Chewing Over the West: Occidental Narratives in Non-Western Readings (Cross Cultures: Readings in the Post Colonial Literatures in English)

439 Pages·2009·1.93 MB·English

by  Doris Jedamski

Chewing Over the West
C ro ss
Readings in the Post / Colonial
ultures
Literatures in English
119
Series Editors
Gordon Collier †Hena Maes–Jelinek Geoffrey Davis
(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
Chewing Over the West
Occidental Narratives
in Non-Western Readings
Edited by
Doris Jedamski
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
For Jaap and Karlien (Leiden)
and for my mother (Mireval)
Published with the financial support of the International Institute for
Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden
Cover design: Gordon Collier and Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2783-1
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2784-8
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2009
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix

Theme and Identity in Postcolonial Arabic Writing
RASHEED EL-ELANY 1
Moving Pictures: Western Marxism and
Vernacular Literature in Colonial Indonesia
KEITH FOULCHER 37
Mother Tongues with a Western Accent: Indigenous Negotiations
with English Language and Narratives in Kenyan Art
EVAN MWANGI 75
The Development of Modern Burmese
Theatre and Literature Under Western Influence
U WIN PE (MAUNG SWAN YI) 93
Writing Against, Writing With:
The Case of Algerian Literature
AMINA AZZA–BEKKAT 109
The Use of T.S. Eliot’s Literary Traditions
in Contemporary Arabic Poetry
SADDIK M. GOHAR 127
War and Ideology: Erich Maria Remarque’s
All Quiet on the Western Front and the Vietnamese
Novel Without a Name by Duong Thu Huong
URSULA LIES 161
Under Indian Eyes: Characterization and
Dialogism in Modern Hindi Fiction
THOMAS DE BRUIJN 183
In Search of a New Image:
An Indian Madame Bovary?
GUZEL V. STRELKOVA 213
Chewing Over Ethnographic Models:
Berber Writings from Algeria
DANIELA MEROLLA 243
The Naya drama in India: Rediscovering
the Self in the Western Mirror
ANNA SUVOROVA 259
Hybridity in Komedi Stambul
MATTHEW ISAAC COHEN 275
“Elementary, My Dear Wat”: Influence and Imitation
in the Early Crime Fiction of ‘Late-Victorian’ Siam
RACHEL HARRISON 303
The Vanishing-Act of Sherlock Holmes
and Indonesia’s National Awakening
DORIS JEDAMSKI 349

Notes on Contributors 381
Index 385
Acknowledgements

First, I would like to express my gratitude to the contributors, who showed
inspiring enthusiasm in this project and who kept up their over-all coopera-
tion and patience even in times when the editing process seemed to be
foundering. It is almost common knowledge that a book project takes more
time, more energy, and more patience than is initially reserved for it. A
seemingly endless series of unexpected obstacles kept prolonging the
editing process, sometimes leaving me in despair, wishing I had never
started it. Crashed computers and lost files, or files that were incompatible,
providers failing to send or receive messages plus communication problems
of many other kinds, misread style sheets, and even contributors who
seemed to have vanished altogether; all that did not really help. But in the
end, it was life itself that caused the most drastic delays: the loss of my
father, the birth of my daughter, the new, magnificently hectic and enchant-
ing life with her, a new job – “life is what happens while you’re busy
making other plans”; I could not agree more with John Lennon when I re-
collect the countless nightshifts at my computer, frantically trying to meet
self-imposed deadlines that were fated to be jeopardized by yet another
unforeseen ‘detail of life’.
A ‘medal for patience’ should be awarded to Gordon Collier, technical
editor of the Cross/Cultures series at Rodopi, who with his kind, witty, and
encouraging emails did more to keep this project going that he himself
probably will realize. I also wish to express my gratitude to Justin Watkins
at SOAS, who did not hesitate to help selflessly with some intricate Bur-
mese reference details with only a handful of Dutch stroopwafels in recom-
pense. I owe special thanks to my brother, Frank Teichmann, who deserves
a kilo stroopwafels for his very critical but highly constructive comments
on my introduction to this book, conveyed in some late-night discussions at
viii CHEWING OVER THE WEST (cid:87) ⏐ (cid:88)
the massive wooden table at my mother’s place over a good cup of café au
lait.
This project would not have been possible without the kind support of
the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, which not
only facilitated a workshop in preparation for this volume but also partly
financed the publication of it. I am also grateful for the financial support
provided by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOW),
the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW), the Re-
search School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), and the
Leids Universitair Fonds (LUF) for their financial support of the prepara-
tory workshop.
My heart-felt gratitude goes to my family and close friends who, never
failing to support and encourage me, have patiently put up with my at times
utterly asocial behaviour and grumpiness over the last couple of years.

DORIS JEDAMSKI
LEIDEN, OCTOBER 2009
Introduction

DORIS JEDAMSKI

Postcoloniality: A Matter of Perspective
R
ECENT DECADES have seen much debate on (post)colonialism,
(post)modernity, on cultural and national identities, their constitu-
tion and representation, and on a phenomenon dubbed ‘writing
back’ – the response of formerly oppressed cultures and nations to their op-
pressors.1 Coined by Salman Rushdie, the term ‘writing back’ was adopted
by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin in their trend-setting book The Empire
Writes Back.2 The title itself and, even more accentuated, the first line of
the blurb on the book’s back cover bring to the fore the major restriction of
their approach, and of the discourse that was to develop from it in the fol-
lowing decade: “The experience of colonization and the challenge of the

1 In scholarly writing, the notion of ‘writing back’ no longer refers exclusively to the post-
colonial situation but also includes various social, religious, and ethnic groups and covers, for
instance, gender-related forms of counter-discourse. A valuable overview and critical dis-
cussion of the core debates on postcolonialism is provided by Ania Loomba, Colonialism/
Postcolonialism (London & New York: Rouledge, 1998), and in The Post-Colonial Question.
Common Skies, Divided Horizons, ed. Iain Chambers & Lidia Curti (London & New York:
Routledge, 1996). For some brief but enlightening thoughts on postcoloniality in its relation to
postcolonialism, see the introduction by Keith Foulcher & Tony Day to Clearing a Space.
Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature, ed. Foulcher & Day (Leiden:
KITLV Press, 2002): 1–17. An overview of the issue of cultural identity can be found in the
collection of essays Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall & Paul du Gay (Sage: Lon-
don, Thousand Oaks, California & New Delhi, 1996).
2 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (New York: Routledge, 1989) prominently cites a state-
ment by Salman Rushdie (“the Empire writes back to the Centre”) as the guiding theme of
their book.