Friday, 17 March 2017

Assignment - Paper no.(14) The African literature

Name: Hariyani Vaidehi C.

Roll no- 18

Year - 2015-17

M.A Semester - 4

Paper no.(14) The African literature

Email Id: - vaidehi09hariyani@gmail.com


Assignment topic:
 Can the subaltern speak? But are they even heard?


Submitted to:
Smt.S.B.Gardi
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH,
MAHARAJA KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI  BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY,



Can the subaltern talk? is a well-known exposition by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak.


Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak is an Indian researcher, scholar, and feminist. She is University Professor at Columbia University, where she is an establishing individual from Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Considered "a standout amongst the most persuasive postcolonial scholarly people", Spivak is best known for her exposition "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and for her interpretation of and prologue to Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie.

In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Spivak examines the absence of a record of the Sati work on, driving her to ponder whether the subaltern can even talk. Spivak relates how Sati shows up in local chronicles. Spivak shows that the Western foundation has darkened subaltern encounters by accepting the straightforwardness of its grant. Spivak explains on the procedure, the attention on the Eurocentric Subject as they reject the issue of portrayal; and by illusion the Subject of Europe, these learned people constitute the subaltern Other of Europe as unknown and quiet.

Gayatri Spivak moreover specifies the second rate position of third world women, and she utilizes the expression "subaltern" to depict them. She ponders on basically colonized females who are twofold colonized economy and sexual orientation. Furthermore, she makes it clear that there are not two fundamental orders of individuals and countries as colonizer and colonized, yet there is another gathering aside from this, and it is the ladies mistreated by both the colonizer and colonized.  
The harassment of imperialism and patriarchy makes it terrible for the females, thus non-white ladies were quieted and no one can hear them.

Here we are going to analyse the women characters in the African Literature. We know that the colonizers mistreated the male as well as the female natives. Here we will see that the colonized man also treated the women in a bad way along with the colonizers. In recent years we see that the condition of women is improving, but are they really heard?

“Mumbi” – in Ngugi wa Thiango’s “A grain of Wheat”:-
Mumbi is a blameless spectator in all of the misbehaviours. She is sister of Kihika. One might think that being a sister of an activist; she must hold a high place in society. But she is exploited. She becomes a mere victim in this struggle. Kihika is not able to save her sister Mumbi from this exploitation.
Mumbi is raped by Karanja, a British collaborator when her husband Ginkoyo is imprisoned in the British Concentration Camp. Mumbi is left without any identity and she is almost used as a thing for the male; colonised as well as colonizers.  Of course his brother or the male members of that place didn’t try to save her or even support her.  Thus, we can see that she was mistreated by all the colonizers used her and the colonized couldn’t protect her.

The role of women in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart:-
Okonkwo is a well-known wrestler of the Ibo community. He is a man of courage and strength, but what is the courage in mistreating his wife.  The Ibo allowed wife beating. The novel describes two instances when Okonkwo beats his second wife, once when she did not come home to make his meal. He beats her severely. He beat her again when she referred to him as one of those "guns that never shot”.
So we can observe that he has more than one wife. That may be the culture but is the position of women praiseworthy in that society. On one hand the colonizers ruled over them by torture and hard work, on the other hand their own male family members beat them. There is no place for them to complain and to speak. Even if they speak the main question is that are they heard or not?

Desala in “The Swamp Dwellers”:-
Desala symbolises the modern life. She is seen by all the family members as an unfaithful woman. We can’t blame Desala because as a young girl when she married to Igwezu she also must be having some young dreams for her life and when she tried to fulfil all her dreams she is also not wrong. The society doesn’t give her that position of good women. Here we see the role of her own people not considering her as a good person.

The archetypal mindset is same everywhere. When countries like Africa, India etc. were colonized by the colonizers at that time we saw that how the females must be treated. Women were always kept in inferior position by the Patriarchal society. Whether the men are colonizers or colonised or of any position, they keep the women always in periphery.

For example:-
In the play “Hamlet”, we see Ophelia in subaltern position. She is just treated as a thing by her father and Hamlet too. We don’t find her raising voice. Even she raises her voice who was going to listen to her in that patriarchal mindset society.

Another example we can see of Hester Prynne. She was not guilty yet the patriarchal society troubled her a lot.
This was about literature. Now let’s see the real examples of the recent time.

In 21st century we say that the position of women is changing. They are coming in the centre but now of they are coming in the centre then they should be heard.

Are they heard???????

No

The situation is still the same.

With the help of technology we can see now there are many tools available were girls can also share their views. Twitter, Facebook and many social media platforms gives women a chance to post something. There are many ways but are women heard on this platform also. In the past women were getting some kind of punishment of speaking or they were completely ignored. In this time women are trolled if they speak something. There are many examples about this act of trolling. Let’s analyse some of them.


Actress Shruti Seth was trolled on Twitter for making comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s selfie with daughter plan.
She twitted,
“A selfie is not a device to bring about change Mr. PM Try reform. #selfieobsessedPM “
— Shruti Seth (@SethShruti) June 28, 2015
This was her opinion. It is not necessary that all the women like this idea of Selfie. So what is wrong if someone doesn’t agree with others? Especially when a woman speaks something it becomes problematic.

Let’s view another example:-

Zaira Wasim, the young actress from 'Dangal' was also being trolled on the social networking site Twitter. She was forced to apologise publicly after her pictures with Mehbooba Mufti went viral on social media, and the Jammu & Kashmir chief minister described her as a "Kashmiri role model".

The 16-year-old from Srinagar, who was  trolled on Twitter, made two Facebook posts explaining her position. Trolls laid into her and the J&K CM for being "Indian agents".

Spivak in Can the Subaltern Speak talks about how people(Here we can say women) oppressed by colonizers(Present time – The Patriarchal society are not allowed a voice because they do not have importance to be heard.  Women act out in acts of violence to make a point, and no one understands or does anything to change the way the subaltern is being treated today.

Conclusion –

Kyu sach ka sabak sikhaaye
Jab sach sunn bhi naa paaye
Sach koi bole tto tu niyam kanoon bataye
Tera darr, Tera pyaar, teri wah
Tu hi rakh rakh saala
Sadda Haq Aithe Rakh


All the women can speak but they also should be heard. Other males should protest against this type of treatment given by any male to women. All the women have right to speak what they want. Well we don’t know whether anything will change in future or not.

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