ABDUL JANMOHAMED MANICHEAN AESTHETICS: THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE IN COLONIAL AFRICA  
(ABBREVIATED SYNOPSIS BY ROSEMARY PHILLIPS)

INTRODUCTION

JanMohamed opens his introduction by stating that the colonial and African literatures written in English have in the past been examined in a socio – political vacuum.

He also notes that one must understand the "generative ambiance" (2) of the nature of colonial literature and the rise of the African novel and therefore writes that:

Because the colonial writer was often involved in articulating the various theories – the white man’s burden , his civilising mission…which sought to rationalise the whole imperial endeavour, his literature tends to be replete with ideological valorisations of this colonial experience. ( 2)

JanMohammed also makes the point that the origin of African novels lies in "the transformation of indigenous oral cultures into literate ones" (2)

JanMohammed emphasises the "uniqueness of the colonial situation" (2),due both to the "trauma and confusion of its rapid social and cultural transformation" (2), and to "the richness and complexity of its political and ideological contradictions"(2).

He stresses that an understanding of colonialism is crucial to studying its literature.

He acknowledges the fact that "social relations are largely determined by economic motives"(2) but feels that the socio-political aspects of the relationship between coloniser and colonised are more important in the study of literature

His emphasis in studying literature is to examine:

the drastic measures of imperial domination- population transfers, the policies of "reserve," of gerrymandering, and of forced production, the negation of indigenous legal systems and religions, and ultimately, the denial of the validity of indigenous cultures…(2-3)

He also notes the fact that the changes are so swift that the dominated people scarcely have time in which to devise methods of readjustment or of balancing various conflicting interests. He also states that the social disruption produced by such rapid and drastic changes along with the "profoundly antagonistic relations between coloniser and colonised cause colonial societies to exist in a state of latent crisis" (3), or a kind of ‘social pathology’ as Balandier calls it. This social pathology is caused by the "facts of domination and race"(3)

JanMohamed states that according to Joel Covel’s White Racism: a Psychohistory whatever a white man experiences as bad in himself, whatever is forbidden and horrifying in nature tended to be designated as black and projected onto a man whose dark skin and oppressed past fit him to receive the symbol. European colonisers see Africa ass a literal repository of evil, according to Fanon in his The Wretched of the Earth.

JanMohamed believes Fanon’s definition of colonial society as a Manichean organisation is by no means exaggerated and goes on to say "colonial mentality is dominated by a manichean allegory of white and black, good and evil, salvation and damnation, civilisation and savagery, superiority and inferiority, intelligence and emotion, the self and other, subject and object" (4).

JanMohamed makes an interesting point that "The absolute negation of the very being of the colonised people breeds a counter negation" (4), and quotes Fanon’s comment "On the logical plane, the Manicheism of the settler produces a Manicheism of the native. To the theory of the ‘absolute evil of the native’ the theory of the ‘absolute evil of the settler replies." JanMohamed further explains that the colonial society embodies a rejection of the coloniser by the colonised and vice versa, however he notes the absolute dependency of the coloniser on the colonised for his privileged status.The colonized, according to JanMohamed, is simultaneously attracted and repelled by the colonialist. "The ambivalence of the native is the result of his genuine admiration of European technology and his hatred for the system that subjugates and insults him"(4).Indeed there is a dilemma which ensues. The superiority complex of the European creates, according to JanMohammed, a corresponding sense of inferiority of the native who attempts to overcome this feeling by espousing Western values and social customs only to discover that the system does not allow him/her too go beyond emulation of European model because there are no structures in place for the non-European to be able to move forward since the means to education and equality are denied.

JanMohamed defines two terms: petrification and catalepsy, the two dilemmas which a colonized individual faces – If the individual chooses to remain loyal to his indigenous culture he is opting to stay in a "calcified" (5) society which has already been touched by colonialism this is petrification. If on the other hand the colonized chooses assimilation he becomes "trapped in a in a form of "historical catalepsy" (5) because colonial education severs him from his own past replacing it with a study of the colonizer’s own past. JanMohamed notes "Thus deprived of his own culture and prevented from participating in that of the colonizer, the native looses his sense of historical direction and soon his initiative as well"(5).

JanMohamed examines six authors "who have substantially experienced the pains and pleasures of colonial society and whose books are thoroughly influenced by the opportunities and restrictions of their ambiance"(5-6). He chooses 3 European writers Joyce Cary, Isakk Dinesen, Nadine Gorddimer, and three Africans:Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o , and Alex La Guma. He recognises that although these authors have lived in different parts of Africa, at different times, to him "they have all thoroughly experienced the generic aspects of colonial society" (6). JanMohamed lists the topics he will be examining in his study:

1) The first is the nature of the influence of colonial social structure on the literary structures of works produced within that ambiance.He will begin each chapter by defining the specific colonial situation in which the author finds him/herself and how he/ she reacts to that environment. He will also study how the author experiences/ internalizes the major features of colonial life.

His study will examine the cognitive (intellectual, thematic and formal structures

b) the emotive aspects of the writers’ attitudes towards attitudes and experiences

For JanMohamed, literary structures are grounded in social structures. Instead of focusing on ‘class’ he focuses on race because according to him: "in the colonial situation the function of class is replaced by race" (7). He emphasises the colonial experience as being "experienced in terms of race" (7). He goes on to say that class relations form a king of horizontal division within the society but that race can function both horizontally and vertically: "regardless of the native’s relation to the modes of production or the amount of wealth he may accumulate, he will always be considered inferior by the colonialist" (7).

The second topic he examines is more specifically the negative influence of colonialist literature on African fiction: the African writer will respond to the limited coloniser’s perspective on colonialism.

JanMohamed defines the "dialectic of negative influence" (8) which he considers is "a literary manifestation of the manichean socio-political relation between the colonizer and the colonized" (8). He summarises the struggle which the black writer faces:

The black writer finds that colonialist praxis and literature promote a negative, derogatory image of Africa and its inhabitants, and thus is motivated to attempt correction of that image, through a symbolic, literary re-creation of an alternate, more just picture of indigenous cultures" (8).

JanMohamed’s emphasis will be then "how this dialectic affects the shape and the substance of African fiction" (8).

The third major issue he will examine is the question of realism, one of the aspects of African fiction. He notes that Ian Watt’s criteria for the formal aspects of realism are applicable in the African novel, but especially Georg Lukacs’ theory of realism because his inclusion of the representation of totalities his insistence on the inclusion (in realistic fiction) of the conflict between "man-as-individual" and "man-as-social-being" which JanMohamed finds appropriate for the definition of the ideological structures of African novels.

He points his reasons for selecting the six authors of his choice (two writers from each of three regions) Joyce Carey and Chinua Achebe from Nigeria, Isak Dinesen and Ngugi wa Thiong’o from Kenya and Nadine Gordimer and Alex la Guma from South Africa all chosen for "the variety of topics and themes, and formal and ideological characteristics manifested in their literature" (9) He aims to "cover a gamut of colonial and African writing" (9) to ensure the greatest possible comprehensiveness of the conclusions drawn from his study. In addition his study attempts to compare three pairs of writers in order to trace the various aesthetic, ideological, experiential, and political oppositions between the white and black authors. JanMohamed notes: "Because the relation between colonial and African literatures is dialectical, the work of a given author can be adequately understood only in terms of its opposite" ( 10).

To JanMohamed, Carey’s racial romances must be read in opposition to Achebe’s realistic novels

Dinesen’s idyllic utopia in Kenya must be understood in juxtaposition with Ngugi’s portrayal of the havoc caused by the Mau Mau war, Gordimer’s depiction of the effects of apartheid on the conscience of liberal white South Africa must be read in conjunction with La Guma’s representation of the more drastic consequences of apartheid for the blacks( as well as "Coloureds" and Indians). By examining the authors JanMohamed hopes to outline of the emerging tradition of African fiction.

JanMohamed points out that in order to examine these emerging traditions of African fiction he analyses a series of paradigms chosen for their dialectical opposition to each other instead of using the "coherent narrative of conventional literary history"(10).

(Please turn to summary of authors and essential background information including the historical data given read the first part of these "info sheets" ignoring the cognitive and emotional intentionality and the ideological aspects for now – those aspects should be read a little later when the terms are defined later )

JanMohamed examines some of the themes these writers have in common, however his emphasis is the study of contradictions and relationships- how the socio-economic contradictions influence the writers and how they are taken up and transformed by their novels and autobiographies. He attempts to define the antagonistic relationship between colonial and African a hegemonic and nonhegemonic literature.

CONCLUSION

JanMohamed reiterates the two main concerns of his study:

The relations between literature and its social context, and the negative aspects of the relationship between colonial and African literature. JanMohamed treats his texts as in the following manner:

- As "expressions of the nexus of economic, political, and social factors that define their colonial context" (263), which consist of the Manichean oppositions between subject and object, self and other, white and black

- The relationship between colonial and African fiction – focusing on the African reaction to colonial images of Africa and its inhabitants and the antagonistic relation between these two groups of literature.

JanMohamed describes his method of examining the novels as a "rewriting of the literary text" (264) in such a way so as to discover "a prior historical or ideological subtext" (264). This subtext is "never self-evidently present" (264) but must itself be "(re)constructed after the fact" ( 264).

His study analyses the relation of each novel to the dense historical, economic, and political ambiance as well as the fundamental Manichean structure of colonial societies. JanMohamed refers to Nadine Gordimer who makes an important point that Manichean society is incapable of generating a national literature; (each author is influenced by his/her own subjective world or understanding of "the truth" no work is entirely subjective or objective), therefore a manichean society can produce African national and European colonial literatures, but the two cannot be combined. JanMohamed notes :

An attempt to transcend the manichean dichotomy can produce, as it does in Gordimer’s work, fiction that is neither colonial nor national, but that defines an end of colonialism and points toward the development of a national consciousness and literature. (265-266)

JanMohamed distinguishes between the "overt" or cognitive structure of a discourse

Which he describes as a conscious textual intention to represent or depict a kind of world or a particular theme. On the other hand there is the "covert" or emotive or ideological structure of a discourse which can be defined as an unconscious selectivity and closure according to which the depicted world is organised. The emotive structure can also be seen as the product of a "will" (267) or "desire" (267) to secure the relative coherence or position of the individual and the group to which he belongs. JanMohamed agrees with Eagleton’s point that the overt, cognitive structure of an ideological discourse is paradoxically subordinated to its covert, emotive structure.

JanMohamed distinguishes between a hegemonic and a non hegemonic literature

Hegemonic literature justifies an establishes ascendancy – the ideological function of the text is to "solve" contradictions in order to secure a coherent world – and paradoxically preserves the contradictions it wishes to solve. He defines the purpose of nonhegemonic literature is : concerned with defining and clarifying its values and priorities as with "subverting" the ascendancy of the dominating group, and to bring to consciousness the deep contradictions afflicting the subjugated group and thereby to "solve" these contradictions by making them available to conscious, discursive analysis.

Background Information Joyce Carey served as a colonial officer in Nigeria from 1913-1920, he retired due to ill health and published the following Assia Saved, 1932

An American Visitor 1933 The African Witch, 1936 Mr. Johnson, 1939

Historical context :The Depression provoked the British Government to exploit the colonial economies to mitigate the economic pressure at home. Carey’s fiction is written in a background for the demand of ideological justification of the status quo. He develops in his fiction the theory of the white man’s burden the rhetoric of savagery and the need to civilize.

Cognitive intentionality :Simply to present universal themes such as the "wars of beliefs" in an African setting which supposedly permits greater transparency than the more "complex" European environments.

Emotional intentionality :These romances are determined by a powerful emotional intentionality:

A desire to maintain the dominance and coherence of the colonising self and group in the face of an alterity considered hostile and evil.

Ideological function: to legitimate and reinforce colonialist ideology

The colonialist desire to maintain the status quo is accurately represented by the fact that all the romances with the exception of An American Visitor depict a disturbance that ends with the elimination of "agitators"- the coherence of the colonial world is saved once more from the monstrous demands of an evil other.

Isak Dinesen (Kenya)

Her attitude dialectically opposed to Carey’s she is a farmer and her theory is of the "noble savage", the decay of industrial civilisation and the rhetoric of paradise and innocence

Background: Dinesen lived on a coffee farm in Kenya from 1914-1931

Published her first autobiographical work: Out of Africa 1938, Also Shadows on the Grass, 1960

After the 1914-1918 war, due to the larger influx of British officers she felt increasing antipathy toward bourgeois society which she sought to escape..

Cognitive intentionality : To recapture her life on the Kenyan coffee farm

Emotive intentionality : To recapture the believed unity found in a pre-industrial, feudal life influenced by Rousseauesque nostalgia for the "natural man" .Also a belief in a utopian community she tries to establish on her farm. Dinesen overcomes the contradictions of the Manichean bifurcation by posing binary opposites of black, white, men and women etc. so that by complementing each other the opposites form a transcendent synthesis. Unlike Carey Dinesen treats the Africans as subjects. The coherence of self and the universe is achieved through a complete repression of all unpleasant biographical events.

Ideological function: To outflank both the increasingly powerful bourgeois society and colonial manicheanism. A desire for unity and coherence. Dineesen’s autobiographies imply a rejection of history, which influences her choice of literary form- a tale

Cary’s is full of violence, suppressing a desperate desire for coherence and peace. Dinesen’s is characterised by edenic bliss, perfection and congruity. Carey’s fear and rejection of the blacks lead to the dualistic structure of racial romances, with their Manichean tensions and polarities. Dinesen’s genuine fondness and respect for the natives lead to the strong, inclusive, monistic structure of her autobiographies.

Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

Attempts to demythelogize the European experience of Africa

Explores the dilemma of the liberal consciousness trapped between its own humanistic values and the highly antagonistic manicheanism of apartheid.

Background: Born in South Africa 1932. Published novel Lying Days 1953

( published most of her work during a period marked by a drastic contradiction – while most African countries were gaining their independence in the late 1950’s and 1960’s the Afrikaners had achieved control of the government and were ruthlessly systemising the subjugation of the black South Africans through the elaboration of the apartheid doctrine.

Cognitive intention : Close to the emotive intentionality. Embarks on a lengthy examination of colonial government and consciousness.She attempts to unmask the unconscious aspects of colonialist mentality – particularly its attachment to the privileges that prevent honest self-examination

A will to discover a "decent" basis for a subjective and communal stand which leads to the repetitive pattern in her novel:

Appalled by various aspects of racism, apartheid, and colonialism her characters are forced to examine the complex relation between self and society

Gordimer’s fiction simultaneously reveals the absence of and the desire for a viable, humane, and just interracial community which would free the individual from the debilitating contradictions of a Manichean society.

As act and object is to bring to consciousness the major contradictions between the whites’ patronising abhorrent attitude to blacks and the former’s actual parasitic dependency on the latter.

This progressively stronger recognition of the alterity of blacks represents a coming-to-consciousness of rebounding reciprocity, and it leads Gordimer to redefine self and community.

Gordimer’s novels are historical: their plots unfold against the backdrop of specific events in the political history of South Africa

The novels confront the manichean society and expose the contradictions embedded in it. She embraces incoherence in order to root out unconscious biases and desires.

In contrast to colonial literature, the novels of the three African writers typify different aspects of the realist tradition that attempts to balance European denigration and romanticization of Africa and to depict the problems inherited from colonialism.

His fiction best illustrates the dialectic of negative influence

It documents the disintegration of the totality of a past oral culture and reveals the present dilemma of individuals caught between historical catalepsy and petrification

Things fall Apart,1958

No Longer at Ease, 1969

Arrow of God, 1964

Both Chinua Achebe and Ngugi waa Tiong’o published during a political transformation in Africa Nigeria achieved independence in 1960 and Kenya in 1963

Close to emotive intentionality

An attempt to provide an alterrnaate, more just picture of European colonization and African cultures

Examining the relation between self and other in the colonial context

Achebe’s fiction is designed to transform the African status from that of an object to that of a subject whose complexity the colonialist is unable to comprehend.

To redefine the African as subject

To give an unidealized presentation of the complete totality of the Igbo culture.

To bring to consciousness various aspects of colonial experience.

An important function as symbolic acts is the refutation of authors like Joyce Carey

To preserve, through a judicious use of language, imagery, and plot, a permanent image of the concrete totality of a vanishing oral culture

His novels bring to consciousness the conflict between historical catalepsy and cultural petrification that engulfs the colonized man.

His future oriented novels reveal the problems caused by the peripeteia of values and grapple with difficulties of cultural reintegration and regeneration in the wake of an anticolonial war.

Published: Weep not, Child, 1964, The River Between, 1965, A Grain of Wheat, 1967

Cognitive Intentionality : The portrayal of various stages of Gikuyu struggle against colonization

( the most traumatic experience for Ngugi’s life is the disintegration of Gikuyu society during the Mau Mau war)

Emotive Intentionality :( in his first two novels) a desire to alleviate suffering and reunite the community

Ideological Function :To avoid the pain of colonial subjugation by retreating into a mythic universe, into a fantasy world where problems can be solved by divine intervention

The novels are symptomatic products of the peripeteia of values and the catalepsy-petrification problem

Ngugi defines community in a dramatically different manner. He demonstrates in his novels that the self is only definable through the mediation of the other and that isolation from others leads to the complete attenuation of the self.

Thus each character is the centre of the community- each character is a grain of wheat with a potential for germination

A Grain of Wheat is a unique utopian novel in the African canon

The substance and style of his fiction reflect the drastic attention of black life in the apartheid society of "contemporary" South Africa. He depicts the drastic transformation of depressed individuals who manage to develop an awareness of their political conditions.

Background: La Guma’s novels, published mainly in the 1960’s

His novella particularly In the Fog of the Seasons’ End depicts urban guerrilla warfare illustrate the backdrop in which he is writing: the indiscriminate repression of all Africans by the apartheid government

Cognitive Intentionality :His novels best represent the nature and effects of colonial oppression and the structure and dynamics of the gradual rebellion against apartheid

Emotive intentionality :A desire to alleviate the suffering caused by apartheid

Ideological function : To point out the marginality of black life under apartheid

To bring to consciousness the political seriality which imprisons the colonised man in South Africa

His later novels demonstrate the only viable route to freedom lies through the formation of groups that can wage a prolonged political and military struggle against apartheid.

La Guma responds to the absolute maicheanism of apartheid with absolute negation. The black guerilla fighter in South Africa can only have the freedom to define self and society if he first destroys the supremacy of the white other.

As symbolic acts their ideological function is to valorise individual vengeance rather than collective action.

"La Guma’s project thus demonstrates the systematic, if painful emergence of the subject, the transformation of the slave into an individual who is the master of his personal destiny (though not yet of his world)" (276).

In conclusion JanMohamed notes that

The fundamental fact that becomes evident from the preceding studies of the six authors is that colonial society, with its highly charged, allegorical manicheasim and its peculiarly inhumane drama, generates such a powerful socio-political-ideological force field that neither colonial nor African literature is able to escape or transcend it .(276-277)

JanMohamed goes on to say that all six writers are forced to come to terms with the Manichean structure in their own ways: "they may try to subvert it or overcome its consequences, or they may valorize it; but regardless of the overt thematic content of their writing, they cannot ignore it" (277). There are differences in their specificity but there are similarities in the ideological structure- for example the struggle against various facets of colonialism by the African writers in their response to colonialist practice, ideology and literature.

This antagonistic relationship between African and Colonial literature to Jameson is dialogic in nature and calls it a "dialogical structure of class discourse" (277). The individual text (or entire work of an author ) can be regarded as a kind of parole or individual utterance of the vaster system of langue or class discourse. For Jameson: "only an ultimate rewriting of theses utterances in terms of their essentially polemic and subversive strategies restore them to their proper place in the dialogical system of social classes" (278).

JanMohammed notes that Dinesen points out the colonialist dismisses the African cultures and their past as being utterly useless, barbaric, and evil, and this is internalized by the colonized man.

JanMohamed emphasises the fact that the colonizer, due to his military superiority is able to impose his will and his entire world his social, political, legal and moral system not because of his mere presence but the real destruction is achieved by military power and not ideology

From the perspective of the colonialist the two basic ideologemes ( minimal unit around which class discourses are organized) coalesce around the classification of the native as a "degraded savage" and as a "noble savage" on the one hand there are pictures of monsters and terrifying creatures on the other hand there are gracious beings without will and purpose. Caliban and cannibals on one side and Ariel and Friday on the other.

Other points made by JanMohamed:

The question of literacy which allows the development of historical consciousness by allowing the literate individual to scrutinize the fixed past, to cultivate a more conscious, critical, and comparative attitude to the accepted world picture. This can produce a sense of change and an attempt to determine reality.

Another point he makes is that African fiction reacts to universalized notions of Africa and Africans so that not only does African fiction write back to these generalisations given by the colonialists but also by the Negritude writers by examining the specificity of their culture. The negritude writers who became alienated because of their being assimilated by the French tended to define the "African personality"(282) as a "continental phenomena"(282).

The use of the English language by African writers means that the writer is "condemned to participate in the physically and culturally different worlds of the colonizer and the colonized" (283), and is involved in an "antagonistic dialogue" (283). JanMohamed points out that African writers negate the colonialist depiction of them as savages by using metropolitan language and literary forms and they overcome the colonialist "romance" of Africa by using metropolitan realism.

He also notes that William Walsh in his appreciation of the Igbo culture re-created in Achebe’s fiction, laments the fact that this society in spite of its artistic achievements and the cultivated subtleties of language is transient because it cannot record itself for the future. JanMohamed notes:

The irony, then , is that while literacy and the English language contribute to the destruction of this transient society they also allow writers like Achebe to fix and preserve the vanishing culture by creating an image of it in their novels. (283)