Engl 242 - Nz

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civilising mission

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The Idea of colonizing as a civilised mission legitimises colonial rule. Sreading British rule was seen as desirable.

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colonial discourse

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Colonialism’s signifying system: the system of statements and representations that justify and naturalise European colonial authority and power structures. Induces a barrier between the colonizer and the colonized.

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colonial gaze

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Every person is intiially a free subject, when free becomes the object of another's look. It turns the subject into an object.
done by Jean-Paul Sartre.

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duration

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A concept developed by Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941). Bergson distinguishes duration (la durée) from mechanical “clock-time.” While “clock-time” is the time that can be measured and broken into individual segments by clocks and calendars, “duration” is time as experienced by consciousness. (mansfield)

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going native

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Term that describes a colonized fear of becoming like the locals and going native. this was widespread amongst the colonies. (woman at the store)

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hegemony

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A high ranking dominant class maintains position by force and consent. produced through a network of institutions .

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Identity politics

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Refers to a widespread phenomenon in 1970s political activism, where groups which were previously marginalised from the mainstream because of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. began to embrace that difference and re-interpret it as a positive source of collective identity. Identity politics usually takes the form of a demand for the right to be different, and for that difference to be recognised as legitimate; in literature, it often found expression in the call to replace negative with positive representations.

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ideological state apparatus (ISA)

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Louis Althusser distinguishes between repressive state apparatuses (e.g. the penal system, the police, the army etc.) and ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). ISAs are social institutions such as education, the legal system, the family, the church, the arts and media.

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liminality

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A term coined by social anthropologist Victor Turner. The term is often used adjectivally with reference to “space” or “situation.” A liminal space is a space in-between. In literature it is often a space (setting) that symbolises a character’s in-between situation: the old life/world has been left behind, but a new life/world has not yet been established. A liminal situation is one where the character is vulnerable and under threat: as s/he explores new ways of being, s/he hovers between two secure positions. (/how pearl button was kidnapped)

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myth

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A social narrative or image that carries embedded meanings for a culture or society; representations that shape and structure daily life, and whose implied cultural attitudes have become ‘naturalized’ through the removal of the dimension of time, change. The extreme effect of myth is to hide the semiotic workings of a narrative’s or image’s signs and codes…Myths turn social signs into facts.

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nation

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An “imagined community” (Benedict Anderson) which is understood as distinct and separate from all other nations. “Nation” is a relational term; like any sign, one nation consists in being what the others are not. The concept belongs in fact to the realm of signification, not to any external, referential world; each is a discursive construct whose identity consists in its difference from others. “Nation” refers not to the external world of “facts” but to a symbolic referent—an “imagined community,” which is maintained by a wide variety of discursive institutions

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objective correlative

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Term coined by T.S. Eliot in an essay entitled “Hamlet and His Problems”. He says: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion,” and which will evoke the same emotion from the reader. An “objective correlative” is a detail of setting or scene that is devised as an objective counterpart for abstract states of mind or emotion. (mansfield)-

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the other

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Colonial discourse commonly distinguishes between “self” (the coloniser) and “other” (the colonised). The existence of others is crucial in defining what is “normal” and in locating one’s place in the world. The colonised subject is characterised as “other” through discourses such as primitivism and cannibalism, as a means of establishing the binary separation of the coloniser and the colonised and asserting the naturalness and superiority of the colonising culture and world view. (sargeson)

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Puritanism

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Both a religious movement and a secularised pattern of feeling and conduct; Frank Sargeson distinguishes between the “pure Puritan” and the “impure Puritan.” The latter refers to a code of conduct motivated not by morality but convention: doing the right thing because of what people think. “Doing the right thing” finds expression in a work ethic, sexual repression and a general distrust of emotion and pleasure. An individual’s behaviour is closely monitored and non-conformity with approved social patterns is actively discouraged, resulting in a life structured by duty, respectability and convention.

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realism

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Realism refers to a set of literary or artistic conventions that encourage us to “recognize” and “trust” their depiction of the world; we don’t look at the language/medium, but “through” it to see “reality” behind it. Realism is a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life. As such, realism is concerned with revealing “the truth” about society and representing this truth in an accurate and unromanticised way. Theories of realism rest on the assumption that art imitates reality, and that reality is more or less stable and commonly accessible. (sargeson)

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settler nation

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Many critics and writers have commented on the ambivalent position of settlers in settler colonies, especially where they constitute a racially distinct majority with regard to the indigenous inhabitants. Settlers are displaced from their own point of origin and may have difficulties in establishing their identity in the new place. They are frequently constructed within a discourse of difference and inferiority by the colonising power (“colonials/colonial”) and so suffer discrimination as colonial subjects themselves.

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stereotype

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‘The stereotype is not a simplification because it is a false representation of a given reality. It is a simplification because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation that, in denying the play of difference…constitutes a problem for the representation of the subject in psychic and social relations.’ (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 75)