FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE 2

wealth and postcolonial literature, and the concerns or

Edward O. Ako: From characteristics of postcolonial literature.
If it is true that Britain used military might to subdue a good part
Commonwealth to of the world especially in the last part of the nineteenth century,
mili- tary victory constituted not the winning of the war, but of a
Postcolonial Literature (2004) battle and it were cultural texts to complete what military might had
started. Thus, literary texts which were produced during this period
[CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 6.2 (2004): and which can be described as colonial or colonialist texts,
<http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol6/iss2/1>.] reflected the colonial ethos, and contributed to the complex of
attitudes that made imperial- ism seem part of the order of things
It can be argued that one of the major additions to the curricula (see Boehmer 2-3). In other words, it was clear that to assume
of Departments of English in Europe, the Caribbean, the United control over a territory or a nation was not only to “exert political or
States, Australia, etc., in the last two decades is what has been economic power, it was also to have imaginative command”
called variously “commonwealth” or “postcolonial literature.” Our (Boehmer 5). It is in the self-representations of the British and the
own Department of English at the University of Yaounde I has not representations of the Other, that the ideological uses of English
escaped from this trend. The number of students enrolling to take literature can be seen most clearly. The best illustra- tion is in the
higher degrees in the field called “Commonwealth Literary Studies” introduction of English literature into the Indian educa- tional
more than quintupled especially from the moment that Cameroon system: After the battle of Plassy in 1755, the British East India
was admitted into the Commonwealth of Nations along with Company began to administer the various native Indian states as
Mozambique: Cameroon was admitted into the Commonwealth of colo- nies. As Gauri Viswanathan has noted, a high proportion of
Nations in 1998. The query as to why the term “post-coloniality” has those who came over from Britain to serve as administrators were
found such urgent currency in the First World but is in fact hardly Scots who found it easier to succeed without English patronage
ever used within the excolonized worlds of South Asia and Africa abroad than at home. The Scots had the responsibility of training a
can be explained perhaps by the fact that it is considered as a civil service from among the Hindu and Muslim populations and one
cognate term with commonwealth. The reser- vations expressed of the principal subjects taught the newly Europeanised natives was
elsewhere on the possible “offensive” nature of the term are, in my English literature. It was expected to convey the values and
standards of the conquerors: The British had conquered India with
opinion, “willingly” ignored. The following discussion represents a
ships and cannon; they were, however, “to rule it with
brief tour-de-force of taxonomy to initiate a conversation on these
Shakespeare” (Viswanathan 17). And talking about the Scots, it
rather vague and sometimes confusing concepts. It will per- haps
would be a major oversight not to note that Adam Smith–better
be more rewarding if we first examine the relationship between
empire and English literature, in other words, the ideological uses known as the author of The Wealth of Nations–was actually the
to which English literature was put. I am concerned with colonial founder of English as an academic discipline (see, e.g., Eagleton).
and colonialist literature: as far as I am able to determine, Elleke At the time that Adam Smith introduced lectures on English
Boehmer is one of the few critics who makes a distinction between litera- ture in Scotland, this discipline was regarded in Oxbridge as
colonial and colonialist literature, see her Colonial and Postcolonial an un- academic discipline and not worthy of serious inquiry.
Rather, what held sway in lecture halls were classical studies:
Literature 4-5, 50-
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Sanskrit. If classical studies constituted
51. Next, I examine the concept of commonwealth literature and
the the academic menu of the upper classes, religious studies were
controversies surrounding it, and lastly, I discuss selected aspects the main menu of the lower
of the concept of postcolonial studies, the differences between
common-
3 EDWARD O. AKO FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE 4

classes. However, by mid-century, religious studies which were “a vital if subtle connection exists between a discourse which those
used to control the lower classes, was fast losing its grip as a result who are to be educated are represented as morally deficient and
of scientific discoveries and social change. It was therefore the attribution of moral and intellectual values to the literary works
imperative for another social institution to be put in its place to they are assigned to read” (Viswanathan 62). Clearly then, English
replace religion and the church as disseminators of value, tradition, litera- ture, or better still, colonialist literature played the role of the
and authority. As Terry Eagleton notes, George Gordon in an “surro- gate Englishman.” As Eagleton so well puts it, English
Oxford inaugural lecture said: “England is sick, and English literature pre- senting “the Englishman in his highest and most
literature must save it. The churches, having failed, and social perfect state, be- comes a mask for economic exploitation, so
remedies being slow, English literature has now a triple function” successfully camouflaging the material activities of the coloniser that
(23). Of particular significance, however, is the fact that English as one unusually self- conscious British Colonial official, Charles
an academic discipline “was first institutionalised not in the Trevelyan, was prompted to remark, ‘The “Indians” daily converse
universities, but in Mechanics’ Institutes, working men’s colleges, with the best and wisest Eng- lishman through the medium of their
and extension lecturing circuits” (Eagleton 52). The reason for this works, and form ideas, perhaps
was because it was expected that the “softening” and “human- higher ideas of our nation than if their intercourse with it were of a
ising” effect of literature could be used to cement the relations be- personal
tween the social classes. English literature was therefore to serve kind’” (Viswanathan 66-67; my emphasis).
as a kind of opium whose role was to ward off what Mathew Arnold This use of literature as a “mask of conquest”–to use the title of
saw as the anarchy that would engulf and disrupt social relations in Viswanasath’s book–was only part of a larger scheme. In his widely
England (Eagleton 65). anthologised “Minute on Indian Education,” Thomas Macaulay indi-
If English literature was institutionalised in Mechanics’ Institutes cated clearly the role of education in India when he declared thus,
and in other vocational colleges as an instrument for the “we must at present do our best to form a class who may be
transmission of “moral” values to the lower classes, it becomes interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class
clear that it could become an even more effective weapon in the of persons, In- dian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
“softening” of con- quered peoples. And it is precisely with this in opinions, in morals and
mind that courses in English literature were introduced in Indian in intellect” (430; my emphasis). This category, “Indian in blood and
schools as far back as the 1820s and formalised with the passing of colour, but English in taste” is what Frantz Fanon calls “black skin,
the English Education Act of 1835. Yet, as Viswanathan notes, white masks” and V. S. Naipaul calls “mimic men.” In the Native
“what is now known as the subject of English literature, the British American context, this is what Black Elk calls being an apple, red
educational system had no firm place for it until the last quarter of out- side and white inside. This leads us to the overall issue of
the nineteenth century” (434). Thus, Shake- speare, Addison, representa- tion in the making of empire. Boehmer states in her
Bacon, Locke, and others became part of the literary curriculum of Colonial and Post- colonial Literature that “in writings as various as
Indian schools, curriculum functioning here as discourse (in this romances, memoirs,
context, I propose that it would be most advantageous to carry out adventure tales or the later poetry of Tennyson, the view of the
a study of the literary texts used in Cameroon secondary schools world as directed from the colonial metropolis was consolidated and
between 1948 and 1968. The focus here will be on curriculum as con- firmed. So, it also followed almost automatically that resistance
dis- course and will examine, other than Shakespeare’s texts, the to imperial domination–especially on the part of those who lacked
works of Jerome K. Jerome, R. M. Ballantyne, Rider Haggard, guns or money–frequently assumed textual form” (Boehmer 14).
Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain, etc. These were Some of the textual forms that emerged as “resistance” to imperial
compulsory texts in sec- ondary schools in the 1950s and 1960s). domination are what are called variously Commonwealth literature,
Again, we are reminded that New English literatures, Literatures in English, Third World
Literature or Post- colonial Literature, with other cognate terms also
used, such as World
5 EDWARD O. AKO as postcolonial” (16).

Fiction, World Literature written in English, multicultural

literature, minority literature, resistance literature, etc.
For some, the idea of Commonwealth Literature is quite
straight- forward because it is the literature produced by countries
which are former colonies of Britain or had the status of dominions.
For others, it can be extended to cover countries which, although
not former Brit- ish colonies, are now members of the
Commonwealth of Nations. For yet others, matters are not that
simple. There are those who argue that the very notion of
Commonwealth Literature is in it self condescend- ing, narrow and
misleading (see, for example, Tiffin in her “Com- monwealth
Literature: Comparison and Judgement”). And for some the
designation is dépassé, something of an anachronism. In a study
commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat and entitled
Learn-
ing from Each Other: Commonwealth Studies in the 21st Century, the
au- thors are not concerned with whether Commonwealth Literature
ex- ists or not. Rather, for them, the issue is how to broaden the
concept to embrace literatures in indigenous languages. In the
section entitled “Intellectual trends in Commonwealth Studies,” the
authors ask, “How can the study of Commonwealth literature more
fully embrace literatures in languages other than English, and
reflect the increasingly complex varieties of English used?” (19). In
my view, the question would make sense in terms of examining the
varieties of English used, the attempt at nativization etc. It would be
inappropriate, however, to think of calling the literature in the
indigenous languages Common- wealth Literature especially as
some of these literatures pre-date the historical situations that
brought about what is today known as the Commonwealth. It
appears to me that it would be more appropriate to call Sanskrit,
Igbo, Yoruba, Hindi: Khosa, Kikuyu, Hausa, Maori, and Zulu
literatures by their names rather than by the designation of
Commonwealth Literature. Perhaps if these works are translated
into English, then they could fit into this category as in the case with
Ngugi wa Thiongo’s works rendered from Gikuyu into English. Nor
can, say, Wolof literature be considered francophone literature. The
authors were, of course, aware of the fact that many scholars were
not comfortable with the designation. They note that this is
“particularly in the field of literature” where some scholars “shy
away from the term ‘commonwealth’ and prefer to use such terms
FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE 6 other than English-Hindi, for example–or who switch out of English,
like Ngugi, are permitted into the club or asked to keep out” (63).
They note that the very concept of “commonwealth” derives from For Rushdie, the idea of Com- monwealth Literature is just an
“egalitarian principles of popular sovereignty, rights and freedoms. attempt to create an exclusive literary ghetto. He further adds that
Commonwealth studies potentially offer democratic and all- the “effect of creating such a ghetto was, is, to change the meaning
inclusive forms of social analysis, pointing to reconstructed of the far broader term ‘English literature’ which I’d always taken to
societies and to communities beyond colonialism” (16). They add, mean simply the literature of the English language–into something
rather problemati- cally, that the term “post-colonial is far more far narrower, something topographical, nationalistic, possibly even
constrained than ‘com- monwealth’ even though the former may in racially segregationist” (63) […] “Com- monwealth literature was
theory (but frequently does not in practice) encompass a wider invented to delay the day we rough beasts actually slouch into
field geographically” (16). Bethlehem. In which case, it’s time to admit the centre cannot hold”
For Salman Rushdie, however, the problem is of a different (71). While Rushdie echoes Achebe’s Things Fall
nature. In an essay entitled provocatively “Commonwealth Apart here, there is also a reverse movement from the periphery to
Literature Does not Exist,” he attempts to define what “they” say the
Commonwealth Lit- erature would be. He says that there is “a body centre. If for Rushdie the term is “narrow” and “segregationist,” for
of writing created, I think, in the English language by persons who Michael Gorra, it can only be used in the past tense. In his After
are not themselves white Britons or Irish or citizens of the United Em- pire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie Gorra states that “the first books of
States of America” (63). If this is true of Commonwealth Literature, what we then called ‘commonwealth’ literature often opposed
it is certainly not true of postcolonial literature as it embraces the British novels to works from India or Africa–E. M. Forster–R. K.
United States of America. He further notes that “it is also uncertain Narayan, Joyce Cary–Chinua Achebe” (4).
whether citizens of common- wealth countries writing in languages
7 EDWARD O. AKO not exclusively, in the Western academy (on the desig- nation of
postcolonial, see, for example, Appiah; Mishra and Hodge;
This is the same kind of sentiment that is voiced in Deepika Mccallum; McClintock; Shohat; Bahri notes that the compound word
Bahri’s essay where she notes that the “cognate terms first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1959 as did the
‘commonwealth’ and ‘Third World’ have all but disappeared as unhy-
prefixes from the body of literature now largely designated ‘post- phenated word in the American Heritage Dictionary (Bahri 65). But
colonial,’ succumbing, on occa- sion, to the appellation, ‘new before we get into the problem of the meaning(s) of the term, it is
literature in English’ […] the ‘new’ dif- ferentiates the writing from necessary to explore a few aspects of the historical circumstances
‘old and established,’ while the Anglo- phonic character of the term that brought about what is today called postcolonialism: In my view,
gives it continuity and position with the old and established” (Bahri post- colonial theory deals with problems of migration, slavery,
64). In The Empire Writes Back: Theory and suppression, resistance, representation, difference, caste, class race,
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin gender, place, and responses to the influential master discourses of
reject imperial Europe such as history, literature, philosophy, and
the term “commonwealth” because, they argue, it rests “purely on linguistics, and the funda- mental experiences of speaking and
the fact of a shared history and the resulting political grouping, writing by which all these come into being. If Edward Said’s seminal
while New Literatures in English” is considered Eurocentric and
1978 work Orientalism and Bill
condescending towards the new in comparison with the old even if
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s 1989 The Empire Writes
it de-emphasizes the colonial past” (23). But if the term
Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature helped to usher in
commonwealth is considered inappropriate, what are the
what is today known as postcolonial studies, the Algerian and
advantages that postcolonial has or seems to have? In fact, why
Vietnam wars, the Black Power Movement in the United States of
has it gained currency? If the term “common- wealth” is mired in
America, the rise of the Women’s movement, and anti-war
controversy, the term postcolonial has not fared any better, even if
radicalism etc., set the
it now seems to have carved a niche for itself, espe- cially, although
FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE 8 War brought up, “strictly within the field of literary studies, the
question of how colony and empire had been represented in
social agenda (see, e.g., my “The African Inspiration of the Black western literatures” (63). In effect, there was a call for a re-reading
Arts Movement). Aijaz Ahmad states in his In Theory: Classes, of the established canon (and the canon wars erupted in the US
Nations, Lit- eratures that it was in the crucible of the Algerian and Canadian academe). Thus, the vocabulary of colonial racism in
Revolution and Vietnam War that “at least some of the intellectuals Shakespeare, Austen, Eliot, Shelley, Tennyson, Gide, and John
of the contempo- rary West learned to question their own place in Perse was studies exhaustively. In other words, the activism con-
the world, and hence to question the hegemonic closure of the tinued, but in different ways and in different modes. Ahmad puts it
texts upon which their epis- temologies were based” (58). It was thus, “after the movements of the 1960s were over–dominant strands
during that period of what is called have been mobilized to domesticate, in institutional ways, the very
loosely the generation of 68 that parallels could and were made forms of political dissent which those movements had sought to
be- tween the situations in Indo China an Algeria, the Nazi fore- ground, to displace an activist with a textual culture ? and to
occupations of the IInd World War, and the plight of blacks in reformu- late in a postmodernist direction questions which had
American urban ghet- toes. been associated with a broadly Marxist politics” (90).
The mobilization of millions of radicals (black, white, and I now attempt to present my definition of postcolonial literature,
women), Hispanic-Americans, and Mexican agricultural labour to locate it geographically if that is possible, and above all, to
workers was so massive that, over a decade or more, questions determine if the proposition that in many ways “the term
that had been ignored for a very long time, were put on the social ‘postcolonial’ is far more constrained than ‘commonwealth,’
agenda (Ahmad 60-61). Ahmad notes that it was during this period although the former may in theory (but frequently does not in
that, “colonialism and im- perialism were addressed (now), for the practice) encompass a wider field geo- graphically” (Symons
first time in the history of U.S literary criticism” (62). The Vietnam Report 16). In Once More with Feeling: What is
9 EDWARD O. AKO of colonialism while gender relations were utilized on a discursive
level to conceptu- alise the relationship between colonizers and
Postcolonialism? Bahri notes that “it is used not merely to colonized, how does one deal with the problem of gender in this
characterize that which succeeds the colonial, but also the chapter formulation? On the problem of gender and class, Ahmad reminds
of history fol- lowing the Second World War, whether or not such a us that, “nationalism in the pre- sent (century) has frequently
period accom- modates the still-colonized, the neo-colonized, or the suppressed questions of gender and class and has itself been
always colo- nized” (55). Alluding to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak frequently complicit with all kinds of obscurantisms and revanchist
and others, she notes that the present moment in these nations is positions” (38).
not “post”: the “co- lonial” in any genuine, or even cursory sense, as Other than gender, the categories of caste and class also have to
covert mercantile neo- colonialism, potent successor to modern be
colonialism, continues its virtually unchallenged march across the addressed, as these groups experienced colonialism in various
face of the earth, ensuring that the wretched will remain so, forms and in varying degrees. Ahmad notes that the Subaltern
colluding in, as they did before, but now also embracing, the Studies Group in India set out to formulate a corrective to “elitist
process of economic and cultural annexation, this time well nationalist Indian historiography in order to investigate afresh the
disguised under the name of modernization” (59). Unad- dressed in ways in which subal- tern classes were affected by and reacted
the “post” in postcolonialism is the problem of the hierar- chical towards the colonial encoun- ter” (84). What this means is that there
relationships that exist between ethnic groups in the settler colonies were differences between and within colonies which makes it
as well as the different economic and cultural contexts of, for impossible to present postcolonialism as a simple binarism. Arun
example, the Maori in New Zealand, the Aborigines in Australia, Mukherjee makes this point when she notes that “the
those between black and white South African writers (see Bahri postcolonialists’ generalisations about all ‘postcolonial peo- ple’
84). Of par- ticular concern too, is the problem of gender relations. suggest that Third Worldism and/or nationalism bind the people
Since men and women were affected differently by the experience
FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE 10 imperialism and colonialism, of more and more analyses of different
local situations, and of determined efforts to avoid the ism- ization
of these societies in conflictless brotherhood, that the inequalities of the adjective “postcolonial.” But if–as seems inevitable–
of caste and class do not exist in these societies and that their “postcolonial studies is the name that is going to hang over the
literary works are only about ‘resisting’ or ‘subverting’ the gate, then let us use the word in a way that includes America
colonizers’ dis- courses” (27). (Hulme 122- 23).
Peter Hulme, in pleading that America not be excluded from the In the light of the above selected observations, Stephen
category of postcolonial nations, argues that “postcolonial” should Slemon’s definition of postcolonial literature seems to me to be the
not be used as a merit badge; the adjective implies nothing about most com- prehensive as it embraces all the possible categories of
a post- colonial country’s behaviour. As a postcolonial nation, the subalterns and more. In his essay “Unsettling the Empire:
United States continued to colonize North America, completing the Resistance Theory for the Second World,” he notes that “the term
genocide of the Native population begun by the Spanish and post-colonial is an outgrowth of what formerly were
British. Or, to use a more recent example, “postcolonial” is not a ‘commonwealth’ literary studies”–a study which came into being
description that should be awarded to Indonesia when it became after “English studies had been liberalized to include ‘American’
independent from the Neth- erlands and taken away again when it and then an immediate national or regional litera- ture: Australian,
invaded East Timor. A country can be postcolonial and colonizing Canadian, West Indian” (105). He further notes that the term has “a
at the same time. […] As time passes, and we keep reading valency of subjectivity specifically within Third and Fourth World
Fanon, perhaps the similarities between American countries in cultures, and within black, and ethnic, and First Nation
their postcolonial phases and African and Asian countries in theirs constituencies dispersed within First World terrain” (105). To this
will come to seem at least as important as their dif- ferences. I am should be added the notion that the postcolonial is also “a cultural
in favour of more and more analyses of the different forms of
11 EDWARD O. AKO Appiah, Anthony Kwame. “Is the Post-in Postmodernism the Post-in
Postcolonialism?” Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 336-57.
marker of non-residency of a third-world intellectual cadre, as the Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Empire
inevitable underside of a fractured and ambivalent discourse of Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post Colonial Literatures.
coloni- alist power, as an oppositional form of “reading practice” London:
(Slemon 45). It is clear to me that the term “postcolonial” not only Routledge, 1989.
encompasses a wider field geographically in ways that the term Bahri, Deepika. “Once More with Feeling: What is Postcolonialism?”
“commonwealth” does not, since it deals with a re-reading of Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 26.1 (1995): 51-82.
English, French, and American canonical texts, the literatures of Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Post Colonial Literature. Oxford: Oxford
Africa, India and the West Indies etc., as well as the problems of UP, 1995.
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Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Mark-
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