The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration

108 Pages·1993·8.79 MB·English

by  David Spurr

THE RHETORIC OF EMPIRE
Post-Contemporary Interventions
Series Editors: Stanley Fish
Colonial Discourse in Journalism,
and Fredric Jameson
Trav~l Writing,
and
Imperial Administration
DAVID SPURR
Duke University Press Durham & Lo,uwn 1993
far Laurie Gottlieb Spttrr
© 1993 Duke University Press All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper""
Typeset in Galliard by Tseng Information Systems
Paru of the Introduction and Chapter 1 appeared in
ucolonialist Journalism: Stanley to Didion," R11rita11: A
Q1111rtmy Rtrin1• 5, no. 1 (Fall 1985). Grateful acknowledg
ment is made for permission to reprint this material.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Date appear
on the last printed page of this book.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Surveillance: Under Western Eyes 13
2 Appropriation: Inheriting the Earth 28
3 Aestheticization: Savage Beauties 43
4 Classification: The Order of Nations 61
s
Debasement: Filth and Defilement 76
6 Negation: Areas of Darkness 92
7 Affirmation: The White Man's Burden 109
8 Idealization: Strangers in Paradise 125
9 Insubstantialization: Seeing as in a Dream 141
10 Naturalization: The Wilderness in Human Form 156
11 Eroticization: The Harems of the West 170
12 Resistance: Notes Toward an Opening 184
Bibliography 203
Index 209
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE IDEA FORA BOOK LIKE THIS BEGAN IN THE EARLY
1980s, when Massud Farzan and I used to meet for breakfast in the campus
grill at Dickinson College. He would go over the coverage of the Iranian
Revolution in the morning papers, expressing alternate amusement and
indignation at the printed misconceptions concerning the culture and soci
ety of his native country. I pursued the idea in an NEH summer seminar
splendidly directed by Giles Gunn at the University of North Carolina,
and later as a fellow of the Inscicute for the Humanities at the University
of Illinois at Chicago.
My colleagues at the University of Illinois and elsewhere have contrib
uted knowledge, criticism, encouragement, and practical help. They in
clude Jonathan Arac, Ross Chambers, James Dec, Clark Hulse, John Hun
tington, Lansinc Kaba, Maryline Lukacher, Gene Ruoff, Gerald Sorensen,
and Linda Williams. The students in my seminar on Criticism and Colonial
Discourse have been more helpful than they may know. Reynolds Smith
of Duke University Press has displayed a rare combination of enthusiasm,
wisdom, and patience. And, finally, I am grateful co Ned Lukacher for his
genuine intellect and his genial spirit.
-
INTRODUCTION
Chnque homme porte en Lui un monde
wmpose tU totJt ce qu'il a V11 et nime, et otl
il rentre sans cesse, nlors mime qu'il parcourt
et semble habiter un montk itranger.
- ChateatJbriand, VOYAGES EN ITALIE
'I!i.-E_EORMAL END OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM DUR
ing the latter half of the twentieth century has in more recent years given
rise to a new range ofs tudies devoted to reexamining the history, politics,
psychology, an~l;!OS'!~g~f co}onization. Within the field ofl1terary study
alone, scholars have expericncedamafor paradigm shift in which literary
works once studied primarily as expressions of traditionally Western ideals
arc now also read as evidence oft he manner in which such ideals have served
in the historical process of colonization. The particular languages which
belong to this process, enabling it while simultaneously being generated
_,.,,.-- by it, arc known collectively as colonial discourse.
In the following chapters I propose to identify thE_b~ic rhetorical fea
tures of this discourse and to study the way in which it has been deployed,
--both m the moclem period of European colonialism (roughly 1870-1960),
as well as in the more recent period of decolonization. My study, which
draws its examples primarily from British, French, and American writing
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offers a general introduction
to modern European colonial discourse, rather than focusing on a more
narrowly defined historical moment or geographical area; it emphasizes
.,..,..--rhetorical analysis rather than historical narrative; and while borrowing
fromthe languaieofc ontemporary literary theory, it carries this analysis _.
bcyQ._nd_the.boundarics of Ji!ga~mto other forms of writing.
Tnthc course oft his study, it will become clear that what we call colonial
discourse is neither a monolithic system nor a finite set oft exts; it may_m ore _,,.---
accurately be described as the name for a series of colonizing discourses,
---
each adapted to a spedfic fiistorical s1tuat1on, yet having in common cer-
------------
-
2 THE RHETORIC OF EMPIRE INTRODUCTION 3
tain clements with the others. This series is marked by internal repetition, metaphor, and other rhetorical procedures more often associated with fic
but not by all-encompassing totality; it is a series that continues, in some tion and poetry. Thus I present nonfiction writing, and literary journalism
forms, through what we call the postcolonial world oft oday. In speaking of in particular, as the means for staging an introductory analysis of colonial
colonial discourse, one necessarily treads on unstable ground; one seeks to discourse. Th~q~tions..ro_whjcb_J_rontinually_ruurn...ru-e the following:
identify the colonizing gestures in language while recognizing the impos Ho~ ds,~_th~este~rite~~ct a~ercnt..reprcsentation~f
4
sibility of containing them within a bounded textual field. ~sion, the strange and (to the writer)_(?ften incofl!prC:h<:_n_sibJe_rcalities confronted
then, will take place on a kind_ g_f_bordcr terrain, within an area of tension in the non~Wcst~rn_world? F.!!~t arc the cultural, ideological, or litc!:_ary ......-
coristructis6asca?
b_e~cn...9e~itio!!_and po;erlessne~o define,_b ~~een containment of prcsuppc,sit:~ons u~ which sucha
my subject and recognition o_f it~contain~m:ality. My exploration of these questions involves two basic procedures: (a) a
The problematic nature of this subject has required imaginative and mapping of the discourse, which identifies a serics_oLbasic troees which
often nontraditional critical approaches. In the English-speaking world emerge from...r.bc...Wc~tern colonial cxpcriencc,_;!_f!.Q_ (b) an informal geneal
alone, a number ofs tudies in recent years have begun to create new knowl ~[n~h the repetitions and variations oft hese tropes arc seen cooper
edge about colonial discourse and its variations, such as Orientalist, Afri ate across a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century contexts. These
canist, and primitivist discourse. Edward Said, Christopher Miller, and basic procedures arc accompanied throughout by a reflection on the nature
Patrick Brantlinger have examined the discourses of colonialism primarily of writing itself, not only as an £e!_Stcmic violence and aj'.olonizing order, __
in canonical works of English and French literature, and in popular ad but also, to cite Michel Foucault, as-that which opens up"'a wholcficld of
venture novels. James Clifford and Marianna Torgovnick have written pro responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions" ( 1983: 220), including
vocatively on the connections between twentieth-century literature, art, the subversion of its own order.
and ethnography. Mary Lou~_ratt has written a comprehensive study I have devoted a chapter to each of tw~_rhc_to.ri:Eal modes, or ways
of travel writing as pan of the history of European imperialism since the of writing about non-Western peoples. Taken together, these constitute
_.,..- Renaissance. Sara Sulcri has studied the rhetoric of the British in India. a kind of repertoire for colonial discourse, a range of tropes, conceptual
Ashis Nandy has given new life to the study oft he psychology of coloniza categories, and logical operations available for purposes of representation.
<~ / tion. Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha have helped to formulate theoreti· Since these rhetorical modes arc not confined to journalism, I also have
1
cal models for what promises to be an ever-renewing intellectual project. occasion to cite their occurrence in such genres as essays in political and
My own work, which is indebted to all of these writers, seeks both a moral philosophy and documents in colonial administration. In doing so,
return to basic principles of rhetorical study and an expansion of the field I wish to suggest that journalism follows on more systematic orders of
of inquiry into certain new areas. I have found most of my examples in discourse, adapting them to particular events and translating them into a
literary and popular journalism and in related genres such as exploration language of popular appeal. Journalistic language is a kind of palimpsest,
narratives, travel writing, and the memoirs of colonial officials. My focus underneath which the texts of Rousseau, Diderot, or Carlyle lie just barely
on nonfiction writing is motivated bY. a desire to examine the discourse in effaced. These rhetorical modes, however, must be understood as more
~ a form unmediated by the consciously aesthetic rcguirements ofJ m!!gina than merely literary or philosophical; they arc th0opes that come into
tive literature. Journalism is distinguisneaTroinficrion by the conventional play with the establishment and maintenance of colonial authority, or, as
expectation-~f its grounding in an historical actuality; its relation to this sometimes happens, those that register the loss of such authorityjfhcre
actuality is understood to be primarily metonymic and historically refcr- is nothing especially conscious or intentional in their use; they arc part of
/ ntial rather than metaphoric and self-referential. Nonfiction writing in the landscape m wfiich relations of power manifest themselves. As in any
general often combines this mctonymic quality with an absence of formal organizing taxonomy, this project involves a certain degree of abstraction,
closure, so that it opens directly onto the fractures and contradictions of not to say reduction: it subordinates the complexity and discreteness of
colonialist epistemology. any moment to the need for understanding it within a larger context. If I
However, I also try to show how journalism and other forms of nonfic find that the language of the French in Algeria conforms in certain ways
tion, despite conventional expectation, depend on the use of myth, symbol, to that of the British in India or the Americans in the Philippines, it is
~j (., ,;( / Gr c,
(j INTRODUCTION 5
4 THE RHETORIC OF EMPIRE
not that I choose to ignore the substantial differences- political, cultural, forms as imaginative literature, journalism, travel writing, ethnographic
description, historiography, political speeches, administrative documents,
~ogica!,_geogr~Ehical- which distin~ish ~ ncountcrs-from one
and statutes of law.
\ anoth~~ther, given the obvious differences, I have insteaatriedtoidcn:
~n_gpe~d~rallels and the common genealogies that unite these Culture and colonization arc etymologically as well as historically re- /
apparently dise_arate occasions of disco~~-Taking historical difference as fated; both derive from the Latin co/ere: to cultivate, to inhabit, to take
care of a place. The Latin co/onus designated both a farmer or husbandman
a matter ofc ourse, I have lgoked for lin~ ~.f.s~mvcrgence, correspondence,
and a member of a settlement of Roman citizens, or colonia, in a hostile or
and analogy.
By the same token, the list of rhetorical modes which provide titles for ne_wly conquered country (OED), while a,lt11ra referred both to tilling the
sod and to refinement in education and civilization.
the following chapters should not be considered definitive; there may be
Modern uses of c:olony and colonialism arc no less ambiguous and multi-
other modes or other ways of defining the ones I have designated. Nor
should they be understood as entirely discrete from one another; on the valent than their Latin roots. The British divided their colonies into three ,, • J
contrary, they overlap continually, and certain tropes might be classified classcs-~n colonl~ ,_colo11i_cs with_"'representative» governments, and
as subcategories of others. What I have called the rhetorical strategics of those with~rcsponsiblc:_go~emments- designating increasingly indirect
debasement, for example, is a form of ntgation in the sense that it negates forms of crown rufe._~ onies with "responsible» governments were eli-
the value of the other. Likewise, the trope of idealization in practice often gible for elcv~tion ~inion» statu~ An equally diverse range applied
~ nfcrgcs with aestheticizatum, just as the figure of the noble savage represents to tlie French Empire under the Third Republic (1871-1940), where the
Ministry o_f Colonies ruled most territories, but Algeria, considered part
both a e~iiosoe!!ical and an aesthetic ideal. 111~-slip~ge between cate-
of France rtsclf, came under the Ministry of the Interior and Tunisia and
/ gorics is proba_!ili,~_to.any rhetorical.t~~Y., in~ lassig!
/ treatises on rhetorical figl!rCS. It is to be hoped that the imprecisions of Morocco under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. European colonies in gen-
this procedure may be tolerated, however, in the interests ofd escribing the eral were unofficially divided between those established for the c:ontrol of~
nature of a discourse whose forms arc related, as in all writing, by both resources and populations (French Indochina, the Belgian Congo, Dutch
repetition and difference. Having sketched a general outline of my project, Indonesia, the United States Philippines), and those designed for the settle- /
mmt of Europeans (Algeria, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand).
I would now like to consider more closely some of its critical asswnptions.
Just as the Romans saw the establishment of overseas colonies as part
In writing about Claude Lcvi-Strauss's studies of the Indians of western of the larger designs of their empire, it is still possible to distinguish colo-
Brazil, Jacques Derrida has identified what he callrthc-nnt~ nialis~ ~rom i~perial_ism as part from whole. Benita Parry thus writes of
"the essential confrontation that opens communication bcrween peop cs colomahsm ~::s pecific, and the most spectacular, mode o( impsrialism's
and cultures, even when that communication is not practiced under the many and mutable states, one which receded the rule of international
banner ofc olonial or military oppression» (r976:ro7). Derrida argues that finance ca 1talism and whose formal ending im rialism has_s · (34).
the writing produced by this confrontation always involves a "violence of In speaking of the discourse of co m ism, however, the distinction tends
the letter» imposed by one culture upon the other, a violence, in other to colla~se, since the basic principles of this discourse, rooted in the very
.,.,, words, "of difference, of classification, and of the system of appellations.» ~oundat1on~ ~f Western c~lture, also constitute the discourse of imperial-
/:The very rocess by which one culture subordinates another begins in the ism. Impenal1sm has surv1Ved the formal ending of colonial rule, but so
has colonial discourse. .,,.-
~ t.of namin~ eavm~ e , o ~ ng ~a n un own territory
the ILnes_of._division and unifor~ty,..Qf boundary and continuity. ~heori~s o~ col?nialism and colonial discourse begin by combining the
One already secs that this notion of the anthropological war extends be various historical mstances ofc olonization under the rubric oft he "colonial
yond anthropology as a discipline and beyond the initial confrontation of si.~ion,» a notion for which the French anthropologist~ gcs-Balan
cultures. In its broader sense, it includes the entire system by which one d1cr prov1dc~ sic definition in r963. According to Balandier, the colo- ~
cul~rc comes to interpret, to rcpresen.~yt o domjn~ .I t nial situation is characterized by "the-domination imposed by a foreign
includes, in other words, thca~s ofc olonialism as produced in such minority, 'racially' and cultu[ally different, over a materially weaker indrge-
6 THE RHETORIC OF EMPIRE INTRODUCTION 7
nous majority in the n:unc of a racial (o r ethnic) and cultural superiority." have they disappeared. The instability of the colonial/posrcolonial divide
fo
A set of relations is put intopl~ c tween two different cultures~ fast belongs discourse as well.
moving, technologically advanced, and economically powerful; the other With this instability always in mind, my concentration is on_writing..itsclf
slow-moving and without advanced technology or a complex economy. r~ hcr dian on otficr mamfcstaflons of colonia_l!Y.lc. Returning for a mo
These relations arc antagonized by the "instrumental _r~ if.h.the.c~ ment to that classic situation, one can sec a ~ horical relation between
E!ZCa society is forced to play, so ihatinorder to maintain its authgritr. ~he ~ vrit~r and the colonizer. The problem oft he colonizer is in some sense -{Y
colonizing society resorts not only to force, but also to a se~~~f "p~cudo- the proolem oft he writer: in the face ofw hat may appear as a vast cultural ~
)UStifii:arions and stereotyped behaviors" (34- 35). Balandicr thus secs the and geographical blankness, colonization is a fonn of sclf-insci_:ip..tion_omo._
coloiual situationa s one of "latent crisis," an order maintained precariously t~c lives ~fa p~ople who arc conccived_ofa s an.cxtc;nsion oft he landscal!£,
/ by ideology ana representation asw cl~;ilaclmiiiTstration. --P~r the colonizer as for the writer, it becomes a question of establishing
Contemporary critics would question some of Balandier's assumptions: autfionty tlirough the demarcation of identity and diffg,cnc~:_Membcrs of~
the notion of technological and economic "advancement," for ex:unplc, or a colonizin class will insist on their radical difference from the colonized
the insistence on a simple binary division between one culture and the as a way of·c itimizing heir own position in the colonial community. But
other. Most would agree, however, in the value of a theoretical model at the same time t ey wilt insist, paradoxically, on thc~olonizcd people's
for the colonial situation as something that exists in the real world and essential identity with the -both as preparation for the domestication
that linguistic representation belongs to it either as an instrument ofc olo of the colonize and as a moral and philosophical precondition for the
nial rule or, more fundamentally, as the set of signs in which the colonial civilizing mission.
situation can be read. In pointing out that the essential confrontation of The colonizer's traditio al insistence n difference from the colonized ~
cultures marking the colonial situation extends beyond the "banner" of establishes a notion of the sava c as oth the antithesis of civilized value.
colonial rule itself, Derrida recalls Antonio Gr:unsci's notion of hegemony And yet the tendency of modern literature and science has been to locate
and the power ofr uling ideas which continue co hold sway outside the his the savage within us, in our historical origins and in our psychic structure.
torical and institutional limits of direct domination. My own ,stiia~ As modern, civilized human beings, we assert authority over the savage
colonial discourse as belonging both to the classic colonial situation and both within us and abroad, but the very energy devoted to such an asser-
~/ to the mprc_elusive, more powerful for~ ~y in the tion acknowledges its own incompleteness as authori . When we obe or
postcolonial world. - arc obeyed, how much of that obedience is mere mimic . Colonial dis-
"Posccolonial" is a word that engenders even more debate than "colo- course cars this constant uncertainty, leading to an inherent confusion of
~ nial," in part because of the ambiguous relation between these two. In identity and difference, a simultaneous avowal and disavowal of its own
the pages that follow !_shall refer to the postcolonial·in two wa~: as an authority. This fund:unental instability makes for a rich profusion of rhe-
historical situation marked by the dismantling of traditional institutions torical forms which often clash with one another, and yet which all enter
1- 5of2 !c2oolioanl.iearla p. othweer-f, iarsnt-d· asa n-a- -os-eb-a, c-rccht- ofofr c amlt e-imriaccail-v kcns- otwo ltchd·e. - de-i-s-nco-euw-rs: efs la og-sf tfhlye, seiqtuuaaltliyo nin. tToh teh ec rmisaistr-irxid odfe rne,l autniostnasb olef c poonwteexr tt hoaft c cohlaornaicatle rpiozewse trh me cakoelos nfioarl
new P-Olitie!_formations come into being. he second is both an inte lcc a shattering of its discourse, not unlike the profusion of different voices in
,tual project and a transcultural condition that inclu cs, along with new a paranoid schizophrenic or in The Waste Land. ~olonial discourse, des itc
possibilitics,-ccrt~ crises of identity ~ eprcsentation.\Gayatri Spivak, it~ her constant function in serving the forces ofo r er, actually assumes~
for ex:unplc, an Indian-born American acaacmic, speaks movingly of her a number of widcl divergent rhetorical forms, like a scrfcs o agmcnts
estrangement both from "Western liberalism" and from the indigenous ma c ~ y stress fractures under the ur en of colonial aut ~
peoples of her native country (70-72). But in neither the historical nor the ltwtl c apparent by now that I use the phrase "colonial discourse" to
c~l sense docs the postcolonial mark a clean break with the colonial: designate a space within language that exists both as a series of histori
the relations of colonizer to colonm:d have neith~1licsamcix>r cal instances and as a series of rhetorical functions. Historically speaking,
8 THE RHETORIC OF EMPIRE INTRODUCTION 9
the phrase refers to the language employed by representatives of the great ogy that is fairly easily cxplain<;~!J..~.g., in Said's Covering Islam) in terms of
colonial powers in establishing authority over vast regions ofA frica, Asia, national policy and public opinion. - ·----
the South Pacific, and Latin America during the period of imperial cxpan· Literary journalism, however, combines an immediate historical interest
sion that reached its height at the end of the nineteenth century. But I have with the complex layering of figurative language that conventionally be
written a rhetorical study rather than a history and thus have attempted longs to imaginative literature. It often has a symbolic character that, in
to describe the aspects of this language which survive beyond the classic comparison with journalism as information, tends to multiply its possible
colonial era and which continue to color perceptions of the non-Western levels of meaning. The presence of the writer as part of the narrative scene,
world. Herc I follow Paul de Man's notion of rhetoric as being~ moreover, conceals the most obvious effects of ideology and suppresses the
~tudy...of tro1-1,es and]fgim·s,.but..iili.o.asJ!..P-rocedqre_that.susP-ends the historical dimension of the interpretive categories that arc brought into
~gic.ou.giyen troP-e in order to place it within a large_r narra~ivc play. The writer implicitly claims a "subjective and independent status"
/ framework which includes the history of literature and of phd~oQ.lucal free from larger patterns of interpretation and deriving authority from the
thinki~y given trope can thus be read as part of a pattern of repe· direct encounter with real events.
titian. De Man's theory of the "grammatization of rhetoric" implies that T~ authority, of course, is as problematic as the~ to a subj~cti~c /
the trope will implicitly claim its own subjective and independent status, and independent status in interpretation. At the risk of betraying an onto-
while a critical deconstruction shows its syntagmatic position within a nar logical naivete, one may say that this writing is about things that really
rative pattern, as well as its declension from a set of historically determined happen (no matter how they arc interpreted) and that on another level it
concepts and categories. Thus "a vast thematic and semiotic network is re is about the struggle with events not entirely within the writer's control.
vealed that structures the entire narrative and that remained invisible to a There is in journalism an clement of subordination to the aleatory nature
reader caught in naive metaphorical mystification" ( 16). Although de M~ of the event not present in the relative mastery of the fiction writer over
refers specifically to literary narratives, the critical procedure he defines 1s the invention and ordering ofn arrative events. The journalist also relics on
applicable to nonliterary texts as well and to the hybrid known as literary narrative as a resistance to the aleatory, but this is a defensive position in
journalism. comparison to the novelist's more creative and even capricious power.
Given my reliance on literary journalism for examples of colonial dis Essentially this point is made by T. S. Eliot in an essay which dem
course, it may be useful to say something about the discursive specificity onstrates the impossibility of distinguishing journalism from imaginative
of this kind of writing. My initial attraction to literary journalism is better literature on a scale of literary value. Swift's Dmpier's Letters and New
explained autobiographically than theoretically. Having worked as a jour man'sApologia Pro Vita Stm (both literary journalism to Eliot) are infinitely
nalist in more than one European country before moving into the study of superior on such a scale to a second-rate novel. For Eliot, then, the distinc
literature and critical theory, I began with a personal.as well as intellectual tion is futile on grounds of textual form and can only be made by referring
interest in the interpretation of cultures. These interests combined with a to the circumstances ofc omposition; the journalist writes "under the pres
sense of living in a moment of historical urgency- interpretation had real sure of an immediate occasion" (Selected Essays, 440). Eliot's move has the
consequences for living people who had little control over how they were ~ect of displacing questions of form with those of practice when makil}_g
represented to more powerful nations and cultures. The study of fiction, critical distmct1ons; 1t evokes an image of the literary journalist as caygh!_
while obviously relevant to questions ofc ultural interpretation, seemed at wttfim the play of more powerfulTorces, yet Jaymg claim to a space.2f_i!l
/ a formal and aesthetic remove from the historical reality oft he postcolonial ~th-oticywithinttrarficld;-Thc·task: of cnt1cism, then, would be
L situation. The material of the daityncws media, on the otncr hand, was, to demystify the grrn.J~hority by defining its conditions and
-in-Watter Benjamin's phrase, so "shot through with explanation" (89), so its place within a larger, unacknowledged discursive framework.
transparently the expressio~ f ideology as to obviate the need for critical A final distinction between literary journalism and fiction seems to be
/ 1ntervcntion. Thc news me-dia's reliance on institutional sources their lace made possible by the existence, in the former case, of alternate frames of
in -a- mar_ket ec-onom-y, a-nd their stan ardizcd discourse produce an ideal- historical reference. Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads (1939) is a nonfic-
...
INTRODUCTION II
10 THE RHETORIC OF EMPIRE
q~cstion that matters for this study is, finally, not how one literary form
tion account of his journey through the tropical Mexican states of Chiap as
differs from another, ~ut how writing wo~ks, in wha_!~ er form, to produce ~
and Tabasco, where, under the socialist regime of Lazaro Cardenas, Catho
knowledge about other cultures. That is why, at the risk of failing to show
lic churches had been destroyed and priests driven out or shot. This text
the proper respect for literary distinctions, I have freely drawn together
provides the setting and theme for Greene's novel, The Po1ver and the Glory
~xamplesJrom so many different kinds of text, treating them as moments
( 1940). One difference between these two texts is the lack, in the former, of
m the production of a larger discursive phenomenon.
any implied distance between the author and the first-person narrator; like
. In addition to transgressing boundaries of literary form, the study of
most literary journalism it is avowedly autobiographical. More important, 1
discourse also recognizes an inherent ambiguity in the rdarion between
however, is the fact that the reader of T/Je Lawless Roads can compare it to ./
author and text. The text speaks ambiguousfy."rs it the voice of an indi-:;:,,---
other historical accounts of southern Mexico under the Cardenas regime.
-vidmrrwritcr,-thc voice of institutional authori · , of cultural ideology? It is
Without doubting the truth of Greene's personal account, we can none
;s
all ?f ~ese things, oft~n at t~e s:im~ time: ~n t~e col?~' situation wcrr
theless question his interpretation in the light of rival accounts and can
:15 m Its aftermath, this amb1gu1ty m writmg itself 1oms with the logical
connect it to Greene's cxtralitcrary affiliations ( in this case, the work was
mcohercncc of colonial discourse to produce a rhetoric characterized by
commissioned by the Catholic church). Ofc ourse, we can do the same with
constant crisis, just as_ !:O~ rule it,clf continually creates its own cris~K
The Power and the Glory, and we do it all the time, but only by violating
2f author= . The anxic of coloniaJ discourse comes fro · act that ,(
the terms of the novelistic convention which would protect it from being 7 -,
ili£.£olonizcr's p er de nds on resencc n , consent of ~h € ·
read as historical representation. We have to read the novel, in other words,
£O~nize,d, What is power without its object? Authority is in som~-;~~ ~
as if it were The Lawless Roads. One could also argue, however, that the 1 ,
~~ferr~ by those who obey it. That they do so under extreme forms jr• ("'
convention offictional ahistoricity is violated by Greene himself in writing t5J
of constr~int doc~ not chan~e ~ cir place in the balance, their indispcns- v~;:r -..
a novel with a historical setting. The distinction between the novel and
~blc r~I~ m granting authority 1ts proper value. Hence the uneasiness, the ~ ~·,,,. '
literary journalism on grounds of historical referentiality turns out not to
be so dear, after all. mstab1hty, the frequent hysteria of colonial discourse. ~ ~~ ,iv-1 c-.:..1".,1 c} ·'l ·
There_ is no real cent~r to thisd iscourse, apart from the historically cen
Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1910), a work which serves as a continual
tral motive that authority must be maintained. But even the nature of this
point of reference in the succeeding chapters, offers another case study in
authority changes from one era to the next. The intense and localized colo
the problem of historical referentiality. Conrad's suppression of any direct
?ial_ administration of fifty years ago, for example, has shifted to a more
reference to Africa or the Congo has the effect of universalizing his narra
mducct and global supervision of Third World political and economic de
tive, making it possible to read it as a "statement of the human condition"
velopment: Colonial d' ursc thus docs not simply re roducc an ideology
rather than as simply an account of conditions in the Belgian Congo in the
o~ a set of ideas t _at must constE!!I~b~~pcatc . tis rather a ay of cre-
early twentieth century. Fictio_!!al_conventions th_us cn;tblc a universalizing_
atmg and respondmg to reality that is infinitely adaptable in its function of
metaphor that we do n~~'i!y_grant to literary journalism, which is
as preserving the basic structures of power. Foucault makes a similar point:
read localized in time and place. Criticism, however, has the power both
of historically localizing fictional narrative and, conversely, of expanding There is n_ot, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it,
the frame of reference belonging to nonfiction. Thus Heart of Darkness another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses arc tactical cle
has been read as incorporating the racism of men, like Conrad, who took ~ents or blocks operating in the field off or~clat1ons; there can exist V
pare in the work of colonizing the Congo, while journalistic narratives like d1ff~ ~d even contradictory discourses within the same strategy. ·4)
Henry Morton Stanley's In Darkest Africa (1891) can be read mctonymi (1980:100)
cally as pare of a long history of representations of the Congo. The irony
Discourse ma be understood here as a discontinuous scgmen~
of this particular case is that Heart ofD arkness tells us more about what.the
that com me in various ways in the service of power. But power s
Belgian Congo was really like tliananyfournaHsticor nistori~ count.
no more be conceived as a monohthtc structure than discourse. Foucault
The study of discourse, however, explodes these categories ofg enre in
asks us to think of power not as simply the privilege of law, prohibition,
the effort to seize hold of a more global system of representation. The