Dettagliato: Colonialismo : Haggard, Conrad, Achebe e Okri. Introduzione al periodo e key concepts.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY/CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

These terms both refer to the variety of cultures and the need to acknowledge

(riconoscere) this variety to avoid universal prescriptive cultural definitions. Bhabha

employs the terms as oppositions to draw a distinction between two ways of

representing culture.

CATACHRESIS more commonly known as dead metaphor. It is the application of a

term to a thing that it does not properly denote. This term is used by Spivak, linked to

the meaning of appropriation. It is the process by which the colonized take and

reinscribe something that exists traditionally as a feature of imperial culture or

colonizer, such as parliamentary democracy. Another common and empowering

catachresis is the application of the term “nation” to a social group in existence

before colonization, such as the zulu nation, the aboriginal nation etc.

MIMICRY is an important term in post-colonial theory. It describes the ambivalent

relationship between colonizer and colonized. It is a process of imitation of colonizer

from colonized. The colonized mimic the colonizer, by adopting the colonizer’s

cultural habits, assumptions, institutions and values. The result is a “blurred (confusa)

copy” of the colonizer. This is because mimicry is never far from mockery and it can

appear as a parody. However, the idea of mimicry was introduced by colonizers.

HYBRIDITY is one of the most disputed and employed terms in post-colonial

theory. It refers commonly to the creation of new transcultural forms within the

contact zone produced by colonization. It is a term also used in horticulture where it

refers to the cross-breeding (incrocio) of two species by grafting (trapianto) or cross-

pollination to form a third, hybrid species. Moreover, hybridization takes many

forms: linguistic, cultural, political, racial etc. Linguistic examples include pidgin and

creole languages. Furthermore, recently, the term has been associated with the work

of Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer and colonized relations stresses their

interdependence and the mutual construction of their subjectivities.

AMBIVALENCE is a term used in psychoanalysis to describe a continual

fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its opposite. It also refers to a

simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from an object, person or action. It was

adapted into colonial discourse by Bhabha who describes it as the complex mix of

attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and

colonized. The relationship is ambivalent because the colonized subject is never

simply and completely opposed to the colonizer. However, according to him

ambivalence disturbs the simple relationship between colonizer and colonized. It is,

therefore, an unwelcome aspect of colonial discourse for the colonizer. The only aim

of colonial discourse is produce subjects who reproduce its habits and values, who

mimicry the colonizer. But instead it produces ambivalent subjects whose mimicry is

never very far from mockery. So, ambivalence describes the fluctuating relationship

between mimicry and mockery.

COLONIAL DESIRE is a term employed by Robert Young, that indicates the extent

to which colonialist discourse was pervaded by sexuality. According to him, the

discourse of colonialism is pervaded by images of transgressive sexuality, of an

obsession with the idea of the hybrid, and with persistent fantasies of inter-racial sex.

FEMINISM AND POST-COLONIALISM

Feminism is an important concept to post-colonial discourse. Tendency to sexualise

the black woman’s body more than the white woman’s, and to associate it with

deviant forms of sexuality.

DOUBLE COLONIZATION is a term that refers to the observation that women are

subjected to both the colonial domination of empire and the male domination of

patriarchy. So, women are doubly colonized by imperial and patriarchal power.

Apocalypse Now

It is a Francis Ford Coppola movie, directed in 1979. In the movie is described the

heart of darkness of Americans and is presented their guilt. There is a sort of criticism

about them. It is inspired by Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness”. It is considered as

the most famous movie about the war in Vietnam. It is based on a insoluble moral

dilemma made up by the war, dilemma based on the figures of the colonel Walter

Kurtz, symbol of evil and madness, and the captain Benjamin Willard, symbol of

good and respect for the rules.

Key concepts:

1. Adaptation > transposition of literary text in films (story, context, characters)

2. Appropriation > a form o f adaptation, a process of cultural change. This is

A.N.

3. Indigenization > a production of a strange hybrid in which original values are

changed.

Differences between literary and movie text

Literary Movie

Single narrator 2 different narrative voices:

inside voice (character)

outside voice (external)

Images indirectly described Images dominates , directly described

Description of characters Presentation of characters by images

Space indirectly visible, mediated by Space directly visible

description

Time > ellipsis represented by a blank. Cut of scene > ellipsis, change of scene

Flash-forwards and flashbacks.

Music is not presented Music is only presented here linked to

an emotional function.

Discussion!

Differences between the book and the movie:

1. Main character: Willard and not Marlow, sent in order to kill Kurtz.

2. The characters of the company are military and not civil.

3. Lack of the frame, it is only presented the central story.

4. Substitution of the narration with the external voice.

Symbols: connection between the helicopter’s blades at the beginning and the electric

fan’s blades when Willard is in his room.

Music: protesting music against the war in Vietnam. Ex. The doors, Rolling stones,

Wagner symphony.

Relationship between Willard and Kurtz is similar to that of the novel. Willard is

obsessed by Kurtz.

Coppola interprets Kurtz, while Conrad doesn’t. At the end of the movie, Kurtz is

killed by Willard, while he is declaiming a poem of a modernist poet who denounces

the modern, empty men, slaves of capitalism.

Tiger: Chef has an exaggerated reaction when he saw the tiger. The tiger represents

the nature, a potential enemy that attacks men and runs away. It represents the

violated nature. It is a symbolic scene > all people have lost humanity and contact

with the world and nature because of the war.

The comparison between Willard and Kurtz in the box (gabbia) is a sort of test in

order to see if Willard can figure out (riesce a capire) his world. He hates the

photographer because he has entered in this world without understand it. Colby, the

first sent, had not the capacity to see the horror therefore he become a slave. The right

man that can kill Kurtz and can narrate his story is Willard.

Harsh scene of the sacrifice of the ox (bue): parallelism with the sacrifice scene of

Kurtz. The ox is a projection of Kurtz who became as a victim. He is not only the

monster.

The most important moment of the movie is when Kurtz is died and Willing can take

his place. He has to take a decision: become the new Kurtz or return to humans’

world? He takes a moral decision: he throw the machete in order to demonstrate that

he wants to be free from everything.

Colonialism (1914)

Africa today > 53 states

Geography

Africa is divided in Saharian Africa and Sub-Saharian Africa. The Sub-Saharian

Africa is divided in four parts, too:

1. West Africa (Africa Occidentale)

2. Central Africa (Africa Centrale)

3. East Africa (Africa Orientale)

4. South Africa (Africa Meridionale)

History

The history of Africa can be divided into 3 ages:

1. Pre-Colonial age (from origins to 1884)

2. Colonial age (from 1884 to 1951) > main event is the BERLIN conference

(1884-1885) that divided Africa (the division of Africa).

3. Post-Colonial age (from 1951 to today).

Pre-Colonial age is the age of the creation of various empires and societies, the age

th

of explorations started by Portuguese in 15 century (contact between Europeans and

Africans), period of slave trade, that started very early. There were 4 different routes

of slaves:

1. The Atlantic route or Atlantic triangle

2. The Trans-Saharian route Older form of slave trade

3. The Red Sea route

4. The Swahili coast route

Moreover, in the Pre-colonial Africa there were two main political systems:

1. Segmented political system, based on the fragmentation, on independence > a

kind of democracy (Things Fall Apart)

2. Centralised political system, based on a central power

There are 5 different kinds of Segmented societies, classified from the simplest to the

most complex:

1. Band organization

2. Classical segmented system

3. Universalistic segmented system, based on larger groups

4. Ritually stratified segmented system, organised by rituals (witches, warlocks...)

5. Autonomous village system, formed by independent villages and not by bands

(it is the example of society that we can find in Things Fall Apart).

As concerns centralised political system, there are 3 main forms:

1. Pyramidal monarchy (king at the top, nobles, poor at the bottom)

2. Associational monarchy (similar to pyramidal monarchy, based on a system of

multiples groups > large organization)

3. Centralised monarchy (the power is concentrated in the hands of the king).

As concerns economy in Pre-Colonial Africa, there are many economic systems like:

1. Hunting-gathering (because they are basic activities, basic system of economy,

cacciatori e raccoglitori)

2. Pastoral nomadism

3. Agro-pastoralism (based on pastoral economy and agriculture)

4. Subsistence-oriented trade (based on purchasing to live)

5. Market-oriented trade (it is a better developed form of trade, trade for money

and not for subsistence).

Colonial age starts when colonization started, marking the ends of Pre-Colonial age.

With colonization there are many significant changes. Colonizers went to Africa to

explore it, especially to explore mines to find diamonds and iron. th

An important example of colonization is that of Congo, that began in the late 19

century by King Leopold II of Belgium. He attempted to persuade the Belgian

government to support colonial expansion around the Congo Basin. Their

ambivalence resulted in Leopold's creating a colony himself. With support from a

number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a

personal colony, the Congo Free State, then nominated the Belgian Congo. in 1885.

By the turn of the century, however, the violence used by Free State officials against

indigenous and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic

pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating

the Belgian Congo in 1908.

However, at the end of 1800, King Leopold captured many indigenous, reducing

them to slavery, and killed most