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A Small Place Introduction Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 on the Caribbean island of St. Jones (Antigua). Her major works explore the themes of colonialism and its influence on people of Antigua. One of her most famous books, A Small Place dwells on neocolonialism in the newly independent country. The author starts the book with the phrase, If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see, and continues her anti travel narrative indicting neocolonialism in the newly independent Antigua (Nelson 262).
A Small Place faced strong criticism and was considered so scurrilous by many influential Antiguans that [Jamaica Kincaid] found herself informally banned from the island (Paravisini-Gebert 14). According to critics, it defies common sense to argue that the epoque of neocolonialism was so poor. Some critics blame Jamaica Kincaid for the harsh language she used in descriptions, whereas some of them consider that her book contains plenty of misinterpretations and exaggerations caused by the authors super emotional attitude to the British. The aim of the paper is to explore the book more thoroughly within the frameworks of criticism faced by the author. A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid's book is much about colonialism. The author makes a little effort to hide the anger about the island, the British, colonialism and its effects.
Kincaid wants to show the differences in the representation of the local society, and uses the method of figuring them in gendered terms in order to reach the purpose. As Keith E. Byerman asserts, the book explores the public realm and attacks what is for the island the male world of politics, business, and public life (Byerman 91). Kincaid speaks to a reader in the second person. Her words are full of offence and brutally characterize the audience and the tourists: An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness (you do not look the way they look); the physical sight of you does not please them; you have bad manners (it is their custom to eat with their hands; you trying to eat their way, you look silly; you try eating the way you always eat, you look silly); they do not like the way you speak (you have an accent); they collapse helpless from laughter, mimicking the way they imagine you must look as you carry out some everyday bodily function (Kincaid 17) This characterization contains no objectiveness. The only thing it has is a post-colonial abrogation of everything the colonizers tried to bring in the colony.
Abrogation is the refusal of the categories of the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory standard of normative or 'correct' usage, and its assumption of a traditional and fixed meaning 'inscribed' in the words (Byerman 92). The authors attitude is a mere mocking, where the colonizers act as the objects of abuse and ridicule. As it is considered by Jamaica Kincaid, she simply inverted the power of naming inherent in colonial discourse by saying in public what other Antiguans can say only in private (Byerman 92). However, the authors attitude to colonizers can be called in question.
The colonization itself has both negative and positive aspects. Actually, every kind of integration, globalization or colonization (by the example of Antigua and its people) may pose a threat to cultural identity. Probably, the author was right in relation to fact that colonizers sometimes behaved brutally and wanted to show their supremacy over the colonized nations. However, the British did bring a lot of positive into the cultural and social development of Antigua. Further, the author claims that the colonized Antiguans thought that the British we un-Christian-like, small-minded; they thought that the British were like animals, a bit below human standards as we understood those standards to be.
We felt superior to all these people... (Kincaid 29). This is a kind of ironic inversion aimed to express the maximum of the authors hostility in relation to the British. As it is claimed by the author, the British ruined Antiguan identity. Really, Antiguan cultural identity still bears the marks of integration of the British, however, the culture of strong society managed to survive and not to lose its identity. Antigua absorbed extrinsic influence of the British and, by enriching through British colonizers, together with the society that can be considered both the creator and the bearer of cultural identity, developed into unique nation. At the same time, the culture of the weak society would inevitably be destroyed; and colonization would only be conductive to this process.
It is difficult to understand the aggressive accusations made by the author in relation to the British. However, the only explanation is that Jamaica Kincaid's super emotionality was caused by her intrinsic psychological problems, which had the slightest relation to the actual state of things. Further, the author speaks about linguistic difficulties of using English language. She writes, For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime [colonialism] is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?
And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal's deed. (Kincaid 31 - 32). At the same time, Antiguan people have no Antiguan language. In such a way, the colonized people face the choice either to keep silence (as there is no native language), or to accept English.
The author also criticizes the British with their system of education. However, the British tried to introduce the system of traditional education and tried to educate girls and boys in Antigua like any other child would be educated in Great Britain. Probably, the imposition of education, dress (the Antiguan schoolgirls were expected to wear traditional British clothes, like any British girl), and behavior (as far as the schoolchildren were expected to behave according to the British standards), so, probably, this imposition was different from what it meant to be a girl (a woman) in Antigua. Yet, it doesnt inevitably mean that such imposition made any harm to the Antiguan girls, with the binding ties to British traditions and models of behavior.
The author tends to show that the British were guilty because the Antiguan youth were devoted to the British culture, literature, songs, and other British things. The author herself was brought up on classic English literature. However, again, it is a mistake to claim that British culture ruined the Antiguan society. The assimilation is the natural process and, actually, imposes no threat to the culture of the colonized nation, unless the colonized have no culture at all. Jamaica Kincaid also dwells on corruption.
However, her attitude is double-natured. The author claims that the independence made no actual impact or significant changes in the countrys dominant order. She claims that the Antiguans continued to feel themselves slaves, and continues to keep silence. Power and wealth belong to few people, whereas the other live as awful as they would live being slaves in colonialist Antigua. Those of them, who are rich and powerful, are indifferent to the other people. They are corrupt and think only of their own welfare.
However, how comes that Antiguan people are so passive? The author gives her own explanation, while writing about the island, a small place discovered by Columbus. She adds that Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this) to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they could be less lonely and empty -- a European disease (Kincaid 80 - 81). In such a way, the author simply releases the nation of the responsibility for all these negative changes and claims that everything that is somehow product of colonialism: government corruption is a natural product of British domination.
Neither the ministers of state who practice corruption nor the people who elect them can be held responsible (Byerman 92). However, the author is evidently wrong with such taking the responsibility off. Despite all British negativeness, the British didnt force the Antiguans to lose their responsibility, personal liberty and human dignity. It was the Antiguan nation that made the choice. The author indirectly confirms this assumption, by writing, they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings (Kincaid 81). However, it is not the British fault, but the Antiguan desire to escape from reality.
It is the Antiguan identity that makes the Antiguan ministers corrupt. It is the way of thinking that forces the Antiguans maintaining the myth of their own noble enslavement in order to escape their entry into a common humanity (Byerman 93). Again, the author accuses the British and their slave factory of the Antiguan corruption and decline. It is not true, though.
Both slavery and colonialism were unable to suppress or displace the indigenous society. The author (as well as other Antiguans) is unable to identify her true motherland. She faces difficulties when she tries to identify an Antiguan culture that is separable from that of the colonizers and the tourists (Byerman 94). The answer is, probably, very simple.
The indigenous people generated no new culture that could be the basis for rejuvenation or an authentic Antiguan society (Byerman 94). Instead, it was the British culture alone they had. The Antiguan could use British culture in order to learn how to assault or attack the whites with their world. Yet, they preferred being (and voluntarily remained) slaves.
Antigua obviously went through the conflict of cultures, where one culture suppressed the other. The British were accused of distorting and erasing the Antiguan history and glorifying their own. At the same time, this standpoint is not correct and resulted from those Antiguans, who couldnt accept the culture of the colonizers and who despised or devalued their own cultural identity. Conclusion Colonization itself, probably, is quite dangerous for the cultural, political and social identity of the country. According to the author, it results in simplification of the aboriginal identity, despite bringing in plenty of new things. However, it is very important to realize that the identity of the country is much more viable than Jamaica Kincaid tries to show.
In result, when the nation faces colonialism, nothing can actually threaten to its viability, except of modification of the countrys cultural forms. British colonization supposed both integration and unification. Both processes were parallel and inevitable. Probably, the author had right to express her anger, using such harsh words. It is easy to understand that her anger and dissatisfaction is a logical and natural phenomenon resulted from colonizations side effects as well as from the price Antigua had to pay for it. However, the use of coarse and rude remarks in relation to colonizers hardly can be correlated with making decisions concerning actual problems caused by the British colonization.
The book, actually, can offer nothing in the least bit useful to solve the problem in a serious and constructive vein. Jamaica Kincaid's book contains no positive solutions. The author is unable to offer the audience any certain action program except of primitive slogan, Leave us alone with your colonialism. To some extent, such point of view can be called the analogue of colonialism, but shaped into an opposite form. However, the entire book implies no objective development. The book is rather a reflection dedicated to lack of education, culture and morality in the Caribbean nowadays, than a well-ground criticism of colonialism.
The attempts to bulk all the facts together are not successful and cannot be earnestly taken into account. The authors accusations and laying a smock down on tourists make the Westerners thinking about travel in another light. Being the critic of British colonialism, Jamaica Kincaid, actually, can set off the same, what luddites could set off against the engineering tools e. g.
nothing. The issue of colonization contains nothing principally new for civilization. Any new phase of the evolution development of social and political systems of our world somehow or other is accompanied by inevitable surges of marginalization and aggression. The same concerns British colonization and its side effects in Antigua. The negativeness of colonization is a typical side effect. Probably, it was quite striking and dramatic, and, therefore, it was able to arouse a keen interest.
However, the colonialism should go its way, where the side effects of the British colonization were the inevitable products of the process. Works Cited Byerman, Keith E. "Anger in a Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid's Cultural Critique of Antigua. " College Literature 12. 1 (1995): 12 pgs. Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Penguin, 1988. Nelson, Emmanuel S.
Contemporary African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999.
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