The colonizer panoptic and the colonized faith: resistance and attack in the fakir’s island, by Alice Perrin

Abstract

Based upon a study that embraces the theoretical presuppositions on post-colonialism, panoptic view, multiculturalism, resistance, in other words, theories that involve “Third World” cultures and their researchers – such as Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin, Bhabha, Mattelart e Neveu -, we carried out the analysis of an English language novel The Fakir’s Island, by Alice Perrin. The author, of Indian origin, is recognized world wide as a great name of the post-colonial literature, as the majority of her novels are about “colonized India”, revealing the irony and humor in Anglo-Indian relationships. The focus of our reading will be based on the unveiling of the cultural dialogues present in the novel, especially the way of looking, as well as the panoptic vision, in which the colonizer subdues the other, enthroned on a favorable architectonic structure: a fort, highlighting his power based on a place, and the subdued condition of the colonized. Another factor of analysis is the way the colonized resists to the domination process: making use of a “curse”, in this case common to Hindi culture, as a way and strategy of counterattacking. We aimed at analyzing the novel under the post-colonial light, revealed by the means of cultural encounters in the colony / the colonizer metropolis / colonized and, in this way, within this panorama, investigate the exclusion and disapproval of the imperialist subject from a physical-geographical (the fort) and ideological (the Other) point of view, and thus creating presuppositions that give evidence of how important the image of the Agra Fort is as the “support basis” for the omnipresent view of the western subject, as well as the presence of the magical Hindi curses as the only “weapon” to fight against the objected individual. In order that this research may achieve its objectives, the methods of procedure will be historic and comparative, whereas the character will be descriptive-analytic, so that in this way the facts may be identified, described, classified, interpreted and, especially, analyzed by the author without his interference or manipulation. The theories proposed will be described together with the narrative in question.