as Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua and David Grossman tend to depict secular ...... Selbourne, Lord Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, and General. Smuts. See Land ...
APARTHEID AND ZIONISM: A POST-COLONIAL READING OF SELECTED NOVELS BY NADINE GORDIMER AND S. YIZHAR
A Dissertation Submitted To
The Department of English Language and Literature Women’s College for Arts, Science and Education Ain Shams University By
Rania Reda Nasr In Fulfillment of the Requirements For The Degree of Ph.D. Under the Supervision of:
Dr. Gehan Al Margoushy Asst. Prof. of English Literature Women's College Ain Shams University
Dr. Magda Mansour Asst. Prof. of English Literature Women's College Ain Shams University
2012
Acknowledgements رب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﻦ
I would like to express my sincere gratitude and deepest appreciation to my supervisors Dr. Gehan Al Margoushy and Dr. Magda Mansour for their invaluable guidance and moral support. I am deeply indebted to their insightful comments and suggestions that helped me greatly throughout the writing of this study. I would also like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Abdelwahab El Messiri, who provided tremendous contribution on the field of my study, for his encouragement and moral support. Many sincere thanks are due to all my friends and colleagues at the English Department for their encouragement and support. Their extensive discussions around my work and interesting explorations have been very helpful for this study. Last but not least, I owe my deepest gratitude to my beloved family for their understanding and support. Special thanks are due to my father for his encouragement and endless love.
ii
CONTENTS Preface
……………………………………………..... 1-6
Chapter One
: 'Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory': An Introduction...............................
Chapter Two
: Apartheid and Zionism: Cultural Origins and Historical Parallels……...........................
7-46 47-86
Chapter Three
: Paradox and Ambivalence in the Apartheid Narrative: The Conservationist and July's 87-145 People ……………………………………….
Chapter Four
"Apartheid Israel": Zionism and Nation Building in Khirbet Khizeh and 146-195 Preliminaries ………………………………
Conclusion
………………………………………………
196-206
Works Cited
………………………………………………
207-225
Summary
………………………………………….
226-229
Abstract
…………………………………………
iii
Preface
Preface The uniqueness of the colonial situation and its traumatic effects provide a fertile field for the study of the political, social and ideological contradictions within the opposing groups of oppressors and oppressed. This dissertation studies the South African and Israeli models and examines the oppressiveness of the colonial encounter embodied in the dismantled Apartheid system in South Africa and the ongoing Zionism in Israel. There is a pattern of behavior, which is identical in its general lines exhibited by those settlers, who have formed political entities in non-European lands, namely South Africa and Palestine. In both countries, we have a "settler colonialism", which is different from the traditional colonialism because the settlers are permanently there, and permanently in contact with the indigenous inhabitants; the discriminatory treatment imposed upon the natives is more intense, systematic and brutal than that to which the natives were subjected to by the imperial authorities who were based overseas. Another thing which distinguishes "settler colonialism" from traditional colonialism, is the declared exposure to discrimination based on race, color and creed by "settler colonialism". Comparing the dissidence stance of two prominent writers belonging to these oppressive regimes, Nadine Gordimer (1923- ) and S. Yizhar (1916-2006), this study tends to trace various manifestations of racism in the South 1
Preface
African and the Zionist narratives. Unfortunately, the Zionist oppressive colonial system persists in Palestine in spite of the controversy about its colonial/postcolonial status. Throughout a history of oppression by virtue of belonging to a certain race, this study examines the psychological complexes rendered by such conditions as revealed in the works of Gordimer and Yizhar. The colonial history of Apartheid/Zionism has been documented extensively by a wide spectrum of writers from many fields. Critics such as Edward Said, Abdel Wahab Elmessiri, Uri Davis, Michael Prior and Donald Akenson have tackled the analogy between Apartheid and Zionism either from a political perspective or within Biblical interpretations. However, this analytical study is one of the pioneers to explore the opposing interrelationships within the literary context of both systems. The dissertation delves deeply into the psychological realms of the colonial subjects whether they belong to the side of the colonizer or the colonized. The study aims at exploring how both writers capture the reality of the two nations: South Africa and Israel. Both countries have had an aggressive and extensive history of oppression. The socio-historical background of each of these countries plays an integral part in the analysis of the selected novels. It does not only assist in the interpretation of the stories themselves but also helps us focus on the thematic concerns raised by the writers. As a result, a socio-historical approach is necessary in this study to show the subtle similarities and differences between the two systems which helps in making a comparison between the two writers. 2
Preface
Skin colour and ethnic interpretations become a means of classification and categorization of people into races and, in the context of Apartheid and Zionism, provide the basis for separation, discrimination and oppression. The history of colonization and of land occupation indicates that the political and social dominance of one nation over another is acted out within a racist discourse and under the justification of building a nation. Studies of race and nationalism often view national lands as sites of territorial conflict, focusing on the opposition between the colonizers and the colonized. This study investigates not only poles of opposition which produce ambivalence in the colonial relation but also the psychic dilemma and identity crisis that often emerge in literature. Not all resistance literature is written by the colonized other, since some is produced by dissenting voices among colonizers. The literature of both South Africa and Israel depict a nation struggling to express its voice and construct a national identity. The study proposes the works of Nadine Gordimer and S.Yizhar as distinctive dissenting voices of the social ethos. Gordimer is regarded as a representative of the South African writers who provide a nuanced picture of this racially divided country – its divisions, conflicts, and the unique psychological tensions under Apartheid. In the Israeli setting, Yizhar is one of the highly esteemed native-born writers who is known for his deep belief and strong devotion to Zionist ideals. His literary works, however, reflect a critical and an oppositional stance regarding the Zionist establishment. In his act of literary dissidence, Yizhar exposes the moral and the psychological conflicts of the 3
Preface
Israeli soldiers as he gradually questions the morals and ideals on which Zionism was primarily founded.
The novels examined in this study depict abuses of power and their associated moral dilemmas, focusing on the consciousness of the detached self. The study focuses on The Conservationist (1974) and July's People (1981) to reflect the oppressive and racist regime of Apartheid in South Africa. The study then attempts to compare this Apartheid system with its Israeli counterpart by exploring Yizhar's novels, Khirbet Khizeh (1949) and Preliminaries (1992). How far and to what extent does each writer oppose/adopt the prevailing ideologies of his/her culture? How do they attempt to build a legitimate relationship to the land that rejects them and how is this complex relation revealed in their narratives? Attempting to resolve these ambivalent relationships, this study examines the writings of Gordimer and Yizhar within the theoretical framework of postcolonialism. The study aims to discuss the South African and the Israeli models in the light of major postcolonial theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Edward Said. Dedicating his lifetime to critical and theoretical practices against colonialism and racism, Fanon chose the field of psychology as his means of investigating the impact of oppression on colonial subjects. Fanon advocates the reconstruction of history and culture as the basis for new postcolonial forms. Bhabha's central concern of postcolonial theory is the construction of identity discussing notions of hybridity and ethnicity. He examines the instabilities of the 4
Preface
colonial identity resulting from the ambivalent relationship between the colonizer and the colonized along with the problematic issues of dislocation and alienation. Said is concerned particularly with the Palestinian struggle for selfdetermination while his main contribution is dedicated to the Western conceptualization of the East as the different 'other'. He represents an analysis of the negative stereotypes and the colonial assumptions inherent in Western representations of the Orient. The dissertation is divided into four chapters and a conclusion. As it has been shown, the theoretical framework of the study draws mainly upon Fanon, Bhabha and Said. Moreover, in order to reach a profound critique of the colonial situation and a comprehensive analysis of the proposed novels, the study also draws on George Hegel’s and Albert Memmi’s theories on the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Moreover, the study benefits from Octave Mannoni's and Paulo Freire’s psychological interpretations in reading the dynamics of colonialism. Chapter one, an introductory chapter, lays some theoretical groundwork providing an overview of the colonial and postcolonial discourse, a definition of terms and a review of the socio-political formation of South Africa and Israel. Chapter two demonstrates an analogous representation of Apartheid and Zionism reviewing the socio-historical background of these two most debated systems. Chapter three examines the novels of Nadine Gordimer in the light of the proposed theories to interpret the colonial relationship in the South African setting. The fourth chapter of this study is dedicated to an analysis of S.Yizhar's novels reflecting the 5
Preface
colonial ethos in Palestine. The study traces the contradictions and conflicts within the context of a changing political and social reality. The conclusion brings the dissenting voices together to discover common themes between the two models that represent an oppositional attitude to the dominant imperialistic attitude in their respective countries. Within the framework of postcolonial theories, the writings of Gordimer and Yizhar will highlight the dissidence stance of each writer and to what extent he/she upholds a liberal view and ‘speaks the truth to power’. Throughout the course of this study, the terms ‘Black’ and ‘White’ are employed to refer to the racial categorization imposed by the regime of South Africa. Therefore, the term Black (with a capital letter) is to emphasize the definition attributed to them by the dominant system, Apartheid. From another perspective, it is unfortunate to refer to Palestine as the "State of Israel". In no way does this imply acceptance of their ideological affirmations. The dissertation, however, is obliged to use the terms without accepting or affirming any of their unjust implications.
6
Chapter One 'COLONIAL DISCOURSE AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY': AN INTRODUCTION The terms colonialism and postcolonialism have attracted much debate among scholars. This often makes it difficult to propose fixed definitions of the terms. This introduction attempts to highlight the most prominent features of each discourse in order to interpret the factors that influenced the writings that belong to each of them. These features are supposed to shed more light on the works of Gordimer and Yizhar, which are the core of this study. Colonialism is a system established by European states which deliberately use brutal force for their economic advantage. This involves the prevalence of a dominant White world, in which the 'other' is rendered inferior and subordinate. Colonialism constitutes a racial order where the dominant minority subjugates the subordinate majority based on a politics of exploitation and supremacy of one group above another. This is achieved through the suppression of the natives, for the exploitation of land and natural resources on the one hand, and the institutionalization of slavery and segregation on the other. This entails the domination and subordination of "racialized population" in many subtle ways and which is rationalized and justified by the "white man's burden" and his "civilizing mission". Abdul JanMohamed emphasizes these views by saying:
7
Chapter One
The colonizers' efforts towards absolute political, economic, and spiritual domination create in them a feudal spirit, supported by a series of familiar rationalizations: the superiority of white races, their mission to civilize the rest of the world, the inability of the natives to govern themselves and to develop their own natural resources… ("Economy" 3) In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon views colonialism in these terms: Overnight the Negro has been given two frames of reference within which he has had to place himself. His metaphysics, or, less pretentiously, his customs and the sources on which they were based, were wiped out because they were in conflict with a civilization that he did not know and that imposed itself on him.(110) In a situation where the prevailing values and ideals are those imposed by the oppressor, it is only natural that we find physical and psychological repression in the form of negating the native's past rendering him with no origins or roots. In other words, the settler or colonizer acts as a majority while the oppressed colonized is in the place of the minority. Thus, occupation of land, according to Fanon, entails occupation of psyches: There is no occupation of territory, on the one hand, and independence of persons on the other. It is the country as a whole, its history, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured, in the 8
Chapter One
hope of final destruction. Under this condition, the individual's breathing is an observed and occupied breathing. (Black Skin 65) In her critical study on colonial discourse, Anne McClintock proposes two forms of domination where colonization "involves direct territorial appropriation of another geopolitical entity, combined with forthright exploitation of its resources and labour, and systematic interference in the capacity of the appropriated culture to organize its dispensations of power" (295). The first form of domination is manifested in the ‘classic’ colonization or the ‘imperial’ colonization in which a minority of colonists occupies land far from the colonial metropolis and exercise control over a majority of indigenous population. This involves a "large scale, territorial domination" with the political and economic oppression to exploit the natural resources and labour of the land. Another form of domination is marked by "internal colonization" where, by contrast, the natives are expelled by the colonial settlers who no longer have a mother country to return to. The authors of the postcolonial study, The Empire Writes Back, differentiate between these two forms of colonization in terms of settler and invaded colonies. The indigenous people in the invaded colonies "remained in the majority but were administered by a foreign power" (Ashcroft et al. 211).This concurs with the concept of classic or imperial colonialism. While, on the other hand, in the settler colonies people are expelled and dispossessed by the colonists following their arrival who, by time, ceased to represent the majority group. This form of colonialism is perceived in accordance with the concept of "internal colonization". 9
Chapter One
Edward Said agrees with McClintock and argues that colonialism represents the "domination and inequities of power and wealth" (Culture 20). It is a way of maintaining unequal privileges of economic and political power to guarantee a position of superiority for the West in opposition to the Orient. He states that “[i]ndependence was for Whites and Europeans; the lesser or subject peoples were to be ruled…” (Culture 26) because they were racially superior. This results in the "ambivalence" of the colonial situation where rejection is accompanied by dependency from both opposite side. In this context, JanMohamed states: For while he (the settler) sees the native as the quintessence of evil and therefore avoids all contact because he fears contamination, he is at the same time absolutely dependent upon the colonized people not only for his privileged social and material status but also for his sense of moral superiority and, therefore, ultimately for his identity. (Manichean Aesthetics 4) From another perspective, while the native hates the system that oppresses him, he is at the same time attracted to the Western technology. This rejection and dependency on part of the colonizer, and the attraction and hatred on part of the colonized, represents the ambivalence in the colonial discourse. Frantz Fanon divides the colonial period into two phases: 'extractive', where the colonizer tends to extract the raw materials of the colony; it gradually shifts to the 'consumer phase' of colonialism which fragments the indigenous society into a number of classes. The shift 10
Chapter One
between the two phases of colonial domination is gradual and is distinguished by the emergence of class conflicts within the indigenous community. According to Fanon, the colonial world is a "Manichean" world inhabited by two different opposing "species" – namely, master/slave, colonizer/colonized, and oppressor/oppressed:
The colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say with the help of the army and the police force, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. (Wretched 41) Fanon's implicit paradigm of White masters and Black slaves is viewed as an inherited historical phenomenon. Inferiority and slavery were passed by generations as the primary and constructive nature of the Black race. The colonial Whites have long exploited the Blacks in subhuman terms. The two opposing forces characterize this interdependence relationship between colony and metropolis where the prosperity and privileges of the colonizer is based on the oppression of the colonized. Fanon proceeds further to examine the various expression of racism exposing the justifications of colonial oppression. The psychology of 11
Chapter One
oppression is a topic of significance to which Fanon made pioneering contributions. Delving deeply into the experience of the oppressed, Fanon argues that colonialism was not just economic or political oppression only, but it was psychological as well because it permeated the inner concepts of the self. At the core of this study are the Manichean racist perspectives determining the colonial encounter, forms of power and resistance, the existential dilemma and the alienation of the colonial self (colonizer and colonized). In this context, Amilcar Cabral states that the experience of colonial domination shows that, in the effort to perpetuate exploitation, the colonizer not only creates a system to repress the cultural life of the colonized people; he also provokes and develops the cultural alienation either by so-called assimilation of indigenous people, or by creating a social gap between the indigenous elites and the popular masses. (57) Introducing Postcolonialism: In many cases, postcolonialism is considered as one of the most debated fields of cultural studies. The debate about the status of settler countries as post-colonial suggests that issues relating to postcolonialism transcend the boundaries of a strict definition. In a literal sense, postcolonial is that which has been preceded by colonialism. The term is used synonymously with the post-independence period of former colonized countries. Initially, the term post-colonial (with a hyphen) was used to indicate the 'post' colonial state in chronological reference to the period following independence. It suggested "a concern only with the national 12
Chapter One
culture after the departure of the imperial power" (Ashcroft et al., Empire 1). The term was later developed "to cover all the cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonialism to the present day… during and after the period of imperial domination and the effects of this on contemporary literatures" (Ashcroft et al., Empire 2; emphasis added). Postcolonialism (without a hyphen), then, does not imply "after" but the product and outcome of colonialism. In her study on the 'pitfalls' of the term, McClintock states, "Metaphorically, the term 'postcolonialism' marks history as a series of stages along an epochal road from 'the pre-colonial', to 'the colonial', to 'the post-colonial'"(292). Thus, the term does not necessarily imply the post-independence historical period in former colonies, but is rather perceived as a resistance discourse, "one which begins in the moment that the colonizing power inscribes itself onto the body and space of its Other and which continues as an often occluded tradition into the modern theatre"(Slemon 3). From his perspective, Ato Quayson avoids the chronological implication of the term suggesting 'after' independence and perceives a postcolonial discourse instead as a process," a notion of coming-into-being … to suggest creative ways of viewing a variety of cultural, political and social realities via a postcolonial prism of interpretation" (11,21). Postcolonial theories are thus built upon the colonial experience of opposition and struggle 'within and against' current oppressiveness of colonialism; they bear witness to 13
Chapter One
peoples emerging from social, political and economic domination to reclaim their equality. Elleke Boehmer states, Rather than simply being the writing which 'came after' empire, postcolonial literature is that which critically scrutinizes the colonial relationship. It is writing that sets out in one way or another to resist colonialist perspectives… To give expression to colonized experience, postcolonial writers sought to undercut thematically and formally the discourse which supported colonization- the myths of power, the race classifications, the imagery of subordination.(3) Engaging in the psychology of both the colonizer and the colonized in the 'process of decolonization', postcolonial theories raise their self- consciousness in order to build a new society where equality prevails. In literature, postcolonialism "embraces the historical reality and focuses on the relationship which has provided the most important creative and psychological impetus in the writing" (Asckcroft et al., Empire 24). In accordance with Aschroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, Stuart Hall maintains that the term is not merely a period of time, then and now; postcolonialism, in short, is an outcome of colonialism. It refers to a general process of decolonization which, like colonialism itself, has marked the colonizing societies as powerfully as it has the colonized. Hence the subverting of the old colonizing/colonized binary in the new conjuncture …everything is reversed at the same 14
Chapter One
moment, all the old relations disappear forever and entirely new ones replace them. (“When was the Postcolonial?” 246, 247) Postcolonial literature, then, reflects the colonial ethos giving expression to the colonized experience. It is a literature that reacts to the discourse of colonization dealing with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. It is also a literary critique to texts that carry racist or colonial undertones. According to Boehmer, postcolonial literature "identified itself with the broad movement of resistance to, and transformation of, colonial societies" (184). Accordingly, the colonial discourse analysis and postcolonial theories are, thus, "critiques of the process of production of knowledge about the Other"(Williams 8). Postcolonial literary critics re-examine classical literature with a particular focus on the social discourse that shaped it. Postcolonial fiction writers might interact with the traditional colonial discourse by attempting to modify or subvert it. Protagonists in postcolonial writings are often struggling with questions of identity, experiencing the conflict of living between the old native world and the invasive force of imperial dominant cultures. The critical nature of postcolonial theory entails destabilizing Western ways of thinking, therefore, creating space for subaltern or marginalized groups to speak or produce alternatives to dominant discourse. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, postcolonialsim is a much disputed term. Apparently, postcolonialism entails recognition of the 'other', decolonization of racial hierarchies and exploitative practices. Whether it reflects the historical 15
Chapter One
period after the end of colonialism or peoples struggling for independence, the term is associated with modern forms of imperialism that can be applied to the conditions in Israel: Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority within the modern world order. Postcolonial perspectives emerge from the colonial testimony of Third World countries, and the discourse of 'minorities' within the geopolitical divisions of East and West, North and South. They intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a hegemonic 'normality' to the uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories, of nations, races, communities, people. (Bhabha, Location 171) From a negative perspective, the term is seen as ambivalent. It represents the continuing concepts of the colonial system along with the subordinate views of the 'other'.i As we shall see in the South African case, despite the formal independence, no authentic reconstruction of the native's past is offered. Imperialism as a concept and colonialism as a practice are still active in new forms within the supposedly newly 'independent' nations. According to McClintock, postcolonialism is "a white word" (291) and the extent to which the formerly colonized countries could be perceived as 'post' colonial is debatable. Postcolonialism reflects the continuation of old practices in new ambiguous forms where
16
Chapter One
settlers become natives and rewrite their past to serve their present purposes. Hall states, It is not that, thereafter, everything has remained the same- colonization repeating itself in perpetuity to the end of time. It is, rather, that colonization so refigured the terrain that, ever since, the very idea of a world of separate identities, of isolated or separable and selfsufficient cultures and economies, has been obliged to yield to a variety of paradigm designed to capture these different but related forms of relationship, interconnection and discontinuity.(“When was the Postcolonial?” 252) Thus, we see how postcolonialial studies reflect the history of oppression and the ongoing legacies of European colonialism. In A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, Schwarz states, Postcolonial studies work to make this relation of unequal powers more visible, with the goal of ending it. Postcolonial studies in this sense are the radical philosophy that interrogates both the past history and ongoing legacies of European colonialism in order to undo them… [through] a transformation of knowledge. (4) It is in this sense that the study adopts the postcolonial discourse in reading the novels of Gordimer and Yizhar. By unfolding the traumatic effects of the colonial encounter 17
Chapter One
upon both the colonizer and the colonized within the proposed narratives, the study aspires to achieve better 'knowledge' to interpret the present of South Africa and foresee a better future in Palestine where racism ends and equality prevails.
Racism: The Ugly Face of Colonialism Within the post colonialist agenda it is crucial to understand what racism is. Racism can lead to violent and drastic acts. It is associated with terms such as extremism, hatred, exploitation, separatism, denial and mass murders because of genocide. According to Abdel Wahab Elmessiri, the term ‘race’ is abstract and not based upon scientific facts, “it defines an attitude derived not from the findings of scientific research about race but from mythical assumptions largely divorced from reality” (Land of Promise 165). Elmessiri further suggests a definition of the term: We can consider ‘racism’ as a generic term, referring to the social phenomenon of exploitative discrimination practiced by one human group, which defines itself on the basis of a trait (other than sex and class), against another that lacks that trait. (168) Thus, race has functioned as an instrument of power and racism was employed as an oppressive devise embedded in the institutional structure of dividing peoples on basis of color, nationality or other inherited characteristicsii. This study highlights the notion of race as a form of power to exercise exclusion and subordination in the Apartheid/Zionist 18
Chapter One
models. Racism is systematically institutionalized in every aspect of the political, economic and social life. Racism first emerged in the 19th century and it simply referred to the idea that human beings are divided into separate races ("Racism"). This was often used to justify the belief that some races were inferior to others. The resulting practice of giving privilege to certain groups and denying others their rights based on racial characteristics is what distinguishes racism. Historical experiences unfold upon a set of attitudes and behaviours that obliges people in subordination only because they belong to a 'different' category. Consequently, racism is detected in the negative attitudes and institutionalized discrimination and exercises of power against the "other" group that is excluded and rendered subordinate in order to justify privilege and oppression. This discrimination results in racial segregation or separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a bathroom, attending school, going to the movies…etc("Racism"). Thus, we see that race signifies the major historical legacy of colonialism – namely, the injustices committed against the "people of color" or a supposedly "inferior" race. Fanon agrees with the previous definitions and states that racism is part of the "systematized oppression of a people" and the negation of their cultural values (Dying 33). According to Fanon, racism is the ideology of colonialism: Racism stares one in the face for it so happens that it belongs in a characteristic whole: that of the shameless exploitation of one group of men 19
Chapter One
by another which has reached a higher stage of technical development. This is why military and economic oppression generally precedes, makes possible, and legitimizes racism … It is not possible to enslave men without logically making them inferior through and through. And racism is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization. (Dying 40) In The Colonizer and the Colonized, Albert Memmi states that the 'systematic devaluation' of Blacks and other subordinate groups along racial and ethnic lines represent a continuation of a colonial legacy (70). Memmi states that: Racism appears, then, not as an incidental detail, but as a consubstantial part of colonialism. It is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist. Not only does it establish a fundamental discrimination between colonizer and colonized … but it also lays the foundation of the immutability of this life. (74) Forms of racism were either detected in the physical removal or obliteration of the "other", or through the absorption of different groups into the values and attitudes defined by the dominant group. In "Racism and Culture" Fanon argues that there is a ‘reciprocal’ relationship between culture and racism within the colonial domination. He distinguishes between two modes of colonial racism; first, the ‘crude’ or ‘vulgar racism’ in which the inferiority of the native is based upon biological terms, as in the assumption 20
Chapter One
that Blacks have smaller brains and are less intelligent. Based upon the concept of inferiorization, it presents essential differences between the human races to legitimize prejudices and unequal practices. It accepts the 'other' within its society but only in subordinate position which enables exploitation. The second and more subtle mode of racism is ‘cultural racism’ and which held that the White man stands for beauty, intelligence and privilege while the Black man is rendered inferior and subhuman. Cultural racism asserts on the differences between races providing no place for the 'other' within its society and who must be excluded and segregated so as to provide no threat to the dominant culture. Accordingly, racism either subordinates by positing human differences, or completely represses and rejects by exclusion. Since racism is constructed basically on both discourses, hence, it unfolds upon an inherent paradox that is to exploit the 'other' and at the same time to eliminate it. Scientific racism based upon biological theories of superior and inferior races no longer became the dominant discourse. Cultural racism or "new racism" emerged based upon cultural differences rejecting the co-existence of other different cultures. In her study on new racism, Amy Elizabeth Ansell notes the shifts in the racial discourse: New racism … is a form of racism that utilizes themes related to culture and nation as a replacement for the now discredited biological referents of the old racism. It is concerned less with notions of racial superiority in the narrow sense than with the alleged "threat" people of color pose … (Ansell 20) 21
Chapter One
In short, racist discourse is defined as involving the use of ethnic categorizations (biological, cultural, religious …) as signifiers of fixed, deterministic differences of the "other". This "otherness" serves as a basis for legitimizing exclusion, subordination, and exploitation of groups. The discourse unfolds upon an inherent ambivalence in the relation between racist and racialized, colonizer and colonized in which "fear and desire double for one another and play across the structures of otherness" (Hall, “Old and New” 256). This conforms to Fanon's argument of ambivalence in which the colonized desires to dispossess and replace his oppressor: "there is no native who does not dream at least once a day of setting himself up in the settler's place" (30). Thus, the colonial situation is characterized by the ambivalence between attraction and repulsion of its subjects. According to the connotations of the terms race and racism, the two concepts become closely related. The presence of the physical differences between groups does not necessarily create races; rather, it is the recognition of such differences as significant or the negation of another as insignificant is what constitutes the concept of race and, in turn, racism. Mannoni’s Complexes and Hegel’s Paradigm: Colonialism, thus, entails economic and cultural subjugation motivated by the greed of the superior West for land and labour of the "other" by dispossessing indigenous people and repressing their culture and economy. Hence, the oppressed is defined in terms of his oppressor. Fanon points out to the dehumanization entailed in the interrelation between colonizer and colonized which he ascribes to racism. This results in the constant feeling of the Blacks as being 22
Chapter One
inferior and in constant comparison to Whites. Blacks, in Fanon's terms, are "constantly preoccupied with selfevaluation" (Wretched 211). The basis of differentiation is asserted in language, culture and values: in order to be human, the 'inferior' race submits to the doctrines and values of the ‘superior’ race. This is manifested in the dissolution of the indigenous culture and values of the natives which, in turn, begin to come to terms with the European civilization and seek absorption into the White mainstream. This results in what Fanon calls the superiority and inferiority complexes; Whites are ridden with guilt while Blacks try to escape their inferiority either by proclaiming their acceptance of the cultural models of their oppressors aiming to achieve "a white existence"(Black Skin 228), or by condemning their own cultural values. He states: Having judged, condemned, abandoned his cultural forms, his language, his food habits, his sexual behaviour, his way of sitting down, of resting, of laughing, of enjoying himself, the oppressed flings himself upon the imposed culture with the desperation of a drowning man. (Toward 39) Fanon and Mannoni both provide a psychology of colonialism representing the opposing parties of the conflict revealing, thus, the psychological as well as the political liberation and decolonization. Concurring with Fanon's superiority/inferiority complexes, Mannoni proposes two complexes illustrating the origin of colonialism: the "inferiority complex" of Europeans and the "dependency complex" attributed to the colonized. The "inferiority 23
Chapter One
complex" constitutes "the main driving force of the Western man, and provides him with the energy which sets him apart from all other peoples in the world"(128). According to Mannoni, the Black suffers from a "dependency complex" and is in need of an authority to rule and protect himiii. From his perspective, Hegel in The Phenomenology of Spirit proposes a master/slave paradigm to analyze the relationship between Black and White and the origins of oppression. Hegel argues that man becomes conscious of himself only through recognition by the other. Thus, he defines the master/slave relationship in terms of recognition and not negation which leads to conflict if denied. The one who attains recognition becomes the master while the other who recognizes only without being recognized becomes a slave. It is then that the master oppresses and dehumanizes the slave. Hegel states: Self-consciousness is faced by another selfconsciousness; it has come out of itself. This has a two-fold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superceded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self. (111) However, Hegel argues that eventually the master would be a victim of his own privilege and advantage. Alienated from human labor and having not accomplished something concrete in life, the master loses himself while the slave reflects his humanity through his labor and achievements in life. By transforming nature, the slave could eventually 24
Chapter One
transform himself and becomes the real victor in the relationship (111). In this context, Fanon states that one's existence is dependent upon the 'other being' and his recognition of him. He states," It is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend. It is that other being in whom the meaning of his life is condensed" (Black Skin 216-217). Drawing deeply on Hegel's theory, Fanon states that the colonizer/colonized relationship is, thus, a derivation of the master/slave relationship where the one practices absolute power while the other is totally powerless. The two 'species' in Fanon's Manichean world are rendered lost in perpetual conflict of cultures, traditions, languages and values (Wretched 39). Cultural Racism: Stereotype and Prejudice in South Africa and Israel As we have seen, racism is an important element of colonial oppression that is manifested in the subjugation of a certain race and the denigration of their culture and values. The dominant culture is the one imposed on the oppressed by violence, and through distorting the values and norms that historically prevailed among the oppressed. Thus, under colonialism, Fanon argues, the native's culture is not only suppressed but also obliterated completely. The indigenous people are first subjugated politically and economically, and then dehumanized culturally. According to Fanon, this is enacted in order to convince the natives that "colonialism came to enlighten their darkness" and that if the settlers left they would fall back again into degradation and barbarism. He states, 25
Chapter One
Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. (Wretched 169) Within this context, Paulo Freire introduces his theory of "cultural invasion" that implies the superiority of the invader and inferiority of the other. Penetrating the "cultural context of another group", the invaders impose their own values and cultural ideals: "cultural invasion is thus always an act of violence against the persons of the invaded culture, who lose their originality"(150). This will eventually lead to the cultural "inauthenticity" of those who are invaded; they begin "to respond to the values, the standards, and the goals of the invaders" (150). Freire further states that in this process, the invaded become convinced that they are inferior to the invaders and then they end up identifying themselves in terms of the values and ideals of the invaders (151). Accordingly, one of the most effective factors of cultural racism is stereotypes. Originally, it focused on the inferiorisation based on color; it then developed to include the values and customs of a group. In his illuminating study on the concepts of stereotype and prejudice, Daniel Bar-Tal states that stereotype and prejudice are concepts that are closely related in that "prejudice as a negative attitude toward an outgroup or the members of that group is usually based on a negative stereotype…" (Stereotyping 4). In short, stereotype is “a set of beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people” (5)iv. The existence of negative 26
Chapter One
stereotypes and prejudice results in discrimination. Bar-Tal defines discrimination in terms of "any behaviour which denies individuals or groups of people equality of treatment… based on a distinction made on grounds of natural or social categories …" (10). Defining the colonial subject (whether colonizer or colonized) in terms of positivity or negativity, the stereotyped discourse of colonialism is "fixed in a consciousness of the body as a solely negating activity or as a new kind of man" (75). We shall later see the negative stereotypes attributed to the colonized Blacks and to the Arabs in the Apartheid/Zionist settings in contrast to the positive traits of the dominant Whites in South Africa and the Israeli Sabra. These stereotypes in both models were/are manifested in acts of prejudice justifying, in turn, racial discrimination and colonization. Within the Apartheid context, Fanon points out that Black stereotype have been associated with negative qualities which are, in turn, imparted to children through the educational system. Schoolchildren were thus led to internalize a set of values as the characteristics of Europeans' rationality and power in contrast to the "other's" irrationality and weakness. This, naturally, was an indirect way of suggesting inferiority and subordination. Fanon states: "one is white as one is rich, as one is beautiful, as one is intelligent"(Black Skin 52). Thus, the colonizer tends to dehumanize the native further by creating negative stereotypes about him. Some of these negative traits, for example, are: "Sin is Negro as virtue is White", "The Negro is a beast, the Negro is evil, the Negro is mischievous, the Negro is ugly", "Negroes are savages, idiots, illiterate … 27
Chapter One
There was a myth of the Negro that had to be destroyed at all costs"(219). Since Apartheid is defined in terms of the subordination and inferiority of the natives, we encounter a body of literature dense with negative stereotypes of the 'other'. Whereas Fanon examines the negative stereotypes associated with the Blacks, Said focuses on the Orient, the image of the Arabs vis-à-vis the West. In his influential work, Orientalism, Said focuses on the colonial discourse in which the West develops an image of Eastern land and cultures. It represents an analysis of the stereotypes and colonial assumptions that are inherent in the Western representations of the "orient". Such stereotypes legitimized their dominant power over these countries and manifested the ideologies of discrimination and domination in the colonial discourse. Said suggested that the Orient was not allowed to represent himself but was always represented as the Western "other" (Orientalism 78). Thus, the colonial civilizing myth to bring light to the dark places and peoples of this world "was fashioned on a racist hierarchy designed to impose the inferiority complex on the natives" (Culture 33). The 'other' is simply a negative term set up in opposition to the colonizer's own self-image. In this context, Boehmer states, "Images of the native, alien or Other, reflected by contrast Western conceptions of selfhood – of mastery and control, of rationality and cultural superiority, of energy, thrift, technological skillfulness (81)". The scene is slightly different in the Israeli setting. Apart from the need to control, is the desire to avoid, to denigrate – that in Boehmer terms in the colonial 28
Chapter One
"unreadability" of the Other practiced in the politics of displacement and negation (Boehmer 94). By excluding the Arabs from the Israeli mainstream rendering them 'nonexistent', Zionism focused mainly upon the positive stereotypes attributed to the Israeli Sabra. In his critical study on the creation of the ‘new’ Jew, The Sabra, Oz Almog states that the stereotypical Sabra appeared as a "hero" (8), "charmyouth", and full of "self-confidence" (9). Almog states that Sabras have "a rough and direct way of expressing themselves, a knowledge of the land, a hatred of the Diaspora, a native sense of supremacy, a fierce Zionist idealism, and Hebrew as their mother language" (7). Almog further states that school textbooks intended "explicitly and implicitly, to inculcate Zionist values" (26) and served to "instill Zionist ethics and to familiarize students with the glorious past of Israeli people" (27). Thus, "Hebrew culture was glorified and made central to world culture; it was the standard against which all other cultures were compared" (28). Anti-diaspora ethos and its associated stereotypes are central to Zionist ideology where the New Jew is portrayed with strong, physical beauty, self-confidence, pride and heroism (78) while the Diaspora Jew is pale, soft, coward and passive (83). In this context, Naveh states: This Israeli archetype, the Sabra, was idolized as a new person, brave and proud, muscular and tanned, handsome and authentic, close to the land, hardworking, modern, and efficient, willing to sacrifice for his country, without the fears that supposedly characterized the Jewish identity in the exile. (248) 29
Chapter One
On the other hand, the repression of Arabs is present in textbooks as being "shunted aside" and "obliterated from consciousness” (194). In order to consolidate its colonial ideology, Zionism found it inevitable to stereotype and to distort the image of Palestinian Arabs in the school education of young generations. In his critical study on the state's racist system in education, Ismael Abu-Saad explores the power of school textbooks in shaping the students' consciousness and how the depiction of Arabs in Israel have been reflected with discriminatory practices within the state's educational system. Abu-Saad examines the mechanisms by which these practices of anti-Arab stereotyping and negative portrayals perpetuate racist attitudes and direct "delegitimization" of Palestinians and Arabs (Abu Saad, “Separate and Unequal”). The impact of the negative imagery of Arabs extended beyond school textbooks and pervaded literature, a situation that is similar to the South African context in which the Blacks were also dehumanized in literature. Recording the Arab stereotypes in the children's literature and education of the new state, Fouzi El Asmar states that [i]n order to sustain a society willing to live in endless conflicts with the Arabs, it was necessary to educate the successive generations of Israeli Jewish youth to accept zioninst thoughts, and to accept the perpetual conflict with the Palestinian Arab people. (vii) Thus, serving political objectives, "a lowly and despicable" image was attached to and projected on the Arab figure. Palestinians are portrayed as "foreigners" (59) and "gangs" (66) having no right to the land that was empty and desolate 30
Chapter One
till the Jews "bloomed" and developed it. The Arab soldier is a “mentally retarded coward who is reluctant to fight” (6); he is "despicable and dishonorable" (109). The Jewish figure, on the other hand, is civilized and well dressed. The Israeli soldier is a fearless "superman" (104), "courageous", "responsible", "truthful" and "wise"(117). The only positive image rendered to Arabs is from a Zionist perspective and serving a Zionist doctrine. A "wise" Arab is the one who has eventually come to accept Zionist ideals and accepts the fact that Palestine belongs to the Jews. A "positive" Arab refuses to fight the Jews and, therefore, is "devoid of national and political values" (85). On the other hand, the "positive" Jew fights for his people and country. The work of Gila Ramus-Rauch traces the development of the Arab figure in Jewish literature. Arabs are absent and do not exist in Israeli literature; their identity continues to be submerged under various labels. She states that Y. H. Brenner "depicts for the first time the entrance of the Arab into Jewish psyche" (44). The Arab is a terrorist, murderer, kidnapper, or is physically defected and portrayed as poor with torn and dirty clothes. He is immoral, corrupt and primitive. Rice states that the Arabs are portrayed with all the "physical and moral disabilities"; the Arab is shown to be "gross, hook-nosed, black-haired, rapacious, cruel, exploitative" (52). After 1948 (War of Independence), Israeli literature marks a great shift in the status of the Arab. Relations between a majority and a minority changed with the founding of the new state. The literature of the period reflects ArabIsraeli conflicts revealing Arab violence towards the Jewish 31
Chapter One
presence. The works of the Palmach Generation reflects the unsettling inner guilt and moral dilemmas of the first generation of modern Jewish soldiersv. According to Robert Alter, their fiction reflects the 'moral shock' in which images of the Arabs are incorporated into a "schematization of the materials of history in the interest of conscience" ("Images" 64). Thus, Jewish guilt and morality were noted as shaping factors in representing the Arab character of that period. Morahg further states that most Arab figures in the Israeli literary canon are "abstractions" and "depersonalized"; they "serve as schematic catalyst for the internal dilemmas of their Jewish counterparts, and it's only these Jewish characters whose inner world's are much more deeply penetrated and extensively portrayed" (149). The later fiction of the 1970s represents a transition in the figure of the Arab from moral to psychological status. The Arab figure symbolizes the existing threat and fear that erupts the Israeli's life. The turning point in the representation of the Arab finds its expression in the late 1970s fiction that witnessed new perspectives in the ArabIsraeli relations. No longer can both communities be regarded as separate and new roles were assigned to Arab characters in Israeli fiction. From his perspective, the Israeli critic Yochai Oppenheimer believes that this development does not reveal a new image of the Arab; rather it is a "recycling of prevailing images of the Arab" (231). He, further, states that although the marginal depiction of Arabs in the early literature of the canon has shifted to the centre, yet the physical representation of the Arab is central in its negative stereotypes. 32
Chapter One
Reversing the Paradigm: Decolonization and New Humanities In a world of racial hegemony, the experience of oppression produces either a tendency towards rebellion and a search for autonomy or a tendency towards assimilation. Fanon's philosophy of revolution is manifested in the Black Conscious movement that had re-established selfconsciousness as a force of rebellion. According to Fanon, the Black could not achieve authentic liberation even after the dismantling Apartheid because he did not fight for his freedom but was set free by his master. The Manichean structure persists in their psychology – both Black and White. He further explains that only violence frees the alienated consciousness caused primarily by the oppressive regime. He states: “Colonialism … is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence” (Wretched 48) to destroy the former structure of colonialism and the alienated consciousness that the oppressive regime has planted in the psyche of the oppressed. Violence, thus, liberates the consciousness and at the same time destroys the political and social institutions of the colonial rule that were once a means of oppression and the native is thus freed from his inferior complex and from his despair (Wretched 94). This, according to Fanon constitutes a change in the individual's perception making way for a "new humanity" to rise up. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon saw the 'double face' of a colonial revolution as reflected in both the destruction of the old and the building of a completely new society. He states, "Come, then, comrades, the European 33
Chapter One
game has finally ended; we must find something different … we must grow a new skin, we must develop new thinking, and try to set afoot a new man" (316). Thus, the creation of new men not of a different color or social class, but men of a different consciousness and non-alienated: Decolonization … influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally … it brings a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new men, and with it a new men…the 'thing' which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself. (28) Accordingly, Fanon's advocacy of revolutionary violence is interpreted in two dialects: first as a decolonization of an oppressive rule and liberation of the oppressed creating a 'new humanity'; second, the reversal of roles between the Black and Whitevi. In the liberating process, the oppressed, Fanon assumes, achieves his psychological liberation by taking the role of the oppressor and violator: He [the native] of whom they have never stopped saying that the only language he understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force. In fact, as always, the settler has shown him the way he should take if he is to become free. The argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the colonialist understands nothing but force. (Black Skin 66) 34
Chapter One
In his critical study, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire states that the oppressed reverses roles in his struggle for liberation and becomes the oppressor. He states that the oppressed "adopt an attitude of 'adhesion' to the oppressor … their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression" (30). The "new man", according to Freire, is the oppressor; he is not the selfliberated man of Fanon. Freire examines further: "Their vision of the new man is individualistic; because of their identification with the oppressor, they have no consciousness of themselves as members of the oppressed class" (30). Freire argues that it is the "fear of freedom" that afflicts both the oppressor and the oppressed. This theory is further manifested in a double strategy: oppressors fear "losing the 'freedom' to oppress" as well as the oppressed who fear "to embrace freedom" (31). The oppressed, thus, suffers from a duality established in his psyche: “Although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at once and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized” (32). Freire further argues that the oppressed could achieve their liberation "only as they discover themselves to be "hosts" of the oppressor, in which they exist "to be like the oppressor"(32). In the light of Fanon's theory that liberation purges both oppressor and oppressed, Freire also states: As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressor's power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the 35
Chapter One
oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression. (42) Thus, the aim to abolish the dehumanizing system of colonialism liberates both the colonizer and the colonized, oppressor and oppressed. In other words, Freire argues that an authentic liberation does not merely depend on the reversal of roles, "in moving from one pole to the other". Nor does it depend upon replacing "former oppressors with new ones" (43). He states that the oppressed seeks revolution as a means of "domination" rather than liberation; hence, Freire states that it is “absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role” (121), which is to liberate rather than to dominate. It is interesting to see that in the Israeli setting, the predominant image of the Jew as the persecuted victim of the Diaspora spread around the world has undergone a major fundamental change and, thus, it does not exactly fit with Fanon's and Freire's definitions. The concept of 'newness' in the Zionist doctrine is defined in terms of replacing the Diaspora Jew with the idealized image of the new Sabra. From one perspective, the Zionist project of a "new" Jew – ideal and brave – has replaced the preconceived negative images. From another point, the victorious Jew plays the role of the oppressor of Arabs who are the true natives of the land and whose role has been dramatically shaped as the suppressed victim. Thus, the uprooted Jew tried desperately to sink roots in the land, while the rooted Arab was uprooted … A native son belonging to land and landscape 36
Chapter One
– that identification is overturned by the war and it calls for a re-assessment of the protagonists' relation to themselves, to land, and to the Arab. (Ramras-Rauch 83) Switching coats, the Arab has become, in a sense, an image of the traditional Jew-uprooted and persecuted. This reversal of roles in the Arab-Jewish relations is integral to the Jewish identity: “The Sabra Israeli's view of his own situation assumes a total reversal of the old function, consciously or unconsciously” (Yudkin 83). Reflecting the Arab image in this issue, Ramras-Rauch states that the uprooted Arab plays the role of the victim "whose plight is in essence 'Jewish', and who has taken on some of the age-old aspects of the Jewish identity" (121). In his critical study, "The Arab in Israeli Fiction", Gershon Shaked states that "it is the Arab who plays that role now in the life of the Israeli Jew which was formerly played by gentiles in the Diaspora" (17). Estranged and uprooted, the Jew is forever alienated as he attempts "to strike roots in a hostile environment" (19). This role has made the Arab a stranger in his native land. The persecuted Jews have become persecutors to the Arabs who become persecuted and who begin to behave in a traditional Jewish manner. Proposing a completely different and cynical view, Brenner posits the Arab as being ‘guilty’ of causing the Jew’s sense of guilt and turning them into victims of their guilt. Thus, the Jews who were once persecuted in the Holocaust and by the Western anti-Semitism have become persecutors and have been persecuted by their sense of guilt while the persecuted Arab has turned into a Jew in his actions and mentality (98). 37
Chapter One
Decolonization and Identity Crisis: In postcolonial theories, the problem of identity returns as a persistent theme in the course of study. As it has been shown, postcolonialsim flourished as a field of enquiry reflecting new cultural identities that emerged from oppressive regimes and emphasizing fragmentation and loss. Fanon's three phases of the native's response is manifested either in the assimilated culture of the occupying power, or in being disturbed and confused, or through rebellionvii. This process of dehumanization causes an identity crisis in the colonized: Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: 'in reality, who am I?' (Wretched 200) Fanon suggests that colonialism, with its concepts of White racial superiority over non-whites, has created a sense of division and identity crisis of the colonized expressed in Du Bois’s "double consciousness"(Souls 2), i.e. the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others. Since the culture and language of the colonizers are considered superior to the native's culture and norms, a strong sense of inferiority is established in the colonized subject and which leads to the adoption of the language and culture of the colonizer represented in Bhabha's "mimicry" and Said’s "assimilation". According to Mannoni, "[a]ssimilation can succeed if the personality of the native is first destroyed through uprooting, enslavement, and the collapse of the 38
Chapter One
social structure"(27). As a result, the colonized assimilates the colonizer's mentality and considers himself superior to his own people and contempts his own cultural values. This creates a split in the identity of the oppressed and ends with his alienation from the self and from the society. A colonial territory characterized by economic oppression, political violence, racism and degradation, inevitably produces alienated subjects. Alienation is one of the most important themes in Fanon's theory. Fanon states: In the man of color there is a constant effort to run away from his own individuality, to annihilate his own presence. Whenever a man of color protest, there is alienation. Whenever a man of color rebukes, there is alienation. (Black Skin 60) The concept of alienation has been widely discussed and debated in postcolonial theories. One is either alienated from nature, or form his fellow men, or from himself. Fanon posits five forms of alienation: estrangement from the "self" and one's identity, estrangement from the "significant other" exemplified in one's group, estrangement from one's cultural language and history, estrangement as an outcome of violence in relation between white and black; and lastly, estrangement as a result of denial of social activities (Black Skin 38). In the Black/White confrontation, the Black is faced with the reality of his "existential inferiority" (Black Skin 15) thus resulting in a clash between values and self-perception. Within this colonial regime that deprives people of their status as human beings, Fanon argues that the Black is 39
Chapter One
faced with "a feeling of non-existence" (Black Skin 139). This existential dilemma reflects the complexity of the colonial relation between colonizers and colonized, in South Africa and Israel. Nevertheless, Fanon argues that the native is not the only one alienated. The alienation of the White oppressor is caused by the racial hegemony the colonial regime engenders. The "superiority complex" opposed to the "inferiority complex" of the Black, thus, gives rise to alienation: "The white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness" (Black Skin 11). Thus, Fanon uses the term alienation to represent conditions of separation of the individual from his self, his culture, or his society. It also describes a denial or suppression of individuality – a condition of hopelessness. He states, "I am speaking here, on the one hand, of alienated blacks, and, on the other, of no less alienated whites" (29). Throughout the proposed theories, this study tends to trace the existential dilemma and alienation of the colonial self in the writings of Gordimer and Yizhar. South Africa and Israel: Postcolonial Revelations
Within
Colonial
and
A review of the socio-political formation of South Africa and Israel demonstrates a clear racialized pattern of colonialism – of political oppression, economic exploitation and cultural subjugation. There is no society more than South Africa that better illustrates the division of people into "species" on basis of race classification. South Africa represents a system of 'internal' colonization separating settlers from natives; not only geographically, but also socially and economically. Fanon's Manichean psychology is 40
Chapter One
best traced in South Africa where power privilege were given to a specific race enforcing laws that control the "other" assumed inferior races. To preserve the "racial purity" of the colonizers, segregation was enforced by White domination in South Africa. However, Goldberg argues that White supremacy and prosperity is dependent upon the presence of the non-whites and not their absence from the social formation, "but their controlled presence, their service of and obedience to white order and oversight … They depend not on the absence of "non-whites" from White space but their structured exploitation within it" (Racist Culture 50). This concept, thus, agrees with Hegel's theory of 'recognition' that states that both colonizer and colonized depend on each other for the achievement of self-determination and identification of each's identity. In this context, Robert Bernasconi states: Racism wants to make its targets disappear, but it does not want them to disappear into anonymity. It wants to see them without seeing them… In slavery time, Whites saw Blacks as slaves… under slavery, Blacks were supposed to appear happy; under segregation, submissive; and today the stereotypes are manipulated in the form of images of the gang member, and the drug addict… It is not that Blacks are invisible to those Whites who are nevertheless most aware of them. (288) On the other hand, when we come to a similar study of Apartheid in Israel we find that of all contemporary multiethnic societies, Israel is most complex on basis of race 41
Chapter One
relations and the most inherent with conflicts and contradictions. The Israeli society is composed of a various population in which multi-layered ethnic, racial, religious and national identities meet on a number of levels. The prevailing existence of a diversity of races in South Africa justified the Apartheid's separateness and segregation as a form of cultural pluralism; however, in Israel, the land was inhabited only by the Arabs and eventually developed into a multi-ethnic diversity under Zionism. Zionism sought to 'melt' all migrants from all corners of the world (but not the original inhabitants) into the melting pot of a homogeneous new state to unify all into one ‘New’ identity strong enough for the national revival project. Alan Mintz states: Rather than being seen as ethnic groups or minorities, the Jews who came to Israel from many countries around the globe were meant to be absorbed into a new society in Zion that represents a departure from life in the many and varied diasporas. (“Fracturing” 407) However, this apparent image of a stable Israeli society hides a diverse conflicting pluralism and internal contradictions that will be unraveled in the following chapters. Since Jews do not constitute a race, the Jewish search for identity is deeply rooted in the Jewish psyche. Accordingly, the Israeli identity has undergone much transformation. The Jews experience a dichotomy in their identity; once victims of anti-Semite persecution in the Diaspora, they have become victimizers of other victims – the Palestinians whom Said called "the victims of the victims" (Power 250). Thus, Zionism resembles the Western 42
Chapter One
colonial systems, yet it acts out racial prejudices that it had experienced in the Diaspora. The conflict between the ideals of the individual and the values of the collective group that is inherent in the Zionist psyche will be explored further in the analysis of Yizhar’s writings in the fourth chapter of this study throughout an analogous interpretation of the identity crisis in Gordimer’s fiction. But to reach a profound vision of such an analysis of the inner conflicts of the colonial subject (colonizer and colonized), a comprehensive reading of the colonial situation in South Africa and Israel should be presented. The second chapter of this study is dedicated to a representation of historical, cultural and political parallelisms of the Apartheid and Zionism. Examining the development of the literary canon of each system, the chapter introduces Gordimer and Yizhar as opposing voices to such oppressive regimes.
43
Chapter One
i
The categories of race and class have been excluded from the postcolonial idiom. The relation between former colonists and colonized is featured in new terms of ethnicism, pluralism and hybridity. From this perspective, Mishra and Hodge in their critical study “What is Post (-) Colonialism?” argue that postcolonialism implies pluralism, not following independence, but "implicit" in the colonial discourse. Furthermore, they suggest two forms of postcolonialism; “oppositional postcolonialsim” identified in the 'post' independent colonies at the historical phase of 'post-colonialism' which reflects the condition of South Africa. The second form, which is applied to the Israeli model, is "complicit postcolonialism" which is an "always present 'underside' within colonization itself" (284). ii
Widely known for his writings concerning the notion of race, Du Bois states that there is no scientific basis for the widely held view that blacks are inferior subhuman incapable of developing a civilization. On his behalf, Du Bois defines race as follows: It is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life. (85) In his discussion on the concept of race, Du Bois moves away from the physical differences of color and hair, but rather introduces more "subtle, delicate and elusive" differences on which basis people are excluded (85). iii
Mannoni, paradoxically, argues that the inferiority complex attributed to the colonizer springs mainly from a physical difference, namely the colour of skin. He states, An inferiority complex connected with the colour of the skin is found only among those who form a minority within a group of another colour… As with Europeans, any difference can cause a feeling of inferiority. (39) Thus, the colonial settlers experience an inferiority complex, in Mannoni's terms, due to their minority status and difference in colour 44
Chapter One
amongst the majority "other". A third factor that Mannoni proposes for the inferiority complex is dependency. He asserts, "[a] European who is more or less the victim of an inferiority complex tends to feel- and not simply to consider- an objective position of dependence as a sign of inferiority". He further argues that the "other, on the other hand, feels inferior "only when the bonds of dependence are in some way threatened"(40). iv
The distinction between stereotypes and prejudice resembles that between opinion and attitude: stereotypes are beliefs or opinions about the attributes of a social group or its members, whereas prejudice is usually conceptualized as a negative intergroup attitude … a tendency to evaluate an entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.(Bar-Tal 8) v
The Palmach Generation is the generation of the state who believed in the military and agricultural conquest of the land. They reflect the conviction that the purpose of literature is to serve the nation and function as an integral element of the Zionist struggle to build a nationstate. The literature of the Palmach Generation reflected the Zionist ethos of inventing an Israeli sabra. Their zionism ‘was that of the selfmade ‘sabras’, natives of the land of Israel, whose Israeli identity was a substitute for, not a continuation of, their Judaism’ (Inbari 136). vi
Reversal according to Bhabha is articulated in terms of his concept of hybridity: Hybridity is the sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities; it is the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal (that is, the production of discriminatory identities that secure the 'pure' and original identity of authority) … It unsettles the mimetic demands of colonial power but reimplicates its identifications in strategies of subversion that turn the gaze of the discriminated back upon the eye of power… so that other 'denied' knowledge enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its 45
Chapter One
authority – its rules of recognition … (Location112, 113) vii
In "Remembering Fanon", Bhabha posits his three conditions on the process of identification: to exist in relation to an otherness, "space of splitting" and conflict of fantasy of native to replace colonizer while preserve his place as a revolutionist, and the "demand of identification" (117). They end up in Bhabha’s concept being "almost the same but not quite" (Location 92-102).
46
Chapter Two
Chapter Two APARTHEID AND ZIONISM: CULTURAL ORIGINS AND HISTORICAL PARALLELS Minorities all over the world naturally adapt to the prevailing dominant norms, struggling to preserve their distinctive heritage and fight racism within the powerful majority. Throughout the course of this study, minorities in South Africa and Israel are depicted as the powerful distinctive groups that are enforcing their norms within a racist discourse. Thus, the real nature of majority/minority relations is that the issue revolves around power and not quantity. An examination of colonial and postcolonial literary presentations of nationalism provides a field of study to investigate the ambivalence and hybridity produced by the colonial conflict. Providing an analogous examination of the colonial features of Apartheid and Zionism, this chapter emphasizes racism as fundamental to the relations in colonial societies in order to provide a description of the colonial experience. Exploring the mainstream of the South African and Israeli narrative, this chapter introduces Nadine Gordimer and S. Yizhar as representatives of the dissenting/oppressive colonizers. In the middle of a deeply rooted history of colonialism and slavery in South Africa, the Apartheid system is the darkest legalized system in modern life. Lasting more than forty years, the system practiced all types of bias, prejudices, discrimination, segregation, oppression and racism. Originally, the term Apartheid is an Afrikaan word for 47
Chapter Two
“apartness” used as a political slogan of a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1994 ("History of Apartheid"). After the Second World War, the National Party came into power and imposed the most oppressive segregation system in history. The system classified inhabitants by skin colour into three racial categories: Bantu (Black Africans), White and coloured (of mixed Bantu and European descent). A fourth category of Asians (Indians and Pakistanis) was added later. Thus, skin colour becomes the basis for classification and categorization of people into races and, in the context of Apartheid, provides the basis of discrimination and oppression of black people ("History of Apartheid"). The system of Apartheid was enforced by a series of laws passed in the 1950s. The government segregated education, medical care, transportation and other public services through a number of strict laws to segregate the different races. Only Whites enjoyed complete freedom to travel, work and vote, while other races could move around only with Pass Laws and prevented from entering some places where supremacy was for the Whites only. To maintain strong control over other races, the White ruling minority issued the Pass Law to control the movements of Blacks and coloured races. The Urban Area Act was another law that prevented these inferior races from remaining in big cities after sunset ("History of Apartheid"). Moreover, the Group Areas Act that was designed to separate racial groups geographically became the heart of the Apartheid system. The Act assigned races to different 48
Chapter Two
residential and business sections in urban areas. There were separate beaches, buses, hospitals and schools; signboards “Whites Only” were applied to public areas. The Land Acts restricted the limited rights of Black Africans to own land. In addition, other laws prohibited most social contacts between races; enforced segregation of public services and separation of educational values. Thus, these laws allowed the ruling White minority to segregate and exploit the vast majority of Africans. Black people were denied basic human and political rights receiving services greatly inferior to those of Whites. Women, under the Apartheid regime, suffered both racial and gender discrimination since they had no legal rights, no access to education and no right to own property ("History of Apartheid"). Although the creation of Apartheid is usually attributed to Afrikaner government (1948 – 1994), it is also partially a legacy of British colonialism which introduced a system of laws not only to restrict the movement of Blacks in these areas, but also to prohibit their movement from one district to another without a signed passi. Kenneth Parker traces the origins of South Africa to the migrations of European settlers that started after the economic transformation of the country. British settlers viewed the Afrikaners as inferior and were kept at the bottom of White hierarchy, both socially and economically. Native Blacks were forced to migrate to reserves – “Homelands” to work as cheap labour in the mines (10). The cheap Black labour and the exploitation of the rich natural resources of gold and diamonds elevated rapidly the standards of living of the White South Africans keeping Blacks in a condition of subservience. On the meaning and origin of Apartheid, 49
Chapter Two
Ronald Bruce states in his article “Of Walls and Bantustans: Apartheid”: The term ‘apartheid’ is of Dutch-Afrikaans origin and translates literally as ‘apartness’. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 to provide legal framework for perpetual economic, political, and social dominance by people of European descent. The creation of Bantustans, tribal reserves for the indigenous Black inhabitants of South Africa, was an integral part of the apartheid’s racial segregation policies. The white minority in South Africa considered the Bantustans as “homelands” for the Black majority. (8) Timothy Keegan, in Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order, confirms that the British imperialism in South Africa in the 19th century subjugated the local people in the interests of the colonial economy. Keegan further states that Apartheid had its roots in the colonial system that was implemented throughout Africa and that relied on a racial hierarchy to suppress the indigenous people (10). Thus, Apartheid was built upon racial colonial settler societies in which a minority of White settlers lived amidst an indigenous or ‘native’ majority as mentioned before. The Apartheid reinforced a racial hierarchy in a physical distance between racialized bodies. The term ‘nonwhite’ defined Black people in relation to the master/slave relation that aimed to maintain the “purity” of White bodies. 50
Chapter Two
Michael Chapman points out how fear of “racial mixture and White determination to preserve racial purity were at this stage … of key psychological importance to the appeal of apartheid: an appeal that found support among most whites” (221). Thus, various repressive acts were enforced to ensure thisii. In his critical study “The Continuing Salience of Race”, Jermey Seekings states that the systematic racial classification of Apartheid was required to entail three main objectives. The first was ideological: to maintain racial purity by preventing mixing of White blood (non inter-racial marriage) and the residential segregation by race forcing the removal from ‘White’ areas. The second objective was to ensure and protect the privileged economic position of the White minority by reserving land for White ownership only. The third objective was to maintain political dominance of white minority (giving no vote rights for Blacks). Thus, the oppressive system of social division maintained and regulated by the Apartheid state was for the interest of White profit and White power. On his behalf, Stephen Clingman states that to be born black is not only to be deprived of the vote, but virtually to be committed to the role of the worker, whether in industry, mining or agriculture … To be born white, on the contrary, is to enjoy a position of privilege, most obviously in terms of the vote but also socially and economically confining blacks to a subordinate role and whites to a position of supremacy. (Novels 15)
51
Chapter Two
Hence, the state power was not aimed to serve exclusive interests of a leader; rather, it aimed to promote the economic and social welfare of a racial group. In "Racism's Last Word", Jacques Derrida maintains that Apartheid is "the unique appellation for the ultimate racism in the world … the essence of evil" (330). Condemned as "a crime against humanity", the system maintained, "the separate development of each race in the geographic zone assigned to it" (331). Manifesting the lowest extreme of racism, Apartheid is the “daily suffering, oppression, poverty, violence, torture inflicted by an arrogant white minority on the mass of the Black population” (332). According to JanMohamed, South Africa is "the epitome of the worst aspects of colonialism: it, has rigorously systematized and codified the inequality, oppression, and deprivation of the subjugated people" (Manichean 79). JanMohamed maintains that the economic exploitation of non-Whites in South Africa had its roots in the prevailing slavery system. The White colonizer, further, reinforces his sense of superiority on the "difference" and "otherness" of the other non-Whites. On the ambivalent relationship of dependency in the colonial encounter, JanMohamed states that the colonialist sense of superiority projects itself completely on the Other and, thus, destroys the effectiveness of indigenous economic, social, political, legal, and moral systems… By thus subjugating the native, the European settler is able to compel the Other's recognition of him and, in the process, allow his own identity to
52
Chapter Two
become deeply dependent on his position as a master. (“Economy” 85) Similarly, the situation in Israel reflects the same colonial and racist system. As an ideology, Zionism holds that the Jews are a people like any other who should ‘gather’ in a single homeland through a national movement. The movement is defined in Encyclopedia Hebraic as “a national movement emerging at the end of the 19th century with the object of returning the people of Israel to their historical homeland in the land of Israel, drawing its inspiration from the vision of return to Zion (Jerusalem), which has impacted the history of Israel throughout the centuries of its exile” (592). The Zionist national project of establishing a nationstate in Palestine aimed primarily to liberate the Jews of the Diaspora from the persecution of anti-Semitism. Failing to assimilate in Western societies, many of the Jews adopted Zionism which encouraged "the transfer" to the land of Palestine. Alan Hart states that "the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) solution to the problem of anti-Semitism – the persecution of the Jews in their Eastern European heartland, was emigration and assimilation in Western culture". Jews are, thus, transformed from being a segregated minority in the West to the "mimic colonizers" in the East (63). Unlike the Whites of South Africa, religion in the Diaspora became the medium for preserving Jewish bond to their ‘Holy Land’. Zionist leaders based their claim on Palestine on the Biblical myth that they were descendants of the land’s original inhabitants who had been promised it by God in the divine covenant of the Old Testament. While the 53
Chapter Two
Zionist movement was based heavily upon these Jewish religious myth linking the ‘Chosen People’ to the Land of Promise, the modern form of the movement is mainly secular, which brings it closer to Apartheid in South Africa. Zionism is thus considered a Jewish national movement of 'redemption' to an ancestral homeland as a response to the persecution of the Jews in Europe and anti-Semitism. Waves of anti-Semitism in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust encouraged the great majority of Jews to the belief in the necessity of a Jewish homeland ("History of Zionism"). Agreeing with the Apartheid ideology of ‘purity’ but with an even more extreme attitude, Zionism predicated on the existence of a ‘pure’ Jewish state that excludes the Arabs considering them as 'non-existent'. The Zionist slogan that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land” asserts the Israeli denial of Palestinian existenceiii. Joseph Weitz, the administrator responsible for Jewish colonization, states: Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both people in this country … the only solution is a Palestine … without Arabs. And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs … all of them; not one village, not one tribe, should be left. (81) In his critical study on the Zionist discourse, Hannan Hever states the difference between a Jewish state and a state having a Jewish majority:
54
Chapter Two
The former, totally Jewish in character, will deny any constraint stemming from the presence of some other nation perceived as contradictory to its own interest; the latter, by contrast, will actively exploit the possibilities accruing to it in virtue of its majority status. (“Minority Discourse” 139) Thus, the Zionist movement sought to build a large settler population to create an exclusive Jewish State with the controlling majority. This was achieved by reducing the Palestinians to an "insignificant minority" through the repressive acts of expulsions of the indigenous Arabs and dispossession of their lands and resources. Accordingly, the new ethnic state aims to achieve three main goals of the Zionist movement: building a Jewish majority through mass immigration, preserving an ethnically exclusive character of the Jewish State; and, lastly, maintaining the mass expulsion of the Arabs (Ruether 136). According to Abdel Wahab Elmessiri, the Arab expulsion was implemented through two methods, “terrifying and terrorizing the Arabs and/or subjecting them to actual terror” (Land of Promise 139). The national dream had, thus, been fulfilled based on two major transfers of population – the majority expulsion of Palestinians along with the minority “ingathering” of the Jews. However, the “cleansing” of the land was not complete because of the few Arabs who decided to stay in their land (147). The remnant Arabs were subjected to all kinds of oppression and inequality. Being reduced to a small minority, Palestinians were rendered politically inexistent. Their lands were confiscated and they were discriminated against in every way – politically, socially, economically and 55
Chapter Two
culturally. Each Arab village was separated from the other and declared a closed area from which no one can leave or enter. Thus, the Israeli government “divorces people from their concrete situations, turning them into abstract and isolated units” (145). Such segregation measures recall the Bantustans set aside for the Black inhabitants of South Africa. In accordance with the Apartheid's racial categories, the Israeli government legislated four classes of citizenship. Class “A” (Jews) have all privileged access to the material resources of the state along with the social and welfare services. Class "B" (non-Jews) are discriminated against in law, denied equal access to land and water. Furthermore, they are not permitted to serve in the army. Class "C" citizenship (Arabs), namely, 'present-absentees', is provided for Arab citizens of the State of Israel that are considered present as taxpayers with voting rights, yet, classified as 'absent' being denied equal access to water and social and welfare services. They are also 'absent' being denied all rights to their own property (land, houses, bank accounts … etc.) until confiscated by the State. Class “D” (non-Jews/Arabs) is taxpayers without voting rights having no access to social and welfare services. Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants are denied citizenship and their properties had been confiscated without compensation. Thus, all non-Jews or Arabs are denied the right to utilize their property and are discriminated against in every form of life (Davis 88-89). On basis of such a unique quality – Jewishness – Jews are granted all kinds of economic and social privileges that are denied to native Arabs. To achieve 56
Chapter Two
and preserve a Jewish identity, Zionist leaders predicated a set of discriminating laws within its legal system similar to those laws of South Africa "for cultivation, development and settlement by, of and for Jews only" (Davis 39). Thus, similar to South Africa, there is only one "officially recognized nationality group in Israel which benefits from all the fundamental laws of Israel, namely, the Jews" (Wright 78)iv. Said states that in South Africa, as well as in Palestine, [a] minority is surrounded by an unreconciled majority; it has appeared important therefore for the minority to maintain a state of siege – that is, for a minority, like the Israelis or the white South African, to maintain a state of siege against the majority (Arab and Black). (Politics 169) Under the basis of such a system, the study argues that the Zionist ideology that constructs the founding of the State of Israel is racist in its core since the concept of the 'Pure' Jew constructs the basis of the State's division of Jews and 'Gentiles'v. Furthermore, it argues that the inequality, oppression and racial discrimination that takes place under the Israeli government in the form of Zionism and the conscious extermination of natives is far worse than the Apartheid system that existed in South Africa. Drawing on the analogy between South African Apartheid and Israeli Apartheid, Uri Davis states that "the key legal distinction in South African Apartheid legislation was between 'White', 'Coloured', 'Indian' and 'Black', whereas, “the key legal distinction in Zionist apartheid legislation in Israel is between 'Jews' and 'non-Jews'” (39). Even though Black 57
Chapter Two
inhabitants were rendered 'aliens' in their own homeland, "they were not defined out of legal existence" (69). The South African Apartheid recognized the legal personality of its Black inhabitants in a way that Zionist Apartheid with regard to Palestinians does not. Having classified Palestinian refugees as 'absentees', the Zionist Apartheid not only defined them as 'aliens' in their homeland, but "cast them outside legal existence" (70). Furthermore, one of the most effective schemes of political and social control over natives in South Africa and Palestine is the restrictions and regulations of their freedom of movement. Both regimes established laws to restrict natives to designated areas known as "reserves" or "Bantustans" in South Africa and "cantons" in Israel enforcing geographical and social segregation between natives and settlers. Cutting Palestinians off from water resources, access to jobs, travels, and education and health services without means of communication or development is modeled after the South African Apartheid system. To achieve complete dependency, all Arabs (non-Jews) must carry "identification cards" similar to the pass paper that Blacks in South Africa had to carry. Like the Western colonizing powers, Zionism viewed all non-Jews as inferior, marginal and irrelevant - "To be a non-Jew in Palestine/Israel is first of all to be marked negatively" (Said, “Ideology” 43). Pursuing the Western colonial model of domination over "invisible" natives, the Zionist system implemented its policy of exclusion and expulsion of the Arabs. In comparison to the South African setting that exploits Black labour, Zionism completely 58
Chapter Two
excludes the Arabs from the social or economic hierarchy. Based exclusively on Jewish labour, Zionism represents an ideology of difference and negation. According to Davis, that policy aimed not only at the "conquest of land", but also the "conquest of labour" (27). The policy of the government employed only Jews in place of Arab workers in every field of life. As European settlers sought to exploit the riches of their colonies including the labour of natives, Zionism aimed at a higher level than resources of the land. Indigenous natives were not to be exploited but completely replaced. Aspiring to create a Jewish working class in the new nation, the movement advocated immigrants to manual labour employing Jews only. Arabs, first driven from their lands, have been prevented from becoming a proletariat in the new state economy. Whereas the South African Apartheid made use of Black labour, the Zionist system consolidated (through economic segregation) the main idea of its ideology that the Arabs are 'non-existent'. Thus, while the nature of colonization in South Africa was to exploit, in the Middle East it was to displace and expel. Moreover, and ironically, the 'separate development' and cultural differences within Israel did not aim only at separating Jews from Arabs but also resulted in seperating "the many cultures of Jews from each other" (Ruether 226). While the Zionist movement encouraged all the Jews of the Diaspora to settle in and 'restore' the land of Israel, it favoured the Ashkenazi Jews (European Jew) above the Sephardic (Oriental Jew) because of their cultural background. Thus, they are rendered "superior in activity, 59
Chapter Two
intelligence and scientific capacity to the Sephardic and Arab Jews" (Ruppin 217). Placing the Oriental Jews and the Arabs in a lower cultural or racial paradigm justifies political and economic discrimination against them by European Jews who "firmly believe they are engaged in a civilizing mission" (Elmessiri, Land of Promise 115). According to Elmessiri, tensions between European and Oriental Jews had its strong impact on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Oriental Jews were "manipulated" to maintain tension with the Arabs, as cheap Arab labour is used to "undermine the bargaining power of the Sephardic workers" (118). Thus, the hostility between Arabs and Oriental Jews deepened over land and labour resulting in permanent pressure between the two unprivileged groups. Accordingly, one can deduce that privilege and discrimination are deeply rooted in the Zionist ideology – not only against Arabs but also against what they see as the less "pure" Jews. According to Elmessiri, four distinctive features set Israel as a "settler-colonial enclave". First, is the fact that the Zionist settler-colonialism was based on "population transfer" or the expulsion of the natives. Unlike South Africa Apartheid, they did not aim to exploit natural and human resources only, but they "coveted the land itself without its population" (Land of Promise 102). The second trait is its "simultaneous independence from and dependence on the West" (103). They benefit from Western support until gradually they become an autonomous controlvi. The third distinctive feature of the Zionist movement is its "expansionist nature" (106); the final feature is its "racial and cultural heterogeneity" (108)vii. 60
Chapter Two
Counterarguments to the Zionist/Apartheid analogy maintain that Apartheid in South Africa was an official policy of discrimination against Blacks enforced by violence and based on minority control over a majority population. They argue that, in contrast, Israel is a majority-rule democracy with equal rights for all citizens. They further argue that 'petty apartheid' does not exist in Israel; Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on same trains and busesviii. In the Jerusalem Summit 2006, The Myth of Israeli Apartheid, Zionism and Racism supporters to Zionism argue that Zionism is not an imperialist movement since they return to their ancient homeland to 'redeem' their land. They argue that "racism claims superiority while Zionism merely claims distinctiveness"; racism seeks the persecution and degradation of inferior groups, while Zionism seeks protection for those victims of persecution. Rather, than an "expression" of racism, they state that Zionism is a "response" to racism – a response to those long persecuted Jews by forces of anti-Semitism. Military oppression, walls and curfews are justified in terms of protection for citizens: It would be tantamount to denying a people which, unlike Palestinians, has a unique religion, a unique language, a unique script, a unique history and unique customs, the right to national self-determination. Thus, they justify their approval of preventing racial mixing on such basis in favour of a people who have no such “uniqueness”.
61
Chapter Two
Apartheid and Zionism: Between Facts and Fables The Apartheid and Zionist systems share a lot of myths; the myth of a vacant land for a landless people" (Prior 103) in South Africa is similar to the Zionist slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land". The "civilizing mission" (177) of Europeans in South Africa resembles the "universal mission" (Almog 73) of the Jews. Moreover, the "Jewish people were a chosen people, destined to be a light to all nations" (75). The "virgin" land (Prior 177) of South Africa is the same as Shapira’s examination of the land of Palestine: “a wild landscape devoid of trade and shade … where the inhabitants were strange and alien, wild like the land itself” and “desolate under Arab rule” (Land 53, 214). Fanon states, The settler makes history; his life is an epoch, an Odyssey. He is the absolute beginning: "This land was created by us"; he is the unceasing cause: "If we leave, all is lost, and the country will go back to the middle ages." Over against him torpid creatures, wasted by fevers, obsessed by ancestral customs, form an almost inorganic background for the innovating dynamism of colonial mercantilism. (Wretched 51) Deeply rooted at the heart of the Afrikaner (White) identity lays the myth of the "white man's burden" and the assumed superiority of "white civilization" and "white" missionary. In The Bible and Colonialism, Michael Prior states that the Afrikaan identity is primarily rooted in the ideological justification of superiority of race and distinctive culture and the myth that Apartheid "was designed to 62
Chapter Two
preserve the cherished cultural identity of each group: all distinct ethnic units must be allowed to survive, each with its own language, religion and traditions" (76). Dwelling upon fabrications and myths, the Afrikaner upholded the politics of separation as a necessary act since races were" divinely ordained to preserve their distinctiveness" (88). Prior states: Nearly all white South Africans subscribed to the view that they belonged to a race which was superior to all other races in Africa, and that superiority was reflected in their religion, technology, politics and arts, and in their power and wealth. (89) Accordingly, the Whites had a sense of superiority vis-à-vis the African, in virtue of belonging to a civilized race and a noble religion. This, for them, justified expropriation of land, exploitation of labor, and subordination of natives. Both colonial settlers in South Africa and Israel share the "biblical justification" that constructs the basis of their ideologies. Moreover, the discourse of the "civilizing mission" that had legitimized colonialization and racism in South Africa is accompanied by the myth of the "Promised Land" in the Zionist ideology. The myth of the covenant of the Jewish people emphasizes the sacred nature of the Zionist claim on the Land of Promise justifying, thus, their colonization. Being members of a presumed superior White civilization, they cast themselves in the same missionary role as carriers of that civilization, and, in the name of that cultural and racial superiority, tried to 63
Chapter Two
depopulate their promised land from the aborigine to carve out another Western democracy in the Middle of the jungle. (Land of Promise 23) However, Elmessiri states that the myth of the superiority of the White civilization and the Jews' 'sacred right' to colonize Palestine is not central to the Zionist movement. Rather, their ideology is based more on the myth of the "Pure" Jew which is a new form of racism (119). As we can see, Zionists share with Western imperialists the myth of the White man's superiority assuming they were both civilizing the natives. But whereas European settlers saw Blacks as inferior, degraded and uncivilized, Zionists saw Arabs as non-existent and irrelevant and excluded them completely from any privilege. In his critical analysis, Facts and Fables, Clifford Wright states, "the conflict is primarily about the land but it is also an ideological struggle between two peoples which involves a score of myths and fables" that are created primarily to serve a political purpose (xi). Thus, under the guise of "separate development", settlements acclaim the legitimacy of social progress and economic development rather than racial superiority. Nation building and the Development of a Literary Canon: In his influential work, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson tackles the slippery concept ‘nationalism’ by applying the colonial paradigm of the relationship between nation and culture and asserting that the national 64
Chapter Two
community is largely imagined. Anderson argues that communities are to be distinguished, not only by their falsity/ genuineness, but also by the style in which they are imagined (15). Anderson proposes a definition of the ‘nation’ as "an imagined political community" (6), imagined because not all members of one nation meet but in their minds lives their image. He states "Nationalism is not awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist" (6). By inventing, Anderson means in the sense of imaging and creating not fabrication or falsity. According to Anderson, the cultural project of nation building is a process of homogenizing, of turning the many into one to produce the image of a solid community (26). Thus, this homogenization is achieved by enforcing one race and culture through the suppression and exclusion of the ‘other’, a situation that we encounter in our study of the Apartheid/Zionist racial regimes. The real beginning of the South African novel in English is generally associated with Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883). It was not until the 20th century that literature written by Black South Africans emerged. Writers sought to restore dignity to Africans by reconstructing a heroic African past. Solomon Plaatje was viewed as the founding father of Black South African through his novel Mhudi (1930). Another South African novelist whose work embodied his liberal concerns was Alan Paton. Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) employs the theme of South Africa’s social and political dilemma. Providing a critique of the Apartheid system was the main concern of another prominent South African writer, 65
Chapter Two
Alex La Guma, in his novel A Walk in the Night (1962). J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner, is one of South Africa’s most acknowledged writers. His novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) tackles issues of direct political statements. Accordingly, all South African writers sought to deal with the oppressive reality of South Africa’s divided racial hierarchy in their works. Hence, literature becomes a weapon in opposing the existing social structure. Writers carried their liberal views in their works in an attempt to resist the Apartheid regime. On South African literature, Said states, True, an ambience of polemic surrounds this work, but that is only because one cannot look at African writing except as embedded in its political circumstances, of which the history of imperialism and resistance to it is surely one of the most important… it is harder to render invisible the politics of African culture.(Culture 288) According to Emmanuel Ngara, “Literature, particularly committed literature, is not only a passive product of historical conditions, a passive reflection of reality, but it can also influence and help to shape reality” (25). The literature of South Africa that deals with oppression, resistance and liberation is considered Apartheid literature, while the literature of the 1990s and after is conceived as postApartheid literature with its emphasis on reconciliation and transition. This rigid break between the old and the new South Africa confronted writers of post-Apartheid period and was reflected in their work. They have often found difficulty 66
Chapter Two
in coming up with new themes apart from the old concerns of oppression and resistance. Writers found themselves in a real dilemma: they adhered to the past and its themes, while trying to break away from it and create new forms of expression that conform to the transitional period. As much as post-Apartheid works portray modern realities in South Africa, many writers still deal with the legacy of Apartheid and its aftermath as South Africans struggle to shape a new hybrid identity ("South African Literature"). Since nation building constituted a major political and cultural activity within the Zionist project, nationalism is seen as the most significant new (or revived) ideology of Jewish identity with the Hebrew language as its emblem. According to Nocke, the Zionist project was to create an image of a "New Jew" disconnected from the cultural roots of the Diaspora to mark a "new" beginning in his ancient homeland: These Canaanites rejected any connection with Judaism and the Diaspora and declared an historical bond with the land, thereby imposing a somewhat neo-imperialistic vision on the region and re-interpreting history according to their own ideological agenda. (144) The heterogeneous society of the Yishuvix that combines many different cultural traditions was to be transformed into a national one, thus, fulfilling the Zionist ideal "one nation – one culture" (Nocke 148). With the establishment of the state and the massive invasion of the displaced Jews of the Diaspora and their pervasive Yiddish cultures and traditions, that language was confronted with the 67
Chapter Two
'new' nation's ideology and considered as a threat to the primacy of Hebrew. Because of the vital link between language and the land, the Hebrew language became a vital factor in the national revival movement of Zionism. Yiddish, the language and emblem of the Diaspora, was abandoned in favor of the Hebrew "the once and future language" (Chaver 39). In its actions to construct a national identity, the Zionist establishment defined Israeli literature in terms of its Hebrew language as well as the Jewishness of its writers. Israeli literature became a tool of promoting Zionist values through the revival of Hebrew language in the restored ancestral land. Brenner states, "Israeli writers owe their Israeli identity and their language to the Zionist project of revival" (5). This "interdependence" between the revival of the land and the Hebrew language with the national rebirth set the discourse of the Zionist project by rejecting the image of the weak Diaspora Jew; a "new" heroic image was to be created. Thus, for a national Israeli literature "to be written in Hebrew exclusively by Israeli Jews", the literature of the Diaspora as well as that of the Palestinians was set at the margins of the society. This "twofold exclusion", according to Brenner, represented the separatism in the Zionist doctrine (Brenner 6). According to Dan Miron, Hebrew literature must be differentiated from Jewish literature: Hebrew literature constituted the literary expression of the Hebrew nation and therefore must be written by Hebrews rather than Jews. Although the New Hebrew nation was in the early stages of formation, the characteristics of 68
Chapter Two
nationalism and therefore of a national literature were already present: common territory – the land of Canaan, one national language, and a shared political history. (“Modern Hebrew Literature” 298) Jewish literature is, then, a literature written by Jews adopted from other cultures marking the absence of a common language, territory, and culture and not bound to political determinations. Hebrew literature, on the other hand, is historical, national and employs biblical narratives in its content (Inbari 118). However, Assaf Inbari argues that Modern Hebrew literature does not meet these criteria. He states, "it is not historical, but perceives time as immersed in the present; it is not national, but individualistic in content… and the multi-generational language, with all its resonance from the past, has been abandoned in favor of language that represents the immediate experience of the present" (127). Creating a literary culture is crucial to the process of the Zionist project of "nation-building". A political understanding of the Israeli texts is essential to a complete appreciation of the complexity of the Israeli national culture and the collective identity that consolidates the Zionist ideology. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, a body of literature has developed dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict and the "culture of separation" that characterizes the Israeli society. According to Alan Mintz, to create a voice and project it within the literary canon required the revival of Hebrew. Whereas most writers from Ashkenazi background wrote in Hebrew, Sephardic writers, in contrast, adhere to Arabic and were thus marginalized in the society (408). 69
Chapter Two
Hillel Halkin states that "only a Hebrew-speaking Jewish state could guarantee a place in which Modern Hebrew authors would be read" (30). Gila Ramras-Rauch traces the development of Israeli literature and divides it into three major phases: early writers pre-1948; writers of the 1948 (The Palmach Generation); and writers of the Statehood Generation (1960s- 1980s)x. The origins of Modern Israeli literature lie in the Hebrew literature written in Eastern Europe during the 19th century by immigrant writers. Although the roots of these writers were anchored in the European tradition, their works deal mainly with the land of Israel. The first major prose writer was Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921). His style creates the effect of a spoken Hebrew language struggling to be born. Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970), winner of Nobel Prize in literature in 1966, is considered the most brilliant and profound Hebrew author of the 20th century. Much of his work is dedicated to recreating the lost world of the traditional Jews. The 1948 writers were deeply involved in the values and concerns of Jewish settlement of the pre-state affirming Zionism as their ideology. A different spirit pervaded the literature of the 1960s and the 1970s. Writers tended to expand on the reversal of roles in the Arab/Jewish relations where the figure of the Arab becomes part of the Israeli psyche reflecting ‘elements of alienation, self-criticism and self-doubt’ (Domb, The Arab 121). Israeli fiction began to focus on personal stories rather than the epic of national rebirth. The works of Sammy Michael, Shimon Balas and Eli Amir introduce the Eastern voice in Israeli literature. Their themes of loss, identity and 70
Chapter Two
exclusion interpret their literature as condensed with cultural memory that gives integrity and coherence to the past. Aharon Appelfeld recreated the Jewish society of the Diaspora before and after the Holocaust probing the wounds in the Jewish psyche. Most other contemporary writers such as Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua and David Grossman tend to depict secular modern Israelis whose Jewishness is at conflict. New approaches in Hebrew literature are introduced marking a break from Zionist ideological patterns (BenHorin). The events of the Holocaust have deeply affected the discourse of Israeli literature which had long been preoccupied with themes of nation-building. The negation of the Diaspora Jew establishing a "new" literature caused an ideological divide between the Diaspora Jew and Israeli-born Sabras. The co-existence between the Israeli and the Holocaust survivor presents a work that reflects the emotional insecurity of the minority/majority relationship. Issues raised by these writers reflect tensions between a personal and a collective identity, memory and history. The return to the repressed past has become a national obsession. Nostalgia for places and traditions resulted in a double identity and dual life between "over there" and "here". The standard exile/home paradigm reflects the dichotomy and complexity of place in Jewish literature. However, the conventional Zionist model of Jewish place that privileges Israel as home and Diaspora as exile remains dominant. According to Miron, Hebrew literature at last "enjoyed the conditions of normalcy and independence" by native Hebrew speaking writers in the established state of Israel who were 71
Chapter Two
“fully delivered from the crippling circumstances of the exilic situation” (“Modern Hebrew Literature” 296-297). The literature of the 1960s and the 1970s expressed an alienation from society and shifted its vision from the collective to the individual. This deviated from the dominant ideology that insisted upon the supremacy of the collective experience. The fictional works of this phase seek to capture the experience of war and the Israeli soldiers as they occupy a land inhabited primarily by Arabs. Writers tend to explore the moral conscience of the soldiers as Zionist "myths" are gradually exposed resulting in the disillusionment of Zionist ideals. Those native-born writers brought to their work different perspectives than those of their preceding generations primarily because their life experience was fully rooted in the land and their mother tongue was Hebrew. The "new" Sabra preserves a separate identity in his/her native language and land. Sharing these same Zionist values and ideals, the State generation is, thus, characterized by their "deep bonds to the Land and the language" (Ramras-Rauch 53). In her study, Inextricably Bonded, Rachel Brenner states that Israeli literature "was meant to represent Israeli culture as distinct from the Jewish Diaspora culture as well as from the Palestinian culture"(4). Brenner, further, traces the European influence on the foundations of Hebrew literature: The desire to establish a state modeled upon the image of the West and the wish to refashion the Jew in the person of the enlightened European 72
Chapter Two
reveal a deeply embedded dependency on the West. (8) Brenner, thus, asserts that Western values played a vital role in shaping the culture of Zionist "enterprise" (42). Two main concepts deeply rooted in the Israeli narrative are: the Western influence (that consolidates the myth of the Jews who came to develop and cultivate the "empty land"); and the "negation of the Diaspora" and creation of the "New Jew". Gordimer and Yizhar: Dissenting Voices of Oppressive Regimes Like her predecessors, Nadine Gordimer has dramatized the history of her country by reflecting the oppression of the racist regime in her works. Born in 1923 to Jewish immigrant parents, Gordimer has chosen to live in South Africa. This commitment to a place and people has profoundly shaped her work. She began writing at the age of fifteen and since then she has achieved an international literary recognition. Gordimer has won numerous literary awards, which culminated in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Gordimer states, “In the long struggle against apartheid, it has been recognized that an oppressed people need the confidence of cultural backing. Literature, fiction including plays and poetry, became what is known as a ‘weapon of struggle’” (Living in Hope and History 13). Gordimer defines African literature as Writing done in any language by Africans themselves and by others of whatever skin color who share with Africans the experience of having been shaped, mentally and spiritually, by 73
Chapter Two
Africa rather than anywhere else in the world. One must look at the world from Africa, to be an African writer, not look upon Africa from the world. (Black Interpreters 5) Many critics have called Gordimer an “interpreter” or even “the conscience” of South Africa (Clingman, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer 1) because she has consistently explored in her novels the lives and experiences of the oppressed in the racial setting and her fiction has been received as embodying a powerful moral critique of Apartheid. While her early works were in the tradition of liberal South African Whites opposed to Apartheid - “the ugliest creation of man”- as she states in her non fictional study Writing and Being (21), her later works reflect a move toward more radical political and literary traditions. Firmly opposed to the racial segregation of the Apartheid legal system, Gordimer attempted in her writings to innovate and develop the South African English novel beyond its conventional tradition of realism by depicting and exploring the oppressive experiences of a disintegrating society. Thus, by the 1970s after Sharpeville Massacre and Soweto Riots, Gordimer moved out of the mainstream of liberalism of most South African Whites opposed to Apartheid and began moving toward a more radical positionxi. Accordingly, Gordimer considers herself a “minority within a minority” as a “white … that was never at home in white supremacy” (“Living in the Interregnum” 270). Thus, she is twice marginalized from the society: first, from her own race by her political beliefs as a White person
74
Chapter Two
opposing the Apartheid government and second, as a White Jewish in Black South Africa. Within the framework of racial discrimination, Gordimer’s novels give us a deep insight into the historical experience between the two forces of a superior White system and a rising African nationalism. Gordimer’s early fiction establishes one of her most insistent themes – the failure of liberalism as an ideology as a means of resistance to racism. The development of her characters embodies her political consciousness as it was aroused by her need to establish an identity and a sense of belonging as a White minority in South Africa. In an interview in 1965, Gordimer states her gradual view on race and racism from her position of a privileged minority: A white South African, brought up on the soft side of the colour-bar, I have gone through the whole packaged – deal evolution that situation has to offer … unquestioning acceptance of the superiority of my white skin, as a small child; acceptance of the paternal attitudes that “they” are only human, after all, as an older child; questioning of these attitudes as I grew up and read and experienced outside the reading an experience that formed my inheritance; to finally, re-birth as a human being with all this means in the face of the discrimination that sorts them into colours and races. (Conversation 34) Raised in such a traditional White South African family, Gordimer confesses that “the blacks were not ‘my people’ because all through my childhood and adolescence they had 75
Chapter Two
scarcely entered my consciousness. I had been absent. Absent from them” (Writing and Being 128). It was through reading that Gordimer began to challenge the cultural and ideological assertion that Blacks were inferior. Gordimer speaks of her cultural and political transformation as a metaphor of two births; the second one was when she broke out of the colour-bar. Discovering "the great South African lie", Gordimer breaks away from the racial ethos and rebels against this persisting status quo by what she calls a "second birth". Dividing Gordimer’s novels into three phases: the bourgeois phase (The Lying Days, A World of Strangers, and Occasions for Loving), the post-bourgeois phase (The Late Bourgeois World, A Guest of Honour, and the Conservationist), and the revolutionary phase (Burger’s Daughter and July’s People) – JanMohamed notes the paradox in Gordimer’s fiction is revealed as she insists on writing about the “objective, political conditions in South Africa”, while her fiction remains “fundamentally subjective” and preoccupied with “personal and moral dilemma that her protagonist suffer due to their encounter with apartheid” (Manichean 147). While Gordimer engages herself with the traumatic effects of racism and depicts the oppression of the Blacks within the Apartheid regime, her major preoccupation, however, has always been the personal and moral dilemma of the White oppressor and his identity crisis. In her novels and short stories, Gordimer subjects the consciousness of her White protagonists to an analysis in an attempt to define their shattered identities. Reflecting the inner struggles and the gap between the self and the Other, Gordimer traces the disintegration and alienation of her 76
Chapter Two
characters. Her fiction, then, is "fraught with moral problems and anxieties of an intelligent and enlightened white consciousness"(Manichean 87). By examining the development of the Manichean relations in the Apartheid setting, Gordimer repeats a common pattern where the protagonists are confronted with the racial hierarchy and attempts to re-evaluate their attitudes of the self and the other. Gordimer traces this identity crisis through the gradual disintegration and total alienation of her protagonists. In Manichean Aesthetics, JanMohamed states that while Gordimer examines the troubled consciousness of her protagonists and her desire to "bridge" the gap between the self and the society, this leads her "to a prolonged meditation about the dissolution and rebirth of the self that is constantly seeking to unite with its other" (146). Gordimer states that personal independence in South Africa entails political liberation first. Fanon argues that there had been no effective decolonization in South Africa since the colonial structure of races persisted. To end colonization effectively, violence was inevitable as a radical response to the increasing institutionalization of Apartheid not only to destroy the structure of colonial rule but also to cure the resulting alienated consciousness of the colonial encounter. The political changes in the power in the late 1980s focused Gordimer’s attention on the creation of a new nation. Gordimer’s post-apartheid novels examine the phenomenon of power that is lost to the White government and its emergence to the new rising community. Moreover, her novels foreshadow the oppression and violence of the past mingled with a hybridity of cultures based on equal rights. 77
Chapter Two
After Apartheid, the ideology of building a new nation is of central importance. Writers aim to explore new resources and policies to bind the nation together and to transform the past identity of living within the legacy of racial injustice and political oppression to a new reconstructed one embodying the ideals of unity and reconciliation in a “new nation”. Gordimer’s recent novels explore possible problems of a new national identity developed within a new constructed setting. Within the Israeli setting, Yizhar published fiction about the War of Independence raising morally challenging issues. He further published a series of memoirs vividly evoking his early childhood and youth on a Palestinian landscape. Born into the heart and soul of the Zionist settlements in Palestine, Yizhar's obligation to ideological attitudes of Zionism was undoubted. His identity as a Sabra, his Jewish "ethnicity", his native Hebrew language, and his military service served in shaping his Zionist identity (Brenner 161). However, Yizhar did not share the spirit of triumph and redemption that accompanied the Jewish victory in the 1948 war – called the War of Independence by Israelis, and the Catastrophe (Nakba) by Palestinians. Yizhar Smalinsky, widely known by his penname S. Yizhar, was a Professor of Education and Hebrew Literature at Hebrew University and later Tel Aviv University. He served as a member of the Knesset and his uncle, Moshe Smilansky, was one of the leaders of the first wave of Zionist settlers and a prominent writer in the Hebrew literary canon. Yizhar was awarded the highest literary prizes of the state for his literary achievements. In the 1930s and 1940s, he published several collections of short stories; in the late 78
Chapter Two
1940s, he wrote his most controversial novella, Khirbet Khizeh and in the late 1950s he published his massive work Days of Ziklag. Yizhar resumed his long years of literary silence in 1992 with the publication of the first volume of autobiographical novels, Preliminaries. In addition, he wrote stories for children and young adults. Yizhar's stories deal primarily with "the individual and collective struggles of the pioneer-settlers" within a hostile environment (Miron, “Introduction” 4). Yizhar's writings mark autobiographical themes reflecting his experience as a soldier in the War of Independence. In an interview with Rochelle Furstenberg, Yizhar states the events that determined his "birth" as a writer: One or two events concerning injustice toward the Arabs, which I witnessed at the end of the war, created an explosion in my life, which made me a writer … It was that trauma of the personal fall from innocence that led me to write my stories. Similarly, it is that "fall from innocence" that marks Yizhar’s birth as a writer and which pervades his writings – the ambivalence between inherited values and reality. It is this ‘birth’ that resembles Gordimer’s ‘birth’ mentioned earlier after discovering ‘the great South African lie’. Yizhar's identity as a firm believer in the Zionist national and linguistic revival intensifies the complexities and ambivalence within him. His writings are full of conflicting attitudes: images of the Arab and Diaspora Jew contrasts with images of the "new" Sabra; the Zionist "myth" of the "empty land" contrasts with the pictures of war crimes that he 79
Chapter Two
presents; his representation of the suppressed memory of the Arab dispossession and victimization also contrasts with the glorification of national memories of the "ancient" land. In his fiction, the Arab is the native son deeply tied to the land and the Jew is uprooted and estranged. Thus, his self-image as an oppressor undermines his deep faith in the Zionist ideology. This change in the victor's self-image is portrayed in deep feelings of guilt and a "crisis of conscience" (Elon 262) that pervades all his writings. Yizhar's "tormented conscience" (Yudkin 71) is reflected in the portrayal of his protagonists. A typical Sabra is portrayed in Yizhar's stories with ambivalence, self-doubt, and moral indignation. Ramras-Rauch states that Yizhar, influenced mainly by the Wolfean and Joycean stream of consciousness, penetrates deeply in the human psyche to express the inner uncertainties and conflicts of believing and opposing. Ramras-Rauch states: Yizhar's fiction stems from the elusive nature of the authorial voice. Thus he will employ the "telling" technique … an indirect expression of the author's values as he puts a distance between himself and the events. That distance is what enables him to enhance the stream of consciousness technique and the inner voice. (58) The first appearance of the native Israeli Sabra in literature was in S. Yizhar's fiction. Gershon Shaked, a scholar of Hebrew Literature, states that "Yizhar published his works before all his literary fellow as a kind of elder brother, and many followed after him in any number of area" 80
Chapter Two
(181). Yizhar's works reflect the existential dilemma and psychological guilt of the Israeli Sabra. The exploration of the land becomes a symbol of his protagonists' guilty conscience and homelessness. In his analytical study, The Sabra, Oz Almog argues that the widespread definition of Sabra as the native-born Israeli is insufficient; they are "a homogeneous group who had influence far beyond their numbers" (XI). Developing a "consciousness about their cultural uniqueness", the Sabras developed their own life style, literature and established Hebrew as their mothertongue language (6). Creating the "standard model" of the Sabra, the Zionist ideology meant to denote the distinction between the Diaspora Jew and the Israeli native-born. Almog defines the Sabra generation within cultural context as "a generation for whom Hebrew was the language of conversation and of reading, and who were educated under the mythical aura of the pioneer settler" (2). The historian Anita Shapira notes that the children of early Zionists were born into the ethos of the "New Jew; they did not have to go through any psychological and existential dilemma (New Jews 12). Conclusion Both countries, South Africa and Palestine, share a history of race-based colonialism; the colonizers settled in these countries, attached themselves to the land and were reluctant to leave. Both countries have large settler populations identifying themselves with the colonized places, rather than with the countries from which they originally came from. Walter Rodney, a prominent historian and political figure, explores this relationship in How Europe 81
Chapter Two
Underdeveloped Africa maintaining that it is a relationship of power on the economic, political and cultural levels. He states that colonialism was a venture undertaken by the European powers to extend their empires. It was a system of exploitation and relocation of profits to the mother country where the colonizers plundered the resources of the colonized countries without restraint (162). On the other hand, Apartheid and Zionism developed a more systematic negation of life for those classified as Black, coloured or gentile (non-Jew) where racial discrimination was institutionalized. The enactment of the racist laws in both regimes manifested the 'inculcation of fear' in both Whites and Blacks, Jews and gentiles (Campschreur 13-15). Accordingly, the implemented race laws touched every aspect of life creating a permanent divide between each opposing groups. Apartheid and Zionism was/are definitely more than just a master/slave colonial relationship. From the previous survey of the colonial setting discussed in this chapter, we can deduce that both oppressive regimes, Apartheid and Zionism, share a lot in common; however, they differ in form. Dwelling on biblical justifications, both systems enforce political discrimination, social segregation, economic exploitation and cultural denigration in order to attain power and enact their racist ideologies. Whereas the Apartheid system in South Africa enacted the ‘classic’ form of colonialism in order to exploit and subordinate the natives, Zionism implemented its discourse of negation and exclusion by completely rejecting the indigenous natives of the land – thus, performing the ‘internal’ form of colonialism. On the other hand, both oppressive systems performed both forms of racism; that is, 82
Chapter Two
crude and cultural. A survey of the literary canon of each system unfolds upon a prolonged discourse of racist attitudes. Negative stereotypes were attached to the Blacks in South Africa imposing, thus, the norms and cultures of the settlers. The image of the Arab in the Israeli literary canon, however, marks a gradual development. In certain works, the Arab is rendered invisible and non-existent; in others, he is attached to negative stereotypes similar to those attributed to the Blacks. Furthermore, endless positive stereotypes are associated with the created image of the 'new' Sabra. Within such an oppressive and racist setting, the next chapter is dedicated to the unresolved conflicts of the colonial encounter in the South African setting. The chapter traces the ambiguous relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and its traumatic effects on both the oppressor and the oppressed as manifested in selected works by Nadine Gordimer. The chapter will tackle forms of power in constituting an identity along with forms of resistance to this undesired power. How does language work or fail to work in race relations? How do people adopt a language to generate influence and control? What happens when suddenly these forms of power fade away and how is this reflected upon the colonizer and the colonized?
83
Chapter Two
i
Both the British and Dutch (the Boers) co-existed amidst continuing conflict though both were united in the oppression of the native Blacks. The country’s economic transformation from an agricultural to a capitalist state after the discovery of gold mines intensified the struggle between the British and the Boers. One of the main events that shaped the history and geography of South Africa was the Boer war (1899-1902) to gain the economic power of the gold mines. The Anglo-Boer war ultimately led to the British domination splitting South Africa into two countries: Orange River colony and Transvaal ("History of Apartheid"). ii
For example, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act prevented mixed marriages and the Immortality Act outlawed interracial sex. For more readings on the subject, see Chapman, Southern African Literatures. iii
It is one of the most problematic phrases in the history of Zionism. The slogan is incorrectly ascribed to Israel Zangwill, "The Return to Palestine". However, the earliest publication of the slogan appears by Alexander Keith in 1843 and later in 1853 by the British reformer Lord Shafesbury (Muir). iv
One of the most racial discriminating laws is the Law of Return that allows all Jews from all over the world the right to return to their 'ancestral' land while denies the same right to the indigenous natives, those Palestinian refugees of 1948. Furthermore, this racist system grants any Jews of any nationality the right of citizenship whilst rendering Arabs second-class citizenship by the Law of Citizenship (Nationality Law). The government further establishes the right to confiscate any land or property of the Arab refugees through the Absentee' Property Law. Those resident in the country are rendered "present-absentees". Thus, present as taxpayers with the right to vote, yet absent and non-existent having lost all their rights to land and property. Other areas are closed for security reasons and Arab owners are barred from their properties under the Land Acquisition Law. The Status Law 84
Chapter Two
allows privileged economic, political and social benefits to Jews only ("Zionism"). v
A term that refers to any people who are non-Jew, or a nation that is non-Israeli. vi
Elmessiri compares this relationship between the Israelis and Western power as the one between a child and a "stepmother". Since Zionism did not have a "mother country", it relied on the "step-mother" to achieve power: "The stepmother used the stepchild as much as the stepchild used her" (Land of Promise 104). vii
From his perspective, Jimmy Carter adheres to the analogy between Zionism and the Apartheid system in South Africa. He states that Zionism is "a system of Apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other with Israelis' totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights" (215). However, Carter believes that the policy was not based on racism and he further maintains that the ideology was materialistic in the first place: "The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa – not racism, but the acquisition of land" (189). On his behalf, Akenson maintains that the Apartheid and Zionist system was not only about race, but about culture. Whereas in South Africa Whites and non-whites were kept apart, the Afrikaans-speakers and English speakers were culturally separate. Similarly, in the Land of Israel, the same separateness was achieved between Oriental Jews and European Jews and Arabs. viii
Discrimination occurred at two levels, there was "Grand Apartheid", which established separate homelands and areas, and "Petty Apartheid" which segregated everyday places. ix
The Yishuv are those residents in Palestine prior 1948.
x
Although Ramras-Rauch stopped short at the 1980s, other writers such as Dan Miron, Gershom Shaked and Risa Domb 85
Chapter Two
document the development of Hebrew literature where modern writers experience physical and metaphoric journeys in search for self-identity and attachment to a place. xi
The Sharpeville Massacre was the police response to black protestors demonstrating at a police station protesting against the pass laws; 69 were killed and over 300 injured. Similarly, 176 students of a high school were killed at the Soweto Riots protesting against the enforcement of Afrikaan language as the medium of education.
86
Chapter Three
Chapter Three PARADOX AND AMBIVALENCE IN THE APARTHEID NARRATIVE: THE CONSERVATIONIST AND JULY'S PEOPLE South Africa unfolds upon a history that is deeply rooted in colonial rule and White supremacy since the first Dutch settlers arrived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who became known as the Afrikaners. Seeking a new cultural and national identity, the Boers modified their Dutch language and mixed it with some African words, which became their Afrikaan language. A number of economic and social factors affected the Boer settlers and caused a mass migration beyond the colony's borders, known as the Great Trek. Although the Dutch settlers shared a common language, religion and interests, "there was no sense of a national consciousness. They were more a community of settlers in a relatively hostile colonial environment than a nation in the making" (Prior 72). The British annexed the country in 1795 leading to conflicts with the Afrikaners over the gold and diamond mines and, eventually, the Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902) (Harsch 18). Michael Prior further states, "The Whites, British and Boers alike, had a sense of superiority vis-à-vis the African, in virtue of belonging to a civilized race and a noble religion" and which justified their colonial and racist acts of separation and exploitation (73). It is important to point out that from (1948-1994) the Apartheid legislation tried to permanently alter the native existence through banning interracial sexual relations and 87
Chapter Three
marriage; the use of public libraries and universities; admittance to entertainment facilities such as theatres, or even public bathrooms; the mass movement of natives to new settlements far from their work centres and from major cities. Any Black person without a valid pass in his possession was liable to be arrested. Members of the state police force had the right to raid and arrest any Black citizen under any pretence and many were tortured in detention (Gordimer, Lifetime 114). According to JanMohamed, the denial of legal rights is bound with the deprivation of political freedom that is enforced by banning, house arrests, imprisonment, torture and death. Any political action or even a protest constitutes a crime. Moreover, social and economic discrimination ensures that non-whites are not allowed for certain jobs and trades and not given the same wages. However, JanMohamed argues that the basis of discrimination was primarily religious. The isolation of non-whites aimed at preserving the "purity" of the Afrikaner consciousness and the "uniqueness" of their culture that it became a "sacred". Thus, Apartheid "the civil side of their religion, has become a literal Manichean doctrine" that uses biblical concepts to support its views of the inferiority of the Black (Manichean 80-83). In order to keep races distinct, the Apartheid racist laws were implemented and enforced by the National Party. The conflict between the colonizer and the colonized reveals a set of paradoxes and ambivalence in the colonial relationship. Moreover, the decolonization process accompanied by a reversal of roles unfolds upon a more paradoxical relationship. Within the framework of the 88
Chapter Three
proposed theories, this chapter highlights the paradox and ambivalence in the colonial encounter as it is reflected in the Apartheid narrative with its bleak yet massive presence imposed on twentieth century South Africa. Two key novels by Nadine Gordimer The Conservationist (1974) and July’s People (1981) have been chosen for this purpose: as a document of the severe subjugation of the Blacks on the African subcontinent, in contact to the neighboring West's democratic freedom as represented by White South Africans. It will also show the effect of the colonial setting of the Apartheid oppressive and racist regime on the colonial subject. It explores different forms of power in Gordimer's novels which, ironically, become a means of resistance at the same time. Revealing racist and colonial undertones, her novels reflect the effect of the colonial relationship on the colonial subject. Once the colonizer is deprived of a power that consolidates his sense of identity, he is faced with an identity crisis that eventually leads to his alienation. The second objective of this chapter is to explore the ‘morbid symptoms’ of living within new forms of definition and which is manifested in the identity crisis and existential dilemma that inevitably leads to alienation. Thus, much of Gordimer’s fiction deals with the restlessness of contemporary White South African, a minority attempting to sustain its dominance and attachment to the land that rejects it. Gordimer’s sixth novel, The Conservationist, considered her densest novel and her masterpiece, presents a vivid portrayal of a racist setting within the Apartheid system. The novel embodies all forms of oppression in forms of prejudice, cultural estrangement, stereotyping and discrimination. Awarded the Booker Prize, 89
Chapter Three
the novel deals largely with the theme of the estrangement of the South African Whites from the African landscape. Gordimer explores the themes of identity crisis and alienation as she examines the complexity of White privilege amongst the growth of the Black Consciousness movement. Considered a "revolutionary prophecy" of political reversal, the novel examines the downfall of White privilege in South Africa through its depiction of characters. Clingman states, "white South Africa is threatened on every page" of the novel (Novels 169). Mehring, the central White character in the novel, stands for a class of racially prejudiced South Africans searching for a newly rooted relationship with the land of South Africa (Gorak 243). Coming from a wealthy industrialist class, Mehring is not a farmer but owns a farm in rural South Africa and enforces laws of the Apartheid regime. Mehring represents the White and rich European settlers for whom "the whole world is theirs"(Conservationist 266). Barbra Temple Thurston states that the farm is mainly a place to bring women to, furthermore, to practice his exploitation of Black farm workers. He uses his farming activities as a sentimental way of connecting to the African earth, and cynically, as a way to "write off taxes" (Thurston 65). His need to "conserve" the land that he had no right to, and his mental deterioration following the discovery of an anonymous murdered Black body on his farm led to his collapse by the end of the novel. After an "improper" burial of the Black body, Mehring is obsessed throughout the story by its presence (JanMohamed, Manichean 122). Throughout the novel, the figure of the Black body haunts Mehring’s dreams, unsettles and disturbs him. The novel ends by a storm that 90
Chapter Three
blows in to raise the body out of the mud and threatens Mehring’s mental state, leading to his mental breakdown. The body is claimed by Black workers on the farm who give it an appropriate ceremonial burial, which symbolizes the Africans' claim over the land. Thurston states that Mehring's psychological disintegration signals the end of white power while the resurrection of the Black body suggests the rising force of a Black South African (65). Accordingly, the raising of the Black body represents a "return of the repressed" on both the political and the psychological levels. Just as the body represents the return of the Black force in political terms, it equally signifies that repression is bound to return to consciousness in threatening and haunting ways. Mehring lives in a state of “oppressive fracture” (Clingman, Novels 209) and by the end of the novel he reaches a state of mental deterioration. The novel indirectly embodies the reversal of roles of White power to Black rule through the image of the dead body that returns to manifest its natural right to the land. Gordimer, further, depicts the existential dilemma of her protagonist through his sense of guilt and detachment to the land. In The Conservationist, the Apartheid social oppression is the underlying basis of cultural alienation from land and people alike. The novel reflects the racist laws that control the freedom and movement of the Blacks and Indians, such as the Native Land Act and the Group Areas Act. The Black workers and their families are gathered in degrading and oppressive conditions to serve the needs of the white-owned industry that is resembled in Mehring’s wealth to preserve the security of the Whites. Mehring owns a 40091
Chapter Three
acre farm directly outside of Johannesburg, where Black labourers and Indians exist to serve his privilege status. The Indians violate the Group Areas Act as they own a store near Mehring's farm. Designated as a 'White' area, they could be arrested anytime; Bismillah, one of the Indians, bribes the officials "to keep himself and his family one move ahead of the official visit"(115). Clingman states that they further exploit Black labours to build them a fence to keep other Black labors out, those who have no jobs or homes and threaten their existence (Novels 156). The farm is a place bought by the White regime to put those classes that are not allowed to live in the city. Without the 'pass', another symbol of racism, the Black workers are denied power and legitimacy. Mehring who represents pure Western materialism states, “A farm is not beautiful unless it is productive” (20). Similarly, the Black laborers who live and work on the farm are valued only according to their productivity – a mere capitalist and exploitative criterion. Mehring's workers are merely a "method to his conservation policy… he is largely indifferent to them"(Thurston 70).Blacks are even refused the right to gather eggs and dig roots on the farm (42). JanMohamed states that Mehring's relationship with the workers on his farm reflects that between masters and slaves (Manichean 120). They exist only to serve their masters who preserve all the privileges afforded them by the regime. On the other hand, Gordimer reflects the racist system through her depiction of the Indian family which represents another race within the Apartheid color bar. The Infdian family, Bismillah's, live behind a wire fence kept under strict 92
Chapter Three
regulations and watched by vicious dogs. Managing a shop, their communication is strictly limited with Blacks and Whites. Relationships between them are maintained in terms of services only, as Blacks are evaluated in terms of the work they do to keep the farm productive. Deprived of material possessions and social freedom, Africans and Indians suffer from the racist system. Gordimer portrays a picture of South Africa divided by Apartheid in which the status of social life is equated by colour of skin. While the characters (whether Indians, Blacks, or Whites) physically live together, they are yet separated by South African fixed racial rules and laws. According to Thurston, the habit of social and cultural exclusion of the system, ironically, leads to a blind selfimprisonment (74). This is reflected in the scene of Bismillah's dogs snarling at the gates even though they were no longer closed:"In the morning, William found the gates open. Inside the dogs snarled and raced up and down, as if, for them, the pattern of closed gates was still barred across their eyes"(125). In this context, Newman states that "[t]he image of a culture deliberately walling itself in, refusing to communicate across the lines drawn by apartheid, even collaborating with it, is also an image of walled-off consciousness"(61). In “Interrupting the Hegemonic”, Brian Macaskill recognizes Mehring’s physical existence as located within the confines of a “closed system”: “From the flat to the car to the office, from tables to beds, from airports to hotels, from city to country” (The Conservationist 75). According to Macaskill, Gordimer’s novel opens a series of “intertexts” which enable us to witness “segments” of life of Black labours on Mehring's farm and by the Indians who operate a 93
Chapter Three
nearby store. The depiction of Indians in their store is a reflection of Mehring's “closed system” intensified by restrictions imposed by South African government on “nonwhites” (158). Isolating himself from his neighbors, friends and workers, Mehring states, "My possessions are enough for me"(204). He believes that "to keep anything the way you like it for yourself you have to have the stomach to ignoredead and hidden-whatever intrudes"(73). Thurston states that Mehring's "closed system" reflects his living "in a limited consciousness locked in its assumptions of cultural superiority"(73). Throughout the novel, Mehring is obsessed by thoughts of death and guilt. In his gradual deterioration, Mehring thinks, “How long can we go on getting away scotfree? … soon, in this generation or the next, it must be our turn to starve and suffer” (46). The novel closes on the description of the farm people preparing for a proper funeral of the Black body. Their activity is contrasted to the mental disorder that characterizes Mehring's state. Representative of the White man in the colonial South Africa, Mehring thinks in distress: They were ready for the next white man. If it were not to be me, it would have been someone else. The next buyer … They have been there all the time and they will continue to be there. (313314; emphasis added) In his state of hallucination, the final words of the novel come from voices inside his head, "Come and look, they’re all saying. What is it? Who is it? It’s Mehring. It’s Mehring down here?" (320). 94
Chapter Three
Thus, Gordimer investigates deeply into the psychological distortions of a White political response to Apartheid, dealing with the political fears and obsessions of a White consciousness. Gordimer exposes the ways Apartheid damages the privileged members of the society as well as those who are excluded from privilege. Gordimer’s depiction of Mehring had wider connotations which mark revolutionary change in South Africa and the downfall of White supremacy. Stephen Clingman argues that “[t]he vision is one of historical transfer, prophetically, The Conservationist is situated at the point where white history ends and black history resumes” (Novels 190). Language and Land: A Form of Power and Resistance in The Conservationist Language as a means of communication is expressed in written signs and everyday life speeches. It reflects the values and ideals that constitute the basis of identity. Thus, by imposing a foreign language and suppressing the native's spoken and written language, the colonizer destroys all means of communication manifesting, thereby, the cultural racism of the colonial system: Having no ancestral land, they [the colonizers] deal with their sense of displacement by unquestioningly clinging to a belief in the adequacy of the imported language. (Ashcroft et al., Empire 25) Fanon asserts that, "a man who has a language … possesses the world expressed and implied by that language … Mastery of language affords remarkable power" (Black Skin 18). 95
Chapter Three
Language becomes a means of domination and power while the colonized is forced to adopt and use the language of the colonizer in order to communicate or else become a stranger in his own countryi. Fanon states, "To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture" (38). The colonized could be assimilated into the colonizer's culture. However, Fanon perceives otherwise; the Black is a slave of his appearance and the language that he adopts becomes an affirmation of his inferiority with its multiplicity of negative values. The Black could never be White, "whatever he does, the Negro remains a Negro" (Black Skin 173). This is interpreted, moreover, in Bhabha's terms "almost the same, but not quite". In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire’s demand for dialogue with the oppressed coincides with Gordimer’s insistence on communication between different races. For Gordimer, the “logic of domination” in the South African context is an attempt at creating what Freire terms “cultural silence”. According to Freire, ‘non responsiveness’, ‘non involvement’ and ‘non participation’ are typical characteristics of dominated people and are a direct product of the whole situation of economic, social and political domination (11). South African people are silenced and their political activities are suppressed. The government would realize that it cannot ‘think without other people, nor for other people, but only with other people’ (Freire 126). Seeking to resolve this lack of communication, Gordimer maintains to awaken the conscience of the oppressor from one point and at the same time emphasizes the necessity of dialogue between the Blacks and the Whites. According to Gordimer, communication serves as a powerful political act 96
Chapter Three
preventing conflicts between the enclosed world of the Whites and the public field of the outside world of the Black majority. It is only by breaking the silence that a political and conscious awareness of the oppressive regime would be achieved and resolved (Essential Gesture). The languages of South Africa have been attached to race and class, master and servant for so long that language itself has become a means of powerii. Because of the limitation of interaction between Whites and Blacks South Africa, there evolves problems of communication between the two races under Apartheid. The failure to communicate among characters reflects a wider social communication problem. In her novels, Gordimer appears to reflect the deeply rooted racial, social and cultural gaps between White and Black characters in the use of languages and the power it manifests. In the context of Apartheid, Gordimer sets up a dialogic confrontation between her Black and White characters in order to reveal the damaging effects of such a system. Although Mehring claims to be a conservationist deeply integrated with farm and farmers, his policy of keeping distance from his Black workers and the “languages and cultural difficulties” results in his difficulty to “imagine someone speaking as they speak” (180). Thus, language, in Macaskill's terms, becomes a tool for "social conservation" (159). He further states that such conservation "is obviously an emblem of wider patterns of exploitation-capitalist, sexual, and colonialist exploitation" (163). The absolute absence of communication between Mehring and the children on the farm reflects the larger process that takes place between Blacks and Whites: “He asks a question … The children don’t understand the language. He goes on talking 97
Chapter Three
with many gestures” (9). Thus, the exclusive “closed system” that Mehring intentionally lives in as a means of preserving his social and racial superiority widens the communication gap between him and his farmers (Thurston 73). Throughout the novel, they communicate only by means of the traditional codes of Apartheid. His attempts of preserving his superior languages on the one hand and his lack of interest in learning the languages of his workers on the other eventually lead to his total isolation and dislocation. The signpost to Mehring’s farm is written in three languages – English, Afrikaans and Zulu – “NO THOUROUGHFARE / GEEN TOEGANG / AKUNDLELA LAPHA” (140). As the signpost represents the relationship between the three types of languages used in South Africa, however, it remains an “absurd, a hopeful claim that can never be recognized” (141). The signpost, thus, exposes the lack of communication as the language of power precedes all other languages. Thurston states that, in his mental disintegration, Mehring loses control of his power that Gordimer symbolizes in his superior language in forms of dashes, unfinished sentences and obsessive thoughts of death. The fragmented structure of the narrative, thus, emphasizes the disjunction of the two societies and the lack of communication between them. In a very concise remark, Gordimer stresses the lack of communication even between father and son resulting, thus, in his further isolation: “were they referring to the same things when they talked together?” (134). Since language provides the very terms in which one culture perceives the "other" on racist-built stereotypes, it becomes one of the principle tools utilized to alter that image 98
Chapter Three
or oppose it. Language gives expression to ethnicity, while seeking at the same time to oppose racist stereotypes. Thurston states that as much as the Africans preserve their own language as much as they are secured and powerful. She states, "Gordimer shifts linguistic and social codes, exploring the role that language plays in identity formation. She reintegrates African identity through language and culture, while dissolving the white world's reality"(75). Farmers can talk about Mehring “in the safety of their own language” and “can say what they like” (Conservationist 75). On their behalf, the Indians deliberately use their language to isolate themselves: “In a full shop, the privacy of this talk in Gujerati: was as secure to the family as if the shop were empty. The language reached nobody else’s understanding” (Conservationist 120). Culturally exclusive, their communication with their customers is limited: “Demand. Response. Counter-demand. Statements. No word was given away. Communication, narrowed down its closest immediate confines, was complete” (Conservationist 119-120). In addition to language, the land remains a persistent theme in the consolidation of power and construction of identity. In the colonial setting, relationship with the land constitutes a means of power and reflects the ‘existential dilemma’ of the colonial subject, colonizer and colonized. Paradoxically, it might reflect forms of struggle and resistance. In The Conservationist, Gordimer depicts the Black people’s natural attachment to the land in contrast to Mehring’s (Thurston 70). His relationship with the land is full of contradictions. For example, Mehring is sensitive to the beauty of the countryside, which is an important redeeming quality for him, but at the same time, he exploits 99
Chapter Three
the land by extracting pig iron. Watching his Black farm manager, Jacobus, Mehring laments: "He certainly has a sense of attachment to the place"(145). Acknowledging their sense of belonging, Mehring thinks “They were squatting God knows how long before he bought the place and they’ll expect to have their grandchildren squatting long after he’s gone” (202). Africans have tradition and cultural continuity that Mehring lacks (JanMohamed, Manichean 120). Gordimer portrays Jacobus and the workers' attachment to the land as genuine and natural in contrast to Mehring's displacement. This is reflected as they run the farm effectively during Mehring's absence. Their inheritance and extended family structure allows them to protect and support each other. Remaining tied to their ancestral culture, the Blacks “conserve their beliefs, and their beliefs conserve and regenerate the land and its people” (Newman 35). Judie Newman further imposes the fundamental question of the novel is “Who shall inherit Africa?” (57). The novel focuses on the sterility and lifelessness of White society that is symbolized by Mehring. As a second or third generation descendant of European settlers, Mehring is a marginal figure with no homeland, no ancestral roots. Caught between living the way of ancestors and living according to the fixed norms of a new society, he becomes condemned to live in two societies while not being attached to either. Mehring wants to be “at one with the land as an ancestor at one with his own earth” (161). The ancestors are symbolized by the unnamed buried man. Newman maintains that though Mehring claims ownership to the land, he lacks the spiritual connection of the African farmers who have been reduced to 100
Chapter Three
carrying "papers that made them temporary sojourners where they were born (114). Moreover, Clingman argues that Gordimer’s clever portrayal of Mehring’s son, Terry, as a homosexual intensifies Mehring’s sense of uncontinuity. There will be no pass of inheritance to the next generation. On a broader level, Gordimer suggests the sterility of White settlers in South Africa and the restoration of power to African descendants. The strength and independence of the Blacks are vividly opposed to the decay and degeneration of the Whites. Mehring's attempt to plant European trees to ensure his belongings and continuity on the farm is rendered futile. He sarcastically tells his girlfriend, Antonia that he is “planting European chestnuts for the Blacks to use as firewood after they’ve taken over” (210). When his son suggests they plant oaks, Mehring says “you don’t plant oak for yourself but for those who come after” (146). Thus, Mehring acknowledges and confesses his (and his group’s) temporary stay on the farm in particular and in South Africa in general (Clingman, Novels 157). Mehring is not a real farmer, he is an industrialist who has originally bought a place where he could enjoy sexual encounters “a place to bring a woman” (47). For Mehring, the farm is merely "a story to be told over drinks and at the dinner-table"(27). His central concern is ‘conservation’ of land to ensure his tax income and to indulge himself in the romance of rural life in South Africa at the expense of people who work on his farm. Mehring’s possessing attitude is summed up by Antonia’s remark “You don’t own a country by signing a bit of paper the way you bought yourself the 101
Chapter Three
title deed to that farm” (101). Thus, according to Thurston, it is Mehring’s exploitation of the land and the people that affords his luxury of conserving it (Thurston 70). By the end of the novel, the Black workers give the Black body a proper burial claiming him as one of their own, He had no family but their women wept a little for him. There was no child of his present but their children were there to live after him. They had put him away to rest, at last. He had come back. He took possession of this earth theirs; one of them. (252) From another perspective, nature becomes a power of its own as a means of resistance. In an interview with Robert Boyers, Gordimer stated, “in The Conservationist, the landscape is the most important character” (Conversation 196). On the powerful force of nature Fanon points out how “Hostile nature, obstinate and fundamentally rebellious” can be a means of resistance for the colonized, and that “colonization is a success when all this indocile nature has finally been tamed” (Wretched 201). At the end of the novel, the storm sweeps in to raise the body out of earth and drives Mehring out of the land. The storm stands for the struggling force of nature as it rejects oppression and raises the body, another important symbol of African culture. Rain in the novel is described as a bird “taking off again with a sweep that shed, monstrous cosmic peacock, gross paillettes of hail, a dross of battering rain"(218). The rain washes away the road between the town and the city to keep Mehring cut off from the farm (Newman 63).
102
Chapter Three
The draught and storm operate as major symbols in the novel: “Dust has the effect on the distant hills of a pencil sketch gone over with a soft rubber” (108). Thus, "[n]ature knows how to use everything (245); the draught is relieved with rain while the storm, a "monstrous cosmic peacock"(232), restores African culture by reviving the Black body predicting the rule of Black power and “sweeping away” White dominance – all this is further emphasized by Mehring’s psychic disintegration (Thurston 74). Realizing the power of nature, Mehring states “This place absorbs everything, takes everything to itself and loses everything in itself” (189). The land reveals its power against and rejection of Mehring’s attempts to conserve it throughout the novel. According to Newman, Gordimer explores White consciousness stripped of political authority, projecting its psychological conflicts as the Black conscious rises from its suppressed position. Newman states, [U]nder her ironic title, Gordimer argues that to conserve a land, to maintain it as neither the hothouse of fantasy, nor the desert of neutral tones, the first task is to regenerate its language. A new rhetoric expresses rather than represses the individual, and the land possesses as much as it is possessed. (67) According to JanMohamed, "[t]he novel equates the blacks' ability to survive with nature's similar capacity for regeneration and, hence, implies that, like nature, they are the real conservationists"(Manichean 121). Newman emphasizes that by echoing the Black political slogan at the end of the novel “Come back Africa”, Gordimer reinforces the sense of 103
Chapter Three
African people taking possession of their land after years of internal exile, oppression and White domination: “They had put him away to rest, at last; he had come back” (267). On the powerful force of nature, Irene Gorak states that Gordimer “wants to convey nightmare landscape inhabited by a mind like Mehring's, an apartheid consciousness without unity and without depth” (248). Colour symbols are also important: the overwhelming black presence throughout the novel cannot be ignored in contrast with White power. Recurring images of blackness represented in fires reinforce the black South African liberation struggle for the land. Mehring walks along “the new boundaries of black and the fire had also "leaked a trickle of black towards the fence" (75). These images of blackness continue: "The picnic bank is in black territory"(95); “the black landscape out there” (106), “black desolation down there at the river” (109). In the overwhelming presence of blackness, the White characters seem to crumble “All the farm was dark except for themselves. He and his son” (172). Sexual Power Power emerges as a dominant theme in Gordimer’s fiction. In an interview in 1986, Gordimer defines this as one of her “central themes … power, the way human beings use power in their relationships” (Conversation 259). Gordimer, however, is not referring to gun power, fire or brutal violence; instead she refers to power as it is symbolized in families and relationships. When Gordimer declares that “sex and politics … have been the greatest influences on people’s lives” (Conversation 275), she is clearly manifesting the two 104
Chapter Three
forces as two equal sources of power. On the significance of the body, Gordimer depicts: a particular connection between sexuality, sensuality, and politics inside South Africa. Because, after all, what is apartheid about? It’s about the body. It’s about black skin, and it’s about woolly hair instead of straight long blond hair … The whole legal structure is based on the physical, so the body becomes supremely important. (Conversation 304) Newman states that sexual power in Gordimer’s fiction is generally used as an analogue for political attitudes. In The Conservationist, it is analogous to the imperialist domination. By symbolizing the domination of the land through Mehring’s sexual exploitation of women, Gordimer depicts another form of socio-political oppression in South Africa. In a white-male-dominated culture, Mehring states: “There’s a special pleasure in having a woman you’ve paid” (71). Thus, throughout the novel he attains a sense of power throughout his sexual encounters. According to Newman, Gordimer’s translation of the colonial desire for the land into sexual power is one of her main strategies in writing The Conservationist (Newman 55). Mehring’s sexual colonialism is portrayed in Gordimer’s scene with the young Portuguese girl on the plane. As Mehring explores her body with his hand and examines the "grain" of her skin, he compares her flesh to the land and desert below him, which he sees as “Golden reclining nudes. Torso upon torso, hip sweeping from waist, smooth beyond smoothness” (97).
105
Chapter Three
On the other hand, Gordimer’s depiction of Mehring’s “sexual fascism” (102) serves as an integral feature of his racial attitude. In “Prospero’s Complex”, Newman provides an analysis of racism as a product of sexual repression. Mehring’s sexual identity has been shaped by racial factors and his breakdown was a result of associating his sexual fantasies with the dead African body. When the body rises up to the surface, Mehring relapses into a fantasy of a sexual encounter with a “coloured” girl. The fact that one of his mistresses has Black friends and the girl on the plane is Portoguese implies the racial overtones of the novel. Thus, Gordimer implies the linkage of race and sex in Mehring unconsciousness through the association of his interracial sexual fantasies and his obsessive images of the dead body. Newman further states that "[f]emale exploitation and exploitation of land are linked; sexual guilt functions as a surrogate for colonial guilt"(59). Gordimer further proceeds to link the political disturbance of the country with Mehring’s sexual instability as she portrays the last sexual scene in the novel between Mehring and the ‘coloured’ girl in his car. As representative of land, she reflects the end of White possession to the land. Mehring observes “The grain of the skin is gigantic, muddy and coarse. A moon surface” (246). As Mehring sees two men in the dark at the distance, he falls into a state of panic and breakdown. Mehring’s abandonment of the girl, then, symbolizes his abandonment of Africa and his land (Newman 65). In his deteriorating state of mind, Mehring thinks:
106
Chapter Three
He’s going to leave her to them … he’s going to make a dash for it, a leap, sell the place to the first offer … He’s going to run, run and leave them to rape her and rob her. She’ll be all right. They survive everything, coloured or poorwhite, whichever she is, … They can have it, the whole four hundred acres. (250) Accordingly, Gordimer’s use of sexual power in the novel serves as a manifestation of the political dilemma of the country. On the one hand, Gordimer associates sexual exploitation of women with Mehring's exploitation of the land; on the other hand, she links sexual and racial attitudes with the political status of the Apartheid system. Furthermore, Gordimer’s depiction of the homosexuality of Mehring's son is an assertion of her political beliefs. Thus, by suggesting the sterility of White settlers in Africa, Gordimer implies the end of White rule as the Blacks take over with their extending families (Clingman, Novels 157). Accordingly, JanMohamed states that The Conservationist is a novel of power and stylistic innovation. Gordimer's main theme has always been the oppressiveness under the Apartheid system in South Africa. The novel, however, differs in style and technique. It depicts two worlds, where the narrator presents the Africans and the Indians' while Mehring's subjective world is revealed through his interior monologues (Manichean 118). Gordimer represents the stream of consciousness blended with the characters' response to life. The novel spans the life of the White colonizer in an African landscape through the interior life of the White industrialist. The novel is full of minute 107
Chapter Three
details where each stone, egg and tree carries symbolic implications. Much of Mehring’s stream of consciousness takes the form of a dialogue that takes place within his mind in a continuous and obsessive argument with absent characters intertwined with Gordimer's voice. Just as the Black body represents the oppressed black world in South Africa, it also represents the psychic repression within Mehring’s mind. Clingman regards Mehring's coherence of character dependent upon social and cultural norms that when it changes, his character disintegrates. Clingman states that “the more Mehring attempts to repress the body psychologically, the more threateningly it begins to haunt him” (163). Thus, the body poses a threat to Mehring as his disturbed interior monologue reveals his obsessions and fears. Fragments of conservations with his son, lovers, and workers are occasionally interwoven with his stream of consciousness. The title is ironic in the sense that Mehring does not believe in the preservation of nature as a conservationist, but in the cultivation of its resources to serve his human and sexual needs. Thus, the narrative techniques expose the reality of Mehring who only "conserves his political and economic injustices"(Clingman, Novels 148). Newman maintains that, throughout the novel, Gordimer integrates some of the traditional beliefs of Zulu, a major ethnic group in South Africa, as she attempts to contrast the African literary tradition with the sterility of White South African. Gordimer derived quotations from Henry Callaway’s 19th century The Religious System of the Amazulu that deals with the traditional beliefs, myths and 108
Chapter Three
legends of the Zulu. Thus, the novel achieves the reversal of White power by Black power primarily through its formal structure – the insertion of Zulu quotations, thus, asserting African traditional strength and possession of the land (Newman 55-56). Thurston states the disruption of the narrative with quotations from Zulu mythology evokes – like the Black body – the sense of a deep but pressing African presence” (71). Moreover, Newman argues that each quotation introduces or reinforces an event in the novel to uncover the real story of the Blacks not the White as it is superficially portrayed (39). Examples of Zulu quotations are those prayers for corn (39) and for the children and their continuation of life (61), African rain and floods (231). The bed of reeds that finally bears up the Black body is also a highly important site in Zulu myth. However, Macaskill argues that it would be a mistake "to assume that the black subtext unequivocally offers an idealistic solution to the political problems"(163). In this context, Fanon warns against the passive indulgence in old traditions and myths alone rejecting the genuine struggle of resistance. He, thus, meets with Gordimer’s argument that nation building is maintained through genuine commitment not mere emotional connection to a particular place as land or home. However, this reveals a paradox within Gordimer. From one point, she adheres to the revolutionary liberation; while, at the same time, she attributes no revolutionary act to the Africans who are throughout the novel passive and silent. The only resisting act in the narrative is through nature and land; even 109
Chapter Three
Mehring’s deterioration is proposed as a result to his sexual fantasies and fears, not to an authentic liberation movement on part of his workers. JanMohamed states that the stylistic complexity of the text reflects the complexity of South Africa’s political crisis. Gordimer’s ambiguous ending of the novel encouraged readers to assume that Mehring dies at the end. He also assumes that “by merging with the dead man, Mehring has become one of the ancestors of Africa”, and by “transcending the racial barriers of apartheid … [he] becomes an inhabitant of Africa” (Manichean 124). However, Gordimer asserted in an interview that Mehring does not die and his fate is metaphoric, and that whoever believes otherwise has not read the story carefully enough (Conversation 17). On his behalf, Clingman emphasizes the role of revolution in purging the colonial subject: To raise the repressed to consciousness is also to bury its threatening aspect properly, to lay it to rest… it is a theme of the novel that the political outrage that the unburied body represents is also a reproach in the black unconscious, which can be laid to rest only through political revolution.(Novels 164-165) This can be read as symbolic of South Africa endorsing its past as a way to build its future in a way reminiscent of what Fanon calls "national consciousness". Living in the Interregnum: Existential Dilemma, Identity Crisis and Alienation in July's People
110
Chapter Three
Gordimer’s concept of an interregnum is a period that is characterized by ambiguities, uncertainties and contradictions. Gordimer’s work indicates that the process of political transition to Black rule requires a redefinition of roles and a re-evaluation of values. The interregnum can be conceived as a phase of Bhabha's "in-betweeness" or Hegel's "disintegrated consciousness" in a period of political transition. Thus, post-apartheid South Africa constitutes a state of interregnum where the old oppressive regime is preventing the birth of the new. Gordimer’s view of the interregnum as depicted in July’s People provides a critical analysis of a political transition between the overthrow of the previous White racist regime and the emergence of Black majority rule and the difficulties that arise in such a process. According to Erritouni, it is a "dystopian" critique of Apartheid South Africa with a "utopian" projection that anticipates a more positive post-apartheid attitude. The novel foresees the inevitable collapse of White South Africa and the emergence of new political and social realities that give the country a new national identity (68, 69). In The Essential Gesture Gordimer states, The transformation of experience remains the writer's basic essential gesture; the lifting out of a limited category something that reveals its full meaning and significance only when the writer's imagination has expanded it. (298) Drawing on Anderson's concept of the nation as being 'imagined', this chapter explores Gordimer's imagined moment of revolution in South Africa as depicted in July's People and the effects it might have on the colonial subject. 111
Chapter Three
The novel opens on a "bourgeois white family", Maureen and Bam Smales and their children, who are forced to escape from the burning city for the rural African village of their servant, July. Having “nowhere to go” (18), the Smales flee the violence of the city with their servant who leads them through back roads to his Kraal “a habitation of mud houses occupied only by members of his extended family” (12). Their new life is contrasted to the “seven-roomed house and a swimming pool” (25) of their previous life, thus, reflecting the racist system. Finding themselves accommodated in a hut and stripped of all privileges, their identities gradually crumble as they lose power of their economic status. The Smales hopelessly cling to old forms of power manifested in symbols of the car, its keys, gun, radio and toilet paper (Thurston 95). However, Gordimer highlights the psychological battle that shapes the relationship between Maureen and July that dominates throughout the novel. In his analysis, JanMohamed states that Gordimer's main purpose is to examine the Manichean relations in such an "apocalyptic" setting (Manichean 139). He further states that Gordimer’s fiction “recognizes the traumatic presence of racism and graphically depicts the oppression of Blacks, but her major pre-occupation is always the personal and moral dilemma that her protagonists suffer due to their encounter with apartheid” (Manichean 147). At the end of the novel, when Maureen hears a helicopter landing, she runs towards it not knowing nor caring if it carried “saviors or murderers” (158). She runs abandoning her husband and children, claiming no responsibility “like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing 112
Chapter Three
only for their lone survival” (160). The novel ends on this ambiguous note, with Maureen rushing off to the unknown. The Apartheid racial system defines the relationship between Maureen and July in July’s People based on master/servant grounds and under "conventional" racist norms (Smith 143). The novel reflects the Apartheid racist policies of the color bar that forced each racial group to live in specially designated areas. Besides the Group areas Act and Native land Act, Gordimer highlights special emphasis on the Pass Laws that control the movements of Blacks and which serve to be the most humiliating and degrading symbol of the system. Thurston maintains that the White liberals are ignorant and indifferent to African culture, and that their relationships with the Blacks are based on economic status. The irony used in “the knock on the door” in the African hut is deliberate in affirming the racial and economic disparities between the two races since there was “no door but an aperture in thick mud walls” (1). Maureen and July maintained harmony within the White system by adhering to a set of roles and patterns in their relationship (Thurston 97). This harmony, however, is revealed to be shallow when the privileges of that system are lost; Gordimer, thus, exposes the illusion of White liberalism. Gordimer states “All this roleplaying that is done in a society like ours – sometimes the role is forced upon you. You fall into it, it’s a kind of song and dance routine, and … my characters find themselves acting out these pre-conceived, ready-made roles” (Conversation 116). Forced to carry a passbook as all Blacks, July performs the subservience role of an obedient servant while Maureen acts out the master role that the system provides. 113
Chapter Three
Recalling the dogs' scene in The Conservationist, we see how the fixed roles of the "gracious madam" (Thurston 97) and the faithful servant are further carried out blindly in July’s village even within the "explosion" of roles: "You like to have some cup of tea? July bent at the doorway and began that day for them as his kind has always done for their kind"(1). Smith states that both Maureen and July are unable to go beyond their fixed roles, unable to perceive new roles of definitions other than the "formal code of evaluation"(150). When July's wife, Martha, tells him: "You could have a shop here, sell soap and matches… And now you can drive. For yourself"(135), July refuses and holds on to the fixed established norms of dependency. July views his relation to the Smales as "rooted in his status as a servant" (Smith 150). In The Conservationist Gordimer reflects the reversal of roles indirectly through the image of the dead Black body as it returns and re-establishes its historical claim to the land. Unlike July's People, there is no direct conflict between Whites and Blacks, but only nature plays its role of protest and reversal. This reversal was more explicitly depicted by Gordimer in July’s People. The novel reverses the concept of inferiority and dependency of the master/slave relationship for it creates a situation where Whites are forced, yet reluctant, to re-perceive the Blacks within a violent revolutionary setting imagined by the author. Gordimer gradually portrays the reversal of roles that the new situation engenders. Caught "in a dramatic reversal of roles", the Smales are forced to re-evaluate their relation to July (JanMohamed, Manichean 142). Acknowledging his emerging power, July 114
Chapter Three
had seen the white woman and the three children cowered on the floor of their vehicle, led the white face behind the wheels in his footsteps, his way the only one in a wilderness, was suddenly aware of something he had not known. – They can’t do anything. Nothing to us anymore… here they haven't got anything-just like us. (21, 22) In the novel, material possessions assume symbolic dimensions as Gordimer draws the reader’s attention to the new connotations associated with them in the transforming social ethos. Gordimer employs the bakkie (car) and the gun as devices through which the characters become aware of their new identities and power relations that emerge out of the reversal of roles. JanMohamed (141-143) and Thurston (100-103) analyze the conflicting relationship between Maureen and July, positing it into three major confrontations. The first confrontation involves the control of the car keys, the bakkie's. Symbolizing economic power and technology that maintained Whites’ privilege over Blacks for many years, the car becomes an important aspect of definition to establish the identity of the Smales. On the other hand, July’s control over this technology symbolizes the reversal of roles for the Blacks to take over. The scene reflects Maureen’s challenge and resistance as well as July’s struggle for selfrealization and recognition. The confrontation indicates Maureen’s disintegration in contrast with July’s growing sense of power and authority. Thus, “in struggling over the car, both master and slave are fighting to control the means of their independence” (JanMohamed, Manichean 142). Hence, the illusion of liberalism is exposed. July tells 115
Chapter Three
Maureen “you don’t like I must keep the keys. Isn’t it. I can see all the time, you don’t like that” (69). When Maureen argues that they have always trusted him back in the city, July exposes the hypocrisy of their liberalism: “I’m not say you’re not a good madam – but you don’t say you trust me. – It was a command. – You walk behind. You looking … you frightened. I’m not working enough for you?” (70). In this context, Erritouni reveals the gap between the liberal shallow beliefs and their attitudes. He states, "the disjuncture between the Smales' political and economic views accounts for their inability to understand the nature of July's claim on their car" (74). When Maureen suggests they exchange the keys as friends; July refuses and insists upon the old norms of master/servant relationship. The conflict ends when Maureen angrily threatens him “if all you can think about is what happened back there, what about Ellen? – The name of his town woman fell appallingly between them …” (72). Feeling helpless and losing control over the conversation, Maureen threatens to tell his wife about his relationship with his lover, Ellen. Maureen’s eventual decision to ‘hand over’ the car keys to July implies the main theme that foreshadows the novel of White power handling over their authority to Black rule in South Africa. The second battle between Maureen and July was when July objects to Maureen’s working with the African women in the fields. He insists that she does not do her laundry and prevents Bam from collecting wood. Thurston maintains that July’s status among his villagers as an urban black is derived from his employers’ status as a White economist. July develops his sense of authority and power 116
Chapter Three
amongst his people through his two contrasting images of himself as July, the urban servant, and as ‘Mwawate’, the villager. Thurston further states that the broken hut manifests his break with his traditional past, and his protection to the car is "a symbol of July's connection with his urban past and his aspiration for the future (101). Before the revolution, his people perceive him as a source of money, thus, his importance is measured in economic terms. By being "host" to the Smales after the revolution, his source of income is threatened. Thus, any inferior work done by his employers would degrade his identity among his people. He, furthermore, wants to ensure that his employers are unable to establish any relation with other villagers in order to be completely dependent upon him. Maureen threatens again to tell his wife, Martha, about his town lover, Ellen. But this time July was ready with his weapon by threatening her: “But he silenced her: - Yesterday night someone’s come. – The whip cracked over her head. Deep breaths slowly pumped her chest … Police? Who come? – He left her to it a moment” (100). When Bam’s gun is stolen, Maureen and July have the third and final confrontation. Reflecting her "fear to lose power" in a scene that is most powerful in the novel, Maureen insists that July recovers the stolen gun and accuses him of stealing items from her house in the past. Rejecting his old subservience role, July refuses "servant's formula" (94) of their last confrontation. He tells Maureen “How I must get that gun? … You know where it is? You know? Then if you know why you yourself, your husband, you don’t fetch it? (150). July enforces his speech with a dismissive signal from his hand as resistance to the former servant code 117
Chapter Three
“His hands flung out away from himself” (151). Gordimer vividly portrays the deadly scene that shatters any perceived roles between them: “She was stampeded by a wild rush of need to destroy everything between them; she wanted to erase it beneath her heels as snails broke” (152). Maureen goes further to accuse July, “You stole small things. Why? I wouldn't tell you then but I tell you now. I said nothing because I was ashamed to think you would do it” (152). July replies in one word, “you” (152). Gordimer's narrator finally announces July's triumph, he is now “done with her” (152). The third conflict signifies the climax of the novel, Maureen finally understands the relationship of dependency and subordination of her servant for fifteen years; what it meant for him to “ask for everything. An aspirin. Can I use the telephone. Nothing in that house was his” (155). He was oppressed and subordinated to a status of “total dependency” (155). Furthermore, Maureen’s employment of July represents the oppression of all Black workers within the Apartheid system. According to that system, Blacks were to be employed in the city by "passes" and visited their families in rural areas once every two years. After losing all comforts of her White society, Maureen has come to realize the oppressive conditions that the Black South Africans have experienced under Apartheid. Accordingly, Gordimer emphasizes the relationship between material possessions and power in the novel. Being accustomed to a life defined by economic security and ownership, the Smales' sense of self is shattered as they are unable to adapt themselves in the new environment. As Mehring's character was dependent upon social and cultural 118
Chapter Three
privileges that have lead to his disintegration when removed, so are the Smales. Now dispossessed politically, culturally and economically they cling to their few remaining belongings in order to maintain their identities. In his critical study, “Apartheid Inequality and Post Apartheid Utopia”, Ali Erritouni states that “This disjuncture between the Smales’ political and economic views accounts for their inability to understand the nature of July’s claim on their car” (74). Gordimer, thus, emphasizes that it is not sufficient to sympathize with the Blacks, reject racism and object to the policies of Apartheid. Sharing properties equally is demanded for White South African liberal position. In her essay “Apprentices of Freedom”, Gordimer stated her belief that “racial problems, both material and spiritual, can hope to be solved only in circumstances of equal economic opportunity” (2). In this context, July’s People changes the social ethos and reverses the roles set by the Apartheid racial system to redefine the relationship between different races. The concept of dependency and inferiority is replaced as Maureen is forced to re-perceive her servant and to acknowledge his human rights; in other words, to see him in a new role beyond his restricted role as a servant. In her article, ‘Living in the Interregnum’, Gordimer emphasizes the importance that Whites should accept new roles and find ‘new perceptions’ (266) in their relationships with Blacks for the transformation process of South Africa. Gordimer states: The hierarchy of perception that white institutions and living habits implant throughout daily experience in every white, from childhood, 119
Chapter Three
can be changed only by whites themselves, from within. (265) The power of language is further developed in July's People. According to Smith, the inability of Blacks and liberal Whites to communicate with each other forms a central theme in the novel (151). In the role reversals, July’s masters experience an unfamiliar condition in the village where both their primary English and Afrikaans languages prove to be useless since they have neglected to learn the indigenous African languages. In her new setting, Maureen wakes one morning to the sound of "calls in one of the languages she had never understood"(4). July is both the creation of an African world as Mwawate, and the Apartheid White that named him July: “July was a name for whites to use” (120). Gordimer’s imaginative disintegration of the Apartheid system also takes place in the deterioration or uselessness of the superior language. The crisis of the role reversal exposes the lack of communication between the two races – one bound to political marked places enforced by the Apartheid policies of the color bar while the other enjoys privilege in all its forms. In her new environment, Maureen fails to find the words to express the real oppression of the Africans: “No fiction could compete with what she was finding. She did not know, could not have imagined or discovered through imagination” that “they had nothing” (29). Language in the novel is caught between the old and the new: “For him, too, there had always been something to say: the servant’s formula, attuned to catch the echo of the master’s concern” (94). According to July, the English 120
Chapter Three
language "back there": is a symbol of subservience – “an English learned in kitchens, factories and mines. It was based on orders and responses, not the exchange of ideas and feelings” (96). When Maureen “didn’t understand him”, she thinks, “the black man’s English was too poor to speak his mind” (97). The kind of English language that July has acquired appears limited to socio-economic exploitative relationships: “They could not read him….back there, for fifteen years; but then they had put it down to the inevitable, distorting nature of dependency” (60). The Apartheid system only taught July to communicate only what was necessary to allow him to perform tasks for his “masters” where the "vocabulary was limited to orders given by whites and responses made by blacks"(45). July remains trapped in the language of Apartheid, the language of subservience for blacks, the language of the past that the novel attempts to subvert by exposing its limitations in the new environment. With the reversal of roles, “Now he chose what he wanted to know and not know. The present was his; he would arrange the past to suit it” (96). Gordimer reflects this language barrier in the three main encounters between Maureen and July. In the first confrontation over the bakkie, July maintains power over the use of language when he mentions the word “boy”reminding Maureen of his subservience. Suffering a superiority complex and a sense of guilt of the racial term, “the absurd ‘boy’ fell upon her in strokes, neither appropriate nor to be dodged. Where had he picked up the weapon?” (69). Maureen challenges July and tries to maintain power as she mentions Ellen, “her words shoved them and they were together, duelists who will feel each 121
Chapter Three
other’s breath before they turn away to the regulation of paces” (72). Both Maureen and July go beyond the language barriers of the system “back there”, each aiming to maintain his control over the conversation. Maureen finally “dropped fifteen years of the habit of translation into very simple, concrete vocabulary” telling him she had never meant to hurt his "dignity": “if she had never before used the word ‘dignity’ to him: it was not because she didn’t think he understood the concept … it was only the term itself that might be beyond his grasp of the language” (72). At the beginning of the novel, Maureen was sure that “he and she understood each other well” (13); before their first confrontation “she was the one who understood him, the way he expressed himself” (61). But now, Clingman states, she knows that “the very language she had used as a means of "conciliation" was for July nothing more than the medium of his everyday oppression” (Novels 200). In their second encounter, when Maureen threatens him of Ellen again: “Are you afraid I’m going to tell her (his wife) something?” (98). July strikes back: “What can you tell … His anger struck him in the eyes … That I’m work for you for 15 years. That you satisfy with me?” (98). Gordimer portrays the scene: She was feeling no personal threat in him, not physicals anyway, but in herself. How was she to have known, until she came here, that the special consideration she had shown for his dignity as a man, were was by definition a servant, would become his humiliation itself, the one thing that was to say between them that had any meaning. 122
Chapter Three
Fifteen years. Your boy. You satisfy. (98) Gordimer’s use of incomplete and unpunctuated phrases manifests the collapse of the grammatical rules, thereby, the complete breakdown of the society and the disregard of its rules. In their last and strongest confrontation, Maureen’s illusions are finally shattered as July bursts out angrily in his own language: Maureen understands although knows no word. What he had had to be, how she covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself … to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others. She was not his mother, his wife, his sister, his friend, his people. (152) In this scene and within a "revolution of language" (Clingman, Novels 200), Gordimer presents her view of the African liberation as reflected in July's control over the language. Accordingly, Gordimer portrays every action and attempt at communication as blocked by cultural, racial and language barriers between Black and White South Africans. The novel, thus, examines language and cultural difficulties maintained by Apartheid within the context framework of role reversal. In this context, Smith states, "The paradox which epitomizes the deadlock of the book's ending is that 123
Chapter Three
only when the black man refuses to talk the white woman's language is she able to understand 'everything'"(152). Clingman further maintains that the language of the “master bedroom” is also affected by the new political situation (Novels 199). Bam “struggled hopelessly for words that were not phrases from back there … But the words would not come. They were blocked by an old vocabulary” (127). Thus, language and sexuality is politicized in Gordimer's fiction. In July's People, Gordimer uses once more the analogy between the political powers of the country and the sexual power of her protagonists. By depicting the theme of reversal of roles and July’s gradual awareness of power, Gordimer asserts the inversion of the dominant social code of White male domination over women and Blacks. Gordimer’s portrayal of the three major confrontations between Maureen and July over power and control is reflected through sexual implications. The scenes depict a man and a woman together in moments of angry conflicts mingled with sexism. For example, the first conflict over the car keys: “Here are your keys” (68); Maureen’s sarcasm in “your keys” challenges July’s reaction to take them: He stood there, his solidity an acceptance that he could not escape her, since she was alone, they were one-to one; hers an insinuated understanding that she had not refused to come to him but wanted them to meet where no one else would judge them. The subtlety of it was nothing new. People in the relation they had been in are used to having to interpret what is never said, between them. (69) 124
Chapter Three
According to Thurston, Maureen and July have been “locked” together for fifteen years in a “domestic intimacy” of the master/slave relationship. Like lovers, “they instinctively know each other’s vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and boundaries - where to touch to cause pain. With the restraints of the old system gone, they begin to use their intimate knowledge, not to maintain harmony, but as weapons of destruction” (99). In their final confrontation, Gordimer portrays the scene between Maureen and July in an ironic sexual description: “The incredible tenderness of the evening surrounded them as if mistaking them for lovers” (153). From another perspective, Gordimer reveals the link between the power of material possession and sexual desires. The White couples lose any sexual desire as they gradually lose possession of their materials that symbolize their power and superiority. Removed from their “master bedroom” (65), Gordimer contrasts the two modes of life: “They had not made love since the vehicle had taken them away. Unthinkable, living and sleeping with the three children there in the hut. A place with a piece of sacking for a door. Lack of privacy killed desire” (79). Implying that the Smales' new economic condition regulates their sexuality, Maureen thinks: We understand the sacred power and rights of sexual love as formulated in master bedrooms … Here, the sacred power and rights of sexual love are as formulated in a wife’s hut, and a backyard room in a city. (65)
125
Chapter Three
The unsettled and disturbed relationship between Bam and Maureen reflects the disintegrating White power in South Africa. Displaced socially and politically, the Smales’ sexual status degenerates. They no longer know each other as they did before. Maureen fails to recognize in Bam the previous traits of the suburban architect. For a moment she has “a single throb of impulse to go over to the man and sink against, embrace him, touch someone recollected, not the one who persisted in his name, occasionally supplying meat, catching fish for people” (93). Maureen felt as if the man she had married had been "left" behind in the master bedroom; what was here with her, "was some botched imagining of his presence in circumstances outside those the marriage was contracted for" (98). Moreover, Bam finds himself thinking of Maureen as “her” not Maureen: “with ‘her’ there was no undersurface of recognition; only moments of finding each other out” (105).
False Generosity and Tolerance as Forms of Racism in July's People Many Whites assume an antiracist position within the society- a liberal movement directing its efforts in condemning racist acts, exploitation and oppression. In Racist Culture, Goldberg examines this paradox inherent within liberals as they tend to idealize "principles of liberty and equality" insisting upon the moral irrelevance of race while, at the same time, they accept the concept of difference and call for the "toleration" of difference. Consequently, this racial "tolerance" practiced by the dominant groups allows the different group to presume having intolerable 126
Chapter Three
characteristics. Tolerance, then, becomes a mask behind which those liberals hide their racism. From another perspective, it manifests their privileged powerful status to tolerate. Goldberg further points out that: Liberals are moved to overcome the racial differences they tolerate and have been so instrumental in fabricating by diluting them, by bleaching them out through assimilation or integration. (Racist Culture 6) On his behalf, Freire's psychoanalysis of the oppressive rule reveals the spirit or the "false generosity" of the oppressor as a manifestation of his sense of guilt. He states that “Any attempt to 'soften' the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity” (28-29). Freire further states, “with this false generosity, he attempts not only to preserve an unjust order, but to 'buy' peace for himself” (142). In many of her novels, Gordimer exposes the illusions of White South African liberals upholding the racist policies of their nation. Gordimer's criticism of White liberalism is depicted in Antonia's confession to Mehring in The Conservationist: "I want to change the world but keep bits of it the way I like it for myself"(71) and Mehring's attempts to "conserve" the status quo of the colonial and racial ethos. Thurston states, "Guilty of using the privileges of the affluent white community for [Antonia's] own pleasure and protection, her protests ring hollow… The seriousness of her criticism is undercut by her hypocrisy" (67). In July's People, Gordimer exposes the ‘false generosity’ and the hypocrisy and shallowness of such 127
Chapter Three
liberalism in her depiction of the characters of Maureen and Bam Smales. In this context, Erritouni states, "the majority of white South Africa, supporting and supported by a racist government, had profited from the Manichean world apartheid fostered" (70). As liberals, Maureen and Bam want to belong to a multi-racial society but they hold on to the material possessions and privileges the system affords. Both have sought to detach themselves from the injustices of the racial system; they treat their servant decently, oppose the racial policies of Apartheid, and even try to join political parties to reject racism. At the very beginning of the novel, Gordimer stresses their liberal views in order to unravel their hypocrisy after losing the possession of their materials. She states that “They sickened at the appalling thought that they might find they have lived out their whole lives as they were, born white Pariah dogs in a black continent” (8). However, from a racial perspective, Bam’s attempts to bring his White possessions with him to July’s villages serve to illuminate his unconscious acceptance of his racial superiority. On her behalf, Maureen discovers that she has unintentionally reinforced Apartheid laws in her previous relationship with July. July exposes her hypocrisy, “You tell everybody you trust your good boy. You are good madam, you got good boy” (70), yet maintain a superior sense of self. Thus, Maureen's prior "liberal" views and her "humane" treatment of her servant "do not go to the heart of the racist and discriminatory policies of white South Africa" (Erritouni 74). Her payment of the "fine" for violating the Pass Laws and Group Areas Act reflects her compliance with the regime and, thus, her fake liberalism. 128
Chapter Three
Smith states that “The Smales striven to avoid racist attitudes of majority of White South Africans but their attempts to overcome color bar have blinded them to the economic component of apartheid” (71). Smith further argues that what collapses in Maureen’s final confrontation with July is the final illusion that "Maureen sees herself and the life of her family as untainted by the grotesque prejudices of the white master-race norm. This belief is what collapses in her final confrontation with July” (“Masters” 148). As Gordimer goes on in exposing the illusions of "white innocence", Smith argues that “[t]he collapse of white military power which the novel assumes is far less disturbing than the collapse of white moral power which it analyses” (152). Thus, in her final confrontation with July, Maureen discovers that her previous views of herself as a humane liberal were false since they were based and dependent on economic and racial privileges. Therefore, when these economic privileges and cultural dominance fade away by the "explosion of roles"(117), Maureen's sense of self has disintegrated driving her to a point of internal crisis. In the epigraph to July’s People, Gordimer quotes a line from Gramsci’s text Prison Notebooks to reflect an imagined moment of revolution in South Africa: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms”. Gramsci implies the death of the old and the inability of the new to be born, thus, implying the uncertainty of the future. In this period, Gordimer emphasizes the ‘morbid symptoms’ of the anxieties and contradictions that characterize the situation to foreground her views on the racial co-existence and national unity in a new and emerging unstable society (Clingman, 129
Chapter Three
Novels 193). The space between the two transitional periods constitutes a complex situation that is characterized by confusion, contradictions, and reversal of roles. Gordimer states, “The interregnum is not only between two social orders but also between two identities, one known and discarded, the other unknown and undetermined” (Essential 269). The relationship between Maureen and July emphasizes Gordimer's state of interregnum. Struggling violently her new situation of dependency on July, Maureen clings to old elements of power and privilege as an assertion of her superior identity. With the disappearance of these elements, Maureen is left struggling between two modes of self-realization: the old that is dying and the new that she resists and challenges. She is "no longer in possession of any part of her life"(139). Thus, as the Smales are struggling to maintain power through their possessions, they manifest the “morbid symptoms” in which identity is created by ownership. The loss of all material possessions and loss of former traditional roles played a great part in Bam and Maureen’s identity crisis because their identity was dependent on these privileges. They became July's possessions, "she and her family were fed by them… hidden by them. She looked at her servant: they were their creatures, like their cattle and their pigs"(96). Furthermore, with the disappearance of these privileges, their identity disintegrates as they suffer the “morbid symptoms” of the interregnum. In his article, ‘Masters and Servants’, Smith points out that the only element of identity which remained constant for Bam and 130
Chapter Three
Maureen in their new existence was the fact that "They are white. They are seen as white and they are treated as white. Relations with all their new neighbours are affected by their alien whiteness” (148). According to Smith, both opposing groups are imprisoned within a patterned response produced by generations of white masters and black servants. The Smales cannot pass beyond their former relationship with July. To see him from any perspective other than that of liberal, self-confident white overlords is impossible. (142) Within the context of this new ambivalent relation of dependency JanMohamed argues that the novel reflects a "struggle of consciousness"(Manichean 140). He states, “While the dissolution of the master/slave relationship produces a corresponding disintegration of the master herself, ironically the resultant insecurity makes Maureen cling even more tenaciously to the servant” (142). In the novel, Gordimer portrays this dependency: “Always a moody bastard … she had indulged him, back there. She had been afraid – to lose him, the comforts he provided” (64). Only when the reader thinks she is referring to her husband Bam, it turns out to be July she is referring to. On the other hand, we encounter a Black servant from the very beginning of the novel who is very much assimilated in his masters’ culture, adopting their language and values. July is "adrift" from his culture and family (Thurston 101). Exemplifying Mannoni's dependency complex, July strives hard throughout the story to preserve his status amongst his masters and his people. Split between July, the servant, and 131
Chapter Three
Mwawate, the villager, it seems clear that July has chosen to be assimilated and absorbed within the White culture and considers himself superior to his own people. Although July has always refused to carry his passbook, the degrading symbol of racial subservience, in his new awareness of power, he cannot destroy it: He thought of the pass-book itself as finished. Rid of it, he drove the yellow bakkie with nothing in his pockets. But he had not actually destroyed it. He needs someone…. to tell him to burn it, let it swell in the river, Bam’s signatures washing away. (137) Even within the reversal of roles and the shift in power, July still attains his sense of power and control through his masters and is yet dependent upon their previous superior image to preserve his identity among his people. This is evident in his clash with Maureen when he refuses that she shares any work with the African women. Thus, July experiences an identity crisis and an existential dilemma through the abolition of White power, not conversely: "I'm the boy for your house, isn't it?" (71). Thus, July represents Bhabha’s concept of one’s identification in relation to others as well as Freire's theory of "fear to embrace freedom". Rendered lost and alienated, July lays "in-between" the African and the White cultures, not belonging completely to either. Paradoxically, July’s control over the car and the keys and his insistence to drive reflects his growing sense of power and manifests his desire to achieve recognition and, in Fanon’s terms, an ‘independent self-consciousness’ (219). 132
Chapter Three
Within new roles and definitions, July ends split between being identified in relation to his masters and his attempts to replace them and take over forms of power. Thus, July longs for recognition and acceptance in new terms other than subservience and slavery. This is unfolded throughout his confrontations with Maureen and through her resistance to deny him his right to this recognition. July’s need for recognition and redefinition is reflected in the split identity that he develops as an urban worker and as ‘Mwawate’, the villager. July is lost and alienated as he plays the role of a servant, host and villager at the same time. The contrasting images of the character of July runs parallel with Maureen’s as she struggles between her identity as a madam of which she fights to preserve, and her new identity as a guest adjusting within new forms of definition. Drawing on Hegel’s concept of mutual recognition and Fanon’s theory of self-consciousness, the study maintains that the dominant impression of loss and disillusionment, which prevails at the end of July’s People, highlights the identity crisis of Gordimer’s main characters who fail to attain recognition of one’s self and of the other. Drawing upon Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit, Gordimer’s description of Maureen’s mental state is a state of ‘disintegrated consciousness’. By presenting the character of Maureen as a representation of resistance to change, Gordimer explores the failure of the central characters to achieve self-realization and as Hegel states, ‘to recognize themselves as mutally recognizing one another’ (111). Hegel further states that ‘self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that it exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged’ (111). Maureen’s denial 133
Chapter Three
of recognition of July’s being which is exemplified in her continuous conflicts with him, thus, constitutes an act of resistance to his achieving self-realization. The study maintains that the interregnum manifests the obstacles facing the oppressed to attain self-consciousness as well as the oppressor's failure to recognize and acknowledge his being, which signifies the total failure of the process of decolonization. According to Gordimer, the Whites do not acknowledge the presence of the blacks, that is, they see the Blacks in the form of ‘non-seeing’ ("Living in the Interregnum" 265). Gordimer laments the complete negation of Black identity whether denying their existence or distorting their image as being inferior and subordinate. Accordingly, the dismantling of Apartheid should require physical and psychological changes; that is, not only a reversal of the racist social structure, but also new definitions in accordance to each other. Failing to ‘mutually recognize one another’ (Hegel 112), Gordimer proposes her pessimistic view of the future of South Africa, which is manifested in the ambiguous interpretations of Maureen’s flight. This further reflects Gordimer’s pessimistic vision of the demise of the whole system of Apartheid in South Africa. Maureen’s flight at the end of the novel reinforces her resistance to the redefinition and social transformation of both races that the revolution demands. Reflecting Hegel’s concept of lord/bondsman relationship, both parties remain: unequal and opposed, and their reflection into a unity has not been achieved, they exist as two opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the 134
Chapter Three
independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another. The former, the lord, the other is bondsman. (115) The sense of loss and disillusionment that prevails at the end of the novel reflects the rejection and failure of the Whites to "redefine" themselves within new forms that is unbiased and equal to the Blacks. Thus, Maureen is rendered lost, alienated and "cast totally adrift" whereas July's alienation is not ultimate since there is hope of regenerating his African identity because of his deeply rooted consciousness (Thurston 102). According to Bhabha, the colonial relationship is marked with ambivalence where conflicting attitudes between the colonizer and the colonized are deeply reflected in the "unconscious". The colonizer is, thus, less secure than Said implies in Orientalism. Opposing groups both need and depend upon each other. Thus, we encounter the vulnerability of the colonizer's identity that is expressed in the "narcissistic demand that he (colonizer) should be addressed directly, that the Other authorize the self, recognize its priority, fulfill its outlines"(Location 98). On his behalf, the colonized resists by returning the "gaze" of the colonizer or, in Bhabha's terms, mimicry- "the name for the stragetic reversal of the process of domination… that turns the gaze of the discriminated back upon the eye of power" (112). Paradoxically, mimicry becomes a form of power as well as of resistance, by including its subjects to imitate the norms and values of the dominant culture. This is what we 135
Chapter Three
encounter as we examine the character of July; as much as he is assimilated in his master's culture and mimicking their norms, as much as he achieves his sense of power among his masters by returning back their "gaze", and among his people as well. Offering a solution, Gordimer states in “Living in the Interregnum” that White South Africans have to give up or share their possessions of economic wealth since their wealth was primarily constituted from the injustices of the Apartheid regime and the oppression of the Blacks. She notes “In the eyes of the black majority which will rule, Whites of former South Africa will have to redefine themselves in a new collective life within new structures … A more equitable distribution of wealth may be enforced by laws” (265). However, Gordimer has revealed the difficulty that will be faced by future generations: Whites have developed a totally unreal idea of how they out to live, of their right to go on living in that country. Consequently, they must undergo a long process of shedding illusions in order fully to understand the basis for staying in South Africa. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people who have the will to attempt this. It’s very hard to peel yourself like an onion, without producing a lot of tears in the process. Yet it is absolutely necessary for anybody who wants to stay. (“Conversation” 196) Thus, Gordimer maintains that the Whites in South Africa must exert hard efforts in order to gain a place as an African and a national identity. In this context, Fanon asserts that "it 136
Chapter Three
is through the effort to recapture the self and to scrutinize the self, it is through the lasting tension of their freedom that men will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence for a human world"(Black Skin 231). This is definitely applied to the colonizer and the colonized as well. Accordingly, Smith states that July's People is a "prophetic" interpretation of events anticipating an inevitable change of power relations. In the process of recording the transition from White to Black rule, the novel also narrates the history of the corruption of the Apartheid system. The title is ambiguous; it poses double interpretations for the reader, whether Gordimer meant July’s African people or his masters as his people is left for the reader to interpret. The novel opens on the White educated liberals as July’s "people" but when he plays "host" in his village the reader is introduced to July’s other "people" of Black South Africa. On the ambiguity of the title, Smith states that July’s people are "both subjects and objects of possession, their roles and identities comprised by a patterned response produced by generations of White masters and black servants" (141,142). In the final scene, Maureen runs: “She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime” (160). Smith states that her flight from her family and the past reveals the radical collapse in her identity (144). Like Mehring in The Conservationist, whether she survives or not is irrelevant to the story of the birth of a new nation (Thurston 103). Some critics see Maureen’s running as a gesture of hope. Thurston states that “Running is Maureen’s first authentic action” (57). Clingman further states that “Maureen is running from old structures and relationships…. 137
Chapter Three
but she is also running towards revolutionary destiny. She does not know what that destiny may be, whether it will bring death or life. All she knows is that it is the only authentic future awaiting her” (Novels 203). The ending of the novel, thus, highlights the sense of ambiguity that characterizes the process of transition in South Africa. Critics have provided different interpretations of the novel; some assume that the novel predicts the achievement of cultural hybridity and the co-existence of the different races in a newly born South Africa. This is manifested in the Smales’ children’s attempts to ‘learn July’s language’ (139) so they can play games "in the village people's language but not in their own"(140), and in their adoption of African traditional behaviors throughout the novel (Thurston 95). Thus, the promise of a racial and cultural integration is offered in the relationship between the Smales children and the villagers. In this sense, the novel projects "a vision into the future"(Clingman, Novels 201). Maureen’s decision to run implies a rejection of the ‘new’ structure to ‘be born’. The underlying impression of Maureen’s flight illustrates the resistance to the reversed roles that the political transition engenders. Reflecting the White's alienation and existential dilemma, Gordimer states: The black knows he will be at home, at last, in the future. The white who has declared himself or herself for that future… does not know whether he will find his home at last. ("Living" 270) Thus, Erritouni maintains that the main question that Gordimer poses is not "who will rule?" but rather what is the 138
Chapter Three
role South African whites would play in the new dispensation"(68)? To conclude, Gordimer's novels reflect the racist fixed norms determining the relationship within the Apartheid system. Power emerges as a persistent theme in Gordimer's work where the land, language and the body are embodied to manifest dominance. These power relations unfold upon ambivalence of the colonial encounter. Moreover, when these forms of power fade away within a reversal of roles, the colonial subject experiences a more complex situation. Gordimer’s use of the English language marks a change from her early novels to July's People where the dominant language serves as a means of identification with the European culture. In The Conservationist, the language of power fades within the other languages of South Africa and the Zulu traditional culture; whereas in July's People, Gordimer highlights the failure of the English language to achieve communication between the opposing groups for the future nation building. Drawing upon the proposed theories of rejection and dependency, we have seen how Maureen in July’s People represents the colonizer, yet still needs to be "recognized" by her servant July in order to fulfill her sense of superiority. On the other hand, while July rejects the oppressive and degrading system of Apartheid, he is yet dependent upon the Smales to preserve his image amongst his people. Simultaneously, Mehring in The Conservationist is dependent upon his Black and Indian workers on the farm to achieve his recognition as a member of the superior race. From another perspective, whereas the Blacks are dependent 139
Chapter Three
upon Mehring in their colonial relationship, the Indians are seen more independent and enclosed upon themselves preserving their language and culture. Failing to recognize and to be recognized, fearing to lose power or to "embrace" freedom, the colonial subject is rendered lost and alienated. The superiority/inferiority complexes persist in the collective psyche of both opposing groups hindering both of them from achieving either solidity or liberation. We have seen how July benefited from the revolution and used it as a means of power and domination, not liberation. Thus, Fanon's revolutionary violence or Freire's reversal of roles is insufficient to purge neither the Whites of their superiority complex nor the Blacks of their inferiority complex. Accordingly, this study adopts Gordimer's proposition that to attain self-consciousness and recognition, new definition of roles should be established based upon equality and non-privileges. According to Gordimer, the South African nation does not exist. She states, We have no common language and we have, of course, no ethnic kinship, but, on the contrary, a constant re-definition of quite ancient ethnic differences. Our common historical experience is not one of fighting together, but against one another- white man against black, Afrikaner against Englishman. We have no common frame of political thought, but a class of bitterly opposed ideologies. ("Novel" 34) Accordingly, the formal end of Apartheid does not necessarily entail an end to oppression or prejudices. It is 140
Chapter Three
rather a new form of exploitation where the former regime redefines its expressions and strategies holding on to its racist ideologies of power and privilegeiii. In this context, Mannoni argues that a colonial situation is forever created the very instant a white man, even if he is alone, appears in the midst of a tribe, even if it is independent, so long as he is thought to be rich or powerful or merely immune… and so long as he derives from his position, even though only in the most secret self, a feeling of his own superiority.(18) With the release of Nelson Mandela and his election as the first president of South Africa, the country begins a new history. In his first speech, Mandela adopts the concept of the "rainbow nation" as reconciliation between the opposing groups in South Africaiv. Adopted as the anti-racist strategy, multiculturalism in its diversity has become the policy designed to solve racism and ethnic conflicts in postcolonial era. Multiculturalism, the ethos of racial diversity, tends to eliminate any racist practices and institutions. The term is generally used to describe the coexistence of diverse culturesv. The term "ethnicity" came to replace "race" in postcolonial theories. Whereas racism negates or violates, ethnic identities are performed through identification by raising the consciousness of the oppressed. Ethnicity recognizes the social, cultural and religious practices that help to constitute a postcolonial national identity not based on the physical appearance. It assumes the consciousness and awareness of a certain oppressed group to reverse a social or 141
Chapter Three
political order. Nevertheless, Fanon argues that adopting or raising the national consciousness after independence is not the solution since it perpetuates old forms of exploitation. He states, The militant who faces the colonialist war machine with the bare minimum of arms realizes that while he is breaking down colonial oppression he is building up automatically yet another system of exploitation. This discovery is unpleasant, bitter and sickening: and yet everything seemed to be so simple before: the bad people were on one side, and the good on the other. The clear, unreal, idyllic light of the beginning is followed by a semi-darkness that bewilders the senses. The people find out that the iniquitous fact of exploitation can wear a black face or an Arab one. (Wretched 145) Accordingly, this study maintains that the reversal of the "Manichean" psychology where the oppressed takes the role of the oppressor is not a genuine solution. There are many Whites who have been victims of oppression and many Blacks and Arabs who consciously complied with forms of oppression. Thus, skin color and ethnic groups do not necessarily condemn/acquit a whole race. The next chapter will further proceed to reflect the racist setting of the settlers in Israel, their project of nation building, their conflicting relationship with the natives, and their resulting alienation, identity crisis and existential dilemma. The collapse of the "white moral power" that Gordimer revealed in her novels will be compared to Yizhar's 142
Chapter Three
analysis of the settlers' attitudes and their relationships with the original inhabitants of the land.
143
Chapter Three
i
One of the most famous writers who have pride in their own native language is the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. In this context, Ngugi states, But in most African countries before but more so after independence the majority are denied access to their languages because the state has marginalized them to the point of official invisibility… In some cases there is hostility to African languages… but the [African] languages remain under siege. And even where there are positive policies, there is no economic, political, cultural and psychological will behind their implementation. All the will and resources are put behind European languages. ii
The Afrikaan language is originally Dutch; one of the main languages spoken in South Africa. There are eleven official languages in South Africa, namely English, Afrikaans, Ndebele, Sepedi, Xhosa, Venda, Tswana, Southern Sotho, Zulu, Swazi and Tsonga ("South African Languages and Culture"). iii
In an interview with Gordimer, Cartwright asks her view of post-apartheid South Africa and the supposedly formal independence. She states, "We were naive, because we focused on removing the apartheid government and never thought deeply enough about what would follow". Gordimer further states that public discourse now in South Africa is "crippled" by former oppression. iv
The term was coined by Desmond Tutu to describe postapartheid South Africa with the first democratic free election of the country. The phrase was used by Mandela in his speech in 1994. For further readings on the topic, see Martin Meredith, Nelson Mandela: A Biography.
144
Chapter Three
v
Distinguishing between cultural diversity and cultural difference, Bhabha states that the former asserts the recognition of pre-given cultural customs and values while the latter focuses on the colonial authority to dominate in the name of cultural supremacy (Location 34).
145
Chapter Four
Chapter Four "APARTHEID ISRAEL": ZIONISM AND NATION
BUILDING IN KHIRBET KHIZEH AND PRELIMINARIES Since the concept of the nation is mainly "imagined", as Anderson suggests, the Zionist project aimed at building a nation-state in the land of Palestine. The idea of one's natural attachment to a place, or the sense of belonging to a particular nation has proven to be a myth in modern ideologies. The legitimacy of the Zionist state depended upon the collaboration of the British Empire with the Zionists. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was designed to maintain a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It "promised the longed-for imperial patronage which was required for a Jewish national home"(Prior 124). The Jewish homeland, thus, became internationally recognized by such Declaration (Akenson 164). According to Elmessiri, this enacted a pattern of settler colonialism similar to that of South Africa. He states, "Britain gave colonial sanction to Zionism by issuing the Balfour Declaration" (Land of Promise 37). He further states that "the idea of the white man's burden, be he a gentile or a Jew, is a theme that both Zionism and the philosophy of apartheid have in common"(Land of Promise 24). Settlers both in South Africa and in the Middle East were/are engaged in collective acts of colonization. Three major attributes to any colonial regime were achieved by both policies: political sovereignty, social segregation and economic exploitation, thus, asserting rights of settlers over rights of indigenous natives. A fourth form, cultural 146
Chapter Four
denigration, is exemplified in the negative stereotypes attributed to Blacks and Arabs. Fitting within the colonial frame, Elmessiri argues that it is no coincidence that both the Balfour Declaration and the South Africa Act of Union (1909) were both affected by the same politiciansi. He states, In implanting and backing white settlers in South Africa and Zionist settlers in Palestine, the British Empire was founding two little pockets of settler-colonists who would owe allegiance to the imperial metropolis. (Land of Promise 101) While both ideologies share much in common, they represent a different social context. Michael Prior argues that the racist elements of crude biological racism became unacceptable and developed into the distinctiveness of culture rather than the superiority of race as the basis for separate development. He states that Apartheid "was designed to preserve the cherished cultural identity of each group: all distinct ethnic units must be allowed to survive, each with its own language, religion and traditions"(76). Zionism, on the other hand, aimed at preserving the ethnic purity of the Jews by the repression of any other culture that should be marginalized and silenced. The concept of the "pure" Jew is at the core of the Zionist ideology (Land of Promise 27). Elmessiri states that ‘the main Zionist goal was, and still is, to gain allegiance of all Jews to the national ideal’ which is achieved by providing the Jew a religious definition placed within a ‘national context’ (Land of Promise 19).Thus, the "pure Jewishness", like whiteness, grant the
147
Chapter Four
Jews the "sacred rights" and biblical justification for colonial acts. In this respect, Elmessiri states that "European settler colonialism was predicated on certain racist assumptions concerning the genetic and cultural superiority of Western civilization and the White man" (Land of Promise 109). According to Crossman, the European settler colonialism was launched in terms of the White man's right to bring civilization to "the less civilized 'natives'" by physically occupying and "wiping out the aboriginal population" (58). Similarly, Lord Balfour maintained that the process of settler colonialism was an expression of the "great rights and privileges" of the European race, describing the inequality of the races "to be the plain historic truth of the situation"ii. However, Prior states, "the rhetoric of the sacral discourse of the achievement of Zionism is undermined by the reality of the catastrophe for the indigenous population"(172). In this context, Elmessiri also states that Zionism, since the establishment of the State, has become "more or less political and practical, with the spiritual and religious overtones reduced to simple elements", casting thus Israel in a role of a "cultural centre in a crude national sense" (Land of Promise 61). Akenson defines Apartheid in terms of "what happened when a tribe that embraced the ancient covenantal grid gained control of a modern state, in the context of the economy and society of Southern Africa"(96). That is definitely what happened in Palestine in 1948, when the Jewish settlers came to "revitalize" the land that was, according to them, "a virtual state of anarchy… primitive, neglected and derelict"(Ben-Gurion, Personal History 25). 148
Chapter Four
On his behalf, Ruether states that although the term ‘Arab’ is a cultural-linguistic term that means Arab-speaking people including Christians, Muslims or Jews, Zionism created a separation of a Jewish identity from the Arab identity to prevent ‘Levantinization’- that is, the merging between Arab and Jewish national culture (87).The Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared that: When we say 'Jewish independence' or a 'Jewish State', we mean a Jewish country, Jewish soil; we mean Jewish labour, we mean Jewish economy, Jewish agriculture, Jewish industry, Jewish sea; we mean Jewish language, school, culture. We mean Jewish safety, security, independence, complete independence, as for any other free people. (Jewish Case 66) In this context, Davis argues that one main difference that characterizes the Zionist colonial efforts in Palestine and distinguishes it from those in South Africa is that the Zionist movement did not originally predicate its efforts in Palestine on the colonization of the native land through the dispossession and exploitation of the native people. Rather, it has systematically followed a pattern of colonization that has emerged as much more cruel and disastrous for the native indigenous population: colonization through the dispossession and exclusion of the native people. (27) Thus, Zionism is the nationalist movement that aimed at the "normalization" of the Jewish people in the Diaspora 149
Chapter Four
and establishing an exclusive Jewish state in the land of Palestine as an ideological and national project. Based mainly upon illusions and myths (whether racial superiority or the sacred right to the land), the Zionist project is engaged in building a Jewish nation "clean" of the Arabs (Elmessiri xiii). It is an imperialist political and economic system but it is even worse than imperialism because it asserts rather than negates its racist character. Thus, we find that within this project of nation building, the dominant culture either marginalizes or denigrates completely the dominated culture. Said argues that the Zionist denial of the existence of the Arab is paradoxical: Zionism aimed to create a society that could never be anything but ‘native’ (with minimal ties to a metropolitan centre) at the same time that it determined not to come to terms with the very natives it was replacing with new ‘natives’.(Question of Palestine 88) Both the White Afrikaans and the Israeli community were seen as colonizers who assume a European identity. Adopting Western colonial beliefs and norms, both communities established a nationalist movement to justify their system of discrimination and oppression. In “Israelis Adopt What South Africa Dropped”, John Dugard states that the two regimes, though seem different, are closely related: Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black majority. It was characterized by the denial of political rights to blacks, the 150
Chapter Four
fragmentation of the country into white areas (Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority, racial separation and white security. The Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories is seen different as it is not designed as a ‘long-term oppressive regime’ but as a system maintaining order by peaceful settlement. Dugard states that Israel has imposed its control in the manner of a colonizing power ‘under the guise of occupation’. Having many features of colonization, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories resembles the Apartheid system by fragmenting the country into reserved areas. The restrictions of movement and freedom imposed by the Israeli system go far beyond Apartheid’s “pass system”. Moreover, Dugard states that the Israeli occupation surpasses those of the Apartheid regime in many aspects: Israeli’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites. (Emphasis added) According to Goldberg, Zionism not only embodies some key features of the Apartheid state, but it represents “a novel form of the racial state” (“Racial” 26). He further states that the racist system in Palestine "is today among the most repressive, the most subjugating and degrading, the most deadly forms of racial targeting. It is a fate worse than apartheid" (39). 151
Chapter Four
Representing the discriminatory identities that "secure the 'pure' and original identity of authority" (Bhabha, Location 112), the oppressors are profoundly affected by the violence and dehumanization they impose upon the oppressed and that eventually turns against them and possesses their psyches. Said states: For the first time Westerners have been required to confront themselves … as representatives of a culture and even of races accused of crimes – crimes of violence, crimes of suppression, crimes of conscience. (Culture 235) This chapter offers a psychological study of the effects of colonialism upon the colonizer manifested in Bhabha's "inbetween" state which is marked by his existential dilemma and identity crisis. It presents the dissenting voice of S. Yizhar as representative of the dominant culture. To what extent does Yizhar adopt a genuine opposing stance? How far do his texts carry racist and colonial undertones? Attempting to answer these questions, this chapter presents a literary critique of the novels of S. Yizhar Khirbet Khizeh (1949) and Preliminaries (1992) in the light of the proposed theories. Khirbet Khizeh and the Israeli Crisis of Conscience Yizhar's novella, Khirbet Khizeh, written shortly after the War of Independence, documents all the disparities and conflicting values in Yizhar's consciousness. Translated into English by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck in 2008, the story is recognized as a classic in the Hebrew literary 152
Chapter Four
canon. The story describes acts of brutality and expulsion committed by Israeli soldiers against armless inhabitants of an Arab village "Khirbet Khizeh" during the 1948 war. The narrator’s inner conflicts and tormented conscience is revealed throughout the story as he questions the values and ideals of the state's ideology that he deeply cherishes. Amos Elon states that the story "saw the creation of the Arab refuge problem" (276) contradicting, thus, the Zionist myth of the 'empty land'. Furthermore, Elon maintains that Yizhar was the first "to sharply focus on a theme that in the following years was to disturb the conscience of many Israeli writers: Israeli's deep moral responsibility for the fate of these refugees" (276). Khirbet Khizeh was incorporated into the states' education syllabus of Hebrew literature and dramatized for television in 1978. Disturbing the public, the story caused controversial debates and general outrage resulting in multiple waves of criticism. Reviving the theme of memory that constitutes the essence of Jewish identity, the story opens on a recollection of the narrator: TRUE, IT ALL HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO, but it has haunted me ever since. I sought to drown it out with the din of passing time, to diminish its value, to blunt its edge with the rush of daily life … I saw I could no longer hold back … instead of staying silent, I should, rather, start telling the story. (Khitbet 7) The narrator separates himself from the collective group of his army; first, by asserting his tormented conscience and, second, by announcing his decision to speak out and tell his 153
Chapter Four
story. The narrator, then, starts recording the violence and indifference of his fellow soldiers as they act out the orders of expulsion against Arab residents: "to load them onto transports, and convey them across our lines; blow up the stone houses, and burn the huts; detain the youth and the suspects, and clear the area of 'hostile forces'" (Khirbet 9). While the narrator attempts to reveal his uneasiness of the situation – "This is a filthy war", he is consoled by one of his friend's future vision of the village as a modern Israeli settlement: "immigrants of ours will come to this Khirbet what's – its – name, you hear me, and they'll take this land and work it and it'll be beautiful here" (107). The narrator's opposing stance is revealed through his ironic thoughts of his inner consciousness: Of course. Absolutely. Why hadn't I realized it from the outset? Our very own Khirbet Khizeh. Questions of housing, and problems of absorption. And hooray, we'd house and absorb – and how! We'd open a cooperative store, establish a school; there would be political parties here. They would plow fields, and sow and reap, and do great things. Long live Khirbet Khizeh! Who, then, would ever imagine that once there had been some Khirbet Khizeh that we emptied out and took for ourselves. We came, we shot, we burned; we blew up, expelled, drove out, and sent into exile. What in God's name were we doing in this place! (108) The stream of consciousness, especially the narrator's internal monologues, probe the most intimate and inner 154
Chapter Four
depths of the individual. Like Gordimer in The Conservationist, Yizhar's uses this technique to bring out the intimate depths of the collective group through the thoughts of one individual who is attached to them in language and action. Between opposing and getting along with his fellow soldiers, Yizhar's narrator recalls those moments of satisfaction, "we were getting excited. The thrill of the hunt that lurks inside everyman had taken firm hold of us" (Khirbet 34). Attached to the group and involved in its activities, the narrator resists being an outcast – "I was impatient for the beginning of things that I imagined differently from everyone else. I was content with everything and hated starting to feel differently, and I didn't want to stand out from the others in any way. It always ended in disillusionment"(40). The narrator's inner consciousness swings backwards and forwards between those moments of moral revolt and the "tickling pleasure" of conquest (Khirbet 42) that overwhelms him. Accompanying his fellow soldiers in their racist activities, the narrator still preserves a mode of conscience and morality. The narrator's emotional climax reaches its height as he and the soldiers encounter an Arab woman with a child in her hand, so proud and self-controlled that the narrator "felt ashamed in her presence and lowered [his] eyes" (103). Recalling that emphatic scene, the narrator goes on: Exalted in their pain and sorrow above ourwicked-existence they went on their way and we could also see how something was happening in the heart of the boy, something that, when he grew up, could only become a viper inside him, 155
Chapter Four
that something that was only now the weeping of a helpless child. (104) It was only then that the narrator realizes what was taking place. His spontaneous thoughts unfold upon a reality so long suppressed: Something struck me like lightning. All at once everything seemed to mean something different, more precisely: exile. This was exile. This was what exile was like. This was what exile looked like … I had never been in the Diaspora – I said to myself – I had never known what it was like … but people had spoken to me, told me, taught me, and repeatedly recited to me, from every direction, in books and newspaper, everywhere: exile. They had played on all my nerves. Our nation's protest to the world: exile! It had entered me, apparently, with my mother's milk. What, in fact, had we perpetrated here today? (104) Aware of his limitations and helplessness, the story concludes on a note of despair offering no resolution. As the narrator visualizes the future: the land would be occupied, cries of the victims would be silenced and the pains of the exiled would be forgotten – "Tomorrow, both painful humiliation and helpless rage would turn into a kind of a casual irritation, shameful but fading fast … when silence had closed in on everything and no man disturbed the stillness" (112). Hence, the story closes on biblical allusions to demonstrate the extent of the narrator's hopelessness and despair: "then God would come forth and descend to roam 156
Chapter Four
the valley, and see whether all was according to the cry that had reached him" (113). The story wavers between two overlapping perspectives: one belongs to an anonymous individual soldier and the other to the collective group of his army that represents the Zionist ideals. The final scene, however, posits the alienated individual, with his burden of guilt and futility, apart from his collective group. Within the colonial discourse, Said states, "the voices of the dominated are represented almost entirely by their silence, their absence" (“Secular Criticism” 9). He further states that history is filled with discrimination “made between what is fitting for us and what is fitting for them, the former designated as inside, in place, common, belonging, in a word above, the latter, who are designated as outside, excluded, inferior, in a word below” (130). In literature, this cultural oppression is manifested in the pervading theme of ‘silence’, where the ‘other’ is always silenced and forbidden any means of expression. One of the most recurrent themes in Yizhar's story Khirbet Khizeh is the pervading silence that is contrasted with the sounds of bullets, gunshots and explosions. Throughout, the landscape stands as the eversilent witness to acts of brutality and violence. Recurrent images of the "shameful silence" (23), the "orphaned silence" (27), and the donkeys that had to bear their scars of "bleeding mud and silence" (39), and most of all the "absorbent abyss of enormous silence" (50) that swallows up the voices of the soldiers and the shots of their guns – all images contrast with the "howling" and "scream" and the "roar" of the stones (55). The narrator reaches "the sound of silent desolation" (63) as he reveals his alienation in the land. The contrast between 157
Chapter Four
silence and sound reaches its height as the narrator helplessly mingles with his friends: There was nowhere to wander or to distance myself. I went down and mingled with them … words rang in my ears. I did not know where from. I passed among them all, among those weeping aloud, among those silently grinding their teeth, those feeling sorry for themselves and for what they were leaving behind, those who railed at their destiny and those who quietly submitted to it … those weeping for the fields that would be desolate, and those silenced by exhaustion … (105) By the end of the story, Yizhar concludes on a note of the helplessness of the landscape and the futility of any resistance that runs parallel to the narrator's helplessness and passivity reminding us of Bhabha's "in-between" state. The narrator recalls the silence of the village "that was conspiring to create an atmosphere of its own, a realization of abandonment, an oppressive grief separation, of an empty home, a deserted shore, wave upon strange wave, and a bar horizon. And that same strange silence as though of a corpse" (108). The story highlights the double alienation of the protagonist: external and internal. On the one hand, he feels estranged from the collective group and, on the other, he feels divided from within. The narrator is split between his nationalist affiliations that demand active participation with the collective and their acts of violence and his humanistic ideals that reject violence. Accordingly, this also recalls 158
Chapter Four
Fanon's concept of alienation as expressed in estrangement from one's self and one's culture and group. The description of landscape is one of the most effective tools in Israeli literature. It is integral in Yizhar's story Khirbet Khizeh and plays a significant role in reflecting the protagonist's inner conflicts. Yizhar integrates descriptions of nature coupled with abuses of power within the dramatic sequence to reinforce the troubled conscience of the Israeli soldier. Yizhar's celebration of the beauty of primitive landscape of the native Arabs contrasts with images of the destruction of landscape under Israeli control. Hills and plains are to be turned into settlements and roads. The bright detailed and vivid setting contrasts with the destructive eviction of the villagers. The narrator describes the natural bright scene that will darken after their mission is complete: one clear winter's day, and describing in detail the departure and the journey, when the dirt paths were moistened by the earlier rain, and the cactus hedges surrounding the citrus groves were burned by the sun and moist … as the noonday gradually advanced, a pleasant unhurried noonday, which moved on as usual and turned into a darkening twilight chill, when it was all over, finished, done. (7-8) The narrator further describes the village as they go through unknown territory, setting out into the washed, cleansed existence of the fields, the pure pellucid air, among plantations partly plowed, and partly covered with weeds and 159
Chapter Four
grass – it was so pleasant to sloth around the muddy paths slippery with puddles and fresh mire … all the surrounding crops of fields belonged to that village, whose abundant water, good soil, and celebrated husbandry had gained a reputation almost equal to that of its inhabitants … (9-10) Throughout the novella, Yizhar dwells on the beauty of landscape, of the "well-tendered gardens" (11) and the "luxuriant land rustled in blue, yellow, brown, green, and everything between them, warming itself in the after-rain sun, gazing in total silence toward the light and the gold" (25). The disappearance of the Arab from the land has shattered Yizhar's image of the beautiful landscape: Once villages were something you attacked and took by storm. Today they were nothing but gaping emptiness screaming out with a silence that was at once evil and sad. These bare villages, the day was coming when they would begin to cry out … Desolate abandoned silence. (26) The Israeli historian, Anita Shapira states that the pre-state landscape, according to Yizhar was "redolent land, rich in gardens, cultivated fields, and the Arab villagers are integral to its cultural landscape" (7). Shapira, further, states that Yizhar's inner pain had sprung from the loss of the world of his youth that is recollected in his memory. Ramras-Rauch states that Yizhar's landscape is "personal, ahistorical, yet mythic" and "it is only in the heart of the wasteland, 160
Chapter Four
undisturbed by progress or boundaries, that he can experience what it is to be a native son" (61). Yizhar's narrator proceeds in his meditative descriptions of the huts and houses and the walls that had been attentively decorated … testifying to a loving care whose foundations had now been eradicated … a way of life whose meaning was lost, diligence that had reached its negation, and a great, very deep muteness had settled upon the love, the hopes, and the good and less-good times, so many unburied corpses. (41) Every now and then, the narrator interrupts the silent landscape with images of futile resistance "like a wild wind or like the ocean waves crashing on the shore" (49); or like the cow that "began to bellow desperately in waves of stupor, as though only by bellowing forth could she find a grip in a world that had been shaken out of orbit" (56); or "the air, which despite its brightness … had meanwhile become pale and vaguely murky" (79); and most of all the image of orphaned shadowy veil" that descends upon the fields and hills – "fields that would never be harvested, plantations that would never be irrigated, paths that would become desolate. A sense of destruction and worthlessness" (89). The narrator is overwhelmed with pain as he observes, "we descended from the hilltop, into the jaws of death" (90). The narrator's sense of guilt of the surrounding destructions of the houses is reflected with fear and uneasiness: 161
Chapter Four
We had a sudden sense of foreboding as though we were about to be attacked, the alien walls were closing in on us, encompassing us with solemn malicious whispering, suddenly we seemed cut off, devoid of hope … (56) Accordingly, Ramras-Rauch states "the war has broken the intimate connection to the landscape, just as it has questioned ownership of the land"; Yizhar's technique of reflecting this dilemma was through the estrangement and dislocation of his protagonist (61). The story, then, ends in an unresolved dichotomy typical of the "in-between" state referred to by Bhabha: celebrating the unspoiled nature and the deep desire to preserve its primitivism, while endorsing the Zionist dream of settling in and developing the wasteland: “of a whole territory essentially unused, unappreciated, misunderstood … to be made useful, appreciated, understandable" (Said, Question 85). One of the major constituents of the Israeli identity is the figure of the Arab and his rootedness to the land. In her study of the development of the image of the Arab in Israeli literature, Ramras-Rauch argues that early Zionists feared and envied the Palestinian Arabs who appeared pitiful in their poverty and backwardness yet represented the native sons of the land, enjoyed rootedness and security. Thus, the image of the Arab was delved deeply in the Jewish psyche both as an example of the attachment to the land and as a symbol of threat and danger to the Jewish existence. This ambivalent portrayal of the Arab as both the enemy and the native son compared with the rootlessness of the immigrants pervades the pre-1948 literature. With the Zionist project that 162
Chapter Four
aimed to cleanse Jewish culture and preserve it as 'pure', images of the Arab were associated with negative stereotypes as being primitive, backward and unworthy of the land. Throughout Yizhar's critique and dissent, emerges the colonial racist attitude that perceives and evaluates the 'other' within negative stereotypes. The Arabs in Yizhar's story Khirbet Khizeh are "stinking Arabs" (26); they are dirty and despicable "looks like filth" (58); they are cripples and animals "They're just like animals!" (99), "Then a cripple passed by" (100); they are an "obedient, grooming flock of sheep, unable to take stock of their situation … being led to the slaughter" (94); and above all "they're not even human" (25). Within the light of role reversal, the Arab plays the role of the passive coward in contrast with the courageous Sabra. Yizhar's story, thus, marks a new stage in Hebrew literature in which the Arab's role is to reflect the Israeli consciousness. The Arab serves as a mirror to liberate the Jew of the conflicts of his Diaspora past, thus, helping the 'new' Jew to maintain his identity. The Arab is no longer a ghost in Hebrew literature but, rather, a helpless victim. Described in a racial language, the Arab springs out of the Jewish memory of persecution in the Holocaust, thus, replacing the passive Diaspora Jew. One of the soldiers states: They don't even have blood in their veins, these Ayrabs. To abandon a village just like that! Man! If that was me instead of him, you'd find me here with a rifle in my hand. (60 -61) White writers in South Africa who related themselves with the liberation movement rejected Apartheid, clearly and publicly; while Israeli writers show a split in their identity 163
Chapter Four
and contradiction in their writings as they could not completely denounce the Zionist ideals they propagate. In his stories, Yizhar apparently seems to expose Zionist ideals and values, questioning his people's rights to the land. In Khirbet Khizeh, that "personal fall from innocence" that initiated Yizhar to write his stories is portrayed in his narrator as he reveals his disillusionment – “astonished at how easy it had been to be seduced, to be knowingly led astray and join the great general mass of liars – that mass compounded of crass ignorance, utilitarian indifference, and shameless selfinterest”(7). The collapse of Zionist ideals and virtues is ironically revealed as the narrator records the orders of expulsion in a civilized manner: it was now obvious how many good and honest hopes were being invested in those who were being sent out to implement all this 'burn-blowup-imprison-load-convey' …with such courtesy and with a restraint born of true culture, and this would be a sign of decent upbringing … of the great Jewish soul. (9) Thus, the narrator's ironic attitude characterizes his passive stance throughout the story. Although war was Yizhar's recurrent theme but his main concern was unfolding the narrator's disillusionment and collapse. Yizhar’s work reflects a dichotomy between a strong political involvement and the psychological extremes of his protagonists. His guilt-ridden characters are aware of the powerlessness and uselessness of their situation and end up in disillusion and alienation. In her analysis of the Sabra figure, the most common figure in Yizhar, Brenner states: 164
Chapter Four
The self-assurance of the heroic, idealistic, and moral protagonist of the Palmach generation, a figure who represented noble communal norms and collectively shared values, underwent a transformation in the statehood period to become a figure characterized by self-doubt, indifference, and a pervasive sense of alienation. (149) As a result, Yizhar's typical hero is depicted as a fixed and static character incapable of development. He is "a captive of his own sensitivity and sensibility. He is passive" (Ramras – Rauch 53). In his long journey of conscience crisis, Yizhar's protagonist in Khirbet Khizeh "establishes a separateness from the groups" (Yudkin 76). The inner struggles of the protagonist, thus, parallel the outer struggle of the war. Ramras-Rauch states that "the Israeli reality has been and continues to be, the troubled co-existence of the two worlds: the individualistic and the collective, the inner and the outer" (58). The collective group that reflect a minor Zionist scale in Yizhars stories are depicted from the viewpoint of a particular character who takes part in their action and identifies himself with their values. However, his inner self that defies their actions is engaged in an unresolved psychological and moral conflict, which again reflects the "in-between" state. Ramras-Rauch states that Yizhar "pushes his protagonist to the verge of conflict: that is, he confronts basic realities that touch upon the continued existence of society, yet his moral code denies him the power to accept those realities" (83). 165
Chapter Four
While the image of the Arab in Israeli fiction is closely tied to the self-definition of the Israeli identity, he is not regarded as integral to the "internal Jewish experience". Morahg states, "Arabs are regarded as an external force impinging upon the central drama and are depicted as an abstracted human experience that must be reacted to but not accounted for" (150). Whereas, Khirbet Khizeh apparently seems mainly about the Arab's pain, however, it delves deeply into the consciousness of the 'new' Jew reflecting his inner conflicts as he passes the journey from belief to a complete disillusionment. Reflecting the "traumas" of victory, the story records the sense of guilt that accompanies the Israeli victory. Brenner observes that the story records "the dilemma of the 'new' Jew as a victor whose sense of guilt conflicted with the politics of triumphalism" (146). The injustice committed against the Arabs in the village runs parallel throughout the story with the narrator's conflict between power and ethics. Ramras-Rauch states that the main theme of the story is "the maltreatment of Arabs vis-àvis Israeli conscience" (67). The conflict within the narrator's consciousness reaches its height: The people who would live in this village – wouldn't the walls cry out in their ears? Those sights, screams that were screamed and that were not screamed … the submissiveness of the weak … who didn't know what to do and were unable to do anything, the silenced weak – would the new settlers not sense that the air here was heavy with shades, voices, and stares? (109) 166
Chapter Four
The narrator's objections and rejection of the expulsion evokes outrageous reaction from his comrades and fellow soldiers. Eventually, the narrator comprehends his helplessness and futility: My guts cried out. Colonizers, they shouted. Lies, my guts shouted. Khirbet Khizeh is not ours … I wanted to do something. I knew I wouldn't cry out. Why the devil was I the only one here who was getting excited? From what clay was I formed? … There was something in me that wanted to rebel … who could I speak to? Who would listen? They would just laugh at me. I felt a terrifying collapse inside me. I had a single set idea, like a hammered nail, that I could never be reconciled to anything, so long as the tears of a weeping child still glistened as he walked along with his mother … on his way into exile, bearing with him a roar of injustice … (109-110) The narrator mediates throughout the story, "I still had a strong feeling of being a stranger here, of being totally out of place" (50), "a wave of bitterness washed through me"(79), "and I hated the entirety of my being" (82), "I felt I was on the verge of shipping" (109), "I felt a terrifying collapse inside me" (110). Although the Israeli identity is deeply rooted in the collective discourse, yet the story exposes a break between the nationalist and the ethical ideals. The narrator's sense of desperation, thus, arises from the collapse and disintegration of his idealistic beliefs. 167
Chapter Four
According to Brenner, the narrator "dissents from the truimphalist collective" and records his disturbed conscience by passive silenced cries every now and then. Brenner states that "the victory has given birth to a consciousness that, on the one hand, feels an obligation to the discourse of the triumphalism ideology and, on the other hand, experiences a compelling sense of responsibility toward the vanquished" (Brenner 151). Estranged and uprooted, the narrator ends his story on a note of deep disillusion. The final scene of "blanketing" silence that pervades the landscape emphasizes the pessimistic recognition of failure despite the apparent victory of the collective group. Recording his protagonist's conflicts, Yizhar employed a dramatic style along with a unique use of language. Considered as "revolutionary" in style, Yizhar innovated a combination of rich literary Hebrew prose and a colloquial idiom that completely departs from his predecessors' technique. Thus, he was considered the "archetypal representative of the new Sabra literature" and "the most outstanding and original prose writer of his generation" (Yudkin 74-75). Accordingly, Yizhar utilizes his technique in order to convey the Zionist values and norms. Khirbet Khizeh documents racist and inhumane attitudes of Israeli soldiers towards helpless Arab villagers. It is fundamentally the record of moral conflicts. It represents a moment of insight into the project of building a nation-state on the foundation of the oppressed minority. The Zionist project to replace first the Diaspora Jew with the idealized Sabra, then, replace the Arab with this 'new' Jew has been achieved basically by the obliteration of 168
Chapter Four
memory and history. In his critique of the image of the Sabra, Elon maintains that he is "ignorant of the past, or indifferent to it, a race cast solely into the present" (Elon 257). By replacing the Arab villagers in the story with the new Sabra, the Zionist project will, thus, consolidate its basic idea of the "empty land" and the 'negation of the Diaspora'. This process is further manifested by obliterating the memory of the defeated (of the Diaspora Jew and the expelled Arab as well). Thus, the main theme of the story is not the Arab's fate but the "psychological turmoil of the narrator who assimilated the best of humanistic and idealistic values he was brought upon, and then found himself faced with a rupture between those two value systems" (Shapira 40). Shapira, further, states that ‘the remembrance of the expulsion continues to hover between the conscious and the unconscious, between repression and recognition’ (55). The novel traces the failure of the protagonist to establish an identity and exposes the agony of his futile attempts to reconcile these opposing elements within himself. This study, however, argues that Yizhar’s narrator ends in disillusionment and alienation not because of his inner conflicts, as Yizhar implies, but due to his detachment from the collective group, the very ethos of Zionist values. This recalls Gordimer's depiction of Maureen's loss and disillusionment when she was set apart from the materialistic privileges and forms of power. The Israeli Sabra and the Existential Dilemma in Preliminaries Yizhar's novel, Preliminaries, was published after three decades of his last work. Another literary innovation and the first volume of Yizhar's subsequent four volumes of 169
Chapter Four
the autobiographical novel, the novel was originally published in Hebrew as Miqdamot and translated by Nicholas de Lange in 2007. The blend of the protagonist's interior monologues along with the narrator's intense sense of location helps Yizhar to trace the life span of a young artist from infancy in a farm in Negev through childhood in the city in Tel Aviv to adolescence in an agricultural settlement in the pre-state period in Palestine. Divided into five parts, the story traces the development of the consciousness of a boy growing up in the shadow of Arab/Jewish tensions, brought up by an idealistic father who represents the new Sabra, and experiencing fear and a constant struggle for survival. Mirroring the perspectives of a child, the story captures the boy's sensual experience and his most primary responses to the world which is mingled with his adult consciousness as he looks back in memory. The protagonist experiences the riots in 1921 and the tensions with the Arabs, while his life in the city is marked by financial worries and new technology (soda drinks, American jazz, and silent cinema). The final part of the novel is dedicated to the rich portrayal of the natural landscape and the relation between Arab and Jewish labourers (Miron, "Introduction"). In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon states, ‘I believe that it is necessary to become a child again in order to grasp certain psychic realities’ (190). In order to achieve this, Yizhar’s story Preliminaries is unfolded through a child’s experience and memories. The story opens with the description of the father ploughing his land and unawarely seating his child on a hornet's nest. Sitting on the soil in the shade of an ancient tree till "Daddy only has to finish this one rectangle, as a final act of possession of the ground and the 170
Chapter Four
ploughing like a last signature on the deed of ownership" (Preliminaries 44). The boy is stung. His meditations on the family and the land are interrupted by the horrible attacks of the wasps. Going back with his memories, Yizhar tries to capture the painful scene: "and what does he know, since he was nothing yet to know … intolerable pain". The scene consists of a series of long interior monologues as the father rushes off with the mother in a wagon to seek a doctor. Carrying the wounded boy, the father is lost in vast "mineral space" where he, the child, and the mother are all "pointless … because truth to tell there is no place here yet. Everything is still experimental. And the place that exists is precisely this vast open emptiness without anything" (Preliminaries 73). Disturbing thoughts of fear ranging from the tragic to the comic as they take the road through the Arab village are intensely described reflecting the external/natural and the internal/personal reality. Moving to the city marks another experience for the child. The primary fears of a child observing his father as he strives hard to "strike roots" in a hostile environment shifts to a completely new experience marked by technology and instability. Fear is replaced with the struggle for existence as the child grows up in the city. The image of the 'new' idealized Jew pervades the third transitional experience as the boy observes his father as the ideal labourer packing and shipping oranges to London with "all the responsibility for the rebuilding of the land" (Preliminaries 200).The story weaves together adult memories of the harsh Zionist experience in pre-state Palestine with immediate reflections of childhood memories: 171
Chapter Four
all we want is peace, Mummy insisted, we just want to build the homeland, and what do they want from us, all those desert Arabs, what have we done to them, apart form bringing them medicine, enlightenment and a culture of cleanliness. (108) The novel, thus, traces the consciousness of the narrator as a child and adult, as he repeatedly questions his struggling existence on a land upon which two people fight over: and even before we had managed to grasp that here we were in the land of our ancestors, and that this was our homeland, the longed-for land, and that those were our brothers who cherished the soil of our land, we were already surrounded by the jostling and shouting, the stench and the filth. (107) Throughout the novel, the child suffers fear (wasp sting, being lost in a masked crowd during a carnival, passing by an abandoned building, being besieged in the Arab courtyard and lost in the expanse of the landscape). According to Alter, the most recurrent theme in the novel is "the child's constant discovery of the unguessed richness of the world" (“The Flow” 53). Further in the story, the narrator recalls: "What did all the people in the Kiosk Café do before it opened here? … suddenly as though this is the centre of the land, a place you could not manage without, and that everyone in the city loves soda" (Preliminaries 176). The narrator, thus, recalls the scary visions that have enchanted him as a child; visions of the vastness of the sky and earth, "the contour of a hill, the explosive clattering rush of a passing train, the flickering 172
Chapter Four
images of silent cinema, a choir singing, a donkey peeing, the strange bulbous shapes of Hebrew letters he cannot yet read". While the world makes him feel small and helpless, it provides him with moments of "rapture" as when he first hears a choir singing: Suddenly a choir starts singing. Suddenly and that. Stunned. He is stunned. No, not he. There is no he. He is now only what enters him floods him fills him full … Now he is like a diver who cannot breathe again until he surfaces … Nothing else, only this thing that he never knew existed. Nothing else exists. Only this, a choir singing. (193-194) One of the main factors shaping one’s identity is memory. Memory is an integral part of any cultural and national identity in the Zionist case. Zionism was created based on the experiences of earlier generations and of the shared memories of the Jews and their diverse origins. Between the individual memory of the self and the collective memory of the group, identity is constructed and formed. In her study Diaspora, Memory, and identity Vijay Agnew states that "memories establish a connection between our individual past and our collective past (our origins, heritage, and history" (3). Individuals experience a dynamic tension everyday between living 'here' and remembering 'there', between memories of places of origin and conflicts in places of residence, between symbolic and physical home. Thus, "memory is an act of remembering that can create new understandings of both the past and the present" (8). Individual memory is dependent upon and related with the 173
Chapter Four
collective group memory. Memory does not originate exclusively within individual, but as a cultural and social phenomenon as well: Memory is a key to personal, social, and cultural history and is dependent on time and context. What we remember is articulated by the major political and social narratives of our time; they enable us to reconstruct history by identifying and filling gaps in its many narratives. (184) However, not all remembrance of the past is associated with longing and nostalgia; memory becomes a documentation of a history recording oppression and subjugation. Founded upon the ancestral origin of the land, Zionist ideology, however, insisted on the suppression of the memories of Diaspora survivors. Thus, without a shared history and a collective memory, one is rendered rootless and alienated. This paradox marks a profound split in the Zionist identity. From one point, he adheres to the past memories; while, at the same time, he suppresses and completely negates any memory of the Diaspora. The Zionist settlers were in fact unable to liberate themselves from the psychological effects of the Diaspora. Despite his sudden sense of power, the "new" Jew remained trapped in his memories of the Diaspora. No longer persecuted and oppressed, he becomes the oppressor enacting the behaviour of his former Diaspora oppressors. In Preliminaries, the Arab/Jewish tension is always portrayed in the background, "there is unease. On every side unease. You can feel it" (97). The narrator, further, observes "and even when nothing happened between the Jews and the 174
Chapter Four
Arabs, all the time something was happening that they tried to hide … wasn't this our place? Wasn't it their place? Were we intruders? Were they intruders" (116). Images of the ideal Jew versus the Arab constitutes the framework of the story: The whole idea of a Jewish neighbourhood next to Arab, living from each other by day and separating at night, the enlightened, the clean, the cultured, the builders of the Land on this side and the natives, the backward, the filthy, who have caused the desolation of the land on that side. (139) Yizhar’s narrative, therefore, displays much subtlety and complexity. Despite his apparent dissidence, the novel is full of racist images of the "backward" and "filthy" natives "howling … bombing … stealing …destroying and butchering" (118); such images are often contrasted with images of the enlightened and cultural immigrant settler throughout the story: "the Arab fellah … he is the slave of the land and we are of course the friends of the land, friends for life and friends for the future" (51). Indulging deeply in his meditations and memories, the narrator states: And then everything will look totally different … Here are two thousand dunams of Zionist renewal. Jewish land. A little island of rich, scientific new green surrounded by an ocean of ignorance, primitiveness, and underdevelopment … and suddenly there will be this new green to be seen. By hostile eyes, too, that do not like the renewal or the renewers. A hostile circle all around … what is it like to be 175
Chapter Four
the child of a settler? To be the baby of someone who has decided to make the idea a reality with his own body. (52) This extract is one of many monologues in the novel which attempt to legitimize colonization and expulsion in the name of progress, civilization and cultivation. Reminiscent of the "white man's burden", such monologues utilize a Zionistmade Manichean allegory to construct "interchangeable oppositions between… good and evil, superiority and inferiority, civilization and savagery, intelligence and emotion, rationality and sensuality, self and other, subject and object"(JanMohamed, "Economy" 82). Such Zionist binaries are aided by recurrent negative stereotypes associated with the image of the Arab as "frightening Arabs". Yizhar speaks of "their crowds, their din, their filth" and claims that "the only language they understand is deceit". In sum, they are "a terrible, savage, uncivilized, murderous mob" (107); furthermore, the Jewish settlement was “like a small island surrounded by a sea of Arabs, like a world of darkness around the little light” (107). Consolidating the Zionist ideology, the narrator states: only in our land could we find our homeland; they, the Arabs, were never there, in any place or in any argument … they simply did not exist…We would uproot when we returned to our land and tilled our fields, well-watered Zionist dream, and would plant new trees brought from overseas. (107)
176
Chapter Four
The planting of the trees resembles Mehring's planting of the European chestnuts in The Conservationist to consolidate attachment to the land reflecting, thus, power and control. Yet the landscape in Yizhar seems to resist colonial and oppressive acts and to play an active role against exploitation. When the "new" nation attempted to 'strike' roots replacing the uprooted indigenous population, the land answers back with resistance to cultivation and exploitation. In Preliminaries, the narrator recalls "the earth's resistance to being cut open and [to] its opening up for renewal" (56). Ploughing the land in the very first pages of the book reflects, in general, the birth of the 'new' Jew striking roots in a 'new' land – thus, the Zionist dream: "every Jew would pay for the planting of a tree in memory of the national hero who was cut off in his prime. How many Jews were there in the world? Each one would donate a tree"(56). But again the land resists: "a tree that has not managed to grow even though they have poured a lot of water on the sand where they planted it, and hammered in a stake next to it" (172). In addition, we see how the 'sting' has become a metaphor and a symbol for nature's response to Jewish settlement, for the father's failure as an image of the 'new' Sabra, or for the failure of the Zionist dream that has been stung: "so you see, you have been stung – you have been warned" (82). The rich description of the landscape with its open space and unspoiled primitive scenes reflects its hostility towards and attack against Zionist settlers; the "stubborn soil has not been touched for thousands of years, if ever, and no man has touched it, or assailed its innocent wholeness" (44).
177
Chapter Four
Moreover, Miron states that the detailed description of the open landscape of the empty desert of pre-state Israel is extensively scattered throughout the five sections of the book reflecting, thus, "the development of the particular Zionist mentality which the novel follows and delineates" (10). It is this open expanse that challenges both the old pioneer generation of the father and the new growing up generation whose role is to 'conquer' this land (“Introduction” 10). The artist narrator, as Miron points out, captures the scene of an open landscape in detailed vividness: And then? Then there were the hills. Not the body of the hills and their mass but the line of sky tracing the edge of their spine … above the whole horizon of the earth's expanse, utterly simple beyond all simplicity … like a firm line drawn by a very sharp pencil, touching and tracing the roundedness of the earth of the fields … while this line, this beautiful, indifferent line, so fine one moment and so woolly the next, ran above the whole contour of the hills, rising and falling slightly like the contour of a horse's back perhaps, or maybe that of a girl lying on her side and the tender outline from her waist to her thigh … and all around from side to side, as though to fill the entire expanse of that breathing earth. Were there any paths on it? Were the field sown or harvested? Nothing, it is all obliterated by the mist and lost in it … nothing was happening now, no horse galloping no donkey plodding no camel trudging sleepily, no man and no woman, land all shaven, empty with 178
Chapter Four
emptiness of late summer, with no vegetation, no grass … in this full nakedness, totally prone, bare with nothing on it. (37-38) Yizhar's excessive depiction of an empty land further reflects the Zionist neglect to the presence of the Palestinian Arabs on the land. In the novel, Yizhar states: Only she and He, the land and God she silently turned to Him through all the emptiness and heat and little clouds of dust, and He to her through all the torrid, empty skies from so much arid lights; until the perfect nothingness of the skies above reaches and touches the perfect nothingness of the land beneath, on which there is nothing. And there is only the silence between them … (87) The pastoral land was exploited and replaced by images of modernization and development, "… it was a fundamental mistake. That maybe this land doesn't want us at all, really. Because we came here to make changes that it doesn't want" (86). Throughout the novel, the ‘hard’ land resists in "signs of protest: all sorts of droughts … floods, and all sorts of rejection of new trees … all kind of stings and scorpions and serpents, with all kinds of resistance to the strangers come to change"(88). Split again between his Zionist ideals and his individual values, the Israeli Sabra ends up questioning his entire being and his place amongst this hostile, yet attractive, nature and among the collective group of his own people. Images of disillusionment and alienation pervade Yizhar’s Preliminaries, reflecting the existential dilemma of 179
Chapter Four
the Israeli Sabra on his Old/New land. Yizhar’s narrator states that "it was a vision of failure" and that "all that was left was a memorial to failure" (120); the great Zionist project "giving hopes to a poor nation that it would finally get itself a real foundation and a solid economy – yet all had failed" (121). The narrator is left with an image of failure and disillusion: and all so solid and the future of Zionism so well based and so assured and unquestionable, totally well grounded and seriously thought out in all its details, and the labour all well organized and dedicated … and suddenly there was failure. Total failure. (Preliminaries 122) According to Miron, childhood is represented in "sadness, loneliness, fear … in a series of dark scenes and insights" (“Introduction” 18). Being a mere shadow and an observer over the daily events from the margins of life, the child questions if Zionism, has truly managed to fulfill its dream to establish a 'place' for the Jews. The family's constant move from one place to another throughout the book, thus, emphasizes the placelessness and exilic experience within the land. Moreover, the constant clash between the settlers and natives which is intensified by the murder of the Israeli writer Y.H. Brenner has increased Miron's belief of the doomed failure of Zionism in Yizhar's story. The image of the kite that represents a symbol of Zionism consolidates the failure of the movement as the kite flies away in endless space, "this is not an Arab tiyyara, despite its Arabic name … but of invention and revolution, of conquest and break 180
Chapter Four
through, of imagination and daring, of the triumph of Jews and the triumph of progress" (Preliminaries 212). Fading away in the endless space, the kite “is flying further and further, light and free and flying … it flies away and it flees and is no more it has gone away and is no more, is nothing, it has gone gone gone”(214). Disillusioned, the narrator states: how a man can fall, and all his smashed gods fall down upon him, how his faith caves in and everything he has sacrificed himself for in the past, everything that was high above the hardships of this hard land, a worker, a Hebrew … that man who raised this hard land and suddenly it eludes him, the ground has fallen away under his feet, there is nothing underneath him now, there is no firm ground under his feet. (260) The child ends up by questioning the place of settlers in an unwelcoming environment: "what is happening here. How do we keep going. Surely in truth everything here is only games of illusion. All the calculations, the planning, it's all games of make-believe" (76). Yizhar's unique use of language captures the inner and outer landscapes of his protagonists in Preliminaries before and after the establishment of the State. The "newness" of his language is blended with a rich mixture of old traditions. Alter states that "his prose embodies an extraordinary degree of linguistic innovation. He invents words from existing Hebrew roots with an Elizabethan zest …" (“The Flow” 52). This study, thus, claims that the fact of Yizhar's "newness" reflected in his language is a concrete embodiment and a 181
Chapter Four
manifestation of the Zionist ideal he adheres to. He reflects a "vibrant culture that is not the least diasporic", a new culture that is based mainly upon the revival of Hebrew language. Alter further, states that "the ultimate triumph of Preliminaries is its achievement of a fully realized world in the Hebrew language" (54). In that context, Yizhar's technique is, thus, a celebration of the Hebrew language that he deploys to reflect the inner consciousness of the Hebrew soul. Rather than being a critique of Zionism, the novel becomes a perfect expression of its success: we are not people who are out for ourselves, we are people with an idea, we are people who belong, without that we would not be here, people who belong to an idea, a goal and a mission. (216) According to Alter, Preliminaries is "an artistic success" and at the same time "a Zionist success story". By reflecting the obstacles that faced new settlers and their struggle for survival and existence, the story becomes the "creation of a culture" (216). The narrator states, he is actually sitting here inside a theatre, that tiny theatre in which the greatest show on earth is being performed, the spectacle of the birth of the new Jew in the new land, a show whose main point is the Jew working the land as a free man, independent, neither exploited nor being exploited. (50) The collective memory of the protagonist lays bare the collective history of the nation. Yizhar's autobiography is, 182
Chapter Four
thus, a biography of the entire nation and the Zionist dream to replace the Arab labourer with the Jewish Sabra, to "exchange weak Arab cows for fine cows" (57) so there would be "[n]o more primitive farming methods blindly aping those of the Arabs" (57). The narrator, further, states: "we even uprooted and discarded everything the Arabs had planted, and planted it all again – for no extra pay – so that we wouldn't have a Herzel Forest planted by alien labour" (58). Images of the violent and murderous Arab parallel the abundant images of the heroic and patient Sabra. However, as Yizhar laments the lost beauty of land and nature that is spoiled by the Jewish immigrants, his main theme is the human nature itself and its growing sense of place through the child's discovery in confusion and fear of the concrete world around him: suddenly he knows that soon, almost unnoticed, none of this will remain, neither this vineyard nor this sandy path, none of this will remain… because everything here is provisional, with no necessity to exist like this particularly, the vineyard that will be replaced by an orange grove, and the building plots that will replace the orange grove... everything that there is here is temporary and they are only pretending to be farmers… only temporary vineyards and temporary orange groves… they all exist but not in the blood, not firmly grounded, nothing is solid here, the vineyard has no solid basis and the late-ripening grapes for the festivals have no solid basis nor does the farmer and it is not clear if his sons will. (294-295) 183
Chapter Four
Lamenting this lost harmony between man and nature, Yizhar ends the story by nostalgic reference to that piece of land. Relying on memories and their emotional impact, the author probes every aspect of daily life reflecting the anguish and sorrow of uprootedness. The protagonist's sense of alienation, thus, reflects Yizhar's ambivalence of portraying an individual not belonging to a collective group. Yizhar expresses the theme of individualism in the midst of a collective through a long passage of interior monologue: Even when they are all together there is always one who is left on his own… And even when they all belong there is always one who does not entirely belong. He belongs yet he doesn’t belong, or not wholly, or not all the time… And even though it's sad being on your own there is always one who doesn't entirely join in, who doesn't entirely belong, who is always slightly not. And how can someone like that rebuild the land when you all have to rebuild the Land together, and one on his own cannot rebuild anything? Or it's as though he's only there to watch, from the sidelines, watching, seeing, saying nothing…leave me alone friends, let me be and don't wait for me. Even though, at the same time, strangely enough, wait for me, I'm coming too, wait for me I'm coming too. (225226) From his perspective, Miron concludes that the novel presents no “authentic Jewish place” for the idealized Jew: “For Yizhar, authentic space is represented by the 184
Chapter Four
agricultural settlements … surrounded by Arab villages and opening to the vast emptiness of the desert nearby” (27). Miron claims that Preliminaries is a story embodying the failure of Zionism, "a great prose threnody for a dream that has faded away" (28). Yet, this study claims that although Yizhar's apparent critique of Zionism is "moral" and "existential", his writings reveal a writer very much absorbed in the Zionist ideology. This truth is subtly exposed through his conscious adoption of its ideals and values: not to sit blindly like this waiting like this not to sit gloomily passively helplessly, pick up and go out and not to be Diaspora Jews but pick up and go out and do something. (126) This study, further, argues that images of the patient and heroic Sabra pervading the novel are utilized to convey the taming of the resisting land that would eventually yield to development and cultivation. Thus, we can foresee a celebration of reunion between the land and its ancestral claimer. The story arouses sympathy and admiration for the long-abused Sabra in a hostile environment. It reveals not the failure of Zionism as Yizhar implies but documents a long journey of Israeli conflicts. Memory is, further, utilized to convey a strong attachment to the land despite the apparent hostility. Unfolding the story from childhood to adulthood experiencing the first jazz, soda and cinema consolidates this attachment. The novel ends on a note of hope not failure where "a fresh start was always possible" (304). The Jewish family will finally build their own house with their life savings on the land: "on this new plot on the edge of all the orange groves the house is going to be built" (305). 185
Chapter Four
Since the title "preliminaries", as Miron states, "announces something which is about to come or take place" (“Introduction” 1), the study foresees that it announces the launching and development of a national movement. Yizhar's themes waver between external landscapes of open desert space and the inner landscapes of his protagonists. For Yizhar, self-deterioration of protagonists does not in the least mean the failure of the national movement. Ramras-Rauch states that, in his work, it is war that spoils the rightful Zionist dream: War mars the reality which he depicts through the romantic innocence of his characters … the sight of burned bodies, the awareness of fate's mutability, the experience of pain and the inflicting of pain, hate and compassion, alienation and belonging-all combine in an interiority that experiences the extreme of the human situation. (78) Shapira states that "Yizhar fully believed that the War of Independence had been forced upon the Jew. It had been a war of defense, a struggle for survival. But he was revolted by the violent new methods, a deviation from all the values his education had inculcated" (Shapira 10). Thus, "victories", in Yizhar's stories, "are portrayed as terrible defeats" (Elon 248). Elon further states that Yizhar "slowly develops his characters and achieves what has often been called the collective portrait of an entire generation" (275). Furthermore, Yudkin observes that Yizhar aims "both to create a revived, rich new Israeli Hebrew literary language springing from Israeli soil and he also remarks the sense of 186
Chapter Four
strangeness that the Israeli, a comparatively new arrival in the area, evidences towards the land, in contrast with the deeply-rooted Arab" (15). In his introduction to the novel, Dan Miron states that with the publication of this autobiography, Yizhar became "universally acknowledged as both the founding father of Israeli literature as a whole and as its chief master of prose fiction" (“Introduction” 2). Drawing on the Bakhtinian spatial and temporal theory, Miron states that, in his early stories, Yizhar's overwhelming sense of space had come at the expense of the sense of being in time "since his stories are "devoid of genuine historical essence". Yizhar’s opposition to the temporal and the spatial in his works is manifested when his protagonist flees history and takes refuge in the expanse of nature. His narrator recalls, "and where was the first place? The very first? Because the first place, although there is no supporting evidence, was orange, all orange, wholly orange, very orange, totally … and how could the memory remember it so precisely unless it really was like that"(35). Whereas in Khirbet Khizeh the story unfolds upon two temporal orders: the time of the event and the time of narration, the protagonist struggles throughout the story to overcome the memory of the event. According to Miron, Yizhar's early technique of negating the role of memory and historical consciousness" is actually the clearest manifestation of the Zionist inversion of the Jewish imagination" (6-7). Yizhar's "newness" in his technique is manifested once more in his depiction of the theme of memory in Preliminaries that was absent in his previous 187
Chapter Four
stories. The slow development of the personal experience runs parallel with the historical development of nation building through recurrent shifts between the present and the past. Yizhar's technique of the stream of consciousness, thus, signifies the theme of memory in the novel that was absent in his previous works. Accordingly, all of Yizhar's works display his attachment to the land and deep love for nature. This is observed in his detailed description of the open landscape of fields, sand, deserts, sunset and sunrise, darkness, stars, wild plants, insects and birds, and the mud of the earth. Yizhar's landscape is symbolic of the resistance of nature to all efforts of refinement and development. Images of the resisting land are depicted either to consolidate or to question the bond between the individual and the land. It can be a cruel hostile nature and it can be enchanting. Thus, the detailed outer description of nature and landscape in Yizhar's stories serves in emphasizing the inner conflicts of the protagonists as they behold its beauty. Yizhar's hero "withdraws into an internal landscape" revealing "a divided self" where the personal and social values are in conflict (Ramras-Rauch 58). Despite all the Zionist efforts of reconstruction, Elon observes Yizhar's landscape as a "sad", "hazy landscape of an all-pervasive present, in the gap between past and future" (Elon 257). It is a landscape that is "torn" by political and ideological conflict. Forms of power in the Israeli setting resemble those described earlier in the Apartheid scene; however the power of language in the Israeli colonial setting takes another form. Power is associated with the Israeli Sabra alone as gender issues far exceed the sexualiii. The only powerful language is 188
Chapter Four
that of Hebrew; any other language is marginalized and silenced. In her novels, Gordimer tackles the theme of language within the master/slave paradigm; whoever is in control, adopts the power and mastery of language. The scene, on the other hand, is different with Zionism. As an ideology founded upon the complete negation and exclusion of the "other", the expression of language as a means of power is enabled only in Hebrew. As a typically Zionist narrative, racist tendencies abide in S.Yizhar's Preliminaries. Despite his apparent stance as an anti-war and a representative of moral conscience, Yizhar's racist attitudes could not be ignored in such a work so infused with Zionism. There is little place in Preliminaries of the crisis of the guilt-ridden characters of Yizhar's previous works. Instead, Yizhar draws heavily in the novel upon the image of the heroic Sabra, thus, manifesting his Zionist ideals. Moreover, the concept of "newness" that constitutes the essence of the Zionist racist ideology is adopted in Yizhar's technique of writing. New themes springing from the land, new idioms as a means of expression, and new portraits of the sad and hostile landscape – all serve in the glorification of the Zionist ideals of "newness" and the creation of a ‘New Jew’. Furthermore, the figure of the Arab in Yizhar's stories is meant only to "mirror" the inner conflicts and uncertainties of the Israeli hero (Oppenheimer 206). The Arab reflects the Israeli search of identity and functions as an echo of the psychological tensions experienced by the Israeli characters. Having no identity, the Arab is "a mirror reflecting the Jewish hero whom the writer seeks to portray in his work" 189
Chapter Four
(Shaked 20). Diminishing the role of the Arab in Yizhar's stories reflects the outer scene of Zionist neglect to and subordination of Arabs. Moreover, enforcing Hebrew as the dominant language for communication sets a problem of misunderstanding at the core of the Arab-Israeli relation. Yizhar's literary devise as a means of domination, thus reflects Zionism in general. His "revolution in language" (Yudkin 88) runs parallel with the Zionist revolutionary project of the revival of Hebrew language. In The Israelis: Founder and Sons, Elon states that "Diaspora was not only a catastrophe, but a disgraceful shame" (209). The Diaspora Jew becomes a "minor image" of the fate from which Zionism sought to escape and, further, deny. Elon states: “In the shifting moods of remembrance and rejection, young Israelis are frequently torn between anger and shame at the very notion of having such an accursed past” (209). According to Dina Porat, the real "other" to Zionism was not the Arabs but "diasporic Jews and everything they represented" (47). She, further, states: Zionist identity was forged and fostered vis-àvis the Jewish diaspora … This process necessitated severing all ties to the past, denigrating the diasporic Jews and their characteristics, and glorifying the bravery of the new Jews. (Porat 61) Moreover, Porat further states that "Israel's self-perception is still Western, idealizing democracy, modernity, and innovation" (66). Although the land of Israel is central to Jewish ideology as the homelands of all Jews, Jewish Diaspora has its deep and pervasive effect on Jewish identity 190
Chapter Four
producing a hybridity of Western civilization and Jewish culture that is confronted with the Zionist attempt to replace this identity with a national one. On his behalf, Robert Rotberg believes that Zionism was created to solve the miseries of the Jewish Diaspora and that "its battle was with the diaspora" (6). Maintaining its identity as the rescuer for the weak Jews of the Diaspora, Zionism aimed at "denigrating diasporic weakness and building anew" (6). Denouncing the Diaspora with its languages, culture and memory of the persecuted Jew was the leading ethos of the new Israeli identity. Zionism, thus, unfolds upon an apparent paradox within its ideology; while based mainly on the theme of revival of the past, the movement deeply rejects and negates the old and celebrates the new. This paradox, accordingly, marked a split in the construction of the Israeli identity which is reflected in Yizhar's protagonists. In The Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel maintains that recognition is indispensable to the self-consciousness and identity of the individual. Without the recognition of the "other", that is without seeing the reflection of oneself in the other, the individual could not attain consciousness. Rereading Hegel's notion of recognition between the dominator and the dominated and the inequalities of "one being only recognized, the other only recognizing" (113), and applying it within the Zionist context reveals another paradox in Zionist ideology. As oppressors, Zionist settlers deprived Palestinians of recognition and rendered them "invisible" on the land and "silent" in literature, producing, thus, a problematic situation. In comparable to the colonizer in South Africa who achieves self-consciousness as the master is reflected in the image of the slave, the Jew could not fulfill 191
Chapter Four
his identity because of the non-existent other. At the same time, when the other is recognized as "less pure" and subordinate, the Jew faces another dilemma inherent in his identity. Being oppressors and colonizers and imitating Western norms, Jewish settlers become entrapped in their old role as victims aiming to be recognized and accepted by the West. In this context, they resemble the Blacks in their dependency on the West for recognition. Paradoxically, they become a "colonized colonizers" as Brenner terms them (51). Examining the psychological aspect of the colonized, Memmi in The Colonizer and the Colonized shows how the Diaspora Jews as a colonized minority are psychologically trapped in their efforts to become "the same" as the Western colonizers. According to Memmi, Diaspora Jews: endeavor to resemble the colonizer in the frank hope that he may cease to consider them (the Jews) different from him. Hence their efforts to forget the past, to change the collective habits, and their enthusiastic adoption of western language, culture and customs. (15) Drawing on Memmi's theory, Bhabha represents his concept of the "incomplete process of assimilation" of the colonized from the colonizer's point of view, in spite of the desperate longing of assimilation on behalf of the colonized. Accordingly, Bhabha and Memmi believe that colonization does not solely entail territorial occupation and economic exploitation of natives; both read the colonial encounter in terms of its psychological impact on both the colonized and the colonizer. Trapped in their mimic roles, the Jews fail to 192
Chapter Four
attain a true sense of self-consciousness. Thus, "mimicry is at once resemblance and menace" (Bhabha, Location 86). Conclusion The common meaning of the term nation-state is that "each distinct ethnic-linguistic group should be a selfgoverning political entity" (Ruether 44). In other words, it is "an assertion of singularity" (Anidjar 283). In this sense, Zionism has worked to consolidate the existence of an Israeli state "that aims to guarantee in law and in practice an ethnic majority of such people as are identified by the state as 'Jews'"(Davis 183). The idealized Sabra, disconnected from the traumatic past, "was promoted to homogenize the immigrants of diverse cultural backgrounds" (Nocke 143). However, the analysis of Yizhar's novels reveals the conflicts rooted in the Israeli psyche which, in turn, is reflected in his disturbed self and fractured identity of the invented Sabra. Whereas the individual and the collective group were contrasted in Khirbet Khizeh, they are closely interrelated and parallel in Preliminaries. The dreams and hopes of the individual 'new' Sabra in the novel run parallel with the Zionist project of establishing a nation-state. The personal conflicts of the individual, thus, reflect the Arab/Israeli conflicts of the nation: there were two tribes, two nations, two peoples confronting each other here, and it's either us or them, and there will never be calm here, there will never be peace, they can't stand each other, there's only a thin skin barely covering the mouth of the raging volcano. Go, the earth cries here, get out of here shouts the place, go away, 193
Chapter Four
scream the streets, off with you, screech the alleys, away with the lot of you. (125) However, Alexandra Nocke argues that since the 1980s and 1990s, Israel has undergone extensive changes where the Israeli identity is being "deconstructed and reconsidered… and new currents are undermining the Zionist core values". The idealized Zionist image of one single identity was replaced by the concept of the pluralistic and multicultural society. This entails the "deconstruction of the hegemonic, secular Zionist national identity"(144). Moreover, Ruether argues that modern notions of the term nation-state refer to the state "where one holds citizenship, regardless of one's ethnicity of origin… people of a plurality of ethnic and linguistic groups within one political community" (44). In this sense, the Israeli state has developed its image as pluralistic and multicultural to fit within these modern concepts of a nation-state.
194
Chapter Four
i
Of these politicians, Elmessiri names: Lord Milner, Lord Selbourne, Lord Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, and General Smuts. See Land of Promise, 101. ii
See Richard Stevens, "Settler States and Western Response", in Jabara and Terry, The Arab World, (167-168). iii
In her critical study, Marriage Made in Heaven, Naomi Seidman demonstrated the complex ways in which the Hebrew and Yiddish languages are deeply generated and reflect the sexual politics of modern Jewish culture. Yiddish is traditionally characterized as feminine while Hebrew is portrayed as the "archetypal masculine entity"; Hebrew is considered as the "father-tongue" while Yiddish as the "mother-tongue" (120). It is the emblem of the "new" masculine Jew that Zionism sought to create in replacement of the weak and passive Diaspora Jew. On his behalf, Mintz perceives Zionism as a "revolution about construction of masculinity"; the "new muscle Jew" would remake the Jew male both inside and out"("Fracturing" 411). Moreover, we could deduce the sexual undertones of the metaphoric scenes in Yizhar's novels of the "virgin", innocent and untouched land that is rendered stubborn and resistant to masculine invasion.
195
Conclusion
Conclusion If one aim of literature is to document and reflect the oppression of earlier generations, then Apartheid and Zionism would provide excellent literary material, since they can be classified as the most oppressive regimes of colonialism and racism. Apartheid and Zionism are two faces of the same coin, both applying a policy of privilege and racial discrimination based on spiritual ideologies for a completely materialistic purpose. Both regimes were/are characterized by discrimination, oppression and territorial fragmentation. Although settlers in both systems constitute a minority, they, paradoxically, act out an oppressive and racist discourse vis-à-vis the majority natives. Whereas the minority of the White Afrikaans in South Africa represents the dominant group maintaining its power from the mother country, the situation in Palestine is more complex and contradictory. It represents the ambivalent discourse of the Jews acting as a minority aiming to be recognized and assimilated in Western civilization on the one hand, and as the oppressive minority vis-à-vis the Arabs on the other. Whereas the Apartheid system advocates the combination of two forms of racism – that is, exploitation and segregation; Zionism, on the other hand, implements a more rigid form of racism – namely, expulsion and exclusion. The "separateness" of Apartheid was justified to preserve the culture of each ethnic group, while the exclusionary discourse of Zionism aims mainly to preserve the "purity" of the Jews. The Zionist concept of the Chosen People "redeeming" their Promised Land on basis of purity is not 196
Conclusion
much different from modern allegations of the "white man’s burden", the "civilizing mission", and the racist superior/inferior paradigm. Thus, we can deduce that racism is deeply rooted in Zionism and it is even far worse than the Apartheid system that was legally declared as racist. Zionism conforms to any definition of racism. Its laws and practices define it as exclusive for Jews. Racial groups share characteristics that are more physical whereas ethnic groups share a common language and a set of religious beliefs or some cultural characteristics. On this basis, Zionists do not consider themselves racists on the narrow grounds that Jewishness is only a religious identity and that Israel welcomes Jews of all races and ethnicities and therefore cannot be racist. In this context, Apartheid South Africa might also be considered non-racist because on the same grounds it welcomes Whites of all ethnicities and grants them privileges above the Black natives. The study concludes that the relationship based on a superior/inferior paradigm that establishes the basis of norms and codes determining the relationship between both poles in Apartheid is much agreeable than the nihilistic relationship based upon neglect and denial of the ‘other’ in the Zionist ideology. However, this study maintains that racism is an act of behavior and attitude against the ‘other’, which is not exclusively based on physical characteristics. Exploring the themes occupying South African Nadine Gordimer and the Israeli Yizhar Smilansky, this study reveals that the relation between colonizer and colonized in both writers is revealed as destructive. The study exposes the traumatic effects that both regimes had and still persist to 197
Conclusion
have on both the colonizer and the colonized. While the former is disfigured as an oppressor, alienated, and disillusioned – solely preoccupied by his privileges, the latter is a victim of oppression and degradation. Excluded from all social institutions, cut off form his own history, and deprived of his own language, the colonized is rendered alienated with a fractured identity and an unresolved emotional dependency. The dehumanization of the oppressed, thus, falls back on the oppressor and finally leads to his own alienation and destruction. The Zionist colonizer in Yizhar's works suffers not only a crisis of consciousness as the White Afrikaner in South Africa but also a crisis of conscience. In other words, he lives in an endless state of interregnum. Whereas Gordimer's characters are lost between the old order and the new order, Yizhar's identities are lost between the old Diaspora Jew and the new Sabra. This study reveals that Yizhar's stories document a perception of failure, which can be attributed to the failure to recognize the "other" and be recognized by him. This in turn leads to the failure of Zionism as a project, a failure that Yizhar's novels seem to predict. Through a postcolonial reading of Yizhar's novels, the Jewish settlements in Palestine epitomize the paradoxical situation and identity crisis of a colonizer imprisoned in his self-identification. In their attempt to integrate themselves with the European mainstream, Jewish settlers sought to create an exemplary Western nation-state in Palestine. Within Bhabha's context of "almost the same", the Jewish state was meant to be like Western states and Jews were to 198
Conclusion
emulate the civilizing mission of the Europeans. The Zionist ideology sought to redefine the Jewish identity and thereby ideology and identity have often become inseparable. This Zionist ideology was to be implemented in two main strategies, first, the negation of the Arabs as the legitimate owners of the land rendering them primitive and backward inhabitants; secondly, the negation of the Diaspora Jew. Along with the exclusionary discourse of negation is the invention of the "new" Jew – the idealized Israeli Sabra – who is meant to replace the passive and weak image of the despised Diaspora Jew. Accordingly, more stereotypes were established to consolidate the idealized image of the Israeli Sabra vis-à-vis the Diaspora Jew and the Palestinian Arab. However, the Zionist politics of negation and exclusionary discourse entrapped this "new" Jew in another psychological dilemma of ambivalence and self-doubt. With a fractured identity, the "new" Jew (being emotionally out of place) questions the legitimacy of the land and, in turn, the values and norms of the Zionist ideology. Yizhar's novels analyzed in this study reveal sense of guilt, spiritual dislocation and alienation as prominent themes which are vividly dealt with through the stream of consciousness of agonized characters. In fact, the Zionist demand for the "new" reveals the paradox and ambivalence inherent within the Zionist ideology. Since the Zionist ideology was primarily based upon the myth of "recovering" and "reclaiming" an ancient land, the attempt to build a Hebrew replacement to Diaspora Jewish culture reveals a paradox in relation to Jewish memory and the myth of the past that this 'new' creation was built upon. 199
Conclusion
This study maintains that the colonial relationship is marked by paradox and ambivalence. It traces this ambiguity in the colonizer/colonized encounter within the Apartheid/Zionist setting and which is, further, reflected in the works of Gordimer and Yizhar. The colonial relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is marked by conflicting opposites wavering between attraction and repulsion, rejection and dependency, the old and the new. Nevertheless, exploring the Zionist scene unfolds upon more ambiguities that could be vividly traced in the Israeli psyche causing a split in its identity. From one point, the Zionist ideology establishes itself upon the revival of the old while, on the other hand, it negates the image of the old Jew and creates a new idealized Sabra. Another discrepancy in the Zionist ideology is revealed while rejecting the Diaspora Jew and, at the same time, identifying with his suffering for Western sympathy. Playing a vital role in the Israeli identity, memory is in conflict between remembering some past while rejecting another. Moreover, the Zionist finds himself fixed within contrasting roles: one of dependence upon the West for recognition and assimilation, while at the same time demands recognition from the inferior Arabs to fulfill his image as a superior race. Nevertheless, it is that same Arab that is rendered excluded and negated in the Zionist ideology. A more problematic situation is his stance vis-à-vis the ‘less pure’ Sephardic Jew reflecting, thereby, a more rigid and racist ideology than the Apartheid. Attempting to build a legitimate relationship to the land that rejects them, both Gordimer and Yizhar adopt an opposing stance to the Apartheid/Zionist systems. However, a closer examination of Yizhar's narratives reveal the 200
Conclusion
dilemma of his conflicting views resulting from the values and ideals that he upholds and the liberal opposing stance that his works reflect. Both Gordimer and Yizhar are nativeborn writers of the colonized land; both depict psychic repressions by unveiling the unconscious that is strongly attached to colonial privileges. Both writers "imagined" a nation to live in; but whereas Gordimer imagined a "rainbow nation" where all opposing groups could live in equally, Yizhar imagined a "pure" nation-state where the Israeli Sabra, in time, would replace the migrant Jew and the Palestinian Arab. Both writers’ literary technique of reversing the established oppositions of colonizer/colonized relationship brings about the paradoxes and contradictions of Apartheid, Zionism and the resulting alienated self. The novels explored in this study highlight the inability of the colonial and postcolonial nations to fulfill the aspirations of their inhabitants. Writing about the Israeli context, Brenner assumes that ‘repossession and revival of the land has failed to create an organic tie with the place’ (74). According to Brenner, this failure is due to the denial of the ‘other’: “the suppressed, or rather neglected realities intervened in the Zionist relationship with the land and prevented a complete repossession” (74). Although the protagonists are physically ‘in-place’ in the land of political power, they are still overwhelmed with the sense of being ‘out-of-place’. Exploring the South African scene unfolds upon an ironic interpretation of independence; the long history of colonialism has ended not with a revolution which achieves authentic liberation, but with an acceptance and coexistence of the racist social ethos. This is further reflected in the character of July as he attains a new form of power and 201
Conclusion
domination within role reversal and, however, achieves no authentic liberation or recognition. Gordimer’s novels repeat the same pattern where the protagonists entrapped within their fixed roles are confronted with an awareness of racial oppression and are forced to re-evaluate their attitudes to the self and the other. The crisis of identity contrasts, thus, with the crisis of conscience in Yizhar’s stories. The role of memory and the past is minor in Gordimer's novels since her stories are portrayed mainly within an imagined future. A parable of the future, July's People defines new relationships of fixed traditions enforced by Apartheid. Gordimer, further, depicts the struggle of the master/slave relationship in context of the revolution that has disrupted and reversed the traditional roles. Through minor images of flashbacks, the reader is informed of the Smales’ life ‘back there’ as perceived by Maureen. The loss of White power and privilege is captured in Gordimer’s comparison between the settings of the “here” and “back there”, the present and the past. Thus, the Smales’ sense of loss and alienation is strongly conveyed through this constant emphasis on spatial and temporal dislocation. Maureen felt “jolted out of chronology” (4) and had the feeling of “not knowing where she was, in time, in the order of a day as she had always known it” (17). Thus, the conflict between the frequent memories of former power and the present ethos eventually ended in Maureen's sense of disillusionment and loss. On the other hand, we have seen how the Zionist identity is constructed mainly upon the power of memory wavering, ironically, between remembrance and rejection.
202
Conclusion
Forms of power in the Israeli setting resemble those discussed earlier in the Apartheid scene; however, the power of language in the Israeli colonial setting takes another form. Power is associated with the Israeli Sabra alone and the only powerful language is that of Hebrew; any other language is marginalized, oppressed and even more, silenced. In her novels, Gordimer tackles the theme of language within the master/slave hierarchy since Apartheid at the time was based upon the superior/inferior paradigm; whoever is in control, adopts the power and mastery of language. The scene, on the other hand, is different with Zionism. As an ideology founded upon the complete negation and exclusion of the ‘other’, the expression of language as a means of power is enabled only in Hebrew. This study highlights the notion of race as a form of power enacted within the colonial situation to discriminate between people for the sake of attaining control and authority. Belonging to a White race or a Jewish race affords its subjects privileges denied to the "other". Language in the colonial setting has proved to enforce a people’s values and culture forcing the subjugated to assimilate and be totally absorbed within the superior culture. Language has proven, yet, to be a form of resistance and struggle on behalf of the ‘other’ as represented in the Indian family Bismillah in The Conservationist and in July's final confrontation with Maureen. Being attached to one’s own language and striving hard to preserve its culture, represents another form of power in the colonial encounter. In addition to language, the colonial subject may exercise power and control through his attachment to the land that either possesses or rejects him. As long as one attains a solid attachment to the land, he achieves 203
Conclusion
another form of power, whether he is the colonizer or the colonized. However, when the oppressed is rendered passive or powerless, nature and land play their role to dispossess the oppressor. By exploring the works of Gordimer and Yizhar, we have seen how language and nature have performed their roles of power and resistance, while at the same time revealing the existential dilemma of their protagonists. Moreover, we can deduce that power could be a virtue and a menace upon its subjects. Failing to adjust within fixed roles of definition proposed by historical claims upon colonizer/colonized, unfolds upon conflicting attitudes: between recognition and rejection, adoption and negation, remembrance and forgetting, the conscious and the unconscious. These contradictions and paradoxes, eventually, lead to the alienation and identity crisis of the colonial subject. Nevertheless, as forms of power vary in the colonial setting; to achieve decolonization or dis-alienation takes various forms as well. Within postcolonial theories, these forms are proposed either in revolutionary violence and resistance, psychoanalytical liberation, in defining new roles, or in hybridity and multiculturalism. Gordimer's novels aspire to achieve higher levels of decolonization which takes into consideration the mental and psychic elements, Yizhar's novels stops short at calling for a complete decolonization. Though his works reveal the psychological sufferings of the Israeli soldiers, especially their sense of guilt, the novels reflect otherwise. They reveal an author who could not detach himself completely from the Zionist ideals that he deeply upholds. However, in spite of the endless racist praise of the Sabras and his pride in the 204
Conclusion
Zionist mission, his novels predict the failure of the Zionist project and seem to foresee the fall of Israel which Elmessiri had so long predicted. Said argues that the "idea of total independence was a nationalist fiction" (Culture 20). On his behalf, Goldberg argues that racelessness represents "a double displacement" (62); it is primarily a displacement from the historical racial definition that has for long been associated with the subject, and a displacement from the insecurities of postcolonial condition that represents the politics of "fear and ambiguity, ambivalence and sense of loss" (“Global” 63). It is this displacement that characterizes the protagonists in Gordimer's and Yizhar's novels. Goldberg further argues that all various forms of racelessness and ethnic pluralism "each served to extend the racial status quo"(53). Accordingly, raceless states indirectly and "silently extend the structure of social arrangements historically fashioned through race" (“Global” 61). Fanon asserts that the dilemma of colonization "includes not only the interrelations of objective historical conditions but also the human attitudes towards theses conditions" (Black Skin 84). To achieve decolonization is, thus, a matter of "consciousness" that involves mental forms as well as physical ones. Thus, the use of psychology in decolonization has a twofold purpose: it investigates the inner effects of colonization on both the colonized and the colonizer and provides tools of resistance through a reversal of roles that subverts the inferiority complex and raises the self-consciousness. To study inequalities and differences is not simply to investigate through mechanisms of exclusion 205
Conclusion
and opposition. It is necessary to identify the process that inequalities articulate social, cultural and political systems establishing Manichean oppositions between dominating and dominated groups in order to reach an ideal form of decolonization. Thus, decolonization entails new grounds of identification and representation. In order to deconstruct the ideologies that fix and eternalize these differences into negative or positive stereotypes, a field of equal recognition is required. In other words, this study argues that achieving a genuine spiritual and material liberation of the self entails primarily a revolution of consciousness. Since South Africa has achieved decolonization (at least literally), one can only hope for the "de-Zionisation" in the Middle East.
206
Works Cited
Works Cited
Abdel Malek, Kamal and David C. Jacobson, ed. Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Print. Abu – Saad, Ismael. "The Portrayal of Arabs in Textbooks in the Jewish School System in Israel". ASQ 29.1 Winter (2007): 21-38. Print. ---. "Separate and Unequal: The Role of the State Educational System in Maintaining the Subordination of Israel's Palestinian Arab Citizens". Social Identites 10.1 January (2004): 101-127. Print. Agnew, Vijay. Diaspora, Memory, & Identity: A Search for Home. Toronto UP, 2005. Print. Akenson, Donald Harman. God’s People: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster. Cornell UP, 1992. Print. Alcalay, Ammiel. After Jews and Arabs: Remarking Levantine Culture. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1993. Print. ---. Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing. San Francisco, 1996.Print. Almog, Oz. The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew. Haim Watzman: California UP, 2000. Print. 207
Works Cited
Alter, Robert. "Images of the Arab in Israeli Fiction". Hebrew Studies 18 (1977). Print. ---. "The Flow". The New Republic 18 June (2007): 51-54. Print. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Press, 1991. Print. Anidjar, Gil. "Literary History and Hebrew Modernity". Comparative Literature Studies 42.4(2005): 276-296. Print. Ansell, Amy Elizabeth. New Right, New Racism. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Print. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Triffin. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge, 1989. Print. ---. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. New York : Routledge, 1998.Print. ---. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995. Print. Bar-Tal, Daniel et al., eds. Stereotyping and Prejudice: Changing Conceptions. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989. Print. Dirlik, Arif. "The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism". Critical Inquiry Winter (1992). Print.
208
Works Cited
Bazin, Nancy Topping and Marily Dallman Seymour, eds. Conversation with Nadine Gordimer. Jackson: UP Mississippi, 1990. Print. Ben-Gurion, David. The Jewish Case before the AngloAmerican Committee of Inquiry on Palestine as Presented by the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Jerusalem: Jewish Agency, 1947. Rpr. Westport, Conn: Hyperion Press, 1976. Print. ---. A Personal History of Israel. New York: Funk & Wagnalls; Tel Aviv: Sabra Books, 1971. Print. Ben-Horin, Michal. "The History of Hebrew Literature in Israel". Jewish Virtual Library, August 2009. Web. 17 June 2009. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/text/b en-horin.html Bernasconi, Robert, ed. Race. Blackwell, 2001. Print. Bhabha, Homi. "Interview with Homi Bhabha: The Third Space". 1990. Ed. J. Rutherford. Identity: Community, Culture and Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998. Print. ---. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print. ---. "Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition". 1986. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post- colonial Theory. Harvester, 1994. Print.
209
Works Cited
Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. Oxford University Press, 1995. Print. Brenner, Rachel Feldhay. Inextricably Bonded: Israeli Arab and Jewish Writers Re-visioning Culture. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Print. Bruce, Ronald. "Of Walls and Bantustans: Apartheid by any other Name". CounterPunch 2 Feb. 2007. Web. 30 Sept. 2010. http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/02/02/apartheidby-any-other-name/ Cabral, Amilcar. "National Liberation and Culture". 1970. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Harvester, 1994. Print. Campschreur, William and Joost Divendal. Culture in Another South Africa. London: Zed Books, 1989. Print. Carter, Jimmy. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. Print. Cartwright, Justin. "Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer: 'I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid'". The Telegraph. 12 Apr. 2012. Web.20June.2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterv iews/9163672/Nobel-laureate-Nadine-Gordimer-Ihave-failed-at-many-things-but-I-have-never-beenafraid.html 210
Works Cited
Chapman, Michael. Southern African Literatures. New York: Longman, 1996. Print. Chaver, Yael. "Outcasts Within: Zionist Yiddish Literature in Pre-state Palestine". Jewish Social Studies: 39-66. Print. Clingman, Stephen., ed. The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Print. ---. The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside. London: Allen and Unwin, 1986. Print. Crossman, Richard. A Nation Reborn: the Israel of Weizmznn, Bevin and Ben Gurion. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960. Print. Davis, Uri. Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. London: Zed Books, 2003. Print. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1986. Print. Derrida, Jacques. "Racism's Last Word".1985. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Jr. Henry Louis Gates, Ed. "Race", Writing, and Difference, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Print. Domb, Risa. The Arab in Hebrew Prose: 1911-1948. London: Valentine & Mitchel, 1982. Print. ---.
Identity and Modern Israeli Literature. London, Valentine & Mitchel, 2006.Print.
211
Works Cited
Du Bois, W.E. Burghardt. "The Conversation of Races". Ed. Robert Bernasconi. Race. Blackwell, 2001. Print. ---. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover, 1994. Print. Dugard, John. “Apartheid: Israelis Adopt What South Africa Dropped”. Electronic Intifada, 29 November 2006.Web. 21Sept. 2007. http://www.electronicintifada.net Edwards, Ursula. "Olive Screiner". Ed. Kenneth Parker. The South African Novel in English. New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1978. Print. El Asmar, Fouzi. Through the Hebrew Looking – Glass: Arab Stereotypes in Children's Literature. St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Print. Elmessiri, Abdelwahab M. The Land of Promise. New Jersey: North American, 1977. Print. Elon, Amos. The Israelis: Founders and Sons. New York: Holt, 1971. Print. Erritouni, Ali. “Apartheid Inequality and Poatapartheid Utopia in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People”. Research in African Literatures 37.4 Winter (2006):68-84. Print. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 1952. Trans. Charles Lam Markman. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Print. ---. A Dying Colonialism. 1965. Trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1965. Print.
212
Works Cited
---. Toward the African Revolution. 1964. Trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1988. Print. ---. The Wretched of the Earth.1963. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004. Print. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1968. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York, 1970. Print. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Ed. and Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1989. Print. Furstenberg, R. "The Man Behind it all". Jerusalem Post February 17(1978). Print. Giroux, Henry A. "Spectacles of Race & Pedagogies of Denial: Anti Black racist Pedagogy". 2003. Ed. Donald Macedo and Panayota Gounari The Globalization of Racism. London: Paradigm, 2006. Print. Goldberg, D.T. "The Global Reach of Raceless States". 2001. Ed. Donald Macedo and Panayota Gounari The Globalization of Racism. London: Paradigm, 2006. Print. ---. Racist Culture: Philosophy & The Politics of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Print. ---. "Racial Palestinianization".2006. Ed. Ronit Lentin. Thinking Palestine. Zed Books: London and New York, 2008. Print. ---. The Racial State. Oxford:Blackwell, 2002. Print.
213
Works Cited
Gorak, Irene. “Libertine Pastoral: Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist”. Novel. Spring (1991): 241-256. Print. Gordimer, Nadine. The Black Interpreters: Notes on African Writing. Johannesburg: Spro-Cas/Ravan Press, 1973. Print. ---. The Conservationist. London: Jonathan Cape, 1974. Print. ---. “The Essential Gesture”.1984. Ed. Stephen Clingman. The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and places. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Print. ---. July’s People. New York: The Viking Press, 1981. Print. ---. "Literature and Politics in South Africa". Southern Review 7(1974).Print. ---. "Living in the Interregnum". 1982. Ed. Stephen Clingman. The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and places. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Print. ---. Living in Hope and History. New York: Farrar Press, 1999. Print. ---. "The Novel and the Nation in South Africa". Ed. G.D. Killam. African Writers on African Writing. H.E.B., 1973. Print. ---. "What Being a South African Means to Me". South African Outlook 107 July(1977). Print. Gordimer, Nadine and David Goldblatt. Lifetime under Apartheid. New York: Knopf, 1986. Print. 214
Works Cited
Halkin, Hillel. "Politics and the Israeli Novel". Commentary April (2004): 29-36. Print. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. Print. ---.
“Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity”. Journal of Communication Inquiry 10.2(1986): 5-27. Print.
---. "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities". 1988. Ed. James Donald and Ali Rattansi. ‘Race’, Culture, and Difference. London: Sage Publications, 1992. Print. ---. “When was the Postcolonial?”. 1996. Ed. Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti. The Postcolonial Question. London and New York: Routledge.Print. Harsch, Ernest. South Africa: White Rule Black Revolt. New York: Monad Press, 1980. Print. Hart, Alan. Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. Volume One. Clarity Press, 2009. Print. Hegel, G.W.F. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977. Print. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. "Race", Writing, and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Print. Hever, Hannan. "Israeli Fiction and the Occupation". Tikkun Jan / Feb. 18.1(2003): 63-68. Print.
215
Works Cited
---.
"Minority Discourse of a National Majority: Israeli Fiction of the Early Sixties". Prooftexts 10(1990): 129-147. Print.
---. Producing the Modern Hebrew canon: Nation Building and Minority Discourse. New York and London: New York University Press, 2002. Print. "The History of Apartheid in South Africa". Student Stanford Education. Web. 27 Feb. 2007. http://www-csstudents.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/a partheid.hist.html "A History of Zionism and the Creation of Israel". Zionism on the Web. Web.20Nov.2009. http://www.zionismontheweb.org/zionism_history.htm Inbari, Assaf. "Towards a Hebrew Literature". Azure Spring 5760(2000): 99-154. Print. Irwin – Zarecka, Irena. "Frames of Remembrance The Dynamics of Collective Memeory". 1994 Ed. Rotberg, Robert I. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print. Isaken, Runo. Literature and War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian writers. Trans. Karl Dickson. Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2009. Print. Jabra, Abdeen and Janice Terry. Eds. The Arab World: From Nationalism to Revolution. Wilmette, I.: Medina University Press, 1971. Print. 216
Works Cited
Jacobson, David C. "Patriotic Rhetoric and Personal Conscience". Ed. Kamal Abdel Malek and David c. Jacobson. Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Print. JanMohamed, Abdul. "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature". 1986/5 Ed. Jr.Henry Louis Gates. "Race", Writing, and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Print. ---. Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983. Print. Keegan, Timothy. Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order. Cape Town, 1996. Print. Kramer, Micheal P. "Race, Literary History and the Jewish Question". Prooftexts 21.3(2001): 287-349. Print. Lentin, Ronit, ed. Thinking Palestine. Zed Books: London and New York, 2008. Print. Macaskill, Brian. "Interrupting the Hegemonic: Textual Critique and Mythological Recuperation from the White Margins of South African writing". Novel 23.2 (1990): 156-81. Print. Macedo, Donald and Panayota Gounari. The Globalization of Racism. London: Paradigm, 2006. Print. Mannoni, O. Prospero & Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization.1968. Michigan UP, 1990. Print. 217
Works Cited
McClintock, Anne. "The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term 'Post-colonialism'". 1992. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Harvester, 1994. Print. Mc Ewan, Neil. Africa and the Novel. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1983. Print. Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer & the Colonized. 1957. Trans. Howard Greenfeld. Boston: Beacon, 1991. Print. ---. Racism. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2000. Print. Meredith, Martin. Nelson Mandela: A Biography. Thomas Dunne: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Print. Mintz, Alan. "Fracturing the Zionist Narrative". Judaism 48.4 Fall (1999): 407-415. Print. ---. "Writing about Ourselves: Jewish Autobiography, Modern and Pre modern". The Jewish Quarterly Review Spring (2008): 272-285. Print. Miron, Dan. "Introduction: A Late New Beginning". 2007. S. Yizhar. Preliminaries.1992. Print. ---. "Modern Hebrew Literature: Zionist Perspectives and Israeli Realities". Prooftexts 1 January (1984). Print. Mishra, Vijay and Bob Hodge. "What is Post ()Colonialsim?". 1993. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Christman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.Print. 218
Works Cited
Morahg, Gilead. (1986) "New Images of Arabs in Israeli Fiction". Prooftexts 6.2(1986): 147-162. Print. Muir, Diana. "A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land". The Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2008. Web. 28 March2010. http://www.meforum.org/1877/a-land-without Naveh, Eyal. "The Dynamics of Identity construction in Israel through Education in History". Ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print. Newman, Judie. Nadine Gordimer. London: Routledge, 1988. Print. Ngara, Emmanuel. Art and Ideology in the African Novel. London: Heinemann, 1985. Print. Noble, A. "The Blues: An Interview". Print.
Ten 81.25(1989).
Nocke, Alexandra. "Israel and the Emergence of Mediterranean Identity”. Israel Studies 2.1(2006): 143-173. Print. Oppenheimer, Yochai. "The Arab in the Mirror: The Image of the Arab in Israeli Fiction". Prooftexts 19.3(1999): 205-234. Print. Pappe, Ilan. "The Bridging Narrative Concept". Ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print. 219
Works Cited
Parameter, Barbara McKean. Giving Voice to Stones: Place and Identity in Palestinian Literature. Austen, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1994. Print. Parker, Kenneth, ed. The South African Novel in English. New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1978. Print. Pinsker, Shachar. "Imagining the Beloved: Gender and Nation Building in early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature". Gender and History 20.1 April(2008): 105-127. Print. Porat, Dina. "Forging Zionist Identity Prior to 1948". Ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print. Prior, Michael. The Bible and Colonialism. Sheffield Academic Press, 1999.Print. Quayson, Ato. Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Print. Rabkin, David. "Race and Fiction: God's Stepchildren and Turbott Wolfe". Ed. Kenneth Parker. The South African Novel in English. New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1978. Print. "Racism". Encyclopedia Britannica.Web. 20 Feb. 2007. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/488187/r acism "Racism". Encyclopedia Hebraica . 1976, vol. 28. Tel-Aviv: Encyclopaedia Publishing Company. Print.
220
Works Cited
Ramras-Rauch, Gila . The Arab in Israeli Literature. London: I.B. Tauris, 1989. Print. Rice, Michael. False Inheritance: Israel in Palestine and the Search for a Solution. London: Keegan Paul International. 1994. Print. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press, 1982. Print. Rotberg, Robert I., ed. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 2006. Print. Rouhana, Nadim N. "Zionism's Encounter with the Palestinian: The Dynamics of Force, Fear, and Extremism". Ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. Print. Ruether, Rosemary Radford and Herman J. Ruether. The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002. Print. Rutherford, Jonathan. Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998. Print. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus, 1993.Print. ---. "Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity". Journal of Communication Inquiry 10.2(1986): 5-27. Print. 221
Works Cited
---. "An Ideology of Difference".1985. Ed. Jr. Henry Louis Gates. "Race", Writing, and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.Print. ---.
Orientalism. 1978. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995. Print.
---. The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestine Self- Determination 1969 – 1994. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print. ---. Power, Politics and Culture: Interview with Edward W. Said. Ed. Gauri Viswanathan. New York: Pantheon Books, 2001. Print. ---. The Question of Palestine. 1979. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Print. ---. "Secular Criticism".1983. Ed. Jr. Henry Louis Gates. "Race", Writing, and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Print. ---. "When was the Postcolonial?". 1996. Ed. Iains Chambers and Lidia Curti. "The Post Colonial Question. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Print. Schwarz, Henry and Sangeeta Ray. A Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print. Seekings, Jeremy. “The Continuing Salience of Race: Discrimination and Diversity in South Africa. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 26.10 Jan (2008): 125. Print.
222
Works Cited
Seidman, Naomi. A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. Berkeley: California UP, 1997. Print. Senghor, Leopold. "Negritude & Modernity". Ed. Robert Bernasconi. Race. Blackwell, 2001. Print. Shaked, Gershon. “The Arab in Israeli Fiction”. Modern Hebrew Literature. 3(1989): 17-20. Print. ---. Hebrew Narrative Fiction 1880-1980. Vol.I. Hakkibutz Hameuchad & Keter, 1993. Print. ---.
Modern Hebrew Literature. Bloomington Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2000. Print.
and
Shapira, Anita. "Hirbet Hizah: Between Remembrance and Forgetting". Jewish Social Studies.7.1 (2000): 1-62. Print. ---. Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Print. ---. New Jews, Old Jews. Tel Aviv, 1997. Print. Shohat, Ella. "The 'Postcolonial' in Translation: Reading Said in Hebrew". Ed. Silvia Nagy – Zekmi. Paradoxical Citizenship: Edward Said. Lexington Books, 2006. Print. ---. “‘Rupture and Return’: Zionist Discourse and the Study of Arab Jews”. Social Text 75 Summer (2003): 49-74. Print.
223
Works Cited
Slemon, Stephen. "Modernism's Last Post". Eds. Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin. Past the Last Post. Harvester Wheatsheaf: hemel Hempstead, 1991.Print. Smith, Rowland, ed. Critical Essays on Nadine Gordimer. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1990. Print. ---. “Masters and Servants: Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People and the Themes of her Fiction”. Ed. Rowland Smith. Critical Essays on Nadine Gordimer. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1990. Print. "South African Literature". Media Club South Africa. Web. 13 Feb. 2006. http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com/index.php?opti on=com_content&view=article&id=107:literature&cat id=35:culture_bg Stevens, Richard P. and Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri. Israel and South Africa: The Progression of a Relationship. Rev. Ed. New Jersey: North American, 1977. Print. Stevens, Richard. "Settler States and Western Response". Ed. Abdeen Jabara and Janice Terry. The Arab World: From Nationalism to Revolution. Wilmette, I.: Medina University Press, 1971. Print. Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. "Speaking My Language: Ngugi Addresses at the 2012 Sunday Times Literary Awards. Books Live. 25 June. 2012. Web. 25 Aug. 2012. http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/06/25/speaking-mylanguage-ngugi-wa-thiongos-address-at-the-2012sunday-times-literary-awards/
224
Works Cited
Thurston, Barbara Temple. Nadine Gordimer Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999. Print. Weissbrod, Lilly. Israeli Identity: In Search of a Successor to the Pioneer. London: Tsabar and Settler, 2002. Print. Weitz, Joseph. My Diary and Letters to the Children. Massada: Ramat Gan 1965. Print. Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman. eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Harvester, 1994. Print. Wright, Clifford A. Facts and Fables: The Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Keegan Paul International, 1989. Print. Yizhar, S. Khirbet Khizeh. 1949. Trans. Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck. Adina Hoffman, 2008. Print. ---. Preliminaries.1992. Trans. Nicholas de Lange. London: New Milford, 2007. Print. Yudkin, Leon I. Escape into Siege: A Survey of Israeli Literature Today. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan, 1974. Print.
225
Summary
Summary The purpose of this study is to trace racist forms of oppression and subjugation in the Apartheid/Zionist narratives. The study compares between the dismantled Apartheid racist system in South Africa and the ongoing Zionist system in Israel/Palestine. The study examines the conflicting relationship of the colonial encounter between both opposing poles of colonizer and colonized through the analysis of selected works of two of the most prominent dissenting voice in South Africa and Israel, Nadine Gordimer and S. Yizhar. Both native-born writers depict the oppressiveness of such regimes and its traumatic effects on the colonial subject and which is further reflected in the identity crisis, existential dilemma and alienation. The novels examined in this study depict abuses of power and their associated moral dilemmas, focusing on the consciousness of the detached self. The study focuses on The Conservationist (1974) and July's People (1981) to reflect the oppressive and racist regime of Apartheid in South Africa. The study compares the Zionist colonial system in Israel with postcolonial South Africa by exploring Yizhar's novels, Khirbet Khizeh (1949) and Preliminaries (1992). The dissertation is divided into four chapters and a conclusion. The theoretical framework of the study draws mainly upon Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. The study explores further through Hegel’s and Albert Memmi’s theories on the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. From another point, the study draws upon Octave Mannoni's and Paulo Freire’s psychological 226
Summary
interpretations in reading the dynamics of colonialism. Chapter one, an introductory chapter, lays some theoretical groundwork providing an overview of the colonial and postcolonial discourse, a definition of terms and a review of the socio-political formation of South Africa and Israel. Chapter two demonstrates an analogous representation of Apartheid and Zionism reviewing the socio-historical background of these two most debated movements. Chapter three examines the novels of Nadine Gordimer in the light of the proposed theories to interpret the colonial relationship in the South African setting. The chapter traces the ambiguous relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and its traumatic effects on both the oppressor and the oppressed as manifested in the selected works of Nadine Gordimer. The fourth chapter of this study is dedicated to an analysis of S.Yizhar's novels reflecting the colonial ethos in Palestine. The chapter reflects the racist setting of the settlers in Israel, their project of nation building, their conflicting relationship with the natives, and their resulting alienation, identity crisis and existential dilemma. The collapse of the "white moral power" that Gordimer revealed in her novels is further unfolded through Yizhar's stories and dissidence. This chapter offers a psychological study of the effects of colonialism upon the colonizer manifested in Bhabha's "inbetween" state and which is marked by his existential dilemma and identity crisis. The study traces these contradictions and conflicts within the context of a changing political and social reality. Exploring the themes occupying Gordimer and Yizhar, this study reveals that the relation between colonizer 227
Summary
and colonized is destructive. It further reveals the traumatic effects that both regimes have and still persist to have on both the colonizer and the colonized. While one is disfigured as an oppressor, alienated, and disillusioned – solely preoccupied by his privileges, the other is a victim of oppression and degradation. Excluded from all social institutions, cut off form his own history, and deprived of his own language, the colonized is rendered alienated with a fractured identity and an unresolved emotional dependency. The dehumanization of the oppressed, thus, falls back on the oppressor and finally leads to his own alienation. This study unfolds upon the racist underpinnings of an ideology so long held as the embodiment of justice and ethics. An ideology founded upon "negation" and paradoxes produces individuals with split identities and sense of displacement. Thus, we can deduce that the Zionist colonizer suffers not only a crisis of consciousness as the white Afrikaner in South Africa but also a crisis of conscience. In other words, he lives in an endless state of "interregnum". Whereas Gordimer's characters are lost between the old order and the new order, Yizhar's identities are lost between the old Diaspora Jew and the new invented Sabra. Accordingly, this study maintains that the reversal of the "Manichean" psychology where the oppressed takes the role of the oppressor is not a genuine solution. There are many whites who have been victims of oppression and many blacks and Arabs who consciously complied with forms of oppression. Thus, skin color or ethnic groups do not necessarily condemn/acquit a whole race. To study inequalities and differences is not simply to investigate through mechanisms of exclusion and opposition. It is 228
Summary
necessary to identify the process that inequalities articulate social, cultural and political systems establishing Manichean oppositions between dominating and dominated groups in order to reach an ideal form of decolonization. Thus, decolonization entails new grounds of identification and representations. In order to deconstruct the ideologies that fix and eternalize these differences into negative or positive stereotypes, a field of equal recognition is required.
229
Nasr, Rania Reda. "Apartheid and Zionism: A Post-colonial Reading of Selected Novels by Nadine Gordimer and S. Yizhar" Ph.D. Dissertation. Women's College. Department of English Language and Literature. Ain Shams University. 2012.
Abstract The uniqueness of the colonial situation and its traumatic effects provide a fertile field for study of the political, social and ideological contradictions within the opposing groups of oppressors and oppressed. A review of the socio-political formation of South Africa and Israel demonstrates a clear racist pattern of colonialism – of political oppression, economic exploitation and cultural subjugation. This dissertation studies the South African and Israeli models and examines the oppressiveness of the colonial encounter embodied in the dismantled Apartheid system in South Africa and the ongoing Zionism in Israel. Comparing the dissidence stance of two prominent writers belonging to these oppressive regimes, Nadine Gordimer (1923- ) and S. Yizhar (1916-2006), this study traces various manifestations of racism in the South African and the Zionist narrative. Throughout a history of oppression by virtue of belonging to a certain race, this study examines the psychological complexes rendered by such conditions as revealed in the works of these two writers within the framework of postcolonial theories. Key words: Apartheid, Zionism, racism, colonialism, post-colonialism, S. Yizhar, Nadine Gordimer, superiority/inferiority complex, oppressor/oppressed, stereotypes.
راﻧﯾﺔ رﺿﺎ ﻧﺻر" .اﻟﻌﻧﺻرﯾﺔ و اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﯾﺔ :دراﺳﺔ ﺗﺣﻠﯾﻠﯾﺔ ﻟﻧﺧﺑﺔ ﻣﺧﺗﺎرة ﻟرواﯾﺎت ﻧﺎدﯾن ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر و س .ﯾزھﺎر" .رﺳﺎﻟﺔ دﻛﺗوراة .ﻛﻠﯾﺔ اﻟﺑﻧﺎت .ﻗﺳم اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻻﻧﺟﻠﯾزﯾﺔ و اداﺑﮭﺎ .ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻋﯾن ﺷﻣس.
ﻣﺴﺘﺨﻠﺺ اﻟﺒﺤﺚ
ﺗﮭﺪف اﻟﺮﺳﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻰ اظﮭﺎر اﻟﻌﻼﻗﺔ ﺑﯿﻦ اﻟﺼﮭﯿﻮﻧﯿﺔ و اﻟﻌﻨﺼﺮﯾﺔ و ذﻟﻚ ﻣﻦ
ﺧﻼل ﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﺑﯾن ﻋﻧﺻرﯾﺔ اﻻﺑﺎرﺗﺎﯾد ﻓﻰ ﺟﻧوب اﻓرﯾﻘﯾﺎ و اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﻓﻰ اﺳراﺋﯾل/ﻓﻠﺳطﯾن .ﺗﻛﺷف ھذة اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ اﻻﺿطﮭﺎد اﻟﻧﺎﺗﺞ ﻋن اﻟﻌﻧﺻرﯾﺔ ﻓﻰ ﻛﻠﺗﺎ اﻟﺑﻠدﯾن ﻟﻠﺳﻛﺎن اﻻﺻﻠﯾﯾن و ﻋﻼﻗﺔ اﻟﺗﺻﺎدم و اﻟﺗﻧﺎﻓر ﻣﺎ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣر و اﻟﺷﻌب اﻟﻣﺿطﮭد .ﺗﺗﻧﺎول ھذة اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ ﺗﻠك اﻟﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﻣن ﺧﻼل دراﺳﺔ رواﯾﺎت اﺑرز اﻻﺻوات اﻟﻣﻌﺎرﺿﺔ ﻟﮭذﯾن اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن ﻓﻰ ذﻟك اﻟوﻗت ،و ذﻟك ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﺗﺣﻠﯾل رواﯾﺎت اﻟﻛﺎﺗﺑﺔ ﻧﺎدﯾن ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر و س .ﯾزھﺎر .ﺗﻛﺷف ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ اوﺟﺔ اﻟﺗﺷﺎﺑﺔ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن و ﻣن اﺑرزھﺎ ﺗﻠك اﻟﻌﻧﺻرﯾﺔ و ﻗﯾﺎم ﻛﻼ اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن ﻋﻠﻰ ﺗﺑرﯾرات دﯾﻧﯾﮫ و ﺧراﻓﺎت ﺳﯾﺎﺳﯾﮫ .ﻓﻰ ظل ﺗﻠك اﻟﻘوة اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣرة و ﻣ ن ﺧﻼل ﻗراءة ﺗﺣﻠﯾﻠﯾﺔ ﺳﯾﻛﻠوﺟﯾﺔ ﻟﻠرواﯾﺎت ،ﺗﻠﻘﻰ اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﺿوء ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻧﺗﺎﺋﺞ اﻟﻣﺗرﺗﺑﺔ ﻋن ھذا اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﻘﻣﻌﻰ و اﻟذى ﯾﺑرز ﺳﻣﺎﺗﺔ ﻓﻰ ﺷﺧﺻﯾﺎت ﺗﺻﺎرع اﻟﺿﻣﯾر و اﻟﻌﻘل و ﺗﻌﻛس ﻣﺷﻛﻠﺔ اﻟﮭوﯾﺔ و اﻻﻧﺗﻣﺎء ﻟﻼرض و اﻟوطن.
ﻣﻠﺧص ﺗﺗﻧﺎول ھذة اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ دراﺳﺔ ﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﺑﯾن ﻋﻧﺻرﯾﺔ اﻻﺑﺎرﺗﺎﯾد ﻓﻰ ﺟﻧوب اﻓرﯾﻘﯾﺎ و اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﻓﻰ اﺳراﺋﯾل/ﻓﻠﺳطﯾن .ﺗﻛﺷف ھذة اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ اﻻﺿطﮭﺎد اﻟﻧﺎﺗﺞ ﻋن اﻟﻌﻧﺻرﯾﺔ ﻓﻰ ﻛﻠﺗﺎ اﻟﺑﻠدﯾن ﻟﻠﺳﻛﺎن اﻻﺻﻠﯾﯾن و ﻋﻼﻗﺔ اﻟﺗﺻﺎدم و اﻟﺗﻧﺎﻓر ﻣﺎ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣر و اﻟﺷﻌب اﻟﻣﺿطﮭد .ﺗﺗﻧﺎول ھذة اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ ﺗﻠك اﻟﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﻣن ﺧﻼل دراﺳﺔ رواﯾﺎت اﺑرز اﻻﺻوات اﻟﻣﻌﺎرﺿﺔ ﻟﮭذﯾن اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن ﻓﻰ ذﻟك اﻟوﻗت ،و ذﻟك ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﺗﺣﻠﯾل رواﯾﺎت اﻟﻛﺎﺗﺑﺔ ﻧﺎدﯾن ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر اﻟﺣﺎﺻﻠﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺟﺎﺋزة "ﻧوﺑل" ﻓﻰ اﻻدب و اﻟﺗﻰ وﻟدت وﻧﺷﺄت ﻓﻰ ﺟﻧوب اﻓرﯾﻘﯾﺎ ،و اﻟﺗﻰ ﺗﻌد ﻣن اﺑرز اﻻﺻوات اﻟﻣﻌﺎرﺿﺔ ﻟﻧظﺎم اﻻﺑﺎرﺗﺎﯾد اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى .ﺗﻛﺷف رواﯾﺎت ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر ﻋن اﻟﻘﮭر و اﻻﺿطﮭﺎد اﻟذى ﺗﻌرض ﻟﺔ ﺷﻌﺑﮭﺎ ﺗﺣت ﻧظﺎم اﻻﺑﺎرﺗﺎﯾد و اﻟﻌﻼﻗﺔ اﻟﻣﺷﺣوﻧﺔ ﻣﺎ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣر و اﻟﻣﺿطﮭد ﺗﺣت ﻧظﺎم ﻋﻧﺻرى ﯾﻔﺻل ﺑﯾن اﻓراد اﻟﺷﻌب ﻋﻠﻰ اﺳﺎس اﻟﻠون او اﻟﻌرق. ﻛﻣﺎ ﺗﻛﺷف رواﯾﺎت ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر ﻋن اﻟﻧﺗﯾﺟﺔ اﻟﻣﺗرﺗﺑﺔ ﻟﮭذا اﻻﺿطﮭﺎد ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﺗﻧﺎوﻟﮭﺎ ﻟﺷﺧﺻﯾﺎت ﻣﻘﻣوﻋﺔ و ﻣﺿطﮭدة او ﻟﺷﺧﺻﯾﺎت اﺧرى ﻣﻔﺗﻘدة ﻟﻠﮭوﯾﺔ و ﻏﯾر ﻗﺎدرة ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺗﻌﺎﯾش ﻋﻠﻰ ارض ﺗرﻓﺿﮭﺎ و ﺗﻧﺑذھﺎ .ﺗﺻف ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر اﻟﻣﺷﮭد اﻟﻣدﻣر ﻣن ﺧﻼل ھذة اﻻﺣداث و ﺗﻠك اﻟﺷﺧﺻﯾﺎت ،ﻛﻣﺎ ﺗﺗﻧﺑﺄ ﺑﺣﺗﻣﯾﺔ ﺳﻘوط ھذا اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﺑﺎﺋس و اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى ﺣﺗﻰ ﯾﺗوﺻل اﻟﺳﻛﺎن اﻻﺻﻠﯾﯾن ﻟﻠﺳﻠطﺔ و ﯾﻘﮭروا 1
ذﻟك اﻻﺳﺗﻌﻣﺎر .اﻧﺗﮭﻰ ﻧظﺎم اﻻﺑﺎرﺗﺎﯾد اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى ﻓﻰ ﺟﻧوب اﻓرﯾﻘﯾﺎ ﺑﻌد ان دام اﻛﺛر ﻣن ﺧﻣﺳون ﻋﺎم ،و ﺗﻌﺎﯾش ﻛل ﻧﻣﺎذج اﻟﺷﻌب ﻣن اﺟﻧﺎس و اﻋراق ﻣﺧﺗﻠﻔﺔ ﺗﺣت ظل اﻟﻣﺳﺎواة و اﻟﻣواطﻧﺔ ،و ذﻟك ﻣﺎ ﺗﻧﺑﺄت ﺑﺔ ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر ﻓﻰ رواﯾﺎﺗﮭﺎ. ﻣن ﻧﺎﺣﯾﺔ اﺧرى و ﻓﻰ ظل دراﺳﺔ ﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﺑﯾن ذﻟك اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟذى ﺳﻘط و اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﻓﻰ اﺳراﺋﯾل/ﻓﻠﺳطﯾن ﺗﺗﻧﺎول ھذة اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ دراﺳﺔ و ﺗﺣﻠﯾل رواﯾﺎت ﻣﺧﺗﺎرة ﻟﻠﻛﺎﺗب اﻻﺳراﺋﯾﻠﻰ و اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ س .ﯾزھﺎر. ﻓﻰ ظل ھذا اﻻﺳﺗﻌﻣﺎر اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﺗﻛﺷف ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ اوﺟﺔ اﻟﺗﺷﺎﺑﺔ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن و ﻣن اﺑرزھﺎ ﺗﻠك اﻟﻌﻧﺻرﯾﺔ و ﻗﯾﺎم ﻛﻼ اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن ﻋﻠﻰ ﺗﺑرﯾرات دﯾﻧﯾﮫ و ﺧراﻓﺎت ﺳﯾﺎﺳﯾﮫ ،ﻛﻣﺎ ﺗﻛﺷف ﻣن ﺧﻼل دراﺳﮫ ﺗﺣﻠﯾﻠﯾﺔ ﺑﻌض اﻻﺧﺗﻼﻓﺎت ﻓﻰ اﺷﻛﺎل ﺗطﺑﯾق ھذا اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى ﺑﯾن اﻟﺷﻌب اﻟﻔﻠﺳطﯾﻧﻰ و اﻻﺳراﺋﯾﻠﻰ. ﺗﻌﻛس رواﯾﺎت اﻟﻛﺎﺗب اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ ﯾزھﺎر ازﻣﺔ اﻟﺿﻣﯾر ﻟدى اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣر اﻻﺳراﺋﯾﻠﻰ ﺣﯾث ﯾﺗﺳﺎﺋل اﻟﺑطل ﻓﻰ رواﯾﺎﺗﺔ ﻋن ﻣﻔﮭوم اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﯾﺔ و ﻗﯾﻣﮭﺎ و ﻣﺑﺎدﺋﮭﺎ اﻟﺗﻰ ﻧﺷﺄت ﻋﻠﯾﮭﺎ اﻟدوﻟﺔ اﻻﺳراﺋﯾﻠﯾﺔ ﻣن اﻻﺳﺎس ،ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾﺗﺳﺎﺋل ﻋن ﺣق اﻟﯾﮭود ﻟﮭذة اﻻرض اﻟﺗﻰ ﺗﻧﺑذھم و ﺗﻘﺎوم ذﻟك اﻻﺳﺗﻌﻣﺎر .ﻣن ﻧﺎﺣﯾﺔ اﺧرى ،ﺗﻛﺷف ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ ان اﻟﻣوﻗف اﻟﻣﻌﺎرض اﻟذى ﯾﺗﺧذة اﻟﻛﺎﺗب ﻟﮭذا اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى ﻣﺎ ھو اﻻ ﺳطﺣﻰ و ﻏﯾر ﺟوھرى ﺣﯾث ان اﺑطﺎل رواﯾﺎﺗﺔ ﯾﻧﻘﺳﻣون ﻓﻰ ھوﯾﺗﮭم ﺑﯾن اﻟﺿﻣﯾر اﻟﺣﻰ و ﺑﯾن ﺗﻠك اﻟﻣﻌﺗﻘدات و اﻟﻣﺑﺎدئ اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﯾﮫ اﻟﺗﻰ ﯾﺗﺑﻧوھﺎ 2
و اﻟﺗﻰ ﺗﻧﻐرس ﻓﻰ ﻋﻘﯾدﺗﮭم اﻟﺻﻠﺑﺔ و اﻟﻌﻣﯾﻘﺔ .ان ذﻟك اﻻﻧﻘﺳﺎم اﻟذى ﯾﺑرزة اﻟﻛﺎﺗب ﻓﻰ ﺷﺧﺻﯾﺎﺗﺔ ھو ﻧﻔﺳﺔ ﯾﻌﻛس اﻻﻧﻘﺳﺎم ﻓﻰ ﻋﻣق اﻟﻛﺎﺗب ﻧﻔﺳﺔ و اﻟذى ﯾﻌﻛس ﺑﺎﻟﺗﺎﻟﻰ ﺳطﺣﯾﺔ ﻣوﻗﻔﺔ اﻟﻣﻌﺎرض ﻟﻠﻧظﺎم اﻟﻘﻣﻌﻰ و اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى اﻟذى ﯾﺗﺑﻧﺎة و ﯾرﺳﺦ ﻓﻰ ﻋﻘﯾدﺗﺔ ،ﺣﯾث ﺗﻛﺷف ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ ان ﺳﻘوط اﻟﺑطل ﻓﻰ رواﯾﺎت ﯾزھﺎر ھو ﻧﺗﯾﺟﺔ اﻧﺷﻘﺎﻗﺔ ﻋن اﻟﺟﻣﺎﻋﺔ و ﻣﺑﺎدﺋﮭﺎ و ﻣﻌﺗﻘداﺗﮭﺎ اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﯾﺔ و ﻟﯾس ﻧﺗﯾﺟﺔ ﻷزﻣﺔ اﻟﺿﻣﯾر ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾزﻋم اﻟﻛﺎﺗب. ﺗﺗﻧﺎول ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ ﺗﻠك اﻟﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﻓﻰ ارﺑﻌﺔ ﻓﺻول .اﻟﻔﺻل اﻻول ﯾﻠﻘﻰ اﻟﺿوء ﻋﻠﻰ ﺑﻌض اﻟﻣﻔﺎھﯾم و اﻟﺗﻌرﯾﻔﺎت ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﻣﻘدﻣﺔ ﻋن اﻻﺳﺗﻌﻣﺎر اﻟﻐرﺑﻰ و ﺗﻌرﯾف ﻣﻔﮭوم اﻟﻌﻧﺻرﯾﺔ و اﺷﻛﺎﻟﮭﺎ و دراﺳﺔ اﻟوﺿﻊ اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﻓﻰ ﺟﻧوب اﻓرﯾﻘﯾﺎ و اﺳراﺋﯾل/ﻓﻠﺳطﯾن ،ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾﺳرد اﻟﻧظرﯾﺎت اﻻدﺑﯾﺔ و اﻟﺳﯾﻛﻠوﺟﯾﺔ اﻟﺗﻰ ﻓﻰ ﻣﺿﻣوﻧﮭﺎ ﯾﺗم ﺗﺣﻠﯾل اﻟرواﯾﺎت .ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾﺗﻧﺎول اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟﺛﺎﻧﻰ ﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﺑﯾن ﻛﻼ اﻟﻧظﺎﻣﯾن اﻻﺑﺎرﺗﺎﯾد و اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﯾﺔ ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﺗﺣﻠﯾل اﻟوﺿﻊ اﻟﺳﯾﺎﺳﻰ و اﻻﺟﺗﻣﺎﻋﻰ و اﻟﺗﺑرﯾرات اﻟدﯾﻧﯾﺔ ﻟﻠﻧظﺎﻣﯾن .ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾﻠﻘﻰ اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟﺛﺎﻧﻰ اﻟﺿوء ﻋﻠﻰ ﺗطور اﻻدب ﻓﻰ ظل ھذا اﻻﺳﺗﻌﻣﺎر ﻟﻛل ﻣن اﻟﺑﻠدﯾن .ﯾﺗﻧﺎول اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟﺛﺎﻟث ﻣن اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ دراﺳﺔ ﺗﺣﻠﯾﻠﯾﺔ ﻟرواﯾﺎت ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر اﻟﻣﺧﺗﺎرة ﻓﻰ ظل اﻟﻣﻔﺎھﯾم و اﻟﻧظرﯾﺎت اﻟﺗﻰ ﺳﺑق ذﻛرھﺎ ﻓﻰ اﻟﻔﺻﻠﯾن اﻻول و اﻟﺛﺎﻧﻰ، ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾﺳرد اﻟﻔﺻل ﻣﻔﺎھﯾم ﻟﻠﻘوة و اﺷﻛﺎﻟﮭﺎ اﻟﻣﺧﺗﻠﻔﺔ و ﺑﻌض اﺷﻛﺎل اﻟﻣﻘﺎوﻣﺔ ﻟﮭل ﻓﻰ رواﯾﻠت ﺟوردﯾﻣﯾر .ﻛﻣﺎ ﯾﺗﻧﺎول اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟراﺑﻊ و اﻻﺧﯾر دراﺳﺔ ﻟرواﯾﺎت اﻟﻛﺎﺗب ﯾزھﺎر و ﺗﺣﻠﯾﻠﮭﺎ ﺑﺎﻟﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ ﻟرواﯾﺎت 3
ﺟوردﺑﻣﯾر .ﻓﻰ ظل ﺗﻠك اﻟﻘوة اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣرة و ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﻗراءة ﺗﺣﻠﯾﻠﯾﺔ ﺳﯾﻛﻠوﺟﯾﺔ ،ﯾﻠﻘﻰ اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟراﺑﻊ اﻟﺿوء ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻧﺗﺎﺋﺞ اﻟﻣﺗرﺗﺑﺔ ﻋن ھذا اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﻘﻣﻌﻰ و اﻟذى ﯾﺑرز ﺳﻣﺎﺗﺔ ﻓﻰ ﺷﺧﺻﯾﺎت ﺗﺻﺎرع اﻟﺿﻣﯾر و اﻟﻌﻘل و ﺗﻌﻛس ﻣﺷﻛﻠﺔ اﻟﮭوﯾﺔ و اﻻﻧﺗﻣﺎء ﻟﻼرض و اﻟوطن. ﻓﻰ ظل اﻟدراﺳﺔ اﻟﺳﺎﺑﻘﺔ ﺗﺗوﺻل اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻰ ﻛﺷف اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﻋﻠﯾﺔ ﻧظﺎم اﻟﺣﻛم اﻻﺳراﺋﯾﻠﻰ و اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ و اﻟذى ﯾدﻋﻰ اﻧﮫ اﻋدل ﻧظﺎم ﻓﻰ اﻟﻌﺎﻟم و اﻛﺛرھم دﯾﻣﻘراطﯾﺔ .ﺗﺗوﺻل ھذة اﻟﻣﻘﺎرﻧﺔ اﻟﻰ ان اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ ﻗﺎﺋم ﺑﺎﻻﺳﺎس ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺗﻔرﯾق و اﻟﻔﺻل ﺑﯾن اﻻﺟﻧﺎس و اﻻﻋراق ﻟﯾس ﻓﻘط ﺑﯾن اﻟﺷﻌب اﻟﻔﻠﺳطﯾﻧﻰ و اﻟﻌرﺑﻰ و ﻟﻛن اﯾﺿﺎ ﺑﯾن اﻟﯾﮭود و ﺑﻌﺿﮭم اﻟﺑﻌض ،و ذﻟك ﻣن ﺧﻼل ﺗﻔﺿﯾﻠﮭم ﻟﯾﮭود اﻟﻐرب ﻋﻠﻰ ﯾﮭود اﻟﻌرب و ﺗﻣﯾﯾزھم ﻓﻰ ﻣﺧﺗﻠف اﻟﺣﯾﺎة اﻟﺳﯾﺎﺳﯾﺔ و اﻻﺟﺗﻣﺎﻋﯾﺔ و اﻻﻗﺗﺻﺎدﯾﺔ .ﻓﻣﻔﮭوم "اﻻﺧر" اذا ﻟدى اﻻﯾدﯾوﻟوﺟﯾﺔ اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﯾﺔ ﯾﺷﻣل اﻟﻌرب و اﻟﯾﮭود "اﻗل ﻧﻘﺎوة" .ﻛﻣﺎ ﺗﺳﺗﻧﺗﺞ ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ ان اﻟﻌﻼﻗﺔ ﺑﯾن اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣر و اﻟﺷﻌب اﻟﻣﺿطﮭد ﻋﻼﻗﺔ ﻣﺗوﺗرة و ﻣﻠﯾﺋﺔ ﺑﺎﻟﺗﻧﺎﻗﺿﺎت و اﻟﺻراﻋﺎت و اﻟﺗﻰ ﺗﻧﻌﻛس ﺑﺎﻟﺗﺎﻟﻰ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺷﺧﺻﯾﺔ و ھوﯾﺔ اﻟﻣﺳﺗﻌﻣر ﻣن ﺟﺎﻧب و ﻛﯾﺎن اﻻﻧﺳﺎن اﻟﻣﺿطﮭد ﻣن ﺟﺎﻧب اﺧر. ﺣﯾث ان اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﻌﻧﺻرى ﻗد ﺳﻘط ﻓﻰ ﺟﻧوب اﻓرﯾﻘﯾﺎ ،ﺗﻌﻛس ھذة اﻟدراﺳﺔ ﺣﺗﻣﯾﺔ ﺳﻘوط ذﻟك اﻟﻧظﺎم اﻟﺻﮭﯾوﻧﻰ اﻟﻘﺎﺋم ﻓﻰ ﻓﻠﺳطﯾن و ﻣﻌﺎﯾﺷﺔ ﺷﻌﺑﮭﺎ ﻓﻰ ظل اﻟدﯾﻣﻘراطﯾﺔ و اﻟﻣﺳﺎواة.
4
ﺷﻜﺮ اﺷﻜﺮ اﻟﺴﺎدة اﻷﺳﺎﺗﺬة اﻟﺬﯾﻦ ﻗﺎﻣﻮا ﺑﺎﻻﺷﺮاف وھﻢ:
.1د .ﺟﯿﮭﺎن اﻟﻤﺮﺟﻮﺷﻰ
أﺳﺘﺎذ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰى اﻟﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪ
.2د .ﻣﺎﺟﺪة ﻣﻨﺼﻮر
أﺳﺘﺎذ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰى اﻟﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪ
ﻟﮭﻤﺎ ﺟﺰﯾﻞ اﻟﺸﻜﺮ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺗﻮﺟﯿﮭﺎﺗﮭﻤﺎ اﻟﺒﻨﺎءة ﻓﻰ اﻟﺮﺳﺎﻟﺔ.
اﻹﺳـــﻢ
:راﻧﯿﺔ رﺿﺎ ﻧﺼﺮ
اﻟﺪرﺟﺔ اﻟﻌﻠﻤﯿﺔ
:دﻛﺘﻮراة ﻓﻰ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰى
اﻟﻘﺴﻢ اﻟﺘﺎﺑﻊ ﻟﮫ
:ﻗﺴﻢ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻹﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰﯾﺔ
اﺳﻢ اﻟﻜﻠﯿﺔ
:ﻛﻠﯿﺔ اﻟﺒﻨﺎت ﻟﻶداب واﻟﻌﻠﻮم واﻟﺘﺮﺑﯿﺔ
اﻟﺠﺎﻣﻌﺔ
:ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻋﯿﻦ ﺷﻤﺲ
ﺳﻨﺔ اﻟﺘﺨﺮج
1995 :م
ﺳﻨﺔ اﻟﻤﻨﺢ
2012 :م
رﺳﺎﻟﺔ دﻛﺘﻮراة اﺳﻢ اﻟﻄﺎﻟﺐ
:راﻧﯿﺔ رﺿﺎ ﻧﺼﺮ
ﻋﻨﻮان اﻟﺮﺳﺎﻟﺔ
:اﻟﻌﻨﺼﺮﯾﺔ و اﻟﺼﮭﯿﻮﻧﯿﺔ :دراﺳﺔ ﺗﺤﻠﯿﻠﯿﺔ ﻟﻨﺨﺒﺔ ﻣﺨﺘﺎرة ﻟﺮواﯾﺎت ﻧﺎدﯾﻦ ﺟﻮردﯾﻤﯿﺮ و س .ﯾﺰھﺎر
ﻟﺠﻨﺔ اﻷﺷﺮاف
: اﻟﻮظﯿﻔﺔ
اﻷﺳﻢ
.1د .ﺟﯿﮭﺎن اﻟﻤﺮﺟﻮﺷﻰ
أﺳﺘﺎذ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰى اﻟﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪ
.2د .ﻣﺎﺟﺪة ﻣﻨﺼﻮر
أﺳﺘﺎذ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰى اﻟﻤﺴﺎﻋﺪ
ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﺑﺣث:
/
2012 /
اﻟدراﺳﺎت اﻟﻌﻠﯾﺎ
ﺧﺗم اﻹﺟﺎزة أﺟﯾزت اﻟرﺳﺎﻟﺔ ﺑﺗﺎرﯾﺦ:
ﻣواﻓﻘﺔ ﻣﺟﻠس اﻟﻛﻠﯾﺔ 2012/ /
/
2012 /
ﻣواﻓﻘﺔ ﻣﺟﻠس اﻟﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ 2012/ /
اﻟﻌﻨﺼﺮﻳﺔ و اﻟﺼﻬﻴﻮﻧﻴﺔ :دراﺳﺔ ﺗﺤﻠﻴﻠﻴﺔ ﻟﻨﺨﺒﺔ ﻣﺨﺘﺎرة ﻟﺮواﻳﺎت ﻧﺎدﻳﻦ ﺟﻮردﻳﻤﻴﺮ و س .ﻳﺰﻫﺎر رﺳﺎﻟﺔ ﻣﻘدﻣﺔ ﻟﻘﺳم اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻻﻧﺟﻠﯾزﯾﺔ و آداﺑﮭﺎ ﻛﻠﯾﺔ اﻟﺑﻧﺎت -ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻋﯾن ﺷﻣس ﻟﻠﺣﺻول ﻋﻠﻰ درﺟﺔ اﻟدﻛﺗوراة ﻓﻰ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺟﻠﯾزى ﻣﻘدﻣﺔ ﻣن اﻟطﺎﻟﺑﺔ
راﻧﯾﺔ رﺿﺎ ﻧﺻر ﺗﺣت إﺷراف
د .ﺟﯾﮭﺎن اﻟﻣرﺟوﺷﻰ أﺳﺗﺎذ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺟﻠﯾزى اﻟﻣﺳﺎﻋد ﻛﻠﯾﺔ اﻟﺑﻧﺎت ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻋﯾن ﺷﻣس
د .ﻣﺎﺟدة ﻣﻧﺻور أﺳﺗﺎذ اﻷدب اﻻﻧﺟﻠﯾزى اﻟﻣﺳﺎﻋد ﻛﻠﯾﺔ اﻟﺑﻧﺎت ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻋﯾن ﺷﻣس
2012
