Empire

Language and Power

(Crf. Thompson, Maglioni, New Literary Links. From the Victorian Age to Contemporary Times, Teacher’s book, CIDEB, pp. 84-85)

The idea the Empire was rooted in the Renaissance when the foundations of modern Europe were laid. If we look at the ideology underpinning the Empire we can see that firstly it referred to the idea that Christianity was the only true religion, that secondly it was made possible by scientific and technological development, and that thirdly it was based on the presumed superiority of Western culture and society.

But looking at the map which shows the extension of the Empire we can see that another decisive factor in the establishment of the Empire was naval power. The connection between naval power - having a large fleet of good ships - and domination of the globe is made visible in the portrait of Elizabeth. The globe itself refers to another crucial element of colonial power: mapping. (A globe also appears in Holbein's painting The Ambassadors, along with a naval sextant - the principal means of navigation then available.) Here, the representation of the earth's space is crude and inaccurate. So too is the map of the Americas in1492. Indeed the mapping of the globe would be inseparable from the gradual 'discovery' by Westerners of all the earth's hitherto 'unmapped' territories. And it would be a political map, placing Europe as the controlling centre of the world. Thus the British Empire here might be said to be something of a dream of conquest that has not yet taken form.

The important point to stress here is that mapping is always done for the benefit of the colonisers, and presumes that the territory in question is a 'blank space' - a terra incognita, before it is mapped. We can see this in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, when he says that when he was a boy 'there were many blank spaces on the earth.'

Yet we can see how, for example, the Americas before they were 'discovered' were not at all a blank space - but home to many different cultures and civilisations which were then 'displaced' or 'wiped out'.

English literature is full of tales which enact such displacement. In The Tempest, the exiled Prospero displaces Caliban's mother Sycorax as ruler of the island, and makes Caliban his slave, through a combination of the power of his art and language. Remarkable for the time is surely the way Caliban uses the language he is taught by Prospero as an instrument of resistance, anticipating the much later appropriation of English and the English canon by post-colonial writers (See Agard, Walcott, Soyinka, Jamaica Kincaid, Zadie Smith etc.). We also have a sense that Caliban has a knowledge of the isle and its qualities. Yet the fact that Shakespeare makes Caliban, despite his protests, acknowledge the superior power of Prospero's art is surely indicative of a general belief that, in Shakespeare's time the arts and sciences of the West were superior to those of any other culture.

A similar situation occurs in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, only here there is no magic involved. Crusoe masters the island thanks to his resourcefulness and hard work. Indeed he turns the island into a microcosm of the bourgeois property owning society he comes from. It's interesting, however, to note that here the native instantly submits to Crusoe, almost wishing to become his slave. Unlike in The Tempest, here there is no conflict, no power struggle. Crusoe's superiority and right to rule is instantly acknowledged. Friday is thus in a way the projected fantasy of the ideal colonial subject. In a way Friday is as much a tabula rasa as the blank spaces on the map. Crusoe teaches him the rudiments of 'language' as he would a child. Interesting too is the way Defoe in his description of Friday tries to emphasise the aspects of him that are closest to European physiogr)omy. Compare this with Coetzee's 'tongueless' Friday who refuses to learn to express himself, whose silence is a form of resistance to being known.

Essential to both these enterprises as we have seen is the teaching of language. In both cases language is used as a means of government, of control. It is both a way to give orders and instructions. Through language, the violence of colonial power is sublimated in a more civilised form of c6ercion. In this sense we can see that the ideology of Empire is inseparable from a didactic, “civilising” impulse, and yet mantains a necessary supplement of pure racism.