Politics of ‘wonders’ and Colonial Cultural Institutions: V. S. Naipaul’s Half a Life and Magic Seeds

Abstract

In “Signs taken for ‘wonders’” Homi Bhabha deliberates on the effect of colonial encounter on the colonized subjects as a result of their introduction to colonial cultural discourse which he calls the “emblem of the English book”. Thus, how colonizers are able to inscribe their own “book’ or cultural discourse, their own mentality and their own narratives of identity onto the mind and imagination of the colonized is central to postcolonial studies, what this paper strives to find out in the example of Naipaul’s alienated character in Half a Life (2001) and Magic Seeds (2004). This paper argues that there are two species of "wonders" depending on the sort of colonized subjects' exposure to the colonial cultural discourse; one which is effected on the classic scene of colonial cultural encounter and the other one which is effected on the scene of colonial cultural institutions, especially educational ones. Naipaul’s characters make it clear that the roots of the strange fragmented familial, religious, cultural or emotional experience of identity which dislocates, displaces and deracinates individuals from their homes transforming them into wanderers across the international scenes or metropolitan centers lie in the second sense of Bhabhaite "wonders, possessing their soul in their encounter with “the emblem of the English Book”, the sense that effects a different form of response from the colonized subjects.

Keywords

• Cultural Discourse
• Naipaul
• Cultural Institutions
• Homi Bhabha
• Missionary Schools
• Religion
• Postcolonial