Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
That Obscure Abject of Desire
Daniel Goodman
University of Cincinnati
dgoodman1@pop.mindspring.com
Critics of V.S. Naipaul claim that he casts an abjectifying gaze on the postcolonial landscape; that his eye is irresistibly drawn towards scenes of futility and failure whether it be economic chaos in Africa (A Bend in the River), the cannibalization of revolution in the Carribean (The Return of Eva Peron with The Killings in Trinidad and Guerrillas), or the conspiracy of authority and subservience in India (An Area of Darkness); that he positively revels in an aesthetics of abjection. These works, which include both "factual" travel writing (Area and Return) and fiction (Bend and Guerrillas), underscore a second common criticism, namely, that Naipaul conflates fact and fiction and thereby further denigrates his subjects. That is, because the landscape is leveled by that all-encompassing gaze, there are no grounds for distinguishing fact from fiction, resulting in that night in which all cows (or subjects) are grey.
It is against this background that I want to examine the problematic relationship between Naipaul and his precursor/nemesis, Joseph Conrad, who was likewise accused of projecting a pervasive darkness onto the colonial landscape. Perhaps that apparent conflation of fact and fiction is rather Naipaul's refusal to discard the perceptual apparatus of colonialism any more than Conrad could. Naipaul's works (like Conrad's) are troubled by that colonialist legacy that weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living a legacy not so easily repudiated as many would have it.
I will focus chiefly on the aesthetics of abjection in Naipaul's travel writings: that eye for landscapes littered with the detritus of failed enterprise, that sensation of ceaselessly swooning towards a receding bottom. This intricate and absorbing (insidious yet engaging) aesthetic requires a thoroughgoing working through, rather than the brusque dismissal rendered by the critics. It also affords the proper terrain on which to examine Naipaul's problematic affiliation with Conrad. And last, it allows us to consider whether Naipaul's sensibility is finally complicit with the virulent survivals of colonialism or whether it forces us into a more thoroughgoing analysis of the 'post' in postcolonial.
The University of Cincinnati
dgoodman1@pop.mindspring.com
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