Chapter one introduction

CHAPTER FIVE

COLONIAL OTHERNESS IN THE GOTHIC, POSTCOLONIALISM AND OTHERNESS: GHOSTS FROM ELSEWHERE

The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere is a critical survey of English literature from the eighteenth century gothic works to the postcolonial period which highlights the role of racial and colonial otherness prevailing in the Indian English literature. The objective of the author is to explore ‘Otherness’ in English literature from the beginning to the end. The book is divided into four interesting parts. The first part deals with the gothic postcolonialism and otherness, the second part deals with the relationship between the gothic and otherness, Part three of the book focuses upon postcolonialism and otherness followed by the comprehensive summing up highlighting the major works of Rudyard Kipling, Ishmel, Lavinas, Meilvelle, and so on. The book was published in 2009 by Palgrave Macmillan.

During the colonial period people are proud of purity, indignity and their roots whereas in the postcolonial era people are proud of the hybridity, ambivalence which is considered as the achievement of life, society and literature. Tabish Khair explores that the concept of otherness in the form of gothic novels, magic realism in the form of mixing facts and fictions and role of smoke and darkness indicating the merit of the book.

The book brings a study of ‘other’ that how other has been treated and viewed as a problem, and how they become a major form of horror, fear, violence and marginalisation. For example in Wuthering Heights there are also violent characters present in the novel. While commenting about the fact Harbir Kaur writes,

“The presence of certain violent elements and the streaks violent of madness and the unsocial elements in the character of certain people, evil characters also are there. Heathcliff is an impulsively violent kind of person, but Catherine’s uncle is an evil person, who is a reason behind Heathcliff is becoming uncouth” (2015).

The novel Wuthering Heights reflects specially two kinds of violence physical and psychological. The psychological violence has reflected by the violent behaviour of Heathcliff and the physical violence has reflected in the violent words of Hindley.

Otherness is an attitude of western philosophy which is very much related to the identity. It reflects the enigma of self, silenced, affected and marginalised from the mainstream society. The colonial discourse is the representation of the coloniser’s superiority over the colonised. According to the typical thinking of the Europeans toward east, that the eastern are uncivilised, uncultured, uneducated, black, and lazy and violent specially Indians. Actually the reason behind that they want to make them slaves and use their resources for their personal interests. Therefore they wanted to make them educated and civilised so that they could use them as per their needs. In the colonial period the colonisers were at the ‘centre’ and the colonised were at the ‘margins’. This practice is known as “Othering”. Literary Criticism and Theory defines the western dominating attitude of working. To quote:

“This attitude of raising the Europesn culture as the ultimate standard by which to measure the other culture, is designated Eurocentricism which employs what is called the philosophy of Universalism. European ideas and experiences were Universal, the standard to follow. Eurocentric discourse is seen even in division of the whole world” (Nagarajan, 2012, 186).

Subsequently in the post-colonial period the ‘otherness’ is still prevailing in the society. There are certain prominent figures living in the society but they are treated as others like natives, subalterns, dalits, females, deviants, blacks, nat-girls, eunuchs, gays, lesbians and minorities. Otherness is prevailing in the society right from the biblical period such as the character of Satan represents the other part of the society, as he was not the part of the mainstream society. When go through the Indian mythologies like Mahabharata, Ramayana and Purans there are also some people/ characters who were treated as others. In fact in the colonial period the otherness was expressed with the help of certain features which become the identity of the person and those qualities make them other from the mainstream society. Such as Ravana was a great king but he was also treated as other with the qualities like ten heads, Black, huge personality, violent, and roaring voice etc. Therefore Ravana became one of the most promising symbols of racial otherness of Indian mythologies in the pre-colonial period.

When Europeans had established their companies all over the country along with the globe, the orients were forced to leave their cultural heritage as they were inferior in the eyes of western colonizers. The encounter of east and west was a significant step marks the self- image of the Europeans which produces identities right from the decadent western modernity to the concepts of race, culture, language, and moral superiority.

Edward Said in his famous work Orientalism mainly concerns about a long European tradition which has based on the orient’s special place in the European western experiences, this is E. Said calls the ‘Orientalism’. E. Said mainly focuses upon the British and French orientalism of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries along with the contemporary American Orientalism. Orientalism analyses the oriental discourse which produces many academic and non-academic sources. According to A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory;

“The phenomenon of ‘Orientalism’, Said reasons, occupies three overlapping domains. It designates first the 4000-year history of and cultural relations between Europe and Asia; second the scientific discipline producing specialists in Oriental languages and culture from the early nineteenth century; and third the long-term images, stereotypes and general ideology about ‘the Orient’ as the ‘Other’, constructed by generations of Western scholars” (Selden. 220).

Literally according to E. Said orientalism refers to the western academic and prominent discourses about the eastern. While talking about India Mary Douglous claims that “India is the mirror- image of the west means a totally opposite world to the west” (1972, 12). Actually eastern countries have always treated as other because they are not similar to their culture, race, identity, language and colour as well. According to Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory;

“Orientalism is a thinking , a form of representation that created opinions, ideas and images of the non-european culture in racialized ways so that (1)The east was always contrasted negativity with Europe and (2) it justified the colonial presence in the East” (Nayar. 162.)

Frantz Fanon defines otherness as in the way that the colonisation engages the European men and the Orients a relationship or encounter where it develops only in its contrast with the other. Fanon’s ideas of colonisation were fascinated by psychological effect. His The Wretched of the Earth (1963) and Black Skin White Masks (1967) have considered as the most influential texts of the twentieth century which majorly highlights the psychological ideas of the process of colonisation and the otherness.

Homi K. Bhabha offers a colonialist and a conceptual definition of otherness. He has drawn an “ideological construction of otherness by colonial discourse as dependent on the concept of fixity and ambivalence” (Bhabha, 1995. 66).

Just like Bhabha, Fanon in his book Black Skin White Masks and Edward Said in Orientalism also mark identification between the stereotypes in different ways. Hence in this respect Bhabha claims in relation to otherness. He writes “otherness is at once an object, an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and identity” (Khair. 14). But here Khair argues that otherness should not be limited to the stereotype, negative, desired, emptied, fixed, fetishished, derided other of the colonialist discourse. In the post-colonialism, the European perception of the otherness is often found in the terms of negativity.

Levinas defined ‘other’ in both ‘defenceless’ and ‘oppositional’ aspects. He defines how ‘difference’ is essential for the self and it is teamed for the responsibility of the other. As the given example highlights:

“Does not summons to responsibility destroy the forms of generality in which my store of knowledge of the other man, represents the latter to me as similar to me, designating me instead I the face of the other as responsible with no possible denial, and thus as unique and chosen one” (Levinas. 1995.27).

Tabish Khair has followed Levinas in the establishment of the relationship between the Self and the Other. He himself argues,

“I have followed Levinas in his establishment of a mutually equal relationship between Self and the Other. In that sense my use of otherness is not just philosophical but sociological, which is only appropriate because, whether or not literature reflects society. It is written in that most social of all human creations: language.” (Khair, 16).

Jean-Francois Staszak in his article Other/ Otherness writes about the perception of otherness;

“Otherness is due less to the difference of the other than to the point of view and the discourse of the person who perceives the other as such. Opposing ‘Us’, the ‘Self’ and ‘Them’, the ‘Other’, is to choose a criterion that allows humanity to be divided into two groups: one that embodies the norm and whose identity is valued and another that is defined by its faults, defaults, susceptible to discrimination” (Jean-Francois, Staszak. 2008.1).

In the colonial period the gothic narratives became a powerful medium to express the character had some different qualities and they were not at the centre at all. They were treated as ‘other’. In this book Tabish khair beautifully evaluated such qualities in relation to gothic narratives which made them other like vampires, monsters, madman and criminals etc.

The literal meaning of Gothic is ‘Horror’ or ‘Terror’. M. H. Abrams in his A Handbook of Literary terms describes about gothic fiction. He writes, “the principal aim of such was to evoke chilling terror by exploring mystery and a variety of horrors” (2009.123). The book The Gothic, postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere represents a systematic study and discussion of Gothic fiction. In the opinion of Jameson,

“Gothics are ultimately a class fantasy (or nightmare) in which the dialectic of privilege and shelter is exercised: your privilege seals you off from other people” (1996, 289).

The term ‘Gothic’ refers to the medieval settings, castles, ghosts, revenge, adventures and high emotions, supernatural elements etc. For example in Wuthering Heights the ancient castle plays an important role in the novel, which seems to be a living, breathing entity who reflects the harsh nature of Heathcliff’s family members.

The book highly raises the idea that ‘writing of Otherness’ which is the central concern of Gothic literature because the characters narrated in the gothic narratives are always considered as ‘other’ such as vampires, ghosts, criminals, monsters, demons, and madmen etc. In Wuthering Heights Nelly was shocked to know the fact the she was a ghost or vampire. Tony Morison’s Beloved is also one finest example of the narration of supernatural elements and ghost.

Actually otherness and hybridity are two major concern of the postcolonial theory. Hybridity is commonly considered as an invention of postcolonial thoughts. It is also marked with the radical substitute for hegemonic ideas of cultural identity. Otherness is a philosophical concept of the West or the preoccupation of western thought. But in the recent time the ‘Other’ is figured out as an effected and hitherto silent. While commenting about the negative image of racism and cultures Alexa Wright has commented;

“Human otherness is traditionally constructed in terms of race, sexuality, gender or physical disability. Racial, sexual or physically deformed others‘ have so often been subordinated to the image of the straight, white, rational and able-bodied European male, which in Western culture has traditionally been the standard by which all others‘ are judged”. (2013, 180)

Mary Snodgrass defines the relation of Gothic literature to the concept of otherness. She writes, ‘the concept of otherness underlies Gothicism as a structural myth’ (6). Actually the fact is every definition of Gothic fiction highlights a version of ‘Otherness’. Such she claims,

“the disturbing return of pasts upon presents’ the negative irrational, immortal and fantastic, tales of darkness, desire and power, stories containing, spectres, monsters, demons, corpses, skeletons, evil aristocrats, madmen, criminals and the monstrous double” (Snodgrass. 2005.267).

There are certain features of Gothic fiction such as ghostly secrets, family crime, double selves, madness, decaying houses, deviance and darkness etc. which often found in a gothic narrative. Gothic literature is also marked by some specific language or sounds which make audience scare and sometimes they create a sense of mystery and interest. These interesting words are ‘Phantom’, ’ghostly’ and ‘terrifying secret’ etc. There are also some terms such as hybridity, excess, ambiguity and transgression, which work as the tales of gothic literature. Brodher in Myal strongly highlights the notion of the speech of the other as the title of the chapter “Can the other half Be Told?” itself suggests. To quote:

“Three broad areas of creolisation, a term that has its uses both in postcolonialism and sometimes under differing guises (hybridity, transgression, ambiguity, excess) etc., in the study of gothic fiction (123). ”

There are certain prominent works in gothic fiction which majorly deals with the treatment of other/otherness majorly in terms of the portrayal of characters such as right from the first book of gothic fiction written by Horace Walpole Castle of Otranto (1764), William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), Ann Radcliff’s novels, Lawrence Flammenberg’s The Necromancer (1794), M. G. Lewis’s The Monk (1796), Charlotte Darce’s Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth The Wanderer, stories, novellas, and novels by Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Canon Doyle, Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker etc.

Some of the novels of the nineteenth century highly influenced by gothic fiction such as Charles Dickens’s novels, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847),Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) etc. The gothic fiction involves certain famous characters which often find in a gothic text such as Vampire, Satan, Orphan, Demon, Ghosts, Non-Christian gods, racially different characters, Women as sexually dangerous characters etc. The action of Gothic fiction usually demands a destruction or containment of otherness in terms of such different characters.

Khair disputes that all these major works of gothic fiction are bind with a simple fact that they all involve with certain specific characters or in the other words “various version of other such as the Devil or Ghosts, as Women, Vampires, Jews, Lunatics, Murderers, Non-European presenters etc.”(6). Such as in the case of Wuthering Heights Nelly wonders whether she is a ghost or a vampire, before dismissing that thought.

The gothic fiction is an ultimate example of ‘writing of Otherness’ and it offers two opposite possibilities in concern to otherness. The other and otherness as one is aware of are problematic terms to understand and define. And in the works of Tabish Khair it has been central in realigning this highly disturbed and disputing relationship. According to Tabish Khair the “Other is always a Self with another will: some unknown but still reasoning thing” (The Thing About Thugs. 2010.149), and further that the “Other can be experienced simply as a threat to the existence of the Self”. (150),

The first kind of otherness which Khair has talked about, is the ‘Negative Otherness’ and the second one is the ‘essential sameness’. The negative otherness is concerned with evil or grey shades in the character. Negative otherness is also marked by some specific characters shade such as human sacrifice, Cannibalism and superstition etc.

The second type of otherness is essential sameness. This kind of otherness marked by an ‘illness’ or as noted by author, “a difference waiting to be remediate into the self-same trough the civilizing mission which brings civilization, rationality, truth, and religion” (4, 71). But Otherness can also be divided or read in relation to certain terms such as; geographical otherness, The West and the Others, Exotism, Spatial organisation, Ethnocentrism, and Exoticism etc.

Actually the major concern of gothic fiction is with otherness or it may be said that the otherness is the central concern of gothic literature. In a colonial gothic or gothicised text the terror reflects usually the physical elimination of ‘other’. And it also offers a general perception about gothic literature it “brings primarily as an antidote is the coldness of enlightenment reason (5)”. So that gothic fiction takes us back to the early basis of human emotions. Commonly otherness is considered as a result of discursive process in which a dominant in-group makes one or many dominated out-groups.

These dominant in-groups are reflects as ‘Us’ or ‘Self’ and dominant out- groups are ‘them’ or ‘other’. It is the creation of otherness that employs a principal which allows an individual to be classified into these two hierarchical groups. And this process is also known as ‘Othering’. The otherness and identity are very closely related issues. The other only exists in relation to the self and vice versa.

Jenny McDonnell in her Article, Tabish Khair, The Gothic, postcolonialism and otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere has written about otherness reflected in Jane Eyre,

“Only by coding the unknown figure in Gothic terms, as Vampire, can she find a way in which to narrate the ‘otherness’ that she has registered. This is an action in which the narrator has to face so many tasks which often faced by some colonial and post-colonial writers” (2013.118).

And these tasks have been emphatically discussed by Khair in the book. Khair himself commented about the narration of Otherness while describing’ “an examination of the ways colonial and postcolonial literatures within or influenced by the Gothic genre negotiate within and narrate (or fail to narrate) otherness” (3).

Actually the fact is that the ‘Other’ is not just the reflection of a negative image of the self. Tabish Khair himself accepts the fact, hence he claims, “The other is not just a ‘negative image’ or a shadow of European colonial self but is rather, a conceptual sign, whose referent changes across time and space” (13-14).

The concern of the book is about the narration of the ‘Otherness’ is not global but it is involved and related with those major texts by which the Gothic otherness attached with the European/ British hearts. The book also claims about the “colonial gothic in a British setting” (9).

Harry Aveling in his Book Reviews: The Gothic, postcolonialism and Otherness has written, about a general and simple geographical concept of otherness. He writes, “from the colonies and the Empire and disturbs notions of rationality, meaning, identity, truth, knowledge, power etc.”(Harry Aveling. 2010. 2).

The book has mentioned different ideas and concepts of many authors. But the book does not offer a hostilitic study of these three related issues whereas it suggests a re-examination of gothic fiction in the colonial context and a revaluation of postcolonialism. Tabish Khair focused upon some of the major factors which bought otherness in a gothic (colonial) text, he addressed them as ghosts from the colonies.

The Ghosts from the colonies discussed by Khair are certainly of five types respectively; the first one is the ghost from the Empire. It is marked with the absence of empire in its presence. As we look in the novels of Jane Austin, Charles Dickens and Collins. It is certainly referred with a place into which the leading character or protagonist disappears and from which it comes back. Such as in The Woman in White and Jane Austin’s Mansfield Park, Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations and Bleak House. Or according to the author it also referred to “the silent, un-narrated or under narrated base of the narrated English superstructure” (25).

It is very often to find that such characters are the representatives of the ‘racial otherness. In the nineteenth century the Gothic fiction was influenced by something different. It was marked by back parlours, recognisably modern drawing rooms, middle class Victorian England and the colonies. W. Collins represented the gothic trauma in his The Woman in White (1860).To quote:

“using a high -impact style of narrative that put its characters through a series of extreme mental experiences, Collins and his imitators brought the terrors of the gothic novel down from mouldering Italian castles and into the back parlours and drawing-rooms of a recognisably modern, middle-class Victorian England” (Collins, 2003,13).

The second type of ghost from the colonies is England or Abroad is taken as the fictional places in which the fear is set. As the book notes,

“A radicalised conception of civilizational/ biological degeneration or perhaps most commonly, a fear of racial or cultural hybridisation may get transposed into more accessible” (27).

H. G. Wells’s The Doctor of Moreau is a text that reflects a story in which the colonies, doubts and ambivalences in the behaviour/ nature of Englishness or the civilisation with the exposure to the ‘empire’ and the ‘otherness’ in relation to the colonial power.

The third type of the ‘colonial’ or ‘imperial’ ghost is an English protagonist who takes his appearance of non- English otherness. Hence the book claims, “Colonial or racial other is not actually present, but the narrative and sometimes an English character on an image of this non English otherness” (31).

The fourth and the last type of Ghost from the colonies are certain objects, like artefacts, words, curses and scroll. The author claims about this kind of ghost: “artefacts, words, curses and scroll from the colonies or from non-European spaces can prove to be much material and threatening in British spaces” (32).

Subsequently the fifth type of presence is, ‘actual gothic others in Skin and bone’ (33). Khair has mentioned a range of names of the list right from Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), to William Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom (1936).

In short the gothic literature or the literature influenced with gothic elements the colonies and colonised remain half presented horrifically throughout the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. Khair has also discussed the historical and theological study of the gothic literature, right from the eighteenth century in a general chapter named ‘The Devil and the Racial other’.

The eighteenth century was the age of reason and enlightenment and the glowing visibility of the Empire. But it was also an age of gothic fiction in context to ‘madness’ which is enough concerned with gothic literature. As Foucault commented,

“As for a common language there is no such thing or rather there is no such thing any longer; the constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made” (1961. 12).

In fact the devil was a famous and most common figure of otherness (negative) especially for the Christian people. The common image of a devil was black but Khair argues that it is not always. He writes, “the devil was not always black” (43). The 19^th and the 20^th centuries Faust literature witness the decline of the devil. Khair has mentioned certain different views on the character of the devil like, in the nineteenth century it was an often myth that the devil, if he exists, is within a man. The book also offered some characteristics of the image of the devil like the devil/Satan /Lucifer is an example of negative otherness in the early British gothic fiction.

The devil diminishes into demons of the human (from his psyche to the society) as the 20^th century approaches most of the features of gothic fiction. But later part of the century emerged with the new images of Vampires, Cannibals and their imperial equivalent. Another fact about devils was they were generally associated with non- Christian, African, Asian and heathen beliefs. As gothic fiction develops and bifurcates in the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th century. Such as the famous texts of Kipling’s The Monk of the Beast (1890), Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), polidori,s The Vampyre (1819) were the most notable woks of gothic fiction.

There is a psychological analysis of gothic fiction in a chapter of the book entitled Heathcliff as Terrorist. The chapter offers a psychological analysis of the fiction with the help of certain texts such as Mathew Lewis’s The Monk and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The Monk is a story of a highly virtuous Monk, as the book claims, “A holy man seduced into committing acts of terror by the devil and his own inability to recognise the thin line separating the divine from the demonic” (61).

The Monk describes a story which often considered as ‘holy terror’. According to Khair, “this was a terror that unconsciously dependent on the ambiguity of the sacred” (62). At a certain philosophical level, the scared’s ambiguity looks at a concept of God.

This chapter mentioned the attitude when the terror comes back or comes from elsewhere. While commenting upon the fact Khair writes,

“revealing the terror of the scared in many early gothic texts by the end of the nineteenth century its return has started shadowing the trade and military routes of European Empires” (63).

But the fact is the chapter Heathcliff as terrorist does not defines the psychoanalytical reading of the fear related to the childhood of Heathcliff. The Gothic narratives often carry a different point like terror comes from elsewhere. The terror takes place or comes from when it has been exorcised, banished, disowned, exiled, prevented entry, and crashes the barriers.

As in the context of Wuthering Heights the strength of the novel was that Heathcliff’s terror comes from ‘elsewhere’ and he becomes a gothic villain who takes revenge to everyone who has given him harsh experiences of life. He becomes a victim of the physical and psychological violence since he was brought by Earn Shaw to Wuthering Heights. It was situated in the context of the sublime in the English moors. The sublime moors and the mountain in the Wuthering Heights indicates that it is not simply useful, decorated and domesticized even in neighbourly nature. Therefore we could say Heathcliff as terrorist chapter majorly focuses that how colonial otherness encountered in narrative carrying gothic elements takes place in Britain. Khair wonderfully observes about how Heathcliff’s otherness might resonate in a contemporary context. He writes,

“Imagine an intelligent dark-skinned person, slipping into the country-side of a peaceful European country from somewhere disturbingly “postcolonial”, lying dormant for many years and then snaring the families that harboured him in a net of violence, revenger and terror. It might sound like an account of the so-called “sleeper agents” that organisation like Al Qaeda are said to send into the heart of Europe, but actually it would be one way of describing Heathcliff” (64).

J. C. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is another text prominently discussed by Khair which highlights the colonial or racial otherness. This book represents the reading of ‘imperial gothic’. And it also links two major elements of colonial or racial otherness, such as it links Empire and the gothic.

There are certain writers and Critiques who have also marked Heart of Darkness as a text of racial otherness, such as Chinua Achebe in his An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has written the text carries the elements of terror (gothic) and racial otherness located in African region. It represents a very complex image of colonial otherness. As the example highlights;

“All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest in the junjles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable, and it has a fascination, too that goes to work upon him. This fascination of the abomination you know, imagine the growing regrets the longing to escape the powerless disgust, the surrender the hate” (75).

In short the analysis of the text The Heart of Darkness marks various depictions of otherness not only in relation to African region but also the otherness of Europeans to Africans. As Chinua Achebe points out about this characteristic of the text,

“In racist terms but also the otherness of Europeans to Africans; not just cultures as others but individuals and above all, a grudging never fully acknowledged realisation that the African other is not just the perennial negative image of the European or an empty space or a difference-waiting to be the same” (81).

Khair has mentioned all the major characters/elements of gothic fiction. One general chapter of the book Emotion and the Gothic describe that violent emotions reaches on its highest point in a gothic text. And a gothic text is a way of narrating otherness of the other and its impact on the self. The emotions mentioned by Khair are very often found in a gothic text such as fear, horror and repulsion.

In the post-colonial period the ‘otherness’ still prevailing in the society and literature as well, the Females, Dalits, Eunuchs, Nat-girls, Gays and Lesbians are not the part of the mainstream society and they are treated as other. The book The Gothic, Post-Colonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere defines the perception of ‘otherness’ right from the biblical to colonial period and from colonial to post-colonial period. It deals the otherness prevailing in the colonial period with special reference to gothic and postcolonial narratives subsequently.

Khair has discussed two prolific texts of nineteenth century in relation to gothic with otherness. These texts are Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. These narratives are highly influenced with gothic genre. Nineteenth century and early twentieth century literature was highly influenced within the effect of socio-historical impact of colonies and racial otherness. Khair define the socio-political impact of colonies over the centuries. He claims:

“In retrospect it should have been obvious at the great socio-political upheavals of the late fifties and sixties, especially those regrouped under the names of decolonisation and liberation movements would have a major impact on the ways of knowledge. This impact though it had begun to occur almost immediately has not for the most part been recognised for a variety of reasons” (21).

The book also defines a positive way for those who are trying to speak up for other side. It focuses our attention that how a colonial novel itself to speak up for others. In this respect the author offers three critical chapters along with two general chapters, which discuss the post- colonial attitude towards the other. These chapters are; (1) can the other speak? (2) Negotiating Vodou: Some Caribbean Narratives of Otherness (3) Can the Other half be told?

The others are not the part of the mainstream society therefore they have to face the problem of lack of language while narrating a text. Tabish Khair also focuses upon this prominent problem of the other in an excellent chapter entitled “Can the other speak” which analyses the problem of language in front of the other. The major problem comes just because of ‘lacking of language’. Such as in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness reflects a racial/ colonial other who reduced to lack and grey shades or negativity instead of focusing the un-success of colonial gothic narratives. Khair tried to focus, and to relate the other half to postcolonialism. And the postcolonial attitude of otherness towards a gothic or Gothicised text reflects a textual elimination of otherness. Here the writer claims that, “the option of terror is hardwired into the relation of the self with the other” (173). Ruthvan Den Akker in “Hush, Little Baby-Ghost: The Postcolonial Gothic and Haunting History in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” have written about the common concern of gothic and postcolonialism;

“Gothic and the postcolonial share common concerns of subversion and transgression; both aim to represent alternative experiences, worldviews, and different histories in literature” (2013, 1).

In fact the racial and colonial otherness is not fully predictable because it always comes from elsewhere and it is another part of the self. Such as Salman Rushdie in The Satantic Verses and Stoker in his Drakula has given a similar event in which the racial other comes from elsewhere. Khair has also focused on some prominent Caribbean texts in a specific chapter of the book entitled, ‘Narrating Vodou: Some Caribbean Narrative of otherness’ chapter focuses upon a certain prominent range of Caribbean narratives reflects the elements of otherness. Such as Pravisini Gebert claims that, “a postcolonial dialogue with the gothic plays out its tendencies most completely in a Caribbean writing” (quoted in Hogle, 2006, 233).

Actually the Caribbean writing creates a space that learned to read a different kind of literature which highly concerned with gothic literature. And in the above chapter of the book Khair implicate the further elements involved in the gothic fiction. He has examined certain Caribbean texts in different ways. He also admits that the Caribbean literature is a powerful source of colonial market of otherness.

This chapter of the study of Caribbean narratives discusses five prominent Caribbean texts. But most importantly it discusses two novels, Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), and Erna Brodber’s Myal (1988). The textual analysis of these texts brings a scientific explanation which is settings beyond to the England and to the language of the self.

Subsequently Khair has defined how otherness has presented in the postcolonial literature. To define this he mainly focuses upon Erna Brodber’s Myal (1988) wonderful novel, who brilliantly and effectively describes the author’s attempt to tell the ‘other half’. The novel carries a story which has been considered radical in this endeavour within postcolonialism. Myal highlights some of the major aspects of postcolonial studies and criticism. As Michael de Certeau’s defines this distinction between ‘resistance’ and ‘opposition’.

Erna Brodber uses term ‘creolisation’ in relationship to return to the matter of the gothic and postcolonial studies. Myal represents three areas of creolisation. Khair has mentioned about the use of the term creolisation. He writes, “a term that has its uses both in postcolonialism and sometimes under differing guises like hybridity, transgression, ambiguity, excess etc., in the study of gothic fiction”(123).

The important thing about Brodber’s use of the term is it uses in generic, linguistic and religious creolisation. And according to the concept of postcolonialism post-colonial study is the study of theoretical creole which is related to identity. It also marks not just a site of opposition but also end of resistance.

These certain chapters reflect a different attitude of Khair’s thinking towards the other half. As Harry Aveling comments,

“Khair finds possibility somewhat to his disappointment that what he describes as the necessary verbosity of postcolonial fiction enables many things but also tends to reduce the other to more of the self-same” (2010, 3).

This study of certain Caribbean texts presents a different perception, such as Michael de Certeau defines, a distinction between ‘resistance’ and ‘opposition’. These two aspects play an important role in the postcolonial studies. He has defined resistance as contestation of a given system from outside that system and opposition refers to contestation from inside. Erna Brodber also discussed ‘resistance’ and ‘opposition’ in Myal. But Myal specially discussed ‘opposition’. In relation to Myal Khair has defined, “making it impossible for the narrative to reduce alterity to more of the self -same” (122).

Khair has connected all three major themes (the gothic, the postcolonialism and the otherness) in the previous chapters of the book. He has also given an option of magic realism. Actually magic realism is a style of contemporary English literature, which has great importance in postcolonial studies. The colonial theories are of ‘purity’ and the post-colonial theories reflect the concept of ‘Hybridity’. Robert J. C. Young in his Colonial Desire writes about a common perception of colonialism. He writes,

“It is commonplace of romantic thinking that, as Humboldt puts, “each language embodies a view of the world peculiarly its own”- an idea that was developed by Voloshinov into the “struggle for the sign” For Bakhtin however, hybridity delineates the way in which language, even within a single sentence, can be double voiced”(139).

Some of the postcolonial writings are also afflict magical realism. According to Khair,

“The possibility of hybridisation rests in the livingness of a language in a contestatory social matrix; this aspect is evaded in certain postcolonial versions of hybridity and leads to some problems in magical realism” (139).

But He argues that is nothing new perception which can define non-Europe as hybrid, mixed and a combination of the real and the magical/ fantastic. Therefore we could say that the magical realism is a European contest because it the magic has to be an irreducible and integral part of the reality. Bakhtin defines magical realism is simply ‘lazy’ which does not maintains clear borders and oppositions. Many theorists considered magical realism is to be read allegorically.

Here Khair argues that fantasy and gothic are based on concrete encounters with solid alterity and supernaturality. Todorov uses various kinds of otherness in a gothic text. Raj Kamal Jha’s third novel Fireproof (2007) was majorly concerned with the theme of gothic along with the adoption of a stylistic option of magical realism.

It concerned with ghosts, death, murders, and monsters etc. The novel focuses readers attention to the serious communal problems of India, such as the conflicts between two religious groups (The Hindu and The Muslims) and linguistic or ethic problems.

The Complete analysis of the book results some specific points. It carries a discussion and awareness of the problems of difference and sameness which brings otherness. Gothic or gothic influenced texts begin from the colonial fiction and later from postcolonial fiction. Therefore the summing up or the summary part of the book offers a general discussion upon the gothic or gothic influenced narratives.

The major point by which the book deals is the obsession discussion of ‘Otherness’. Khair excuses from the colonialist obsession with sheer negativity, waiting to be the sameness or non-European otherness or blackness etc. The book itself claims, “this is very different from the common colonialist tendency to turn otherness into sheer negativity, blackness or waiting to be the sameness” (158).

The book revised the historical aspects regarding gothic fiction. In short the book is concerned with the fact that, the other can be visualised in various terms of differences and these differences or problems are (or closely related to such issues) gender, race, colour, sexuality, nationality, identity, class, culture, and ethnicity etc. According to Khair the ‘other’ signifies in the ineradicability of differences.

The study and analysis of Tabish Khair defines that, the gothic fiction extends well towards the end of the eighteenth century. The extension was very useful and well except the incorporation of magic realism in gothic fiction. Hence the book represents a re-examination of the gothic fiction in a colonial context. Along with that it also marks a revaluation of the postcolonialism as a consequence of the re-examination of the gothic fiction. The author has mentioned in the introductory part of the book about this perception of the book. He writes,

“While not a holistic study, my readings in this book do suggest a re-examination of gothic fiction in the colonial context and a revaluation of postcolonialism as a consequence of this re-examination. In different ways, I argue in this book about the pitfalls and achievements of colonial and postcolonial attempts as depicting or ‘giving voice’ to the colonial or racial other, as seen in gothic fiction or fiction influenced by the gothic. Hence this study suggests not only points of departure and revaluation in the fields of postcolonialisn and the study of gothic fiction, but also implicity, in our political engagement with present day global realities” (18).

The author has related the study of these three interesting and challenging issues. He commits,

“The gothic has a troubled relationship with the normative in general and the colonial or postcolonial context is the only one of various such negotiation with the normative. The postcolonial contexts obviously the normative can be even more restrictive and potentially blind” (38).

The study of postcolonialism in the book gives a number of related texts set in England and arising in England. The author’s focus on the perspective of otherness makes him able to focus on a diverse range of material from a different and new perspective. But the text also carries some methodological problem reflects in the whole text is Khair’s treatment of ‘other’ or ‘otherness’. Because certain problems or issues are not clearly or very well defined by him such as; who is ‘the self’, who is ‘the other’, and whom the ‘self is opposed’?

Actually this problem comes from the description or discussion of certain novels and their major characters. Because majority of the characters discussed by author are women characters and they are defined as ‘other’. But the common understanding of ‘other’ reflects ‘other’, to those who are not from elite, upper and middle class, westernised, well English speaking class. And almost all the postcolonial texts have these kinds of characters which are treated as ‘other’.

Khair represents otherness is a way which is more ethical than a literary problem. He himself claims, “for the other to be other, there has no difference and space for its acceptance, interplay and recognition” (158). The book marks a different way of studying and interpretation in a sparkling and insightful manner which is ethical and challenging. And the ending pages of the book ultimately raise some provocative and compelling questions. These questions are related to the narration and acknowledgement of the “otherness”.

The book broadly discusses that how our encounter with “otherness” works in contemporary global discourses about terror. But the fact is, the questions are not well defined or it could be said that it is not possible to define such kind of broad questions within the space of a book.

Therefore the complete study and analysis of the book from the perspective of anti-colonial discourse provides an innovative and insightful view of the author upon these interesting and challenging issues and towards their related studies. The major issue and the problem discussed in the book is the treatment of ‘otherness’. The author mainly emphasised many ways which are related to the gothic and the postcolonial and their concerned with the narration of “otherness”. And the gothic texts are mainly dealt with the colonial and racial otherness. As Jenny McDonnell defines about Khair’s interest in relation to the treatment of other;

“Khair’s interest, then lies in examining the ways in which colonial and postcolonial writers employ the gothic mode as a way of narrating and acknowledging the agency of the other as other” (2013, 120).

Gina Wisker also commented about Khair’s treatment of ‘other’ (also printed on the cover page of the book), in The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere. She writes,

“This is a fascinating, diverse and rich book which combines across the gothic and the postcolonial in its concern with varieties of colonial and imperial gothic ‘other’ at different times, introducing a focus on the ‘war on terror’ as a topical hook. Khair places the foreign other as a central function in the gothic texts set both in Britain and the ex-colonies particularly in the Caribbean, where British influences is revealed as frequently demonic”. (http://www.amazon.com. August 13, 2014.)

Khair has defined the perception of ‘other’ with the help of certain prominent words used in the post-colonial study such as, gender, culture, class, caste, ethnicity, identity, home, nationality, self, race, inequality, and other etc. And another two issues discussed in the book, the gothic and the postcolonialism share common concern of subversion and transgression. Both subversion and transgression aim to the experiencers, views and histories of literature.

The book brings a re-evaluation of the treatment of racial/ colonial ‘other’ in gothic fiction. It also focuses our attention towards the problems which comes in front of a writer, while the narration of ‘Subalterns’ in the postcolonial era. The book also marks the problems of the representation of ‘differences’ and ‘sameness’ by the author drawn in an adventurous and lucid manner, which is full of critical details but in a concise way. It also highlights the attempts and efforts of the writers of colonial and postcolonial era to ‘write back’.

Gina Wisker in “Crossing Liminal Spaces: Teaching the Postcolonial Gothic” defines the effect of merging of these two specific genres that subvert, transgress, and challenge dominant experiences of reality and ways of knowing;

“The postcolonial Gothic rein habits and reconfigures, it reinstates and newly imagines ways of being, seeing, and expressing from the points of view of and using some of the forms of people whose experiences and expressions have”. (2007, 401- 402)
While commenting about the representation of other in relation to post-colonial narratives RuthVan Akker says;

“The postcolonial ads to the gothic a vocalization of what has previously been silenced and marginalized. The postcolonial gothic then presents its readers not merely with an alternative to Western empiricism, but also disturbs Western hegemonic culture and de-marginalizes the colonized experience. Because the postcolonial gothic draws out otherness, explores the liminal spaces, and engages with the supernatural, experiences and expressions that have previously been silenced” (2013, 3).

Therefore Tabish Khair in this book tries to define the efforts of the writers of the colonial and postcolonial period to write- back. The readings and descriptions of certain prominent texts of some major writers, such as, Rudyard Kipling, Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad Erna Brodber Melville, and Jean rhys etc., offers Khair’s innovative and challenging descriptions on certain major issues discussed in the book like, otherness, sameness and differences and identity along with the role of emotions in the literature right from the nineties. Khair has also offered some suggestions which work as a productive ways of engaging with contemporary global and postcolonial issues.

Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández and Om Prakash Dwivedi in their Tabish Khair: Critical Perspectives have commented about Khair’s treatment of Otherness in the book,

“The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere is an academic study in which Khair tackles controversial issues of Otherness and Sameness, the use of Gothic elements in the distinction between difference and similarity and its ulterior interpretation by postcolonial tenets” (2014. 11).

The book is not a study of gothic or postcolonial literature whereas if focuses upon the link or the central issues of both the issues, which is the portrayal of otherness. David Punter also commented about the surprises of the book along with the Khair’s attitude towards the writing of the book. He writes,

“I attempt to describe some of the importance, I should also register that it is a joy of read: it is eloquent in ways which constantly surprise, yet should not since its author is, as well as a critic, a poet and a writer of fiction. The writing is here is adventurous yet lucid, full of critical detail yet admirably concise” (http://www.amazon.com. August 13, 2014.)

Hence it is foremly mentioned that, the book supports to the concept of anti-colonial discourse because it deals with certain above mentioned issues which have a great importance in the contemporary age. And the book uses majorly the concept of ‘Otherness’ in an innovative and interesting way to look again on the issues, the gothic and the postcolonialism. It also highlights that how otherness has portrayed in the gothic (colonial) and post-colonial narratives as well and how they become a major form of horror, fear, violence and marginalisation.