Colonial Literature Research Articles

Curious About George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism by Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre

Reviewed by: Curious About George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism by Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre Tharini Viswanath (bio) Curious About George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism. By Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre. University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre's Curious About George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism examines how the circulation of Curious George materials—such as the book series, films, TV shows, and art exhibits—promotes negative US exceptionalism. The main focus of the monograph is to unpack the rhetorics of colonialism that circulate within US media by viewing the famous monkey, George, as a cultural icon. Accordingly, the chapters in this monograph take up "four of the mediated reincarnations of George—his rise to literacy success, his emergence in film, his placement in STEM education, and his Holocaust remembrance narratives—in order to demonstrate how contemporary postcolonial theory can offer a provocative re-reading of each discourse individually" (6). Schwartz-DuPre's introductory chapter is largely comprised of an extensive literature review. The chapter begins with a detailed overview of the emergence and circulation of Curious George books and media from the monkey's first appearance in Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys in 1939, to more recent productions including the 2006 Curious George blockbuster film, stuffed toys, collectables, entertainment media, and even giant Curious George parade balloons. Schwartz-DuPre argues [End Page 334] that these various productions make George more than just a character; he is a cultural icon who has the power to direct audiences. The next section provides readers with an overview of cultural icons, metaphors, and ciphers, and George's role as an icon who has immense capacity to uphold certain (American) cultural values. Next, the author provides an overview of postcolonial studies, positing that the US has become one of the greatest colonizing powers in the world. She further argues that "[i]ncluding the US in the rhetoric of postcoloniality is central to understanding that one can be both a victim of violence and a perpetuator of it" (36). In addition to situating the argument and offering definitions and explanations for terms in both literary and media studies, this chapter emphasizes that audiences don't need to have read a Curious George book to be influenced by the monkey's icon status, because the marketing and media surrounding the character is all pervasive. Chapter 2, "Curious George Explores the Diaspora," focuses primarily on postcolonial children's literary criticism to contend that "the Curious George book series, both past and present, fits neatly into the genre of colonial literature and accordingly benefits from a post-colonial re-reading" (46). More than half this chapter is devoted to the following: the intentionality of writers versus the critical rhetorical model, a brief overview of the importance of studying children's literature, and what postcolonial theory has to offer critical readings of children's literature. The literature review is lengthy and can seem a bit dry for those already familiar with the fields of children's literature and postcolonial theory. The literary analysis of the book series, however, redeems this chapter. Building on June Cummins's groundbreaking article "The Resisting Monkey," which demonstrates the parallels between the Curious George narrative and African American enslavement narratives, Schwartz-DuPre analyzes the visual metaphors in the book series to better understand George's diasporic identity and themes of assimilation. This section is most interesting as the author uses media in the form of letters—written by both adults and children—to the Reys to support her argument. The third chapter, "George Teaches Science," is excellent. Schwartz-DuPre analyzes various media depictions of George including Google's Nexus 7 ad (2012), blockbuster films, the popular television series spearheaded by PBS (airing for fifteen seasons from 2006-2022) that offers lessons in STEM education, and digital adventures available on devices such as the iPad or iPhone to demonstrate how, "[i] n George's narrative, a rhetoric of curiosity is upheld as a justification for the colonial quest" (109). Schwartz-DuPre reads the icon of George through the lens of postcolonial Science Technology Studies (STS) to make an important point: while George...

Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift as a Postcolonial Text: A Semiotic, Linguistic and Onomastic Analysis

This essay analyses Namwali Serpell’s seminal novel The Old Drift from a postcolonial perspective. In pursuing this goal, the essay utilises some aspects of postcolonial theory, semiotics, onomastics and linguistics. In particular, it looks at how Serpell reinterprets the history of colonial Zambia as projected and interpreted by colonial writers. The findings suggest that the novel epitomises a new drift in Zambian literature. The novel problematises the views of the imperial centre as exemplified in colonial literature and suggests that the colonisers used the gun, fraud, deception, language and names as some of the means of subjugating the local people and dispossessing them of their land. Therefore, the whole colonial enterprise was pursued for the benefit of the white settlers at the expense of the local people and was motivated by greed, selfishness and self-aggrandisement.

INDONESIAN ISLAMIC POETS' AMBIVALENCE UNDER THE DUTCH COLONIALISM IN THE 1930S

Islamic poets' poetical themes expressed their spiritual experience in Indonesian literature during the 1930s. These themes had opposed to the Islamic movement at the time, which was fighting against colonial ideology. The objectives of this study are to look at why poets advocated oppositional views in the face of colonial discourse, as well as the poets' position within the Dutch colonial system in the 1930s. Thematic notions of Indonesian literary poets in the 1930s, biographical histories of poets, and colonial discourses in Indonesia in the 1930s were among the data sources used in this study. The result revealed that the poets adopted a romantic aesthetic mimicking strategy to portray the idea of their spiritual experience. In most colonial literature, the mimicry between the colonizer and the colonized nation heightens the ambivalence of the Indonesian human personality. Because of ethical adjustments and unacceptable ideal categories, this ambiguous attitude develops. Syncretism emerges as a result of the clash of Western and Eastern civilizations. The author's aesthetic mimicry strategy has implications for the poet's ambivalence: on the one hand, the poet follows Balai Pustaka's aesthetic pattern with an understanding of individualism, while on the other hand, the poet ignites the concept of Islamic symbolic memory as part of the construction of Indonesian cultural identity, as in the Indonesian Cultural Polemics from 1930 to 1942.

Ying Xiong, Representing Empire: Japanese Colonial Literature in Taiwan and Manchuria

Ying Xiong, Representing Empire: Japanese Colonial Literature in Taiwan and Manchuria

The project of the Magazine Mensagem from Luanda and its premiere issue

After an introduction about literary journals of modernism and the differences between European and American ones and those from Africa, the article considers the Angolan periodical Mensagem, published in Luanda in 1951-1952 by the Associação dos Naturais de Angola. Drawing attention to some of the aspects of the journal that remain to be studied, the author adds some information about the difficulties of printing the second issue and reviews the non-consensual historical assessment that has been made of the journal. That said, he analyses the first issue in some detail, focusing on the project of the publication and the texts included therein. In conclusion, he recognizes the decisive role of Mensagem in the break with colonial literature and in the affirmation of an Angolan literature.

Space and Anxiety in the Colonial Novel: The Concepts of Sanctuary and Confinement in Burmese Days, Max Havelaar, Kim and Midnight’s Children

This article examined the notion of colonial anxiety through the concept of space in the colonial setting, particularly through the usage of signifiers found in colonial literature. The four case studies used are Burmese Days by George Orwell, Max Havelaar by Multatuli, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. These have been investigated in terms of the supposed sanctuary and feeling of unease that the private colonial spaces they present offer to their characters. In this way, it has been argued that private colonial spaces can be discussed in terms of both positive and negative signifiers for those using them. Highlighting the effect of colonial anxiety, this piece is primarily interested in the negative connotations and how the characters deal with these challenges. The emphasis on space focuses on individual locations and structures and how they impacted those inhabiting them, aiming to flag active signifiers of anxiety in terms of space, which connect to the wider debate into colonial anxiety at the literary level.

Queer Korea

Queer Korea

Digital Humanities and Colonial Literature: The Reinvention of Space

Digital Humanities and Colonial Literature: The Reinvention of Space

A human in the history of family: the crisis of identity in the novel “OST” (“Moroz’s Village”) by Ulas Samchuk

Colonial and postcolonial literature is essentially different from the literature of the colonizing states, in particular, this is manifested in the aspect of self-identification of characters. However, in this study, we are dealing with emigrant literature, which is a qualitatively different product that has absorbed the features of colonized and at the same time decolonized consciousness. This was reflected in the characters in the novels of émigré writers. The aim of the research is to analyze the peculiarities of the self-determination of characters in Ulas Samchuk’s novel “OST” (“Moroz’s Village”). The subject is the national identity of the characters, and its social conditionality. The study used such general scientific methods as analysis and synthesis, as well as the actual philological — aspect, image analysis, and historical and literary methods. The focus was on national identity, the connection between generations and memory, tradition, and its preservation or rejection. The relevance of the study is due to a certain shift in perspective, and therefore considered aspects that scientists who have studied this problem, considered in part or bypassed. This is, in particular, the connection between the family and social identity of the Moroz family, the problem of memory and forgetting or separating oneself from the family; traced dynamics of self-awareness: the position of the characters throughout the novel is constant or variable. The novelty of the study connected with a deeper immersion in the social context of the struggle of 1917–1919 in the Cherkasy region, depicted by a writer who could afford to write in an uncensored environment and describe events without adhering to party doctrine. As a result, we found that a person’s self-determination depends entirely on society, but the environment around him is more important in adulthood than the family circle but provided that he rejected or did not preserve family memory, and illustrated this on the material of the novel “OST” (“Moroz’s Village”). The prospect of further research is to apply the chosen approach to the works of various writers of the past and present, which will see the formation and development of identities of characters under the influence of socio-political situations.

Ecocritical Post Colonialism and Plantationocene: A Comparative Study of Sky Is My Father by Easterine Kire and Aranyak by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

Sky Is My Father is a historical novel by Easterine Kire who writes about the life of Naga indigenous people living amidst naturally rich mountain scape and forced recruitment of Naga tribesmen as bonded labourers by the British which tribal warriors of the Angami tribe try to resist against. Their fight is the collective fight of their community to save the land which they are deeply connected to from British invasion and subjugation. Britain’s colonization of the third world countries have always brought with it deforestation and disruption of habitat of indigenous people and native plant species. Similarly, Bibhutibhushan’s Aranyak is a novel on Satyacharan’s predicament in the pristine jungles of Bhagalpur where he is posted. His guilt comes from the job he is sent there to do which is to cut down the forest that is not only important to the native community there but to him as well. Capitalocene and Plantationocene as Donna Haraway defines is a contemporary epoch which has its roots in European Imperialism. This imperial legacy of rampant exploitation and destruction of environment which is singlehandedly a contribution of Britain’s colonial rule includes subjugation of indigenous people into forced labour along with destruction of forest spaces for resource extraction. What entails as a result is postcolonial trauma within native psyche. Post colonial literatures coming out of South Asia like Sky Is My Father and Aranyak essentially discusses Britain’s expansion, coercive policies and their after effect on the native people of India in relation to the ecological disruption around them.

Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603-1707 by Kirsten Sandrock

Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603-1707 by Kirsten Sandrock

Literature as a diagnosis and as a prognosis (creativity of the people of Maghreb in the XX-XXI centuries)

From the very beginning, still in the depths of the colonial era, and being a national response to French colonial literature, the poetry and fiction of Maghreb writers became a form of expression of the real life of their countries and a testimony of the social and political transformations that finally led to the social and political contradictions of the post-independence age. The evolution of literary genres has constantly induced writers not only to diagnose the protest forms of the national self-consciousness of the peoples of the Maghreb, but also to predict the social cataclysms and events to which the radicalization of Islam and the tread of political Islamism actually lead, The Maghreb literature of the XX-XXI centuries constantly testified to various processes of the surrounding reality. Sometimes these forms of expression of the state of public consciousness turned into the nostalgic conceptualization of the past, a past perceived as a kind of an Oasis of acquired Knowledge about the World. These oases also refracted mirages of a dialogue between the Maghreb peoples and the French, which actually did never take place because of the wars of liberation. However, in the Maghreb literature, these illusions sometimes were transformed into dystopias, which especially since the decade of the 1990s turned into premonitions of real threats of radical Islamism. In the global literary process, the work of the Maghreb writers - regardless of the countries of their residence in the West or in the East - reflects the searching for ideals of justice, remains an evidence of the era of transition from colonialism to post-colonialism, and a source of plausible forecasts for the future.

Récit colonial allemand sur la région du Cross-river au Cameroun : pluri-référentialité, collection des savoirs ethnologiques et relations interculturelles – le cas de Urwald-Dokumente: Vier Jahre unter den Crossflussnegern Kameruns d’Alfred Mansfeld

On the basis of the colonial narrative of Alfred Mansfeld, the present article shows how the narrator manages to convey his knowledge about Cameroon’s Cross-river region. German colonial literature played a very active part in the media campaign for the dissemination of information about the colonies. Therefore, the colonial space became an object of interest (as a source of knowledge) for colonial writers. The presented intercultural reading makes it possible to outline the different visions of cultural contact that existed between the colonizer and the natives.

Interview with Margarita Peraza-Rugeley

Margarita Peraza-Rugeley, artist and researcher, Doctor in Latin American colonial literature and university professor, is a creative talent who talks to us about her work and creative processes. Her passage through different cities and countries, especially during her formative years, have undoubtedly enriched her work. Among her references, she cites pottery, jewelry and the Mexican architect Luis Barragán Morfin. Below, we share the interview.

Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 by Su Yun Kim

Reviewed by: Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 by Su Yun Kim David Krolikoski Su Yun Kim. Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2020. Pp. 204. US$49.95 hardcover, US$32.99 ebook. Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 by Su Yun Kim explores the contentious relationship between Korea and Japan during the colonial period through the lens of intercultural romance. The monograph is primarily a work of literary scholarship that surveys representations of heterosexual relationships between Japanese and Koreans. Readers of colonial fiction will be familiar with this trope, but no English-language studies have tackled the subject in comparable depth. The choice to frame the book around intercultural romance enables Kim to reconsider canonical texts by the likes of Yi In-jik, Yi Kwang-su, Yom Sang-sŏb, and Yi Hyo-sŏk from a fresh perspective, illuminating strands of desire and apprehension related to assimilation through marriage. [End Page 565] As one might imagine, the topic of romance between a Japanese and Korean couple in the early twentieth century is a minefield. The legacy of colonial Korean literature itself has been stained by the history of collaboration. In South Korea, literature that was written in service of the Japanese empire has been labelled ch’inil, a term that innocuously means “intimacy with Japan” but bears the stigma of national betrayal. Decolonization efforts after liberation in 1945 were cut short in the chaos that resulted in the establishment of two separate states on the peninsula. Collaborators were not punished by the new South Korean government, a state that initially relied on largely the same police apparatus that was previously employed by Japan to maintain order. Due to this fraught history, collaboration remains a sensitive subject more than 75 years later. Kim explains that depictions of relationships between Japanese and Koreans in colonial literature have been read schematically through a nationalist framework: “Narratives that end with a successful marriage are considered to be ‘pro-Japanese,’ while those that depict an unsuccessful marriage are deemed ‘resistant-nationalist’” (12). Imperial Romance will be of interest to readers who want to learn more about collaboration and assimilation in the context of colonial Korea and the Japanese empire. In this respect, the monograph serves a useful companion piece to earlier English-language studies such as Intimate Empire by Nayoung Aimee Kwon, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea by Mark Caprio, Primitive Selves by E. Taylor Atkins, and Romance, Family, and Nation in Japanese Colonial Literature by Kimberly K. Kono, among others. Caprio and Atkins both explore the Japanese perspective, analyzing top-down policy in addition to cultural products. Kono’s study, like Kim’s book, analyzes fictional depictions of intercultural relationships, but her focus is on Japanese literature. Meanwhile, Kwon investigates collaboration in the context of Korean literature, arguing for a more nuanced approach to this sensitive issue that rejects the binary of collaboration versus resistance adopted by numerous earlier studies. She too mostly uses Japanese-language sources. In Imperial Romance, Kim combines readings of Korean fiction (and a handful of films) with historical research based on the analysis of periodicals and government-general documents. In comparison to previous studies, her monograph is tighter in focus, allowing for a more thorough investigation of a single issue throughout the colonial period. Romance (yŏnae) is certainly a subject ripe for further discussion. In Korea, the term gained currency in the early 1920s as an import from abroad. As Kwon Boduerae has argued, the emergence of romance coincided with the transformation of gender relations in Korean society. The notion that an individual could choose their own partner signalled the dawn of a new era for women in particular. No longer restricted to the household, some women took on new roles in society: working in bars, studying at foreign universities, etc. The so-called “new women” (sin yŏsŏng) became a symbol of change for progressives, but were also stigmatized by others for their embrace of Western fashion and cultural norms. These women could also fall in love on their own accord, prioritizing their...

Op de raaklijn tussen het historische en literaire. Het Vlaamse koloniale proza tot 1960 toegelicht door Luc Renders

Publications on Dutch literature about the Belgian Congo that have appeared to date are fragmentary and scattered across scholarly as well as cultural journals, collected volumes, and conference proceedings. There are practically no comprehensive studies on the history of Flemish colonial literature. Koloniseren om te beschaven. Het Nederlandstalige Congoproza van 1596 tot 1960, a recently released book by Luc Renders, aspires to redress this gap in research. Renders’ book can be considered the first as wide-ranging and detailed literary-historical exploration of pre-1960 colonial literature, which is presented against an extensive historical background. Crucially, Renders not only compiles the existing research on colonial writings in Dutch, but also contributes to it in an important way.

Book Review: Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603–1707 by Kirsten Sandrock

Book Review: <i>Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603–1707</i> by Kirsten Sandrock

“Se il partito più caritatevole non sarebbe di ‘chiudere’ l’Africa?” Stereotipi, esotismo e discorso coloniale nel resoconto africano di Emilio Cecchi

ABSTRACT The article aims to analyse Appunti per un periplo dell’Africa (1954), a travel book written by Emilio Cecchi that narrates the writer’s impressions and experiences in some Portuguese African colonies. The text is influenced by fascist propaganda, linked to imperialism, and shows the tendency to present African populations as the object of colonization. We consider the various stereotypes and images that Cecchi uses in the representation of the colonized people of the Portuguese territories in Africa, in particular in discourses focused on race, women, dance and the colonial system. It turns out that Cecchi’s work is fully inserted into the ideological context of the early twentieth century, reaffirming a colonial discourse that supports the primacy of the civilized European over the primitive African and giving into the fascination for the exotic, typical of colonial literature.

Geopolitics and Strategic Interests of the British in the Tribal Areas of the North West Frontier and its Administration

The tribal region of the North West Frontier (NWF) of the Indian Sub-continent was geo-politically an important region for the British India. It provided a direct link to Afghanistan. During the colonial history of India, Afghanistan was used as a buffer between the expanding Russian Empire and India. So the tribal areas of the NWF were to be used as a buffer between Afghanistan and India in case Russia penetrate in Afghanistan. Beside this, controlling the tribal areas also helped in protecting the adjacent settled districts from the plunder of the tribesmen. The tribal areas also provided safe passages to the British convoys. The paper highlights colonization and administration of the tribal areas of the NWF, and the geopolitical interests of the British colonial power in this area. The paper explores all this through the lens of the colonial literature produced during that time. &#x0D;

Sandrock, Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603–1707

Sandrock, <i>Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603–1707</i>