4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
Postcolonialism, Children, and their Literature
Sayed Ahmad Hashemy, department of Education, Islamic Azad University, Lamerd Branch, Lamerd, Iran. Hashemy.ahmad@yahoo.com
Daryoosh Hayati, department of English, Islamic Azad University, Lamerd, Fars, Iran.
Email: daryooshhayati@gmail.com
Eisa Amiri, department of Education, Islamic Azad University, Lamerd Branch, Lamerd, Iran.
Abstract
This essay discusses whether the term‖Postcolonialism‖ is applicable to the study of children literature or not. As it is clear postcolonialism is regarded as the need, in nations or groups which have been victims of imperialism, to achieve an identity uncontaminated by universalist or Eurocentric concepts and images as a phenomenon of late twentieth-century political, economic, and cultural reality, such definition exempt children literature from being considered postcolonial, however this essay discusses that regardless of the commonly accepted idea of children being exempt from postcolonialism, how some postcolonial elements as being subaltern, victims, colonized and the other to name a few could be traced in books written for children. Yet the core question dealt with is: What do we mean by "postcolonialism" in relation to children's literature? Moreover, through a historical survey of works of children literature as well as a look at cultural products aimed at creating a global brand, it is further discussed how culture bound children literature is and why its engagement with contemporary issues of each epoch approves postcolonialism as suitable rather than odd for the contemporary period due to its concentration on the most prevalent issues of the age as globalization, Eurocentrism and identity crisis.
Keywords: postcolonialism, subaltern, the other, peripheral and Eurocentrism.
Introduction
Children are the subaltern and simply to speak of them in the context of postcolonialism is to raise a contradiction: postcolonialism and children. If we think of postcolonialism as a phenomenon of late twentieth-century political, economic, and cultural reality, then children 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
are to a great extent exempt. It is true that children's rights interest us, and that, as Gareth Matthews points out, "our society is moving slowly in the direction of assigning rights at an earlier and earlier age" (80). Having remarked this, it must be added that children remain the most colonialized persons on the globe. This is apparent even in the literature labeled for them. As Jacqueline Rose pointed out in a comment on J. M. Barrie's The Little White Bird, the literature published for children is "a way of colonizing (or wrecking) the child" (27). Perry Nodelman argues something similar when he applies Edward Said's notions of "Orientalism" to the study of children and their literature, and it is this colonizing tendency of both the literature for children and the adult criticism of that literature that Peter Hunt opposes when he calls for a "childish" reading of children's literature (Hunt, p.192-94). So the first thing to be clear on is just how deeply colonizing are the activities of writing for children and commenting on children's books and to which extent can children literature be regarded as postcolonial.
These activities are so colonizing that one might say, as Nodelman does, that none can escape the role of colonizer. Speaking of their own "imperial tendencies," Nodelman admits: "in order to combat colonialism, I am recommending a benevolently helpful colonizing attitude towards children" (Nodelman, p. 34). If we conclude with Nodelman and Rose that both the writing about children's literature and the writing of it are colonialist, then it could be concluded that no such thing as a postcolonial children's literature or a postcolonial criticism of it exists.
While the above idea seems theoretically true, critics who study children's literature have found that children literature and what has been written for them adheres closely to a culture's notion of what a child is—a notion that may change considerably from epoch to epoch. To make the idea tangible many critics traced the history of children literature dealing with the most current issues of each epoch. As discussed below, as far as the issues of the age children literature has been concerned with in previous centuries indicates, it seems that the cultural issues as identity, hybridity, diaspora and generally postcolonialism as the most outstanding current issues of our time are not also relevant to literature for children, but also as it appeals to logic such issues are essential.
As Anne Scott MacLeod has shown, the nineteenth century opened with a prevailing belief in a rational but imperfect child and moved to the Romantic idea of childish purity and innocence. When late eighteenth-century popular cultures were dominated by religion, either 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
Catholic or Protestant, notions about the nature of children were grounded in the doctrine of Original Sin. As a result, literature written for children, which became considerable in the first half of the nineteenth century, consisted of "moral tales" designed to instruct children in proper behavior and codes of conduct, the most important of which was obedience to one's parents and God. Consequently, most of the authors were devout Protestants—especially women concerned with the instruction of children, including most notably Anna Letitia Barbauld and Maria Edgeworth.
The gradual blending of these various currents allowed for the prevalence of a hybrid creature in the 1860s, the beginning of the "golden age" in children's literature, when it became common for children's verse and novels to offer a "sugared pill"—a lesson imbibed through entertainment. Lewis Carroll marked the extreme in playful entertainment with the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. By the end of the century, fantasy and adventure novels dominated the market, defined by Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, and Louisa May Alcott, among others. Although inexpensive adventure novels known as "shilling shockers" or "penny dreadfuls" drew some fire for their sensationalism, they still served an instructional function, as contemporary critics have shown. Recently, several critics have examined in particular how this prolific genre taught children socially accepted gender roles and proper codes of conduct.
The didactic contributions and innovations of the 19th century continued into the 20th century, achieving a distinct place in literature for children's books, and spawning innumerable genres of children's literature. Yet in the case of the social and cultural reflections in the 20th century, it was not until the 1960s that "socially relevant" children's books have appeared, treating subjects like death, drugs, urban crisis, identity crisis, discrimination, the environment, and women's liberation to name some of the most frequently reflected themes. S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders (1980) and Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese (1977) are two works that offer vivid portrayals of the sometimes unpleasant aspects of maturing. These books also reveal the trend toward a growing literature for teenagers. Other novelists that write convincingly of growing up in contemporary society include Ellen Raskin, Judy Blume, and Cynthia Voigt.
As the brief historical review of children literature in previous centuries indicated, children literature, as a result of being mostly written by adults, is culture and social bound and 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
therefore applies the most prevalent ideas, attitudes and views of its time. As many works of children literature both written or translated to English, for example the Little Black Fish by Samad Behrangi, the 20th century Iranian short story writer represents ideas as freedom, identity, existential dilemma, diaspora, nonconformity and cultural issues of the time, so it can be assumed that the term "postcolonial" designates a time after imperial powers have departed (in one way or another), and that the postcolonial voice is a voice speaking its own authority and identity in confidence of that authority and identity, then children only express a postcolonial voice after they have ceased to be children. Adults speak for and construct versions of children, so their identity and existence is shaped by them.
On the whole, however, adults continue to "colonize" young readers. Children, then, may not be in the position of postcolonial subjects, speaking for themselves and taking responsibility for their own actions. The literature which they read may also participate in a colonizing" enterprise if it is assumed that it sets out to draw its readers into the world as adults see it and construct it. On the other hand, the postcolonial critics are not to set out to de-colonize children; rather they try to clarify how children's literature and the criticism of that literature manifest the powerful force of Eurocentric biases and in doing so the critics try to dismantle that powerful force. And yet the earlier mentioned contradiction takes another twist: children and their literature are always postcolonial, if by postcolonial it is meant that which stands outside and in opposition to tradition and power.
Methodology
This study is based on postcolonial critics like Said, Bhabha, Fanon and Simon During combined with the critics in children literature as Peter Hunt and Bannerji so as to show that children literature from a postcolonial prospect includes the same elements as hybrid identity, Eurocentrism, subaltern, Otherness to name a few just in the same way as adult literature does.
Findings and Discussion
Not only in the case of literature but also in many other cases children are subjected to colonialism. The term‖ cultural policy‖ is one of the dubious ones. While such policy is called ―cultural policy‖ by diplomats and those seeking to maintain good relations with culture workers (i.e. writers, theatre people, composers, artists), a less considerate or more cynical term used by marketers is ―nation branding‖. Branding is now a buzzword in marketing, in the era of cultural diplomacy, the use of the term has shifted from products such 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
as Coca-Cola, or services such as those offered by McDonalds, to the cultural exports of individual countries, and their reputations, as animations produced mainly by companies as the Walt Disney. Taneja summarizes this approach as ―giving products and services an emotional dimension with which people, especially children can identify‖ (Taneja, 2006, p. 2). While it may be difficult for those working in literary and cultural fields to imagine the emotional dimensions of Coca-Cola or of a McDonalds hamburger or of an animation, it is a fact that marketers try to achieve such an impact by telling stories, i.e. engaging their clients through narratives closely related to literature and culture. This is also where literature comes in while the bitter fact is that such products are mainly meant to address children as their global subject through making their products as global brands.
From the mid-1990s on, new marketing strategies for products have moved away from disseminating the same standardized glossy images throughout the world. Instead of selling products in the same way to every culture, marketers have turned to narrative, to finely-tuned story-telling, carefully adapted for individual cultures, for specific audiences, with specific cultural backgrounds and beliefs with stories that may only tangentially relate to the product especially for children who are ready to accept whatsoever they have been told in form of stories or narrative poetry.
Moreover, much of the neocolonial trend is done through translations to the target market’s languages. The negative aspects may not seem so important at the first glance, but a close attention on the cultural, religious and such effects of translations that usually make a role model for children remains long, the effects of some of which are lifelong. Such a trend facilitates the idea of Eurocentrism, hegemony and neo-imperialism to name a few through shaping global images all of which serve the superiority of the West and self negation among children. In other words, the translating culture is as much, if not more, involved in the selection of the foreign materials it wishes to have circulated and read as any neo-colonialist force providing the funds to make this possible. The above trend can be of oppressive, repressive and in some cases even abusive contents imposed on helpless children readers, all aimed at superimposing the superiority of the West to pave way for the neocolonial tasks.
As earlier discussed, cultural policy consists of at least two basic strands: the export of culture for ideological purposes, and the export of culture for trade initiatives through making images of role models. They are connected and overlapping – but while the first generally includes translated literature and sometimes addresses its importance, the second (the image making approach) avoids the topic of translation. Indeed, though nation branders know the 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
value of story-telling, they try to tell their stories through picture books (for children as their target markets). They may have a point, as many post-colonial studies have revealed.
In a recent book on post-colonialism, Changing the Terms. Translating in the Postcolonial Era (Simon and St-Pierre 2000), Sherry Simon begins her introduction with an anecdote about the literary texts available in the ancestral home of the Indian writer, Amitav Ghosh, when he was a child. These were works of European children literature, all translated into Bengali, a collection of books that could be found in much the same form in all corners of the (then) British Empire. They represented, on the one hand, the children’s access to the European world of letters, and, on the other, they were the physical representation of a certain canon of recognized works, ―identifying imperial tastes in genteel settings‖ (p. 9). In Simon’s words, as texts that came from outside for example, Indian culture, they served ―the imperialist, Orientalizing cause‖:
―Much of what has been called post-colonial theory in recent years, and applied to the translation of literature, takes a dim view of translation. Translation has been accused of deliberate misrepresentation for the purposes of marketing, much of the translated stories for children has been seen as imposing colonial texts as the norm, to the exclusion, denigration and stereotypification or Orientalization of local culture‖. (Simon, 2000 p.123)
The American citizens who produced the document behind the very recent American Global Cultural Initiative certainly do not see the translation of literature as a nefarious form of neo-colonialism; they simply say that ―culture matters‖ and that ―cultural diplomacy reveals the soul of a nation‖. For them, cultural diplomacy via the translation of literature is a strategy that can restore the view that America is a beacon of hope rather than a ―dangerous force to be countered‖, while at the same time serving to broaden the horizons of the reading public of the United States.
Although children and their literature are not inevitably outside a Eurocentric vision of things, they do represent a challenge to the traditions of mainstream culture. Simply to acknowledge children and their literature in a journal such as ARIEL is a postcolonial act; it is a gesture toward re-conceiving the canon and toward redefining what academic and professional criticism does and says. In this sense, children's literature benefits from the expanded field of inquiry that is an aspect of cultural studies. If, as earlier discussed, certain genre films or certain forms of graphic art such as the comic books, translated books, picture books and cartoons are considered seriously, then we can rest fairly easy taking books for children seriously. However one cannot get away from contradiction: when we take children's 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
books seriously as an object of study, we initiate the very colonizing of the field that that field had seemed to resist. In short, the notion of "postcolonialism" in relation to children's books requires some organization. What do we mean by "postcolonialism" in relation to children's literature? Here's a controversial question. As others have noted, "postcolonial" now serves to mean many things to many people. Postcolonialism is a site of debate as much as it is anything else. Stephen Slemon, in an earlier number of ARIEL, notes that:
"the attributes of postcolonialism have become so widely contested in contemporary usage, its strategies and sites so structurally dispersed, as to render the term next to useless as a precise marker of intellectual content, social constituency, or political commitment" (Slemon,1995, p.8).
More recently, Shaobo Xie argues that no such a thing as an "'uncontaminated' or 'indigenous' postcolonial theory" exists (Xie, 1997, p.7). What is of central importance Xie finds in Simon During, who writes:
post-colonialism is regarded as the need, in nations or groups which have been victims o f imperialism, to achieve an identity uncontaminated by universalist or Eurocentric concepts and images. (Xie, 1997, p.7 ) .
Xie, speaking in a general sense, remarks that "postcolonialism represents an urgent need and determination to dismantle imperial structures in the realm of culture" (Xie, 1997, p.15). The tension here resides in the inability of these descriptions of postcolonialism to account for children who are a group well practiced in colonial attitudes, and who hope to grow out of their colonial positions through accommodation to their colonial "elders." Children are always marked by (contaminated by) the attitudes of an older generation. This older generation might encourage children to speak, but it does so expecting them to speak its words, to pass on its wisdom, to perpetuate its vision of the world. The subject of children's literature in the quotation from Xie is the notion of cultural multiplicity. Children may not speak their own literature, but we can assure that the literature they read comes to them in the fullness of the cultural situation of the late twentieth century. It can, for example, be acknowledged that a novel such as Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy (1994), set in Sri Lanka, is a "welcome contribution to … literature" (the quotation derives from the Globe and Mail and appears on the back cover of Selvadurai's novel). A similar example is Althea Trotman's How the East Pond Got its Flowers ( îggi ) , a Canadian picture book for children, set in Antigua during the time of slavery. In other words, we can introduce our children to works of 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
literature that represent the range of cultural experiences and histories that make up the national and international communities that touch all of us. This is one aspect of postcolonial studies: breaking the hold of the great traditions that have dominated the study of English literatures since the rise of English studies during the heyday of British imperialism. We have arrived at a consciousness that, as Charles Larson argues:
when we try to force the concept of universality on someone who is not Western . . . we are implying that our own culture should be the standard of measurement (Larson, 1999. p.64).
In fact as Leslie Kant notes on the importance of early reading on attitudes and behavior in her foreword for a Schools Council publication, not only is not it too soon to make children aware of what the existing circumstances are, but also the idea of making children aware of their true identity and their cultural circumstances is of priority over mere entertainment:
It is never too soon to start thinking about the ways in which attitudes may be influenced by reading'. Most teachers would argue, it says, that apart from the acquisition of language, the major role of fiction is to encourage children to explore relationships and to develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior and that of others, and the images that children encounter when reading are a powerful means of shaping such thinking and behavior. If, as the Bullock Committee states above, fiction has a major role in encouraging children to explore relationships and to develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior and that of others, then children's stories based on folktales do much more than 'open vistas of beauty, adventure, and splendor in the bewildered minds of children with their mystic and dreamlike qualities. ( Bullock, 1975, p 2)
In addition to Leslie Kant’s view, some other critics also agree that children must be exposed the facts, especially those historical ones that has shaped their ancestors’ identity, so as to help construct their identity. In such case texts giving them an awareness of their cultural diversity so as to help shed light on their future existence are of utmost importance. Conforming to this idea, Staples states:
Hunting for History: Children's Literature Outside, Over There, and Down Under," points out how persistent is the tendency to see even the literatures of such postcolonial countries as Canada and Australia in terms of Western European and American traditions. Indigenous voices and diasporic voices 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
continue to speak from the periphery of what Zohar Shavit refers to as the "literary poly-system. (Staples, 1989 , p.12)
If we locate the term "postcolonial" in the period of national independence movements arising with greater urgency after World War II and the Korean War than they did prior to these wars, then at least one of the texts featured in these pages will appear anomalous: Burnett's The Secret Garden, considered in Michael Cadden's article. Here is a decidedly "colonial" book, but one we need to examine from a postcolonial perspective. Just as Said has taught us to read early texts by the likes of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens for their evocations of a colonial mind-set, so Cadden teaches us to look for a similar mind-set in Burnett. John Ball does the same for our understanding of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, also noted as an "imperialist" text by Michael Joseph in his essay on Achebe, and June Cummins does something similar in her treatment of the Curious George books. Our current awareness of cultural diversity within political and economic borders goes some way to readjusting the manner in which we read such familiar texts as The Secret Garden or Where the Wild Things Are or the books about Curious George. E. B. White's Charlotte's Web. Is discussed by Sidhwa quoting from a student who was given the task to read and discuss their idea this way:
In Charlotte's Web, the reader meets many animal groups on the Zuckerman farm; the animals face other animals very different from themselves. Each animal comes to recognize and accept the other animals' cultures. The animals accept one another because they acknowledge the others' perspective, habits, and feelings. In short, they accept the "culture" of the other animals, and they attempt to understand creatures different from themselves. Because children identify with animals, this kind of literature (i.e., animal fantasy) can show that the different cultures in the animal's world are similar to the different cultures in the humans' world. In education today, children are faced with classrooms full of children from many different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Through literature, we can introduce the concept of cultural diversity, and facilitate an understanding and acceptance of this diversity. (Sidhwa, 1993, p.15)
They lengthy quotation above is to indicate how this student's focus on Charlotte's Web derives from the perspective of their cultural moment. She is, in effect, using a postcolonial perspective to read what it is a deeply colonialist book. It is argued that the farm with its 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
various animals served as an allegoric reminder of America's great melting pot. My argument would have attached this book to the traditions of American populism and agrarianism; it presents an idyllic vision of just how America brings a disparate group of people together and forges a homogeneous culture. Lynn, however, sees another model at work in Charlotte's Web, the model of multiculturalism. If the book is multicultural, this does not necessarily mean it is postcolonial. But Lynn's reading is itself a sign of a kind of reading which can be called postcolonial because it partakes of the ideological urge to read texts within our cultural moment and to argue for the rights of diversity and for what Charles Taylor calls "a regime of reciprocal recognition among equals" (p.50).
One aspect of postcolonialism, then, identifies a revisionary reading of canonical texts that articulates how these texts construct worlds. Graeme Harper, Clare Bradford, and Robyn McCallum take up this subject in their essays in the pages that follow. The books we read inevitably construct versions of the world and its various peoples, and we need to understand just how these constructions influence our notions of what we have become accustomed to refer to as the "other." Difference, diversity, otherness—these are watchwords when we come to examine
any world construction. Canonical texts such as The Secret Garden or Where the Wild Things Are or Charlotte's Web—tend not to foreground issues of difference; rather the notions of difference remain a backdrop hardly impinging on our consciousness. We tend to take difference and the privileging of one group over another as natural. Postcolonial reading uncovers the construction of cultural identity. More recent and directly postcolonial texts bring difference into the foreground and by doing so they remind us just how unnatural the division of human beings into hierarchical groups is. Works such as Selvadurai's Funny Boy or Himani Bannerji's Coloured Pictures confront us with racial diversity and the agony that can accompany decolonization. As Raj Rao's article in this issue points out, Selvadurai illustrates just how the colonial mentality that often surfaces as racism works its way into gender relations, both heterosexual and homosexual. Part of the postcolonial enterprise is a liberation from the diminishing placement of people according to their racial origins, their religious beliefs, their gender, or their sexual preference. The relationship of an individual to a group marks the beginning of the colonial process, as the novels of Emecheta indicate. Rose Mezu's schizoanalytic analysis of two of Emecheta's novels points up this continuing tension between individual desire and group cohesion. My mention of fiction by Emecheta, Selvadurai, and Bannerjii raises another problem: the definition of children's literature. Clearly, the publishing and marketing of the books by Emecheta and Selvadurai differ from 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
the publishing and marketing of Bannerji's Coloured Pictures. And a glance through the table of contents to this issue will indicate that the "children's literature" examined in these various articles comprises books clearly targeted at a very young readership, at books for the "middle" years, and at books accessible to adolescents. The most difficult area is the last. Publishers now explicitly label certain books as "young adult," and we have books placed in such sections in book stores. But books such as Funny Boy or The Bride Price are not marked off for such a specialized readership; some will argue that they are not what we mean when we refer to "children's literature."And yet they not only concern childhood and adolescence, they are also important for young readers. Their content offers important experience for young readers. They deal with difficult issues both relevant and accessible to young readers; such themes as social, national, and sexual identity are referred to as colonial. In short, a novel such as Funny Boy deals with growing up, and the problems and anxieties attendant upon growing up that this book presents are not in any way inaccessible to an adolescent readership.
The question as to what makes a work of literature suitable for children remains vexed. And authors continue the vexation in their choice of creative work for this issue. Clearly, a poem such as Shirley Geok-Lin Lim's "Presumed Guilty," participates in the textual web of folklore and fairytale, but it does so in the revisionar)' and haunting manner of Sexton's Transformations. And Lim's "The Rebel" speaks from the point of view of an adolescent (like M . Nourbese Philip's "The Bearded Queen," an extract from her Young Adult novel-in-progress), but it seeks an audience that crosses generations. Poems such as Rienzi Crusz's "Distant Rain," Lynne Fairbridge's "I Do Not See Them Here," Claire Harris's "Tower Power," Richard Harrison's "speaking of voice (identity[politics])," and Richard Stevenson's "Homo Sapiens Strut" speak across age lines, but are clearly not inaccessible to young readers. Some of these poems have strong political voices; we might argue that political work offers young readers an important perspective from which to view the world into which they are growing. In other pieces, we move into experiences that depend upon age and maturity; but who is to say young readers ought not read of an older person's coming into realization. The experience of understanding knows no age limit. What many of the speakers of these poems confront is identity. Identity is at the heart of the matter. Just what does this familiar and over-worked word mean? Is "identity" some Keatsian afflatus derived from an act of anti-self-consciousness? Do human beings have an "identity" in common? Does "identity" take shape from social, cultural, and political realities? Does "identity" derive from blood ties to specific groups? Can any "identity" follow from an act of liberation untying the individual 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
from ideological forces which seek to corner him or her at every turn? Can such a thing as a "postcolonial condition" exist? The essays in this issue of ARIEL seek to investigate such questions. They provide intriguing forays into relatively new territory, but of course they do not provide definitive answers. The best they can hope to do for us is unblind our ears to the global reality in which that which we have taken for granted for so long—the Eurocentric vision of things—can no longer smugly assume primacy of value in the human community. Postcolonialism is a manifestation of the desire for the acceptance and understanding of otherness, and as such it has a logical affinity with children who seem to strive for recognition. The contradiction lies in the desire of children to join the group that holds authority over them. The desire is always and ever to become the other.
Many postcolonial critics disagree the use of the term “postcolonial” to discuss the reactions of people from former colonies to the imperial influences in their culture, As an example K. Singh proposes the term ―post independence" K. Singh argues that the term postcolonial places emphasis on the political, economic, social, and cultural subjugation of a nation's spirit of nationalism, freedom, and heroic struggle against foreign oppression. Rod McGillis in his editorial note looks at the relationship between postcolonialism and children's literature and children's literature in postcolonial societies. I want to address briefly some aspects of the "postcolonial," this contentious term that Singh and many others in "postcolonial" societies find troubling. Singh's comments makes me reflect on my recent editorial for the postcolonial issue of Bookbird, in which I trace my colonial heritage—my British-style schooling, the conflict between Western and Indian values, the clash between school and home. Had the term "postcolonial," which leads to "colonial constructs" and "imperial nostalgia," according to Singh, prompted me to focus on my experiences at Auckland House School, in Simla? Would the term "post independence" have made me stress my nationalistic side, my fierce pride in being the first member of my family to be born i n a free India—one of Rushdie's "midnight's children"? Would I then have focused on my enjoyment as a child in reading the biographies of freedom fighters like the Rani of Jhansi, Bhagat Sing, Gandhiji, Subhash Chandra Bose, and Jawaharlal Nehru? This aspect of my upbringing infused in me no confusion of values, no contradiction of loyalties and motives; rather, it was an empowering moment to grow up in the "new" India. The message of our leaders was that the young (women in particular) needed to throw off the shackles of the past, to become educated and forward-looking, to seize the untold opportunities in this new reality. 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
However, my ambivalence should not be mistaken for insecurity or disharmony. What I find lively about postcolonial discourse (whether of children's or adult literature) is that it is no longer a confrontation between colonial versus nationalistic." A blurring of boundaries is occurring as writers and scholars —both Western and non-Western—explore the contradictions and complexities of the postcolonial global situation. This has come about through changes in global politics, economy, trade, cultural exchange, and immigration policies.
Postcolonial literature covers a vast canvas and is essentially idealistic in nature as it attempts to right the wrongs of the past. If colonial literature was characterized by imperial propagation of the ideology of supremacy over the colonized races, postcolonial literature re-evaluates colonialism for its hypocrisy and self-serving racist attitudes. If colonial literature perpetuated stereotypes of backwardness, of barbaric and uncivilized peoples through narrative, characterization, and themes, postcolonial discourse counters this by recognizing achievements in the arts and sciences and contributions to technology and culture. It is the story of the "other." Postcolonial literature speaks in multiple voices; it gives agency to and embraces all hitherto marginalized segments of the population—children, women, untouchables, and ethnic and racial minorities.
Decolonization has led also to forms of liberation of children, not least of whom are the children of colonial officials, missionaries, and traders who were colonized through their upbringing, education, and leisure reading. As Argentinean author Graciela Montes states, adults colonize children by "granting" the "gift" of language to them: "words name things and, when they name, they inevitably carry with them a huge cultural load, a way of looking at, of feeling, and of dealing with the world" ( p.22 ) .
Whether Portuguese, British, French, or Spanish; colonial children were exploited as historical "objects" to perpetuate their "empires." Colonial literature dictated how they should perceive the land of their birth and childhood. Yet the words, the characters, and situations in these stereotypical, derogatory books often contradicted the experiences that surrounded them. As adults, many of these colonial children have written about their lives in the colonies, rejecting the dissociation and rootlessness of their colonial life by linking their emotional and psychological well being with their rich experiences of indigenous cultures. Iris
MacEarlane, Rumer Godden, Manuela Gerqueira, and Alberto Oliveira Pinto, to name a few, have tried to relive their isolation, redefine race relations, and integrate their dual identities. 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
To Godden, who grew up in Bengal, the British viere a "society of exiles"; they were "rootless" as "cut flowers" (Macmillan, 1998). As Edward Said states in Culture and Imperialism, we are just becoming aware of:
How oddly hybrid historical and cultural experiences are, of how they partake of many often contradictory experiences and domains, cross national boundaries, defy the police action of simple dogma and loud patriotism (Said, 1970).
Critics level charges of reverse elitism and exclusion against postcolonial discourse. Russell Jacoby, for instance, while applauding it for opening up new areas of study beyond traditional Western literature, censures postcolonial theorists for being contradictory, obscure, undefined, confused, and elitist. He raises the question of whether Western writing about postcolonial or post-independence societies should be construed as the appropriation of the voice of the other and as a form of domination. This attitude has led to debates concerning such works as Susanne Fisher Staples's Shabanu. Is Staples, an American, stereotyping Pakistani culture by focusing on one small group, the camel herders of the Cholistan desert? Can she write authentically of Pakistani culture? Is she not indulging in cultural appropriation.
Yet other issues emerge in this debate: Who speaks for whom? Can Western writers/ theorists speak for non-Western subjects? Whose voice is legitimate? Are such questions valid? Many feel that postcolonial scholars have marginalized certain groups by not including them in the discourse. In 1995, at the Mid-Atlantic Writers Association Conference in Baltimore, one participant observed that postcolonial works routinely exclude diaspora Africans and the experience of slavery from their studies. Are postcolonial studies strictly a matter of history, or is it a modern all-embracing concept that brings all marginalized groups to the centre of the debate? The experiences of the enslaved and the distortions and omissions of their history have parallels in postcoloniality. For instance, James Berry's Ajeemah and His Sort fictionalize the thoughts and feelings of two enslaved
Africans uprooted from their home in Ghana. The postcolonial aspects of subalternity can be found in their stories: their internalized rebellion, their sense of outrage at being denied freedom, and their helplessness in the face of crushingly superior— often military—forces. Despite these dehumanizing conditions, they maintained their pride and dignity and safeguard 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
themselves against the demoralizing impact of slavery by retaining something of their former lives.
Widespread immigration from the former colonies to Western countries (to find better economic opportunities, to flee political oppression in some instances, and to seek freedom from the constraints of traditional cultures) has created what could be seen as another form of postcolonial literature, a literature of exile characterized by conflict between Western and traditional values, by cultural marginalization, by racial conflicts, by pressures to assimilate or integrate. Lesley Beake's A Cageful of Butterflies (1989), Ramabai Espinet's The Princess of Spadina; A Tale of Toronto (1992), Rosa Guy's The Friends (1973), M. Nourbese Philip's Harriet's Daughter (1988), Indi Rana's The Roller Bird of Rampur (1993), Nazneen Sadiq's Camels Can Make You Homesick ( 1985), Bipsi Sidhwa's An American Brat ( 1993), and Rukshana Smith's Sumintra Story (1982)—works on which we would have liked to receive articles—are all powerful narratives of children and adolescents trying to negotiate between their former and adopted societies.
Conclusion
According to what has been discussed earlier perhaps Prahbat K. Singh is right in stating that this preoccupation with a hybrid identity and the crisis of a split identity is relevant only to those living abroad in adopted Western homes and not to those in the newly independent nation, who are developing national identities’, free of the ambivalences of the colonial period. They can do this despite the inescapable Western impact on their lives for they have integrated the English language, Hollywood films, Western medicine and technology, clothing and music, in their overarching "post-independence" culture.
Moreover the tension here resides in the inability of these descriptions of postcolonialism to account for children who are a group well practiced in colonial attitudes, and who hope to grow out of their colonial positions through accommodation to their colonial "elders." Children are always marked by (contaminated by) the attitudes of an older generation. This older generation might encourage children to speak, but it does so expecting them to speak its words, to pass on its wisdom, to perpetuate its vision of the world. The subject of children's literature according to Xie is the notion of cultural multiplicity. Children may not speak their own literature, but we can assure that the literature they read comes to them in the fullness of the cultural situation of the late twentieth century. In other words, we can introduce our children to works of literature that represent the range of cultural experiences and histories that make up the national and international communities that touch all of us. This is one 4th International Online Language Conference (IOLC 2011)
aspect of postcolonial studies: breaking the hold of the great traditions that have dominated the study of English literatures since the rise of English studies during the heyday of British imperialism.
This essay is not a comprehensive representative of what is happening creatively, critically, and theoretically in postcolonial children's and young adult literature as we would have liked it to be. But as Victor J. Ramraj, the editor of ARIEL (whose editorial contribution to this issue was indispensable and very much appreciated), assures us, it is difficult with an operating on deadlines to wait for all the promised submissions; a published book can. What we have included here, however, does provide an interim report on some current areas of and approaches to the field.
Attention must be paid to the fact that Children's literature must be a bridge between the colorful, blissfully ignorant and innocent world of children, their dreams and sweet imaginations, and the dark world of the adult whose consciousness is drowned in bitter and painful truth and in the hard social environment. The child must cross this bridge and venture into the dark world of adults with awareness and armed with light in hand. It is in this way that a child can be a help and a real friend to his father in life and a positive force for improvement in the sluggish and ever-sinking society. Moreover, accurate information about the current issues of the world as well as the necessary information regarding identity, threats to ones identity and such items must be reflected in children literature, because the children of today are much more culturally threatened by the new imperialism through mass media, games and similar items under the cover of globalisation. We should give them values which enable them to deal with and evaluate the various moral and social problems in the ever-changing conditions and circumstances of society so as to prepare them for their future life and avoid otherness and identity crisis. Thus it need not be mentioned that the term postcolonial is relevant and a must-be in children literature.
كلام اول 
موضوع: مقالات كنفرانس هاي خارجي
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تاريخ: 2 شهريور 1390
بازديدها: 6785
