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qontfnns's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting outlook on reading colonialism on literary works.
You know, I've always been wondering how people on classic books seemed to dilly dally a lot in their lives, walking on morning and afternoon walks for hours, staying on acquaintance's residence for a fortnight at the shortest, and then moving directly to another acquaintance's castle on another city, not coming home and be productive for a month or more! And yet they still lived in a lavish property, ate proper dinner made by cooks, hired maids, and bequeathed thousands of pounds to their children upon marriage or death. Hiring maids and cooks were the least you could do for your social status, and they would still insist on doing so even if they already felt like they 'fell into poverty' (which poor people can hire anyone else to provide their basic necessities??). Lavish, lavish, lavish. Where's all the money from? Why of course, OF COURSE, they might just have been involved in the astronomically lucrative business of SLAVERY AND COLONIALISM. This is barely mentioned in the classics I've read, which are mostly Jane Austen's. The men's jobs were brushed over quickly as if it's so natural and easy to earn money, or she's just clueless about it. This is a parallel I noticed in Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang as well. Women living in affluent houses won't be affected by the conflicts happening outside their neighborhood. With no internet, limited means of disseminating the news, or intentional deprivation of information due to then European patriarchal tendency to baby their women lest they fell into a hYsTEriCaL fit, it's possible that they weren't quite aware of imperialism/colonialism going on? Well, being ignorant is a lesser sin than being the actor of evil themselves I guess. I'll be lenient to female classic authors.
Anyways, this book investigates traces of slavery and colonialism in Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre. I haven't read both, but anything written by white people pre 1945 hits different now. I'm seeing things in a new light, and I'll try to pay more attention to this nuance from now on IF I'm going to read more of such classics anytime soon. I feel it most urgent to read things from the colonized point of view instead now, at least until the disgust subsides :/
You know, I've always been wondering how people on classic books seemed to dilly dally a lot in their lives, walking on morning and afternoon walks for hours, staying on acquaintance's residence for a fortnight at the shortest, and then moving directly to another acquaintance's castle on another city, not coming home and be productive for a month or more! And yet they still lived in a lavish property, ate proper dinner made by cooks, hired maids, and bequeathed thousands of pounds to their children upon marriage or death. Hiring maids and cooks were the least you could do for your social status, and they would still insist on doing so even if they already felt like they 'fell into poverty' (which poor people can hire anyone else to provide their basic necessities??). Lavish, lavish, lavish. Where's all the money from? Why of course, OF COURSE, they might just have been involved in the astronomically lucrative business of SLAVERY AND COLONIALISM. This is barely mentioned in the classics I've read, which are mostly Jane Austen's. The men's jobs were brushed over quickly as if it's so natural and easy to earn money, or she's just clueless about it. This is a parallel I noticed in Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang as well. Women living in affluent houses won't be affected by the conflicts happening outside their neighborhood. With no internet, limited means of disseminating the news, or intentional deprivation of information due to then European patriarchal tendency to baby their women lest they fell into a hYsTEriCaL fit, it's possible that they weren't quite aware of imperialism/colonialism going on? Well, being ignorant is a lesser sin than being the actor of evil themselves I guess. I'll be lenient to female classic authors.
Anyways, this book investigates traces of slavery and colonialism in Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre. I haven't read both, but anything written by white people pre 1945 hits different now. I'm seeing things in a new light, and I'll try to pay more attention to this nuance from now on IF I'm going to read more of such classics anytime soon. I feel it most urgent to read things from the colonized point of view instead now, at least until the disgust subsides :/
thatkimberleyryan's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Amazing critical look at the link between reading and the intrinsic colonialism of the stories we are told. Short read. Impactful.
jenniechantal's review against another edition
3.0
"While class and gender (the making of white class, white gender) may have been the obvious subjects of the narrative, race and colony as bedrocks of power are startlingly unremarked; in fact, normalized, stipulated, matter-of-fact.
The constant reinforcement of the unseen, unread, the hardening of narrative position, is the pedagogy of colony."
Cultural and literary criticism often goes over my head. I don't have the academic background that would allow me to better understand texts like these. But what I did get out of it is critical to helping me read with even more awareness and attention to what she calls the "pedagogy of colony".
katie_greenwinginmymouth's review
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
I’ve been wanting to read some Dionne Brand for ages and this was a great intro. This is a very short book, an essay really, but Brand has such a fluid and expansive approach to thought that it covers much more ground than you might expect. I absolutely adore reading this sort of writing, it feels completely transformative to me and makes connections that can’t help but show you new ways of being or engender new modes of thought.
In this essay Brand examines how the 19th Century novel constructs a sense of self and a morality that is colonial, Eurocentric and oblivious to the fundamental contradictions at its heart where this morality is based on a deeply immoral treatment of those that are deemed to be different and lesser than the white author and presumed reader. What does it mean to read these novels as a Black woman and what effect does that have on your sense of self? What contortions do you put yourself through to take your place as reader?
“Reading narrative requires, demands, acts of identification, association, affiliation, sympathy, and empathy, actors of en/inhabiting....Narrative is not just the simple transportation of language but of ideas of the self, and ideas of the self that contain negations of other people. What is it, then, to adopt or be indoctrinated into these narrative structures, those ideas, to come to know those ideas as your own, when you are the negated other people?”
Absolutely essential reading, especially if you’re a fan of the ‘classics’.
2treads's review against another edition
informative
reflective
5.0
Dionne Brand has put into critical thought what many a Black reader has felt or questioned re the positioning of us, within, quite frankly a literary landscape that is still very much mired in colonialist views and expression.