Summary of Introduction to Culture and Imperialism

Culture, according to Edward Said, means two things in particular. Culture consists of the
aesthetic practices whose principal aim is pleasure, like art of description, communication
and representation which are independent of economic, social and political influence.
Secondly, it is a concept that has an element of refinement and elevation and it is the reservoir
of the best ideas and practices of a society.
Edward Said sees novel as a cultural form which plays an important part in the formation of
imperial attitudes, references and experiences. The connection of discourses to the empire is
very interesting to study. He thinks that Africanist and Indianist discourses are a part of the
general European effort to rule distant lands and peoples. It is the colonizers special way of
representing these lands and the orientalist description of the Islamic world. What explorers
and novelists say about the strange regions of the world is based on stories rather than facts.
These discourses describe the mysterious East and stereotype African, Indian or Irish mind.
The distinction between they and us is clear in these discourses. The idea of bringing
civilization to barbaric people, of punishment or death when they misbehave or rebel
because they only understood violence is quite clear in these discourses. The colonizer
always feel a difference between themselves and native_ they are not like us and they
deserve to be ruled.
The coming of White man in non-European world brought resistance. Along with armed
resistance the colonized people made considerable efforts of cultural resistance, they tried to
assert their national identity. They also create political parties and associations with the
common goal of self- determination and independence.
The main battle of imperialism is over land but the issues like liberty, right, identity, who
owned the land who has the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back
and to whom it belongs in future were contested and reflected and even decided in narratives.
Novels were used by the colonizer to establish the idea of its cultural dominance in the minds
of the natives. They also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity
and the existence of their own history.
The power to narrate or to block other narratives from forming and emerging is very
important to culture and imperialism. The grand narratives of emancipation and
enlightenment mobilized the colonized people to rise and overthrow imperial subjection.
Culture comes to be associated with nation and this differentiates us from them and with
some degree of hatred for foreign nations. Culture in this sense is a source of identity. The
colonizer not only invades the foreign territory but also tries to intrude in the culture of the
natives. It is the only way through which they can colonize the mind of the natives. The
colonized people put resistance to this cultural intrusion and return to their culture to assert
their identity and these returns produce religious or national fundamentalism.

Narrative becomes a battle ground where the ideologies contend with each other because it
represents the culture of the respective people. Every nation appreciates its own narrative
loyally and uncritically while fighting with others. Culture becomes a protective enclosure
and politics is very crucial to it.
The novel is connected to the imperial process manifestly or implicitly. Great Expectations is
a novel in which the English attitude towards Australia is presented. Australia was a penal
colony where irredeemable and unwanted excess population of culprits was sent. The people
sent to Australia could succeed but they could hardly return and if they return they are not
accepted by the society as Magwitch was unacceptable to Philip whom he supported
financially. They could expiate their crimes but their stay in an outside world makes them
permanent outsiders. They are capable of redemption as long as they stayed in Australia. The
prohibition placed on Magwitchs return is not penal but imperial. Subjects can be taken to
Australia but they cannot return to metropolitan space. On the other hand Philips childhood
friend Herbert returns as a hardworking business man and he is accepted by Philip. The
relation of Britain with other empires is normal which Australia could never enjoy. This is
because of the interest of empire in the colonies other than Australia where no profit is
possible.
The generation of scholars and critics of the colonized world have seen, in texts of the West,
an interest of the colonizer in what was considered a lesser world, populated with people of
lesser color. The resources of the colonized land attract the colonizer.
After the Cold War, America hatched the idea of New World Order and conceived the notion
that: we are number one, we are bound to lead, we stand for freedom and order and so
on. America is self-congratulatory and proclaims responsibility.
Conrad writes as a man whose Western view of the non-Western world is so ingrained as to
blind him to other histories, other cultures and other aspirations. Conrad is both an imperialist
and anti-imperialist. He fails to understand that India, Africa and South America also have
lives and cultures with integrities. He does not see that the natives were not totally controlled
by the imperialists and that the anti-imperialist movements were not all corrupt.
Nostromo embodies the imperial arrogance and Conrad seems to be saying, we westerners
will decide who is a good or a bad native because natives have existence by virtue of our
recognition. We created them, we taught them to think and speak and when a native rebels
it confirms our idea that all natives are silly. This is in fact what Americans felt about their
Southern neighbors. Conrad could not understand that the natives had a sense of identity and
this made them to cling to the basics of their culture and moved them to offer resistance and
rise against the unjust rule of the colonizer.
Life in one subordinate realm is imprinted in fiction by the dominant realm. All these
narrative argue that the source of worlds significant action is Europe whose representatives
are free to visit the third world. These narratives depict the world outside West as having no
life, no history, no culture, no integrity and no ideology and they are dependent upon West for

their representation. Conrads novels confirm the habitual Western suspicion about the
others.
The world now has changed. The metropolitans of Europe and America now have large nonwhite populations who are powered enough to ask for their narratives to be heard. The
narratives of the colonized people have posed a threat to the western point of view about the
overseas territories and have energy to animate the wish for independence and to speak freely
without unfair domination. They represent their own culture and their own history reducing
the western claims as mere propaganda or misrepresentation.
Culture and imperialism are closely related. The imperialists think that their culture is
superior to the culture of others and so the others need to be enlightened and to be ruled
because they dont have enough knowledge and intellect to rule their own land properly.
The novel is a part of relationship between culture and empire. The authors do not intend to
project their own culture as superior but they are influenced by the history of their societies
and they are shaped by their societies. It is in the imperialist attitude of their societies which
is projected in their discourses. Culture and its aesthetic forms are derived from historical
experience.
The novel was major form of literature in England and France. America, emerged as an
empire during the nineteenth century, followed these two empires in producing novels after
decolonization of England and France. The idea of ruling the overseas territories has a
privileged status in these three cultures. These empires project and propagate their cultures
through novel and use it as a tool to establish their intellectual superiority over the natives.
Their novels differentiate between us and others.
There is always the idea of power and national interest behind running the affairs of lesser
peoples with a zeal that we are exceptional and not imperial. The intellectuals, artists and
journalists collaborated to this idea of empire. The Europeans have always thought that there
is a settled difference between us and others. They think their identity and culture as
superior to others.
A new group of intellectuals among the colonized lands has now emerged and they are
presenting their point of view from a perspective very different from the colonizers
perspective. Binary opposition has lost its ground. Identity is no longer a static entity as it
was thought by the imperialist culture. All cultures are now involved in one another, no pure
culture remains. A hybrid culture has evolved.