Aegis 2015
Children as Perpetrators of the Colonial Project >>> Lauren Edmonds Children are products of their upbringing. They absorb the societal norms in which they are raised, they project promise or fear for the future, and they reveal truths more openly than blustering or blinded adults are able to. In the postcolonial world, this becomes a reiteration and advancement of prejudiced relationships between oppressors and oppressed. The binary oppositions of colonizer and colonized, of master and servant, are taught through generations even as society believes it has moved past the dark past of colonization. Even when each generation incrementally moves toward a more just world, the stigma of the colonial project remains. Fortunately, postcolonial discourse offers a forum for critically examining the cascading effects of these teachings. Texts such as Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People and Claire Dennis’s Chocolat work from the lens of the colonial child to reveal the internalization of power dynamics learned from elders, and subsequently reveal the truth of “post”-colonialism Repercussions of the colonial project have long haunted the Western world. Since Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, colonial and postcolonial literatures have attempted to muddle through the destructive past they themselves created. According to Edward Said, notable scholar on postcolonialism, “Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient [...] The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other” (73-74). The literature that has grown out of this relationship reveals to the world the social, political, and psychological effects that colonization has had on individuals and nations. While the oppressed are the clearest victims in this dichotomy, the oppressors have also suffered significant hidden damages. From superiority complexes, to cycles of abuse, to false relationships with native “subalterns,” colonizers have irreparably damaged themselves in their quest for dominance. Even worse, they pass those values and scars down through the generations. “But why focus on children?” asks Satya Mohanty (315). Colonizer adults certainly hold a fair share of curiosities in their own right. Mohanty cites a biographer of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, for his answer: children are able to enact “the transformation of a small space into a whole world which comes from the intense absorption of a child” (Mohanty 316). An adult may know that there is a world beyond the colonial project. He may realize that life in England or America is different than what he is living as a European or American in Africa, and he also understands that there are parts of the world that the colonial project does not reach. For all his nationalism, for all his commitment to the colonial project, he understands that his daily interactions in a colonized nation are not repeated everywhere in the world. A child, on the other hand, lacks such perceptions. The direct and indirect influences of her colonizing elders must be considered as they teach her
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