Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion portrays the mutually complex relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Pygmalion, a mimicry play, shows how the mimicry strategy, proposed by Homi K. Bhabha, paradoxically functions as both resemblance and menace in the hands of the colonizer and the Other. Based on Homi K. Bhabha's theories, the Other employs the mimicry strategy either too perfectly or imperfectly as a sign of resistance to servitude; on the other hand, employing the colonial mimicry strategy, the colonizer desires a reformed recognizable Other as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite. This paper tries to show how Higgins, the colonizer, and Eliza, the colonized enter the Third Space in which no party has priority over the other; in which power relationships are reciprocal and their identities are mutually constructed. Pygmalion depicts an untenable situation in which both the colonizer and the colonized are entrapped.
Literature, as a branch of Humanities, has a significant role in demonstrating the problems and the realities of a society. Therefore, the literary texts written in South Africa, had a major role in the victory of people against the policy of Apartheid, according to which the whites were segregated from non-whites. Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard is one of the writers, who showed his hatred and dissatisfaction to the world, with his plays. He is known for his deeply rooted and controversial anti-apartheid plays. His Blood Knot (1961) has been chosen in this study, in which the negative implications of colonialism and racism can be explored. Bhabha is one of the influential critics whose works give priority to the agency of colonized people. The relation between the colonizer and the colonized will be scrutinized subsequently according to what Bhabha mentioned in his influential book The Location of Culture.
The postwar American society has been depicted in numerous literary works of the American authors among which, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is of significance due to its depiction of one of the most dominant discourses of the period and onward, the alienated youth. The Wars inflicted upon the members of the society an intrinsic wound, the indelible sense of alienation in relation with the world around. The vulnerable youth in particular is a population exposed to such a dangerous phenomenon. Employing Kenneth Keniston's theory of alienation presented in his influential book, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society (1965), this paper focuses on Salinger's timeless novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) to excavate the symptoms of the alienated youth in Holden Caulfield, the protagonist. In so doing, specific elements would be detected in the American youth; namely: the distrust of commitment, pessimistic existentialism, the feeling of contempt for the self and the people around, aesthetic quest, the fragmentation of identity, the refusal of adulthood and socialization, facing different social problems, the fear of death and having experienced traumatic incidents early in life. The results would show the inevitable probability of any single adolescent suffering from alienation. That is to say no matter what cultural background the youth come from, he or she would eventually inflate with the osmosis of realities of the world around and would resort to the destructive bubble of alienation just as Holden did in The Catcher in the Rye.
South Africa, like many other Eastern countries, was a victim of the brutal phenomenon called colonialism. Its people suffered a lot but did not give up protesting against it. Literature was often used as a means to demonstrate the problems and realities of the society. Therefore, the literary texts can be considered an effective weapon in this battle. One of these influential people is Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard who is known for his anti-apartheid plays. This article scrutinizes the relation between the colonizer and the colonized in Athol Fugard's My Children! My Africa! based on Homi Bhabha's ideas. According to him, the relation between the whites and the blacks becomes reciprocal in the third space of enunciation. Despite their differences, they try to live peacefully. The mimicry strategy is employed by the colonized to prevent total resemblance. They are dependent on each other notwithstanding their opposition, and both are aware of this, which makes them stick together.
To begin with, Heart of Darkness has always been challenging for every critic who feels the urge to take either pro-colonialist or contra-colonialist positions. However, herein the main focus would be set less upon the binary stances regarding the protagonist and his leanings toward the natives. Based on the indissociability of the psychological-cum-cultural operations, this study lends itself best to an amalgam of Freudian together with Bhabhian theories such as the dreamwork, repetition-compulsion, mimickry and hybridization. That is to say, it deserves attention to see the colonialist ideology through the dissecting lens of psychoanalysis. Besides, Tiffin's subversive counter-discourse would provide a valuable source to this study. The present study aims to explore the underlying motive for Marlow's narration and his interaction with the natives free from a slippery evaluation of the narratives prime facie. Since any consideration of the native-settler relation without taking the mutual impact of one on the other would only reveal a limited angle to the events, Marlow's narration will be less concerned with the Hegelian subject-non-subject dichotomy than the intersection of both, however disguised. Of particular note is that such intersection gives rise to the ensuing ambivalence at the heart of the text, Marlow's account of events, thence the clash of perspectives, whether fictional or critical, can be discerned. Eventually, this hybrid ambivalence casts the text into a hybrid existence that would account for the narrators' neurosis on the one hand and the contradictory critiques on the other.
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