With the aim of changing the misled perception of the East Indian culture and lifestyle in the West Indies, Jenny Sharpe’s Colonial Imaginary portrayed life, labour and the picturesque. She is a professor of English, comparative literature and gender studies in UCLA. ULAB staged an international conference on July 10-11, 2015, where she elaborately discussed her work and shared her thoughts:
“I think there is a lot of potential. And we need to seize the media. I think Fanon once wrote a piece: The Voice of Algeria and that was later the name of a radio station. The radio had a nice voice, the people’s voice. No matter what, radio was the main source of media back when technology was not that advanced.”
Given that the English language is a strong barrier and a difficult obstacle to reach within the majority of our country – how do you think we can effectively bridge the gap between the West and the East?
The solution is diaspora, of course. Diaspora can form that connection. This is something that post colonialism works on. Today we are a globally connected world. We have advanced means of mass communication that connects the whole world together and in Bangladesh diaspora is huge!
What compelled you to focus your work on post-colonialism?
Even though we are at the end of the colonial stage, the perception that I am working on has its roots firmly planted in the West. I believe it's the effect of colonialism, miscommunication and the inability to send broad messages about the change that the East Indians have gone through ever since colonialism ended. Even though in the post-colonial area we are depicting them in the same way.
In your work, you talk about race discrimination. Bangladesh, being a Muslim majority country, has no racial differences, rather sex discrimination is widespread. What is your take on this?
Well, I mean, one of the things which my work focuses on is that gender is always being talked about even when it is not. So I not only concentrate on the women but also on how the men are being represented and to what degree is this masculinity a colonial construct and to what degree it has been inhabited and taken up by men. So again, I think when we talk about gender, I believe it is a relationship between men and women, and you can’t have one without the other. In my talks, I was always interested in both. I think the most important fact regarding the issue for your country today is visibility. Are the women invisible? Are they not being represented?
Living in the States, I have come about a lot of misconceptions about Islamic countries and Muslim women. It is very interesting when you look into that. And one of the other things that you can see nowadays, particularly in the States, is that the colonialism is repeated in every other way. In a way, it seems as if the white men are trying to save the Muslim women from the Muslim men, which to me is unusual and a repetition of colonialism. The problem is that the American feminist play into that, because they are misled by the belief that women here are invisible. Moreover, they forget to see how the Bangladeshi women are expressive and have their own ways of finding themselves in society.
And this is why I am working with colonialism, because these issues are still in the act of being, and the level of reach of these misconceptions are high.