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Analysis of waiting for the barbarians
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Questions about waiting for the barbarians
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Literary Research Project Deluded assurances: Solipsism in the search for colonial identity Waiting for the barbarians & Heart of Darkness Jotham Ng 18 4B What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? [...] Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader. He has even prepared a scroll to give him, replete with titles, with imposing names. […] Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now what’s going to happen to us without the barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. (Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians”) Constantine Cavafy’s poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” (1904) and Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), one of two texts that we will be focusing on in this research paper, have more in common than just their identical titles. Both texts seek to highlight the fear and tensions that arise from waiting for those that are termed as Others by the colonial subject and the implications of the wait on colonial identity. The wait as exemplified in the poem is not merely a physical one but more of a …show more content…
Furthermore, it is the establishment of this binary opposition that justifies the colonial enterprise as a civilizing mission, a God-given task, where colonizers are “emissar[ies] of pity and science and progress” (Conrad 43) who not only appropriate but speak for the Orient in the “timeless dimension of a completely healed world” (Orientalism 174), a romantic notion of an idealized utopia with the colonizers as the new chosen ones who will lead the Orient into a better
Orientalism is the misconception by Westerners of foreign people from the “Orient.” It focuses on the differences between the East and the West, and it serves as a justification for imperialism because the West is depicted as superior to the East. Argo, a movie about the Iran-American conflict of 1979, is primarily set in the Middle East where all the inhabitants are wrongly depicted as full of mindless rage, screaming, irrational, and reasonless mobs. In 1891, French economist and journalist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, stated about the colonies of the Orient “a great part of the world is inhabited by barbarian tribes or savages, some given over to wars without end and to brutal customs, and others knowing so little of the arts and being so little accustomed to work and to invention that they do not know how to exploit their land and its natural riches. They live in little groups, impoverished and scattered.” Argo having strikingly similar depictions of Eastern people over a hundred years later raises the question “has the Western perspective of the East changed?” ...
Mannoni, O., Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonizaiton, trans. Pamela Powesland (New York, Praeger, 1964).
In Orientalism, Edward Said claims that, “as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West” (5). The complex network of political, economical, academic, cultural, or geographical realities of the Orient called “Orientalism” is a way of coming to terms with the Orient, or to be less geographically specific, the Other. Although Said defines Orientalism to be specifically Franco-British experience in the Arab world, his basic arguments can be applied to the process of Othering in a more general sense. Especially his idea of “representation” plays a central role in the epistemology of Orientalism.
Introduction: The epoch of imperialism cannot be defined simply as a proliferation of inflated egos tied to the hardened opinions of nationalists, but also a multi-faceted global rivalry with roots of philosophies tainted with racism and social Darwinism. The technique of each imperialist was specific to the motivations and desires of each combative, predominantly Western power and subsequently impacted the success of each imperialist and its colonies. Driven by industrialization, Europeans are aware of the urgent need for raw materials and new markets to maintain a constant rate of expansion and wealth. Imperialism became a competition; in general, the European countries led with fervor while the non-Western regions deemed likely to be stepped on.
In J.M. Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate comes to discover the humanity of the barbarian through his interactions with the blind girl, which eventually leads him to learn about the nature of his own humanity. Although the Magistrate is more lenient on the Barbarians than Colonel Joll, he still unknowingly objectifies them, while placing himself above them. It is only when he is imprisoned that he comes to realize the fragility of his own humanity. Ultimately Coetzee uses the magistrate’s journey from empirical leader to broken and fearful prisoner to express that peace and stability between people can only be obtained when all humanity is valued.
The colonization of the West is not without its obstacles; culture clash, fears of assimilation, periods of poverty, military action and government corruption, all of these contribute to a colorful history of an intricate part of our nation.
New imperialism was the mid nineteenth and twentieth centuries cultural equivalent to a modern day mafia, its roots entangled in the economic, cultural, and humanistic aspects of life. The sole objective of the nations entailed the exploitation of their controlled state. Gestating from the change in control of Asian and African nations to the Europeans by means of political deviance, malicious sieges, and strategic military attacks. The juxtaposition to the modern equivalent endures as the aforesaid is sheltered by the fairytale that these nations were in need of aid and by doing so the Europeans were the good guys. The ideas of new imperialism are greatly influenced by those of the enlightenment. Taking place during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the enlightenment was an intellectual movement with the goal of social progress (Genova, 1/11). Armed with scientific thought and reason, enlightenment thinkers set out to explore the fields of science, economics, and human nature. Brilliant minds such as Voltaire, Kant and others all across Western Europe collaborated to further knowledge. The enlightenment laid the foundation on which new imperialism sprung, embedding the ideas of an incessant need to explore not only the scientific world but the physical world as well. The enlightenments goals and ideas significantly influenced new imperialism, because the enlightenment created a need for new means and a purpose to accrue them.
By the end of the 19th century, European free trade imperialism included much of Asia and Africa within a swiftly growing world mercantilist economy. Europeans entered these uncharted areas with the intention of dominating the indigenous society, which swiftly alienated the two societies and formed new dual, segregated societies. Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” and George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” outlined this social order and class rivalry presented between the British Empire and the native people. Gandhi’s letter to Lord Irwin supported this view as well, by looking into the dual societies within the context that the British isolated the native society from the economic hegemony that the British enjoyed. Together, Kipling, Orwell, and Gandhi provided a detailed account of the British prejudice within dual colonial society through the social and economic hegemony they held.
... nations of the time saw their expansion and imperialism as a profoundly nobly pursuit. The native people of Asia and Africa were considered to be savages and uncultured. The influence of European ideals and ways of life would, in the minds of their conquerors, help these people achieve better lives and a lead them to a better existence.
After exploring the backgrounds of Joseph Conrad and Alan Paton, we realize the differences in their upbringings and how that may have had an effect on their outlooks of Africa. These authors grew up in completely different settings in completely different time periods; Joseph Conrad in a predominantly white area amongst those who would be the colonists of Africa in the future, and Alan Paton in the Africa itself amongst those who the colonization affected most greatly. These factors contribute to the different viewpoints that are apparent in their respective works. From analyzing the content of their writings, it is apparent that, although, both authors have the same overall opinion of colonialism, these opinions are due to two very different reasons.
The expansion of a nation has almost always been necessary for its survival. The colonization of America, Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia are such examples. While the colonization of one place generally means the continued prosperous life of another, such an idea is lost when the act becomes a violent struggle of deception and power. This loss of humanity is clearly seen in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. Imperialism and colonization led to a complete disruption to the inhabitants of the Congo and resulted in retaliation by the natives and the suffering of many people.
When people think of the concept of imperialism, they usually view it as something that pertains to government. Even the first definition of imperialism in the dictionary is “imperial state, authority, spirit, or system of government” (Webster 729). However, imperialism encompasses so much more than this. In comparing the resonations between Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with Johann Goethe’s Faust, one can see how imperialism affects the political, the social, the psychological, and the spiritual, especially within the past 200 years. Stemming from this is man’s existential freedom, his “mechanical and lifeless existence in society”, explored in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”.
He stated, "Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European Atlantic power over the Orient than it is a veridic (truthful) discourse about the Orient.” The nexus of authority with knowledge empowered the West to generalise and misrepresent the orient, consequently subjugating and controlling it. By exaggerating and distorting the difference between the familiar occident (West) and the alien orient (East), they are constructing the East as the extremely inferior, backward and foreign counterpart of the West, in need of Western ‘rescue’. It is therefore this colonialist podium, which the Orientalist artist stands on that, in part, generates Roger Benjamin’s notion of the ‘Oriental mirage’. The concept that a “travelling artists always has an unstable view of its subjects” is concrete, imitative painting of any kind is an estimation. However the Imperialist and Colonialist credentials of the orientalist artists inevitably skews this image further. The mirage becomes additionally distorted as they are faced with the obstacles of cultural misunderstanding and ethnocentrism. Jean-Léon Gérôme and Henri Matisse alike both ‘suffered’ from this colonialist cultural curtain, which was drawn across and
During the era of maritime exploration and the discovery of the Americas, assumptions were made of the land likening it to not only a paradise, but one that was overrun with cannibalistic natives. These suppositions led to a desire to explore the lands and conquer the savages that posed a threat to man and civilization itself. The consequences of this mass colonization and dehumanization of the natives paved the way for literary pieces that pose as critiques of the era when viewed through a post-colonial lens. When looked at through a post-colonial perspective, a few common themes prevail amongst compared texts. Focusing on the theme of the journey, what it means, and what is at stake, Garcilaso de la Vega’s “The Story of Pedro Serrano” and Juan José Saer’s The Witness both touch on all these themes with great severity, dissecting the purpose of the journey and what it means to be a civilized man.
Imperialism sprung from an altruistic and unselfish aim to "take up the white man's burden"1 and “wean [the] ignorant millions from their horrid ways.”2 These two citations are, of course, from Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, respectively, and they splendidly encompass what British and European imperialism was about – at least seen from the late-nineteenth century point of view. This essay seeks to explore the comparisons and contrasts between Conrad’s and Kipling’s view of imperialism in, respectively, Heart of Darkness and “White Man’s Burden” and “Recessional.”