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Bhumi Dangi.

Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University

Semester-3 Assignment

Paper- 11 Postcolonial literature

‘Subaltern cannot speak by Gayatri spivak & Commonwealth literature does not exist by Salman Rushdie – merging the theories and trying to see what emerges out of it.’

Commonwealth Literature, Post-Colonial Literature in English, New Literature in English, World Writing in English – these are just some of the terms being used to describe the writings of ‘members’ of the former British Empire.

The number of titles, however, reflects the growing international importance of such writings as evidenced this month at the London Festival of Commonwealth Literature, with writers coming from around the globe. They tentatively include Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan- Canadian author of ‘The English Patient’, the book that inspired the movie that swept the board at the latest Acadaemy Awards ceremony.

The nine-day festival, sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation and the University of London among others, will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and mark the Year of the Commonwealth in Britain.

It is an important milestone because many universities around the world now have courses in Commonwealth Literature, or some similar nomenclature, and academics are churning out books seemingly at the same pace as the fiction writers, poets and dramatists. Professors who teach the subject say that students who want to study English Literature are increasingly interested in the works coming from the English-speaking Caribbean, Africa, Canada and South-East Asia.

But what IS Commonwealth Literature? Many years after the term came into being, it still causes disagreement, according to Professor Hena Maes-Jelinek, a Belgian expert on the writing from Britain’s former colonies.

In a recent lecture at the Free University of Brussels, Maes- Jelinek said that writers often find the term limiting since it implies a uniform kind of literature and also tends to categorise this writing as outside the British mainstream.

In a famous and scathing essay, the Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children, once asserted that “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”, and he has been supported in this view by other authors.

“Isn’t this the very oddest of beasts… a school of literature whose supposed members deny vehemently that they belong to it? Worse these denials are simply disregarded! It seems the creature has taken on a life of its own,” Rushdie has written.

He added that the nearest definition of Commonwealth literature he could get sounded patronising because it appeared to be “that body of writing created … in the English language, by persons who are not themselves white Britons, or Irish, or citizens of the United States of America.”

The creation of this “phantom category obscure what was really going on and worth talking about”, Rushdie said, explaining that some so-called Commonwealth Writers had more in common with the ‘magical realism’ of Latin American authors than with other ex- British colonies.

But even if Commonwealth Literature does not exist, the Commonwealth itself certainly does. The (British) Commonwealth of Nations, to give it its original name, is an association of states comprising Britain and its former colonies, along with their dependencies.

The original grouping in 1931 and comprised Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand who, while self-governing, pledged allegiance to the British Crown. The association was expanded and restructured in 1949, when participants agreed to drop both the ‘British’ and the concept of allegiance. Today the Commonwealth is a loose alliance of 53 countries, with a combined population of more than one billion.

‘Commonwealth Literature’ is thus used to cover the literary works from territories that were once part of the British Empire, but it usually excludes books from the United Kingdom unless these are produced by resident writers who originate from a former colony. The great irony, however, is that much of the best literature that has emerged from Britain in the last years has been produced by writers from or with roots in colonies.

    Gayatri Spivak and subaltern

Gayatri Spivak is prominent name in the world of literary criticism. She is heavily bended upon the other moments like Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. What she have done in criticism, are the things where we can find all these things in bit or more.

Term ‘subaltern’ is borrowed from Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It signifies ‘the oppressed classes. Here Gayatri puts her argument that a subaltern cannot speak his mind. Because he is suppressed by the one who is colonising him. The thing gets worse with colonised woman. Here suppression comes from dual side. As colonisers, in general, does not want anyone to speak against themselves; that is the first part. And the social structure which is more generally patriarchal, does not allow her to speak. Because in patriarchal society, woman is assigned with lot many roles – as wife, daughter, mother, sister. It makes her identity depended upon any male person. So there chances become laser n laser where woman haves her own identity as an individual. She, in one or the other way, finds satisfaction of life in making his man happy. Such conditioning has taken place in her life from days of childhood. So, with passing time, it gets naturalisation.

There emerged a new way of looking towards history—from the angle of subaltern. Cause it is duty of an intellectual to make visible position of the marginalised. Thus Subaltern studies project was launched during 1982 in leadership of Ranjit Guha. It challenged all the freedom fighters moment which took place in India. According to this study, some elite class people like Gandhiji, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Javaharlal Nehru, Lokmany Tilak are the most celebrated freedom fighters whereas some of the tribal people who have sacrificed their lives have no place in history. So, this history has deconstructed the idea of all the freedom fighting movement.

Gayatri have given a perfect concept-map which speaks a lot –

Social Formation	Subaltern	Dominant Group	Ideology
Class	Working Classes	Capitalist bourgeois	Capitalism
Empire	Natives	Europeans	Colonialism
Patriarchy	Women	Men	Gender
Nation	Ethnic Group	Majority	Homogenization and nationalism

Thus she speaks up for all the classes where domestication takes place in one or the other way. And this happens in such a way that one feels helpless to do anything but to sacrifice. It becomes very much difficult to free the mind which once was colonised. There is a very interesting saying in English. –

“Once a victim, forever a victim”

    ‘Commonwealth literature does not exist’ – Salman Rushdie.

What does Commonwealth mean?

“Commonwealth,^[3][4] is an intergovernmental organisation of 52 member states that were mostly territories of the former British Empire.^[4] The Commonwealth operates by intergovernmental consensus of the member states, organised through the Commonwealth Secretariat, and non-governmental organisations, organised through the Commonwealth Foundation. English noun ‘Commonwealth’ in a sense means ‘public welfare, general good or advantage.”

-         Wikipedia.

Thus, commonwealth nation means the nations which were previously ruled by British raj. And now they have been established as free countries. As they were ruled for so many years, they perhaps may not have proper system to handle out everything. That is why there emerged ‘Commonwealth Foundation’ to give a helping hand to such nations.

‘Commonwealth Literature’

As a part of Commonwealth Foundation’s cultural programme, some group of international literary organizations came together. They helped commonwealth writers to develop their writing craft. They started giving some prise for such literatures. For example ‘short story prize’. This is how the term ‘Commonwealth Literature’ comes in existence.

Many of the writers have accepted and started using the term. They have begun to work as a commonwealth writer. While some writers denied to accept it. One of the prominent voices is of Salman Rushdie. He very strongly disagrees on the point that he questions even the existence of term- Commonwealth  Literature, in one of magazines. He very clearly considers it ‘unhelpful’ and even ‘distasteful’. It was an Interview where Rushdie have given these words. In the same interview, two contemporary writers were there. Shiva Naipaul and Buchi Emecheta. Rushdie found that they also think in the same direction. That is why; the interview got published under headline like this ‘Commonwealth writers . . . but don’t call them that’.

The Commonwealth Pen: An Introduction to the Literature of the British Commonwealth  By A. L. McLeod

English Postcoloniality: Literatures from around the World  By Radhika Mohanram; Gita RajanGreenwood Press, 1996

Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Society in a 'Post'-Colonial World By Geoffrey V. Davis; Peter H. Marsden; Bénédicte Ledent;

Class, Culture, and the Colonial Context: The Status of Women in Buchi Emecheta's the Joys of Motherhood By Derrickson, Teresa

Traveling with Joyce: Derek Walcott's Discrepant Cosmopolitan Modernism By Pollard, Charles W

These are some of the examples of commonwealth literature article. 



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