Post-colonial Discourses in Francisco Sionil José's Rosales Saga

Already at the beginning, this voyage provided many new impressions and and insights. It brought along with the acquaintanceship of Francisco Sionil Joses an intensive contact with a National Artist of the Philippines, and besides a highly interesting and sympathetic human being. With José's Rosales Saga and our conversations it provided unique insights behind the scenes of Philippine society, and with our two-day trip to the locations, where the novels of the Saga are playing, and to the hometown of its author, it provided unique impressions.

However, the dissertation itself then provided many new thoughts on the scientific discourses of post-colonialism, which raised for me, not for the first time, a kind of frustration about the way in which scientific discourses seem to be led nowadays. The post-colonial theory is to mirror the subjective feeling of the formerly colonized societies, it is to give the population of those societies, the simple man, the simple woman, a voice. However, it is decisively characterized by its development by scientists teaching at universities in the industrialized states, mainly the U.S.. That among those scientists there are many from the post-colonial societies may be seen as a positive sign. However, it must be noted that because of their long-term stay in industrialized countries, by their privileged position and by the absence of material poverty even those scientists have lost contact to the simple men and women in their societies, if they had had it any way, and therefore are not really able to give them a voice. I can recall the reaction of a scholar at a German university, when I reasoned that the biggest problem of the lower classes was a roof over their head and regular meals - "But that's pure materialism!". Yes it is, pure and simple, even if it does not fit into our way of thinking. That I did not find any mention of this problem in the scientific literature makes me wonder.

And then there are some details of the discourse. The idea of a condition of post-coloniality originated from groups like the "Subaltern Studies Group" in India, which wanted to abolish the focus of history on the ruling classes and instead give a voice to the subjective voice of the lower classes, the "subalterns". The term "subaltern" in this context was coined by the Intalian communist Antonio Gramsci as a discription of social groups cut of from access to power by hegemonial structures. It may be questioned if Gramsci, who with the term "subaltern" wanted to describe certain classes of society, included the application of this term on whole societies within the global community.

And that's for me already one of the most important problems of post-colonial theory. In the discussion, post-colonial societies are seen as one block, which is described as remaining homogenically and monolithically in the role of the victim, while the former colonial power gets assigned the role of the culprit. That there also was an upper class within the original population of the colonies often benefitting of the presence of the colonial power, which obviously could also take on the role of the culprit, is neglected, as is the fact, that there are culprits and victims of colonialism even among the former colonial powers. The village eldest, for instance, who on order by the colonial power organized the administration on a local level of the colony, was, one can safely say, benefactor, not victim of colonial power, even if he was subordinated to the colonial power, as his access to power was, with limits certainly, existent, and it often happened that rebellion against the colonial rule actually originated exactly from those classes, which were actually in power, as those classes actually had an understanding of the structures of colonial rule. And exactly those social classes, which until then had organized the administration of the colony for the colonial power, often took over power after the end of colonial rule and went over this business as usual, like they were used to from their former colonial masters, a fact clearly contradicting the thesis of subalternity of the colonial subjects.

Naturally, in the course of time various interest groups in the scientific community joined in to enter their typical fray into the discussion, thereby securing for themselves a space in the scientific stratosphere. As an example, there is feminism. Feminists in a further development of the Triple-Oppression-Theory assumed that women were suppressed under post-colonial conditions because of their gender, their class and their ethnicity. However, it does not seem important at all that in many cases of colonial societies, for instance in Muslim societies, there was a much lower degree of discrimination of women than usual in those societies, that additionally there are countries, in which because of different gender roles of those countries the discription from a Western point of view is absolutely irrelevant, this only an example how in the discussion on the condition of post-colonialism the Western point of view rules, ignoring points of view not agreeing with it.

A similar problem appears on the topic of the scope of post-colonial literature. In the discussion, India, the Caribbean, Australia and parts of Africa are subsumed under the tag "Post-colonial Societies", and there is a hot discussion about the question, if the United States may be included in the list of post-colonial nations. Wide parts of Asia are not included in this context, which can only be explained by the fact, that no literature in the European languages (mainly English and French) was produced there - or that no literature from those post-colonial nations was published in the mayor American and British publishing houses. The treatment of the scientific topic of post-colonialism is thus influenced by the activities involved in it, and the the result is tampered with in such a scope that the value of the results of the discussion must clearly be doubted.

On the topic of the Philippines, especially the Rosales Saga, I would in this context quote a sentence by Francisco Sionil José, according to which "a people can also be colonized by its own rulers", which can be traced through his novels and can also be confirmed from reality. Related to the scientific discussion of Post-Colonialism, in a simplified way this means that the ruling class in the Philippines gets assigned the role of the culprit, and that the colonial power is released from the role of the culprit and into meaninglessness, a basic assumption up to now never appearing in the post-colonial theory. Therefore, my dissertation with its some 240 pages is necessarily countroversial, and I have not great hope for it acquiring international recognition, but nobody shall say I did not try...

Zurück