Engendering the Colonized: A Study of African and Asian Postcolonial Fiction

by Ayesha Mirza

Postcolonial theorists often define colonialism as a binary in which colonialist powers signify a male figure which discovers, yearns for, explores, oppresses and abuses the colonized territory. Hence, the occupied territory turns into a female figure, or a bride who depends on her male counterpart, fears his advances and yet, yields passively to them; or in some cases shows revulsion ending in submission, endures his atrocious behavior and yet wants him to continue his hold over her female existence. This dichotomy of weak and strong, master and slave, oppressor and oppressed, active and passive, possessor and possessed, west and east, male and female is implicitly or explicitly expressed in a bulk of postcolonial literatures be it in the form of passive males succumbing to the advances of western invasions, or men trying to reclaim their masculinity through nationalist and resistance movements. This essay is circumscribed to the study of Asian and African postcolonial novels in order to locate the gendered nature of the colonial project.

Achebe’s simple narrative Things Fall Apart explicitly mourns the lost masculinity of the Ibo men. A recurrent binary of dominant male, and female “other” runs parallel to the strong white man, and weak native. The natives at one point realize that just like a man’s passion for a woman, ‘the white man’s fetish had unbelievable power” (106). In front of this fetish, the Ibo men soon start loosing their will to act, to fight. This passivity is seen with contempt and a pang of nostalgia by Okonkwo as he recalls the days when “men were men” (141). When finally “effeminate men clucking like old hen” refuse to own their lives and become the possession of white man; the protagonist breaks free of the humiliating position by taking his own life (146). Thus we see Okonkwo’s character as the foil against which the inactive Ibo men have been placed to show their impotency in the backdrop of colonial project. One noteworthy aspect of this novel is the inherent Igbo binary that manhood is to be celebrated and femininity is inferior. Thus to be respectful one has to be masculine; brave, active, passionate and strong. When a nation loses these masculine traits, it ceases to be respectful. And hence the strongest Igbo tribe known for its fearless men is reduced to the state of femininity when oppressed by a colonizing power.

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in his novel A Grain of Wheat highlights the same loss when he renders the character of Karanja, the mimic man, in front of Margery, a white woman. Margery acknowledges that she “felt a sensual power at the fear and discomfiture she inflicted on Karanja” (37). Thus the native is not only reduced to the status of a woman, but even worse; he is inferior to a white woman who is herself a subaltern in her society. Karanja accepts the white man’s presence with “resentful alacrity” (36); while Kihika believes; “what we now want is action” (14). Karanja, like a faithful wife or a ‘damsel in distress’, fears Mr Thompson abandoning him. “Thompson had saved him from shame. Thompson. And he was going. He strolled back to his room, heavy with the sense of imminent betrayal” (158). Kihika, on the other hand, makes the policemen at Mahee, a symbol of colonial power, resist weakly at his assault (16). Thus the binary of two men; one docile and the other active; highlights the African lapse into femininity and the struggle to regain the lost masculinity. The nationalist and resistance movements are hence efforts at reclaiming the respectable, masculine status of a nation. Finally, the imagery of a woman “big with child” (247) that Gikonyo intends to carve for Mumbi symbolizes an Africa full of opportunities, prospects and progress after breaking free from colonial oppression.

The women writers of Africa, doubly colonized in their homelands, talk mostly of the male oppression on women. However, their domestic concerns cannot remain detached from their colonial setting. Emecheta is one such instance, who in Joys of Motherhood depicts Nnu Ego lamenting the lost masculinity of her husband. She refers to him as a man with ‘a belly like a pregnant cow’ (42) on one occasion, symbolizing that the African nation was being exploited by the west just as a man uses a cow for his gains. Similarly, her analogizing Nnaife with ‘a woman mourning her husband’ (42) symbolizes the loss of Africa’s maleness. Nnaife’s act of washing white woman’s clothes is also emblematic of African nation’s lost masculinity. What women used to do for men, men are doing for women. Similarly, Dr. Meers’ calling Nnaife a ‘baboon’, and Nnaife’s prospective response; “We work for them and they pay for us. His calling me baboon won’t make me one” brings forth the fact that just like a woman doesn’t know in how many ways a man manipulates her, a colonized native also remains unaware of his exploitation. We can discern here a clear reversal of gender roles as the entire nation becomes the slave of west. Running with this is a paradox that Emecheta along with other woman authors create. They show women in active roles, fighting along with their male counterparts a struggle of sustenance, or as in the case of Nnu Ego, fighting with the ills of life alone. They reject the male allegation of their being passive. Hence the industrious Nnu Ego sacrificing, enduring and earning in the love of her children is a strong rebuttal to the male allegation that a woman is passive. Thus despite all the demeaning allusions to effeminate men, Emecheta asserts that these images are a male construct that women have accepted. The reality is very much the opposite; woman is not passive and weak.

It is not only African literature that foregrounds the gender representations of colonial domination and nationalist resistance. Asian nationalist and postcolonial authors also uncover the “Orientalist images of the subcontinent veiled as an Eastern bride” (Suleri 76).  Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi in his depiction of mimic man like Asghar, and men like Mir Nihal who take respite in pigeon-flying and courtesans, shows the inability of native to fight the western assaults. The inactive male lamenting his lost pride, "All this, and more, had not been forgotten by Mir Nihal and his wife and the others; they all burned with rage and impotent anger, for they could do nothing” (142); is analogous to the misery of Mumbi of A Grain of Wheat. Asghar’s wonderment and disdain for Budho is symbolic of west’s “prejudice against and curiosity of” the east (Theo d'. Haen, Patricia Krüs 153). Thus in Edward Said’s words, the Orient “had been since antiquity a place of romance” for the west. By and by, Delhi has been referred to as a city “built hundreds of years ago, fought for, died for, coveted and desired, built, destroyed and rebuilt, for five and six and seven times, mourned and sung, raped and conquered, yet whole and alive, lies indifferent in the arms of sleep”. This holds true not only for Delhi, the entire Indian nation has been subject to many destructions and restructurings. It has always been passive in its encounters with multiple civilizations and has moulded herself in accordance with the cultures of her masters.

Mohsin Hamid in his Moth Smoke treats Kashmir as Ahmad Ali treats Delhi. But this time it is not a woman being conquered by a man; it is a woman being pursued and fought for by two men- India and Pakistan. Hamid in his interview with Newsweek explains what the character of Mumtaz Kashmiri symbolizes; her “surname is "Kashmiri" because the feuding "brothers" fight over her just as India and Pakistan do over Kashmir”. Moreover, she absorbs all the influences of western world during her stay in America. When she breaks away from west, the struggle of the two men to own her begins as a simulacrum of Kashmir which remains under the western influence for years and when the western authority leaves begins the conflict between two “brothers”.

While all the writers we have analyzed so far treat the colonial project as the conquest of man over a woman; Sara Suleri is apt to catch the inferior status rendered to women in this enterprise. She appositely denies this binary, and contends that the colonial project was in essence a love of a man for a man. She analyses various Anglo-Indian male and female writers and posits that “The woman seems to be at a better vantage point to assess how much the colonial encounter depends upon a disembodied homoeroticism rather than on the traditional metaphor of ravishment and possession”. She further goes on to say in the light of Forster-Aziz relationship in A Passage to India that “The Anglo-Indian woman writer evinces a powerful understanding of the imperial dynamic as a dialogue between competing male anxieties” (77). If we generalize Suleri’s claim in order to apply her thesis on her own Meatless Days, we see a strong depiction of papa as a person in love with the colonialist. His stay in Britain, and marriage with a white woman as opposed to the white man living in India and mystified by the native woman depicts a far closer proximity between west and east - proximity that is often obliterated by the rendition of native and intruder in heterosexual binarism. However, it is noteworthy that in homoerotism both men lose their masculinity as a consequence of the absence of ‘other’. Furthermore, in the colonial encounter, the native yields in to the western power, fear and charm. In this way the native becomes more ‘feminine’ than the colonizer.

Simplistically put, the colonialist, nationalist and postcolonialist discourse views colonization as a gendered activity. However, these theoreticians and authors cannot go far without the ‘otherness’ of the other. If a woman ceases to be relegated to the periphery and the centrality of man becomes obsolete; as alluded to in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (‘in some tribes a man's children belong to his wife and her family'); the entire parallelism between colonial project and gender will collapse. Although theorists like Suleri have made efforts to challenge this dichotomy, in a patriarchal society the idea of homoerotism is too deeply woven with the view of lost masculinity to evade the question of femininity. In short, as long as woman remains at the periphery she will remain a symbol of slave nations.

Cite this Article: 

APA: Mirza, Ayesha. . "Engendering the Colonized: A Study of African and Asian Postcolonial Fiction". 2011, October 6. Web. Date of Access. <http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/engendering-colonized-study-of-african.html>.

MLA: Mirza, Ayesha. "Engendering the Colonized: A Study of African and Asian Postcolonial Fiction." http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/. 6 Oct. 2011. Date of Access. http://ayesha-mirza.blogspot.com/2011/10/engendering-colonized-study-of-african.html