Robeson-October issue

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when a child is born,

they say it is before or afer the rice is harvested,

they say their cries awaken the ancestors and they must be named

afer their forefathers,

their parents shed their given name and accept the title of ‘parent’.

rituals are to be done,

animals are sacrifce and the gods are pleased,

there is a new member for the jungle to care for.

the child has multiple parents,

shuttled between households to be taught diferent

skills before fnding their calling,

their fngers either become nimble or rough,

forever etched are the teachings of their parents.

the jungle are their silent guardian,

Unforgiving, harsh and noisy,

they are raised through pain and rain,

but somehow they still make home in the soil that hurts them.

Emma Masing

words:

illustration: nandita sharma

children of the jungle,

built with so much love and pain,

anchored by the roots of history.

Look at what you’ve done to me:

Since I was young my skin has bothered me,

I would cry in the mirror when I got too tanned,

I would cry till my lungs threatened to collapse on me,

I would cry and cry because the white dress my mother picked out for me was too harsh on my skin.

My mother would cradle my face with her fair hands she inherited from her uncle,

And tell me how beautiful my tanned skin was and that it didn’t matter what people said,

And it’s true it doesn’t matter what people say but it matters what I say.

And what I say is this:

My skin is ugly.

My skin reminds me that I am the survivor of rape victims,

of colonisers that couldn’t leave my ancestors alone,

My skin is marked by spots that just don’t want to go away

My skin is painful, so god awfully painful to look at because it just reminds me that I am not white.

I am caught in this whirlpool of self-hate just because I am not the same colour as my oppressor.

What will my grandfather say?

What will my grandmother say?

Teir granddaughter who defed odds to be in this land,

To breathe the cold bitter air of the people who killed their mothers and fathers,

is ashamed of her culture, heritage and language.

Look at what you’ve done to me

I have anxiety of the skin, the heart, the soul and the mind.

When I started university,

My skin became a statement, an issue,

an uncomfortable silence that white people just didn’t want to break.

My skin wasn’t mine anymore,

It was a political statement, and it was for the whole world to see.

My skin and my anxiety became one and

It followed me everywhere threatening to cut my skin just so when it heals,

I can see that bit of white that reminds me of how fucked my self-hate became.

And now?

Now my anxiety is calculated,

My anxiety is now a weapon to use against me,

Fuck the people who tell me that race shouldn’t be a factor in my life,

Tell that to my psyche,

Tell that to multiple breakdowns in public restrooms because the white gaze is the

sharpest thing that has touched my skin.

My inhales are in tandem with the issues of today,

My tears are bottled and sold to co-operations who want to show how diverse they are,

My weakness is their power,

My weakness is a reminder that my ancestors died for nothing.

My skin is a statement,

And I still hate it someday,

And I still want to see the manmade silver of white on my ugly brown skin,

some days looking at a mirror could be the hardest task because my refection,

Shows the eyes of my ancestors who are ashamed of me for betraying them,

And I have betrayed them.

Look at what you’ve done to me,

Look at what you’ve done to me.

I have anxiety of the skin, the heart, the soul and the mind.

It is necessary to frst dissect the term “Western” to un-

derstand what it means and what it constitutes. It is ofen

used interchangeably with “modernised” and these two

terms have links, but ultimately the two terms have difer-

ent meanings and connotations. “Western” can be identi-

fed as being in opposition to “eastern”, or “the Orient”. Ed-

ward Said notes that the idea of “the Orient” was ‘almost a

European invention, and had been since antiquity’, as seen

by Sallust, a Roman hisvtorian who described Asia

as ‘voluptuous and indulging’, noting that ‘its

pleasures soon sofened the warlike spirits

of the soldiers’, a sentiment echoed by

the British in India.1 Tis demon-

strates the notion that ‘the West [is]

rational [...] the East [is] irra-

tional’ and morally degen-

erate, while it lived in ‘lazy

luxury’.2 Tis is an early

example

“Othering”

and placing the “east” as

opposite to the “West”.

Tis idea was seen again

in the medieval period

during the First Crusade,

which Peter Frankopan

describes as ‘Te frst

great struggle between

the powers of Europe

for position, riches and

prestige in faraway lands

[...] triggered by the re-

alisation of the prizes on

ofer,’ making the Cru-

sades the frst example

of European colonialism.

In the modern globalised world, how fair is it to

say that “Westernisation” is a colonial legacy, and

not merely the impact of the zeitgeist? Tis paper

will dissect the term in order to understand the lay-

ers of meaning it constitutes when it is applied to

a colonial project such as British India. Te paper

argues that “Western” is a fexible construct and,

though there have been attempts to

solidify it, it ultimately

exists as vehicle for

oppression.

property rights of the new ar-

rivals, to tax gathering, to the

powers of the King of Jerusa-

lem.’4 Tis is a clear example of

Said’s description of ‘Oriental-

ism as a Western style for dom-

inating restructuring, and hav-

ing authority over the Orient.’

A key point, then, to understand-

ing what is meant by “Western” is

understanding what is meant by

“eastern”; it is noteworthy that

“Western” is described simply

as being in stark contrast to “the

East”. Does “the West” exist with-

out “the East”? In order to sepa-

rate the west and east geograph-

ically, there needs to be a central

“line” to divide the two.

Norman Davies describes this

line as being based on an ‘elastic

geography’ as ‘social scientists

invent divisions based on the cri-

teria of their own disciplines.’6

Te term “Middle East” to de-

scribe what is geographically

West Asia is a good example of

the existence of this imagined

boundary: calling this region

“the Middle East” is based on it

being a mid-point between “the

West” (western Europe) and the

Oriental “East” (such as India

and China). Terefore, this term

is based on a western European

view that places Europe at the

centre, and orients the whole

world accordingly.

Tis orientation of the world is

both based on and infuenced

the Eurocentric cartograph-

ic convention that centres the

world map along the prime me-

ridian line in Greenwich, Lon-

don, and was used as far back

as Gerardus Mercator’s original

world map in 1569, that was

used for navigation in an era

that saw the beginnings of Eu-

ropean colonialism.

He goes on to describe how, fol-

lowing the Christian victory on

15th July 1099, ‘Te Middle East

was being recast to function like

western Europe’: ‘New colonies

were founded in the Outremer

- literally ‘overseas’ - ruled over

by new Christian masters. [...]

Jerusalem, Tripoli, Tyre and

Antioch were all under the con-

trol of Europeans and governed

by customary laws imported

from the feudal west which

afected everything from the

However, this convention and

resultant designation of West

Asia as “the Middle East” are

completely arbitrary; as pointed

out by Piers Fotiadis, ‘Medieval

mappa mundi, for example,

centred the world on Jerusa-

lem and placed the east on top.

Te conventional north-up mod-

el is as arbitrary in ‘a spherical

world where there is no obvious

top or bottom and in a universe

where the terms “top” and “bot-

tom” have no meaning’, as seen

by Muhammad al-Idrisi’s ex-

ample of a south-up map in his

book Kitab Rujar - known by the

Latin Tabula Rogeriana in “the

West” - published in 1154.9 Yet

Europe is ofen centred in the

top half, giving it prominence:

‘Eurocentric maps [...] reinforce

a sense of Europe as the centre of

the world, the cradle of civiliza-

tion. To centre the map elsewhere

is to make a political statement

about the world’.10 However, Fo-

tiadis also points out that ‘Tere

is nothing natural about a par-

ticular orientation; it is the dom-

inance of socially constructed

beliefs that make it seem so’,

and those beliefs are key to

understanding

what

con-

stitutes the term “Western”.

Said summarises it so:

[...] men make their own history,

that what they can know is what

they have made, and extend it

to geography: as both geograph-

ical and cultural entities - to say

nothing of historical entities - [...]

geographical sectors as “Orient”

and “Occident” are man-made.

Terefore as much as the West

itself, the Orient is an idea that

has a history and a tradition of

thought, imagery, and vocabu-

lary that have given it reality and

presence in and for the West. Te

two geographical entities thus

support and to an extent refect

each other.

Said’s theory of Orientalism is a

central text in trying to under-

stand the term “Western”. Franko-

pan points out that the view

of Rome as the “progenitor of

western Europe’, and basis of the

British Empire, erases how it was

‘shaped by infuences from the

east.’13 Although he is referring

to the British Empire modelling

itself culturally based on the Ro-

man Empire, this equally applies

in the theory. Te East is present-

ed as the “Other” and apart, while

the West cannot exist without the

East: ‘the Orient has helped to

defne Europe (or the West) as its

contrasting image, idea, person-

ality, experience’ as ‘Englishness

[is subjected to] profound strain,

whereby “the familiar, trans-

ported to distant parts, becomes

uncannily transformed”’.14 Said

clarifes that from the late nine-

teenth century onwards, Orien-

talism was ‘the corporate institu-

tion for dealing with the Orient

- dealing with it by making state-

ments about it, authorizing views

of it, describing it, by teaching it,

settling it, ruling over it’.15 Te

key is that this authoritative view

is inherently one-sided and can-

not be returned: ‘Te everyday

paradox of third-world social

science is that we fnd these the-

ories, in spite of their inherent

ignorance of “us,” eminently use-

ful in understanding our socie-

ties. What allowed the modern

European sages to develop such

clairvoyance with regard to soci-

eties of which they were empiri-

cally ignorant? Why cannot we,

once again, return the gaze?’16

Frantz Fanon wrote ‘For the black

man there is only one destiny.

And it is white’ which also em-

phasises

this

one-sidedness

when it comes to identities, but

‘where Fanon sees the com-

mand to mimic as a subjective

death sentence, Bhabha plays

with the deconstructive possibil-

ities of that colonial stereotype.

He theorizes colonial mimicry

as the representation of a partial

presence that disrupts the col-

onizer’s narcissistic aspirations

and subjects Englishness to pro-

found strain’, suggesting that,

though the majority of the efect

is felt by the colonised peoples,

some strain is felt by both sides

Tis essay has so far analysed the

term “Western” to understand

what basis it had in geography

and in a postcolonial theoreti-

cal context. It is now possible to

attempt to understand what

“Western” meant practically and

how that has evolved. “Te Fa-

ther of History” Herodotus was

born circa 484 BC in Halicar-

nassus, modern day Bodrum,

Turkey.

Halicarnassus

was

originally a Greek city, though

ruled by the Persian Empire by

the time of Herodotus’ birth,

but the fact remains that he

was seen as Greek, not Asian.

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