Evoking Milton: The More Effective Counter-Hegemonic Mode

Although satire is a common choice for counter-hegemonic writings, the evocation and allusion to Milton, as evidenced in both the works of Mahomet and De Quincy, is a much more creative and underhanded mode of subversion.

In my blog post, The Mode of Counter-Hegemony, I stated that the main and most important form of counter-hegemony that can be found in Sake Dean Mahomet’s travel narrative is satire.  However, in my midterm paper, I recanted this notion, and argued that Mahomet’s use of Milton actually does a better job of critiquing and subverting the West and British colonialism.  I argued that although Mahomet, using Milton’s description of Eden, reinforces the Edenic India imagery often found in English literature and paintings depicting the East, Mahomet’s use of said imagery does not invite the English to exploit his home country.  In fact, through the use of the phrase, “bowels of the earth enriched with … gold and diamonds,” language reserved for Satan and his creation of Pandaemonium (his hell-palace,) Mahomet discreetly calls the tempted Western individuals evil, sinful, fallen human beings who are no better than Satan himself.  In this, and other lines like it, it becomes quite obvious that the evocation of Milton is Mahomet’s choice method of subverting the Western power over the East.

De Quincy’s work also employs Milton, which, in a much different manner, acts as a mode of counter-hegemony.  I noted this evocation of the blind poet in my post, Paradise-Hell:  De Quincy and Milton.  As I stated in this post, De Quincy’s use of Milton makes no mention of India; rather, it compares the school he left to a Paradise and a hell. It is a place of torment and hope.  This strange dichotomy is repeated throughout De Quincy’s work as he takes readers through the up and down roller coaster of emotions that is his opium addiction.  In my post, I noted that this melancholic, manic-depressive state seems to have started before De Quincy’s opium addiction.  However, what I failed to note was that the text, and therefore the allusion to Milton, was written after his opium addiction.  Thus, it is entirely possible that the addiction has forced De Quincy’s memories into this bi-polar dichotomy.  The opium, being a product of India and the East, then acts as a counter-hegemonic force, manipulating the needs, desires, and emotions of a Western figure.  Therefore, in his evocation of Milton, De Quincy is inadvertently displaying a subversion of colonial hegemony, acting as an Eastern puppet.  It is interesting to note that, while Mahomet purposefully alludes to Paradise Lost as a mode of critiquing British colonialism and imperial conquest, De Quincy does not seem to have much of a say in the matter, creating a much more effective subversion.  It is a physical revolution rather than simply being a verbal one.

Counter-hegemony through Colonial Submission

When reviewing my posts from this half of the semester, I noticed a theme that was also somewhat present in my earlier posts: the relationship between hegemony, counterhegemony, and colonial relationships. When reviewing my posts about Nuleeni’s sati and Luxima’s hybridity, I realized that both of these characters commit counterhegemonic acts through submitting, in some sense, to colonial authority. This leads me to believe that counterhegemony is only possible through colonial submission.

Nuleeni’s sati is a counterhegemonic act because, although Derozio is submitting his work to colonial authority by imitating western forms and tropes, Nuleeni’s totally willing sati constitutes a direct rejection of European notions of modernity. Nuleeni does not fail to adapt to the modern world. Rather, her wholehearted acceptance of the Fakeer as her lover is a Romeo and Juliet type love story that resonates perhaps more with Western culture than Eastern. However, because she chooses a traditional death, she is simultaneously rejecting and embracing modernism.

This hybridity is physically reflected in the character of Luxima, who’s Hindo-Christian character causes her to be caught in limbo between the two cultures. However, because she accepts Christianity, she is able to defy the Christians in defense of Hilarion and lead an uprising. Both characters can be seen as a rallying cry for subjugated India, even though they, to a degree, succumb to Occidentalism. Without this hybridization though, they would not be be examples of colonial subversion because they would still be stuck in the black and white world of colonial stereotypes.

The Shift of Focus from Dominance to Mergence

When looking back to the beginning of the semester, it is interesting to see how the topic of our class discussions has changed. The main umbrella from which we branched off of was Orientalism, and the idea of dominance. The introduction of Orientalism was brought on to us kind of quickly, as we were introduced to the works of Sir William Jones, Thomas Macaulay, Raja Rammohan Ray, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As we observed these works, we began to shape a definition of Orientalism (with the help of Edward Said’s Orientalism) and the romanticization of what was perceived as the “other” culture, although each author had his own personal opinions. However, as we moved from plays to fictional accounts to other kinds of works, the ideas surrounding the texts became more ambiguous. No longer were we discussing the dominance of the West on the East for a fact, nor were we attempting to reveal what the author actually stood for – the focus of our discussions shifted from this idea of dominance to the possibility of cross-cultural exchange, and the harmony that might have come about from it.

Studying the texts in terms of the picturesque simmered down, but still existed, as we moved into the second half of the semester. In The Missionary, for example, we were able to analyze the picturesque scenes in a neutral context – we saw Hilarion, although representative of the West, wanting to cross that boundary, while still adhering to his own values. His attempt to exert dominance over Luxima (and by extension, her people) is not one-sided because of his own unconscious integration. On the other hand, her devotion to him symbolizes the integration from the other way. As discussed in class, her second sati experience could be interpreted as her own mergence into his culture, or, at least, a willingness to let down her guard (which, in the bigger picture, could be the decided divide between the Western and Eastern societies). In our discussion of De Quincey, the question about his loyalty to his national identity has also come up. We did a close reading of his introductory monologue, and words like “ambivalence” and “contradiction” came up – an indication that he himself was hesitant when it came to the issue of a dominant empire (which, as we pointed out in class, was not even explicitly stated). His ambivalence, though probably with less depiction of a “harmony” than was in The Missionary, still displayed the possibility of an mergence of cultures – or, if that is too strong a claim, than at least no more dominance of any one culture over the other.

 

The Fluidity of Cultural Artifacts

The latter half of the course emphasized a new mode of both cultural hegemony and subversion through process in which an artifact vacillates between its status as a symbol or sign depending on who claims the idea. Systems of cultural hegemony and subversion can only coexist through the fluidity and transmutability that artifacts possess in the colonial-colonized framework. One of the most salient example of such a cultural artifact, which emerges as part of the symbol-sign dichotomy is the sati ritual, an Indian tradition in which a woman commits self-immolation following her husband’s death. The sati ritual recurs in various texts though the intention and implication of the act varies based on the setting and context in which it is performed. The sati ritual cannot be viewed as an inert, cultural artifact as its function in the works, The Missionary and The Fakeer of Jungheera, create varying implications for the rite. In the former, Luxima attempts to enact the ritual as a means by which to validate her relationship with Hilarion, the Western missionary. The context in which she engages with the ritual, however, creates a framework, which upholds the authority imposed by the colonizer, the West, on the colonized, the East, as Hilarion swiftly assumes the role of savior. In this instance the ritual functions as a sign that perpetuates the cultural hegemony imposed on India by Europe through the Luxima’s inability to fully complete the ritual coupled with her death at the hands of an agent of the West, one of the Inquisition officers. The Fakeer of Jungheera, by contrast, restructures the sati ritual as a symbol of cultural celebration and subversion. Nuleeni explicitly decides to enact the ritual as a signifier of cultural autonomy. The fact that Nuleeni overtly chooses to commit the sati ritual for the Fakeer but not her first husband intensifies her assertion of agency in the manner. Nuleeni can be read as the physical embodiment of India whose essence perseveres beyond the death of her corporeal form. Furthermore, Nuleeni’s interreligious relationship with the Fakeer challenges the West’s notions of India as a violent region, especially concerning conflict among the different religious groups, because she is a Hindu and the Fakeer is a Muslim. Ultimately, cultural artifacts must be recognized as malleable entities capable of being read, modified, and understood in various forms in order to encourage a nuanced understanding of colonized-colonial relations.

 

Representations of the Indian Subcontinent in a Variety of Texts Echo Similar Allusions to Sublimity

       Throughout this semester, I have been particularly interested in the Indian sublime and its relevance to Homi Bhahbha’s theories in ’Signs Taken For Wonders’. In many texts we’ve read, key emblems or characters operate as signifiers for the Indian sublime, illustrated visually by the Daniell paintings we studied thoroughly both in class and in blog discussions. For example, in Owenson’s The Missionary, Luxima embodies the Indian sublime, and subverts Hilarion’s implied colonial violence, culminating in a hybrid moment of the two characters and their representations.

         Similarly, in De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, the language employed in describing the effects of opium mirrors the language he uses to describe the Indian subcontinent as a whole. Thus, despite De Quincey’s eurocentric view of opium, his descriptions undergo a series of displacements that represent the Indian sublime. Opium, in this text, thus becomes displaced from symbol to sign, as De Quincey re-contextualizes the substance through his perspective as an Englishman living in Europe. His categorization of opium in terms of the Indian sublime revalue its presence in a distantly Indian landscape. Notably, several passages discuss opium experiences using this language of the sublime: “opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive: and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health” (91). Syntactically, this passage bears resemblance to descriptions of the Indian sublime elsewhere in the text. The use words like ‘primeval’ and ‘antediluvian’ indicate the ancient and powerful force of both the substance and the Indian landscape. The “serenity” he cites alludes back to sublime characteristic of stasis and stability; Daniell’s paintings imply these sublime features by depicting ancient temples and ragged natural landscapes, with-standing the temporarily of human intervention.

         De Quincey’s representations of the Indian subcontinent itself share these characteristic: “Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the Euphrates” (124). The diction here relays the same venerable and aged qualities of the opium high he describes earlier in the text, via words like ‘immemorial’ and ‘institutions’.  Additionally, the ‘mystic sublimity’ echoes a certain awe and tension that afflicts the discourse of power between the developed West and ‘barbarous’ East. He goes as far as to say the Englishmen ‘shudder’ in fear at traditional Indian customs and systems.

          This apprehension on the part of the Englishmen brings to mind key passages in Bhabha’s ‘Signs Taken For Wonders’: “Hybridity is the name of this displacement of value from symbol to sign that causes the dominant discourse to split along the axis of its power to be representative, authoritative. Hybridity represents that ambivalent turn of the discriminated subject into the terrifying, exorbitant questioning of the images and presence of authority” (162). The use of opium of a sign reflects a hybridity of De Quincey’s eurocentric experiences with the substance, and the Indian sublime he calls upon to describe it. According to Bhabha’s assertions, De Quincey’s implied orientalist behavior subverts itself through his complex use of opium as a sign, much like Luxima’s instability as a sign undermines Hilarion’s colonial missionary agenda.

How We Modernize and Orientalize: Ambiguity

Ambiguity. How many times have we used that word in class? How many times have I typed it in a blog post? Countless. So many of the works we’ve studied throughout this course employ the ambiguous to draw in–and perhaps, frustrate–the reader. We see conflicting notions in the words of De Quincy and antagonistic perceptions of the East from Mohamet. And now, at the end of the course, as I struggle to summarize all of my thoughts from this semester into a single blog post, I feel it. I see it. Ambiguity.

Although many of the writers we’ve studied in this class have been absolutely transparent in their beliefs about women and the Orient, a whole semester’s worth of text has created a haze over the ideas I once thought so evident and clear. I would like to draw your attention to a few main events from the texts we’ve examined and ask you if you, too, can relate to the lack of clarity I now experience.

We’ve established that the term “modern” as we know it was derived from a Western framework. When we describe the Orient as “behind” or “retrograde,” we have built these perceptions off of our own knowledge of the working West–a society that appears to be more advanced but, in reality, might be just as backwards. In regards to the way each culture treats women, Mohamet summarized the idea perfectly: in Europe at this time, women are either (to quote Fitzgerald,) “beautiful little fools,” unable to live after death has taken their husband or, on the flip side, prostitutes. Derozio’s Luxima, though, is headstrong and resistant. Even Owenson, the most revolutionary European woman we’ve studied in this course, had to succumb to the struggle of gender politics just to get her book published. So few European women of this time period were described as brave or revolutionary. Yet the West is “modern,” and the East “backwards”? We built our yardstick to measure moderness off of a culture that, it turns out, wasn’t as forward thinking as they–or we, as the readers–thought. Ambiguity.

But, to complicate the issue, I remember a train of thought I had when thinking about Luxima’s satis. Her first sati proved her defiance to die for a man that she did not love, marking her bravery. But, in turn, it caused her people to revolt against the English. While this could be seen as an act of defiance, it also set the Indians up for fighting a losing battle and caused them to realize their potential as the “savages” Mohamet hinted they could be. Was this an act of uprising or an accidental setback for her people? Ambiguity.

Consider the second, successful sati. Although Luxima and the Fakeer’s relationship was less than approved or orthodox, she would rather parish in his death and love him in another life than be without him. “How brave!,” we praised her. We applauded Luxima’s autonomy in writing her own destiny rather than appease the cultural norm. But doesn’t this story sound vaguely familiar? What Western story about two “star-crossed lovers” who die for one another do we all know so well? And when I think about my experience with Juliet, we never view her as brave or revolutionary. We see her as naive. Why is it that, when we “un-orientalize” a tale, we view it completely differently?

Ambiguity.

 

Definitions

Throughout the semester, our discussions have covered Orientalism, sublimity, the picturesque, colonial platforms, social reform, and a multitude of other issues. These have all inadvertently centered on the issue of definition, which has manifested itself in disparate forms. I have found myself asking many questions: What is dominance? Is physical assertiveness more powerful than intellectual or cultural influences? How does the act of moving beyond one’s boundaries allow a critical self-reflection and redefinition? Who defines progression, and how does this goal towards betterment manifest itself in the West’s approach to the East and vice versa?

The linguistic constructs that we reflect upon and converse through are much of what color the relationship between (and perceptions of) the East and the West. Our discussions began with a certain frame in place, with Orientalism painting the West as the dominant power, the imperial force, the Empire. We worked under this assumption and consequently based our theorizations on a hierarchy. But we have shifted from this approach. Unlike many of the prior texts (i.e, Inchbald’s The Mogul Tale andHamilton’s Letters of a Hindoo Rajah,), which have circled either around using the Eastern platform as a means of reflection or have struggled with the issues of domination in the East, the texts we have studied more recently (i.e., Owenson’s The Missionary and The Fakheer of Jungheera) show us a significant hybridity and a consequent questioning of perceived societal order.  We have seen a progression from complete Western imperial power to cross-cultural exchange to even ways in which the East can assert power over the West (DeQuincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater). These recognitions have been aided by critical redefinition, not only of progression and power, but also of the ways in which we construct outlines to discuss such realms.

Reconsidering our criteria alters the way in which we view the interaction between the East and the West as well as how we view the societies themselves. The West, as suggested by DeQuincey, is not free from influences of its colonies, just as the East is not free from the West. In this sense, reconsidering definitions of power and modernity opens up a plethora of new questions surrounding British colonialism of India (and other areas in the world) and allows us to see the true complexities of these relationships.  Who is more affected by imperialism–the supposed “dominator” or the supposed “subservient”? How does this role assignment alter the initial perceptions of who takes on these roles? Again, who defines modernity and progression? How could reconsidering these definitions affect the West’s approach to the East (and vice versa)?

 

Englishness – Tainted, Progressed, Expanded?

The theme running through my last several posts is inherently difficult to define, being based in ambivalence and the nuance of contradiction, repetition, and influence. I have sought to move past earlier dichotomous notions of orientalism and progress toward a more complicated, and appropriate for the time, idea that the East and its interaction with the West had profound implications for both parties, and that the interactions continuously changed the relationship itself. In my last blog summary, I asked the question of historical tautology, whether our understanding of how the relationship developed was clouded by our knowledge of what eventually happened. I craved a more precise understanding of whichever period the writings came from.

 

Our discussion on Homi Bhabha and ambivalence has provided an excellent context for exactly that understanding, through either our discussions of Sati (as was the theme of my paper) or our blog posts about language and theory. And while we have focused largely on India, and the Orient more broadly, I am interested here at the waning hour of the course in Englishness, particularly how Englishness changes with increasing Eastern exposure and influence.

 

De Quincey is a wonderful vehicle for this discourse, given his attention to virtue and vice, dignity, national identity, and his particular fixation with the drug that was so Indian to begin with. He tries to juggle this idea of himself as an Englishman, like any other, whose Opium addiction produced English, or at least Western, dreams, English embarrassments, and an English text. What is missing, largely, is acknowledgement of the Oriental genesis of all of this, and the Indian-English consequence of its use. It is no coincidence that he takes Milton’s Paradise Lost as one of his main allusions, trying to claim as English something that happened, certainly given the existence of the story itself, in the Middle East.

 

One path a student could take here is that of Sir William Jones, and the theorization of a common Indo European ancestor language to birth the two separate societies themselves, or, like in my previous blog summary, seek to understand in the moment how the influence confused the identity of Englishness. Certainly there was a rising tide of imperialistic influence around the world, but how did the agenda change the outlooks and identities of individual Englishmen? De Quincey breaks from the English norm in even publishing his work, but maintains throughout a strict devotion to Anglicanism and Englishness. Soundness of his convictions depends on the changing nature of Englishness, especially as it explores virtue and vice.

 

I think that the more English writers interacted with the East, e.g. Kubla Khan and the “pleasure dome,” the more typical Eastern vices became English fantasies, the more Eastern traditions became English curiosities, and the more intertwined the two identities became. I hope to focus on the idea of Englishness in my term paper.

Tackling the Duality of Orientalist Text with Bhabha’s Repetition/Displacement Paradigm

Homi Bhabha’s potent theoretical findings in “Signs Taken for Wonders” have continued to materialize well into the final literary works of the semester, and while I continue to grapple with the ambiguity imbued in the works of Owenson, Derozio, and De Quincy, I find myself returning to Bhabha’s notions of repetition and displacement as a means of tackling each work’s respective complexity. Inherent in the similarly ambiguous nature of the three distinct pieces of literature is an explicit repetition of anticipated language and thematic qualities working simultaneously with insidious elements that foster displacement of what had been anticipated, ultimately producing something antithetical to what is explicitly articulated.

In the case of The Missionary, while Owenson recreates a near-traditional Sati scene — death by fire, a sacrificial female, willingly executing herself to express devotion and wifely protection for her deceased partner — the historically resonant scene is ultimately rewritten to be a female-centered tradition. Luxima wields palpable agency: chanting the Gayatra and impulsively choosing to spring upon the pyre, Luxima does not allow the flames to engulf her (made most evident by her temporary survival), but rather is the fiery spectacle herself, capable of inciting a “second-coming” in the form of a substantial Hindu revolt. Revolution is born out of the tropes of tradition, reflecting the symbiotic relationship between Bhabha’s repetition and displacement. In yet another distorted representation of a Sati in The Fakeer of Jungaheera, Derozio’s employment of repetition and replacement functions as a mirror image to Owenson: although embracing a deviation from the the Sati norm as unmarried lovers, Nuleeni and the Fakeer are undermined by Derozio’s language. With arms “ivying” around a strong form, Derozio writes Nuleeni and Fakeer’s posthumous position in the language of a traditional trope of marriage: the weaker ivy grows upon and clings to a stronger structure, a clear representation of a wife relying on the strength of her husband. Nuleeni, quite literally, clings to antiquated representations of marital love, and therefore, displaces the romantic, revolutionary spirit of their forbidden love.

Departing from the Sati pyre, De Quincy’s strained relationship with opium as told in the Confessions joins Derozio and Owenson in a strong commitment to Bhabha’s paradigm, made particularly evident in his prefatory notes addressed to the reader. Hurdling over convoluted syntax, the reader is met with counterintuitive representations of collegiate education: De Quincy repeats the tropes of educational and social norms, yet with graduation caps “pressing the temples” and library books infested with morbid moths and worms, he only feigns nostalgia for a sober moment in his life. Adulterated language and difficult syntax displaces the confessionary nature of his memoir and instead, rewrites it as an expression of pride.

And now for my senior moment: I cannot believe this is my last undergraduate blog post! Thank you everyone, and thank you Professor Garcia, for making my last semester so memorable. You all are sublime!

Cross-Cultural Exchange: The Crux of Orientalism

In reading the class blog posts from the beginning of the semester, I am taken by a striking shift in our class focus.  Initially, we seemed to be caught up in the idea of defining Orientalism and applying the term to various texts, making sure to draw attention to Western domination over and control of the East.  Since the first blog summary, though, our focus has altered slightly; more attention has been given to the significant concept of cross-cultural exchange between the East and West.  Though present in almost every piece of literature we’ve addressed, the idea is most evident in Owenson’s “The Missionary” and Derozio’s “The Fakeer of Jungheera,” where it is presented via the metaphor of a romantic relationship.  The fact that cross-cultural exchange entered the class discussion about halfway through suggests that a deep look beyond the surface of Orientalism is both necessary and beneficial, and that it may reveal more significant truths than Orientalism itself.

In “The Missionary,” Hilarion and Luxima are clear and effective representations of West and East, respectively.  Cross-cultural exchange comes into play as the two become enamored with each other and cautiously test the waters of their relationship.  In fact, the entire novel constitutes an intermingling between the two.  Their relationship is mutually beneficial, yet simultaneously destructive – a perfect reflection of the so-called “Orient” and “Occident.”  The missionary and the princess experience true love and teach each other much about their respective cultures and religions, but in the end fail to escape fate and achieve harmony.  Next, Derozio’s “The Fakeer of Jungheera” presents a similar relationship – Nuleeni represents the East and her lover represents the West.  With lofty language and colorful, musical fragments, the epic poem romanticizes the fated relationship.  As with Hilarion and Luxima, this association is forbidden and entails a violation of the woman’s Hindu religion – a dark cloud hangs over the exchange.  As in “The Missionary,” the relationship here ends in destruction.  Importantly, this recurring outcome suggests that Romantic writers view cross-cultural exchange as something which is powerful – even beautiful – yet fated to end in disharmony, perhaps because of the force with which the exchange is carried out.