Session Six
Søren Hattesen Balle
English
Department of Culture and Identity

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Introduction: the summary assignment for today and next time
Introduction: today’s session
Presentation:
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 cultural studies, postcolonial studies, postcolonialism magic realism
Class room discussion:
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Salman Rushdie, ”The Prophet’s Hair” (1981) the thematic functions of postcolonial and magic realist elements in Rushdie’s story

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 the literary text vs. the cultural text high literature vs. products of popular culture, mass culture, media culture, consumer culture, minority culture autonomous aesthtic whole vs. ’signifying practices’ (of modern culture): meaning, identity, representation, and agency complexity, beauty, insight, universality, value vs. the functioning of cultural productions/the construction of cultural identities

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 the literary text studied as a cultural ’signifying practice’ (just like any other cultural object) the literary text expresses or represents culture vs. the literary text creates or constructs culture culture is the source or cause of literary representations
(foreground < background) vs. culture is the effect of literary representations (foreground > background) the literary text has an ideological or politcal funtion the literary text as oppressive or subversive (of oppressive cultural forms)?
the relevance for postcolonial literatures: English language and literature as expressions of colonialism

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Former colonies are independent and free of colonial rule (postcolonial)
However, former colonies remain dependent politically, economically, socially, ideologically, linguistically, aesthetically, etc. (neo-colonial)
Thus, former colonies are hybrids, mongrels, and in-betweens (post-colonial)

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Ngugi
Return to ’harmony’ by transcending colonial alienation and embracing your original culture and language (Gikuyu)
”Language carries culture …(2538)

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John Agard: embracing the languages of the colonised (West Indian Creole, British Guiana) and the coloniser (the Queen’s English).
Writing broken English is an attempt at breaking English linguistically, aesthetically, politically, etc…)

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John Agard, ”Listen Mr Oxford don” (1985) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywy-
Tthdg7w

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Rushdie: Embracing English as a global language (”The English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago”(2541)), but chutnifying it, spicing it up according to how it is used.

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‘My’ India has always been based on ideas of multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity: ideas to which the ideologies of the communalists are diametrically opposed. To my mind the defining image of India is the crowd, and a crowd is by its very nature superabundant, heterogeneous, many things at once. (2852)

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Multiplicity vs. uniformity
Pluralism vs. essentialism, nationalism
Hybridity vs. purity
Heterogeneity vs. homogeneity

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Creole identity
A story about colonialism
Images of colonialism

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”These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as materials derived from myth and fairy tales” (Abrams)

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Is "The Prophet's Hair" a work of magic realism or postcolonialism or both?
Elements of realism, of magic? Why and how are they used?
Elements of postcolonialism: multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity. Why and how are they used?