FW: BBC News: Nobel Prize-winning British author VS Naipaul dies aged 85
Toyin Falola
From: djossou alfred <djossou...@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 5:43 PM
To: Augustin AINAMON <augusti...@yahoo.fr>, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>, "scheel....@neuf.fr" <scheel....@neuf.fr>
Subject: BBC News: Nobel Prize-winning British author VS Naipaul dies aged 85
I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:
Nobel Prize-winning British author VS Naipaul dies aged 85 -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45159149
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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Unlike Samir Amin and Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, pioneers in the field of Development Studies and African Cinema Studies, respectively, Naipaul betrayed Afro-Asia and became a leading apologist for White Supremacy and hegemonic policies, in general. His concern and empathy for the regions were nonexistent. He viewed the regions with utter contempt and disdain. The West was a buttress of civilization, in his myopic a-historical view, and he would sooner blame the victims of Imperialism than its perpetrators.
When I was doing this short video I did not have Naipaul in mind but on reflection, there is some relevance.
www.vimeo.com/ 284666675
Kenya: Journey from Colonialism
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2018 7:24 PM
To: dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: BBC News: Nobel Prize-winning British author VS Naipaul dies aged 85
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Cornelius Hamelberg
V.S. Naipaul was certainly no stranger to this dialogue series and that probably explains why the eulogies haven't been coming in, fast and furious. He will certainly get adjusted to living in the new world and not as a stranger in paradise, his new literary heaven.
Consonant with the sentiments formerly expressed by both dilettantes and specialists during his lifetime here are two assessments :
Where Does He Come From? By Sanjay Subrahmanyam
A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling by V.S. Naipaul
Picador, 193 pp, £16.99, September 2007.
Harrow, Kenneth
a young friend, now reading naipaul, wants to ignore the politics and find pleasure and value in the writing. well, lots of important writers are racist or antisemitic, not to say sexist. heminingway, for instance, was
both sexist and antisemitic, and by current values racist. celine; ezra pound, etc. i find armah's anti-arab stance another form of racism. and it isn't hard to find people like ouolaguem whose anti-stances against hausa or others is considerable.
we come from communities that have their own prejudices, and some, maybe most of us, share the prejudices. some of us are equally opposed to prejudices.
naipaul built his narratives, increasingly, on snobby notions of superiority that came at the cost, the price, of putting down people of color, colonized peoples, non-western people. he was an elitist, whose writing engaged
the reader, even as his hero spit on the vagina of an african woman in Bend in the River. one always asks, is the character the same as the author, but even as the answer is now, that answer disregards the notion of the implied author, i.e., the one we construct
in our imaginary as we read a text, and with whom we, the implied readers, or actual readers, come into dialogue. there was NO room chez naipaul for a dialogue that allowed for an engagement that gave value/intelligence/culture to colonized peoples.
i don't know how cornelius can permit this to go without criticism. i do know we can love shakespeare even as he gives us shylock or othello in terms we would not accept today. one of the great versions of Othello, the
play, i recently viewed had Iago played by a black zimbabwean actor. i was able to separate his vile lines about the black othello from the actor, and author, who penned the words.
with naipaul, eventually, i gave up and quit reading his books. if anyone here continued to read, and wants to make a case, ok, i am willing to hear it. but not without the acknowledgement of this painful recognition
that he was truly a racist, and that that has to go along with whatever else we can say about his work.
ken
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2018 5:47:08 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: BBC News: Nobel Prize-winning British author VS Naipaul dies aged 85/KENYA:JOURNEY FROM COLONIALISM vimeo.com/284666675
Cornelius Hamelberg
“i don't know how cornelius can permit this to go without criticism. “ ( Professor Harrow)
Professor Harrow,
Loves to provoke me. And for most of the actors in this dialogue series, poor V.S. Naipaul is the one writer that they love and have loved to hate. Even in death / after death , they still pursue him. Here's everything that has ever been said about him in this forum, so far. Not that I hold or have held brief for him, but hopefully, in the archives it can be discovered that I have not read Naipaul with my eyes closed. In Facebook, Biko Agozino has also entertained such a funny idea...
Through the noble, patrician mouth of Mark Antony, our Shakespeare said, “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar.”
So let it be with V:S: Naipaul?
Fortunately, Professor Harrow would be the first to admit that he couldn't possibly begin a V.S. funeral oration in the same way: “ The evil that men write lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with V.S. Naipaul!”
I don't know if Naipaul has been interred yet, perhaps, after all, he may be cremated, a Hindu custom which the Hindus introduced to Merry England, in circa 1918, but who knows, like Soyinka's village school teacher Lakunle ( “A savage custom, barbaric, out-dated, Rejected, denounced, accursed, Excommunicated, archaic, degrading, Humiliating, unspeakable, redundant.”) in a similar, disdainful vein, Beyond Belief's author Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul could have opted out of what for his twenty-first century renaissance self must be a quaint and outdated cremation tradition from his own ancestral India, the place which he once wrote a book about with for him the appropriate title of “An Area of Darkness “ as a result of which he took some flak from the Hindu nationalists in Delhi and became a persona non-grata in India, for quite some time.
There are the stiff upper lip anti-racist Africans for whom Naipaul is anathema and they might erroneously think that “An area of Darkness “ is a book that vilifies the dark continent and therefore intend to never read it.
But Mr. Naipaul even if not thought of as a universal man or a perfect man, amensch, a zaddik or an insan e kamil is still very much a human being and even if apparently not sympathetic to the cause, who knows, begore being cremated he might have left a last will and testament requesting that his ashes be bequeathed to the Ganges just like Charles Mingus
Tonight, before I fall asleep ( 1/60h part of death) I forgive my fellow beings who should be forgiven and I pray that I wake up with a clear conscience.
I am not fond of labelling people as racist or tribalist or anti-Semite, not without cause and so far I resist and have resisted the popular current that throws some people on the bandwagon with one purpose in mind only : to tar and feather the 45th President of the United States as a racist or in the case under our purview the preposterous idea that to all intents and purposes, literary merits aside and abandoning the express spirit of Alfred Nobel,'s last will and testament, in 2001 the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to V.S Naipaul, " a racist" - not that similar noises have not been made about Joseph Conrad. Paul Theroux 's “Fong and the Indians” is funny. I'm sorry if you don't think so. Please accept my apologies. I also find Sir Naipaul funny, bristling with his Lordly airs. I once dreamed about an African lion running after him in some African jungle. Sensing danger, Naipaul moving as fast as his legs could carry him, away from the beast.
Naipaul was awarded the Noble Prize in Literature in 2001 “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".
By which token the Swedish Academy acknowledges that Naipaul is controversial - in The Masque of Africa he tells some bitter truths, also some half-truths, observes and unmasks some uncomfortable realities.
Naipaul is seldom sympathetic to his characters. About the gross example of “even as his hero spit on the vagina of an african woman in Bend in the River” - is the character who does the spitting Naipaul's alter-ego? Is the vagina of the African woman a metaphor for Africa?
We could take a second look at Where Does He Come From? By Sanjay Subrahmanyam ."A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling" by V.S. Naipaul
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Cornelius Hamelberg
P.S.
Florida State Rep. Kimberly Daniels thanks God for slavery
From the horse's mouth : V. S. Naipaul : A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling
There is what Chimamanda Ngozi says is the danger of a single story – or even the danger of many stories.
Has Naipaul been taken to court for hate-speech?
If Naipaul's was the only voice – the only story-teller , then in the absence of critical reactions and boycotts from people like Professor Harrow, there would be this singular danger : should a people (any people) be demonized or portrayed as being completely without any redeeming or redeemable features - in the name of Nazism or Racial Supremacy the superior people could want to invoke such beliefs to justify the annihilation of the inferior people, some kind of “the big fish eat the little fish to keep the ocean clean”
My little fear at the present time is that when they finally reconstitute themselves and meet again, the beleaguered Swedish Academy - perhaps under some political pressure from e.g. Uncle Sam they could deem it fit to award Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie the next Nobel Prize , with the express purpose of riling the Mullahs in Iran who ( hopefully) could pass the deadliest form of literary criticism, a Fatwa on Rush-die's head, the heads of his publishers and this time also, the heads of all the male and female members of the Swedish Academy for being so naughty.
On Tuesday, 14 August 2018 22:23:12 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:
Harrow, Kenneth
dear cornelius and all,
you are right that the character is not the author. the author created a vision of africa and africans, in The Bend in the River, which is that of a dystopia, a world that fell apart following the departure of the colonialists. he paints equally disparaging portraits of the caribbean, people whom he describes as half-educated, pretentious, without real intelligence. he paints that portrait consistently of africans who acquire some western education. that is, half-assimilated, unlike him who became fully oxford.
he represents the absolute worst of western prejudices, arguing that the west fell when half-baked, half-educated caribbean blacks and african came to england.
he has indicated his distain for black people in india, and especially in africa, over and over.
why should he get off the hook? why should we respect the nobel choice and suspend our judgment. i have friends who report conversations in which he uttered racist sentiments.
i am not speaking badly of the dead; i am passing a judgment on a public figure, whom i did not know personally.
if i am wrong, if there is a book he wrote i need to read to correct my judgment, ok, let me know, and as i am retired perhaps i will find time to read it. there is a last thought: a friend who is expert in the congo
objected, but things have gone to hell in an handbag since independence. well, of course, from mobutu on there has been much to criticize. an author creates a world; the world naipaul created is not simply a reflection of mobutu's congo, but of black africa,
black people, black perspectives, and he damns that world.
if i am wrong, ok, show me where.
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
" lots of important writers are racist or antisemitic, not to say sexist. heminingway, for instance, was both sexist and antisemitic, and by current values racist. celine; ezra pound, etc."
In some cases, moral equivalence arguments are diversionary tactics, and are forms of fudging, ambiguity and ambivalence
that take us away from the real focus.
Ken, you got to the point eventually. I would add that not only was Naipaul an inveterate racist but though he was of East Indian ethnicity, he was a shameless defender of white supremacy.
Too bad for those who prioritize style over content.
www.africahistory.net
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2018 10:26 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Professor Harrow;
How could you possibly be wrong?
As an amiable, well-liked and well respected Professor of Literature and African Cinema, your own well founded and in and out of this dialogue series, the passionate intensity of various other people's indictments of V.S. Naipaul as a racist , cannot be taken lightly.
I should hope that if we cannot change his magic, the calculated, the often negative, malicious and evil fictions and fantasies that Naipaul's imagination makes of the realities, and his recorded observations and reports of reality in his non-fiction works, at least we can improve on the African realities and our perceptions of humanity, the human condition
I'm happy to share some of your own deep seated prejudices all based on our own values, our background, our world view; at least we are not coming from a remote planet (Saturn) in outer space) with some new, outlandish points of view, merely taking a casual a look at how they're doing over here, passing by, passing time reading some earthy comparative literature being produced and published here on planet earth.
Here's a complete list of Books written by V.S. Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul : Bibliography (delineating/demarcating his writing before and after the Nobel Prize Award.)
At least you are sufficiently tolerant of a few dissenting views, so as not to pass a fatwa against reading V.S: Naipaul or collecting signatures to have him banned from any college curriculum, or libraries, next stage could be a return to book-burning.
I too have heard a few amusing anecdotes about him from his Swedish literary agent ( She was at the Nobel Ball in 2001) and no doubt he did have his own peculiar sense of humour - his Nobel Lecture for example...
I had this discussion with a Biko just the other day , I reproduce it to partly illustrate the dilemma:
He : Comments are always welcome
Me : Naipaul is so hated on our Dialogue Series ! May he rest on peace. I look forward to your review of The Masque of Africa
He : Hate is too strong a word for critique
Me :What's wrong with strong words?
He: Too strong is obscene
Me: I love poetry but not for a living
He: Fela, Dylan, Marley, Makeba all made a living from the word.
Me: So does pastor Adeboye
He:Not poetry. Just showmanship
Me:John Okai is gone. Okai
He: Another one gone. Let him go and rest and return
Me: Naipaul is coming back?
He: He better change that stuffy suit
Me: Could return to a higher caste : Sir Vidia @ the house of Lords !
He: Lord of the flies. Caste Day Done
Me: Na European man teach him to carry shit
He: He dey smell like snow
Me: That's why I fear you
He : My brothers dey fear too much
Me: Smiling and shuffering
He: No mind them
Me :You get the leaders you deserve and when Lord Naipaul criticizes you you want to start acting violently. So what do you have to say about Lord Lugard, I wonder
He: Lord Asshole
Me: And start calling him names. Are you not happy to be living in Trump country?
He: Ain't his country. He just immigrated the other day. We built this country
Me: That's what you say. When do we get paid?
He: Soon come reparations
Me: Brother Oba didn't dare Fear too much , Black Consciousness Yes
When we look at all that's wrong with Africa, maybe V.S. has a right to shout, to even be mad, hostile, cynical, contemptuous, disdainful, ignoble qualities, all of which may prod us with revulsion? Nevertheless, being a psychological hedonist , this Pavlovian sense of revulsion causes you to recoil from reading any more of Naipaul ; understandably not being a masochist you've had enough and will never come back for more. Yet the sale of his books will go up even more now that he's gone ( could anyone be as callous as to say, “ good riddance”? Certainly not. Not even you .Which means that he does have some value, even as your agent provocateur.
Alfred Nobel most probably wanted his prize to be awarded to people whose works are uplifting Your questions are not baffling, but remain unanswered : “why should he get off the hook? why should we respect the nobel choice and suspend our judgment ?”
This leads to the next question, which you may answer if you like : How do you account for the Swedish Academy ( which awards the most coveted literary prize in the world, awarding it to V.S. “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories "
Are we to conclude that a majority of the 20 members of that Academy who voted for him had misread him or are we to conclude that contrary to the express will and spirit of Alfred Nobel's Last Will and Testament, they decided to award the prize to a racist?
If you were occupying stool number 19 in The Swedish Academy in 2001 and had read everything that Naipaul had written up to November that year , no doubt you would have pleaded your case most passionately and possibly deterred them from crowning him with the glorious Noble Prize , assuming that most of the damage had not already been done by then - or was he bolstered and even more emboldened by the award and therefore became even more arrogant (the very genetically Indian whiskers of his moustache and maybe too his pubic hairs, bristling with a more lordly air and utter contempt for the coolie man , and all Africans . A good definition by Peter Tosh : African
Re - Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali's snide remark about “those who prioritize style over content “, perhaps dear V.S. Could be laughing posthumously enjoying the moment of dramatic irony : “ Naipaul’s reaction to Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka winning the Nobel in 1986 (according to Paul Theroux): “Has he written anything?” Then adding that the Nobel Committee was, as usual, “pissing on literature from a great height.” ( From a collection of the worst things he has said ( “the good is oft interred with their bones” )
Harrow, Kenneth
well, cornelius, perhaps if i were swedish i would care more for the nobel prize, its jury, its judgments. the truth is it matters little to me. i have cared about the african world, its own values and debates over literary worth, for most of my life as a scholar. european prizes are often grounded "elsewhere." when beyala was awarded in france, i was equally annoyed. their judgment did not harmonize with my own, and we should never ever defer to major european awards as signifying anything for african worlds of culture and literature.
it is a burden, in truth, that has to be resisted. "it" means the euro-world's reiterated centering of its own values as "universal."
to change topics, it is interesting to ask how someone can make a valid critique of some african world--i.e. construction of reality--without falling into the outsiders' denigration of africa. a good example, again, might
be ouologuem whose incredible irony, bitter satires, attacked real issues. A Bend in the River poses the same problem: can we legitimately criticize mobutu's zaire without disparaging africans in the process. surely it is easy to distinguish a racist's view
from a legitimate stance of critique. a good example of the latter, in this school of ironic critique is the work of kourouma. how is kourouma different from naipaul? the difference is obvious: the former attacks corruption and pettiness of spirit, in order
that we might see the possibilities of a positive world, as given by fatimata, the protagonist's wife. i did not see that possibility in naipaul (but it has been too many years since i read Bend for me to make a considered case).
another recent example of a novel that hit me on the wrong side, whose critiques struck me as more destructive than anything else, was the first novel by teju cole. (one day is for the thief)
i do believe there is something like the outsider's view (or world, construction of a world) that we are invited to share. cole's struck me as far too afropessimistic.
do people remember the violent debates over this issue with Abani on this list? his credibility was destroyed by many, include pius adesanmi. on the other hand, the outsider can see what the insider is blinded to; the
best argument there was made by bakhtin. consider the powers of german translations of shakespeare, not to mention de tocqueville.
we are all outsiders, and insiders. how we occupy those spaces and acquire insights is not obvious. there is nothing automatic about it.
so here's a way to think about it. as we get older, our sight gets worse; and yet, "an old man can see sitting down what a young man can't see standing up."
we were all young once...
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Cornelius Hamelberg
“it is a burden, in truth, that has to be resisted. "it" means the euro-world's reiterated centering of its own values as "universal." ( Professor Kenneth Harrow)
I think that I agree with you almost completely - - but not about Teju Cole's “ Every Day is for the Thief”– he's not hard enough though I recognise and identify with his ire and his being more than distraught about some of the same things, almost an identical set of perceptions, from the airport right through to the end of the book ; I'm less inclined to agree with you about Ayi Kwei Armah's “Two Thousand Seasons”and your words, that you “find armah's anti-arab stance another form of racism “ even if assuredly it was written before the slave auction of Africans in Libya last year. I bet that if it was a bunch of Jews on the run from terrorism in Tel Aviv or Paris ( G-d forbid) being sold into slavery in Libya last year, you wouldn't “find armah's anti-arab stance another form of racism.” And what did African leaders do about it? Bugger all. What did Naipaul say that they did? The African sycophants who crowned Gaddafi “king of kings”in Accra
Anyway, as Cyprian Lamar Rowe once conveyed in a friendly discussion, in which he championed Achebe over Armah ( this was in 1970 when The Beautyful One Are not Yet Born” was Armah's only claim to fame - and the unctuous Cyprian in Ghana in search of his roots , would inevitably be more inclined to journey with Achebe rather than with Armah's who would be seeing thing's with as it were a stranger's eyes( a been to's)
That's a satisfactory response, Sir. The Nobel Prize in Literature? You say that , “the truth is it matters little to me” . Even if some of your favourite writers have been acknowledged, recognised and handsomely reward by the beneficent Alfred Nobel's Academy of jurors...
Perhaps if you were Swedish (not a bad idea) you would care more about Selma Lagerlöf , August Strindberg, Nelly Sachs, Stig Dagerman, Johannes Anyuru and a host of other Swedish writers , although, with so much English and American TV, film, music and literature ( English being a very strong second language of all educated post-war Swedes – it used to be German - still a strong second, after English) this generation is more outward-looking so it's less of Look Homeward Angel
In some of the writing situated in Africa , for the uninitiated – some of those who have never been there and may have only read about it, listened to chaps like Kofi Annan, or Keith Richburg etc., truth – even the not so bizarre or exotic is sometimes stranger than fiction.,
Fortunately or unfortunately, some of the African writers you invoke do not use any African language as their ultimate tool of the craft - language on which so much depends. (I wonder how Naipaul would come across when translated into Wolof or Afrikaans? How does Senghor's To New York rhyme, in Wolof or his native tongue, Serere ? Maybe like King Sunny Ade, singing in Danish or Chinese?
There's the same streak in his brother Shiva Naipaul in his travelogue, North of South – all the irritants that are particularly irksome to you are to be found therein.
What you said lastly can equally apply to Brother Naipaul : “so here's a way to think about it. as we get older, our sight gets worse; and yet, "an old man can see sitting down what a young man can't see standing up."
True too for some ( at least according to Wordsworth) :
“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
“meshuga”
Styles and technique come and go, but long live Soukous!