‌irculation, mobility, diversity, and
mixture” as “its very conditions of possibility” (150). John Tomlinson cites An-
thony Giddens’ use of the term deterritorialization to describe the “disembed-
ding” of people from their locations and “the stretching of relations across time
and space” as “the core [experience] of globalization” (107). Migrants, refugees,
and exiles appear as both empirical and metaphorical subjects in the analy-
sis of cultural geographers and theorists of diaspora (see e.g. Brag 197). Media
scholar Morley points out that “[a]ccounts of postmodern nomadology tend
to operate with one or another form of technologically determinist explana-
tion,” typically having to do with “what new technologies or modes of flexible
production are somehow doing to us” (4). For Zygmunt Bauman, on the con-
trary, the ‘fashionable’ terminology of nomadology is “grossly misleading,” in
that it “glosses over the profound differences” (87) which separate two kinds
of contemporary wanderers—the tourists, Bauman’s figure for the “global
businessmen, global culture managers or global academics” who travel easily
across borders that are being “dismantled for the world’s commodities, capital
and finances” (89), and the vagabonds, who travel “because they have no other
bearable choice” (93), and for whom “the walls built of immigration controls, or
residence laws and of ‘clean streets’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies, grow taller”
(89). Developing the concept of domopolitics as a heuristic for the “reconfig-
uring of relations between citizenship, state, and territory” that is fueled by the
contemporary metaphorical “conjunction of home, land and security” (241),
William Walters similarly notes that, in the era of globalization, “[t]he pre-em-
inent task of government is to attract and channel flows of resources, whether
investment, goods, services, and now flows of (the right kind of) people into
one’s territory” (244). These examples are only a few of many that could be
listed. As Roland Robertson concludes, the “contemporary ideology of home
(or homelessness)” “has seemingly acquired a near-global significance” under
the conditions of globalization (42).
Robertson observes, as well, that the widespread ideology of homeless-
ness combines two discourses that were once distinct from one another: the
“specific discourse of homelessness which deals with inadequate shelter” and
“the phenomenological notion of homelessness” (42). Robertson’s descriptors
suggest that many of the theorists of globalization are working within allegor-
ical modes, moving between literal, concrete events (such as being without
adequate shelter, encountering barriers to immigration, or enacting laws) and
more abstract, figurative semantic registers (such as circulation, mixture, flow,
stretching, or flexibility). In some instances—for example, that of sociologist
Bauman—this is clearly an intentional and motivated discursive style. In an

interview with Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Bauman claims that metaphors “are
the indispensable scaffoldings for imagination and perhaps the most effective
tools of comprehension” (17). In particular, “[m]‌etaphors come into their own”
whenever there is a “need to dissemble the established conceptual network”
and “to capture novel phenomena in a new cognitive frame” (19). Globaliza-
tion, which represents exactly such a phenomenon, has prompted a prolifera-
tion of figurative speech from analysts as they attempt to assemble new cogni-
tive frames and conceptual networks.
If this is true of sociological and political discourse in the age of globaliza-
tion, it seems likely to be even more emphatically true of the writers and pro-
ducers of fiction, who intentionally build the world of their imaginative texts
with figurative scaffoldings. Jameson argues that this is, indeed, the case. In an
essay entitled “Cognitive Mapping,” he proposes that the problem for art in “our
own moment,” what he also calls “the moment of the multinational network”
or “late capitalism” (350), is to find figures adequate to the “new and historical-
ly original dilemma” in which we find ourselves, “one that involves our inser-
tion as individual subjects into a multidimensional set of radically discontin-
uous realities, whose frames range from the still surviving spaces of bourgeois
private life all the way to the unimaginable decentering of global capital itself”
(351). The aesthetic process he identifies in this essay—cognitive mapping—is
itself a figure, taken from the description of the phenomenon by which people
solve the problem of “the mental unmapability of local cityscapes” by practis-
ing and so laying down in memory the paths they take through the city (353).
Colin McCabe explains that cognitive mapping effectively “works as an inter-
section of the personal and the social, which enables people to function in
the urban spaces through which they move” (xiv). Jameson appropriates and
extends the figure to describe the work of personal and social mapping “of the
enormously complex new international space” of the current historical mo-
ment (“Cognitive Mapping” 351). In one sense, cognitive mapping describes
the work of art or the text, but the text here is understood as “a socially symbol-
ic act” or, as Jameson puts it in discussing what he calls “the conspiratorial text”
of contemporary world cinema, as a “collective effort at trying to figure out
where we are and what landscapes and forces confront us” (The Geopolitical
Aesthetic 2). In another sense, cognitive mapping is also the work of the critic.
In “Cognitive Mapping,” Jameson asserts that “one of our basic tasks as critics
of literature is to track down and make conceptually available the ultimate
realities and experiences” designated by the figures of the text (350). He un-
derstands this method as “essentially allegorical” (350): notably, from the time
of its definition by classical Roman writers, allegory has been understood to be
214 Reimer
at the same time “a mode of writing or speaking” and “a form of interpretation”

(Tambling 19).
4 Grasping our New Being-in-the-World: the Work of the

Canadian Texts
“[N]‌ational allegory,” Jameson speculates in The Geopolitical Aesthetic, is being

refashioned “into a conceptual instrument for grasping our new being-in-the-
world” (3). Jameson first introduced the concept of “national allegory” in his
1986 article, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital.” His
use of the descriptor “third-world” occasioned a number of pointed critiques,
among them Aijaz Ahmad’s virtuosic demonstration of the slippages in con-
ceptual categories in Jameson’s divisions of the world into three spheres. Nev-
ertheless, I want to retain one of the distinctions Jameson makes in the 1986
article for my analysis of Canadian children’s narratives. For critics located
at the centre of dominant, Western ideological structures—Jameson seems
to have in mind principally American, White, male critics, as his objectors
point out—sorting texts into discrete categories of “the subjective” and “the
public or political” is a reflection of the “deep cultural conviction” in which
they “have been trained,” namely, the conviction that “private existence is
somehow incommensurable with the abstractions of economic science,
and political dynamics” (69). This, he observes, is not the case for texts from
Third-World cultures, and critics who proceed on the basis of this conviction
will fail to understand that texts can be “seemingly private and invested with
a properly libidinal dynamic” and, at the same time, project a “political di-
mension in the form of national allegory” (69). Responding to this argument,
Ahmad points out that, if “[w]e replace the idea of the ‘nation’ with [the]
larger, less restrictive idea of ‘collectivity’ ” in Jameson’s argument, it becomes
possible to see the presence of “analogous [allegorical] impulses in the US
cultural ensembles” (110). The examples Ahmad gives to support this claim
are of counter-cultural, Black, and feminist American writers. There are many
ways in which Canadian writers and critics, like Americans, stand at the cen-
tre of dominant ideological structures of the current moment: among other
things, Canada is a member of the G7 group of leading developed nations,
a participant in the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United
States and Mexico, and a leading exporter of carbon fuels. But it is also the
case that Canadians, like the writers referenced by Ahmad, have an oblique
relation to the American Empire, to use Hardt and Negri’s descriptor of the
current hegemon, and, typically, some “sense of their own global marginality”
(Reed 40). Perhaps for these reasons, Canadian literature often functions as
national allegory.
This is particularly the case for Canadian children’s literature. In Canada,
children’s literature became an established institution during the 1970s as a
result of both official government policies and popular political sentiment.8
Publication of books for children in Canada began in earnest with the influx of
federal and provincial government funding that was a consequence of a series
of official reports on the state of Canadian culture.9 The studies were commis-
sioned during a period of popular nationalist sentiment in the country, much
of it aimed at countering or containing the overwhelming American influence
on Canadian cultural life: one example was the Committee for an Independent
Canada, which took as its mandate the promotion of “cultural and economic
independence from the United States” (Egoff and Saltman 309). A series of
events during the decade of the 1970s index the rapid institutionalization of
children’s literature in Canada: the establishment of two presses devoted to
the publication of children’s books, Kids Can Press in 1973 and Annick Press in
1975; the opening of the first bookstore dedicated to children’s books in 1975;
the founding of a scholarly journal in the field in 1975; the first international,
academic conferences on the subject in Toronto in 1975 and in Vancouver in
1976; the establishment of prizes in children’s literature by the Canada Council
in 1976; the creation of the position of Children’s Literature Librarian by the
National Library of Canada in 1976; the opening by the International Board on
Books for Young People (ibby) of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre in 1976;
and the sponsorship by the Book Centre of the first annual Children’s Book
Festival in 1977. By the end of the decade, in the context of national conver-
sations about multiculturalism—the promotion of which became an official
federal government policy in 1982—publishing for young people also acquired
an unofficial but often spoken national political mandate, namely, to promote
a specific version of Canada as a tolerant, multi-ethnic community bound to-
gether by its shared differences.
That Canadian children’s literature has produced and reproduced this
“imagined political community” (Anderson 6) becomes obvious through an
analysis of the patterns of its award-winning fiction. In a reading of more than
100 English-language novels awarded literary prizes and published in Canada
8 I have discussed the development of Canadian children’s literature as an institution and have
cited the facts that follow as an indication of that institutionalization in several places, most
extensively in “Canadian Children’s Literature in English” and “For the Record.”
9 Egoff and Saltman list the report of the Royal Commission on Book Publishing of 1971 and
the Secretary of State’s The Publishing Industry in Canada in 1977 as formative. See “Canadian
Publishing for Children and How It Grew,” in The New Republic of Childhood 306–314.
216 Reimer
between 1975 and 1995, Anne Rusnak and I conclude that home in this litera-
ture is often defined by central characters at the conclusions of their narra-
tives as a heterogeneous, multi-generational collection of people affiliated
through choice, rather than a family bound by filial ties.10 This multicultural
view of the national home as formed by affiliation has its unspoken limits: in
Canadian children’s literature, those limits are often racialized ones, built, as
I have already noted, on a disavowal of the presence of Canada’s First Peoples
within the spaces of the nation, a disavowal also extended to other racialized
children, as Louise Saldanha and Clare Bradford, among others, have noted.
Notably, too, the institutionalization of Canadian children’s literature and the
institutionalization of the adolescent or ya novel, with its interest in the re-
lation of young people to societal structures, arise during the same decades.
The possibility, then, that Canadian novels for young people might serve as a
privileged site for the collective, cognitive mapping of ‘where we are and what
landscapes and forces confront us’ in the age of globalization—an age that is
often also characterized as an age in which the sovereignty of the nation-state
is waning—begins to seem both obvious and overdetermined.
To date, I have collected a sample of seventy titles published in Canada be-
tween 1999 and 2014 that feature unhomed young people who do not settle at
the conclusion of their narratives. This corpus is made up, for the most part,
of “unconceptualized texts,” to use Margaret Cohen’s description of the large
groups of unread or underread books in the archive of literature (59). My goal,
like Cohen’s, is to take up “the critical act of perceptive reading” in order to dis-
cern “coherent practices at a collective level” (59).11 Because Cohen works with
texts from the past, her particular interest is to re-establish what she calls “the
framework of lost langues that need to be recovered” before “the full meaning”
of individual texts “emerges” (59). My attempt, rather, is to write a history of
present practice and so to outline a framework that is in the process of being
built, but, like Cohen, I begin by looking for recurrent patterns in the texts with
the aim of defining “the horizon of possibilities” of the group of texts and “the
range of variations within this horizon” (60).
10 See the article by Reimer and Rusnak in Canadian Children’s Literature.

11 Cohen points out that “intensive reading of canonical texts” continues to be the dom-
inant method in literary scholarship and that critics working with large collections of
texts have tended to improvise “alternative kinds of reading” (59). My methods for read-
ing large groups of texts of Canadian children’s literature have been developed in just
such improvisational ways over the past fifteen years. I was interested to discover that
much of what I had determined to be useful in doing such work was shared by Cohen.
Most of the texts in my corpus of Canadian ya narratives are interested

in networked communication systems: not surprisingly, in these 21st-century
texts, these systems are often computers connected to the Internet and mo-
bile phones. These systems fail or are sabotaged in some of the narratives, as,
for example, in Tim Wynne-Jones’s Blink & Caution (2011). Perhaps more sur-
prisingly, many of the novels also allude to texts of ‘elite,’ usually European,
culture and often use these ‘elite’ texts extensively as intertexts: Mozart’s op-
era The Magic Flute (in Leavitt’s Tom Finder), Albert Einstein’s general theory
of relativity (in Barbara Haworth-Attard’s Theories of Relativity), and Vincent
Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night (in Eric Walters’ Sketches) are just a few ex-
amples.12 An interest in numbers, sometimes explicitly money or the lack of
it, recurs in many of the texts; sometimes this interest is focused on a group
of random numbers, or puzzling sets or sequences of numbers. In Sarah Ellis’s
Odd Man Out (2006), for example, Kip spends much of the narrative unsuc-
cessfully seeking the meaning of a sequence of numbers he finds inscribed in
his dead father’s boyhood bedroom. Many of the narratives are structured as
mysteries, with the young characters engaged in solving an enigma, as cousins
Meline and Jocelyn are in Polly Horvath’s The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane
(2007). Forms of mental illness, often including addictions, appear in almost
all of the books and are distributed among most of what Vladimir Propp
calls the character functions—subject, object, sender, receiver, opponent,
and helper.13 Broken relationships with fathers and father figures are ubiqui-
tous: fathers are dead, or have deserted their families, or their identities are
unknown to the young characters; father figures are violent or unavailable.
Relationships with mothers and mother figures are also sometimes disrupt-
ed by death or violence; but, more often, mothers are young, poor, sick, and
underemployed. This is the case in, for example, Caroline Adderson’s Middle
of Nowhere (2012) and Luanne Armstrong’s I’ll Be Home Soon (2012). Perhaps
as a displacement of, or a substitution for, absent or inadequate parenting,
the police and other institutional representatives intrude into the homes and
lives of the young characters. They are usually unwelcome, as in Sara Cassi-
dy’s Skylark (2014), and often ineffective, as in Edeet Ravel`s The Saver (2008).
These regular intrusions also can be seen as one of many instances in which
12 I have discussed in detail the ways in which such intertextuality mobilizes the possibili-
ties of metaphorically “going beyond” what is literally understood to be “home” and “not-
home” in “Mobile Characters, Mobile Texts.”
13 Michael J. Toolan has demonstrated the usefulness of Propp’s formulation for the analysis
of narrative generally (90–102).
218 Reimer
boundaries between inside and outside, private and public, are presented as
unstable and porous.
Read together, this cluster of repeated patterns points beyond a recording
of the literal facts of family dysfunction and the fraying of social safety nets to
a deep phenomenological anxiety about a social, economic, and cultural sys-
tem under stress or struggling to find a new formation.14 There is a collective
recognition of the failure of established ways of being and a collective effort
to grasp the terms and the implications of ‘our new being-in-the-world.’ At the
same time, given the intertextual association with ‘elite’ culture, it is clear that
the subject being produced is at the centre rather than at the margins of a new
paradigm. Some of the texts also begin to map—tentatively and provisional-
ly—ways to move out across the new landscapes before us.
Home is a figurative centre of narrative texts directed to young people,
a resonant and multiscalar term in thematic structures and the origin and
destination of conventional plot structures. Home as nation is also tradition-
ally the context for the production of texts for young people. As identity and
belonging become detached from the national home under globalization,
questions of the location and the terms—indeed, the possibility or impos-
sibility—of different forms of imagined community are set into motion in
these texts. The ability to imagine the nation, Benedict Anderson proposes,
requires a conception of the simultaneity of time across a geographical space
larger than an individual personally experiences and for large numbers of
people of whose existence that individual might be unaware. This is a kind
of imagining which Anderson calls “a complex gloss upon the word ‘mean-
while’ ” (25) and sees as made technically possible by two forms of print cap-
italism, the novel and the newspaper. Jonathan Culler observes that one of
the implications of Anderson’s argument that “the world of the novel” is “in
principle an analogue of the nation” (23) is that it offers “the insider’s view to
those who might have been deemed outsiders” (37). Its structure of address
is an “open invitation to readers of different conditions to become insiders”
(38). Such an open invitation does seem to be extended to “readers of dif-
ferent conditions” of the Canadian novels for young people I am studying.
The complication of these novels is that there is no obvious way to imagine
an inside place—the closed, comfortable, stable place that conventionally is
coded as home.
14 I have demonstrated some of the terms of this anxiety in close readings of Leavitt’s, Ellis’s,
and Horvath’s novels in “ ‘No place like home.’ ”
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c hapter 12
Bone to Bone, Spirit to Spirit—Sovereign

Matriarchy, Asian/Indigenous Relations, and
the Work of Directed Re-Membering
Larissa Lai
I love the bones that are stones.

lee maracle, Memory Serves
∵
1 Introduction
This essay is part of a larger project that seeks to outline the contours of Asian/
Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, north of the 49th parallel in a place
that those who attach themselves to nation-state formations called ‘Canada.’
I actively seek channels of relation that foreground Indigenous and Asian-Ca-
nadian ways of being, both as they are embedded in the global nation-state
system as it has been imagined and produced through Eurocentric histories
of colonialism and imperialism and as they are remembered, constructed and
reconstructed through the peoples, lands and waters on and through which
those histories have been enacted, but who always already have had their own
epistemological and ontological roots, routes and understandings of history.
Here, I take up a fraught debate that has unfolded over the last decade or so,
exemplified most directly in a debate that can be traced through Bonita Law-
rence and Enakshi Dua’s “Decolonizing Anti-Racism,” Nandita Sharma and
Cynthia Wright’s “Decolonizing Resistance, Challenging Colonial States,” and
Nandita Sharma’s “Canadian Multiculturalism and Its Nationalisms.” Lawrence
and Dua make a powerful and insistent argument that people of colour are set-
tlers and must be accountable for that subject position, however discomfiting
it might be. Sharma argues that the Indigenous sovereignty argument made by
Lawrence and Dua reinforces a Eurocentric and colonial understanding of the
nation and that, as such, it is “neo-racist.” I argue that Indigenous sovereignty
224 Lai
need not be understood in Eurocentric or colonial terms and that Indigenous

sovereignty therefore need not reinforce colonial nation formations. Further,
while it may sometimes be necessary to understand Asian Canadians as set-
tlers, their specific settler condition and responsibilities need to be nuanced
and articulated in light of their specific histories of migration, settlement, and
survival. From a relational point-of-view, Asian Canadians may from time to
time need to take up the Westphalian nation-state formation as a matter of
strategy, in order to enter into good relations with Indigenous peoples, but
this is not the only way to nurture and build those good relations, and in fact
cultural avenues, especially as they are built among women and/or through
matriarchal principles can offer a powerful alternative to the much advocated
state-to-state relationship.
I begin by taking up Jodi Byrd’s borrowing of Kamau Brathwaite’s concept
of the “arrivant” as well as Dorothy Christian and Rita Wong’s concept of the
“unsettler” to make a distinction between white and racialized presences on
Turtle Island. Then, through a turn to oratory and literature, specifically Lee
Maracle’s Memory Serves and SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe, I illustrate
the specific forms that Chinese Canadian responsibility might take. I argue
further that story and culture are a necessary ground for the work of rela-
tion-making, especially in the wake of the recent Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. Finally, I expand upon the call that Disappearing Moon Cafe
seems to make for a genealogical recuperation of Asian-Indigenous relation
along matriarchal lines. I have recognized this call in an earlier essay on Dis-
appearing Moon Cafe; however, in the wake of Memory Serves it is possible to
vastly amplify it, through Maracle’s invocation of intentional, directed mem-
ory work and Byrd’s concept of “cacophony.” Indigenous and Asian women
in conversation and story through the work of culture offer channels for re-
lation-building, expanding and complementing the work that takes place
through the more mainstream channels of the law and the state. For this
reason, it is important to read and listen to their work in combination and
conversation, across the boundaries of conventionally (and Eurocentrical-
ly) demarcated literary fields. I call for interrelated rather than compara-
tive reading/listening. With Maracle, I suggest that the work of story and
directed memory is as powerful if not more powerful than the work that
must also be done through state and legal channels, and further that this
work is gendered, and ought to be led by women. Its deepest calling occurs
at spirit-to-spirit and bone-to-bone registers, which I articulate via Maracle
and Lee. Through their work, I expand this matriarchal call to two-spirit and
GBLTQ2SA + writers and storytellers, though these locations require further
theorization.
Bone to Bone, Spirit to Spirit 225
2 Impasses, Self-Reflection and the Shifting Ground of Terminology
If there are two major impasses to Asian/Indigenous relation in Canada, the

first is legal-historical, and the second is episto-ontological. Both are built
into the terms “Asian” and “Indigenous” themselves, and are underpinned by
a Eurocentric legal framework and a history of relationship through those le-
gal terms—their ideological freight, if you like. The legal historical impasse is
built into the contradiction that when Asian Canadians agitate for rights, they
do so in the Canadian state context and thus reinforce the state and its colonial
hold on the land that Indigenous people call Turtle Island. The onto-episte-
mological impasse occurs in the framework of sovereignty, which Indigenous
peoples must turn to in order to regain control of their own future and revive
the knowledge needed to preserve human life on this planet. As much as these
impasses are embedded in Eurocentric legal and historical contexts, they are
also embedded in Indigenous land, history and law, and also, importantly, lan-
guage, experience and story for all concerned. Because this is the case, literary
critics are in a unique position to offer at least a partial understanding of both
impasses and to offer, if not solutions, at least useful analyses that might di-
rect us towards how alliances might be built across both terms. These may be
produced not in any ideal or totalizing sense, but in a nuanced sense that is
honest about and responsible to the history we have lived through thus far. It is
important to open up the contradictions that arise in language and culture in
order to break out of the impasses and open the door to constructive change
and respectful relations.
The two impasses are connected in the sense that in order for Asian Canadi-
ans to understand themselves in citizenship terms, they must imagine a whole
and coherent subjectivity for themselves within the bounds of European En-
lightenment tradition. Similarly, there is a danger that in order for Indigenous
peoples to imagine themselves as sovereign, they must imagine themselves in
Eurocentric state terms. In both cases, there is a certain ideological pressure
to accept Western state formation as an undigested totality. I will show how
this can be intervened upon. For indeed, if the crisis of Western modernity is
the crisis of the bounded, discrete and complete Cartesian subject on the one
hand and national belonging on the other, both are caught in this onto-epis-
temological framework, though at odd angles to one another, in the sense that
not every national attachment that exists globally inherits Cartesian subjectiv-
ity in the same way. Those of us who come from non-European histories have
ontological traditions and trajectories of our own. For some of us, to break the
hold of these ideological forms, or what Deleuze would call territorializations,
requires an extraordinary feat of language, narrative and spirit. I want to argue
226 Lai
that this is precisely what contemporary writers and literary critics are doing.
In engaging such language, narrative and spirit, writers and critics engage oth-
er modernities besides Western ones. I should be clear here that I understand
this work as work done from my own contingent and sedimented Asian Cana-
dian location to think through the specific modes of respect and responsibility
that properly accrue to those inhabiting this site, as the work of a complex
and nuanced solidarity with Indigenous peoples in their nation specificities,
here particularly Stó:lō, Nuu’Chah-nulth, and Syilx, though more broadly all
the nations of Turtle Island. As such, it is a kinship text with Paulette Rea-
gan’s important book Unsettling the Settler Within, though its practice and
method are quite different. I acknowledge and stand in solidarity with those
upon whose lands I have made my home at various points in my life: Payóm-
kawichum, Ioway, Sauk, Meskwaki, Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Musqueam, Squamish,
Tsleil Waututh; as well as the nations of Treaty Seven: Siksika, Piikuni, Kainai,
Tsuut’ina and S toney Nakoda, in addition to the Métis Nation of Alberta,
Region iii.
I use three different terms in this essay that address the condition of racial-
ized settlement. I use “Asian Canadian” because it addresses my larger project;
“people of colour” because it is a term through which much productive conten-
tion arises; and “Chinese Canadian” when referring to specific Chinese Cana-
dian historical, critical or literary instances. To the best of my ability, I nuance
them in their specificity; nonetheless, some unavoidable slippage occurs. How-
ever, I understand all of these terms as emergent and open to the flowing pres-
sures of critical and creative practice, contemporary and historical experience,
as well as both Western and non-Western law and their applications. They are
not completely open terms, free to any interpretation, but nor are they static
or “essential.” I also take up the term “Indigenous” in this essay to address a
complicated historical experience imposed by colonial governments but also
experienced and claimed in a wide range of ways by the original inhabitants of
Turtle Island. I recognize also that specific nation names are preferred and use
them as much as possible where it makes sense to do so.
The project of Asian/Indigenous relation must have at its base an acknowl-
edgement of and respect for Indigenous attachment to the land on the one
hand, and on the other, Asian movements which have variously been framed
as Asian Canadian, diasporic and/or globalized. These Asian movements—
understood in both senses, as political movements and as worldly mobility—
are all implicated in the project of settler colonialism. Specifically, the Asian
Canadian justice movements from the 1960s to the present are predicated on
agitation for the rights of citizenship. Within the context of settler colonial-
ism, such agitation reinforces the state and in so doing undermines Indigenous
sovereignty movements, placing Asian Canadian social justice at odds with In-
digenous sovereignty however much any individual Asian Canadian subject
might wish otherwise. We must be careful when positing “Asian diaspora” or
“Asian migration” as frameworks preferable to “Asian Canadian” precisely be-
cause such a shift disavows the colonial state at precisely the moment when
Indigenous cultural and political activists are asking their racialized brothers
and sisters for a measure of accountability in the ways we have taken up that
formation. Instead, we must consider the ways diaspora and nation work to-
gether. For indeed, we do not want to deny the productivities of the relatively
recent ‘transpacific’ formation or its route through Asian American formations
(though this is not its only possible route). As Lisa Yoneyama writes:
If Asian/Canadian critique were to be critically intersected with transpa-

cific Asian/American critique, this might open up a way to relearn how
Canada as a subimperial nation has been deeply implicated in the trans-
pacific Cold War order. (Yoneyama 197)
Such an analysis, I suggest, would open the door also for deeper forms of
Asian/Indigenous relations, recognized in difference and as historically pro-
duced. Nevertheless, we must remember that the call through Idle No More
and other Indigenous movements is for racialized people who have turned to
the state for the rights of citizenship to recognize our role in state production.
It is a matter of both respect and responsibility to take up that call. While some
of us might not desire a relationship to Indigenous people that is triangulat-
ed through whiteness and European settler colonial relations to the land, we
must, nevertheless acknowledge the ways in which we have been complicit
with it, even when such complicity might, at the time, have seemed like the
work of survival.
As the first move of this essay, I call for a return to the nation and specifi-
cally the concept of sovereignty as a way of calling myself and others marked
Asian Canadian to take up the call of Idle No More and to do the work of seek-
ing and practicing what might constitute respect and responsibility within a
framework that recognizes the necessity of accountability for the past, and
for historical justice to unfold in a creative, imaginative present that remains
necessarily open and unfinished. The work of the nation attaches to the le-
gal-historical framework I lay out above. Within this sphere, “responsibility”
is a key term and a key practice. But the question is, what does it mean, and
how can it unfold? I would like to suggest further that the onto-epistemological
frame is the frame in which deeper relation can be sought, uncovered and/or
newly produced, specifically within the vein of feminist practice and the work
228 Lai
of imagination. The legal frame and the frame of being and doing—what we
might call the cultural frame—may overlap but one need not be contained
within the other. Rather, both already are mutually productive of one another.
This mutual productivity needs to be acknowledged and intervened upon. It is,
in fact, a site of profound creativity and relationality.
3 “People of Colour Are Settlers”
The overt discussion of Asian/Indigenous relations is relatively new. Born, at

least in part, from the incompletely theorized anti-racist movements of the
1980s and 1990s, the recognition that profound distinctions must be made be-
tween Indigenous peoples and people of colour is a difficult but necessary one.
On Turtle Island, north of the 49th parallel, a heated debate erupted after the
2005 publication of Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua’s essay “Decolonizing
Antiracism,” specifically in response to the authors’ provocative claim “Peo-
ple of colour are settlers” (134). Though in the sentence after which they make
this claim, they acknowledge the violence of slavery, migrant labour and un-
documented migration, the recognition that people of colour live on appro-
priated, contested land and therefore have specific responsibilities attaching
to this condition remains of vital importance (134), the statement “People of
colour are settlers” was controversial enough to instigate what the Universi-
ty of Victoria-based political scientist Rita Dhamoon called an “explosion” in
response (20).
Among the responses the most sensational was issued by Nandita Sharma
and Cynthia Wright in an essay called “Decolonizing Resistance, Challenging
Colonial States.” Sharma and Wright suggest that Indigenous turns to the na-
tion for the purpose of reclaiming sovereignty constitute a neoliberal return
to the ruling practices of the colonial state (126) and make Indigeneity a “pos-
sessive identity” for the purposes of group claims on resources (124). Further,
autochthony can be said to be a neoliberal mode of belonging, one whose

attempts to contain contestation are based on allegation that any de-
mand for rights and/or resources by “non-Natives,” including a radical
rethinking of how rights and resources are thought of and distributed, is
tantamount to a disregard for, and even colonization of, the autochtones.
(Sharma and Wright 126, italics in original)
Sharma calls for decolonization without nationalism, and a turn instead to the
concept of the “global commons” as an ideal: “The commons is an organization
of human activity that ‘vests all property in the community and organizes labor
for the common benefit of all’ ” (Linebaugh 6 qtd. in Sharma and Wright 131).
In her counter-response to Sharma and Wright, in support of Lawrence
and Dua’s call to make Indigenous presence and experience foundational to
anti-racist thought and practice on Turtle Island, Rita Dhamoon (21) suggests
that Sharma and Wright make the mistake of adopting an “Oppression Olym-
pics” framework “whereby groups are positioned as if they were competing for
the mantle of the most oppressed, without disrupting hegemonies of power”
(22). Dhamoon recognizes, rightly to my mind, that in seeing all nationalisms
as colonial, Sharma and Wright’s thinking is stuck in Western epistemologies.
I argue further that in thinking of resources and rights as the substance to
be struggled over, Sharma and Wright are inadvertantly caught up in liberal
Western understandings of the grounds for human relations. Citing Glen Coul-
thard’s understanding of decolonization as the work of thinking about “land as
a system of reciprocal relations and obligation” and not as a struggle for land
(Coulthard qtd. in Dhamoon 24), Dhamoon recognizes the profound need to
work across Indigenous and Western epistemologies to understand what is at
stake ideologically. She suggests that Sharma and Wright’s assumptions about
what is at stake are:
bound to Western ontologies of the nation, whether liberal or Marxist, in

which it is assumed that land is always a commodity whether privately
owned or collectively/commonly shared, that man [sic] can/must mas-
ter in/as the nation, and that decolonial conceptions of the nation about
sharing land are not available. These colonizing and indeed patriarchal
ontological frames limit Sharma and Wright because they do not imagine
social identities outside of ‘ongoing practices of ruling.’ (Dhamoon 23)
In a later essay, “Canadian Multiculturalism and Its Nationalisms,” Sharma in-

sists that a distinction be made between migration and colonialism (99), and
argues again for the utopian ideal of a borderless world and common rights for
all human beings (101). For her, sovereignty is necessarily a form of hierarchi-
cal, racist violence that she cannot support:
we also need to challenge sovereignty of all sorts—stories that insist

upon there being a coincidence of identity, territory and authority. This
claim to sovereignty by the Canadian state forms the basis for legalized
discrimination against those deemed to be foreigners, a category that
has, throughout modern history, been used to differentially include the
Other, rather than simply exclude her or him. This claim to sovereignty
230 Lai
also legitimizes a racialized and ethnicized claim to land and to pow-

er. (Sharma 100)
If there is a strangely impassioned liberalism to Sharma’s articulation, there

is also a set of heartfelt ideals that must not be thrown out with the bathwa-
ter. Her anxiety about racialized attachment to land makes sense from a dias-
poric point of view, in other words, from the point of view of those who have
suffered racialized displacement. From a diasporic point of view the call to
account for one’s participation in racialized wrong-doing could function as a
sort of traumatic repetition; it holds up the future spectre of a second loss of
home. For indeed, as Lily Cho suggests, diaspora must be understood “first and
foremost [as] a subjective condition marked by the contingencies of long his-
tories of displacements and genealogies of dispossession” (14). Further, “[t]‌hey
emerge in relation to power. This power is both external to the diasporic sub-
ject and internally formative … diasporic subjects emerge in turning, turning
back upon those markers of the self—homeland, memory, loss-- even as they
turn on or away from them” (15). For such ever-emerging subjects, the hail of
“sovereignty” may well be heard as a form of violence.
The difference at work here, thinking about Asian/Indigenous relation, is
that while the Canadian state may well owe an account of itself to its racialized
citizens (as in, for instance, Japanese Canadian Redress), Indigenous people
owe no such thing to the racialized citizens of the colonial state. The politics
of calling the master to account cannot hold here. In her claim that modern
sovereignty has been used to exclude others, Sharma fails to recognize the Eu-
rocentrism of both modernity and sovereignty as she conceives them. Further,
when she makes a call against sovereignty from a “person of colour” or “South
Asian woman” position she does not recognize the ways in which such a call
from her own historically sedimented location reinforces a colonial power re-
lation that she likely does not intend to reinforce. If the body politics of the
1980s and 1990s are to retain their partial productivities, in fact another stance
is necessary. The question becomes how to generate such a stance—such a
thing is neither obvious nor easy.
Kirsten McAllister worries that “solidarity” can be an empty concept with-
out substance, while guilt is not a productive emotion:
if guilt is all that racialized settlers like me have to offer, this is very trou-
bling since … guilt is an aggressive emotion … Guilt is a way to punish
oneself for something one feels wrong about doing. While it is neces-
sary to regret the harm one has inflicted, it is something different to stay
forever in a position fixated on one’s guilt, especially in public forums,
whereupon the invocation of guilt asks others to relate to us primarily in

a relation of aggression, an aggression against oneself. This hardly seems
a good path forward. (M c Allister 425)
The difficulty then, for diasporic subjects may be as much a psychic/emotional

difficulty as a legal/historical one, which is why I argue that a distinction must
be made between these modes in order to truly take up the path of respect and
responsibility. On the legal/historical front, there is no question that Sharma’s
call is a misstep. As Robinder Sehdev argues, from a “person of colour” loca-
tion, “[t]‌hrough migration our ancestors and we have sworn allegiance to Can-
ada and the Queen of England” (268). She nuances the concept of sovereignty
to make it clear that Indigenous sovereignty need not be understood in racial
terms or in terms of blood ties to the land, as Sharma fears. Sovereignty need
not be understood in Eurocentric terms:
One expression of domination in Canada occurs with the imposition of

equivalences that, in effect, would level the very difference that distin-
guishes First Nations’ sovereignty from the ethnic, linguistic, or cultural
rights of other minorities. The language of a state-to-state relationship
is often used to communicate the intact sovereignty of Aboriginal na-
tions and distinguish their unique position vis-à-vis the state, but this
is tricky language. Nationalism and sovereignty are often understood in
Eurocentric terms, which assume that its definitions are universal while
variations are something less than “true” nationalism and sovereign-
ty. This simply is not the case. Aboriginal sovereignty and nationality
are distinct and affirmed in treaties made with European newcomers.
(sehdev 269)
For Sehdev, the treaty relationship is primary, and people of colour are called
into treaty relationship through citizenship, landed immigrant status, refugee
status or any other state-recognized form of legitimation. This set of relations
is bound to both Western and Indigenous epistemologies of the nation, and
works, in a sense, as a site of translation. Because of its legal, material and ex-
periential underpinnings, neither Indigenous people nor people of colour can
deny this set of relations, but it is not the only set of relations that binds them
differentially together.
To think through the concept of the state-to-state relationship, Daniel Cole-
man turns to Jeannette Armstrong’s essay “Literature of the Land—An Ethos
for These Times” in which Armstrong translates the name of her people “Syilx,”
and then explains:
232 Lai
To be Syilx … is to heed a societal imperative to twine many strands

together to continuously sustain a unity of existence with the genera-
tion-to-generation, year-to year, season-to-season cycles that we are a
necessary part of. Like every other living thing, we have an important role
in the health of the tmxwulaxw and a specific purpose as humans in the
life-force of the land, and the captikw ∫ of the Syilx are there to continu-
ously rekindle the light of its truth. (Armstrong qtd. in coleman “Indig-
enous Place and Diaspora Space” 11)
Coleman explains that tmxwulaxw does not evoke the blood of scientific rac-
ism and ethnic absolutism, but rather a twine of many strands that extends
across human generations and across species. The life force of the earth itself
extrudes these strands of connection and interdependency. It generates sto-
ry, responsibility, and, Coleman says, the renewal of citizenship with the land
(“Indigenous Place and Diaspora Space” 11). For Coleman, this life force has a
spiritual aspect. He says: “Each place has its own revelation, and what matters
is that the peoples of each region take up their responsibilities to interact with
and regenerate the sacredness of their place” (11).
What becomes clear here, then, is that sovereignty need not always be sov-
ereignty imagined in European state terms. In fact, as Rinaldo Walcott argues,
the violence of contemporary colonialism, or what he calls “vicious moder-
nity” is precisely one that erases non-European modes of thought, non-Euro-
pean ways of understanding the human in relation to nation-state apologies
(344), and by corollary, non-European ways of understanding what sovereignty
might comprise.
Dara Culhane is eminently clear on this subject, vis à vis the colonial pro-
duction of British Columbia and the legal/state denial of the very existence of
Indigenous peoples on the West Coast:
Of course, Britain never had colonized and never would colonize unin-
habited land. Therefore, the doctrine of terra nullius was never concretely
applied “on the ground.” Rather, already inhabited nations were simply
legally deemed to be uninhabited if the people were not Christian, not
agricultural, not commercial, or not “sufficiently evolved” or simply in
the way. In British Columbia, the doctrine of terra nullius has historically
legitimized the colonial government’s failure to enter into treaties with
First Nations … When Aboriginal people say today that they have had to
go to court to prove they exist, they are speaking not just poetically but
also literally. (Culhane 48, italics in original)
For Culhane, it is clear that even within the bounds of British law, the colonial
governments had the legal framework to recognize the people who inhabited
the land before they came, they simply chose not to use it (48). The denial
of Indigenous sovereignty in the face of material human presence is clearly
wrong, especially given that even within the framework of the colonizer’s own
legal code, the provision for it exists. Further, it is the denial of Indigenous
worldviews in a way that impoverishes all of us belonging to the broad and
uneven human community.
Reading Coleman, Armstrong, Culhane and Sehdev together, it becomes clear
that settler relations to the land and to Indigenous people depend upon both the
specificity of place as revealed in specific Indigenous nation languages, and also
in relation to the (il)legal ways in which European colonization has been enacted.
We see further how the statement “People of colour are settlers” binds peo-
ple of colour to the Eurocentric state in the most discomfiting of ways. In the
wake of the tenuous coalition work of the 1980s and 1990s, (some) people of
colour’s feelings of abandonment are understandable. We must confront the
statement and act at least in part within the confines of this terrible bind. One
thing we can do is query the language of benefit. When we say, as Robinder
Sehdev and many other people of colour attempting to be accountable do, “I
benefit from the work of colonialism”—this is true, but the nature of the ben-
efit is not optimum. People of colour also lose when Indigenous people are
violated—we lose access to them in the fullness and generosity of their being,
their traditions, and their connection to their land. We lose the possibility of
connecting with their ways of knowing and of putting our ways of knowing in
conversation with theirs. A deeply considered and practised solidarity is still
necessary not just because it is right, but also because the benefits of real sol-
idarity outweigh whatever tenuous benefits we might accrue for participating
in colonialism as usual. We must of course, be cautious of easy or “assumptive”
solidarity as Dana M. Olwan has written:
I argue for the importance of moving towards an understanding of sol-

idarity that does not conceptualize innocence or sameness as prereq-
uisites for liberation movements and justice struggles, and challenges
assumptions of mutuality and commensurability between different set-
tler-colonial contexts. (Olwan 90)
The path towards non-assumptive solidarity requires us to continuously his-

toricize relationships in their ongoing, location-specific unfolding. While sol-
idarity must actively return balance to historically and materially produced
234 Lai
injustice, including the Eurocentric epistemologies that underpin them, it is

insufficient to address only the work of complicity with the colonial state be-
cause such an address, by remaining in the dialectic, also reinforces the co-
lonial state at the epistemological level, producing the “aggressive guilt” that
McAllister cautions us against. We can and must seek other forms of relation
in addition, which may, iteratively over time shift relations to a more respectful
ground, one that recognizes Indigenous and diasporic modernities and their
attached epistemologies and practices.
As a first step, however, we must unpack the specific historical circumstanc-
es that give rise to our settler being, or, as I prefer to term it, our settler emer-
genc/y. I have been using the term “people of colour” to address the problem
of racialized settlers up until this point, largely because it is through this term
that the most pointed debates have occurred to date. It is a fraught term, one
that replaces the Canadian government term “visible minority” in a way that
names and contains a broad subset of people in a quasi-legal, state-centric
way. It does not take account of the multiple histories, interactions and forms
of oppression endured by the multitudes it attempts to name, or the instabil-
ities of the subject brought to light through various strains of poststructural-
ism recognizing the subject as genealogically produced (Foucault), inessential
(Fuss, Spivak) or sedimented through repeated iteration (Butler):
the construction is neither a single act nor a causal process initiated

by a subject and culminating in a set of fixed effects. Construction not
only takes place in time, but is itself a temporal process which operates
through the reiteration of norms. (Butler 10)
If the iteration is not sufficiently consistent or if it operates in relation to oth-

er more intensively sedimented terms, it may be that some terms hold only
weakly or only under certain circumstances. For instance, taking up Rinaldo
Walcott’s declaration “poc doesn’t work for Black people” at the symposium
“20 Years of Writing Thru Race” in 2014, I recognize that Blacks and Asians have
historically emerged along very different lines in terms of racialization, labour,
exploitation and oppression. Though the term “people of colour” may, in fact,
occasionally work for Black people, there are clearly times when it erases im-
portant differences and important histories. We should ask ourselves instead
when, how and in what contexts it works, and what its limitations are and
what gets erased at the limit.
The term “settler,” even to describe “people of colour,” remains important in
relation to the state at the site of accountability. Other terms, however, open
up the political, creative and strategic possibilities of an overlapping site of
responsibility and action. Borrowing from the Bajan poet Kamau Brathwaite,
Jodi Byrd uses the term “arrivant” to signify those racialized people who came
to the Americas under the violent colonial pressures of either force or neces-
sity (xix), people who have both “functioned within and have resisted the his-
torical project of the colonization of the ‘New World’ ” (xix). For Byrd, howev-
er, it is important to recognize the arrivant as a figure belonging to the state,
connected internally as I have argued also to “contradictory quagmires where
human rights, equal rights, and recognitions are predicated on the very sys-
tems that propagate and maintain the dispossession of indigenous peoples for
the common good of the world” (xiv). Reading Lisa Lowe’s The Intimacies of
Four Continents, Byrd argues that from the location of the arrivant as much
as from the location of the white settler, “the fourth continent of settler co-
lonialism … becomes the very ground through which the other three conti-
nents struggle intimately for freedom, justice and equality” (xxv). Indigenous
peoples, in other words, are the “transit” through which both white settlers
and arrivants struggle to materialize a liberal, democratic world. Generously
and brilliantly, she recognizes the profound inequality of the unfolding rela-
tionship between white settlers and arrivants on the Indigenous ground of
transit, as, for instance when Japanese Americans were interned on the Indian
Reservation at Poston in 1942, and told by James Collier, the administrator of
the only internment camp for Japanese Americans run by the Office of Indian
Affairs, that they had there the opportunity to engage in a patriotic, American
democratizing experiment (185–186). Byrd’s recognition is generous because
Indigenous peoples and their relationship to land are the foundational under-
pinning that must be physically and brutally erased before the contradictory
relationship between Japanese Americans and the US State, with the fraught
hope of democracy attached, can even begin to unfold. This does not in any
way minimize our understanding of the suffering endured by Japanese Amer-
icans interned during World War ii. To the contrary, Japanese Americans are
made to carry the onto-poetic meanings (and experiences) of both “cowboys”
and “Indians,” intersubstantively (210). Though Byrd writes in a US context, her
argument also applies in a Canadian one—and all the more so given that the
national boundary between Canada and the US is a colonial boundary.
Byrd’s understanding of Indigenous peoples and lands as the violated and
erased ground of transit also illustrates why Sharma and Wright’s ideal of the
global commons remains a colonial concept. Byrd writes:
any notion of the commons that speaks for and as indigenous as it advocates
transforming indigenous governance or incorporating indigenous peoples
into a multitude that might then reside on those lands forcibly taken from
236 Lai
indigenous peoples does nothing to disrupt the genocidal and colonialist

intent of the initial and now repeated historical process. (Byrd 205)
Byrd argues thus for the kind of solidarity that posits Indigenous disposses-
sion as foundational. We must recognize this violence in order for other forms
of colonial violence to have meaning. This understanding does not preclude
meaningful solidarity work, in fact, it inaugurates it.
In her debunking of the Bering Strait theory, and her positing of Asian Amer-
icans and Indigenous peoples in a relationship of temporal cacophony, Byrd
opens up the possibility of more just and direct relations. To get to that place,
however, we must understand the ways our colonially produced positions have
been used against one another. The Bering Strait theory suggests that the Indige-
nous peoples of the Americas have their roots in Asia, and crossed a land bridge
at the Bering Strait some time in the distant past. The usefulness of this theory to
a US white exceptionalist doctrine of Manifest Destiny (and by corollary, such Ca-
nadian attempts at Indigenous assimilation like Pierre Trudeau’s infamous 1969
White Paper) is that it posits Indigenous people as, at their root, Asian, and thus
as immigrants rather than as rooted in the land since time immemorial as an
Indigenous sovereigntist stance would have it. Byrd recognizes that, while there
may historically indeed have been movement of peoples across the Bering Strait
prior to 18th century European racial classification, there is no reason why people
would not have been moving in both directions. The question of origin as such,
is thus returned to the unstable realm of hermeneutics. But in the meantime, the
contemporary Eurocentric state agenda at work becomes clear. Byrd writes:
The orientalizing cacophonies that remap indigenous peoples as part of

an early wave of Asian immigrants perform an originary racialization of
indigenous peoples as they are recast as immigrants who may or may not
be full citizens. (Byrd 202)
By corollary, I would suggest, the Bering Strait narrative casts Asians as Indige-
nous in a curious way. For now, the work of meaningful solidarity must refuse
such a narrative and uphold solidarity in difference, in the face of the Euro-mod-
ern colonial narrative that aims to conflate Asianness and Indigeneity in order
to undermine the claims of each. We are called upon to be attentive to those
occasions when difference is used to reinforce the state and when conflations
of that difference into a misleading sameness is used for reinforcement pur-
poses. In the case of the Bering Strait narrative, solidarity in difference here is
an act of refusing a colonial attempt to make sameness in order to undermine.
However, in my drive to elucidate possibilities for Asian/Indigenous relation,
I argue that Byrd’s notion of “cacophony” can be productive when it produces

a noisy potential for Asian/Indigenous relation outside or on the interstices of
the linear narratives of the state. Within the concept of “cacophony,” in which
opposition to the colonial state is not the only goal, Asian/Indigenous conti-
nuities can be tentatively addressed. To be clear, I recognize this cacophony as
fraught, and Asian North Americans as implicated in colonial and neocolonial
state projects. But to clarify further, I am not seeking an ideal form, but rather
looking for chinks in the armour of the state, as it were, through which differ-
ent relations, even if still messy, can be sought and made.
Having stated my intention, I turn now to Dorothy Christian and Rita Wong’s
notion of the “unsettler.” In the introduction to their recent anthology on water,
Downstream, in the self-reflective first paragraphs of their introduction, they
describe Wong as a “settler (or unsettler)” (2). The grammatical form is impor-
tant here. In taking up the term “settler,” Wong accepts her inherited relation-
ship to the state: she is still a settler with settler responsibilities. But by placing
“(or unsettler)” in parentheses, Christian and Wong recognize Wong’s agented
capacity for action. Wong does not need to accept her settler condition lying
down; rather, she can stand up, not only for her rights but for the rights of water,
Indigenous peoples, the Peace River, all the contributors to the Downstream
anthology and the Downstream project more broadly. For her “settler” is a con-
dition she has inherited and must accept and work against, while “unsettler” is
an agented (or, as Roy Miki would have it “Asianted”) location, actively engaged
to reimagine and remake Asian/Indigenous relations differently.
Byrd’s concept of “cacophony” becomes newly important here. If the neo
colonial cacophony of the US state formation recalls Indigenous people as
Asian, it must reach into another historical moment before contemporary re-
gimes of race and the Euro-modern state to make this recollection. In so doing,
it opens the door to other, cacophonous genealogies as well as non-Western
epistemologies including Indigenous and Asian ones, as well as Western epis-
temologies of other historical moments. As Renisa Mawani notes, hegemon-
ic racial formations are not historically coherent or seamless (21). In fact, the
colonial project on the West Coast was one of constructing regimes of truth
and technologies of governance to enforce racial divides (15) (which is why
sameness or likeness can sometimes be useful). The door was and still is open,
in other words, to the work of culture and relationship building in the form of
storytelling, oratory, poetry, fiction, music, film, web art and intermedia of all
kinds. It is precisely these relationships that threaten the colonial state: “these
colonial proximities disturbed the self/other divide, creating opportunities for
affinities, friendships and intimacies that jeopardized the question for racial
purity” (Mawani 15).
238 Lai
I agree with Byrd that within the logic of the state, so-called people of colour
are subject to a process of incorporation, while Indigenous people form the
ground of transit who are violently erased. The framework of solidarity work,
however, allows so-called “people of colour” and Indigenous people to work
in alliance. People of colour, insofar as they have accepted the terms of entry
into the state, must be accountable at the site of the state. But there is also
an outside condition for people of colour—they are not pure subjects of the
state. As Smaro Kamboureli notes (in a Canadian context), they do not need to
engage completely the state’s “hailing” (in Althusser’s sense), or programmatic
determinations, of who and what they are:
In the case of the Multiculturalism Act, identifying with the subject as de-
fined by the law does not necessarily mean conceding to the ways the law
constructs us … This involves disobeying the law, deciphering its blind
spots, and writing into them ethnic subjectivity not as a disciplinary con-
dition but as one that develops through and against the law, in effect by
disciplining the law itself. (Kamboureli 105)
I would argue further that such disobedience can have a genealogical aspect—
more desirable histories can be retrieved if they are available in the archive,
in memory, in story or in literature. It is, then, from active sites of racialized
culture-under-production that alternate genealogies can be traced to produce
alternate relations. Even though the Bering Strait narrative is a state form of
culture-under-production—a bad genealogy as it were—it opens the door to
more productive forms, produced by Indigenous and Asian culture producers
themselves, as literature, art and story. We must remain attentive to the pol-
itics of the state and its linear temporalities, but not in an absolute way. We
need also to look to the work of story, literature and culture and its cacopho-
nous “time out joint,” and the work of active memory and imagination. While
the realpolitik labour of producing legal state-to-state relations is still needed,
more deeply and broadly, a (re)turn to what Lee Maracle calls “spirit to spir-
it relationships” (2) in their matriarchal iterations is largely missing from the
conversation and needs to be recuperated.
4 Labour/Land/Property/Race
Now, in the interests of fully inhabiting embodied experience, I will from this
point consider how Asian Canadians, and specifically Chinese Canadians,
figure with regard to the historical circumstances that give rise to our settler
being and how this can be cacophonously intervened upon. This is not be-
cause Chinese Canadians are exemplary in any way, but only because this term
allows me to unfold an argument about alternate forms of nationality in a his-
torically specific way. Further, with regards to a politics of “speaking for,” as
articulated by Linda Alcoff, I can unfold my arguments a little more smoothly
from this place, and leave further research for scholars better placed to address
their own specifically racialized locations. In order to complete the discussion
of culture, it is paradoxically necessary to talk about labour because of the way
that labour is storied and understood in relation to Asian migration.
Malissa Phung’s recent work on Chinese Canadian labour has been impor-
tant for recognizing that the ways in which Chinese Canadian settler locations
differ from the “founding nations” (British and French) location. Phung recog-
nizes that the combination of Confucian patriarchal economic modes, eco-
nomic conditions facing Chinese workers through much of the last century,
and Canadian colonial state needs for cheap labour, produces a very particular
relationship between Chinese labour and the state. She is critical of the ways
in which some Chinese Canadian scholars and writers have recuperated the
figure of the Chinese Canadian railway, laundry, and/or restaurant worker as
an exemplary nation builder, suggesting that this is not a fully desirable re-
cuperation (Phung 99). Arguing that Confucian patriarchal family structures
support a work ethic resonating all too well with the Protestant work ethic
that was so instrumental in opening up the west in relation to white labour,
Phung suggests such an ethic is attached to suspect desires for class mobility
and engenders a Confucian capitalism that can be as violent as Protestant or
European capitalisms if not more so. To exalt such a figure, in the sense of
concealing the violence that marks the origin of the national subject (Thobani
10), is to fully participate in and claim a settler colonial position. It is incom-
mensurate, thus, with respectful relationship building, and further is terribly
shortsighted if human freedom is the implicit goal, even if the temptation to
do it is understandable.
Nevertheless, the figure of the Chinese worker needs to be interrogated.
Here, I see this figure not so much as one that needs recuperation and exalta-
tion (though it is certainly a figure deserving of respect), but rather as one that
bears a little careful scrutiny so that we can see where the lines of productive
relationship building might lie.
It is important to recognize that the British legal requirement expropriating
Indigenous land, in other words, for converting the legal status of territory from
sacred land into capitalist property, requires that the land be worked in the ag-
ricultural sense. Dara Culhane identifies John Locke as the British philosopher
whose arguments through the early seventeenth century were instrumental in
240 Lai
later legal and political justifications of European land seizure in North Amer-
ica (53). Locke’s labour theory of property lays the foundation for legalizing (in
British terms) the expropriation of Indigenous lands in the West. According
to Locke, what justifies an individual owning land is his ownership of himself
and his ownership of his own labour. When a person works the land, his labour
enters the land and the land becomes his property:
Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet
every man has a property in his own person: this no body [sic] has any
right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands,
we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the
state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour
with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his
property. (locke 27)
Culhane notes that, insofar as labour in the Americas is concerned, however,

it is only white men’s labour that can transform natural objects into proper-
ty. According to Locke, Indigenous people have a right only to “the fruit they
gather, the deer they catch and the corn they pick” (Locke qtd. in Culhane 53).
Daniel Coleman points out further that in settler ideology, it is agriculture that
makes land into property, and further justifies the displacement of Indigenous
peoples by whites (White Civility 57).
Let me be very clear here that for me this is all very disturbing logic. But
it is nonetheless the logic that gives us the property relations we live with on
Turtle Island, and it must thus be reckoned with. If the Chinese Canadian de-
sire for exaltation is a desire not just for citizenship rights but also for entry
into property relations then it is, as Malissa Phung argues, desire to embrace
the settler colonial project. However, Chinese men were not used in the way
that the English, Scottish and later other European peoples as well as Unit-
ed Empire Loyalists from the US were for the purpose converting Indigenous
land into capitalist property. It should be noted that very few Chinese were
the recipients of land grants in British Columbia (“Chinese-Canadian Geneal-
ogy”), though further research needs to be done on the extent of Chinese land
grants in Canada more broadly. Certainly, national narratives of agricultural
settlement speak of white settlers. Chinese presence is narrativized through
railway, Head Tax and Exclusion stories. They were not white enough to be
used to settle the land. Instead, their labour was supplementary in the Derrid-
ean sense that it is both a replacement and an excessive addition. It was used
to help open the land up for Western agriculture and resource exploitation,
specifically through their participation in the building of the railway, in ad-

dition to the various kinds of menial support labour that facilitated the col-
onization of Turtle Island—laundries, restaurants, corner stores. While they
were permitted to own property, such ownership was restricted. For instance,
in the City of Vancouver, Chinese people could only own land in Chinatown.
Further, the Head Tax requirement and the tradition of sending money back
to China meant that in practice, Chinese people did not do primary labour of
land expropriation. That said, as Malissa Phung has shown, the project of Gold
Mountain was a project of wealth extraction and must be recognized as such.
Further, the desire for property ownership, though it may or may not have been
there for the loh wah kiu (old timers), is certainly a desire and an active practice
at present, one noted by many Westerners often with extreme racial prejudice.
Those of us Chinese Canadians who make our home in Canada now inherit the
support work done to facilitate the colonial expropriation of the land, as well
as the wealth-building project of Gum Saan. We also carry a fraught relation-
ship to contemporary Chinese colonialism whether we embrace it or not. To
these systemic truths, within an economics of contemporary social justice, we
owe a debt specific from our own racialized location, socially constructed and
emergent to be certain, but also sedimented in Judith Butler’s sense, taken in
to the body through repeated iteration in practice.
Phung is so careful however, to respect the generations of the lo wah kiu, and
to recognize that within the framework of their own world views at the time,
they did what they had to do to survive, and carried a set of fairly hegemonic
Confucian cultural ideals, without access to the kind of educated, after-the-
fact thinking that I have the privilege of engaging here. Such labour must be
honoured.
In the systemic racialized logic of settlement, we might think of the loh wah
kiu as prosthetic to the white bodies that were given land to turn into property.
They functioned, in a sense, as disembodied “arms” of the Canadian state—
labouring flesh meant to extend the whole and complete property-making
bodies of white men, but not to own that property, rather—through the logic
of the Head Tax and Exclusion Act—to return to China when the act of prop-
erty-making was complete. Thinking with Alexander Weheliye and others, we
might contrast the property-making flesh of the Chinese indentured labourers
against the flesh of those Black people who were taken as property in slavery—
labouring extensions of the land at precisely the moment the land was being (il)
legally converted from sacred Indigenous earth to Western capitalist property.
Again, the possibilities of this argument can be expanded, but that is the
work of another essay. For the purposes of this one, what becomes clear is that
242 Lai
while there is no question that Asian Canadian subjects must take responsibil-
ity for their part in the colonial project and for their relationship to the Cana-
dian state, the form that that responsibility takes is itself racialized; it differs
from, for instance, Black Canadian responsibilities.
Further, even within the frame of Euro-centric state relations, indetermi-
nacy exists. As Renisa Mawani notes, the colonial state did not have its racial
truth regime set up in a seamless way. What it did have was a vested interest in
keeping differentially racialized populations separate as a way of controlling
relationships among them and as a way of retaining hold on “racial truths”—
in other words, the hegemonic prevailing narratives both literally and meta-
phorically governing specific racial groups. What was clearly undesirable from
a Western colonial point of view, was connection, relationship building and
inter-mixing among Asian and Indigenous people:
Colonial epistemologies gained traction not always (if at all) from a uni-
fied set of social relations but from a cracked, conflictual, and contingent
constellation. It was precisely because of racial ambiguity and unknow-
ability that the juridical constitution of racial truths and the governance
of colonial populations, including their encounters and proximities, were
thought to be politically urgent. (Mawani 27)
The colonial state was, in other words, in a rush to triangulate Asian/ White/
Indigenous relations, with whiteness and Euro-centric legal thought at the
apex of the triangle. Constructing Indigenous peoples (at least at the turn of
the last century) as innocent and assimilable, and Chinese people as corrupt-
ing and inassimilable (Mawani 25), the Euro-centric state took great pains to
keep them both narratively and juridically separate:
Indian Agents and missionaries speculated that cross-racial encounters

between Chinese, Indian and mixed-race populations and their resulting
intimacies, friendships and affinities might also unsettle imperial visions
of European resettlement and white superiority in other ways. In par-
ticular, many lamented the potentially degenerating effects that Chinese
migrants and ‘half-breeds’ might have on aboriginal peoples—influences
that many argued would not only hinder colonial efforts to civilize the
Native populace residing along the West Coast but would ultimately
jeopardize colonial triumph. (Mawani 13)
Asian/Indigenous contact and relationship-building, thus, represents a threat

to the colonial project. One of the most radical things we can do, then, is seek
alliance, though, of course, with all the caveats and acts of care and thought
I have already laid out. I recognize such a seeking as emerging from a contem-
porary desire that differs from the needs and desires of the past, and erupts in
relation to contemporary decolonial thinking as a utopian, but open-ended
project.
5 Culture/Imagination/Spirit
It is at this juncture that arguments made within the bounds of state logic and
Western law reach their limit. It is not useful to think of responsibility in terms
of “greater than” or “less than”—this partakes of the aggressive logic of guilt
that Kirsten McAllister writes against, or what Rita Dhamoon calls the “Op-
pression Olympics” (22). Rather, it is important now to think in terms of the
specificities of responsibility. Here, I make an argument for story and litera-
ture—for a poetics of responsibility that is connected to the present historical
moment, particular land locations and the particular relationships that exist
and are evolving between language and land.
Sharma makes another error, then, in jettisoning culture and misrecogniz-
ing it as racialized with the rise of neoliberalism. Those of us who produce
and/or study culture know that the racialization of culture has a much longer
history than this, and further that racialized people are implicated and entan-
gled with the racialization of culture in ways that can be either productive or
stifling, and sometimes paradoxically both, depending on the instantiation.
For indeed, the racialization of culture is entangled with internally generated
cultural difference—cultural difference that we will need in order to build re-
lationships beyond those imposed by the state.
When Sharma writes culture “has arrived as a cadaver to the feast of Canadi-
an multiculturalism” she invisibilizes the labour of countless cultural workers,
writers, artists, editors, filmmakers and storytellers who agitated for, against
and at cross-purposes to official Multiculturalism both before and after the
fact, who have held up the cause of human freedom through and beyond offi-
cial and unofficial multiculturalisms and who at present offer us powerful pos-
sibilities for relation making in the present. Though multiculturalism can be
deployed in the empty ways that Sharma proposes as its sole purview, these de-
ployments are partial and not total as she imagines. Both official Multicultur-
alism and small “m” multiculturalism have their productivities, as Smaro Kam-
boureli has shown (105). To be sure, these are uneasy and contingent, but it is
important nonetheless to recognize them, and to be able to think through and
beyond total systems as these will always dialectically reproduce themselves
244 Lai
if we do not. Of course, culture is more than multiculturalism. Understood as

knowledge systems shared by relatively large groups of people, culture in its
multiplicity is necessary to understand the non-Western epistemological tra-
ditions required to break us out of Eurocentric legalisms.
To turn to culture then is to open the door more fully to non-Western epis-
temologies, and specifically Indigenous ones. Lee Maracle’s important book
Memory Serves, which she writes from her location as a Stó:lō si’yam, is instruc-
tive in illustrating the fact that other ways of being have been present on Turtle
Island all along—since time immemorial—both prior to and contemporary
with Western modes. We need to cautiously shift our sense of the importance
of property and turn instead to story, memory and spirit-to-spirit relations: “In
a society governed first and foremost by spirit to spirit relationships to all
beings, memory serves much differently than in a society in which property
possession determines importance” (Maracle 2). By steering away from the
centralization of property relations (and their racialized production through
the logic of Locke) and foregrounding spirit-to-spirit relations, Maracle cen-
tres a Stó:lō world view. Western property relations then become one minor
relation among many—not to be disregarded (we cannot yet let the nation go
because we have responsibilities that lie within its framework), but not to be
made central either. It seems to me that Maracle is quite conscious about this.
The concept of spirit-to-spirit relations echoes the concept of nation-to-nation
relations (Coulthard 147) and refines it to centre Stó:lō ways of knowing. The
implicit teaching here is to give secondary (but still serious) importance to the
concept of “nation” and to seek first and foremost, relationships through spirit.
How can spirit-to-spirit relationships be re-membered and rebalanced from
our own specifically embodied locations to create better human-to-human
and human-to-nonhuman relational ways of being?
For Maracle the present moment is one in which the imaginative and in-
tentionally directed act of “re-membering” is key to Indigenous recovery from
discovery:
To re-member is … directional. Indigenous people commit to memory

those events and the aspects of those events that suit the direction we are
moving in or the direction we want to move in if a shift is occurring … We
re-member events; we reconstruct them because we are aware that they
have already ended, are dis-membered, gone forever, and because they af-
fect us and are directly connected to who we are as a people. (Maracle 2)
To re-member is thus purposeful, imaginative and generative in a political

sense. To re-member can be to address the fallout of Western legal enactment,
but more importantly it takes up issues of importance to Indigenous peoples

with their own concerns at the centre of the work of re-membering: “I choose
to remember what happens to Sockeye because that is the direction from
which Salish people move” (Maracle 2). To re-member is to reassemble the
body of particular Indigenous communities and also of individuals, to make
whole what was dis-membered through colonization. Communities and in-
dividuals are re-membered through story, and specifically through active rela-
tion to wind, breath and voice (3).
In the spirit of directed memory and a poetics of relation, I now return to
the metaphor of the Chinese railway worker as prosthetic arm, not one that
makes property as such, but rather one that extends the arm of the white man,
allowing him to turn land into property. But the thing about prosthetics is that
they are not integral to the body, but rather supplementary to it, even if there
is a measure of adhesion that must be undone or overwritten. Further, there is
no reason—in the present at least—why a Chinese arm must serve the body
of whiteness.
In one of the more charming moments in Malissa Phung’s text she recognizes
that the Canadian state was only able to put down the Riel Rebellion of 1885 af-
ter additional soldiers from Ontario were brought to Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan
by rail (219). The implicit question here is: What if the Chinese workers had not
built the cpr? Might the Riel Rebellion have gone the other way? This thought
experiment is imaginative though not without flaws. Historically speaking, the
soldiers were transported from Ontario to Saskatchewan, which is not the part
of the railway that Chinese workers were employed in. And of course, Chinese
workers did not single-handedly build the railway, though they are certainly to
be credited with executing some of the most difficult and dangerous labour in
its construction. Nevertheless, suppose that instead of working for the white
colonists, Chinese workers had thrown their lot in with the Indigenous people
they encountered more wholeheartedly, and if they had re-membered them-
selves as related to Indigenous bodies instead of white ones. For indeed, there
are stories on the oral record about Chinese sojourners intermarrying among
the Nuu’ chah-nulth in the aftermath of the Meares’ voyages, Chinese railway
workers abandoning the violent exploitation of railway work to intermar-
ry with the Nlaka’pamux at Lytton (Hunter), and Chinese market gardeners
bringing food to the Stó:lō when they were hit by famine (as told to the author
by Lee Maracle). But the desire for such a re-membering to have taken place in
the moment of constructing “White Canada Forever” is a desire of the present.
What Maracle offers us now is the possibility for a re-membering now that can
call up other partial histories that address the needs and desires of the present.
In the meantime, that Chinese workers did take part in the building of the cpr
246 Lai
must of course be acknowledged and accounted for, but also respected. Phung
offers a wonderful analysis, however, of Richard Fung’s Dirty Laundry, a video
production that imagines queer attachments between Chinese railway work-
ers and the Indigenous peoples they encountered while working on the cpr.
More than ever, what we can be responsible to and for now is recognizing and
acknowledging the historical forms of complicity and using our understanding
of them to recognize and avoid contemporary forms. So, for instance, how can
contemporary Chinese Canadians agitate against contemporary forms of Chi-
nese colonialism such as that which takes place through China-based global
mining companies?
Further questions to do with the specificity of Chinese immigration arise
also: What can the relationship between the descendants of the loh wah kiu
be to newer prc immigrants and prc projects that take part in the Chinese
triumphalism that Kuan-Shing Chen documents and critiques in Asia as Meth-
od? What might be the role of those descended from immigrants of the 1960s
and 1970s fleeing the violence and/or instability of communist and commu-
nist-inspired “liberation” movements in East and South East Asia? I ask these
questions not as a question of “guilt” but as questions regarding our active
construction of relationships as they unfold in what Rita Dhamoon calls “the
interactive processes of dispossession and governmentality” (32), but also in
the fields of non-Western epistemologies and the cacophonies of contact as
they resonate in multiple directions. Chinese Canadians can take seriously our
complicity with the colonial project and our responsibilities within in it and
still have our cultural, historical and individual differences.
6 Matriarchal Nations/Feminist Connections/Witnessing
If the call to nation is not necessarily the call to repeat European state forma-
tions, but rather a re-membering of Indigenous sovereignties that embraces
the present in a relational, balance-making, imaginative way, then its libera-
tory potentialities open up immensely. It is productive in the sense that it al-
lows for the retention and production of difference where such retentions and
productions are historically desirable from Indigenous and/or transnational
locations. Sharma is right that it forecloses the possibility of “the commons,”
imagined with the undocumented migrant as the exemplary contemporary
figure, as a borderless globe open to completely free and unfettered move-
ment. It makes sense from a migrant point of view that a borderless world
might be desirable, both for those who move with unfavourable or no docu-
mentation, and those “multiple passport holders” (Ong 2), who move freely
about in a privileged and highly financed state of exception allowing almost

unfettered movement. However, from an Indigenous point of view, the com-
mons appears as yet another form of land theft defined via non-traditional
knowledge systems from the outside. Maracle’s call to re-member shows itself
in this light as a powerful practice allowing those who engage it to draw from
the past but not in a totalizing kind of way. The imaginative and genealogical
aspects of re-membering, and her specific call to consider the direction of trav-
el, makes agented and creative space for imagining relationships across differ-
ence, without denying history, without the attempt to create a new year zero
or a new terra nullius (which is the problem with the ideal of the borderless
global commons). Indeed, it is important to recognize that new fascisms can
be imaginatively produced, and we must remain on guard against them, both
from the outside and within ourselves, as Rey Chow recognizes in “The Fascist
Longings in Our Midst”:
Emerging in postcoloniality, the new “desire for our others” displays …

positive, projectional symptoms of fascisms—a rebelliousness and a mon-
strous aesthetics, but most of all a longing for a transparent, idealized im-
age and an identifying submission to such an image … The indiscriminate
embrace of the peoples of color as “correct” regardless of their differences
and histories is ultimately the desire for a pure-otherness-in-pristine-lu-
minosity that is as dangerous as the fascism of hateful discrimination from
which we all suppose we are safely distanced. (Chow 32)
With Chow, Maracle recognizes profoundly the violence of the clean slate.
We might consider, however, Indigenous traditions of passage, and how those
might organize and regulate human, economic and material flows differently,
as for instance, in the ways Six Nations have occasionally facilitated the pas-
sage of Chinese migrants from the south side of 49th parallel to the north side.
This does not mean, however, that the commons as an ideal should be jetti-
soned. Dorothy Christian and Rita Wong’s recognition, for instance, that we
are all affected by hydrological cycles opens the door to imagining and making
a water commons that need not partake of a Euro-colonial genealogy. Such a
commons need not foreclose concepts like the two-row wampum, but it still
needs to be theorized and delimited.
In relation to Lee Maracle’s work, we must also recognize and actively take
in the fact that for Maracle, Indigenous sovereignty at least in a Stó:lō con-
text means the return to matriarchy, and thus the return to alternate economic
relations—economic relations under Indigenous women’s control: “the orig-
inal economy was managed by women … women were the great sociological
248 Lai
governesses of the past that held jurisdiction over land and the wealth of fam-
ilies” (133). And further:
It is not self-governance to take up another nation’s legal system and en-

trench it in our nations. There is no cultural integrity in guiding our ac-
tions based on external world beliefs. There is no spirituality when it is
rooted in conditions created by external spiritual beliefs. The restoration
of female institutions of power management and authority, choice, per-
mission and jurisdiction and our assumption of responsibility over the
foregoing is what nationhood is all about. (maracle 140)
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Lee Maracle and SKY Lee actively discussed
the relationship between Asian and Indigenous people. These discussions
bore fruit in Maracle’s short stories “Yin Chin,” “Eunice,” “Polka Partners,
Uptown Indians and White Folks,” as well as the 2002 gathering “Imagining
Native and Asian Women: Deconstructing from Contact to Modern Times”
(Wong and Christian 1), which Maracle organized and hosted at Western
Washington University. Reading Maracle’s chapter on Indigenous women
and power, I am now more convinced than ever that SKY Lee’s Disappear-
ing Moon Cafe is a meditation on patriarchal and matriarchal modes of
governance. In order to explain, I must repeat an argument first made by
Rita Wong in 2008, which I interweave with my own to highlight the pos-
sibilities of matriarchal spirit-to-spirit relations and corresponding male
but non-Western-patriarchal bone-to-bone relations (queer resonances
intentional).
As some readers will know, Disappearing Moon Cafe is a novel about a
Vancouver Chinatown family spanning four generations from 1834–1987. The
family is plagued by incest because its patriarch, Wong Gwei Chang refuses
to acknowledge his son Ting An, a child born through his first marriage to a
mixed-race Indigenous woman of the Shi’atko clan called Kelora Chen. Early in
the (non-linear) novel, he abandons Kelora in order to marry Mui Lan, a “real
wife from China” whom he does not love, because the marriage will guaran-
tee the Confucian hetero-patriarchal success of the family. Touted when it was
released in 1990 as the first Chinese Canadian novel (though the Eaton sisters
Edith and Winnifred have since been recuperated), it was largely understood
as a critique of Confucian patriarchy, the Canadian government’s Chinese Im-
migration Act (1885–1923) which required a head tax of $50 for Chinese im-
migrants to Canada, later raised to $100 then $500, and the Chinese Exclusion
Act (1923–1947) which banned Chinese immigration altogether, producing
in effect a large community of Chinese immigrant bachelor labourers, and
a particularly claustrophobic friendship and dating circle for the children of

those few Chinese immigrants wealthy and fortunate enough to have brought
in wives before the borders closed to Chinese immigration completely.
As our thinking on Asian/Indigenous relation deepens, this novel becomes
increasingly important to that discussion and to the work of relationship
building. The patriarchal structure of the Wong family in the novel must be
juxtaposed against the matriarchal structure of the Shi’atko clan, who preside
over Gwei Chang and Kelora’s love and marriage. It is the Shi’atko clan aunties
and the natural world itself that sanction that relationship. In keeping with
what Maracle calls spirit-to-spirit relation, Gwei Chang and Kelora’s love res-
onates: “So he thought she had to be a spirit when he met her. In this dream-
like state, he thought maybe he had died and she was another spirit here to
guide him over to the other side” (Lee 2). What Gwei Chang misrecognizes
as bodily death is in fact a temporary social death, and a rebirth into Indige-
nous ways of seeing. As Malissa Phung notes, it is through his deep connec-
tion with Kelora that Gwei Chang is able to see the land as it truly is, and so
find the bones of the “chinamen” who died building the cpr, the task with
which he has been charged by the Chinese Benevolent Associations: “Then,
as if the barren wasteland around him had magically opened and allowed
him admittance, he followed her through dense thickets, up hills and down
through ravines, a respectable distance between them” (4). Through deep spir-
it-to-spirit relationship with Kelora, albeit spirit-to-spirit relationship tinged
with a slightly worrisome nativism on the part of author SKY Lee, Gwei Chang
is able to engage with the territory that had seemed to him a barren wasteland
before knowing her. However, because of the call of Confucian patriarchy and
a fear of famine, he returns to Vancouver’s Chinatown to reproduce a patri-
archal Chinese national imagination of family and correct economics. Kelo-
ra dies shortly afterwards, presumably from both neglect and grief. In turning
away from Kelora, Gwei Chang turns away from spirit-to-spirit relations, and
in a sense, an originating kinship of contact, in favour of a conservative, pa-
triarchal Chinese nationalism. He enters a life of grief and duty, never fully
committing to his Chinese wife Mui Lan, and hanging on to his son by Kelora,
Ting An, as a token of his lost love, though never fully admitting him into his
new Chinese/Confucian family. As Rita Wong notes, everyone in Chinatown
knows Ting An as an orphan benefitting from Gwei Chang’s patronage, rather
than as his first son—an exalted position in the Confucian family framework
(164). Gwei Chang’s incapacity to embrace Indigenous matriarchal forms of
kinship, Asian/Indigenous relation more broadly, and his embrace instead of
shame and guilt in relation to these, proves ultimately to be the downfall of the
family’s reproductive capacity and its descent into incest. The affect of alliance
250 Lai
matters here. In light of Maracle’s recent remarks about the Indigenous sov-
ereignty as matriarchy, we might read supportive social commentary on Lee’s
part: Had Wong Gwei Chang been able to embrace the Shi’atko clan and ma-
triarchal forms of kinship, his marriage to Kelora might have stood. Within the
diegetic logic of the novel, Ting An would have been Gwei Chang’s heir instead
of his charity case, relations between the Shi’atko clan and Chinatown might
have been strong instead of weak, and Asian/Indigenous relations could have
been matter of pride instead of shame. More profoundly, Asian/Indigenous
sovereign relations would have been produced and deepened. The Chinese in
Chinatown might then have had stronger ties to the land and been less suscep-
tible to racist Canadian government legislation in the form of the head tax and
Exclusion Act.
I argue, then, that the embrace of Confucian patriarchy and patriarchal state
forms are precisely what bind Chinese Canadians to the racist Canadian state
(or the racism embedded in the Euro-normative state form) and to the op-
pressive conditions of the head tax and Exclusion Act within the frame of the
novel. Diegetically, and by corollary, extra-diegetically, had they claimed their
original relation to the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island—relations that
were in fact offered—they would not be in the place of suffering oppressed,
second-class relations to the racist project of White Canada Forever (as one
Canadian project among many).
In her chapter on women and power in Memory Serves, Maracle writes:
Supposing [Indigenous] men did not believe in the loss of power in their
relationship to Canada. Supposing that they went hunting when it was
time to hunt, regardless of the laws Canada attempted to impose upon
them. Supposing they decided simply to cut down logs in their national
territory to build homes … Supposing they insisted that Canada prove its
ownership of the logs, fish, or animals in our territories. Supposing every
Indigenous man in Canada ignored the need for a piece of paper proving
transfer of title, ownership, or rights to use the land. Should Indigenous
men decide to act this way, their action will contravene the central belief
that we have dragged home, namely that Canadian law is valid and su-
perior to our own. Canada for the most part cannot prove ownership or
jurisdiction over our original homelands. (Maracle 139)
In parallel with Maracle’s imagining of an alternate relation to the Canadian

state for Indigenous men, I ask (with SKY Lee), supposing Chinese men had
recognized the traditional sovereignty of Indigenous matriarchies, instead of
the tenuous patriarchal and Eurocentric sovereignty of the Canadian state.
Suppose Gwei Chang had embraced his spirit-to-spirit love for Kelora and the
knowledge of the land she freely shared with him? Suppose Chinese men had
refused the head tax and Exclusion Act? The West Coast of Turtle Island might
have been fraught with much less grief, despair, and loneliness. It might have
become much earlier and more intensely the site of Asian/Indigenous kinship
on its own terms—the world captured in the photographs of CD Hoy might
have continued and might be with us at present. Indeed, I suggest that it is with
us at present, but it is repressed. It is held in memory and imagination by Indig-
enous and Asian storytellers, orators, novelists, poets, culture workers, activists
and intellectuals including Rita Wong and Dorothy Christian, the Movement
Project, David Khang, Larry Grant, Alejandro Yoshizawa, Sarah Ling, Henry Yu,
Bill Chu, Malissa Phung, Lee Maracle and SKY Lee. If we can re-member for
instance, the Stó:lō place names that mark shared history, names like “Sxwóx-
wiymelh” (where Stó:lō people remember many Chinese railway workers died
of the flu) and “Lexwpopeleqwith’aim,” a place the ghosts of Chinese workers
who died during a blast accident are said to haunt (Hunter), then the Cana-
dian state project of extermination for Indigenous peoples and exclusion for
Chinese people, families consisting of real people like the fictional characters
Gwei Chang, Kelora and Ting An might be the norm.
But this is not yet the case, because not enough of us have properly and di-
rectionally re-membered. The Confucian patriarch of Disappearing Moon Cafe
is consigned instead to intimate family dysfunction and flawed reproductivity.
This presents itself as the infertility that plagues Choy Fuk (i.e. the “fuck-up”),
Gwei Chang’s son by Mui Lan, as well as a long line of incestuous relation-
ships among family members who do not understand themselves as such be-
cause Gwei Chang kept Kelora’s memory as a shameful secret. More deeply,
such self-imposed shame feeds a state-imposed necropolitics that is shared in
difference with Indigenous peoples—the lonely bachelor societies of the loh
wah kiu for the Chinese, and the genocidal project of the residential schools for
Indigenous peoples. These are the unjust prices that Chinese and Indigenous
people pay for affirming the sovereignty of the Canadian state while denying
their own. A politics of guilt and blame is clearly not productive here, rather,
it is important to recognize that this is how hegemony works. In spite of all
my imaginative fantasy above, is important to recognize the world historical
realpolitik of the moments I am discussing.
I acknowledge on my own part a fantasy at work—a retrospective fantasy of
the present, a haunted, nostalgic one that longs for a different past that might
give us a different present. And yet, in fantasizing, we might also do a gene-
alogical reading of the Foucauldian sort, to see if there are strands from the
past and from the land (in Armstrong’s sense, see above) to be pulled forward
252 Lai
and woven into the present. Of course, there is always the danger that no
strands exist. I would suggest however, that these strands are being offered by
the speaker/writer/thinker/re-memberers I have named through the course of
the essay.
Reading Maracle in particular, I suggest here that part of the work of re-
sponsibility is the recognition and affirmation of one’s own power and one’s
own sovereignty, in imaginative yet directed national terms and in individual
terms. I used the economic metaphor (“price to pay”) intentionally here just
now, to suggest that an alternate economics is embedded in this set of rela-
tions, one that refuses the abstract equivalences of capitalist economics. For
indeed, Maracle is instructive here too: “Our culture gives us no permission to
accept victimization or exploitation of our selves or anyone else” (6). When we
do accept such victimization there is a spiritual price to pay.
We can see the economics of spirit-to-spirit relations in thinking about the
bones that the young Gwei Chang is sent to collect in relation to the bones of
the men who walk into the fire, whose story is told in Lee Maracle’s Memory
Serves. There are parallels in that in both cases the men are engaged in activi-
ties meant to help their home communities. In the case of the railway workers,
the act of helping those at home in China takes the form of making money for
remittance. In the case of the Stó:lō warriors the work of helping those at home
takes the form of fighting the enemy to protect the home community. In both
cases, wrongs are committed that might perhaps not have been understood as
such in the time of the action: the destruction of the land and the supporting
of a violent colonial settlement on the one hand, the destruction of life givers
(women and children) on the other.
For Maracle, this teaching, this “economics” as it were, goes back to the very
earliest ancestors, the stones: “Stone is our oldest grandfather. We refer to the
stones that keep our songs and stories as grandfathers” (3). So, the oldest and
most enduring material of the earth—stone—holds story. It is a masculine
principle—the grandfathers—who do this holding. But the masculine is noth-
ing without the feminine:
Our grandfathers give us the rock on which we stand, but our grandmoth-
ers move us from that stone in the direction of relation with others. They
are the keepers of the stories that teach us about relations; they are the
flesh of our bones that are stones. (Maracle 3-4)
In seeing the bones as stones, Maracle recognizes the profound interrelation-

ship between land and body, a relationship that needs the grandmothers—
sovereign matriarchy—in order to have its being, in order, that is, to be enacted
in a life-giving way. In the next sentence she says: “I carry them, willingly” (4,
italics in original). Maracle herself is one of the grandmothers who translates
the stories of the bones that are stones in order to build human-to-human and
human-to-nonhuman relations.
Maracle’s concerns about re-membering, wind as story and stones as bones
are thematized from Wong Gwei Chang’s point of view in the first two sen-
tences of the Prologue, entitled “Search for Bones,” in Disappearing Moon
Cafe: “He remembered that by then he was worn out from fighting the wind.
He had to stop and rest in a shaded spot, so he found a smooth flat stone to sit
on, beside a stream that meandered off around a sharp bend” (1). Gwei Chang
is clueless, he does not understand the meaning of the wind, the meaning of
the stones or the meaning of the meandering stream. He does not understand
the earth ancestors, and nor does he understand the old Chinese uncles, the
indentured labourers who did the brutal and often fatal work of dynamiting
the mountains in order to make a path for the cpr. Charged by the Chinese
Benevolent Associations with retrieving the bones of those who died, he is
there in the wilderness for the sake of adventure. Old Chen, Kelora’s adoptive
father introduces him to the Chinese uncles, who see his task as a serious
and deeply spiritual one. They treat him with great respect, but he does not
understand why, and behaves disdainfully towards them until he first touches
the bones:
When he did, he was awed by them … the spirits in the mountains were
strong and persuasive. The bones gathered themselves into the human
shapes of young men … How could he not be touched by the spirit of
these wilderness uncles who had trekked on an incredible journey and
pitted their lives against mountain rocks and human cruelty? … By then,
he understood. By then, in the utter peace of the forests, he had met them
all—uncles who had climbed mountain heights then fallen from them,
uncles who had drowned in deep surging waters, uncles who had clawed
to their deaths in the dirt of caved-in mines. By then, he wasn’t afraid and
they weren’t alien any more. Like them, he would piece himself together
again from scattered, shattered bone and then endure. (lee 12–13)
Because they carry spirit, the bones that are stones teach what language alone
cannot. Through his encounter with the bones, Gwei Chang learns to share
with the old uncles instead of taking from them. He learns to talk bluntly the
way they do and he learns to relate to the paradox of land belonging and unbe-
longing in the way that they do, to “fill … [his] lungs with mountain mist, and
see … [his] shadow walk ahead of [him], homesick” (13).
254 Lai
In gathering the bones of the old railway uncles so the Chinese Benevo-
lent Associations can return them to China, Gwei Chang does the work also
of stitching the land together—Chinese land and Turtle Island land—in an
economy of displacement and violence to both human beings and to the earth.
The gathering of bones becomes a kind of ritual of expiation, respect and a
return to balance.
In telling a bone, stone and ancestor story, SKY Lee also honours a Stó:lō
bone, stone and ancestor story, an old story of collecting the bones of beloved
men who have carried out ambivalent actions. What is important in the pres-
ent moment is that Maracle has bone, stone and ancestor stories of her own,
a Stó:lō story about the painful price to be paid by even the most beloved men
for disrespecting women and children. In it, Maracle makes a generous and
open-ended recognition that histories of violence cannot and should not be
so easily resolved.
Told in Memory Serves, the story remembers a group of beloved Stó:lō men
who, during a war with another nation fought to protect their own people,
killed the women and children of the enemy nation. When they returned
home, their own women told them that the price to pay for destroying the
givers of life was to walk into the fire and burn to death. Though the killings
had been done in the name of self-preservation, a heinous wrong had been
committed that had to be expiated. The women who commanded these deaths
loved the men upon whom they imposed this law. After the flesh of the beloved
men had all burned off, the women collected the bones and carried them to a
new village to be mixed and buried with the women’s own bones upon their
eventual deaths. The teaching of this story seems to be that we must some-
times commit violence to ourselves or to our nearest and dearest in order for
justice to be done and the world returned to balance. This story strikes me
as having contemporary relevance in relation to the murdered and missing
women, and seems to call particularly to white settlers not to protect the men
who have committed violence against Indigenous women along the Highway
of Tears, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, on the outskirts of Winnipeg or in
any of the other places where such unresolved and unexpiated acts of violence
against givers of life have taken place. In an Asian Canadian context, however,
there is a different teaching, which is about gathering up and honouring the
bones of loved ones who have done ambivalent things—in other words the
bones of the sojourner uncles who blasted the mountains in order to enable
the extension of the Canadian Pacific Railway to the coast. (All the bones of
these Chinese men’s bodies, as arm bones of the Canadian state, needed to be
returned to China to become again the full skeletons of men.) These men are
our Chinese Canadian beloved men, who did a good thing by sacrificing their
lives to earn money that enabled the lives of the women and children left be-
hind in China. However, in so doing, they harmed the mountains and enabled
the colonization of Indigenous peoples and the conversion of sacred Indige-
nous land into Western agricultural property. In a sense, they walked into their
own fires—the dynamite blasts that killed them as they opened holes in the
mountains. Their bones were returned to earth by other sojourners until the
flesh rotted off.1 In this context, SKY Lee’s character, Wong Gwei Chang is like
the Stó:lō women of Maracle’s story, who gather the bones and honour them.
But in his abandonment of Kelora, Wong Gwei Chang repeats the violence of
the dynamite-wielding sojourner uncles, and the cycle is repeated. Through
these identifications, he becomes a curiously queer character, a concern I hope
to take up soon in another essay. My job now, as a contemporary Chinese Ca-
nadian writer and critic is, in a sense, to collect his bones and mix them with
my own, which I hope this essay does in a metaphorical/literary sense. In this
essay, thinking with a broad set of Asian, Indigenous and Black writers, sto-
ry-tellers and critics, I, in a sense, polish the bones of Wong Gwei Chang and
the sojourner uncles who blasted the path of the Canadian Pacific Railway,
and attempt to bring them to my current sacred ground, not in the People’s
Republic of China, but on Turtle Island, currently on Treaty Seven territory,
where I make my home.
In polishing the bones here, I am both like and not like the SKY Lee’s charac-
ter Wong Gwei Chang, who, in turn, is both like and not like the Stó:lō men who
walked into the fire to make up for the killing of another nation’s women and
children. Likeness is not sameness, and yet, through the work of story there is
metaphorical territory that can be traversed. The choice to act like another in
a way that produces a resonant, open-ended justice requires a form of atten-
tion that Maracle translates as “maturity,” and a deep and careful recognition
of one’s own historical embodied location. In other words, though the work
of reading and writing that I take up here requires a large measure of sub-
jective judgment, it is not a case of ‘anything goes’: “We conjure the story in
such a way that the best human conduct will show itself through it … Every
story is a guide fleshed out by the listeners in their consideration of future”
(Maracle 245). In taking up criticism as a kind of Chinese Canadian literary/
critical written storytelling, I enact a kind of literary nationalism, not in the
sense of producing “the best of all that has been thought and said” in my cul-
ture or connecting my storytelling to “blood and soil.” Rather, in recognizing
1 See also Paul Wong’s video-performance project Walking the Mountain, and my essay on it
“The Site of Memory.”
256 Lai
the experiential, sedimented cultural specificity of my being, I seek a kind of

metaphoric antidote for the historically and nationally specific cultural vio-
lence I have inherited. This is a creative act, a critical act, and an act of directed
memory. It is open-ended and contingent, but not in any totalizing way—it
is not so morally relative as to be meaningless. Rather, the gesture of mean-
ing-making is very specifically chosen in response to both Lee Maracle and
SKY Lee’s teaching and their longstanding friendship with one another, which
is lucky inheritance of mine, one they have generously passed on, not to me
personally, but to women “like” me to take up thoughtfully and maturely.
I have made my claim then, for both nationalism and sovereignty, but in so
doing I have poetically re-valenced both terms. My nationalism is a contingent
one that recognizes the emergent and fluid qualities of the terms “Chinese Ca-
nadian,” “Asian Canadian” and “people of colour,” while also, I hope, respecting
Indigenous sovereignties, and particularly the Stó:lō matriarchal sovereignty
that Lee Maracle lays out in Memory Serves. Contingent nationalism calls for
the need for literary, critical and creative thinking, not for the Arnoldian pur-
poses of producing culturally dominant national excellence and quality, but
rather for what such thinking might open for those who engage it relational-
ly, in an on-going, ever-emergent “nationalist” practice of “po-ethics” in Fred
Wah’s sense of “something that surrounds you like your house it’s where you
live” (57).
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Index
9/11 attacks 168, 172–173, 178 Brouillette, Sarah 44, 48n9

Butler, Judith 234
Abdul Noor, Sukina 175–176 Byrd, Jodi A. 33, 235–238
Aboulela, Leila 169–170, 174, 178 Cacophony 224, 236–237
Translator, The 169–170
Accent 6, 7, 60–62, 69–70, 88–94, 97–102 Cabral, Amilcar 31
Achebe, Chinua 31 Canada 207–210, 214–216
Adegbija, Efurosibina 60–61 British Columbia 232, 240
Adorno, Theodor W. 155–156 First Nations 210, 231
Agency 149, 156–157 Indigenous lands 226, 240
Female agency 121, 124, 170 Caribbean, The 87–88, 92, 100, 128
Ahmad, Aijaz 32, 214 Censorship 184, 187–189, 192
Ahonen, Pasi (see also Greedharry, Césaire, Aimé 31, 153
Mrinalini) 50–51 Chambers, Iain 205–207
Algeria 34 Childhood (stage of life) 206
Ali, Monica 166–168, 170, 178 Children’s literature 204–209, 215–216
Brick Lane 165–170 Chow, Rey 247
Allegory 211, 213–215 Chrisman, Laura 5–6
Althusser, Louis 1, 208 Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory:
Anderson, Benedict 112, 218 A Reader 30
Imagined Communities 10 Christian, Dorothy (see also Wong,
Anthropology 21, 150–155 Rita) 237, 247–248
Apartheid 9–10, 175, 183–185, 187–200 Cissé, Lusáni 155–160
Appadurai, Arjun 52–53 Cognitive mapping (see Jameson, Fredric)
Archangelsk oblast 116–117 Cohen, Margaret 216
Armah, Ayi Kwei 40–41 Coleman, Daniel 231–232, 240
Armstrong, Jeannette 231–232 Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A
Arrivant (Brathwaite) 224, 235 Reader (see Chrisman, Laura)
Asian Canadians 223–227 Colonial photography 8–9, 149
Chinese-Canadians 240, 242–256 Colonial laws 187–190, 193, 226
Autobiography, Life Writing 107–110, Commonwealth 127, 128
112–113, 122 Consonantal variables 90–96
Cooke, Miriam 163, 170, 176–177
Bauman, Zygmunt 212–213 Muslimwoman 9, 163, 165–166, 168–170,
Berlin (see Germany) 173–175, 177–178
Bertillon, Alphonse 153 Coulthard, Glen 229
Bhabha, Homi K. 32–34 Cronjé Commission, The 185–188
Bhambra, Gurminder K. 33 Culhane, Dara 232–233, 239–240
Black radicalism 38
Bonaparte, Napoleon 16 Deleuze, Gilles 225
Boon, Marcus 159–160 Desai, Kiran 139
Bourdieu, Pierre 130–133 Inheritance of Loss, The 139
The Rules of Art 128, 132–133 Destutt de Tracy, Antoine 16, 20
Brando, Marlon 136 Deuber, Dagmar 87, 101–102
Brick Lane (see Ali, Monica) Dhamoon, Rita 228–229, 243, 246
260 Index
Diaspora 227, 230 Glenaan, Kenneth 171

Diphthong 64, 72, 94 Yasmin (2004) 171–174, 178
Disappearing Moon Cafe (see Lee, sky) Globalization 10, 204, 211–213
Discourse analysis Gramsci, Antonio 9, 23–24, 182
colonial discourse analysis 3, 15 Greedharry, Mrinalini (see also Ahonen,
critical discourse analysis 3–5, 15–16, 21 Paul) 50–51
Discourse analysis (linguistics) 59, Grossberg, Lawrence 129
63–65
Douglas, Sukina 174 Haggling 59–61, 74
Poetic Pilgrimage 174, 177–178 Half Moon Camp 147–154, 157
Dua, Enakshi (see also Lawrence, Hall, Stuart 171, 182
Bonita) 10, 223, 228–229 Hardt, Michael 211, 214
Dwyer, Claire 171–172 Head tax and Exclusion Act (Canada) 241,
250–251
Eagleton, Terry 1–2 Hegemony 23–24, 182–183
Ebersohn, Wessel 10, 192–196 Highbrow and lowbrow literature 133, 184,
Edwards, Brent Hayes 38–39 189, 196, 200
Enchantment 149, 160 Hirsch, Marianne 106, 115, 123
Engels, Friedrich 17, 129 Postmemory 106–109
English varieties Hobsbawm, Eric 211
American English 87–93, 101–102 Home country 209, 230
British English 59, 64–74, 86–90, 101 Homelessness 210–212
Caribbean Standard English 87–92 Host culture 167–171
Creole varieties 88–102 Huggan, Graham 44, 50, 129, 139
Jamaican English 92–99 Hybridity 168, 178
Nigerian Pidgin 59, 61, 68–70, 73–74
Trinidadian English 92–97 Ideologiekritik 3–5, 15–17, 22
English, James 130, 139 Imagined Communities (see Anderson,
Enlightenment 48, 158, 225 Benedict)
Estonia 106, 111–124 Immigration 168, 171–174, 207–212, 236,
Ethnicity 23, 59–63, 73, 231–232, 238 246–249
Imperialism 210, 223
Family dysfunction (see also young adult Indigeneity 33, 228, 236
fiction) 218, 251 Inheritance of Loss, The (see Desai, Kiran)
Fanon, Frantz 34–36, 39–41 Interdisciplinarity 50–52
Feminism 23, 108, 164–165, 170–173, 246 Interlocutors 33, 61
Islam and feminism 174–177 Intonation 66
Radical feminism 164 Islam 147, 162–163, 168–171, 174–179
Flanagan, Richard 127–130 Islamophobia 162, 169–174, 177
Foucault, Michel 52
France 34, 38 James, Marlon 128, 134–135
Frankfurt School, The 53 Jameson, Fredric 205–207, 213–214
Freeden, Michael 2–5 Cognitive mapping 213, 216
Frobenius, Leo (see Anthropology) Japanese Americans 235
Germany (see also mosque) 130, 148, Kamboureli, Smaro 238

150–154, 160
Giddens, Anthony 212 Labour exploitation (see also Marxism) 40,
Gilroy, Paul 34–39 234, 239–241
Index 261
labour theory (see also Locke, John; Marx, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 209
Karl) 45, 240 Muslimwoman (see Cooke, Miriam)
Laclau, Ernesto 19
Lange, Britta 151, 157 Negri, Antonio 212, 214
Language attitudes 73 Newscasting 88, 100–102
Lawrence, Bonita (see also Dua, Enakshi) Nigeria 26, 61–62, 67, 74
223, 228 Ethnicities 62–63
Leavitt, Martine 208, 210 Marketplace 60
Tom Finder 208–210
Lee, sky 224, 248–251, 254–256 Objectification 53–55, 155
Disappearing Moon Café 224, 251, 253 Orientalism 30
Literary prizes 128, 130–132, 140, 191, 215
Man Booker Prize 127–130, 135–140 Paju, Imbi
Locke, John 240 Memories Denied 115–117, 121
London (see United Kingdom) Parry, Benita 32, 40
Lost for Words (see St. Aubyn, Edward) People of colour (poc) 228, 233
Perelli, Nick 187
Man Booker Prize (see literary prizes) Phoneme deletion 72
Maracle, Lee 224, 238, 244–245, 247–253 Phonology 62
Memory Serves 224, 250, 254–256 Photography 156
Market (publishing) 48, 129, 132, 139, 188, 200 Phung, Malissa 239–241, 246, 249
Market, the (commodification) 50–55 Pöch, Rudolf 154–155
Marketplace (see Nigeria) Poetic Pilgrimage (see Douglas, Sukina &
Marx, Karl 1–2, 17, 45 Rashida, Muneera)
Marxism Ponzanesi, Sandra 43–44
Alienation 16–17, 21, 40, 45 Popular fiction 182, 186
Capitalism 5–6, 40, 47, 50–51, 239 Crime fiction 182–184, 188, 191, 196,
Added value 46–47 199, 200
Commodification 46–49, 53–55 Porter, Dennis 30
Consumption 43–44, 199 Postcolonial cultural industry 43–46
Exploitation (see labour exploitation) Postcolonial exotic 44, 129, 140n
False consciousness 1–4, 17 Postcolonial studies publications 32
Fetishism 45 Postmemory (see Hirsch, Marianne)
Matriarchy 247 Post-Soviet 111–113
Mawani, Renisa 237, 242 Prison camp (see Half Moon Camp)
McAllister, Kirsten 230, 234 Prescod, Paula 88
McClure, James 191 Publishing industry 187, 190–193, 215
McDonald, Peter 185, 189
McLeod, John 60, 121 Radway, Janice 199
Memories Denied (see Paju, Imbi) Rao, Rahul 4, 15
Memory (see also postmemory) 108, 120, Rashida, Muneera 174
124–125 Poetic Pilgrimage 174, 177–178
Memory Serves (see Maracle, Lee) Refugees 148, 207
Milroy, James 86 Remembering 107–113, 118
Mimesis and Alterity (see Taussig, Michael) Representation 149–150, 156–157, 163–164,
Moore, David Chioni 111–113 177–179
Morey, Peter 32 Resistance 55, 176
Morley, David 205, 212 Robertson, Roland 212
Mosque, Germany’s first 147–148 Romanticism 48
262 Index
Rules of Art, The (see Bourdieu, Pierre) United Kingdom (UK) 168, 170

Russia, Soviet Union 116, 148 London 165–167
Utterances 68–70
Said, Edward 31–33
Orientalism 31 Valorisation 52–54
Sehdev, Robinder 231 Valuation regimes 52–55
Senghor, Léopold 31, 153 Vane, Brett 188
Settlers 228 Veil 162–165, 178–179
Sharma, Nandita (see also Wright, Visible minority 234
Cynthia) 223, 228–229, 230, 243 Vocalic variables 90
Smith, Sidonie (see also Watson,
Julia) 107–111 Walcott, Rinaldo 232–234
South Africa 37, 184–188, 190–193 Warwick Research Collective (WReC) 40
South Asia 128, 138 Watson, Julie (see also Smith, Sidonie)
Spivak, Gayatri 30–33, 121 107–111
St. Aubyn, Edward Weinberg Camp 147–148
Lost for Words 140 Wells, John C. 90
Subaltern 33, 159 Weltanschauungen 24, 27
Subjectivity 112–113, 122–123, 225 Weninger, Josef (see also Pöch, Rudolf)
Sudan 152 154–155
Swiss People’s Party (svp) 162 Wenzel, Jennifer 37, 40
Syllables 69, 95 Williams, Patrick 30, 33, 39
Sympathetic magic (see Taussig, Michael) Women’s emancipation 174, 177
Wong, Rita (see also Christian,
Tambling, Jeremy 211 Dorothy) 237, 247–248
Taussig, Michael 159–160 World War I 147–148
Mimesis and Alterity 158 Wright, Cynthia (see also Sharma,
Sympathetic magic 150, 156 Nandita) 228–229
Thomas, Susie 109, 123 Writing back 38, 110, 113, 124
Tom Finder (see Leavitt, Martine)
Translator, The (see Aboulela, Leila) Yasmin (see Glenaan, Kenneth)
Transnationalism 38–39 Young adult fiction 207–208
Trauma theory 114 Young, Robert 46–47, 60, 163–165
Tune 70
Turtle Island 225–226 Žižek, Slavoj 1, 21

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Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts

Cecile Sandten GAPS President

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/asne

Katja Sarkowsky and Mark U. Stein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sarkowsky, Katja, editor. | Stein, Mark, 1966- editor.

Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts—an Introduction 1

2 “A Crude, Empty, Fragile Shell?”—Postcolonial Consciousness in an Era

3 The Market as a Dimension of Practice—Commodification, Ideology,

4 Haggling and Postcolonial Phonological Constructs in Nigeria 59

5 Standard Language Ideology Revisited—the Case of Newscasters in

6 Imagining Pasts, Writing Lives—Familial Narratives, Memory, and the

7 Promoting the Exotic?—the Ideological Mechanisms of Literary

8 Reflections of Lusáni Cissé—Imperial Images and Sentient

9 The Ambivalence of the Veil in Contemporary British Culture 162

10 Crime and the Censor—the Production and Reception of Crime Fiction

11 National Allegories in the Age of Globalization—Prologue to an

12 Bone to Bone, Spirit to Spirit—Sovereign Matriarchy, Asian/Indigenous

4.1 “Now” in the phonology of haggling in Nigeria 66

5.1 Background information on the newscasters 90

Katja Sarkowsky and Mark U. Stein

form of political thinking also underlying resistant thought and action by

In light of this diversification of the discussion, section one of this volume,

If the previous chapters each focus on a specific national context (Nigeria,

focus on Wessel Ebersohn’s apartheid and post-apartheid work. Critical of the

vol.). In “Bone to Bone, Spirit to Spirit: Sovereign Matriarchy, Asian/Indige-

1 For some representative analyses see Adorno; and Geuss.

normatively attractive, let alone ‘true,’ options if one wishes to understand the

that most dehumanized of human conditions—capitalism (Marx 97; passim).

and tenacious hold of neoliberal discourses, frequently obscuring a far more

conceptions simultaneously—indeed, some of them are incompatible with

pushes an official line in order either to mobilize the subjects of a polity or to

3 For notable examples see Van Dijk; and Wodak.

political thought. That latter approach involves a different, morphological,

debates and perspectives always exist at the margins of public discourse.

political thinking was traumatically fashioned by interwar experiences as a re-

many incarnations of populisms of left and right, or by the way environmen-

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund. “Cultural Criticism and Society.” Prisms, translated by

“A Crude, Empty, Fragile Shell?”—Postcolonial

1 See Williams and Chrisman.

South Asian cultural production, in our inclusion of materials generated by

global South, regularly accompanies imperial and neo-colonial exploitation,

6 See Goebel and Schabio.

[During decolonization] … when the native hears a speech about West-

The termination of European influence is a necessary condition for the birth

It is a question of the Third World starting a new history of Man … So

Fanon’s conclusion notwithstanding, Gilroy construes his agenda as calling for:

The institution of an anticolonial and nonracial universalism [that] …

Gilroy removes Fanon from the colonized “camp” to an intermediary location

Inside the nation’s fortifications, culture is required to assume an artifi-

It is powerful and lyrical rhetoric. Compare it to Fanon’s own condemnation

Gilroy borrow Fanon’s own nationalist phrasing to reposition him into an

15 See Stephens; Nwankwo; Edwards.

Elsewhere I have criticised categorical anti-nationalism in postcolonial, and

16 See Chrisman, “Nationalism and Postcolonial Studies.”

imperialist articulations of political economy. Postcolonial critics are starting

economy—and a dialectical sense of its positive transformability—is suggest-

Katja Sarkowsky and Mark U. Stein

Katja Sarkowsky and Mark U. Stein

1 For some representative analyses see Adorno; and Geuss.

3 For notable examples see Van Dijk; and Wodak.

Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. Verso, 1992.

Personal testimonial (pt) 1:

Text 10: (2 Igbo clothes sellers/2 Yoruba buyers)

buyer 1: I’m talking of a matching colour

pt: 2 (two hagglers arguing over a damaged or fake product, pre-

Text 1: ( negotiations among 4 interactants – 2 Igbo clothes sellers and 2

Text 2: (Grocery shop: Hausa seller/Yoruba buyer)

Text 7: ( Two hagglers- a Yoruba suits seller and a Yoruba buyer)

Text 11: (Two Igbo suit sellers/ one Yoruba buyer)

Text 5: (A Hausa Barbecue operator/Yoruba buyer)

Text 10: 2 Igbo clothes sellers/2 Yoruba buyers

Text 1: ( 4 interactants: 2 Igbo clothes’ sellers and 2 Yoruba buyers)

seller 2: one-thousand five hundred naira

seller: Walahi, garlic don finish (Indeed, garlic is exhausted)

Text 3: (2 interactants: seller and buyer (both Yoruba))

Text 4: (2 interactants: Yoruba buyer/Yoruba seller)

Text 5: (2 interactants: A Hausa barbecue operator/Yoruba buyer)

Text 6: (2 interactants: Yoruba dress-seller/Yoruba buyer)

seller: Ha-ha, ha-ha customer you wicked o, e fe koba mi ni (Really!

Text 7: ( 2 interactants: Yoruba suit seller/Yoruba buyer)

Text 8: 2 interactants: Shoes and bags’ Yoruba seller/Yoruba buyer

seller: quality lo matter, three-five ni eyi te mu (quality is the most

Text 9: 3 interactants: Hausa onion seller/Yoruba buyers

Text 10: 4 interactants: 2 Igbo clothes sellers/2 Yoruba buyers

buyer 1: na only skirt a want (I want only skirt)

Text 11: 3 interactants: Igbo suit sellers/one Yoruba buyer