1 00:00:00,420 --> 00:00:08,640 My name's Elleke Boehmer and I'm the professor of world literature and English here and the English faculty in the University of Oxford, 2 00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:20,190 I have worked extensively across the past 20 years or so on both colonial and post-colonial literature in English and some in French and Dutch. 3 00:00:20,190 --> 00:00:33,420 And currently I'm finishing up a big book that's taken me quite a few years on Indian travellers to the UK in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 4 00:00:33,420 --> 00:00:41,820 and I'm looking at their writings, their memoirs and the ways in which they see England as exotic. 5 00:00:41,820 --> 00:00:47,670 SP2 -Fantastic. Now, I know that you wrote a biography on Nelson Mandela with the recent news of his illness. 6 00:00:47,670 --> 00:00:51,330 Has this refuelled a desire to revisit your work on him? 7 00:00:51,330 --> 00:00:54,720 It has indeed, partly through pressure of circumstance. 8 00:00:54,720 --> 00:01:01,440 I wrote the short biography of Nelson Mandela, which in part addresses his legacy some five years ago, 9 00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:06,090 around the time that he turned 90 and he recently turned 95. 10 00:01:06,090 --> 00:01:11,250 And what with his illness, there has been a lot of attention focussed not only obviously on him, 11 00:01:11,250 --> 00:01:20,220 but also on his legacy and what it means when this great era, if you like, of Nelson Mandela passes from us. 12 00:01:20,220 --> 00:01:24,900 What does he bequeath to the future in terms of humanitarian understanding? 13 00:01:24,900 --> 00:01:29,640 In fact, I've been invited to to write a couple of obituaries about him, 14 00:01:29,640 --> 00:01:39,000 and that has led me to look again at that legacy and to revisit it and also to consider some of his not only his great heroism, 15 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:44,610 which is undoubted and which are written about, but also perhaps some of his flaws, 16 00:01:44,610 --> 00:01:50,400 his his very human, but nonetheless very tangible flaws, which I could expand on. 17 00:01:50,400 --> 00:01:58,260 But, yes, certainly it's been very interesting to revisit the question of what is bequeathed to the 21st century. 18 00:01:58,260 --> 00:02:02,670 Do you think post-colonial literature, like feminist literature, is often misunderstood? 19 00:02:02,670 --> 00:02:07,470 Yes, I do think it's often misunderstood, not least because folks, if you like, 20 00:02:07,470 --> 00:02:14,190 the man or woman in the street is probably at first sight confused by the word post-colonial. 21 00:02:14,190 --> 00:02:20,070 Some might ask, when did colonialism end? If we are after colonialism, post-colonial? 22 00:02:20,070 --> 00:02:26,850 When did it end? Is post-colonial literature always, in a way, an appendage of colonial literature, 23 00:02:26,850 --> 00:02:33,480 as again, the Post seems to imply it is even as a term quite confusing term. 24 00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:41,700 It's also, I think, a term that is misunderstood by the writers that critics and teachers call post-colonial, 25 00:02:41,700 --> 00:02:50,250 because a lot of these writers will be from now, you know, fully independent nations, confident nations, 26 00:02:50,250 --> 00:02:54,930 you know, part of the the world community, Indian writers, for example, 27 00:02:54,930 --> 00:03:05,940 or Nigerian writers who may rightly query whether they are always to be saddled with this label of coming after the British Empire post-colonial. 28 00:03:05,940 --> 00:03:15,600 So for that reason, I think the term is also not so much misunderstood, but even possibly misread even by the writers to which the label is applied. 29 00:03:15,600 --> 00:03:22,740 So in light of what you've said, what do you think is important when we talk with an author as post-colonial in a nutshell? 30 00:03:22,740 --> 00:03:34,950 I like to define the post-colonial and I have done this in my work as literature that in some or other way, whether overtly or openly, 31 00:03:34,950 --> 00:03:41,220 questions the experience of empire and not only the experience of, if you like, 32 00:03:41,220 --> 00:03:48,270 being ruled by Britain or being ruled by France or having your land taken over by a foreign power. 33 00:03:48,270 --> 00:03:56,460 But also the more subtle question of how do you write with a borrowed pen, 34 00:03:56,460 --> 00:04:01,440 given that a lot of the writers that we call post-colonial are writing in English, 35 00:04:01,440 --> 00:04:06,360 but that English is not necessarily their mother tongue because of colonialism. 36 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:12,780 So there are some really great post-colonial writers like Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, 37 00:04:12,780 --> 00:04:18,690 V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. could see all of whom, and they're very, 38 00:04:18,690 --> 00:04:20,160 very different ways, 39 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:30,780 have asked about the quality and the quantity of the master's tongue of English that they are required to use in order to express themselves. 40 00:04:30,780 --> 00:04:40,320 So it's that inner conflict that split belonging to different kinds of literary and cultural heritage that makes an author post-colonial. 41 00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:43,860 And that is so interesting about the post-colonial condition. 42 00:04:43,860 --> 00:04:53,010 That's the conflict that has kept me very interested, has kept me writing now for over two decades about this kind of material. 43 00:04:53,010 --> 00:04:59,490 So to perspective, undergraduate students, what would you say in response to the question, why should we study post-colonial? 44 00:04:59,490 --> 00:05:09,850 Right. I would say there are a number of different responses that one could give to the question, why study postcolonial writers? 45 00:05:09,850 --> 00:05:15,850 One, in short, is because post-colonial writers in English represent the future. 46 00:05:15,850 --> 00:05:21,040 It's not for nothing that the name of the English literature degree at Oxford 47 00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:27,730 University was changed from a B.A. in English literature to a B.A. in literature. 48 00:05:27,730 --> 00:05:33,940 In English is precisely to embrace and to take account of the fact that 49 00:05:33,940 --> 00:05:40,300 fantastic writing in English is being produced all around the world New Zealand, 50 00:05:40,300 --> 00:05:44,410 the Pacific Islands, India, Mauritius, etc. 51 00:05:44,410 --> 00:05:47,440 So post-colonial writing represents the future. 52 00:05:47,440 --> 00:05:56,470 But I think what post-colonial writing also, interestingly, does is that it casts new light on partly political light, 53 00:05:56,470 --> 00:06:04,330 but also a very interesting structural light on the legacy of English literature, 54 00:06:04,330 --> 00:06:10,120 the legacy of the canon of Chaucer and Wordsworth and Dickens that has been 55 00:06:10,120 --> 00:06:17,110 handed down to us today because it was those writers who in the time of empire, 56 00:06:17,110 --> 00:06:27,610 were used to educate the natives in what civilisation meant an English literary education was intended to civilise. 57 00:06:27,610 --> 00:06:35,980 And in some sense, that project went horribly awry from the point of view of, if you like, the coloniser. 58 00:06:35,980 --> 00:06:41,350 But it also went creatively and wonderfully awry from a post-colonial point of view, 59 00:06:41,350 --> 00:06:47,410 because that civilising education and English literature was taken over by these 60 00:06:47,410 --> 00:06:53,020 new writers is post-colonial writers and was kind of embraced and made their own. 61 00:06:53,020 --> 00:07:01,390 And through Dickens channelling Dickens or channelling Wordsworth, they discovered and developed their own literary voice. 62 00:07:01,390 --> 00:07:07,480 So I think what the study of post-colonial writing does is that it infinitely expands 63 00:07:07,480 --> 00:07:13,690 our sense of the incredible richness and capacity of the English literary tradition. 64 00:07:13,690 --> 00:07:19,720 In terms of writers such as Kipling, where does he fit in? Would you consider him a post-colonial writer? 65 00:07:19,720 --> 00:07:28,240 The question of Rudyard Kipling. His relationship to post-colonial literature is a very, very interesting one. 66 00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:37,240 Kipling, having been called for a very good reason, the bard of Empire, certainly he was the poet of the Raj. 67 00:07:37,240 --> 00:07:41,710 It would be very difficult to style Kipling as, strictly speaking, 68 00:07:41,710 --> 00:07:49,570 post-colonial because he doesn't have an interrogative for questioning relationship in relation to the Empire. 69 00:07:49,570 --> 00:07:53,180 He kind of, he thought, does a pretty good thing if done well. 70 00:07:53,180 --> 00:08:00,790 But what is fascinating about Kipling, and he's he's such a very, very complex and multifaceted writer, 71 00:08:00,790 --> 00:08:08,680 is that he's one of the first writers in English of India to write imaginatively. 72 00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:17,650 Absolutely. From inside India, which is why a well-known Indian writer writing today, Salman Rushdie, for example, Amitabh Gurche, 73 00:08:17,650 --> 00:08:24,730 also very well known, will always write kind of in some sort of interesting relationship or dialogue with Kipling. 74 00:08:24,730 --> 00:08:31,120 Kipling's vision of India has been in some sense taken on by them, but also revised. 75 00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:40,090 So there is, if you like, a post-colonial Kipling by virtue of the fact that these Indian writers of the present day have 76 00:08:40,090 --> 00:08:47,920 used him in order to articulate something about India today that is revealing and interesting. 77 00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:52,000 So what new perspectives come post-colonial work bring to literature? 78 00:08:52,000 --> 00:09:00,670 I think post-colonial literature, almost by definition, brings new perspectives to, if you like, more conventional understandings of literature. 79 00:09:00,670 --> 00:09:03,510 If we think of literature as an assemblage, for example, 80 00:09:03,510 --> 00:09:14,470 or the genre's post-colonial literature immediately kind of opens up what we understand by the lyric poem or what we understand by the novel. 81 00:09:14,470 --> 00:09:21,160 Because what these writers do or these post-colonial writers do is bring their own vernacular traditions, 82 00:09:21,160 --> 00:09:26,410 say from Persian poetry or from Kreyol Calypso. 83 00:09:26,410 --> 00:09:34,960 In the case of Derek Walcott, they're bringing these infusions from their own traditions and their hybridise them kind of cross-cut 84 00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:42,230 them with English literary traditions and create something that is sort of amazing and completely new. 85 00:09:42,230 --> 00:09:48,730 So really, they kind of stretch and expand the boundaries of what we understand literature to be. 86 00:09:48,730 --> 00:09:52,370 Now, you've studied a whole repertoire of post-colonial writers. 87 00:09:52,370 --> 00:09:56,980 Is there any particular works or writers that you find most compelling? 88 00:09:56,980 --> 00:10:04,420 As you can probably tell, I'm a I'm a very enthusiast. Supporter, a fan of this kind of work, 89 00:10:04,420 --> 00:10:12,460 and it's very difficult because we are dealing with such a massive diversity of world writers to pick just a few favourites. 90 00:10:12,460 --> 00:10:21,970 So the right number to mention, I'm going to mention, because he's been in the news, having sadly died in 2013, the year in which we talking. 91 00:10:21,970 --> 00:10:28,120 And that is Chinua Achebe, who's often called the father of African literature because his great novel, 92 00:10:28,120 --> 00:10:34,180 Things Fall Apart, which was published in 1958 over 50 years ago. 93 00:10:34,180 --> 00:10:41,150 And it completely changed the shape of what we understood African writing to be, but also the English novel. 94 00:10:41,150 --> 00:10:47,170 He takes the novel form and he kind of deforms it and changes it in all sorts of interesting ways. 95 00:10:47,170 --> 00:10:51,580 He literally caused things to fall apart and then he put them back together. 96 00:10:51,580 --> 00:10:59,710 He also wrote several other fascinating novels. He wrote memoirs, he wrote short stories, and he's never been out of print. 97 00:10:59,710 --> 00:11:04,750 And Things Fall Apart has sold millions and millions of copies in Nigeria. 98 00:11:04,750 --> 00:11:13,760 It's a kind of standard text like, you know, Great Expectations is in the U.K. since so Achebe is a world changing writer. 99 00:11:13,760 --> 00:11:17,440 Absolutely fantastic. And he's one of the names that I would put forward. 100 00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:22,030 Would you recommend to students who are going to start their interest in literature and 101 00:11:22,030 --> 00:11:27,070 potentially study post-colonial literature that this text would be a gateway into that? 102 00:11:27,070 --> 00:11:35,230 Yes, yes. Yes, certainly, yes. In fact, I was recently working with a former who's interested in going further and studying English, 103 00:11:35,230 --> 00:11:40,270 and this student was very interested in Conrade and in Kipling. 104 00:11:40,270 --> 00:11:47,110 And I then recommended that they had a look at things fall apart, especially at the end, because there's a very, 105 00:11:47,110 --> 00:11:57,490 very Trixi ending to things fall apart that kind of spans the whole colonial literary tradition around, turns it on its head. 106 00:11:57,490 --> 00:11:59,440 So I recommended that the student have a look. 107 00:11:59,440 --> 00:12:09,580 You know, he was fascinated and he could see the very complex and subtle ways in which Achebe was talking back to Joseph Conrad and in a sense, 108 00:12:09,580 --> 00:12:17,020 also to Kipling was saying, actually, look, you know, Africans were not inarticulate, you know, mosque like presences. 109 00:12:17,020 --> 00:12:23,620 They were actually sort of full human beings with sorrows and joys like the Europeans in Conrade. 110 00:12:23,620 --> 00:12:27,140 So that definitely worked. In the case of that, student things fall apart. 111 00:12:27,140 --> 00:12:31,810 It can be because the names are very unfamiliar. They ebow the Nigerian. 112 00:12:31,810 --> 00:12:40,240 It can just initially be a little sort of alienating because it is such a different culture that you're being invited into. 113 00:12:40,240 --> 00:12:47,590 But I would say to any new reader of Achebe, just give it a go, spend an hour, dwell a bit. 114 00:12:47,590 --> 00:12:52,690 Some of these writers, because of their unfamiliarity, you know, they aren't speaking from, 115 00:12:52,690 --> 00:12:56,620 if you like, the heart of Victorian London, which is in a way much more familiar to us. 116 00:12:56,620 --> 00:13:03,370 They're speaking from, say, an island in the Pacific or a village in the Nigerian delta area. 117 00:13:03,370 --> 00:13:08,950 You need to give it. It's a little bit more time. It's like meeting somebody from a very different culture. 118 00:13:08,950 --> 00:13:15,490 You just have to spend a little bit of time getting used to a different accent, a different perspective. 119 00:13:15,490 --> 00:13:19,072 But once you've got used to it, then it's amazing.