Doomed to smallness: violence, V. S. Naipaul, and the Global South.

Doomed to smallness: violence, V. S. Naipaul, and the Global South. ABSTRACT This article traces the cultural authority of V S. Naipaul'sessays and travel writing to his use of violence to represent andanalyse the condition of the Global South. In this Naipaul may appear tobe drawing on the works of other social scientists and theorists ofdecolonization 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. /neocolonialism, but in reality he sharply veers awayfrom these. Instead, Naipaul uses violence to promote a homogenizing andexclusivist ex��clu��siv��ism?n.The practice of excluding or of being exclusive.ex��clusiv��ist adj. & n. vision of the Global South, so that it appears at once to beirreducibly distant and essentially different from what, 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. him, is the core of human civilization. This faux-historicism isaccorded substantial cultural authority since it is a crucial componentin the triumphalist narratives of 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. and the 'newworld order'. ********** Why Naipaul? Why now? These are more than facetious questions,given the reams already devoted to heated debates and analyses of themyriad aspects of the Naipaul canon. The Naipaul industry has been inespecially ruddy health since the writer won the Nobel Prize Nobel Prize,award given for outstanding achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, peace, or literature. The awards were established by the will of Alfred Nobel, who left a fund to provide annual prizes in the five areas listed above. in 2001.But there seem to be some good reasons at present to trace thedevelopment of Naipaul's representation and analysis of globalviolence, in particular in his non-fiction. First, there is the writer's own (renewed) claims topertinence and relevance within a global situation marked by endemicviolence. During a BBC BBCin full British Broadcasting Corp.Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. Radio programme in 2004, after the publication ofhis latest novel The Magic Seeds, Naipaul ruefully rue��ful?adj.1. Inspiring pity or compassion.2. Causing, feeling, or expressing sorrow or regret.rue remarked that he hadbeen speaking of the 'Muslim Rage' a couple of decades ago andhad 'got very little thanks for it'. The events that unfoldedon and after 11 September 2001 do not appear to be in any way surprisingto Naipaul. Rather, he sees these as part of endemic global violencethat developed over the past two or three decades and is'Islamic' in character. It should now be amply clear that therumours about the 'end of history' and 'new worldorder' that were circulated around the time of the collapse of theSoviet bloc in 1989 were, to say the least, premature. Indeed, thedecade and a half since the initiation of this 'new order' mayinstead be seen as the era when the 'cold' war turned'hot', with four major US-led wars (Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan,Iraq again) and the concomitant saturation of the global environmentwith the violence of the so-called 'war against terror'.Clearly, a rigorous analysis of contemporary violence is urgentlyrequired. But given that Naipaul's analysis of this violence is infact the dominant one in the Atlanticist world (that is, the US and itsallies in Western Europe Western EuropeThe countries of western Europe, especially those that are allied with the United States and Canada in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (established 1949 and usually known as NATO). ), tracing its genesis and blind spots is also,to say the least, pertinent. Secondly, while the heritage of criticism of Naipaul's fictionis abundant and venerable, analysis of his non-fiction is relativelyrecent and mostly concentrated on his longer travel narratives. (1) Inone of the first and most important studies of this aspect of theNaipaul oeuvre, Rob Nixon suggests that it is in his nonfiction that'we encounter his most direct, obsessive, elaborate, andpolitically charged accounts of his understanding of the postcolonial post��co��lo��ni��al?adj.Of, relating to, or being the time following the establishment of independence in a colony: postcolonial economics.world'. (2) Naipaul himself has commented that while fiction tookhim a lot of the way, travelling and writing about travelling took himfurther. (3) Nixon also notes the discrepancy between the unusual reachand cultural authority of Naipaul's non-fiction and what he callsthe 'shallowness of its academic treatment'. (4) As the workslisted in note one below show, the past decade has seen concertedcritical efforts to address that lack. This essay sees itself as a partof those continuing efforts. Finally, the questions raised by Nixon about the mode through whichNaipaul's cultural authority as an 'expert' inpost-colonial affairs has been secured is, it seems to me, stillrelevant: First, given his standard evocations of the former colonies as'barbarous', 'primitive', 'tribal' [...]how does his choice of idiom make his readings of such societies easilyassimilable as��sim��i��la��ble?adj.That can be assimilated: assimilable nutrients; assimilable information.as��sim to imperialist discursive traditions that run deep inBritain and the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. ? Second, how has he managed to reproducethe most standard racial and colonial positions while simultaneouslypresenting himself as a risk taker tak��er?n.One that takes or takes up something, such as a wager or purchase: There were no takers on the bets.takerNoun , someone who swims against theprevailing ideological currents out of fidelity to difficult andunpopular truths? In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , how has Naipaul acquired a reputationas an unconventional, extratraditional writer while producing an oeuvresuffused suf��fuse?tr.v. suf��fused, suf��fus��ing, suf��fus��esTo spread through or over, as with liquid, color, or light: "The sky above the roof is suffused with deep colors" with received notions about the barbarism bar��ba��rism?n.1. An act, trait, or custom characterized by ignorance or crudity.2. a. The use of words, forms, or expressions considered incorrect or unacceptable.b. and dishonesty ofIslam, cannibalism cannibalism(kăn`ĭbəlĭzəm)[Span. caníbal, referring to the Carib], eating of human flesh by other humans. in Africa, the simple-minded irrationality ofIndians, the self-destructiveness of Black Power, and the inability ofthe Caribbean and India to generate real history? (5) A host of mutually exclusive Adj. 1. mutually exclusive - unable to be both true at the same timecontradictoryincompatible - not compatible; "incompatible personalities"; "incompatible colors" and hostile ethical, cultural, andaesthetic meanings have been assigned to Naipaul's work. But howcan a writer be understood so differently by different readers andcritics, and his work located on different sides of ideological andmaterial divisions? This essay submits that this question is answered bylooking at Naipaul's simultaneous engagement The concurrent engagement of hostile targets by combination of interceptor aircraft and surface-to-air missiles. and hostility to anumber of contradictory cultural, analytical, and ideological positions,and that this is clearly illustrated in his use of the idiom ofviolence. If he is said to be, at one and the same time, both thetruthful chronicler of the despair and rebellions of the so-called ThirdWorld and the purveyor (World-Wide Web) Purveyor - A World-Wide Web server for Windows NT and Windows 95 (when available).http://process.com/.E-mail: <info@process.com>. of malicious myths and misrepresentations aboutit, this is because of his simultaneous alignment with and hostility tothe people and conditions there. There is an abundance of powerfulAfrican, Indian, and Latin American writings that chronicle thecorruption, decay, and destruction of these societies after their formalindependence from colonialism. Naipaul echoes these chronicles, thusclaiming the role of an authentic recorder and transmitter of a globaldespair. On the other hand, the majority of the writings and writers ofthe Global South explain the violence and destruction that are theirlived conditions in terms of colonialism, the political defeats ofsocialism in these countries, and the ongoing war waged by neocolonialpowers and globalized capital against them. This explanation andanalysis is intolerable to Naipaul and he refuses to engage with it.Naipaul is hostile to these nationalist, internationalist in��ter��na��tion��al��ism?n.1. The condition or quality of being international in character, principles, concern, or attitude.2. A policy or practice of cooperation among nations, especially in politics and economic matters. , systemic, andhistoricist analyses. Even as he chooses to accept and amplify thevision of Global Southern despair, he chooses to abandon and disregardany meaningful Global Southern analysis of it. Thus he can routinelyclaim to be simultaneously representing and misrepresenting the wretchedof the earth and the conditions of their wretchedness. This paper, then, will begin by sketching an outline of some of thecritical debate about Naipaul; it will trace Naipaul's developmentof violence as both symptomatic of, and an analytical tool for, hisunderstanding of the woes of the Global South in a series of essayswritten during the 1960s and 1970s; it will show how Naipaul transfersthe idiom of violence to an 'Islamic' context around the early1980s; finally, it will run Naipaul's analysis of violence againstcompeting interpretations to suggest that the blind spots embedded in itare a result of his decision to accept certain essentialist,anti-historicist, not to say fundamentalist ideas about Western'civilization'. Temperatures rise when Naipaul is around. Take this press reportabout a conference in 2001 in Rajasthan, India. Passions were arousedafter Naipaul, on a post-Nobel-prize-winning tour, interrupted thenovelist Nayantara Sehgal during her talk 'Shared Histories: Issuesof Colonialism and Relationship with the Past', exclaiming'Why do you keep drumming up the issue of colonialism?'. Hewent on to say that India had been independent for fifty years andshould stop harping on about the past, adding, 'Banality irritatesme. Life is too short'. Understandably, this led to a verbal duel,with various writers joining in and the moderator, the writer AmitavGhosh For the banker, see Amitav Ghosh (banker).Amitav Ghosh (born 1956), is an Indian-Bengali author and literary critic known for his work in the English language.Ghosh was born in Calcutta. , being forced to adjourn adjournv. the final closing of a meeting, such as a convention, a meeting of the board of directors, or any official gathering. It should not be confused with a recess, meaning the meeting will break and then continue at a later time. (See: recess, session) the session. (6) This cantankerous can��tan��ker��ous?adj.1. Ill-tempered and quarrelsome; disagreeable: disliked her cantankerous landlord.2. exchange is hardly a recent phenomenon. In 1986Edward Said's comments in a discussion on 'Intellectuals inthe Post-Colonial World' ignited a famous and furious row amongsthis co-panelists. Contrasting the early Rushdie with Naipaul, Saidsuggested: The most attractive and immoral move, however, has beenNaipaul's, who has allowed himself quite consciously to be turnedinto a witness for the western prosecution [...] what is seen ascrucially informative and telling about their (Naipaul and writers ofhis ilk) work [...] is precisely what is weakest about it [...] thecheapest and the easiest of colonial mythologies about wogs and darkies,myths that even Lord Cromer and Forster's Turtons and Burtons wouldhave been embarrassed to trade in outside their private clubs. (7) 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 and 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. took strong exception tothis. Against Said's suggestion that Naipaul recycles the worstracist myths of empire, they contended that unlike most otherex-colonial intellectuals, Naipaul was not concerned with injustices buttruth; and that if intellectuals failed to point out the true nature ofthe tyrannies and dictatorship of the 'Third World', they werein breach of their responsibilities. (8) In these heated exchanges thepatterns of the Naipaul debates become clear: there he is, on the onehand, playing Cassandra to the doomed states of the Global South,dishing out unpalatable truths to people who want to evade theirresponsibilities by blaming the past. On the other hand, he has also beseen as the arch-compradore intellectual, writing, as Said puts it,'to the Western liberal who wants very much to be reassured thatafter '"we" left [...] things got worse. To flatter aprejudice is not "simply" to tell the truth'. (9) These altercations have been recently quickened by Naipaul'senshrinement in the Nobel pantheon. There is no doubt that the admirersand defenders of Naipaul's work have seen the accolade as theconfirmation of what they have always known--the value and integrity ofthe writer's unflinching gaze at truth. A particularly energeticintervention has been made by Dagmar Barnouw. For Barnouw, Critical readings of Naipaul's work have generally beendivided into two groups: a strongly focused postcolonialist critique ofhis indebtedness to western cultural values that does not deal with thetextual complexity, and literary studies of his fictional andnon-fictional texts that do not deal with representational complexity,the text's connectedness to social and political realities. (10) It is to clear this thicket of critical misreadings that Barnouwwades in with her critical scythe scythecarried by the personification of death, used to cut life short. [Art.: Hall, 276]See : Death . Particular ire is reserved forpost-colonial critics who, according to her, are blinded by theirrigidly ideological vision, and have not only failed to read Naipaulwith the requisite degree of sophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. , but also used theircabalistic cab��a��lis��tic?adj.1. Having a secret or hidden meaning; occult: cabalistic symbols engraved in stone.2. Variant of kabbalistic. hegemony in US Humanities departments to keep him off theuniversity syllabuses. In contrast, Barnouw herself finds these virtuesin Naipaul: that he has insisted on a historically situated,differentiating historiography of colonialism; that he affirms theEnlightenment achievements of secularism sec��u��lar��ism?n.1. Religious skepticism or indifference.2. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education. and a modern, complex, andmobile social intelligence; that he is appalled by Third Worlddesolation because 'out of his own experience he can imagine themfully'; that he is accessible to the 'common reader,' andthis provokes the snobs who populate academe; that unlike cosmopolitanintellectuals he does not construct the 'late-twentieth centuryshibboleth Shibboleth(shĭb`ōlĕth), in the Bible, test word that the Gileadites made the Ephraimites pronounce. As Ephraimites could not say sh but only s , the "other"', but is interested inquestioning 'otherness' itself; that he advocates intelligentendeavour and the capacity for transformation in the victims ofimperialism, and not an unquestioning support for them; and that he cansee the problems as well as the benefits of European colonialism (pp.1-51). Much of Barnouw's work, it seems to me, is marred bycontradictory evidence and caricatured exaggerations, and these aretelling because they outline certain strategies in the culture wars overNaipaul. Barnouw praises Naipaul's mobile, non-aligned, inquiline in��qui��line?n.An animal that characteristically lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal of another species.adj.Being or living as an inquiline. movement between civilizations, and at the same time approvingly quotesanother critic: As Boyers puts it sensibly: 'there is something grotesqueabout demanding of a world-class writer that he hew hew?v. hewed, hewn or hewed, hew��ing, hewsv.tr.1. To make or shape with or as if with an ax: hew a path through the underbrush.2. to a party line oran ethnic perspective. He's been very frankly associated withwestern values and he's used that perspective to criticizewhat's happening in the Third world.' (p. 110) Leaving aside the profoundly undifferentiated and dehistoricizednotion of 'western values' for the moment, in what way isNaipaul's 'frank' association with these values notalready a 'party line'? Similarly, Barnouw repeatedlycontrasts Naipaul's historicized consciousness to the ideologicalblindness of post-colonialists, and then describes Among the Believersas his first exploration of Islamic fundamentalism Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating literalistic interpretations of the texts of Islam and of Sharia law.[1] Definitions of the term vary. in Iran--'theexplosive clash between religious and political traditionalism andtechnocratic progressivism' (p. 54). It takes a quite staggeringamount of counterfactual coun��ter��fac��tu��al?adj.Running contrary to the facts: "Cold war historiography vividly illustrates how the selection of the counterfactual question to be asked generally anticipates the desired answer"wilfulness to portray the Shah's Iran astechnocratic or progressive, especially after the valuable studies ofIranian revolution This article is about the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. For the political movement in Iran 13 years prior, see White Revolution.The Iranian Revolution (also known as the Islamic Revolution,[1][2][3][4] by historians such as Roy Mottadeah. (11) Barnouwthen writes of Pakistan that 'what by Western standards isconsidered corruption has been common practice in Pakistan since theinception of the Muslim state' (p. 75). Any intellectual value thissentence may have had is lost by Barnouw's failure to tell us thatwhat is, by 'Western' standards, corruption was in fact commonand institutionalized in��sti��tu��tion��al��ize?tr.v. in��sti��tu��tion��al��ized, in��sti��tu��tion��al��iz��ing, in��sti��tu��tion��al��iz��es1. a. To make into, treat as, or give the character of an institution to.b. practice in the 'West' long beforePakistan came into being, thereby making redundant any comparativeperspective that can be employed in a commentary on the Islamic state The term Islamic state refers to groups that have adopted Islam as their primary faith. Specifically: A Caliphate in Sunni Islam An Imamah in Shia Islam A Wilayat al-Faqih for the Shia in the absence of an Imamah .When Barnouw attacks the migrant postcolonial intellectual for silencingthe 'others' in their very act of representing them, sheprefers to forget that she has just done the same, when she, as a seniorUS academic, has purported to speak for the 'common reader'.As the earlier sample of 'non-academic' reportage from theIndian media shows, the 'common readers' have scarcely beenunited in their admiration for Naipaul's work. In truth, Barnouw's reduction of Naipaul's academiccritics into intellectually stunted post-colonials and dehistoricized'literary' readers is not a little simplistic sim��plism?n.The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple . When the Indianhistorian Shahid Shahid or Shaheed is a male given name common among Muslims. It is the Arabic word for witness or martyr. People with this nameFamous people with this name include: See alsoShaheed (disambiguation page) All pages beginning with Shaheed Amin analyses Naipaul's construction of the Muslimto show how his is a search for ahistorical a��his��tor��i��cal?adj.Unconcerned with or unrelated to history, historical development, or tradition: "All of this is totally ahistorical. sacredness and nothistorical understanding, this is not a 'post-colonial'position. When Akash Kapur shows how, in his idea of a primordial Indiannational identity that must be reclaimed from the obscurity of Muslimrule, Naipaul exhibits structural kinship with Hindu fundamentalism, heis far from a dehistoricized critic. The critic and writer Amitava Kumarwould surely kindle A portable e-book device from Amazon.com that provides wireless connectivity to Amazon for e-book downloads as well as Wikipedia and search engines. Using Sprint's EV-DO cellphone network, dubbed WhisperNet, wireless access is free. It also includes a built-in dictionary. Barnouw's wrath as a migrant 'ThirdWorld' intellectual working in the US, but his reading of Naipaulis politically and materially situated: In his thinking, it is liberalism and not the destruction of thewelfare-state that needs to be blamed for many of the ills of thesociety in which he finds himself a reluctant citizen. This is wrongthinking, but it also involves, on Naipaul's part, a kind ofamnesia. (12) The reasons I think Barnouw's book is a good representive ofthe Naipaul debate is because it outlines both the current criticalpositions on Naipaul and their various pitfalls. These have formed andhardened within the context of an endemic global violence that has beenframeworked by the theses of 'clash of civilizations' and'culture wars'. I want, therefore, to see whether turning tothe representation and analyses of violence in Naipaul's essayshelps in a proper appreciation of his vision. Violence and violation have always been crucial to Naipaul'sexperience and representation of the Global South, be it the Indiansubcontinent Indian subcontinent,region, S central Asia, comprising the countries of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh and the Himalayan states of Nepal, and Bhutan. Sri Lanka, an island off the southeastern tip of the Indian peninsula, is often considered a part of the subcontinent. , Africa, the Caribbean islands, Latin America Latin America,the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. , orSouth-East Asia South-East Asian → le Sud-Est asiatiqueSouth-East Asiasouth n → S��dostasien ntSouth-East Asian → . The opening exchanges in his essay 'Jamshed intoJimmy' (1963) is typical Naipaul: 'You've come to Calcutta at the wrong time', thepublisher said. 'I very much fear that the dear old city isslipping into bourgeois respectability almost without a fight'. 'Didn't they burn a tram the other day?' I asked. 'True. But that was the first tram for five years'. (WW,p. 5) Naipaul would later talk about how the dereliction derelictionn. 1) abandoning possession, which is sometimes used in the phrase "dereliction of duty." It includes abandoning a ship, which then becomes a "derelict" which salvagers can board. and 'manylayers of wretchedness' of India had caught him unprepared (LO, p.21). But violence was the spice that made this taste of wretchednesslinger. Naipaul sees it etched in the very architecture of the Raj:'In India the confrontation of East and West was nowhere moreviolent than in Calcutta, and two buildings, both now regarded asmonuments, speak of this violence: the Mullick Palace and the VictoriaMemorial' (WW, pp. 10-11). He sees in Indians an attitude offrenzied plundering, and this impression of endemic, seemingly randomviolence will remain Naipaul's preferred key to an understanding ofIndia, as the title of his book about a much later journey there, AMillion Mutinies Now, reveals. Violence also saturates Naipaul's Caribbean. In 'Papa andthe Power Set' (1969) he notices how in Basseterre bullet marks onthe walls of a police hut ('many shots were fired but no one waskilled') are preserved as a national monument national monumentIn the U.S., any of numerous areas reserved by the federal government for the protection of objects or places of historical, scientific, or prehistoric interest. that feeds the mythof presidential invulnerability in��vul��ner��a��ble?adj.1. Immune to attack; impregnable.2. Impossible to damage, injure, or wound.[French invuln��rable, from Old French, from Latin (WW, pp. 76-77). He sees the Trinidadcarnival primarily in terms of an atavistic at��a��vism?n.1. The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence, usually caused by the chance recombination of genes.2. An individual or a part that exhibits atavism. outpouring of lunacy lunacy:see insanity. andterror: 'this year there was a twist. After the carnival there wereBlack Power disturbances. After the masquerade and the music, anger andterror. In a way it makes sense' (WW, pp. 134-35). Perhaps his mostelaborate statement on the 'mindless' violence of theCaribbean is made in 'Michael X and the Black Power Killings inTrinidad: Peace and Power' (1979), where he chronicles a series ofmurders that took place in one of the Black Power revolutionarycommunes: But the ground had given up its dead. Six men were charged with thetwo murders. Five were Trinidadian; one was American [...] Jamal gaveinterviews, and now he was as sober and anxious to survive as anybodyelse. He spoke of 'the atmosphere of violence' at the commune;he said he was lucky to be alive [...] So, in sobriety andself-absolution, the Malik commune ended. (WW, p. 148). For Naipaul the macabre events at the Black Power commune summed upnot only a particular Caribbean malaise, but also an essence of theGlobal South. Violence and blackness, violence and race--these themes reach apredictable pitch in Naipaul's writings on Africa. Like India,Mobutu's Africa resonates with words of terror and 'simpleofficial plunder' (WW, p. 209). A scene that becomes a metaphor forthe sheer atavistic violence of Africa is the one where Naipaulwitnesses the feeding of the 'royal' crocodiles inYamoussoukro: Again the bird was thrown. Again the jaws snapped; again the birdescaped. But now the clucking calls had brought from the water on thesand a crocodile even bigger and older than the other two [...] Histeeth looked stained and worn. The chicken's limp neck was placedon the iron rail; the feeder began to bring down his knife. Ididn't look. (WW, p. 278) In 'The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro' (1982-83) decay,corruption, futility, nihilism nihilism(nī`əlĭzəm), theory of revolution popular among Russian extremists until the fall of the czarist government (1917); the theory was given its name by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861). , are all bound up in the description ofan act of ritual violence. Naipaul's act of averting his gaze atthe last moment is a testimony to the unbearable nature of this endemicviolence, rather than to any vegetarian instincts. The writer travels in an insurrectionary world. He catchessomething of the despair and bitterness of the former men of empire. Oneof them, Jacques Soustelle Jacques Soustelle (3 February 1912–6 August 1990) was a French anthropologist specializing in pre-Columbian civilizations. He became vice-director of the Mus��e de l'Homme in Paris in 1938.Soustelle was born in Montpellier. , who led the French fight to keep Algeria asits colony, explains that Europe has been provincialized because of itswithdrawal from Africa, that France had yielded to the 'idol'of decolonization, which was responsible for converting the low culturesof Black Africa into a poussiere of petty dictatorships (WW, p. 308).After hearing Soustelle, Naipaul describes the Algerian war Algerian Waror Algerian War of Independence(1954–62) War for Algerian independence from France. The movement for independence began during World War I (1914–18) and gained momentum after French promises of greater self-rule in Algeria went ofindependence as a macabre dance of death: When it was over in 1962, the French had lost 14,000 men, theinsurgents Insurgents,in U.S. history, the Republican Senators and Representatives who in 1909–10 rose against the Republican standpatters controlling Congress, to oppose the Payne-Aldrich tariff and the dictatorial power of House speaker Joseph G. Cannon. 140,000; 3,000 European civilians had been killed, 30,000Arabs [...] To hand the country over to a terrorist faction would havebeen irresponsible, illiberal il��lib��er��al?adj.1. Narrow-minded; bigoted.2. Archaic Ungenerous, mean, or stingy.3. Archaica. Lacking liberal culture.b. Ill-bred; vulgar. and stupid [...] The million colons haveleft; one Algerian dictatorship has been replaced by another. ArabAlgeria sinks; an idea of France has been destroyed. (WW, p. 312) In Argentina Naipaul sees deluded middle-class guerrillas and abrutal army locked in violent embrace, a society dictated by the rulesof revenge and torture: 'No pattern can any longer be discerned inthe terror. It isn't only the guerrillas and the union men and thecountry's few intellectuals who are threatened. Anyone can bepicked up. Torture is routine' (WW, p. 393). Although he will callthe endemic violence of the Global South 'patternless', thisis a rhetorical sleight of hand sleight of handn. pl. sleights of hand1. A trick or set of tricks performed by a juggler or magician so quickly and deftly that the manner of execution cannot be observed; legerdemain.2. in Naipaul's writing. Again andagain he will devote entire stretches of his writing to the analysis ofthis persistence and pernicious nature of violence. For Naipaul violence in the former colonies arises out of theirderivative or mimic nature. His first encounter with India wasundoubtedly traumatic--'I felt I was in a continent where, separatefrom the rest of the world, a mysterious calamity had occurred'(LO, p. 21). If violence is the visible face of this calamity, it alsooffers Naipaul a glimpse of deeper miseries. In 'In the Middle ofthe Journey' (1962) he finds in the plundering frenzy of theIndians an attitude of the conquerors: 'this attitude of plunderingis that of the immigrant colonial society. It has bred, as in Trinidad,the pathetic philistinism of the reconcant' (WW, p. 6). Thisphilistinism, this mimicking of the European colonizers, indicates aseverely depleted de��plete?tr.v. de��plet��ed, de��plet��ing, de��pletesTo decrease the fullness of; use up or empty out.[Latin d stock of national cultural capital and leads to fatal,enraging dependency--'Incapable of lasting reform, or of a correctinterpretation of the new world, India is, profoundly, dependent'(WW, p. 30). The former colonies are, then, essentially parasitic in nature. In'The Overcrowded o��ver��crowd?v. o��ver��crowd��ed, o��ver��crowd��ing, o��ver��crowdsv.tr.To cause to be excessively crowded: a system of consolidation that only overcrowded the classrooms. Barracoon' (1972) Naipaul sees this inMadagascar: Colonialism is a destructive institution. It creates parasites andhangers-on. And they are still with us--people of all races who profitedfrom the stay in this country of a foreign power. I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed)"Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. whether they've completely reconciled themselves to the changes.(WW, p. 133) Perhaps he is at his most corrosive and dismissive when hedescribes the Caribbean 'dependency': The island blacks will continue to be dependent on the books, filmsand goods of others; in this important way they will continue to behalf-made societies of the dependent people, the Third World'sthird world. They will forever consume; they will never create. (WW,pp.137-38) This dependency has catastrophic consequences for all therevolutionary movements of the Third World. The violence, for Naipaul,becomes directionless not transformative. Like the compradore elites,the revolutionaries of the former colonies are hamstrung by their hollowmimicry mimicry,in biology, the advantageous resemblance of one species to another, often unrelated, species or to a feature of its own environment. (When the latter results from pigmentation it is classed as protective coloration. . Michael X Michael X (1933 - 1975), born Michael de Freitas in Trinidad and Tobago to a Portuguese shopkeeper and a Barbadian-born mother, was a self-styled Black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London. and his murderous commune become a metaphor for allThird World revolutions: Revolution, change, system: London words, London abstractions,capable of supporting any meaning Malik [...] chose to give them [...]It was in London that Malik became a Negro [...] He was shallow andunoriginal; but he sensed that in England, provincial, rich and verysecure, race was, to Right and Left, a topic of entertainment. And hebecame an entertainer. (WW, pp. 153-55) Third World revolutionaries, then, play at revolution and, in theabsence of any genuine aims, with murderous consequences. Some ofNaipaul's most detailed analyses of this condition are to be foundin his essays on Argentina and Grenada--'Argentina and the Ghost ofEva Peron, 1972-1991' (1991) and 'Heavy Manners inGrenada' (1984). After the kidnapping and killing of GeneralSanchez, notorious as a torturer and commander of the Argentinian SecondArmy Corps, Naipaul writes of these mimic guerrillas: The guerrillas look for their inspiration to the north. From Parisof 1968 there is the dream of students and workers uniting to defeat theenemies of 'the people'. The guerrillas have simplified theproblems of Argentina [...] they have identified the enemy: the police.(WW, p. 349) Like Michael X, whose revolution is a perverse entertainment forthe Global North, Argentines play at mimicking northern discontent:'And I never thought the Argentine guerrillas had a good enoughcause [...] They were educated, secure, middle-class people [...] yet,barely arrived at privilege, they were--as it seemed to me--trying topull their house down' (WW, p. 404). Similarly, after the US invasion of Grenada The Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was an invasion of the island nation of Grenada by the United States of America and several other nations in response to Prime Minister Maurice Bishop being illegally deposed and executed. , Naipaul can find onlythe ruins of a mimic revolution: The New Jewel Movement The New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation, or New JEWEL Movement, was a Marxist political party in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada. The movement conducted a successful revolution in 1979 and ruled the country by decree until being deposed in 1983. , founded in 1972, represented the firsteducated generation in Grenada [...] It was a full socialist revolution,Cuba became Grenada's ally; imperialism became Grenada's enemy[...] As the mimicry was perfected, so the excitement grew among thefaithful in many countries [...] the mimicry was like the proof of thenaturalness and rightness of the cause [...] It was the story of aretarded island community hijacked by people slightly more educated intothe forms of a grandiose revolution. (WW, pp. 464-70) As plotted by Naipaul, this mimic revolution then inevitably endsin internecine in��ter��nec��ine?adj.1. Of or relating to struggle within a nation, organization, or group.2. Mutually destructive; ruinous or fatal to both sides.3. Characterized by bloodshed or carnage. violence--'the revolution blew away; and what wasleft in Grenada was a murder story'. The mimicry of the maimed maim?tr.v. maimed, maim��ing, maims1. To disable or disfigure, usually by depriving of the use of a limb or other part of the body. See Synonyms at batter1.2. nations and their incapacity The absence of legal ability, competence, or qualifications.An individual incapacitated by infancy, for example, does not have the legal ability to enter into certain types of agreements, such as marriage or contracts. forintellectually regenerating themselves lead to, in Naipaul'sequation, a destructive rage. In the essays of the 1960s and 1970sNaipaul liberally adds the spectres of 'race' and'culture' to explain this degradation further. The lower thestock of 'racial culture', the more its propensity to mimicthe more highly organized societies (namely, those of the'West'), and the more its rage and violence at the inabilityto become these higher forms of life. After his first'Islamic' journey, Naipaul would add this dimension to hisreading of global violence. Naipaul's early representations of African and Afro-Caribbeansocieties are already blueprints for this analytical mode. Afterindependence from Western colonial powers, these societies regress REGRESS. Returning; going back opposed to ingress. (q.v.) to acult of the folk hero A folk hero is type of hero, real or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. : 'The Negro folk leader is a peasant leader[...] They are linked forever to the primitives who were the source oftheir original power. They are doomed to smallness' (WW, pp.79-80). This leader, then, inevitably takes on an authoritarian role, asseen in the case of Mobutu: 'these--the cap and the stick--are theemblems of his African chieftaincy chief��tain?n.The leader or head of a group, especially of a clan or tribe.[Middle English cheftain, from Old French chevetain, from Late Latin . Only the chief can kill the leopard[...] when the chief sets his stick on the ground the people fall silentand the chief gives his decision' (WW, p. 206). This regressioninto 'primitive terror' and oppression occurs becauseculturally these societies can harness only a mythic memory of Africa asthe source of their identity, and this is no match for the new andcomplex realities of the post-colonial condition. Their'culture' is akin to a primitive religion and for Naipaul, isopposed to the enlightenment bestowed by the superior education ofEurope: The idea of African completeness should not have surprised me.Something like this, a similar religious feeling, was, fleetingly, atthe back of many of the slave revolts in the Caribbean [...] Many of therecent political movements in the black Caribbean have had amillenarian mil��le��nar��i��an?adj.1. Of or relating to a thousand, especially to a thousand years.2. Of, relating to, or believing in the doctrine of the millennium.n.One who believes the millennium will occur. , ecstatic, purely African side. (WW, p. 231) This inferiority sabotages movements like Black Power, which aredoomed to degenerate into anger and terror because of the dislocationbetween its contemporary reality and themythic (or anti-modern) sourceof its integrity and identity. This also makes it impossible for thepeople of these societies not to fall prey to imported and misunderstoodideas and ideals from the Global North. Michael X becomes a'Negro' in London, a panderer panderer1) a person who panders or solicits for a prostitute. 2) some politicians catering to special interests. (See: pander) to British fantasies about race.He returns to Trinidad, bringing that fantasy of revolution andresistance with him, promising a return to African purity when'Malik's Negro was, in fact, a grotesque: not American, notWest Indian West In��dies?An archipelago between southeast North America and northern South America, separating the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean and including the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Bahama Islands. , but an American caricatured by a red man from Trinidad fora British audience' (WW, pp. 161-62). This hollowness of BlackPower movements betrays the larger cultural hollowness of blacksocieties and traps them in a cycle of rage and violence, as Naipaulpoints out after Black Power troubles during the Trinidadcarnival--'Excitement! And perhaps this excitement is the onlyliberation that is possible. Black power in these islands is protest.But there is no enemy. The enemy is the past' (WW, p. 137). In theabsence of real enemies, the violence is self-mutilating and suicidal. Such rage and deluded religious ecstasy For related topics, see ecstasy (emotion) and ecstasy (philosophy).Religious ecstasy is an altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently can also be seen in other'mixed' and 'second-hand' societies, like mestizo mestizo(māstē`sō)[Span.,=mixture], person of mixed race; particularly, in Mexico and Central and South America, a person of European (Spanish or Portuguese) and indigenous descent. Argentina. Like the Caribbean, Argentina was built on the back of agenocidal displacement of the native Indian inhabitants :This article is about the video game. For Inhabitants of housing, see Residency Inhabitants is an independently developed commercial puzzle game created by S+F Software. DetailsThe game is based loosely on the concepts from SameGame. . Like theCaribbean, it attracted European immigrants, who built a 'simplecolonial society created in the most rapacious and decadent phase ofimperialism' (WW, p. 388). Like the black Caribbean, mestizoArgentina yearns for a whole identity, and in its absence can only turnto rage and self-mutilation. Its most successful politicians will onlyinflame this wound: It was Peron's gift or genius to tap all that rage, the ragenot only of the European immigrants and their children, most of themworkers [...] the rage also of the dispossessed Indians in the north,the dispossessed in the regions that were not serviced by the newwealth. (WW, p. 421) If the Trinidad carnival is, amongst other things, a primitivereligious cult Noun 1. religious cult - a system of religious beliefs and rituals; "devoted to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin"cultus, cultfaith, religion, religious belief - a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; "he lost his , so is the cult of Eva Peron--'Saint Evita' inArgentina: 'And they have a saint: Eva Peron [...] She preached asimple hate and a simple love [...] a child's vision of power,justice and revenge' (WW, p. 354). The African cult of the leaderis also the mestizo cult of the saints. By the time he came to the 'converted' Islamic lands inthe late 1970s, then, Naipaul had a fully formed and increasingly rigidunderstanding of the Global Southern states Southern StatesU.S.Confederacygovernment of 11 Southern states that left the Union in 1860. [Am. Hist.: EB, III: 73]Dixiepopular name for Southern states in U.S. and for song. [Am. Hist. : that their stock ofcultural and intellectual capital was low or nonexistent non��ex��is��tence?n.1. The condition of not existing.2. Something that does not exist.non ; that theirmaterial and non-material needs were met by imports from the West; thattheir resultant state of agitation, inferiority, and rage was violentand self-mutilating. In Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, hewould largely retain this interpretative framework. To these he wouldadd his specific understanding of Islamic imperialism. In a talk givenat the Manhattan Institute The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a self-described "free market think tank" established in New York City in 1978, with its headquarters on Vanderbilt Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. of 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 on 'Our UniversalCivilisation' in 2001, he spoke about his first encounters with the'alienated peoples' of Islamic societies far from the Arabheartlands: The Muslim rage was just beginning to be apparent [...] I was amongpeople who had been doubly colonized ColonizedThis occurs when a microorganism is found on or in a person without causing a disease.Mentioned in: Isolation , doubly removed from themselves.Because I was soon to discover that no colonization had been so thoroughas the colonization that had come with the Arab faith. (WW, pp. 507-08) In Naipaul's thinking, the areas of the Global South like theCaribbean islands, Latin America, and Africa have had a predominantlyEuropean colonial experience, and the damages they suffered are held inbalance with the benefits they had accrued from the post-Enlightenment'universal civilization'. But the countries of central,southern, and South-East Asia have had the misfortune of being coatedwith an added layer of a more pernicious (and, in most cases, older)colonialism--that of Islam. In addition to the factors alreadymentioned, this further retards their chances of participating in the'universal civilization' emanating from Europe and NorthAmerica North America,third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. . This makes them more deprived, more anxious, more violent: I found myself among a colonized people who had been stripped bytheir faith of all that expanding intellectual life, all the varied lifeof the mind and senses, the expanding cultural and historical knowledgeof the world [...] This anxiety, this meeting of the two opposed worlds,the outgoing world of Europe and the closed world of the faith, wasspotted a hundred years ago by the writer Joseph Conrad. (WW, pp.512-13) All the elements of his essays on the violence and deprivation ofthe nonIslamic Global South are present in his two book-lengthnarratives of 'Islamic' journeys--mimicry, dependence,cultural/material poverty, anxiety, and violence. Much like Michael X,The New Jewel Movement, and the Argentine guerrillas, the Iranianrevolution, the Baluchi insurrections in Pakistan, and Fundamentalistmovements in Indonesia are built by people of 'simple origins,simply educated, but with a great sneering pride'. (13) This prideis especially irritating for Naipaul because it is in stark contrast towhat he sees as immense cultural poverty. About Indonesia he writes: Sustained great writing, rather than polemic, can only come out ofsocieties that offer true human possibility; and in Indonesia we have,instead, a pastoral people who have lost their history [...] are withoutthe means--the education, the language, and above all the freedom--toreflect. (BB, p. 79) In Pakistan he scolds a man who wants to reclaim some of the burdenof representing his country from 'Western' media:'"Do you think the Americans and Canadians should betravelling around talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to"lecture, speechrebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to us about third world media?""Yes. They know what newspapers should do. You wouldn't beable to tell us much"' (AB, p. 188). Such cultural poverty isanalogous to the material poverty of the people--the former can be saidto lead to the latter--and makes the Islamic nations dependent: The West, or the universal civilization it leads, is emotionallyrejected. It undermines; it threatens. But at the same time it isneeded, for its machines, goods, medicines, warplanes [...] All therejection of the West is contained within the assumption that there willalways exist out there a living, creative civilization, oddly neutral,open to all to appeal to. (AB, p. 194) The awareness of such dependency and inferiority triggers rage inthese people--'the rage of a pastoral people with limited skills,limited money and limited grasp of the world'--and Islam is theirway of getting even. Getting even, despite local variations, is alwaysviolent and destructive. In Iran Naipaul feels that the Shia emphasis onmartyrdom, blood, and death is being serviced by Islam: 'To keepalive ancient animosities, to hold on to the idea of personal revengeeven after a thousand years [...] it was necessary to beinstructed' (AB, p. 8). Even those local rebellions that arenon-Islamic, ostensibly os��ten��si��ble?adj.Represented or appearing as such; ostensive: His ostensible purpose was charity, but his real goal was popularity. secular and even Marxist, like the Baluchiuprising against the Pakistani government, fall apart because they areled by a middle-class intelligentsia with garbled and imported'Western' ideologies. This era of Islamic rage is contrasted with two other'historical' periods in Naipaul's writing. First, whenthe 'universal civilization' came to these lands under theauspices of Europe, 'Karachi in 1843 was a fishing village on thecoast. In 1947, when the British left Active in EnglandLabour PartyMain article: Labour Party (UK) The biggest left-wing party in the UK in terms of members and representation is the Labour Party. , it was a modern port and the maincity of the western half of the new Muslim state of Pakistan' (AB,p. 106). Muslims could not take advantage of this moment because theywere handicapped by their atavistic religion and resentment, and, as inIndia, fell behind intellectually as the Hindus welcomed the 'NewLearning' and surged ahead (BB, p. 265). Next are the brief momentsafter formal independence when pro-Western leaders took their backwardpeople to the brink of modernity, only to be thwarted by the ancientrage. Naipaul's exemplar for this is the Shah's Iran, as hecomments on an Iranian's trip abroad: 'In the late 1970sPaydar went to England [...] this course of study in England was atribute to Sha's Iran. It spoke of the mobility that had come topeople like Paydar [ ] it spoke of the economy that had kept him inwork' (BB, p. 193). But one of these eras was definitely over, andthe other had melted in the heat of alienated and resurgent re��sur��gent?adj.1. Experiencing or tending to bring about renewal or revival.2. Sweeping or surging back again.Adj. 1. rage.Naipaul begins Beyond Belief by denying that his was a book of opinions,but his analytical and representative framework propels him towards someabsolute conclusions: 'Islam ... makes imperial demands. Aconvert's world view alters ... he rejects his own; he becomes,whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story[ ] ... in the Islamof converted countries there is an element of neurosis neurosis,in psychiatry, a broad category of psychological disturbance, encompassing various mild forms of mental disorder. Until fairly recently, the term neurosis was broadly employed in contrast with psychosis, which denoted much more severe, debilitating mental andnihilism' (BB, p. 1). Naipaul's linkage of atavistic violence to the Global Southand, more recently, to the 'Islamic' South has gained thestatus of dominant discourse in the states of the Global North. Despitethis, Naipaul persists in describing himself as an outsider, prickingthe balloons of Western Liberalism as well as post-colonial persecutioncomplexes. His writing is routinely described as prophetic about Islamicfundamentalism and the 'clash of civilizations', ideas centralto the establishment (perhaps enforcement is a better word) of thepost-Cold War 'New World Order'. Much before Samuel Huntingdonand Bernard Lewis For the founder of the River Island retail chain, see Bernard Lewis (entrepreneur). Bernard Lewis (born May 31, 1916, London) is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. , Naipaul is said to have analysed the poisonous andintransigent nature of the new enemy of civilization. In fact, a glanceat any study of the formation of global Islamophobia from the early1970s to the present reveals that Naipaul was very much surfing theZeitgeist rather than anticipating it. This traffic betweenNaipaul's writing and the wider formations of Islamophobia must bethe subject of another paper, and here we must return to the question ofhis analysis of violence. I will suggest that Naipaul's vision isimpaired by his refusal or inability to accept two historical featuresof modernity. At the level of the 'local', he is unable toaccept that in monopolizing violence in the name of order, thepost-colonial states and their bourgeoisie reproduce the central valuesof 'Western' Enlightenment. Far from failing to learn from theEuropean/American colonizers, the states of the Global South haveabsorbed their lessons only too well. And at the level of the'global' he is unable to admit that the achievements ofWestern 'universal civilization', colonial and post-colonial,depend on ensuring conditions of material/cultural poverty and endemicconflict in the countries of the Global South. Non-state violence is routinely seen (and not by Naipaul alone) asatavistic, anarchic an��ar��chic? or an��ar��chi��caladj.1. a. Of, like, or supporting anarchy: anarchic oratory.b. Likely to produce or result in anarchy.2. , nihilistic ni��hil��ism?n.1. Philosophya. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.2. , symptomatic of deeper social decay andmalaise. Anton Blok Anton Blok (born 1935) is an anthropologist famous for studying the Mafia in Sicily in 1961 and again from 1965-1967. Anton Blok was a visiting professor at Ann Arbor (1972-1973) and Berkeley in 1988. He currently is a Cultural Anthropology professor at the University of Amsterdam. offers an explanation in his essay 'The Enigmaof Senseless Violence': The comparative study of violence suffers from several handicaps.The most important is the dominant conception of violence in modernsocieties in which the means of violence have long been monopolized bythe state. Precisely because of the stability of this relativelyimpersonal monopoly and the resultant pacification PacificationPain (See SUFFERING.)Aegirsea god, stiller of storms on the ocean. [Norse Myth. of society at large,people have developed strong feelings about using and witnessingviolence. They are inclined to consider its unauthorized forms inparticular as anomalous, irrational, senseless and disruptive--as thereversal of social order, as the antithesis of 'civilization',as something that has to be brought under control. (14) Thus, for Naipaul, challenges to this monopoly in the states of theGlobal South--be they in Pakistan, Malaysia, or Indonesia--areinevitably nihilistic and self-destructive. Added to this, he refuses totake into account the formative role played by colonial and latecapitalism in the maintaining of endemic violence. As Catherine Bestemanexplains: The economic restructuring of the global capitalist system hasproduced a well protected 'global archipelago of wealth' and aglobal periphery characterized by 'brigandage, mafia-domination,and marauding ma��raud?v. ma��raud��ed, ma��raud��ing, ma��raudsv.intr.To rove and raid in search of plunder.v.tr.To raid or pillage for spoils. private armies'. New forms of flexible warfare [...]match new forms of flexible capitalism. (15) Since he does not admit the structural relationship between thisglobal wealth and global violence, he produces the curious (yetseductive) picture of an advanced core and anterior or atavisticperiphery. The illusion of the Global South being locked in a temporalas well as physical lag behind the advanced 'civilization' isthe product of this vision. Islam and a host of other cultural grids areproduced as an explanation of this lag; violence as the symptom of it. Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth has long beenrecognized as an important intervention in the theorizing of violence.At first glance it might seem perverse to pair the Martiniquanrevolutionary with the ex-Caribbean defender of European'civilization'. However, there are illuminating convergencesand divergences between the two. It seems to me that much visceralunease produced by Naipaul's writing is precisely a result of thesemoments of kinship with and emphatic rejection of radicalanti-colonialism. As Gail Presbey and others have argued, Fanon doesstress the rejuvenating and restorative effects of a violent struggle onthe colonized peoples, but he puts a 'Naipaulian' emphasis oneducation to harness this violence: Fanon predicts that the 'unmixed and total brutality' ofthe colonized, 'if not immediately combated, invariably in��var��i��a��ble?adj.Not changing or subject to change; constant.in��vari��a��bil leads tothe defeat of the movement within a few weeks' [...] the immediacyof muscles is a mirage; knowledge is needed. If violent rebels are noteducated, the colonists will infiltrate, try to divide the groups, andredirect the violence. (16) Similarily, Naipaul can be seen as bearing witness to thefulfilment of Fanon's theses on violence and the post-colonialcondition of the Global South. Fanon writes: 'The colonised Adj. 1. colonised - inhabited by colonistscolonized, settledinhabited - having inhabitants; lived in; "the inhabited regions of the earth" manwill first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in hisbones against his own people [...] the native is an oppressed op��press?tr.v. op��pressed, op��press��ing, op��press��es1. To keep down by severe and unjust use of force or authority: a people who were oppressed by tyranny.2. personwhose permanent dream is to become the oppressor'. (17) Nor is thisviolence limited to the phase of anti-colonial struggle: 'Theatmosphere of violence [...] continues to dominate national life, for[...] the Third world is not cut off from the rest. Quite on thecontrary, it is at the middle of the whirlpool' (WE, p. 60). Thisis exactly what Naipaul describes in his travels in Iran, the Caribbeanislands, and Pakistan. His withering comments on 'dependency/mimicry' have also been anticipated by Fanon: This traditional weakness, which is almost congenital to thenational consciousness of under-developed countries, is not solely theresult of the mutilation MutilationSee also Brutality, Cruelty.Mutiny (See REBELLION.)Absyrtushacked to death; body pieces strewn about. [Gk. Myth.: Walsh Classical, 3]Agatha, St.had breasts cut off. [Christian Hagiog. of the colonised people by the colonial regime.It is also the result of the intellectual laziness of the nationalmiddle-class, of its spiritual penury pen��u��ry?n.1. Extreme want or poverty; destitution.2. Extreme dearth; barrenness or insufficiency.[Middle English penurie, from Latin [...]. (WE, pp. 121-22) These parasitic middle classes, as Naipaul testifies later, will'step into the shoes of former European settlement' and wavealoft 'the notion of nationalisation n. 1. same as nationalization.Noun 1. nationalisation - the action of forming or becoming a nationnationalizationgroup action - action taken by a group of people2. and Africanisation of theruling classes. The fact is that such action will become more and moretinged with racism' (WE, p. 126). From Black Power to Mobutu,Naipaul's writings precisely chart the course of such decay andracism. Fanon is no less prophetic of the corruption and decay of thefigure of national leader: 'In spite of his frequently honestconduct and his sincere declarations, the leader as objectively seen, isthe fierce defender of these interests, today combined of the nationalbourgeoisie and the ex-colonial companies. His honesty [...] crumblesaway little by little' (WE, p. 134). We recall Naipaul'sportraits of Bradshaw or Michael X or the New Jewel Movement. Theintellectually bankrupt, selfish middle classes and the corruptleadership's empty slogans of national autonomy soon take on thetinge of religious tension: 'This merciless fight engaged upon byraces and tribes, and the aggressive anxiety to occupy the posts leftvacant by the foreigner, will equally give rise to religious rivalries[...] this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of thecommonest racial feelings' (WE, pp. 130-31). And as Fanon sees it,the post-colonial nation is not equipped to combat this vicious cycle Noun 1. vicious cycle - one trouble leads to another that aggravates the firstvicious circlepositive feedback, regeneration - feedback in phase with (augmenting) the input because 'By the time a century or two of exploitation has passedthere comes about a veritable emaciation emaciation/ema��ci��a��tion/ (e-ma?she-a��shun) a wasted condition of the body. e��ma��ci��a��tionn.The process of losing so much flesh as to become extremely thin; wasting. of the stock of nationalcultures [...] The poverty of the people, national oppression National oppression is the mistreatment of people depending on what their nationality is. This type of oppression is commonly seen internationally, where the powerful imperialist countries overshadow the politics and economies of exploited countries. and theinhibition of culture are one and the same thing' (WE, p. 191).Poverty of culture, endemic violence, corruption, intellectualbankruptcy, dependency, racial and religious conflicts--all the featuresthat Naipaul finds in the Global South are already present inFanon's reflections. On two telling points, however, Fanon is different from Naipaul onthe analysis of globalized violence of the post-colonial condition.Consider Naipaul's earlier description of his first traumaticencounter with India--'I felt I was in a continent where, separatefrom the rest of the world, a mysterious calamity had occurred'(LO, p. 21)--and then recall Fanon's 'the Third World is notcut off from the rest. Quite on the contrary, it is at the middle of thewhirlpool'. Whereas for Naipaul the maimed nations of the Southhave sealed themselves off from the civilized centres through theirself-immolating rage, Fanon is alive to the fact that this horrendousstate of affairs is maintained by a peculiar and intimate relationship An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship. It is a relationship in which the participants know or trust one another very well or are confidants of one another, or a relationship in which there is physical or emotional intimacy. ,which he calls neocolonialism ne��o��co��lo��ni��al��ism?n.A policy whereby a major power uses economic and political means to perpetuate or extend its influence over underdeveloped nations or areas: . Naipaul berates mimicry, but, in the absence of any analysis of theglobal circulation of wealth and impoverishment, his descriptions areessentially, perhaps deliberately, misleading. The details have notescaped Fanon: 'The former dominated country becomes aneconomically dependent country. The ex-colonial power, which has keptintact and sometimes reinforced its colonial trade channels, agrees toprovision the budget of the independent nation by small injections'(WE, pp. 77-78). Naipaul blames morally bankrupt native elites forallowing this state of dependency to continue, but he ignores theprocess by which they arrive at this state--through the very'civilized' education that the country has received from theEuropean colonizing forces. Fanon is very clear: During the period of decolonisation n. 1. same as decolonization.Noun 1. decolonisation - the action of changing from colonial to independent statusdecolonizationgroup action - action taken by a group of people , certain colonisedintellectuals have begun a dialogue with the bourgeoisie of thecolonialist country [...] during the period of liberation, thecolonialist bourgeoisie looks feverishly for contacts with the elite,and it is with this elite that the familiar dialogue concerning valuesis carried on (WE, p. 35). He calls this class of compradore intellectuals enfranchised en��fran��chise?tr.v. en��fran��chised, en��fran��chis��ing, en��fran��chis��es1. To bestow a franchise on.2. To endow with the rights of citizenship, especially the right to vote.3. slavesor, memorably, slaves who are individually free. It is education andculture, the talk of universal civilizing values, that under theconditions of colonialism produces the intellectual decay of thepost-colonial condition. With no intellectual leadership the middleclasses are blind to national concerns: 'Seen through its eyes, itsmission has nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consists,prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and acapitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque masque,courtly form of dramatic spectacle, popular in England in the first half of the 17th cent. The masque developed from the early 16th-century disguising, or mummery, in which disguised guests bearing presents would break into a festival and then join with their of neo-colonialism' (WE, p. 124). Naipaul cannot admit that it isthe same European 'new learning' that he sees as being thecornerstone of universal civilization. The second crucial difference between Naipaul and Fanon involvesthe question of the agency of the peoples of the Global South. AsNaipaul places the burden of enlightenment and progress exclusively onthe 'educated' postcolonial bourgeoisie, he can only write ofbewildering 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. defeats. Fanon, on the other hand, employs a more generousinterpretation of 'education'/culture. As Nigel Gibson Nigel Gibson is an activist and scholar. He was born in London and was an active militant in the 1984 -1985 Miners' Strike. While in London he also met South African exiles from the Black Consciousness Movement and, in conversation with the exiles, developed an influential suggests in his essay on the role of radio in the Algerian revolution,Fanon observed that the peasants were much creatively in their use of'foreign technology', using technology to 'create andexpress their own versions of truth'. Unlike the educated Algerianbourgeoisie, they did not mimic European culture/civilization, but bentit to their own usages. Fanon suggested that the 'uneducated'peasants could do this for two important reasons: first, they were theones most oppressed under colonialism and had no incentive tocollaborate; secondly, their own cultural resources (songs, oral storytelling, poetry, drama) were less impoverished than those of the middleclasses, and hence they could meet the ideological onslaught of Europewith more inventiveness and imagination. (18) The very idea of thecultural resources of the 'uneducated'--resources that can beused to convert the impact of European new learning to one's ownadvantage as well as to show its oppressive functions--cannot beadmitted by Naipaul. He is condemned to simultaneously pinning his hopeson the 'educated' post-colonial bourgeoisie and somehowexplaining their failures on anything but their education/culture.Hence, his essentialist readings of African voodoo, 'Islamic'fundamentalism, and the spiritual desolation of Latin America. Hencealso, his refuge in the deadly mirage of 'purecultures'--ancient Hinduism, for example. This essay has attempted to trace Naipaul's representations ofviolence from his early essays to his later non-fictional travelnarratives. What we see is the persistence of violence as both a signand an analytical tool in Naipaul's understanding of the GlobalSouth. The alignments and differences of his interpretation withFanon's analysis is indicative of his eclectic engagement with theGlobal South. He borrows and amplifies the trenchant rage and despair ofAsian, African, and Latin-American peoples and writers. But he refusesto engage with or learn from their historicist and materialist analysesof their condition. Naipaul is unable to attend to both the material andcultural logic of colonialism/imperialism and their'post'/'neo' conditions. By eschewing capital andclass as interpretative categories, Naipaul fails to see the intimateand symbiotic relationship symbiotic relationship (sim´bīot´ik),n in implantology, that relationship assumed by an implant and the natural teeth to which it has been splinted. between the 'West' and the'rest', and he seals off the Global South in its own hell offailure. By accepting and indulging in fetishistic views ofEnlightenment learning, he offers fundamentalist dreams ofcultural/racial essences that perpetually recycle myths ofEuropean/American world orders. Let us briefly return to the Naipaul debates and to the Salmagundiexchanges about the post-colonial intellectual. We recall Conor CruiseO'Brien and John Lukacs stridently defending Naipaul as beingdeeply concerned with truth and public rhetoric, and conducting arelentless exposure of the human evil. Edward Said Edward Wadie Sa?d, Arabic: إدوارد وديع سعيد, naturally pointed outthat if exposing the evils of domination and dissembling dis��sem��ble?v. dis��sem��bled, dis��sem��bling, dis��sem��blesv.tr.1. To disguise or conceal behind a false appearance. See Synonyms at disguise.2. To make a false show of; feign. wasNaipaul's chosen task, then he should be writing about these evilsas they exist in the Global North as well as the Global South. He goeson to suggest: The moment Naipaul defines and crystallizes for the westernaudience is the moment of our disappointment with the prospects of otherpeoples. And that disappointment, based as it is on our tendency to growbored with something we can't control, is at the root of theacclaim Naipaul has won. (19) Said is surely correct in his explanation of the lionization ofNaipaul. 'A little room was made for me in the England of the1950s' says Naipaul humbly, but he prefers not to ask why. (20) But let us leave Said for the moment and accept at face valueNaipaul's admirers' claim of what he is--a fearlessinvestigator of the heart of human darkness, albeit of humans who falloutside the ambit of what he calls 'universal civilization'.As a chronicler of maimed humanity, its rage, violence, and failures,how far does he go? His admirers have no doubt that his is an authenticvoice of Global South despair, cutting through the faux-radicalism ofmetropolitan critics. Bruce King Bruce King (born April 6, 1924, Stanley, New Mexico) was a three term Democratic governor of the state of New Mexico.King served in the US Army during World War II. After the war, he attended the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. , in his review of Nixon's'London Calling', takes the author to task for failing torecognize this: Nixon should pay more attention to what third-world intellectuals,scholars, and artists write about their societies and less toprogressive opinion in New York and London [...] Multinational capitalhas, for the most part, gotten along happily with (Eric) Williams,Saddam, and Mobutu; it would probably prefer that Naipaul and othercritics of postcolonial order kept their mouth shut. (21) But as this survey of Naipaul's essays shows, such attempts toalign Naipaul with radical voices of the Global South are misleading.Naipaul is not interested in solidarity with 'third-worldintellectuals', because he does not believe that they can ever bemore than second-rate mimics under any historical/materialcircumstances. Naipaul is opposed to linking the 'post-colonialorder' to the devastations wrought by multinational capital. On thecontrary, he sees the ills of the Global South arising from its failureto be integrated within the world of late modern capitalism. He fails toacknowledge the structural and causal relationship between globalprivilege and global degradation. He refuses to analyse how'universal education' has ensured endemic oppression. He doesnot engage with the material, political, and cultural resistances of the'wretched of the earth', and he attempts to displace theproductive messiness of human interaction with the baleful phantom ofcultural and spiritual purity. In all this Naipaul is in breach of themost important duties of a conscientious intellectual worker. (1) See Rob Nixon, 'London Calling': V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, KB, TC (b. August 17 1932, Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago), better known as V. S. Naipaul, is a Trinidadian-born British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent, currently resident in Wiltshire. ,Postcolonial Mandarin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); TheHumour and the Pity, ed. by Amitava Kumar (New Delhi New Delhi(dĕl`ē), city (1991 pop. 294,149), capital of India and of Delhi state, N central India, on the right bank of the Yamuna River. : Buffalo, 2002);Dagmar Barnouw, Naipaul's Strangers (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is a publishing house at Indiana University that engages in academic publishing, specializing in the humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1950. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. , 2003); V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of RecentCriticism, ed. by Purabi Panwar (New Delhi: Pencraft, 2003); and JoanCocks, 'A New Cosmopolitanism? V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said',Constellations, 7 (2000), 46-60. (2) Nixon, p. 6. (3) Literary Occasions, ed. by Pankaj Mishra Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce from Allahabad University before earning his Master of Arts degree in English literature at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. (London: Picador,2003), pp. 16-17. Naipaul's major essays have been collected inthis volume and the earlier The Writer and the World (London: Picador,2002). All the essays cited here are from these volumes, hereafterabbreviated as LO and WW, repsectively, with references given in thetext. (4) Nixon, p. 7. (5) Nixon, p. 6. (6) Sir Vidia Loses Temper Again!, PTI PTI - Portable Tool Interface (Press Trust of India Press Trust of India (प्रेस ट्रस्ट ऑफ़् इंडिया, भाषा)is a nonprofit cooperative among the Indian newspapers. ), 21February 2002 <http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/feb/21nai.htm>[accessed 18 June 2006]. (7) dward Said, 'Intellectuals in the Post-ColonialWorld', Salmagundi, 70-71 (1986), 44-64 (p. 53). (8) Conor Cruise O'Brien, Edward Said, and John Lukacs,'Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World: Response andDiscussion', Salmagundi, 70-71 (1986), pp. 65-81 (pp. 67-68). (9) Ibid., pp. 78-79. (10) Barnouw, p. 1. Further references will be given in the text. (11) The Mantle of the Prophet: Learning and Power in Modern Iran(London: Chatto & Windus, 1986). (12) Humour and the Pity, p. 62. (13) V. S. Naipaul, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981;Basingstoke and Oxford: Picador, 2001), p. 3; hereafter abbreviated AB.Also, V. S. Naipaul, Beyond Belief (London: Little, Brown, 1998),hereafter BB. All references appear in the text. (14) Meanings of Violence, ed. by Goran Aijmer and Jon Abbink(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), p. 23. (15) Violence: A Reader, ed. by Catherine Besteman (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 303-04. (16) Gail M. Presbey, 'Fanon on the Role of Violence inLiberation: A Comparison with Gandhi and Mandela', in Fanon: ACritical Reader, ed. by Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, andRenee T. White (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 283-96 (pp. 291-92). (17) 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. , The Wretched of the Earth (London: MacGibbon andKee, 1965), p. 42. Hereafter abbreviated WE, with all references in thetext. (18) Nigel Gibson, 'Jammin' the Airwaves and Tuning intothe Revolution: The Dialectics of the Radio in L'An V de larevolution algerienne', in Fanon: A Critical Reader, pp. 297-308. (19) Said, in O'Brien, Said, and Lukacs, p. 81 (20) For a good account of the formation of Naipaul's culturalauthority in the 'West' see Nixon, 'London Calling'. (21) 'Review of London Calling', Research in AfricanLiteratures 24, 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 132-3. PABLO MUKHERJEE University of Warwick In the 1960s and 1970s, Warwick had a reputation as a politically radical institution.[3] More recently, the University has been seen as a favoured institution of the British New Labour government.