Mirror, mantra
Tabish KHAIR
The canonisation of writers like Rushdie and Naipaul in the West
enables it to think of itself as radical without really being
inconvenienced. The real Other remains outside its gaze...
Here is the first line of a long mantra:
naipaulrushdiezadiekureishimonica... Each bead of this mantra is
significant and makes some sense. Some beads might even contain
powerful, perhaps even immortal, magic. But this interminable mantra, as
a w hole, is nothing but mumbo-jumbo mumbled by a West that wants to be
radical without feeling seriously inconvenienced.
After a very short period of looking around, the West has
increasingly turned its gaze onto itself in recent years. There it
stands in front of gilded mirrors, gazing at itself in admiration. What
it sees is no longer the whiteness it saw in the far past. What it sees
now is multi-hued, variously dressed, many voiced. For, the Western
self, particularly in literary and cultural circles, has long accepted
the fact of being creolised. Even the opponents of multiculturalism
cannot see themselves (thank god for small mercies) as snow white. When
the West gazes into its mirrors, it sees its own new post-war
multicultural self. It sees Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Hari Kunzru,
Zadie Smith. And it likes to pretend that it is seeing the Other.
Salman Rushdie |
Tabish Khair |
How convenient to look at an Other who speaks one's own language! No,
I am not accusing Rushdie and Naipaul of bland mimicry or of consciously
catering to Western opinions. These, and many others like them, are
excellent writers, and people of much independence of thought and
posture. One or two of them might even be great writers. And yet, they
belong to a tradition that is less uncomfortable for the cultured
Western reader and critic to face up to. If they present difference,
they present just a different aspect of the West.
Beyond language
Choice of language, of course, is one hammer used to strike at such
authors. I refuse to take up that hammer. What if they write in English
or French? Only a dishonest critic would use that forced/free choice to
dismiss the work of a writer, for - as Sujata Bhatt puts it in one of
her poems - what language has not been the language of the oppressor?
And, by the same token, what language cannot be used to resist, at least
to a degree, the commands of the oppressor? Yet, while I grant them
their languages and I even grant them greatness in those languages, I
repeat my observation: they are a reflection of the new post-war
multi-cultural West. They are the mirror images that make the liberal
West feel comfortable with itself, because it feels that in gazing on
them (and their works) it is reading and championing the Other.
They are not the Other. They are not even different, really. They are
the West today.
They are the West in two very obvious ways. Many of them, like Hari
Kunzru, Hanif Kureishi or Zadie Smith, were born or brought up from
childhood in the West. To read them as Indian or Caribbean writers is to
do them an injustice. They should be read - as Hari Kunzru and some
others have rightly indicated - as belonging to the nation in which they
grew up.
Secondly, even postcolonial writers who went Westward Ho! at a
relatively mature age rode very different wagons. Some were brought
there and put to school in England, USA or France by rich parents. Some
won prestigious scholarships: their departures were caused not by
unemployment or poverty but by recognition granted them by the colonial
or ex-colonial centre. These are not immigrants who come as cheap labour
and survive cheaply.
They are not even like immigrants - and there are (less visible)
African, Indian or Caribbean writers who belong to this category (as do
I) - who move to the West for personal reasons, and then struggle up the
professional chain, selling newspapers, washing dishes, painting houses
until they have a degree (or a new degree) that enables them to enter
(or re-enter) the professional middle classes.
But, again, even these are not alike: to call V.S. Naipaul and Aimé
Césaire Caribbean writers in the same breath is to conflate two very
different positions. I am not talking of politics or colour or claim, or
lack of it.
I am talking of something else. Both Naipaul and Césaire were plucked
out of the colonies by the paternal colonial hand of scholarships and
brought to elite educational institutions in England and France
respectively. Later on, Césaire decided to return to Martinique and
reside there; Naipaul - in both his writing and his choice of residence
- repudiated the Caribbean.
The repudiation may or may not be criticised; it was above all a
personal choice. But surely, it should be noted, just as the choice of a
language should not be criticised, but surely it has to be noted. An
Indian who writes in English does not abandon India per se, but she does
occupy a position of authorship that is significantly different from an
Indian who writes in Hindi or Tamil.
But unfortunately even an Indian who writes about India in English is
not likely to be made visible by agents, clubs and book chains in the
West: she has to write about India in certain approved ways, ways that
very often depend on a celebration of the "multicultural" West either as
actual presence or enabling possibility.
West as global
If the West likes to look into gilded mirrors and admire itself in
the guise of novels about multi-cultural London, or poems written in
chapatti English (or is it paratha, for a fair bit of butter seems to
have been applied?), or stories about the Raj and its oof-springs, the
West also likes to look into gilded mirrors and admire itself in the
guise of "global" literature. Perhaps these are the same mirrors.
Perhaps they are different. Who knows? For, their existence has not been
faced up to.
Let us talk about the mirror image of 'global' literature. Perhaps
the mantra I quoted above is incorrect. Perhaps "rushdienaipaul" is a
segment from another mantra, the mantra of "global" literature. For,
this is a strange mirror image. It appears in the colour of European
languages. A Gayatri Spivak might write a piece on a Mahasweta Devi, but
that hardly makes a dent. Mostly, it is authors writing in English or
French who are stood up in the "global" halls of fame. Come to think of
it, authors who repudiate their homelands and seek the shelter of the
West - from Naipaul to Coetzee - are more likely to be seen as "global"
than authors who stay in their homelands, like Ngugi Wa'Thiongo and
Shashi Deshpande, or who, like Césaire, return home from the West.
Literary trends, such as magical realism, which are fashionable in
the West are used to define, collate and celebrate this "global"
literature, even within the already narrow circumference of legitimating
European languages. African or Asian novelists who experiment with
structure or connect to the modernist tradition are not likely to be
promoted. Instead, preference is given to "story-telling", to "magical
realism" etc. It does cross my mind that, perhaps, it is in writing
today as it has been in music and sculpture for centuries: just as the
coloured man can play, but not compose, the coloured woman is allowed to
tell "stories", but not write a novel. Have we come such a long way
after all, baby?
Invisible literatures
There are other "global" literatures, but they are not visible today.
Some of them are even in English or French or Spanish. Some of them are
even by authors settled or born in the West. But gilded mirrors are not
likely to reflect them. Pass me that bloody bawlty dish, will you?
- The Hindu |