ON CULTURE (continuation)

The robust quality of Frantz Fanon's lines, quoted in Post-Colonial Transformation and lifted from Black Skin, White Masks, is inspiring; the allegiance is definite, the resolve powerful -

I am my own foundation. I will initiate the cycle of my freedom.

The quote matches the intensity of Archimedes' famous words, Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth, leaving us without a tinge of misunderstanding that Fanon's resolve is for the advancement of self-sufficiency and integrity, for the triumph of aspiration and action.

Ashcroft had every reason to consider those lines as exemplar to what Selwyn Cudjoe termed as resistance literature, delineated as a category of literary writing emerging as an integral part of organized struggle for national liberation. In the realm of transculture, language is the first, middle, and last line of offense, and as Ashcroft puts it better, it is in language that colonial discourse is engaged at its most strategic point.

A leader of a resistance who, in words, resolve to be his own foundation and initiate the cycle of his freedom reveals not just himself but his weapon - his language - which if true to its purpose can effectively interpellate the power of colonialism. By my standard, Fanon's words are very effective. In minimum length and maximum vigor, they prove language in general to be a potent tool in identity construction, in this case the identity of the crier, the resister. But with the heavy responsibility bestowed upon the erudite shoulders of language, Ashcroft acknowledges the supreme importance of meaning, the language's meaning, the meaning of literature that it is serving, the very centerpiece of transculture, moving him to state that radical communication, which post-colonial writing represents, could only occur if meaning is present in both reader and writer.

What then lies beneath the mystery and mastery of meaning?

Ashcroft points out that while the writer - being the source of the literature's vision and intention - has the strongest claim upon the meaning of his writing, his writing's meanings are actually attributable to existing subjects, thus negating the notion that meaning is a mental act which the author translates into words. This is corollary to the higher truth that a word does not find a meaning, it is a meaning that actually finds its word, and to my mind Ashcroft is simply saying in this context that the writer is just at par with the reader.

This, of course, is based on the assumption that the writer is saying something meanable, which makes up for the next logical question - How can meanability be assured?

Here is where Ashcroft gets analytical, referring to the relationship between the writer and reader where each performs a function and pursues a goal, the presence of such relationship being crucial in a situation of discourse as it signifies the space within which the writer meets the act of reading. To him, it is important for the writer and reader to be present at the other's act of reading and writing, explaining the time/space machination in this wise: a) a reader may be present in the writing at a conscious level in the author's sense of an audience ; and b) a writer may be present in the reading at a conscious level when the reader accepts the convention that the author is telling him or her something through the text.

One of my best newspaper-reading experiences must have been on account of this relationship. It happened in the Philippines many years ago, the medium being the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the writer being Carolyn Arguillas. This writer, the PDI's Chief of Mindanao Bureau, wrote a twice-a-week op-ed column in English about slice of life in Southern Philippines where she was from. One morning Arguillas stunned a nation breakfasting on coffee con Philippine Daily Inquirer through her column which proudly appeared in Sogboanon, a Southern language, her native language. I read the entire column, hook, line and sinker, and I swear was uplifted by my reading, hook, line, and sinker - even though I did not, do not, speak a word of Sogboanon. By fulfilling her writer's function, Arguillas may have picked the simplest and sweetest-sounding Sogboanon words in her wide Sogboanon vocabulary to deliver a wonderful slice of Mindanao life to us, her avid readers, who were then, in her consciousness, serving audience at her actual act of writing. Returning the favor, she was with us at our act of reading, in our consciousness guiding us to laugh at phrases we thought were funny (and turning out to be actually funny) and contemplate in moments where we thought she was solemn (and turning out that, well, she really was).

It became obvious to me now, but not then, that that specific Arguillas column was resistance literature. Colonization, after all, did not end when the colonizers went home but continues to this day, perhaps even more so, and the columnist begun a surprising transformation process upon us, the dominant culture from Manila who were used to reading "imperial English-only op-ed columns". In short, Arguilla's column was her colonial discourse, and our transcending experience was the transcultural effect.

Ashcroft explains this phenomena, stressing the idea of meanability. He says that the language can, in fact, be altered (without abandoning the writer's function) but if done so, becomes limited to a situation in which the words have meaning. Still, he points out that while the altered writing may at a point become inaccessible to the reader, such inaccessibility is part of a strategy of difference, and that literature has the capacity to domesticate the most alien experience.

Reading Ashcroft's choice example came to me as an Arguillas deja vu, another transcending experience, another transcultural effect, a poem by the Caribbean poet Linton K. Johnson, which I have the pleasure of sharing with you, whether you are the colonizer or the colonized, ruminating a discourse -

di lan is like a rack
slowly shattahrin to san
sinkin in a sea of calamity
where tear breeds shadows daak
where people fraid fi waak
fraid fi tink fraid fi taak
where di present is haunted
by di paas