7 New English Literatures in the Third World

Saswati Saha

Contents

• Introduction
• Third World English
• Criticism of English in the Third World
• Dilemma of the Third World Writers writing in English
• Challenges Faced by an English Writer of the Third World
• The Counter Argument Presented by the English Writers of the Third World
• A Discussion on the themes of the Third World Literature in English
• Conclusion : Summary of the Module
• Reference

About this chapter 

In this Chapter  we will discuss what does ‘third world literature’ actually mean? We will try to question whether all literatures that emanate from the third world can be regarded as third world literature, or are there some specific markers to determine what we understand by third world literature? We will learn that third world literature has a specific aim of looking into what is really going on in the world and why it has been going on. It is a literature that fights, resists and questions the oppression and representation that the first world subjects it to. Then we will discuss about the English literature in the third world and the debate that surrounds it. We will try to question whether it is at all possible to express the third world sensibility in a language that is essentially foreign.

Introduction:

The term “third world” was coined by a French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy in 1952. He used the term to denote those nations during the cold war who were neither aligned with either the Communist soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc.The history of the third world countries are marked by anticolonialism, war of liberation from the foreign rule and mass movement. It comprises of almost all the African, Asian and Latin American nations of the world. The Third World can be understood “as a time-space of subject formation, necessarily determined by imperialism, colonialism, developmentalism and experimentation with bourgeois democracy and other forms of nation- statehood. Not just a geography with its millenia of cultural history – not, for instance, “India”, from the Vedic past to the neo-Vedic present – but India after its occupation and transformation by imperialist rulers.”

One might define Third World literature as composing the literatures of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—perhaps together with their respective metropolitan diasporas. But this could only work if the category was effectively restricted to works written after the end of World War II. And that still leaves the question of whether Third World literature continues to be written or does it capture the ideology, sentiments and energies of nations struggling for liberation.

Narasimha feels that to lump together black and brown novelists from India, Africa and the islands-in-between under the caption “Third World Literature” is a political solution to a very delicate aesthetic problem.

Fredric Jameson in his 1986 essay “Third World Literature in the Era of Multi- National Capitalism” is of the opinion that “it would be presumptuous to offer some general theory of what is often called the third world literature, given the enormous variety both of national cultures in the third world and of specific historical trajectories in each of these areas.” (Jameson 68) But some scholars are of the opinion that there are a few common denominators like colonial past, rejection of the West, including its canonized literary model and emphasis on canonical revision subverting the present canon. To belong to the Third World is to accept an identity, an identity with the wretched of the earth spoken for by Frantz Fanon, to determine to end all exploitation and oppression.

Third world literature is a literature which is not of the world of the white men. Third world literature claimed to have inherited the revolutionary and utopian aspiration once claimed by a class. It is an antibourgeois literature of a world for which literature itself has seemed to become irredeemably bourgeois. The third world literature is always in a dialogue with the Western World. As Barbara Harlow puts it that it is through the third world literature that the first world is being called upon to assume a certain responsibility– a responsibility not for others, for the other, the Third world, the oriental, or however it chooses to designate the unfamiliar, but for the limitations of its own perspective.

The issue is that of dentifying with “the wretched of the earth” and to learn from  them how to look into what is really going on in the world and why it has been going on thus to learn about our own limitations. Scholars are of the opinion that only when the literature from the third world addresses these issues that they can be regarded as third-world literature. Not all literature produced in this vast geographic area is not third-world literature. Some of them associate with the established literary canon of the west and become only “literature”. The works of those authors who fail to identify with the wretched of the earth cannot be regarded as third-world literature.

Frantz Fanon, in his essay “On National Culture” delineated three stages for the development of “Third World Literature”/culture:

•  Pre-independence Literature: native intellectuals show that they have assimilated the culture of the occupying power; we might cite here negritude literature and the early pre-independence novel in
•  Literature “of just-before-the battle”: the natives are restless. This literature is dominated by humour and allegory. Often, according to Fanon, this kind of literature is symptomatic of a period of distress and difficulty, where death is experienced and disgust too. “We spew ourselves up; but underneath laughter can be ”
• Fighting literature, revolutionary literature: the understanding of the literature is not merely an intellectual advance, but a political advance.Fanon writes that in this period a great many men and women feel the urge of writing national literature, they feel the need “to speak to their nation, to compose the sentence which expresses the heart of the people and to become the mouthpiece of a new reality in action.

Thus third-world literature is implicitly seen as a fighting literature, an opposing literature, a literature which deals with nation building, a literature which negates oppression. Literature that essentially responds to colonialism, speaks up against the colonial oppression often using the literary tools of the oppressor. Third world literature also celebrates nationalism and independence and assesses the new development of neo-colonialism and class consciousness that affects the nations with newly acquired independence.

 Third World English: 

Albeit most of the third-world comprise of nations once under British colonialism, there is no denying that there has been a change in attitude of the speakers of Mother English (British) towards the Third World Englishes perhaps because of the political emancipation of many English using third world countries. Admittedly there has also been a perceptible change in the attitude of the Third world users of English in recent years.

There is a huge debate about whether third world can at all adequately express them  in English which is but an alien language. It is said that creative expression might not be possible when you are using a language which is not your own. It is a case of what Meenakshi Mukherjee will call double complication because it “is written in a language that in most cases is not the first language of the writer nor is it the language of the daily life of the people about whom the novels are written”. 

Apart from dialogue, even in description, narration and reflection, the third world writers in English are dealing with modes of thinking, manners of observation, and instinctive responses of people whose awareness has been conditioned by a language other than English. Yet writers like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer are valued for their politically engaged and racially outspoken writings because they can transform their local experience into universal art.

We also come across such writers who use English for linguistic experimentation. English language and literature has become a sphere of exchange in which writers of all stripes can participate and through which they can exchange ideas about their position, be it political, economic, social. Writers often include native words in their works so as to bring out the cultural essence and ethnic sensibilities that can hardly be expressed in English.

Criticism of English in the Third World

The role of English in the Third World has been debated upon for years. This is a language that was brought down by the colonial rulers to facilitate the governance. Soon enough learning English language became important to get government jobs and to acquire a place of prominence in the society. In countries like India, English language and literature was taught in schools to produce a group of clerks that would facilitate the functioning of the government and revere it for its generosity and benevolence. Paul Brian in his book Modern South Asian Literature in English rightly points out that “people who speak primarily English in South Asia have often been criticized as rootless, inauthentic, and generally unfit to represent their cultures.” (Brian, 4) Similarly, the writers from the Third world are also criticized for choosing English as the medium of their literary expression. Many critics have questioned this category called the Third world literature in English. In fact there have been serious reservations expressed about the advisability of a creative writing in an alien language. It has been said that creative self-expression may not be possible when you are using a language which is not your own. These writers are looked upon with suspicion as if they neither belong to the country of their birth nor its literature. For instance Buddhadev Bose considered that there can be no Indian poetry in English after independence since Bose cannot understand why at all Indian poets be writing in English. (Prasad 12-13) Many critics like M.K. Naik are of the opinion that “unless an art is rooted in the soil, it is bound to be condemned to both superficiality and artificiality.” (Prasad 14). It is for this reason that Third world writers in English are faced with a challenge of expressing their emotions in a language that they cannot call their own. Therefore they have to continuously shape and renew the language to suit the purpose of expressing the native spirit. The Indian English writers are accused of not being authentically Indian or are accused of being anxious to prove their Indianness. Apart from dialogue, even in description, narration and reflection, the English writers of the Third world are dealing with modes of thinking, manners of observation, and instinctive responses of people whose awareness has been conditioned by a language other than English.

Dilemma of the Third World Writers writing in English

Fiction written in English from the Third World has become a matter of profound interest for the rest of the world. The names of authors like Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, ShyamSelvadurai, Chinua Achebe is familiar to anyone with some interest in contemporary fiction. It is because of interest in these works that these often top the bestseller list ending up winning many prestigious awards. Albeit the popularity of the authors writing in English in, from and about the Third world , only a small percentage of the population living in these third world countries can speak or read English with enough fluency.

The criticism against the Third World writers writing in English and the language debate landed many such writers in a dilemma about the choice of their medium of expression. Ngugi Wa Thiongo focuses on questions about the African writer’s linguistic medium: should one write in one’s indigenous language, or a hegemonic language like French or English. Thus, the question of whether or not to write in African languages is a serious one for the African writer, as Oliver Lovesey, a scholar of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, notes. In his book African Language Literatures: An Introduction to the Literary History of Sub- Saharan Africa, Albert S. Gérard writes: “This is the dilemma of the African writer today: either he may use a European language and thus gain recognition (and financial reward) from a worldwide audience, but at the risk of cutting himself off from the very roots of all but the most esoteric creative flowering, the common experience of his own society; or he may use his own mother tongue, stoically shun the appeal of the world market, remain one of the inglorious Miltons of the present age, but help his own people’s advance into the age of mass literacy and pave the way for future achievements and renown”.

For Ngugi language also carries the histories, values, and aesthetics of a culture along with it. As he puts it in Decolonizing the Mind, “Language as culture is the collective  memory bank of a people’s experience in history. Culture is almost indistinguishable from the language that makes possible its genesis, growth, banking, articulation, and indeed its transmission from one generation to the next”. (Ngugi 15) He passionately advocates for the overall development of African languages and their use in African and he famously renounced writing in English.

Challenges Faced by an English Writer of the Third World

The challenges faced by the writers writing in English in the Third World have been aptly summarized by Raja Rao when he spoke about Indian English writers. Rao said, “One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own.” (Prasad, 15) It is because of this choice of language that the writers had to “doubly emphasise” that the spirit is their own. G.J.V Prasad writes in the context of the Indian English writers that, “They have been largely unable to get away from this central fact of their writing, of having chosen to write in a language not native or strongly rooted in any region of their country. Indian  English poetry has always been the poetry of the displaced: a poetry born of the education imparted to the urban middle and upper classes in a largely illiterate and poor and, mainly, rural country.” (Prasad 15). Although Prasad writes this in the context of Indian English poetry, this can be applied to almost all the English writers of the Third World who have been continuously confronting the displacement and trying to situate themselves in the culture and tradition of their country. These writers address the alienation as a result of choosing a foreign language and authenticate their native identity, their commitment to their motherland through their writings. This is largely accomplished by the choice of subject matter, in the use of imagery and diction. Their dilemma is about proving their understanding and mastery of the English language and tradition and at the same time maintaining and expressing their distinct native identity. (Prasad 17) It is through their writing that they construct an image of their native land and in the process indigenize English enough to suit the purpose. This is the means that they deploy to deal with their “displaced” identity. Albeit Vilas Sarang has assured the Indian English poets by saying, “Let the poet be himself, by being himself, the poet, in fact, contributes to the definition of Indianness, for Indianness can only be defined, after all in terms of what Indians are.”, yet a sense of anxiety, an urge to answer the question of national identity is found in their writings. Therefore these writers continue with their project of constructing the nation by addressing the tradition, the environment and their situation in their own country.

The Counter Argument presented English Writers of the Third World

P.Lal remarked at a seminar on Indian writing in English that “the debate about whether Indians can write in English is over”. He sent a questionnaire to 75 Indian poets to find out why wrote in English and most of them said that found it quite natural to express themselves in this language.

According to Sashi Deshpande, “To those of us who write in English, it is neither a foriegn language, nor the language of the coloniser, but the language of our creativity. Whether the writing is rootless, alienated or elitist, should be judged from the writing not from the language”. In fact Mahatma Gandhi once told Mulk Raj Anand, “The purpose of writing is to communicate, isn’t it? If so, say your say in any language that comes to hand.” Raja Rao wants the authors writing in English to develop “our own style which may adequately describe our experience and emotion.”

Chinua Achebe argues that “it is neither necessary nor desirable” for the African writer to write English like a native speaker. He feels that “the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit the new African surroundings.”

A Discussion on the themes of the Third World Literature in English

Some major issues that Third world literature in English mainly addresses are postcoloniality and nationalism, diaspora, subaltern politics, racism, partition in case of South Asia and other such problems faced by a “Third world” nation. The topics largely emanate from the kind of experiences the authors or inhabitants of the regions have. But these are not the only issues that literature from the Thirdworld addresses. Family life, love, marriage, death, war and other such culturally and socially specific issues are also captured in these literature. These are depicted in the manner of everyday experiences and not exoticised or idealized. There is a local reference which not only proves the writers sense of reponsibility to the society he belongs but also adresses the issue of displacement faced by many authors. Thrid world literature “is a colourful kaleidoscope of fragmented views, coloured by the perceptions of its authors, reflecting myriad realities – and fantasies.” (Brians 6) Fredric Jameson claims that “all” Third World literature is national allegory. But Aijaz Ahmad ojects to such a view and points out that “I cannot think of a single novel in Urdu between 1935 and 1947… which is in any direct or exclusive way about ‘the experience of colonialism and imperialism” Afterall the Third World is not a homogenous unit and therefore Ahmad claims that it is beyond the grasp of a single theory. The postcolonial experience of each of the nations are different and unique based on their national cultural identity. These countries have noting in common. Since literature and society go hand in hand and is shaped by social, economical and political foundation of the society. The category of the Third World is based necessarily on the experience that the people had in these regions as against the first and second world literature that are defined by the modes of production. Therefore the Third World literature in not necessarily a “singular formation, possessing its own unique, unitary force of determination in the sphere of ideology [nationalism] and cultural production [the national allegory]” (Ahmad 119). If at all nation is discussed in the English fictions it is often a structural device and not a thematic obsession. The Third World literature deals with various thematic and stylistic transitions, for instance, “a shift from realism to magic realism; from colonial sujection to postcolonial freedom; from homogenous, centralized cultures to decentered multicultural societies; a transititon from the order of law to disorder, guerilla warfare; a transition from nationalism to terrorism, both within the nationa state and cross border terrorism.”

Conclusion: Summary of the Module

Aijaz Ahmed complains that the Western academy has codified the Third World into a unitary archive that includes only the writers whom the hegemonic literary critics of the metropolitan university think suitable. This archive, with the stamp of Western sanction attached to it, in then redistributed to the “Third World” as a monolithic “Third World Literature”. Ahmed takes up the case of English in India and examines the impact it had on class formation.

Ahmed points out that although this literature allows a conversation between writers from different constituencies of the Third world, it is consumed in English or in other languages of the metropolis. He also question whether the literature produced by the immigrant population from the Third-world who are now living in the metropolis can be called third-world literature. The immigrant population experience privileged class position as a result of their location in the metropolitan academy.

As a result of this, a difference develops between the writings that are produced in the actual geophysical spaces of the Third World and the writings of the immigrants in the metropolis. Thus we can see that English literature in the third world is a fairly contested domain. Although there is a large output of writings in English from the Third-world population both residing in their country and abroad, they have to really work towards proving that they truly are the literature from the Third world. Therefore only those literatures written in English that gives us a national allegory can be called a third-world literature encompassing all the live experience of the everyday life of the people of the Third-world.

Thus in this module we have learnt about the kind of “new” English literature that emerges from the Third World. We have concentrated on the kind of arguments presented both in favour and against by theorists, critics and writers about writing in English from what is known as the Third World. We have also briefly looked at the contesting opinions regarding the very category of the “Third World”.

Reference

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• Brians, Paul. Modern South Asian Literature in English. London: Greenwood Press, 2003.
• Gérard, Albert S. African Language and Literature: An Introduction to the Literary History of Sub-Saharan Africa. Longman, 1981.
• Hawley, John C. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. London: Greenwood Press, 2001.
• Jameson, Fredric. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”. Social Text. 15, 1986, pp. 65-88 http://www.jstor.org/stable/466493 .Accessed: 12/10/2011 09:38.
• Larsen, Neil. “Third World Literature”. http://science.jrank.org/pages/8118/Third-World- Literature.html. Accessed: 7/7/2017.
• Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. East African Educational Publisher, 1986.
• Prasad, GJV. Continuities in Indian English Poetry: Nation Language Form. Delhi: Pencraft International, 1999.
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