Queerness in postcolonialism. Finding an identity using the example of "Cereus Blooms at Night"

Content

1. Introduction

2. Queerness in postcolonialism: Finding an identity in Cereus Blooms at Night
2.1. Historical Background
2.1.1. British attitude towards queerness during the time of colonialism and its influence on the Caribbean natives
2.1.2. Gender roles and the mati practice: A picture of the indigenous Caribbean attitude towards same-sex relationships
2.2. Spivak’s theory of Subalternity applied to the question of sexual and gender identity in the postcolonial Caribbean
2.3. Shani Mootoo: Cereus Blooms at Night
2.3.1. Characters
2.3.2. Methods of discriminating against members of the queer community experienced by Tyler
2.3.3. Ways to deal with the experienced injustice as shown by characters from Cereus Blooms at Night

3. Conclusion

4. Works Cited

5. List of illustrations

1. Introduction

“Racial segregation”, “gender gap”, “religious wars”, “global differences”, all these problems are frequent subjects of public discourse and private conversations whereas the struggle for queer identity and its acceptance seems to be especially repellent and unpleasant. Only recently protests and marches have started to attract attention - mainly in western societies - yet the process of finding social and individual identity appears to be much more difficult in formerly colonized countries whose people are occupied by (re)gaining a proper self-perception. In order to advance the process of normalizing queerness, it needs to become subject matter of our everyday life. It is for this reason that light must be shed on the right to sexual freedom in order to ensure the adherence of human rights.

This seminar paper seeks to answer the question to what extent and in which ways members of the queer community in postcolonial societies can build an identity using the example of Cereus Blooms at Night in order to illustrate the impact that discrimination and injustice can have on the self-esteem and behaviour of individuals. It will be based upon the influence of British foreign rule with its values and standards on the attitude of indigenous people towards non-heteronormative sexual engagements in order to explain how the current situation has come about. In addition to that, the theory of “Subalternity” by Gayatri Spivak will be incorporated for it shall contribute to the analysis of the queer’s trapped position. Two major parallels between the Indian woman - for whom this concept has originally been created - and the queer Caribbean will be carved out: Loss of the indigenous language resulting in the inability to voice one’s struggle and the double oppression through both foreign influence and indigenous realities. Concluding the historical background for the scene in which Shani Mootoo’s novel Cereus Blooms at Night is set will be a paragraph about the conflict of current western attempts to influence the situation for the LGBT+ community in the Caribbean. In order to introduce the reader to the subject of the novel, characters and their role within the plot will be summarized to ensure the comprehension of the following part which will strive to respond to the initial question of finding identity in a postcolonial society using tangible examples from the book: Types of oppression on one hand, resolutions or at least methods of coping with the imposed inferiority on the other. While the latter must compare the different protagonists, the analysis of the first point will restrict itself to simply one character, Tyler, who is confronted with a huge variety of discriminatory behaviour.

In connecting the historical finding with the examination of the main characters’ bearing and explanation of certain actions as consequences of a continual humiliation on the part of fellow citizens, this seminar paper will attempt to interlink colonial history with present problems.

It is important to note that neither all West Indian countries have ever been subject to the British colonial empire nor have the majority of them been occupied the entire period of colonisation by merely Great Britain. But due to the limited volume of this paper the analysis is forced to restrict itself to only one nation and thus it cannot provide the entire queer image and history in the Caribbean region.

2. Queerness in postcolonialism: Finding an identity in Cereus Blooms at Night

2.1. Historical Background

2.1.1. British attitude towards queerness during the time of colonialism and its influence on the Caribbean natives

In order to be able to understand the homophobia Britain has imported into its colonies during the period of imperialism one needs to examine the approach of the British society towards the queer community in the 19th century. The entire conflict concerning sexual or gender identities only began with the division of people into homo- and heterosexuals over the course of the eighteenth century.¹ This contrasts the approach towards male-male sexual acts in ancient times, being practiced openly and respected as a typical, especially manly and dominant performance.² A person’s sexual life has never before defined one’s identity: It was rather a “game”, “ordinary”, “familiar”³. With the enlightenment, the oftentimes feminine comportment of gay and transgender men evoked a reduction of their manliness and thus the respect, society was willing to pay them. As Thumbard describes it:

The level of shame connected with sodomy had increased because the accusations now meant that one was exposed to the world as an effeminate molly and not a real man. Unnatural practices now brought with them […] unnatural ends. Sodomy was now tied to a deviant gender role.⁴

Since it has now become an inseparable part of the human being, a non-heteronormative identification could not be aligned with the predominant values Britain represented at that time. Being a “pillar of the constitution”⁵, Christianity played a major role within this conflict. Referring to the biblical example of Sodom and Gomorrah, clericals tried to justify their position: Minor sins such as avarice or licentiousness culminated in the aberration of sexual intercourse between men and finally destroyed the mythical city.⁶ Due to the ecclesiastical opposition towards non-heteronormative sexual or gender identities, laws against all kinds of ‘aberrant’ actions or “unnatural crimes”⁷ were passed in Great Britain from the sixteenth century on.⁸ But next to this religious embargo, values such as the “romantic marriage”⁹ or raising kids were highly treasured and as neither a gay couple nor transgender persons are able to satisfy those societal expectations, exclusion and an abnormal image were the consequence. Subsequently, the 19th century was a period of time during which the British islands were location for many judicial cases, rulings and punishments against - nowadays we would call it “queer” - members of their community¹⁰, trying desperately to erase this ‘immoral’ behaviour and to prevent others from joining in.

Just as in Great Britain, a so-called ‘queer’ identity did not exist, or at least define a person for the longest time in the Caribbean. The focus was rather laid upon the act itself than the persons involved. On discovering that these practices were still common within the societies of the colonies, western empires made use of them as a part of the justification for the occupation and oppressing.¹¹ Constructing an ideology based upon Christianising around the colonization, Great Britain could simultaneously protect their own values and ‘enlighten’ the indigenous population.¹² The “Offences Against The Person Act” (OATPA)¹³ introduced in the UK in 1861 was exported to colonies including Jamaica, which to this day maintains the law.¹⁴ Curiously, these rulings are relatively seldomly executed; The much greater challenge for the queer community in modern Caribbean nations is the high presence of homophobia and structures of discrimination against all abnormal behaviour in everyday life. As a consequence of the ideological justification of the Victorian morals, the hierarchy remains seared into the people’s minds.¹⁵ Results of a study on differences within the legal approach of countries towards homosexuality in particular have shown a “correlation between having a British legal origin and having a law criminalizing homosexual conduct”¹⁶. Out of 72 nation states pursuing queerness as a crime 38 show in some way a connection towards Great Britain throughout their history.¹⁷ Another figure demonstrating the persistent influence of the colonial past are the 70% of former British colonies which criminalise homosexuality.¹⁸ Thus, the Caribbean states, in threatening and excluding, remain (home-)countries to the queer population which force a decision between, in Bellot’s words, “either the internal exile of living a lie at home to avoid ostracism or assault, or the external exile of fleeing home in order to finally be ourselves”¹⁹.

2.1.2. Gender roles and the mati practice: A picture of the indigenous Caribbean attitude towards same-sex relationships

Before analysing the attitude of the people colonised and influenced by the British it is indispensable to define what indigeneity means in the Caribbean. In looking at the ethnic composition of the West Indies it becomes obvious, that the vast majority of inhabitants were and still are (descendants of) African slaves who have been transported during the slave trade in order to work on British plantations.²⁰ Consequently, a major part of the development of societal structures and morals has been based upon or influenced by African traditions combined with the peculiar situation of being subject to a foreign empire and thus deprived of your innate human rights. Being aware of these preconditions it is hardly surprising that family and kinship constitute a core feature of Caribbean society. Those were premised upon the existing gender roles within the (slave) communities, which stated that “female dignity be linked to women’s compliance with certain social constructs of respectable femininity”²¹ meaning the return to the ancient role of child bearing and thus being deprived of her sexual autonomy because she needs to be protected.²² Back in the days, slave women “worked in the fields and as domestic servants, had relatively little entry into skilled positions, and were responsible for the care of their families and households”²³. For men it was not common to assist with the familial and domestic work and consequently women found support in relationships between one another through a practice called mati that originated from the gender separation during shipping from the African continent towards the Caribbean.²⁴ Rooted in West African traditions the arriving slaves did, unlike the colonisers, not differentiate between genera in nouns and pronouns resulting in flexible gender roles and sexualities also called the “mutability of gender”²⁵. Women formed communities within compounds called “dyaris”²⁶ in order to provide mutual help with childbearing, providing food and economizing while simultaneously engaging in physical acts with each other minus the reduction of identity on one’s sexual engagements. Due to this approach “nonheteronormative sexualities and complex gender (non)identities are not segregated from the everyday life”²⁷.

Referring once again to the nevertheless existing discrepancies between genders, the Caribbean society provided a basis for the ideological justification of British Victorian restrictions within the sexual discourse. In glamourizing certain family concepts and demonizing ‘inappropriate’ behaviour in favour of a strong masculine ideal and the female submission to it alongside the highly treasured marriage and childbirth, those differences to “imperial gender ideologies”²⁸ started to shrink and eventually disappear. The coloniser’s standards would simply leave no room for otherness and since male predominance was warmly welcomed by at least one half of society, it is no wonder that adapting to the new concepts would happen so quickly and sustainably.

2.2. Spivak’s theory of Subalternity applied to the question of sexual and gender identity in the postcolonial Caribbean

Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, a woman from Indian decency has now come to teach at Columbia University in New York²⁹ and influence the whole field of postcolonial studies with her major theory of Subalternity. It is based upon the concept of essentialism which serves as the source for exclusion: One can classify things as simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, so consequently everything may only exist in one correct version.³⁰ When Spivak introduced the theory, it was intended specially to describe the dilemma around the Indian practice of widow-sacrifice during her husband’s funeral called sati. The rite was abolished by the British in 1829 as, with western view, the tradition had to be labelled intolerable and inhumane. Previously, the practice has been established by the privileged indigenous men without the women’s permission. Nevertheless, putting an end to the self-sacrifice has yet again been a decision made for them. Consequently, one can describe their situation as a “double oppression”, first of all by the native males and additionally on the part of the coloniser.³¹ Unfortunately, the Subaltern, in trying to voice her sufferings finds herself in a further predicament: Adapting to the forced use of the British language and style would be to give in to the foreign rule, but writing a text which demands different theoretical approaches would be at risk to be read through established lenses and consequently remain misunderstood or even discounted.³²

Just as Spivak applied the theory to the subaltern female in the Indian (post-) colonial society, it appears to be applicable to the queer struggle for identity and acceptance in the Caribbean. The “double oppression” finds a parallel in the previously discussed traditional gender-based differentiation on the one hand and the introduction of the heteronormative British gender and sexuality conception on the other. Again, the position and rights of the - in this case queer - subaltern are set by either an indigenous elite or a foreign power. The inability to utter the injustice one faces originates again from the loss of inherent terms for non-heteronormative sexual and gender identities. To this date, the concept of Subalternity is - in contrast to Homi Bhabha’s Hybridity - hardly ever touched upon in modern Caribbean literature, or, as Shlensky would argue: “Subalternity, as we might say, is itself the subaltern of Caribbean postcolonial discourse”³³, at least, no “specific historical and cultural conventions”³⁴ are written about in order to illustrate the discrepancies within the current society. Seeing the growing worldwide acceptance of queer identities that predominantly western countries spread on behalf of their recently adopted appreciation and respect one might assume, that the situation might improve significantly in the Caribbean, too. But is the desperate try of Great Britain to make up for the harm and damage it has inflicted upon its former colonies truly the path towards a solution of the conflict? Because one may argue that attempting to force foreign interests once more in order to ‘better’ (from a British point of view) the societal situation could result in the recurrence of an inferior, colonised feeling of narrowness. Thus, the probability of a sustainable, permanent and sincere change in the approach towards LGBT+ acceptance of the Caribbean people appears to be very low. The queer community- which again is a term created by former colonising empires - in the Caribbean finds itself in a position equivalent to the one of the Indian women, having a long way to go until appreciation and equalization.

[...]

¹ cf. Randolph Trumbach, “Modern Sodomy: The Origin of Homosexuality, 1700-1800.” A Gay History of Britain. Ed. Matt Cook. 77-105. (Oxford / Westport Connecticut: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007), p.78.

² Ibid., p. 77.

³ H. G. Cocks, “Secrets, Crimes, Diseases.” A Gay History of Britain. Ed. Matt Cook. 107-144. (Oxford / Westport Connecticut: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007), p. 122.

⁴ Trumbach, “Modern Sodomy.”, p. 80.

⁵ Cocks, “Secrets, Crimes, Diseases.” p. 126.

⁶ cf. Ibid., p. 111.

⁷ Charles Upchurch, “Politics and the reporting of sex between men in the 1820s.” British Queer History. Ed. Brian Lewis. 17-38. (Manchester / New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 22.

⁸ cf. Cocks, “Secrets, Crimes, Diseases.”, p. 110.

⁹ Trumbach, “Modern Sodomy.”, p. 78.

¹⁰ Cocks, “Secrets, Crimes, Diseases.”, p. 107.

¹¹ cf. Enze Han, Joseph O’Mahoney, British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality: Queens, Crime and Empire. (Abingdon / New York: Routledge, 2018) , p. 6.

¹² cf. Ibid., p. 4.

¹³ Ibid., p. 31.

¹⁴ cf. Ibid., p. 67.

¹⁵ cf. Ibid., p. 68.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 48.

¹⁷ cf. Ibid., p. 2.

¹⁸ cf. Ibid., p. 48.

¹⁹ Gabrielle Bellot., “On Being Queer in the Caribbean.” New York Times. 31 Oct 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/on-being-queer-in-the-caribbean.html (16 Oct 2019).

²⁰ cf. Colin Graham Clarke, Bridget M. Brereton., “West Indies: Island Group, Atlantic Ocean.” Britannica. 31 Dec 2018 https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Indies-island-group-Atlantic-Ocean/Colonialism (18 Oct 2019).

²¹ Yasmin Tambiah, “Threatening Sexual (Mis)Behavior: Homosexuality in the Penal Code Debates in Trinidad and Tobago.” Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean. Ed. Faith Smith. 143-156. (Charlottesville / London: University of Virginia Press, 2011), p. 151.

²² cf. Ibid., p. 143.

²³ Marietta Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), p. 18.

²⁴ cf. Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, “What is a Uma ? – Women Performing Gender and Sexuality in Paramaribo, Suriname.” Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean. Ed. Faith Smith. 241-250. (Charlottesville / London: University of Virginia Press 2011), p. 243.

²⁵ Ibid., p, 248.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 242.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 249.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ cf. n.a., “Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak University Professor at Columbia University; New York.” Reading Spivak. n.d. https://www.readingspivak.eu/ (11 Sep 2019)

³⁰ cf. Peter Childs, Jean Jacques Weber, Patrick Williams, “Spivak and the Subaltern.” Postcolonial Theories and Literatures. 95-113. (Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2006) , p. 96.

³¹ cf. Ibid.

³² cf. Ibid., p. 105.

³³ Lincoln Z. Shlensky, “Hybridity and Subalternity in the Postcolonial Caribbean: Splitting the Difference.” The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature. Ed. Michael A. Bucknor. 304-313. (London. Routledge, 2004), p. 307.

³⁴ Ibid.