|
Strange
Bedfellows: Reading Evelyn Waugh and Frantz Fanon
by Nathan Fiala
During the interwar decade of the 1930s, the British author Evelyn Waugh
began making a name for himself through his travel books and fictional
accounts of trips to North Africa and the Middle East. I will offer
here an interpretation of two of Waugh’s early fictional works, Black
Mischief (1932) and Scoop (1938), based in part on his travels in
the country of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), using the work of Frantz Fanon,
specifically his book Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon, an
Algerian who lived during the last decades of French control, obtained his degree
in psychoanalysis and used his studies to launch attacks on French colonial
rule. As Fanon was an outspoken critic of the colonialist enterprise,
it is questionable whether he would have found any common ground with
Waugh. In his travel books, written while he also worked on Black
Mischief and Scoop, Waugh seems personally uninterested in the
plight of colonial subjects, at times even overtly elitist and racist.
In Labels (1930), his first travel book, he saves most of his
direct criticism for the practitioners of Islam, who he believes have not
produced any “art, history, scholarship, or social, religious, or political
organization, to which we, as Christians, cannot look with unshaken pride of
race.”[1] Nevertheless, I believe that the revolutionary rhetoric of
Fanon is compatible with the piercing wit Waugh’s fictional work is famous
for.
I will focus here on two specific episodes from Black
Mischief and Scoop, which I will call “The Two Embassies” and
“Misdirected Rule” respectively. These episodes gain new meaning when
read with Fanon. In many ways they fit very well within Fanon’s two
most important psychological theses: the black native’s motivation to
physically become white, and the complex impact of colonialism on the colonizers[2].
Black Mischief and Scoop suggest that Waugh had a complex
view of native African populations. I will try to address the question
of why Waugh’s travel writing is so full of overtly imperialist language,
while his fictional accounts are often sympathetic. That is, how could
an author create (and hold?) such separate views of colonialism at the same
time? The answer involves a clear demarcation between Waugh’s art and
his personal opinions.
The Two Embassies: Scoop begins as
a story of mistaken identity. The nature journalist William Boot is
mistaken for the novelist John Boot and sent by his newspaper to cover a
civil war in Ishmaelia (a fictional country that has a number of similarities
to Ethiopia). Before leaving England, he must pick up his reporter’s
visa, so he goes to the two competing Ishmaelite embassies, each representing
a different side in the civil war.
The two Ishmaelite embassies reflect a dichotomy.
The first consulate identifies itself with the patriotic cause.
The consul-general, before dispensing the visa, regales William with
“the cause of the coloured man and of the proletariat throughout the world,”
quoting the “great Negro Karl Marx” and claiming “Africa for the African
worker; Europe for the African worker; Asia, Oceania, America, Arctic, and
Antarctic for the African worker.”[3] In the second embassy, which
prefers the fascist cause, William finds a swastika in the window and a
consul-general who asserts that “the Jews of Geneva, subsidized by Russian
gold, have spread the story that we are a black race…. As you will see
for yourself, we are pure Aryans.”[4] In the hands of Waugh, the
Ishmaelites have become torn between a severely misplaced white-power
movement and a kind of ultra Black Nationalism.
Within this conflict we see a satirical prefiguring
of Fanon’s metaphorical concept of the African with black skin seeking a
white mask. This idea is explained in Fanon’s Black Skin, White
Masks. Due to the humiliating and objectifying nature of colonial
rule, Africans became obsessed with lightening their appearance, as they
associated success and power with white settlers. Thus a social
hierarchy was established, wherein lighter skin tones reflected higher
positions, both socially and economically.
Part of Waugh’s joke is that the fascist
consul-general does not appear white to William at all. The desire to
become white in the colonies was strongly attached to the system of power,
and it was not always necessary to physically change. “One is white
above a certain financial level,”[5] so one could become white by simply
being successful. The fascist consul-general is not simply blind to the
physical realities; in fact he is very shrewd about power at the time.
In opposition to this trend were black-power
movements that trumpeted the success of historically black civilizations.
In his work, Fanon explained that the black man was not simply a man,
but always a man in relation to whites. That is, Fanon felt that he
himself “was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my
ancestors.”[6] The choice then becomes one of two extremes: either one
is ashamed of one’s condition, or one fights back with all of one’s strength.
Under repressive white rule, either choice can lead to the neurotic
climax we see in Waugh.
Misdirected Rule: While his personal writings
often seem to support imperialism, Waugh satirizes both the colonized and
colonizers in Black Mischief and Scoop. Europeans are not
divine, inspiring conquerors; instead, they are foolish and prone to savagery
themselves. Waugh was not an egalitarian, but he did not often
distinguish between a foolish native and a foolish European.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues that
“the Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his
superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.”[7]
Colonization affects indigenous peoples, but Fanon was also interested
in how colonization affects the imperial country and its citizens.
Following a critical approach inspired by Fanon, we can better
understand the actions of Europeans within Scoop and Black Mischief.
The characters are not ridiculous and neurotic in isolation; their
actions result from the colonial situation.
This European neuroticism is best expressed in Black
Mischief, specifically in how the emperor Seth, educated in Europe, is
obsessed with the idea of modernization, even at the expense of the citizens
of Azania (another fictional African country similar to Ethiopia). Seth
is too focused on museums and sterility programs to notice that the people
need jobs and food. Fanon would find Seth’s programs not simply
irrelevant, but the expression of an uncontrollable urge, learned during his
time in Europe, to bring a new civilization to people who are unwilling, or
unable, to accept the changes. Ultimately, Seth’s vision of a modern
country cannot develop apart from modern life: he lies awake at night,
“desperate with the acquired loneliness of civilization.”[8] Always
looking to Europe for guidance, he is unwilling, or unable, to achieve
balanced growth.
When Waugh was writing Black Mischief,
Ethiopia had remained one of the few countries in Africa free from colonial
rule. By the time Scoop was published, Ethiopia had been
defeated and occupied by Italy. In contrast, Fanon’s work dealt almost
exclusively with Algeria, a country with a long history of colonial rule.
We nevertheless see some of the same problems discussed by Fanon at
work within an independent state. Colonialism can control another
country, but its rhetoric can also transcend boundaries and peoples.
How do we reconcile Waugh’s seemingly sympathetic
account of colonization with his travel writing? Waugh was perhaps not so
sympathetic, but his wit was all the more piercing. Waugh saw his
travel writings as a way to fund his travels and devoted more time to his
novels. As he paid little attention to them, the travel books are not
Waugh’s work at its most artistic and polished. I believe Waugh’s artistic
merit lies more in his wit, which is less evident, or completely lacking, in
his travel writings. He has admitted “I can only be funny when I am
complaining about something,”[9] but his art is more than just complaining
about the lack of Western conveniences. If anything, it is a kind of
dialogue with the objects that are supposed to bring convenience, but instead
often act as a tool of enslavement.
Waugh’s travel writings thus show a man, like most
people living at the time, at some level unable to leave behind the comforts
of European civilization. While it is clear he did like to travel, his
travel books are basically an extended meditation on the difficulties of
travel and lack the subtlety of his fictional works. In the comfort of
his study, looking through his notebooks, Waugh seems to have become capable
of separating himself from this need. He saw more clearly the problems
of both modern and non-modern societies. It is, after all, easier to
criticize when one is not confronted with reality.
Notes:
[1] Evelyn Waugh, Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writings (New York:
Knopf, 2003), 95.
[2] This last point has also been discussed by Juan Francisco Elices Agudo in
his paper “On the Pitfalls of National Consciousness: Colonialism and
Modernity in Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief,” which was presented at
the International Symposium: One Hundred Years of Evelyn Waugh, University of
La Rioja, Logroño, Spain in May 2003.
[3] Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief, Scoop, The Loved One, The Ordeal of Gilbert
Pinfold (New York: Knopf, 2003), 242-3.
[4] Ibid., 243-4.
[5] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann
(New York: Grove, 1967), 44.
[6] Ibid., 112.
[7] Ibid., 60.
[8] Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief, Scoop, Loved One, Gilbert
Pinfold, 20.
[9] Qtd. in Nicholas Shakespeare, Introduction, Waugh Abroad, ix.
|