Nostalgia of the displaced colonizer in A. Alberts`s the islands - USD Repository

NOSTALGIA OF THE DISPLACED COLONIZER IN

  

A. ALBERTS’S THE ISLANDS

A thesis presented to the Graduate Program in English Language Studies in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Magister Humaniora

(M. Hum) in English Language Studies

by

Rini Susriyani

  

03 6332 011

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

YOGYAKARTA

2007

  A thesis

  NOSTALGIA OF THE DISPLACED COLONIZER IN A . ALBERTS’S THE ISLANDS

  by Rini Susriyani

  Dr. Novita Dewi, M. S, M. A. (Hons.) Advisor

  A thesis

NOSTALGIA OF THE DISPLACED COLONIZER IN

  A. ALBERTS’S THE ISLANDS Presented by Rini Susriyani / 03 6332 011

  Defended in front the Thesis Defense Committee and declared accepted Statement of Originality This is to certify that all ideas, phrases, and sentences unless otherwise stated are the ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis’ writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if she takes somebody else’s ideas, phrases, or sentences without a proper reference.

  

ABSTRACT

  Rini Susriyani, 2007. Nostalgia of the Displaced Colonizer in A. Alberts’s The Islands.

  Yogyakarta: English Language Studies. Graduate Program. Sanata Dharma University. There is an assumption that writings written by the Westerner about the non-

  West are often implicated in Orientalism, a concept propagated by Edward Said as the West’s discursive methods to dominate the non-West. This discourse is assumed to be most evident in colonial writings, in which the Western authors are members of the colonizing society dominating peoples regarded as different and thus inferior.

  This study attempts to prove otherwise with regard to one writing about colonial Indonesia by A. Alberts, a prominent Dutch author and ex-colonial official.

  This study utilizes theories on Orientalism and colonial discourse to examine the possibilities of Orientalist tendencies in the text. It concludes that despite evidences of the presence of Orientalist discourse in the text, the text is not thoroughly affected by the discourse. Attesting to this is in the text the Western characters are shown as attempting to establish a relationship with the native characters instead of rejecting them. It is assumed that this description occurs due to the author’s background as a displaced colonizer looking to make a connection with the land he had viewed as a home.

  

ABSTRAK

  Rini Susriyani, 2007. Nostalgia of the Displaced Colonizer in A. Alberts’s The Islands.

  Yogyakarta: English Language Studies. Program Pascasarjana. Universitas Sanata Dharma.

  Teori poskolonial, terutama teori-teori mengenai Orientalisme dan diskursus kolonial, menyatakan bahwa literatur Barat mengenai bangsa dan kultur non-Barat cenderung menggambarkan bangsa non-Barat sebagai sosok yang tidak semaju dan selogis masyarakat Barat, bahkan sebagai bangsa yang kurang beradab. Gambaran ini lebih nyata lagi dalam tulisan-tulisan mengenai masa kolonialisme, dimana penulis Barat yang sekaligus adalah bagian dari bangsa yang menjajah dan menguasai bangsa lain tentunya lebih punya alasan untuk menggambarkan bangsa terjajah tersebut sebagai lebih rendah dan kurang maju dibandingkan bangsa penjajah.

  Thesis ini mencoba untuk membuktikan pandangan sebaliknya dari pandangan di atas melalui penyelidikan atas karya A. Alberts yang berjudul The

  

Islands, sebuah kumpulan cerita pendek yang menceritakan fragmen-fragmen

  kehidupan di Indonesia pada masa penjajahan Belanda. Alberts sendiri adalah mantan pegawai pemerintahan kolonial. Mengikuti teori Orientalisme dan diskursus kolonial karya Alberts ini kemungkinan besar masih terpengaruh pandangan yang menganggap rendah bangsa terjajah. Namun analisa penulis menunjukkan bahwa selain gambaran-gambaran yang masih menempatkan tokoh-tokoh berkebangsaan Barat sebagai lebih baik dari tokoh-tokoh pribumi, terdapat pula gambaran-gambaran yang menunjukkan bahwa alih-alih menjauhi tokoh pribumi yang dianggap rendah tokoh-tokoh Barat justru berusaha mendekati tokoh pribumi ini. Kesimpulan yang didapat adalah The Islands yang ditulis oleh A. Alberts ini tidak sepenuhnya terpengaruh oleh Orientalisme dan diskursus kolonial sebagaimana anggapan terhadap karya-karya Barat mengenai masa imperialisme. Diduga hal ini terjadi karena karya ini ditulis sebagai bentuk reaksi terhadap kemerdekaan Indonesia yang menyebabkan Alberts harus meninggalkan Indonesia, dan menggambarkan keinginan seorang mantan kolonialis yang terusir untuk kembali ke tanah yang sudah ia anggap sebagai kampung halamannya sendiri.

  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  To God, my parents, and everyone else who have helped me through all this, and who have put up with me.

  Thank you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page..........................................................................................................

  Approval page...................................................................................................i Acceptance page............................................................................................... ii Statement of originality.................................................................................... iii Abstract.............................................................................................................iv Abstrak..............................................................................................................v Acknowledgement............................................................................................ vii Table of contents...............................................................................................viii

  Chapter I: Introduction..................................................................................... 1

  1. Background of study..............................................................................1

  2. Objective of study..................................................................................5

  3. Research questions.................................................................................6

  4. Chapter presentation.............................................................................. 7

  5. Benefits of the study.............................................................................. 8

  Chapter II: Literature Review........................................................................... 9

  1. Three interpretations of A. Alberts’s The Islands................................. 9

  2. Said’s Orientalism, colonialism, and literature......................................13

  3. Theoretical framework...........................................................................20

  4. Research method....................................................................................21

  Chapter III: Portrayal of Western Characters................................................... 22

  1. The superior Westerner..........................................................................23

  2. The desiring Westerner.......................................................................... 43

  3. The threatened Westerner...................................................................... 48

  4. Chapter conclusion................................................................................ 52

  Chapter IV: Portrayal of Native Characters......................................................54

  1. The native as inferior Other................................................................... 55

  2. The native as unreadable Other............................................................. 62

  3. The native as appalling/appealing Other............................................... 68

  4. Miscellaneous portrayals....................................................................... 74

  5. Chapter conclusion................................................................................ 78

  Chapter V: Continuity and Discontinuity of Orientalism................................. 80

  1. Continuity of Orientalism...................................................................... 80

  2. Discontinuity of Orientalism................................................................. 87

  3. Chapter conclusion................................................................................ 100

  Chapter VI: Conclusion.................................................................................... 101 Bibliography..................................................................................................... 105

  

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. Background of Study This study is about the writing by the Dutch on their colonizing past.

  Although the Dutch have produced a number of writings about their lives and experiences during their colonization in Indonesia, there are apparently not many studies about these writings, particularly about Dutch writings that relate the lives of the Dutch colonialists themselves. The most well-known Dutch colonial writing is probably Multatuli’s novel Max Havelaar, but not much is known about the works by other Dutch authors. Pramoedya Ananta Toer had published an anthology of colonial writings that includes writings by Dutch authors, but these are stories about the lives of Indonesians under Dutch rule and not about the Dutch themselves (see Tempo

  

Doeloe, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Lentera Dipantara, 2003). It is the same with a

  postcolonial study on Indonesian colonial writings, Clearing a Space, which focuses more on writings by Indonesians (see Clearing a Space, edited by Keith Foulcher and Tony Day, KITLV Press, 2002). Therefore this study is committed to the examination of Dutch colonial literature, not only to fill in the gap in literary criticism but also to acknowledge an alternative perspective to Indonesia’s past. We may find that some of the texts treat native Indonesians in ways that are disagreeable to today’s standards, but it is hard to deny that Dutch colonization is indeed part of Indonesian history and what the Dutch have written about that era may provide a glimpse into colonial

  The text chosen for this study is A. Alberts’s The Islands (1999), a collection of eleven short stories recounting experiences in colonial Indonesia. Part of the choice is due to the author’s reputation: Albert Alberts (1911 – 1995) was a notable literary figure in Netherlands, being rewarded five literary awards during his lifetime (source: web.inter.nl.net/hcc/Her.Jansen/alberts.htm). He had been in Madura as a colonial official from 1939 to 1942. The short stories which make up The Islands were written sometime after his return to the Netherlands in 1946 and were published together in 1952 under the collective title De eilanden (The Islands in Dutch). The text examined in this study is the 1999 English language edition.

  The other part of the choice is due to the overall impression conveyed by the text itself. On the text’s back cover this promotional line can be found: “a masterpiece of Dutch colonial fiction from one of the most important writers of modern Dutch literature”. Comprising this “masterpiece” are stories set in mostly unnamed colonial islands where the unnamed Western narrators interact with other Westerners and the frequently unnamed native characters. Despite strong implications that the stories’ setting is colonial Indonesia, clear indications of the setting and identity of the native characters are practically non-existent. Several native characters with significant roles are given Western-sounding names. Nevertheless the introductory chapter by E. M. Beekman, editor of the English edition, confirms that Alberts based his stories on real _{The vagueness 1 with regard to the Indonesian setting and characters may as well be the author’s}

  Introduction by E. M. Beekman, A. Alberts, The Islands, 1999: 3; from this point on all references characteristic style; nonetheless this treatment of the native raises the question on what kind of a picture this purported “colonial fiction” draws of colonial Indonesia, especially given the author’s background as a once active participant in colonial maintenance.

  In the light of postcolonial studies, Western texts about non-Western cultures, principally cultures subjected to Western imperialism, are often perceived as being implicated by the practices of “Orientalism” which emphasize the distinction between the West and the non-West, and in which the former is usually privileged over the latter. In the case of cultures subjected to Western imperialism the texts would have located the opposition between the dominating West and the subjugated locals, resulting in the condescending attitude towards the native. All Western colonial texts are not necessarily affected by this attitude, but due to “colonial discourse” which distorts the reality of colonial relationships authors might accept the disparity between the colonizer and the colonized as the way the relationship should have been.

  Even if they claim to be impartial and give detailed and possibly sympathetic account of the colonial landscape and culture, their claim “simply serves to hide the imperial discourse within which they are created”. Hence, to read colonial texts entails paying attention to their underlying colonialist (as in assuming the superiority of the colonizer at the cost of the colonized’s rights) ideologies and processes (Ashcroft et al, 1998: 42, 192, 1989: 5; Said, 1979: 7).

  Therefore the starting assumption of this study is that Alberts’s The Islands may have underlying colonialist attitude which is expressed in its representations of colonizer. Yet to claim a text to be automatically colonialist simply because it is written by a Westerner and about a colonized non-Western land will be too generalizing. As stated by Elleke Boehmer in her book Colonial and Postcolonial

  

Literature, colonial literature “was never as invasively confident or as pompously

  dismissive of indigenous cultures as its oppositional pairing with postcolonial writing might suggest” (Boehmer, 1995: 4). In other words, the so-called colonial literature is not as two-dimensional as the postcolonial assumption may suggest. The Islands itself is presented in Beekman’s introductory chapter as projecting an attitude which is not so colonialist to the local Indonesians and it can be viewed as an exploration of the Westerner’s loneliness in and out of the colonial territory. The Western characters are isolated from any human contact, echoing the dilemma of the colonizers who were unable to fit into life in the European centre after spending many years in the colony (TI, p. 6). The expressions of loneliness and yearning constituting the principal mood of the stories can be related to the author’s being, in a sense, a displaced ex-colonizer and through his writing is reaching out to the already distanced colonial home. Something of this can be traced in Alberts’s own words where he said that he wrote “from nostalgia, that is to say, in order to be imprisoned again” (TI, p. 9).

  Voices which contradict the hegemony of Orientalist or colonial discourse can exist within Western colonial literature. Dennis Porter, as quoted in Colonial

  

Discourse and Post-colonial Theory, says that “if [an Orientalist] work can be re-

  read, shown to be fissured with doubt and contradiction, it will confirm how under certain conditions Orientalist discourse, far from being monolithic, allows counter- possibility that The Islands, despite being written by a person who had been an active participant in the colonial system, may not entirely be condescending to the native.

  Nonetheless this possibility is practically based on the statements made by a Westerner (i.e. E. M. Beekman), who through the aptly titled “introduction” chapter is primarily trying to introduce A. Alberts and his work to the reader and do not touch the text’s representations of the native Indonesia in detail. Thus this study takes into consideration both the possibilities that Alberts’s The Islands may still be affected by Orientalist discourse and that it may provide a counter-hegemonic voice to the discourse.

2. Objective of Study

  This study’s objective is therefore to examine how the relationship between the locals and the Westerners is presented in the text. This is to find out about the extent of Orientalist attitude in the text and the possibility of contradictions to the discourse in it. My assumption is that this text is not entirely Orientalist and this can be proved through analysis of the portrayal of the characters, both native and Western. My study is not meant to be an apology for A. Alberts or The Islands, but rather to reveal the text as a multi-layered work in which Orientalist attitude is possibly fissured with expressions that counter the discourse.

  A weakness of this study is perhaps that even though Alberts’s The Islands is said to be “a masterpiece of Dutch colonial fiction”, it is not an actual colonial writing in the sense that it was not written during colonial times. The stories this problem is that Western writings of the post-colonial era are considered not immune to the effects of the discourse that privileges the West over non-Western cultures. The persistence of that discourse is explored by Edward Said in his influential work Orientalism (1978). Orientalism is a Western way to “know” the “Orient” and as a way of knowing it becomes the West’s way of maintaining power over the East by authorizing their statements and views of it. The discursive influences of Orientalism persist into beyond colonial times in various textual representations of the non-Western, including literature. During the period of imperialism Orientalist discourse informed the ways the colonizers used to deal with the colonized, and therefore it was part of the colonial discourse or the system in which colonial relationships were defined (Ashcroft et al, 1998: 167-8). Hence although The Islands is not a true colonial text it can be suspected of containing Orientalism, given that it is a Western writing about a non-Western territory that the West once colonized. Furthermore, it was written after Alberts’s return to the Netherlands due to decolonization. I am not saying that Alberts had a grudge against Indonesians, but to some extent the displacement might have shaped the execution of his stories.

3. Research Questions

  Since the assumption is that Alberts’s The Islands is not entirely Orientalist, the questions raised are in what way and to what extent the text is affected by Orientalism. The answers are best found out by studying the portrayal of the to be detected in the representation of the relationship between the two. Analysis on the portrayals is hoped to reveal not only the effects or continuity of Orientalism in the text, but also how this continuity is “discontinued” or disrupted by portrayals which may diverge from expectations of a thoroughly Orientalist text. I am using the term “native” here as the most common and, in my opinion, the most understandable term when talking about relationships between Westerner and non-Westerner, particularly in the colonial sense. Although it may seem that my use of the term is based on the dichotomy of Westerner/colonizer versus non-Westerner/colonized, my study is not meant to further emphasize the dichotomy but rather to see how interactions between the two groups affect the Westerner group.

  The questions this study seeks to answer are therefore:

  1. How are the Western characters portrayed in the stories?

  2. How are the native characters portrayed in the stories?

  3. What do the portrayals reveal about the continuity and/or discontinuity of Orientalism in the text?

4. Chapter Presentation

  In answering the questions above, the following chapters are arranged in this order: the chapter immediately follows Chapter I is the theoretical review in which I present the theories and studies I will use as the basis for my analysis. The portrayals of the characters are divided into one chapter for Western characters and one for native characters, nevertheless taking account of how the two groups are positioned to studies portrayals of the native characters. And chapter V studies how these portrayals counter or confirm the concept of Orientalism and the probable reasons for them to turn out so. The last chapter is an overall conclusion of the study.

5. Benefits of the Study

  The benefit of this study is first to introduce of the work of Albert Alberts, one of the acclaimed writers in the Netherlands, and to add his work to the repertoire of studies on colonial writings. Second is to get an understanding of how a colonial text like The Islands is shaped by its context. And third is to open new trajectories in which studies on Dutch colonial literature may proceed.

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

1. Three Interpretations of A. Alberts’s The Islands

  This section presents three studies or interpretations of Alberts’s The Islands that act as the texts to which I may compare my own interpretation. Texts written in English about The Islands are very rare, either in book form or as online articles, whereas articles in Dutch are simply inaccessible to me. Due to this limitation I found only three interpretations which I regard as helpful. The first interpretation is E. M. Beekman’s introductory chapter featured in The Islands; the second is a short analysis by Rob Nieuwenhuys, an authority on Dutch colonial literature; and the third is a reader’s commentary on the Amazon website.

  Beekman was the editor of the translation project of which Alberts’s The

  

Islands was included, as well as a noted scholar of Dutch colonial literature. In his

  introductory essay he focuses on Alberts’s use of images and writing style to explore the theme of isolation. The island setting stands as an image of the (Western) characters’ loneliness and Alberts’s indirect and vague writing style helps in establishing the sense of remoteness. Beekman finds the theme of isolation in most of the short stories: it is most evident in stories like “Green” and “The Swamp”, and is insinuated in stories like “The House of the Grandfather” and “The Unknown Island”.

  According to Beekman, there are two sides of this isolation theme. The first is that the island setting offers the Western characters a chance to recognize their real to another work of Alberts’s in which the lead character seems to have found strength in his isolation by bonding with nature. Beekman believes that some of the characters in The Islands—particularly the characters in “Green” and “The Hunt”—are presented as suffering because of their disregard of the (colonial) nature and thus in a way denying their own selves. Eventually it can be said that The Islands depict a “journey back to one’s own self”, where characters either have to find non-material meaning to their “journey” in the colonial world or suffer loneliness and dissociation from their true nature (TI, p.16). The second side is more depressing: the characters are too attached to the islands and upon returning to their home country consequently feel like “strangers” among their own people. In addition to being an image of physical and emotional isolation, Alberts’s islands also serve as an ambivalent “haven for [Westerners] who feel the desire to escape the mainland” (TI, pp. 6-7). This “ambivalence” is present in the plight of the characters that become alienated in both the colony and their home country. The same feeling apparently was also experienced by Alberts who admitted in an interview that his writings were means for recapturing his past (TI, p. 9). For characters set in this second side there is practically no escape; even friendships cannot be depended upon to ease the loneliness caused by separation from the islands (TI, p. 17).

  Nieuwenhuys’s analysis on Alberts’s The Islands can be found in his anthology, translated into English as Mirror of the Indies (1999), which covers the early period of Dutch colonization of Indonesia to the post-colonial period. Nieuwenhuys puts Alberts in a section titled as “Not to be Forgotten”, which is the seems to be interested in Alberts’s technique in executing peculiar effects in his work, although he does mention Alberts’s use of several motifs which he associates with the author’s personality. He discusses a great deal of Alberts’s use of ironic tone and compressed, repetitive sentences. Nieuwenhuys believes that this style expresses Alberts’s own alienation from reality which is extended into his theme (Nieuwenhuys, 1999: 290-1). The major theme Nieuwenhuys discusses is communication problem, although in his analysis this implies loneliness as well.

  Almost similar to Beekman, Nieuwenhuys states how this communication problem exists only between humans but not between human and the “mute nature” (Nieuwenhuys, 1999: 293). Two stories that Nieuwenhuys analyzes a bit more extensively are Alberts’s first story “Green” and seventh story “The Hunt”. He nonetheless pays attention only to Alberts’s technique in executing these stories. But in “The Hunt”, Nieuwenhuys particularly marks the ending, in which the narrator cremates the body of the fugitive Florines, as indicating how Alberts made himself present in the story and his feelings of being connected with the hunted man (Nieuwenhuys, 1999: 294).

  The third interpretation I found is not much of an analysis than a short commentary, but I think it is helpful as an example of what readers may think of The

  

Islands. As mentioned earlier, there are practically no English articles on The Islands

  or on Alberts himself published in any website. The websites which feature this text are book-selling sites that provide only promotional comments on it, and out of these sites only one reader-review is found. This reviewer, whose name indicates and altered identity as he interacts with the locals and native nature that is “as fertile as a womb of a young woman”. The reviewer assumes that The Islands is Alberts’s form of reminiscence of his life in colonial Indonesia, basing the assumption not only on the content of Alberts’s narratives but also on his vague and indirect writing style which forces the reader to freely interpret the context. Hence, according to the reviewer, it is necessary to Beekman as the editor to provide explanatory preface, introduction and endnotes (from www.amazon.com).

  These three interpretations reveal the common thread of seeing Alberts’s The

  

Islands as a reflection of the author’s personal issues, either issues arising from his

  experiences as a colonizer or from his own personality, emphasizing the text’s theme of loneliness, and noting its vague wording. The interpretations nonetheless do not talk about how Alberts presents Indonesian characters in his stories and how the Western characters interact with them. Although the Indonesian reviewer above talks about the change the Western character undergoes from his interaction with the “fertile” native, she does not explain what that change is and how it happens.

  The interaction between the native and the Western characters in The Islands, which the above three interpretations seem to neglect, is the trajectory my study is undertaking. As it is concerned with the relationship between the Westerner and the non-Westerner, particularly between the colonizer and the colonized, the theories used are postcolonial theories of Orientalism and colonial literature.

2. Said’s Orientalism, Colonialism and Literature

  Orientalism does not always have negative connotations as today’s impression suggests. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines Orientalism as “a trait, custom, or habit of expression characteristic of oriental peoples”, and “scholarship or learning in oriental subjects” (1990: 832). Similar definition can be found in a number of online sites. One website, for instance, defines Orientalism as “the study and exploration of the Orient by Occidentals”, resulting in “dictionaries, encyclopedias, translations, travel accounts, novels, and paintings” which focused on “real and imaginative scenes of [Eastern] exocticism” (from answers.com). These definitions characterize Orientalism as an academic and aesthetic study on Eastern cultures which is mainly taken up by Westerners. As such, Orientalism acquire negative connotations as prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East, which is the viewpoint articulated and propagated by Edward W. Said in his 1978 book Orientalism.

  Orientalism to Said is not an objective academic study; rather, it is a discourse which constructed the East in Western consciousness as an oppositional image to the West. Following Michel Foucault’s ideas of the relationship between knowledge and power, Said argues that “the Orient” (in Said’s book it particularly means the Islamic Arab world) is not only constructed as a negative image of “the Occident” but also distributed as a fact, thereby continually confirming the West’s superiority over it. In Said’s words Orientalism is “the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient— dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said, 1979: 3). As a discourse Orientalism is more pervasive than it is as an academic study. Its practitioners—the Orientalists—comprises not only scholars but also artists, writers, philosophers, and politicians. Orientalism acts on them as a style of thought based upon the ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and “the Occident”, giving rise to reports, stories and theories which highlight this perceived distinction (Said, 1979: 2).

  As a style of thought Orientalism is latent or remains dormant within the mind until given an outlet as physical expression. Latent Orientalism is the unconscious certainty about the Orient, which contains all the stereotypes of the Orient seen as the opposition of the West. These include views of the Orient as backward, sensual, and passive. The noticeable expressions of Orientalism in texts, speech, and actions are the manifestation of latent Orientalism, and therefore these expressions are called

  manifest Orientalism (Said, 1979: 206).

  Despite his goal to expose the superior and oppressive attitude underneath the seemingly objective texts on the non-West, Said nonetheless asserts that Orientalism is not a Western plot to hold down the Oriental world but rather a rendition of the distinct Orient into scientific and aesthetic texts. This act of construing the non-West is in itself an elaboration of “a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world” (Said, 1979: 12).

  The discursive nature of Orientalism stemmed from it being part of the particular—in part due to the land’s importance as colonial territories. Since Europe approached the Orient as its conqueror and superior, its views of the land were affected by this attitude. It justified its colonization of the non-Western cultures by representing them as depraved and uncivilized, thereby in ‘need’ of the West’s control and guidance (Said, 1979: 95; Ashcroft et al, 1998: 41). This justification and ‘beautifying’ of an otherwise sordid practice is part of colonial discourse, a system of knowledge and beliefs which ensures the superiority of the West vis-à-vis the colonized non-West. This discourse made statements specifically about colonies and colonial peoples, about colonizing powers and about the relationship between these two, based on assumptions about the centrality and superiority of the colonizing West. This was often achieved through the process called “the othering”, whereby the colonizer and the colonized were constructed in oppositional position to each other as “self” and “other” respectively. The colonized gained the identity of and was characterized as “other” through discursive constructions which emphasized their racial and cultural differences from the colonizer. The privilege was obviously given to the colonizing “self” (Ashcroft et al, 1998: 169-172).

  Although colonial discourse was generated to dominate the colonized native, it nonetheless may work two ways: the discourse may also affect the consciousness of the colonizing subject since it is apt to exclude the atrocious reality of colonization and emphasize the “duty” of the colonizer to “civilize” or “save” the colonized from their “degenerate” condition; therefore blinding the colonizer to the duplicity of their position (Ashcroft et al, 1998: 42-3). This act of constructing the non-West in an was explored by Said with regard to texts deemed as objective or transcending the material world, such as scientific and aesthetic texts. This is what Orientalism is about: the effects of colonial discourse expressed in texts, including literature.

  Imaginative literature to Said is not free from ideological influences such as that of colonial discourse, since as an individual living in and influenced by his or her societal circumstances an author cannot escape his or her actuality. Therefore a Western author writing about the Orient would approach his or her subject as a Westerner would; if the author lived in the period of colonialism, he or she would have been aware of the power his or her nation held over the Orient and would have had definite views on other cultures, races, and these others’ position within the colonialist relations. Even if the author was not interested in colonial relationships and tried to be impartial, the discursive beliefs of what the non-West should be imposed limits on what the author was saying about the land, especially regarding the differences between the Western “us” and the Oriental “them” (Said, 1979: 2, 9-11, 43, 158).

  The above discussion may suggest that Western texts, particularly those dealing with colonial relationships, would automatically treat the non-West as weak and inferior. Boehmer, discussing the effects of colonial (in her book it is “colonialist”) discourse, shows that the result of the Western colonizer’s attempt to “understand” what they might have viewed as “bizarre” and “apparently unintelligible strangeness” of the colonies may be interpretations which not only express the colonizer’s “mastery” of the strange world, but also reflect their wonder, practices which described their Western protagonists as being threatened or already damaged by their encounters with the untamable native land; thus indicating the fear which accompanies confrontations with the non-European and the unknown, often perceived as savage and harmful due to its “otherness” (Boehmer, 1995: 50).

  Said’s concept of Orientalism is not without flaws. Critics argue that Said's book contains many factual, methodological and conceptual errors. Said's theory, for instance, does not explain why much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism as Said’s accusation was. Some critics have argued that while many distortions and fantasies certainly existed, the notion of “the Orient” as a negative mirror image is part of any culture’s tendency to identify other cultures as “different”, otherwise their own distinctive characteristics would be invisible. Also any observing culture will logically point out the most striking differences in others.

  Homi Bhabha, as stated by Robert C. Young, challenged Said’s argument that Western dominance is and has been unchallenged, ignoring the obvious resistances by and attempts to give voice to the “other”. Further criticism includes the observation that the criticisms levied by Said at Orientalist scholars of being essentialist can in turn be levied at him for the way in which he writes of the West as a hegemonic mass, stereotyping its characteristics (Porter, 1994: 150-161; Said, 1979: 341; Selden, et al, 1997: 224; Young, 2001: 75). I take these criticisms, especially criticisms on Said’s tendency to stereotype the West and stress its hegemonic influences, as a reference for the possibilities of discontinuities within the supposedly Orientalist literature.

  Since this study examines a text purported to be a “colonial” text, it is important that we comprehend what colonial literature is. While in its general meaning colonial literature invokes the image of texts about colonial periods, Elleke Boehmer divides the term into “colonial” literature from “colonialist” literature.

  “Colonial literature” to her means writings concerned with colonial perceptions and experience, written mainly by European metropolitans, but might also by creoles and natives, during colonial times. On the other hand, “colonialist literature” comprises writings that were specifically concerned with colonial expansion. On the whole, colonialist literature was literature written by and for colonizing Europeans about non-European lands dominated by them and which embodied the imperialists’ point of view. It was informed by theories concerning the superiority of European culture and the rightness of empire, and therefore its distinctive stereotyped language was geared to mediating the white man’s relationship with colonized peoples (Boehmer, 1995: 2-3). Boehmer, however, warns that the unit known as colonial literature (which is the umbrella term including “colonialist literature” as well) should not be viewed as the adversary of the native. Colonial/ist literature need not always signify texts rigidly associated with ideas of native oppression: “Colonial, or even colonialist writing was never as invasively confident or as pompously dismissive of indigenous cultures as its oppositional pairing with postcolonial writing might suggest” (Boehmer, 1995: 4).

  This view is also upheld by Abdul R. JanMohamed in an excerpt from his work “The Economy of Manichean Allegory”. To him “colonialist literature” is not colonialist literature into “the imaginary” and “the symbolic”, and further divides the latter into two sub-categories. What he means by imaginary colonialist literature are texts that represent the native as the negative reflection of the imperialist self. This type of literature is automatically more saturated in Western hegemony. On the other hand, symbolic texts are more aware of the mechanisms of this hegemony and are willing to examine the problems of colonialist mentality and its encounter with different cultures. Symbolic literature is divisible into texts that appear “symbolic” on the surface but are actually “imaginary” on emotional level, and texts that focus on rigorous examination of the “imaginary” mechanism of colonialist mentality (JanMohamed, 1997: 18-23).

  Given Boehmer’s and JanMohamed’s definitions of colonial and colonialist literature, we are able to see their difference from Beekman’s definition of Dutch colonial literature. As written in his preface, Dutch colonial literature comprises texts “written by or about European colonialists in Southeast Asia prior to the Second World War”. Beekman informs the reader that although this literature “cannot develop further because there are no new voices and because what was voiced no longer exists”, yet it is a literature that can still instruct because it “delineates the historical and psychological confrontation of East and West, it depicts the uneasy alliance of these antithetical forces, and it shows by prior example the demise of Western imperialism”. After acknowledging these “political issues”, Beekman emphasizes another aspect of Dutch colonial literature which apparently captures his attention most: that this literature is “a literature of lost causes, of a past irrevocably words, it is a nostalgic literature. Being a professor in American academic surroundings, Beekman proceeds to compare Dutch colonial literature to that of the American South. He claims that the two genres are similar in that both are “as much aware of its demise and yet, not defiantly but wistfully, determined to record its own passing, the inevitable defeat of the more recent masters, a faith in more traditional virtues, and that peculiar offbeat detail often called ‘gothic’ or grotesque’”. In both literatures the major theme is loneliness (Beekman, 1999: xii-xiii).

3. Theoretical Framework

  As mentioned earlier, the three interpretations of The Islands are used to compare my study with. Theories of Orientalism and colonial discourse are used as the basis for the examination of The Islands in its portrayals of the Westerner and the native. The emphasis is on the theories’ concept of separation between the Westerner and the non-Westerner, as in how the latter is represented in the discourse and what the Westerner gains of the representation.

  The theories of colonial/ist literature as stated by Boehmer and JanMohamed are used as the basis to the examination of The Islands’s construction as a “colonial” text. Beekman’s description of Dutch colonial literature aids not only in comparing it to the other descriptions, it also shows what Alberts’s intention might have been in his own treatment of the colonial Indonesia. Both still allow me to work my study to see how Orientalist discourse affects The Islands as well as pointing out how the continuity of the influence may be disrupted.

4. Research Method

  This study is mainly a library research. It is conducted through the following steps: (1) reading the text and finding particular passages which are regarded as corresponding to the binary opposition between the West/colonizer and the non- West/colonized, and classifying the findings in how they are presented in the text; (2) examining the findings in the light of the images of the West, the non-West, the colonizer, and the colonized as proposed by theories of Orientalism/colonial discourse and colonial literature to grasp the nature of character portrayals in The

  

Islands, as well as examining the findings in the light of the text’s historical context

  to conjecture the possible reasons for the portrayals; (3) examining the results from (1) and (2) to deduce the possible extent of the text’s Orientalism as well as the text’s possible counters to the discourse.