Exploring the Imposition of Western Modernity Through Colonial and Postcolonial Writings

The advent of western modernity can be traced back to the 16th century scientific and cultural revolution in Europe, often known as the Age of Enlightenment, and the succeeding Industrial Revolution. Modernity must be understood, at least partially, against the backdrop of what preceded it. Industrial processes emerged gradually from an agrarian society, a structure that had lasted for about 5,000 years. The modernist movement has always been reactive, acquiring meaning and impetus via confrontation with, and renunciation of, previous systems. By the 17th century, Western Europe had already begun the process of transoceanic colonization, and they would proceed to the colonies with the primary goal of profit, according to the capitalist system. Western industrialization served as a paradigm for industrialization in the colonies. Being modern meant adopting Western industrial culture or being entangled in, according to Mignolo, "the colonial matrix of power." Non-Western civilizations did not always have many options and were frequently "civilized" in a Eurocentric manner instead of being granted political authority over their own culture, and as development progressed, the consensus emerged that the only viable kind of civilization in the modern world was an industrial society, and an Anglophone education was a key step towards this.

The clash between Western Modernity and indigenous values produces a relationship with elements of aspiration, violence, creativity, and trauma, but in most cases, all these factors eventually lead to aspiration, assuming the indigenous entity experiencing it has the bare minimum of privilege to even consider a more modern version of oneself. The imposition of western modernity using hard power and violence also assists in the creation of the aspiration since it is seen as a method to avoid the trauma that follows the violence. Modernity is seen as the only way out, and it is through this that soft power control is established.

In Zoë Wicomb's work of fiction You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, Freida, the protagonist, is conscious of the slight advantages her father enjoys since he understands English, and this serves as a motivation for her to seek an English education as she strives to become that sophisticated, "whiter" version of herself. Her ambition originates from an early acceptance that a white person is more educated and has a greater command of the English language, as she quickly agrees without question that "bowl" is pronounced like "hole" rather than "howl." Freida's ambition is also evident in her attempts to straighten her hair in order to seem "whiter." She also has a white boyfriend despite being aware of all the repercussions of having an illegal relationship in Apartheid Africa, which shows her attempt to disassociate herself from her coloured identity and seek modernity. These experiences of her childhood and teenage years give rise to an aspiration so strong that the protagonist goes to England for her education.

A similar theme is noticed in V.S. Naipaul's memoir "Reading and Writing: A Personal Account." Naipaul writes: "I wished to be a writer. But together with the wish there had come the knowledge that the literature that had given me the wish came from another world, far away from our own." This demonstrates his strong desire since childhood to seek colonial modernity. Naipaul recognizes the gap between his personal desires and his cliched perception of literature. As a Caribbean of Indian ancestry, Naipaul had only witnessed communal celebrations, and whatever literature he encountered from his culture was ancient and mythical. The notion of "self" was very much lacking in his culture, and this, along with his father's autodidacticism, drove him to push himself out of a small place, and in his own words "get away to the bigger world."

Likewise, in his memoir "Edmund Wilson in Benares," Pankaj Mishra recounts a few months spent at Benares and how he accidentally found Edmund Wilson's writings in the university library and became fully immersed in them. In Mishra, we have a typical colonial youth who believes, or is led to believe, that a small-town existence is insufficient and that in order to be successful, one must move to metropolitan centres and be educated in the colonizer's language. "I had always lived in small towns where libraries and bookshops were few and far between and did not stock anything except a few standard texts of English literature: Austen, Dickens, Kipling, Thackeray." Mishra believes that his college education has brought him no closer to the intellectual modernity he seeks. He is a small-town person who realizes there are vast worlds beyond the archaic colonial curriculum, and his life has been converted into a frantic hunt for a world beyond, something that would provide him with a sense of achievement and superiority over his fellow citizens.

The aspiration is evident in Wicomb, Mishra, and Naipaul's texts. Although using slightly deflected forms at times, they have deployed the Bildungsroman, which is considered to be a symbol of western modernity, not just because it establishes a certain kind of relationship between the self and the communal (the idea of the self itself being a marker of modernity and developing with the emergence of capitalist systems) but also because it narrates the growth and education of an individual, which are notions associated with western modernity. It must be noted that the aspiration in the case of Wicomb's protagonist is of particular significance due to the Apartheid system, which made the divide between the indigenous and the colonisers much more pronounced.

Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place is a series of essays that discuss the colonial legacy of Antigua, the tourism industry, and how the violent transition to modernity led to corruption in the island. Kincaid writes in an almost accusatory tone which reflects her resentment towards the colonizers, and she discusses how the relationship between western modernity and indigenous values has been almost traumatic in Antigua because there has been a complete erasure of their past, their culture and language, which was not the case in India or South Africa. Sentences like "For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime" depict the horrors of modernity, although it should be remembered that there is aspiration even in Antigua. People in authority, particularly ministers, desire to live lives similar to those of Americans and Europeans, and they go to any length to achieve this. Their desire to enjoy a contemporary lifestyle outweighs any animosity toward colonizers or affection for the homeland. Seeking this contemporary way of life is regarded as a means of escaping the traumatic past of slavery and oppression.

African poets have also caught the anguish of colonial authority, and it is clear from their poems that the imposition of western modernity was undesired and traumatic for the majority of the indigenous population. Mazisi Kunene's "Thoughts on June 26" expresses the indignation toward Western modernity: "Watching Europe burn with its civilization of fire. Watching America disintegrate with its gods of steel, Watching the persecutors of mankind turn into dust." Trauma has been used as a source of aspiration in poems as well. Sipho Sepamla's "Civilization Aba" explains how "western civilization" made her believe in a white man's superiority over a black person. Mavis Smallberg describes how "Willy Nyathele" discusses democracy. Democracy is a concept that evolved with Western civilization, and indigenous people not only accept it but also desire to live in a democratic nation, demonstrating the aspirational relationship of Western modernity with indigenous values despite acknowledging the trauma that it has brought with it.

The texts reviewed illustrate how violence and trauma caused by the colonial imposition of western modernity eventually culminate in aspiration, with the primary reason being the branding of European culture as superior and the adoption of the idea of Eurocentrism by colonized subjects.