the native people are in a condition of hegemony. Missionary is an easier thing to do because it can be accepted by the native people because they know nothing but
their stuff in the village. The native people easily welcome the missionaries in the village.
When the Westerners see a tradition which is not agreeable with their knowledge, they prohibit their adherents to undergo the tradition. It is not upright
in the eyes of the native people. Their tradition is the originality of them. They do resist the tradition from the Westerners by hiding the implementation of the
tradition and giving tribal mark to strong the nationality of people. Rostami mentions that “one way of cultural resistance was by keeping culture alive by
hiding it from the strangers who were in their lands to civilize them ” 2014: 126.
With the existence of the Westerners in Africa, native people are wary. Jolly, as quoted by Lomba said that:
Nasionalist Afrikaners continued to see themselves as victims of English colonization and ... the imagined continuation of this victimization was used
to justify the maintenance of apartheid 2007: 29. They want to protect their remaining land because some of them have
already taken by the Western countries. There are African liberators who investigate and arrest all suspicious people in Mbele. They do it for nationalist
reason. It is believed that the Westerners just want to take everything they have. Therefore, they protect “the only precious thing they have and wish to preserve
are their forefather‟s customs” Rostami, et al, 2014: 126. In Tashi
‟s experience, she undergoes female circumcision so that she is honoring her tradition and country. She also experiences oppression of her
tradition, or else she is not an Olinka. Thus, she feels what people call as identity crisis. It is condition where someone is confused of the real identity she has
because of hybridity. She ever lived in Africa, and then she migrates to America. There is a hybridity in the interference between American tradition and African
tradition. To identify this identity crisis, this research uses postcolonial theory. This postcolonial theory also concerns on voice, hegemony, otherness,
miscegenation and racism issues in this novel Huggan and Tiffin, 2010: 135.
B. Problem Formulation
1. How are the tribal tradition and female circumcision described
through the characters and setting? 2.
How do female circumcision and the tribal tradition reveal the identity crisis experienced by Tashi, the main character?
C. Objectives of the Study
In this part, the researcher answers the problem formulation. First, the researcher answers the description of the tribal tradition and the female
circumcision in the novel. The researcher analyses the background of the tradition and the perspective of the characters. Knowing the background of the tradition, it
is to see what kind of tribal place and society is. Then, the perspective of the characters, also, helps to see the position of female circumcision tradition in
Olinka tribe. Second, the researcher uses postcolonial theory and identity and identity crisis to analyse the way the tribal tradition and the female circumcision
reveal Tashi‟s identity crisis. In postcolonial theory, there are two division
theories: hibridity and hegemony. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
D. Definition of Terms
There are some explanations below which are useful to define some terms in this research:
1. Funk
and Wagnalls
Standard Dictionary
Comprehensive International Edition defines tribe as “a division, class or group of
people, varying ethnologically according to circumstances from which their separation or distinction is supposed to originate,” or “a group or
aggregate of
persons among
primitive peoples,
usually consanguineous and endogamous, under one chief, characterized by
its own culture and having a name, a dialect, a government and usually a territory of its own” Deogaonkar, 1994: 15 Meanwhile,
tradition means “the internal handing on through time”Kroeber,
1948: 411. Thus, tribal tradition means a group of people with same ancestors who inherit tradition from generation to the next generation.
2. American tradition means a group of people who share the value or
moral of America from generation to the next generation. 3.
According to Webstern’s New World Dictionary, identity crisis is “the
condition of being uncertain of one‟s feelings about oneself, especially with regard to character, goals, and origins, occurring especially in
adolescence as a result of growing up under disruptive, fast- changing conditions” Guralnik, 1979: 696.
4. Circumcision “ from Latin „circumcidere‟ meaning to cut around is
one of the most ancient and common surgical procedures worldwide.” El- Gohary, M. Amin, 2015:114. This practice is a kind of
mutilation. In medical term, this refers to female genital mutilation. Based on WHO‟s A Student’s Manual, Female Genital Mutilation
FGM is “a term now generally accepted for the traditional practices that entail injury or removal of part or all of the external genitalia of
girls and women. It does not include genital surgery performed for medically prescribed reasons” Dorkenoo O.B.E, et al, 2001: 11.
9
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A. Review of Related Studies
In the review of related studies, there are four studies are provided in this research,
1. “Sexual Blinding of Women: Alice Walker‟s African Character Tashi and
the Issue of Female Genital Cutting ”by Gabriela EltzBrum.
In her thesis, Brum observed how Walker creates literary works which shows her anger and her emotion towards her literary work. Brum uses many
approaches to see the issue of Female Genital Mutilation FGM. The approaches are religion, health and sexuality, colonialism and post- colonialism,
anthropological view, and gender and aesthetic feminism. Brum, also, observes Tashi in three novels of Alice Walker; the Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of
Joy and The Temple of Familiar. In her thesis, Brum presents Tashi as a model of the reality of Post-
colonial. “The goal of this thesis is mainly to investigate what is for Walker, after all, the implicit concept of literature” Brum, 2005:10.Brum
wants to show that Walker intention is to make the world see the tradition and its effect for women.
This research uses the same character, Tashi, in Walker‟s Posessing the Secret of Joy. Then,
it is different with Brum‟s thesis because this research focuses on the tradition and identity crisis in the novel. The identity crisis of Tashi
happens as the result of hybridity. njn
2. “Possessing the Secret of Black Womanhood: Reading African Women in
Alice Walker‟s Possessing the Secret of Joy, The Color Purple, and Warrior Marks
” by Nontsasa Nako In Nako‟s thesis, Nako discusses Walker‟s works regarding to
postmodernism. She wrote to represent African women towards African tradition and the immigration from Africa to America. Nako does not just talk about
women that Walker presented in her work, but also relates it to the African women in reality. Nako uses a female character in the novel to use it as the
stereotype of woman that Walker presents in her book. She analyses the representation and the tradition of female circumcision. She argues that,
when national and cultural differences are sacrificed for sisterhood and solidarity based on a superficial universalisation of racial and gender
oppression, the totalising, discursive tendencies that many critics objected to in second wave mainstream feminism are replicated Nako, 2004: i.
Nako shows that the sisterhood of women, who share the thing in common, is influenced by the culture or tradition where they belong. Nako also makes a
comparison between Walker‟s The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy to see the African identity and the African American identity. It can be seen that
there is an unequal position where the African American identity is superior to African identity. She analyses more on the representation of female African
people. In this research, the researcher focuses on the tribal tradition. This research
uses postcolonial approach to see the tradition and the revealing identity crisis as the effect of hibridity. This work also talks about African identity, but it is related
