The garden trampled: or the liquidation of African culture in V.S. Naipaul's 'A Bend in the River.'([De]Colonizing Reading/[Dis]Covering the Other)

The garden trampled: or the liquidation of African culture in V.S. Naipaul's 'A Bend in the River.'([De]Colonizing Reading/[Dis]Covering the Other) "Works of art can fully embody the promesse du bonheur only whenthey have been uprooted from their native soil and have set out alongthe path to their own destruction. Proust recognized this. Thisprocedure which today relegates every work of art to the museum, evenPicasso's most recent sculpture, is irreversible. It is not solelyreprehensible rep��re��hen��si��ble?adj.Deserving rebuke or censure; blameworthy. See Synonyms at blameworthy.[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin repreh , however, for it presages a situation in which art, havingcompleted its estrangement from human ends, returns to life."Adorno, Prisms"In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the endyou are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to livenow."Indar in Naipaul's A Bend in the RiverINTRODUCTIONThe extent of Joseph Conrad's impact on both Chinua Achebe andV.S. Naipaul has been copiously documented by both literary critics andscholars, and even by the authors themselves in numerous occasionalwritings, interviews, and literary essays.(1) But if Achebe'sThings Fall Apart contests and negates Conrad's previous negationand distortion of Africa and Africans in Heart of Darkness Heart of Darknessadventure tale of journey into heart of the Belgian Congo and into depths of man’s heart. [Br. Lit.: Heart of Darkness, Magill III, 447–449]See : Journey ,Naipaul's more recent A Bend in the River not only reaffirmsConrad's more pessimistic - if not overtly racialist - perspectiveon Africans and their history, it also serves as the historical anddeterminate DETERMINATE. That which is ascertained; what is particularly designated; as, if I sell you my horse Napoleon, the article sold is here determined. This is very different from a contract by which I would have sold you a horse, without a particular designation of any horse. 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 947, 950. negation of Achebe's now widely influential (but notconclusive) negation of Conrad's novel. Like the history of thenovel in Europe then (or anywhere, for that matter), the history of thenovel in Africa involves a basic process of determinate negation inwhich one literary work often criticizes and complicates another. Inother words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , as competing ideologemes or discursive formations that seek(however unsuccessfully) to resolve the contradictions and crises ofmaterial necessity within their very formal or generic structures,novels such as Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Naipaul's A Bendin the River tend to demonstrate not the appropriateness or finality ofany one structural variant or "cultural dominant" over another(Achebe's politically engaged realism versus, say, Naipaul'scynical or epic modernism),(2) rather they tend to demonstrate thebewildering be��wil��der?tr.v. be��wil��dered, be��wil��der��ing, be��wil��ders1. To confuse or befuddle, especially with numerous conflicting situations, objects, or statements. See Synonyms at puzzle.2. complexity of recent history itself within the postcolonialAfrican context.For this reason among others, the contemporary caricature of Naipaulas postcolonial "mandarin" (i.e., pariah) does not really dojustice to his complexity and importance as a writer of the Third World,especially in Rob Nixon's London Calling: V.S. Naipaul,Post-colonial Mandarin. Many of the remarks that follow are thereforeintended as a dialogical response to critics like Nixon (but also PeterNazareth, Edward Said Edward Wadie Sa?d, Arabic: إدوارد وديع سعيد, , and others), who see only bad faith, cynicism,and "hatchet-jobbing" in the writings of Naipaul. To contestthe by-now familiar stigmatization stigmatization/stig��ma��ti��za��tion/ (stig?mah-ti-za��shun)1. the developing of or being identified as possessing one or more stigmata.2. the act or process of negatively labelling or characterizing another. of Naipaul as postcolonial mandarin,I will seek instead to excavate the historical truth-content withinNaipaul's controversial novel A Bend in the River, therebydialectically preserving it as a crippled monad monad:see Bruno, Giordano; Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron von. (theory, functional programming) monad - /mo'nad/ A technique from category theory which has been adopted as a way of dealing with state in functional programming languages in such a of historical truth.(3)More specifically, I will argue that in diametrical opposition Noun 1. diametrical opposition - the relation of opposition along a diameterantipodal, antipodal oppositionopposition - a direction opposite to another toAchebe's appropriation of traditional Igbo folk-culture in ThingsFall Apart, Naipaul's A Bend in the River proposes a whollydifferent but no less significant situational response to thepredicament of modern African history and culture: whereas Achebeadvocates the reinvestment of semantic richness into the traditionalcultures of Africa's past, adopting a hermeneutic her��me��neu��tic? also her��me��neu��ti��caladj.Interpretive; explanatory.[Greek herm position thatavoids European and essentializing forms of ethnocentrism ethnocentrism,the feeling that one's group has a mode of living, values, and patterns of adaptation that are superior to those of other groups. It is coupled with a generalized contempt for members of other groups. ,(4) Naipaulparadoxically seeks the regeneration of African society through thesystematic destruction or liquidation of its traditional cultures, astrategy that is a hallmark of European modernist aesthetics.(5) Thoughproblematic at best, Naipaul's suggestion that Africans today mustdeliberately "trample" upon the gardens of their past,eschewing all that is not absolutely modern, is not merely reactionary;it also belies Naipaul's utopian hope for the future redemption ofAfrican culture and history.NAIPAUL AS "DISINTERESTED" TRUTH-SEEKERIn the published results of a round table discussion between EdwardSaid, Conor Cruise O'Brien Conor Cruise O'Brien (Irish: Conchubhar Cr��s �� Briain(known affectionately as 'The Cruiser'); born 3 November, 1917) is an Irish politician, writer and academic. , and John Lukacs This article is about the historian. For the anthropologist see John R. Lukacs.John Lukacs (born 31 January 1924 in Budapest his name spelled Luk��cs , Said fueled recentdebates on Naipaul by attacking Naipaul as a racist and self-hatingflatterer of Western white liberals. "[Naipaul] is a third worlderdenouncing his own people," Said stated, "not because they arevictims of imperialism, but because they seem to have an innate flaw,which is that they are not whites" (Lukacs 79). Much of thedisagreement between Said and other discussion participants centered onJohn Lukacs's attempts to defend Naipaul as a disinterested"truth-seeker" who impartially criticizes nearly everyone hewrites about (68). In countering Lukacs's argument, Said arguedthat Naipaul does not impartially "tell the truth;" rather heflatters the prejudices of "ignorant" Western audiences thathave of late grown weary of the problems of the Third World and of thedecolonization decolonizationProcess by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by nationalism. process itself (79-80).Taking his cue from Said, Rob Nixon has argued in London Calling that"Lukacs's style of reasoning [in describing Naipaul as a"truth-seeker"] is characteristic of the way attention isdiverted from any admission of Naipaul's strong, well-establishedposition in England and the effect that might have on his'neutrality'" (181 ft 37). In fact, Nixon even cataloguescontemporary critical response to Naipaul into two separate camps: thoseneo-colonial critics (like Lukacs) who tend to legitimate Naipaul'sclaims to objectivity and those more responsible critics (like Said) who"resist the recurrent style of reasoning about Naipaul'sdisinterestedness" (33). Nixon further argues that, while theformer camp is made up of British and American critics, the latter camptends to consist of South Asians, Indians, West Indians, LatinAmericans This is a list of notable Latin American people. In alphabetical order within categories. Actors Norma Aleandro (born 1936) H��ctor Alterio (born 1929) , Arabs, and Africans - those Third World intellectuals who arefully aware of the "naked bias" in Naipaul's writings.(6)Though both Said and Nixon raise many important issues in theirrespective discussions of Naipaul, neither critic adequately addressesthe historical and political complexities which make novels like TheMimic Men, Guerrillas, and A Bend in the River seem both satisfying and"truthful" to many writers, critics, and readers of ThirdWorld literature. In his Aesthetic Theory, for example, Theodor W.Adorno For the Italian family see Adorno (Family)Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, pianist, musicologist, and composer. has taught us that modernist art works, among which we mayinclude Naipaul's A Bend in the River, may be historicallymeaningful as "damaged vehicles of historical truth."(7)Regardless of the professed politics or class affiliation of the author,modernist novels may therefore contain within them an artistic"truth value" (or "truth content"), which Adornocharacterizes in terms of their "unconscious historiography"(Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 274), or the "crystallization CrystallizationThe formation of a solid from a solution, melt, vapor, or a different solid phase. Crystallization from solution is an important industrial operation because of the large number of materials marketed as crystalline particles. ofhistory" that occurs within them (193). Hence, while remainingcommitted to a Lukacsian theory of reification re��i��fy?tr.v. re��i��fied, re��i��fy��ing, re��i��fiesTo regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.[Latin r , Adorno rightly rejectsLukacs's overly dogmatic views on the importance of the subjectiveconsciousness (or even political orientation Noun 1. political orientation - an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nationideology, political theoryorientation - an integrated set of attitudes and beliefs ) of the individualartist.(8) When criticizing the writings of Naipaul, perhaps we would dowell to remember Adorno's reminder that "suffering, notpositivity, is the human content of art" (Aesthetic Theory 369), orthat "art becomes human only when it gives notice that it will notplay a serving role" (281).In other words, so long as we are content simply to unmaskNaipaul's ideological bad faith, or merely criticize him, anynumber of important questions will remain unanswered. In London Calling,for example, Nixon might have examined the historical sedimentation ofthe "disinterested" in Naipaul, or he might have sought toappreciate Naipaul's writings as "damaged vehicles ofhistorical truth," to quote Adorno. Despite the rigor rigor/rig��or/ (rig��er) [L.] chill; rigidity.rigor mor��tis? the stiffening of a dead body accompanying depletion of adenosine triphosphate in the muscle fibers. of hisapproach, Nixon therefore neglects to historicize his��tor��i��cize?v. his��tor��i��cized, his��tor��i��ciz��ing, his��tor��i��ciz��esv.tr.To make or make appear historical.v.intr.To use historical details or materials. the form of subjectiveconsciousness that gives Naipaul's literary works their distinctivequalities of detachment, alienation, psychological suffering, and"truthfulness." Consequently, he can tell us little about thecognitive character of the "disinterested" in Naipaul. Nor canhe teach us anything about "the negative embodiment of utopianhope" in Naipaul, or the "broken promise of happiness"which, according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. Salman Rushdie, in any case, is the definingcharacteristic of Naipaul's writings.(9)In opposition to both Said and Nixon, it must first be emphasizedthat the perceiving subject in Naipaul is a form of "objectifiedconsciousness" [sedimentierter Geist], not merely a self-serving oranarchistic an��ar��chism?n.1. The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.2. Active resistance and terrorism against the state, as used by some anarchists.3. subjectivity. Any number of specific sociohistorical factorsrelated to the contemporary neo-colonial context therefore makeinevitable the various continuities, repetitions, contradictions, andrestrictions that determine the asocial a��so��cialadj.1. Avoiding or averse to the society of others; not sociable.2. Unable or unwilling to conform to normal standards of social behavior; antisocial. and hostile attributes of thenarrative voices in Naipaul's literary works like The MysticMasseur masseur/mas��seur/ (mah-sur��) [Fr.]1. a man who performs massage.2. an instrument for performing massage. , A Bend in the River, and Among the Believers. The dialecticalmovement between the subjective voice and its prior objects is not thendetermined at random or by mere chance but is rather the result of acomplicated process of social labor, a process that belies thehistorical form of human consciousness that is recurrent inNaipaul's writings. Hence, Naipaul does not so much offer us theunmediated Adj. 1. unmediated - having no intervening persons, agents, conditions; "in direct sunlight"; "in direct contact with the voters"; "direct exposure to the disease"; "a direct link"; "the direct cause of the accident"; "direct vote"direct observations of an irresponsible free-agent as he presents uswith the "objectively" determined insights or even"truths" of a deeply disenfranchised subject of the ThirdWorld in the era of multinational capitalism - which is to say,neocolonialism.More specifically, if the spontaneity or autonomy of the modernistsubject is in reality a highly mediated form of immediacy, as Adornoshows, there are obvious and important epistemological implications thatmost recent ideological dismissals of writers like Naipaul and Soyinkahave failed to address. First, according to Adorno, it is important toremember that an illusory if not self-deluding autonomy is both priorand necessary if truth claims are to be advanced at all. Repeatedly,Adorno argues that it is exceedingly difficult for the modernist subjectof late capitalism In his work Late Capitalism Ernest Mandel argues for three periods in the development of capitalism. First is market capitalism, which occurred from 1700 to 1850 and is characterized largely by the growth of industrial capital in domestic markets. to be both spontaneous and aware of the need forsystemic or deontological de��on��tol��o��gy?n.Ethical theory concerned with duties and rights.[Greek deon, deont-, obligation, necessity (from ; see deu-1 in Indo-European roots) + social change.(10) Secondly, Adorno points outthat for any significant social transformation to occur within themodernist context, society will necessarily depend upon a self-consciousand autonomous subject [Gesamtsubjekt], who is able to perceivesociety's needs and then act accordingly.Adorno's views in this regard are not far from the views ofChinua Achebe, who has also insisted upon the importance of anautonomous post-colonial subject in his numerous occasional essayscollected in Hopes and Impediments. Nor is Adorno far from the concernsof both C.L.R. James and Frantz Fanon Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was an author from Martinique, essayist, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary. He was perhaps the preeminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization. , who famously chastised Jean-PaulSartre for robbing negritude NegritudeLiterary movement of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. It began among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in Paris as a protest against French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation. of its vitality and spontaneity."[C]onsciousness has to lose itself in the night of theabsolute," Fanon wrote in response to Sartre'santi-essentialist critique of negritude. "There is no other way toattain consciousness of the self" (Fanon 133-134). It is also forthis reason that Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. Some consider him Africa's most distinguished playwright, as he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African since Albert Camus so honored. has bitterly complained of"leftocratic" theory in Africa and how it has, in his opinion,sapped the creative energy of an entire generation of young writers.(11)The past failings of Marxist literary criticism Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism informed by the philosophy or the politics of Marxism. Its history is as long as Marxism itself, as both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels read widely (Marx had a great affection for Shakespeare, as well as of Third World writing,of which Sartre's "Preface To Orphee Noir" may beemblematic, should at least give us pause before rushing to prescribe -rather than understand - the "correct" aesthetic responses tothe current neocolonial situation.NAIPAUL AND THE INEVITABILITY OF REIFICATIONThroughout A Bend In The River, Naipaul seems to share Adorno'sbelief in the importance of a self-conscious and autonomous subject[Gesamtsubjekt], fully capable of decisive and effective action in anincreasingly modernized (and often disorienting) world. For Naipaul,sentimentalizing the past inevitably impedes meaningful praxis in thepresent. By dwelling upon the lost comforts of pre-colonial,religio-community existence, as the early Achebe does in Things FallApart, we are rendered impotent when confronted with the harsherrealities of secularized and modernized society. Hence, while Achebeadvocates the preservation and dissemination of traditional folk-wisdomas a cultural remedy for the many problems caused by the modernizationof Africa, Naipaul insists that only by forgetting and "tramplingupon" the past may the social problems of the present be confrontedand effectively resolved. Like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born February 24 1942) is an Indian literary critic and theorist. She is best known for the article "Can the Subaltern Speak?", considered a founding text of postcolonialism, and for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. , who hasstated her "absolute scorn" for those who seek culturalroots,(12) Naipaul often ridicules as misguided those who attempt torecuperate re��cu��per��atev.To return to health or strength; recover. the lost splendors of the pre-colonial past: "Itisn't easy to turn your back on the past," the character Indarstates in A Bend In The River. "It is something you have to armyourself for, or grief will ambush and destroy you. That is why I holdonto the image of the garden trampled to the ground - it is a smallthing, but it helps" (141).The views of Indar, which are later adopted by the narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. , Salim,form the principal theme of A Bend In The River: Given the cataclysmicchanges ushered in by the colonization and industrialization industrializationProcess of converting to a socioeconomic order in which industry is dominant. The changes that took place in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th century led the way for the early industrializing nations of western Europe and of Africa,the past must be utterly annihilated if a new and better African cultureis to emerge. Whereas Achebe seeks in Things Fall Apart to synthesizetraditional and modern culture, Naipaul is much more pessimistic aboutthe value of pre-colonial religious and community life in the moderncontext, specifically tribal and Indo-Muslim lifestyles in Central andEast Africa.(13) Though breathtakingly cynical, and far from adequatelydeveloped, Naipaul's neo-modernist prescriptions for the ills ofpostcolonial Africa may actually be more realistic than thepre-revolutionary prescriptions once offered by Achebe in Things FallApart.(14) This is in part because Naipaul's pessimism regardingthe future of pre-colonial African culture is connected to his intuitivecynicism regarding the historical inevitability of reification itself,or of the extent of the commodity form's penetration into the dailylives of modern Africans.For Naipaul, the reification or "objectification" ofmaterial reality in modern Africa concurs with the advent of bothalienated and historical consciousness, a process aptly illustrated inthe early pages of A Bend in the River when the narrator Salim musesover how an ordinary British postage stamp enabled him to detach himselffrom his local surroundings and consider them "as from adistance":Small things can start us off in new ways of thinking, and I wasstarted off by the postage stamps of our area. The Britishadministration gave us beautiful stamps. These stamps depicted localscenes and local things; there was one called "Arab Dhow dhowOne- or two-masted Arab sailing vessel, usually with lateen rigging (slanting, triangular sails), common on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. On the larger types, called baggalas and booms, the mainsail is considerably bigger than the mizzensail. ." Itwas as though, in those stamps, a foreigner had said, "This is whatis most striking about this place." Without that stamp of the dhowI might have taken the dhows for granted. As it was, I learned to lookat them (15).The reification of Salim's material culture is in this senseprior to his own development as alienated or modernist monad, or eventhe homeless Hegelian-Lukacsian hero of the novel of realism, and it isalso prior to his feelings of cultural inferiority as colonialist ormanichean subject. In the following paragraph, Salim also tells us that"from an early age [he] developed the habit of looking, detaching[himself] from a familiar scene and trying to consider it from adistance" (15). Even more to the point, Salim adds, "It wasfrom this habit of looking that the idea came to me that as a communitywe had fallen behind. And that was the beginning of my insecurity"(15-16).For Salim, then, the British colonization of East Africa indirectly(but also irrevocably) alters the very coordinates or basic structuresof his psychic perception.(15) First, physical objects like the Arabdhow are weirdly estranged from their immediate surroundings: they areexperienced as reified things that are interpellated into a Cartesian,spatial, and grid-like universe, utterly inconsistent with previous ortraditional systems of reference and understanding.(16) The immediateconsequence for Salim is that the path is now cleared for theestrangement of the self as well: he now experiences his own lived bodyas an estranged object or material thing. In other words, Naipaulimplies that, for Salim, alienated monadic One. A single item or operation. An instruction with one operand. 1. (programming) monadic - unary, when describing an operator or function. The term is part of the dyadic, niladic sequence.2. (theory) monadic - See monad. consciousness is a directresult of reification's encroachment into the realm of theontological.(17)Another way of saying this might be that Salim is hopelessly"contaminated" with historical consciousness: he has become,as Baudelaire once put it, a frightened child wandering lost in a"forest of symbols" (Kundera 63). However, as Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for the analysis of contemporary cultural trends; he described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism. has also argued in another context, once the techniques of ostranenie,or "strange-making" in the Russian Formalist sense, areapplied to the phenomena of social life, the positive result is the"dawning of historical consciousness in general" (Prison-House57). Perhaps as a deliberate response to Achebe's critique ofEuropean history in Things Fall Apart, especially in the last paragraphof Achebe's novel, Salim bluntly states that "[a]ll I know ofour history and the history of the Indian Ocean I have got from bookswritten by Europeans" (11). While Salim tells us that the historyof the Europeans is filled with lies and hypocrisy (16-17), the morecrucial fact remains that it is Europeans who first introduce intoAfrica the "white mythology" of historical consciousness.(18)In this sense, Salim does not really deliberately reject his nativeculture, customs, and religious beliefs as much as he is like a manafflicted with a debilitating de��bil��i��tat��ingadj.Causing a loss of strength or energy.DebilitatingWeakening, or reducing the strength of.Mentioned in: Stress Reduction , if not fatal, foreign illness.Finally Naipaul suggests that people like Salim cannot hope to escapereification but must instead "submit to it" in order to becomeeffective and autonomous agents in the modernized and historical world.The theme of the necessity of submitting to reification is, in fact, theliteral meaning of the opening sentence of Naipaul's novel as well,a seemingly innocuous and contradictory tautology tautologyIn logic, a statement that cannot be denied without inconsistency. Thus, “All bachelors are either male or not male” is held to assert, with regard to anything whatsoever that is a bachelor, that it is male or it is not male. with far-reachingimplications: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, whoallow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it" (3). Whilethe first independent clause of this compound-complex sentence seems tosuggest a static and anti-historical world-view ("the world is whatit is"), one must carefully analyze the entire sentence, especiallythe second independent clause and its relation to the novel'sgreater theme regarding the necessity of the reification (or the"thingification") of the individual self ("men who arenothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place init"). The deliberate "thingification" of the self, or theeffort to become "some-thing" rather than allowing oneself tobecome "nothing" is for Naipaul a crucial step in leavingbehind the often stultifying traditions of the past and entering intothe modern world. In opposition to Achebe, Naipaul urges his readers toflee from any nostalgic or misplaced longing for onto-communal socialexistence. We must rather make "things" of ourselves so thatwe can effectively act within a world of preexistent pre��ex��istor pre-ex��ist ?v. pre��ex��ist��ed, pre��ex��ist��ing, pre��ex��istsv.tr.To exist before (something); precede: Dinosaurs preexisted humans.v.intr. things - the worldthat "is what it is," not necessarily because of its static,eternal, or immutable IMMUTABLE. What cannot be removed, what is unchangeable. The laws of God being perfect, are immutable, but no human law can be so considered. attributes but because it has become "what itis" in the modern era.THE MAGICAL AND THE SUBLIME IN A BEND IN THE RIVERBesides the mandate to make "some-thing" of one'sself by one's self; without help or prompting; spontaneously.See also: Of , Naipaul's response to the situation of modern African historymandates the liquidation of traditional or tribal African art, mostlythrough stigmatizing the magical and the sublime as irrevocably waningconcepts within the African context; this is not to say, however, thathistorically-dated Eurocentric concepts like the magical or the sublimehave ever been appropriate as a means of conceptualizing pre-colonialAfrican art, but that Naipaul's narrator in A Bend In The Riverexhibits an entirely Western orientation to aesthetic matters.(19) Morespecifically, throughout A Bend In The River, Salim consistentlydenigrates African art on the basis of its "religious,""primitive," and "magical" properties. Naipauldeliberately juxtaposes conflicting aesthetic values of Africans andEuropeans by contrasting the "beautiful" paintings of aBelgian woman, which are ironically described as "junk" bySalim, over and against "magical" African art such assculpture, masks, and tribal fetishes. In the first 'half of thenovel, Salim praises European painting but condemns African art bystating to a black African character: "Look at those paintings [ofthe Belgian woman]. She wanted to make something beautiful to hang inher house. She didn't hang it there because it was a piece ofmagic" (42-43). While the magical and primitive art of Africans isbelittled by Salim, he nevertheless fears its emotive, repressive, andreligious power (84). Salim's fears seem confirmed when anothermain character, Father Huismans, a Belgian missionary-priest, collectsAfrican art and is subsequently killed for the sacrilege SacrilegeSadness (See MELANCHOLY.)abomination of desolationepithet describing pagan idol in Jerusalem Temple. [O.T.: Daniel 9, 11, 12; N.T. of gatheringAfrican art works to form a European-style museum.The magical tribal art of Africa is rejected by Salim primarilybecause of its irrational character, or because it invokes "thereligious dread of simple men" (65). Salim tells us that looking atFather Huismans' museum is "like being on the river atnight" (65), or being deep in the "spirit-filled bush"where one is "prey" to the "malin" natives lurkingabout (55). Because Salim has no magical fetish fetish(fĕt`ĭsh), inanimate object believed to possess some magical power. The fetish may be a natural thing, such as a stone, a feather, a shell, or the claw of an animal, or it may be artificial, such as carvings in wood. , he feels vulnerable and"unprotected" outside the town (56); however, he alsoridicules those Africans who possess and believe in magical fetishes asprotection against modern warfare (80). Above all, Salim rejects thesimplicity of African art (51). When Father Huismans is killed, forexample, we are told that he errs not in collecting African masks andsculptures for a European-style museum, but because he "reads toomuch" into African art in the first place (82). For Salim, FatherHuismans makes the fatal error of finding "human richness" inAfrican artifacts where everyone else more realistically "sees onlybush" (82). In effect, the priest is scapegoated by Naipaul becausehe cultivates the primordial garden of a dying past instead of"trampling upon it" like Indar and Salim.Adorno also accepts the Hegelian argument that contemporary art"can no longer afford to be naive" (Aesthetic Theory 2),chiefly because of the political dangers inherent in the modern era.Primitive music, for example, is described by Adorno in his AestheticTheory as "repetitive, dreadful, and menacing" (77). In A BendIn The River, Naipaul illustrates this prejudice in the character of theBig Man, a caricature of Zairean dictator Mobutu Seko Sese, who wants toteach modern Africans to be "monkey-smart" (207-208). Becausethe magical art of archaic societies is largely the result of "animmensely repressive collective consciousness" (Aesthetic Theory247). Adorno argues that efforts to resuscitate re��sus��ci��tatev.To restore consciousness, vigor, or life to. it within the moderncontext can only lead to cultural disaster and oppression, not unlikethe reign of the Big Man in Naipaul's A Bend in the Rilver.Similarly, Naipaul shows us how the bogus black madonna cult which theBig Man initiates, much like his false leopard-skin fez and snake-staff,is the inevitable consequence of efforts to reinvest the naive art ofthe past with semantic richness.Not only does Salim reject magical African art, he also recoils fromthe-sublime or ecstatic aspects of African art and nature. Naipaul, infact, relies heavily on Conrad's description of the African bush aselementally dark and horrific. If Adorno rejects the sublime asinappropriate in the modern era, Salim's helplessness in the faceof the natural immensity im��men��si��ty?n. pl. im��men��si��ties1. The quality or state of being immense.2. Something immense: "the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water" of Africa leads not to ecstasy but simplerevulsion and irritation. For Adorno, who relies principally onKant's definition of the sublime,(20) the sublime historicallysignifies "the outright occupation of the work of art bytheology" (Aesthetic Theory 283). Accepting Nietzsche'scritique of theology's historical demise, Adorno argues thatKant's aesthetics of the sublime is largely irrelevant to theconcerns of the modern era, and that the sublime itself has "noplace in modern art" (283).(21) In place of a now-dated aestheticsof the sublime, which in the modern context can only be comical orridiculous,(22) Adorno argues that "radical negativity" hasbecome the proper heir of the sublime, or he suggests that modernistwriters like Naipaul seek an illusion "as bare and non-illusory asthe illusion [once] promised by the sublime" (284). Utopian hope istherefore negatively embodied in Naipaul's novel in at least twosignificant ways: first, if the utopian aim of the Kantian sublime isthe political and psychological "emancipation of the humansubject" (280), as Adorno claims, radical negativity as logicalinheritor of the sublime similarly seeks to free the human subject fromsocial oppression. Secondly, Adorno argues that radical modernists likeNaipaul, who scorn the traditional art of the past, paradoxically seeknot only the liquidation of traditional art but also its redemptionthrough its estrangement from "native soil" or from itsoriginal conditions of emergence, specifically through its relocation ina Western-style museum.(23)Naipaul's Father Huismans, who is responsible for starting thefirst European-style museum in the little town at "the bend in theriver," tells Salim that European-style civilization is itselfinevitable in Africa despite temporary setbacks like revolutions,dictatorships, and economic disasters (85). Though put-off by thepriest's over-confidence, Salim tells us that he generally acceptsFather Huismans' views on the inevitability of the spread ofEuropean civilization in Africa. However, unlike the priest, Salim isnot ecstatic about the "inevitable" coming of Euro-Americancivilization to Africa, a culture that is symbolized for him by thelocal Big-Burger, a fast-food restaurant which resides "at thecenter of things in town" (99). Salim's views in this regardsharply contrast with those of his friend Indar, who naively denies theimperializing mission of the United States (152), telling Salim thatAmericans are not a tribe; rather they're just "individualsfighting to make their way, trying hard like you and me not tosink" (152). While Indar fails to understand the homogeneity ofWestern culture, eliding its ideological or cultural sameness, thisinsight does not escape Salim, who compares the Euro-American colonizersof Africa to a steady "column of ants on the march" (85-86).In other words, Salim does not fail to grasp that even random anddissimilar individuals may share in the collective experience ofalienation. Moreover, by setting a McDonald's style Bigburgerrestaurant at the very site of Conrad's inner station, Naipaulgrotesquely estranges colonialist representations of Africa as "theheart of darkness," in fact lending a very different (and comical)meaning to Kurtz's garbled utterances about "the horror...thehorror" of life in the African bush. This comic edge is undercut,however, by Salim's descriptions of Bigburger sandwiches as"smooth white lips of bread over mangled black tongues ofmeat" (97). Finally, Naipaul's ambivalence about the virtuesand advantages of Western culture is clearly illustrated in hisderogative de��rog��a��tive?adj.1. Tending to derogate; detractive.2. Disparaging; derogatory.de��roga��tive��ly adv. account of contemporary Western art, particularly modernistpainting. While Salim states his preference for European art over"primitive" and "magical" African art, he isprivately critical of European art and of Father Huisman's museumas well. The paintings of the Belgian lady, for example, are describedby Salim as mostly worthless:On the white wall at the end of the room was a large oil painting ofa European port, done in reds and yellows and blues. It was in slapdashmodern style; the lady had painted it herself and signed it. She hadgiven it pride of place in her main room. Yet she hadn't thought itworth the trouble of taking away. On the floor, leaning against thewalls, were other paintings I had inherited from the lady. It was as ifthe lady had lost faith in her own junk, and when the independencecrisis came, had been glad to go (41).Salim directly identifies himself with the Belgian lady by telling usthat they both have a "high idea" of themselves when inreality their lives, and the work of their lives, amount to very little(42). If the Belgian lady paints "junk" (41), Salim, as amerchant, deals exclusively in "antiquated junk made for shops like[his own]" (40). Like the unmarried Belgian lady, Salim is also a"spinster" who leads a solitary and uneventful existence. EvenSalim's vision of the African bush outside his window, which isdescribed as "blurred through the white-painted window panes"of his home and shop (42), parallels the "slapdash modernstyle" of the departed lady.When Salim considers the pitiful situation of the Belgian lady, whichhe cannot help but acknowledge as parallel to his own, he growsdesperate because he senses the utter falsity of his own way of life andthe pettiness of his second-rate, Kantian individualism. The situationof the departed Belgian lady reveals to him how unsatisfactory his lifeis, and it forces him to realize that he has been lying to himself allalong about how "special" or "different" he is fromthe "primitive" black Africans (like Ferdinand, a young manfrom a local tribe) who surround him. "I knew there was somethingthat separated me from Ferdinand and the bush about me," Salimtells us. "And it was because I had no means of asserting thisdifference, or exhibiting my true self, that I fell into the stupidityof exhibiting my things" (42). In desperation, Salim thrusts thepaintings of the Belgian lady upon Ferdinand though he has alreadyinformed the reader that the paintings are worthless primarily as ameans of asserting his uniqueness as an individual, a gesture which heprivately acknowledges as both "stupid" and false.While Salim knows that the paintings are junk, he claims them andidentifies with them because he feels that, even if they are bad art,they are nevertheless the products of rational rather than mysticallabor. In other words, the paintings are not beautiful in actuality, butthey attempt to be beautiful for the jaundiced eye of the disinterestedviewer. Like the "worthless" popular science magazines thatlitter Salim's shop (43), the paintings aspire to the virtues ofthe "disinterested" and are therefore distinct from"simple" tribal African artworks that always "serve aspecific [and malignant] religious purpose" (61).CONCLUSIONNaipaul's double-edged critique of both traditional African andmodern Euro-American culture results primarily from specific economicconditions that are far more urgent than the question of Naipaul'sindividual (i.e., subjective) orientation or his largely anarchisticpolitical beliefs. At the level of "human history as awhole,"(24) A Bend in the River seeks to resolve the historicalconflict between a waning tribal mode of production in Africa and anincreasingly dominant form of Western-style capitalism, which Naipaulcharacterizes as an inevitable, if not salvific sal��vif��ic?adj.Having the intention or power to bring about salvation or redemption: "the doctrine that only a perfect male form can incarnate God fully and be salvific"Rita N. Brock. , historical phenomenon.Naipaul suggests then that the only possible solution to the moderncrisis of African history is the wholesale liquidation of itstraditional cultures, so that a new or "absolutely modern"African culture may come into being. If Naipaul's"solution" is extreme, it nevertheless negatively embodies hisutopian hope for the ultimate liberation of Africa from politicalterror, civil-war, debilitating cynicism, and underdevelopment.The chief problem with Naipaul's approach is that he too quicklydismisses the cultural products of Africa as dying or hopelessly reifiedobjects rather than, as in Achebe's use of folklore in Things FallApart, cultural artifacts that may contain within them the architecturalblueprints for a better or more hopeful future. While African artobjects for Naipaul may possess a "magical feeling of power"(61), these aesthetic properties must be eradicated to enable thecultural logic of the Euro-American marketplace to prevail within theso-called "heart of darkness" (96). Quite frankly, Naipaulsuggests that African magic and mystery must die for Euro-Americancapitalism to succeed, a negative truth that also suggests a positiveagenda for enemies of neo-colonialism.(25)NOTES1 See, for example, Blakemore 15-23; Theime; Nixon 177-190; Achebe,Image 782-794; Watt 196-209; Kinkead-Weeks 31-49; and Fleming 90-99.2 See Fredric Jameson's theorization the��o��rize?v. the��o��rized, the��o��riz��ing, the��o��riz��esv.intr.To formulate theories or a theory; speculate.v.tr.To propose a theory about. of the term "culturaldominant" as well as his periodization Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks. The result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. of the three"fundamental moments" of capitalism - market, monopoly, andmercantile capitalism - and their relation to the respective"cultural dominants" of realism, modernism, and postmodernism(Postmodernism 35-36). Also, see Jameson's discussion of the"second phase" interpretation, or the social level orinterpretive horizon, in which "the very object of [theoretical]analysis [is] dialectically transformed, and...[not] as an individual"text" or work in the narrow sense, but...in the form of thegreat collective and class discourses of which a text is little morethan an individual parole or utterance" (The Political Unconscious76).3 In any case, I do not seek to "save" Naipaul, who hardlyneeds saving, except, perhaps, from the intolerance, rigidity, anddogmatism dog��ma��tism?n.Arrogant, stubborn assertion of opinion or belief.dogmatism1. a statement of a point of view as if it were an established fact.2. of much contemporary political criticism. Naipaul himself isreported to have once commented about Marxist criticism as follows:"Once he [Naipaul] showed me an article written about his books bya Marxist. He said, 'It's like a Christian writing aboutBuddhism saying, "If they could only accept Christ, thenthey'd be saved." He wants to save me [Eyre'semphasis]'" (Eyre 46).4 See Achebe's "What Has Literature Got to Do with It"in which he argues that there is no better preparation for survivalwithin the modern world than the study and preservation of thetraditional literatures of the past (Hopes 170).5 While Naipaul's "solution" may seem disturbing, wemight remember that Walter Benjamin's now widely-celebrated auratictheory, in which he advocated the liquidation of high European culturein favor of its redemption through mechanically reproduced art for themasses, also fastened upon a similar "modernist" resolution tothe crises of Western Europe in the late 1930s, much to the dismay ofAdorno, Horkheimer, and others of the Frankfurt Institute. As Adorno hasalready sufficiently demonstrated, Benjamin's position wasproblematic at best, a mistake at worst. See Wise 195-214.6 In a review of Rob Nixon's London Calling: V.S. Naipaul,Postcolonial Mandarin, Bruce King has described Nixon'sdeliberately politicized critique of Naipaul as a kind of"neo-Stalinism" (133). With considerable irritation, Kingstates his belief that Nixon's book "illustrates what happenswhen a method of literary criticism becomes institutionalized,unself-questioning, and predictable" (132). Though King mayoverstate his case, there is no question that much of the recentcritical hostility towards Naipaul uncannily parallels the Lukacsian(and Zhandovian) disdain for modernism itself throughout the 30s, 40s,and 50s, construed by Soviet critics at that time as a merely reflectiveand regressive form of literature. More recently, Richard Wolff, one ofthe founders of AESA AESA Active Electronically Scanned ArrayAESA ATM End System AddressAESA Agence Europ��enne de la S��curit�� A��rienne (French: European Aviation Safety Agency)AESA Association of Educational Service Agencies (the Association for Economic and Social Analysis),has stated that the task of Marxism in the 1990s must be definedprecisely in its opposition to modernism. Wolff states unequivocallythat the "project [at AESA and the journal Rethinking Marxism]entails the presumption that modernist modes of thinking in Marxism havegenerated all sorts of problems that we wish to resolve, failures wewish to avoid repeating, and missed opportunities"("Interview" 5-6). But if modernism itself is once againsuspect among Marxist critics and theoreticians, it would seem thatNaipaul's epic modernism may be calculated to invite the censure ofneo-Marxist critics like Rob Nixon, a prospect that would no doubtdelight Naipaul, who has no love for Marxist theory or its critics.However, King's own book, V.S. Naipaul, is no more satisfying thanNixon's - mostly because King attempts to skirt politics altogetherin the interests of a neutral, anti-theoretical, and"apolitical a��po��lit��i��cal?adj.1. Having no interest in or association with politics.2. Having no political relevance or importance: claimed that the President's upcoming trip was purely apolitical. " critique. For more on the relevance of Marxistliterary theory in the African context, see Georg M. Gugelberger'sseminal essay (1-20).7 See Zuidevaart 43.8 This is not to say, however, that Adorno's position isequivalent to the American and "pragmatic" position that thespheres of the public and private are somehow distinct. For Adorno, asfor Mao Tse Tung, the personal is still political, but the modernist andalienated artist nevertheless does not experience the personal aspolitical (or the "subjective" realm as objectivelyconstituted).9 In a review of The Enigma of Arrival, for example, Salman Rushdiehas remarked that Naipaul's novel of English country-life seemsmarred by a strange exhaustion, a sadness of spirit, even an absence oflove. Rather than simply dismiss Naipaul as racist and self-hating,Rushdie demands, "Why such utter weariness?" (151).10 See Zuidevaart 108.11 See Soyinka 27-57.12 Gayatri Spivak comments as follows: "If there's onething I totally distrust, in fact, more than distrust, despise and havecontempt for, it is people looking for roots. Because anyone one canconceive of looking for roots, should, already, you know, be growingrutabagas" (93). Also, see Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,"Introduction: Rhizome rhizome(rī`zōm)or rootstock,fleshy, creeping underground stem by means of which certain plants propagate themselves. Buds that form at the joints produce new shoots. " 3-25.13 Though Naipaul may seem dangerously anti-African and anti-Islamic,he is actually pessimistic about the value of preserving traditionalculture within any modern context. Indar, for example, states his viewthat "there may be some parts of the world - dead countries orsecure and by-passed ones - where men can cherish the past and think ofpassing on furniture and china to their heirs. Men can do that perhapsin Sweden or Canada. Some pleasant part of France full of half-wits inchateaux; some crumbling Indian palace-city, or some dead colonial townin a hopeless South American country. Elsewhere men are in movement, theworld is in movement, and the past can only cause pain [my emphasis](141).14 Ironically, Indar's point is perhaps best illustrated inAchebe's later (and less optimistic) novel, Anthills of theSavannas, when attempts to reintegrate re��in��te��grate?tr.v. re��in��te��grat��ed, re��in��te��grat��ing, re��in��te��gratesTo restore to a condition of integration or unity.re a pre-colonial form of publiccorporal punishment corporal punishment,physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, mutilation, and branding. Until c. end up heartily sickening those who had onceadvocated it for its non-European origin.15 For example, in regards to O. Mannoni's Prospero and Caliban:The Psychology of Colonization, Fanon observes in Black Skin, WhiteMasks, "The arrival of the white man in Madagascar shattered notonly its horizons but its psychological mechanisms. . . .An island likeMadagascar, invaded overnight by 'pioneers of civilization,'even if those pioneers conducted themselves as well as they knew how,suffered the loss of its basic structures. . . .The landing of the whiteman on Madagascar inflicted injury without measure" (97).16 See Jameson, Postmodernism 410.17 Borrowing from Merleau-Ponty, Fanon also speaks at length of thisprocess as the "slow composition of [one's] self as a body inthe middle of a spatial and temporal world...a real dialectic betweenbody and world" (111).18 See Rober Young's White Mythologies for a more extensivecritique of the mythical nature of European historiography, particularlyMarxist history writing19 In other words, Salim never approaches anything like an"African" understanding of art; or, as Mary Louise Pratt hasput it, Salim sees African art entirely through colonial eyes.Additionally, because Salim supposedly comes from a traditional Muslimfamily in East Africa - which historically would be a cultural settingthat would encourage suspicion toward Western, representational or"mimetic mimetic/mi��met��ic/ (mi-met��ik) pertaining to or exhibiting imitation or simulation, as of one disease for another. mi��met��icadj.1. Of or exhibiting mimicry.2. " art, in the first place - his reliability inaesthetic matters is suspect at best and implausible at worst. For thesereasons, in discussing Salim's comments on African art, it must beemphasized that for Salim African art is already interpreted for him byWestern thinkers. The point here is not that an "authentic"African perspective would be a non-ideological one, as ChristopherMiller suggests in Theories of Africans, but simply that it would be adifferent ideological response.20 Regarding the Kantian sublime and its dependence on the subject,Adorno states that "Kant was already aware that it is notquantitative magnitude by itself that is sublime. He rightly defined thesublime in terms of the resistance that the spirit marshals against theprepotence of nature. The feeling of sublimity is not aroused byphenomena in their immediacy. Mountains are sublime not when they crushthe human being, but when they evoke images of a space that does notfetter or hem in its occupants and when they invite the viewer to becomepart of this space" (Aesthetic Theory 284). More pointedly, Adornostates, "the sublime, which Kant had considered to be an aspect ofnature, or the unleashing of elemental forces. . .[is] identical withthe emancipation of the subject" (280).21 Additionally, Adorno complains that the term the sublime has beenso hopelessly corrupted by "the mumbo-jumbo of the high priests ofart religion [that] it might be better to stop talking about the sublimecompletely" (Aesthetic Theory 283).22 Adorno states, "[i]n the end the sublime turns into itsopposite anyway.... History has caught up with the dictum about thesublime being only a step away from the ridiculous" (AestheticTheory 283).23 For example, Adorno argues that "[t]he museums will not beshut, nor would it even be desirable to shut them. The natural-historycollections of the spirit have actually transformed works of art intothe hieroglyphics of history and brought them a new content while theold one shriveled shriv��el?intr. & tr.v. shriv��eled or shriv��elled, shriv��el��ing or shriv��el��ling, shriv��els1. To become or make shrunken and wrinkled, often by drying: up" (Prisms 185).24 See Jameson, Political 76-77.25 Thanks to Georg M. Gugelberger and three anonymous readers atCollege Literature for helpful comments and suggestions on a previousdraft of this essay.WORKS CITEDAchebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of :Anchor, 1990.-----. "An Image of Africa" Massachusetts Review 18 (1977):782-794.-----. Things Fall Apart. 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Mediations.18.1 (1994): 5-17.Soyinka, Wole. "The critic and society: Barthes, Leftocracy, andother mythologies." Black Literature & Literary Theory. Ed.Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Routledge, 1990: 27-57.Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Post-colonial Critic. Ed. SarahHarasym. New York: Routledge, 1990.Theime, John. The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V.S.Naipaul's Fiction. London: Hansib, 1988.Watt, Cedric. "'A Bloody Racist': About Achebe'sViews of Conrad." Yearbook of English Studies 13 (1983): 196-209.Wise, Christopher. "The Profane Illumination: Reflections Fromthe Benjamin-Adorno Debate." Arena Journal, 2 (New Series):195-214.Young, Robert. White Mythologies; Writing History and the West. NewYork: Routledge, 1990.Zuidevaart, Lambert. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: MITP, 1991.Wise is assistant professor of global literatures at WesternWashington University Western Washington UniversityWWU or Western) is one of six state-funded, four-year universities of higher education in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located in Bellingham and offers bachelor's and master's degrees. in Bellingham. Currently, he is at the Universityof Ouagadougou Founded in 1974, the University of Ouagadougou is located in the area of Zogona in Ouagadougou. But in 1995 a second campus for professional education known as University Polytechnique of Bobo (UPB) was opened in the city of Bobo Dioulasso and a third campus for teacher training in in Burkina Faso on a Fullbright award.