Abstract:
This study investigates the postcolonial condition of returning to the past as a
symptomatic alternative to escape from the traumatic experience of the colonial
drama. The evidence for the above phenomenon can be derived from V.S. Naipaul’s
The Mimic Men (1967), Among the Believers (2003) and A Bend in the River (1979)
where the ‘hurt ego’ of the postcolonial subject seeks the psychological comfort of
tradition against modern secularism. The textual analysis of those texts shows that
the nostalgia for re-actualizing the past takes a totalitarian turn in both Among the
Believers and A Bend in the River, when postcolonial rulers deviate from universal
democratic values and embrace the discourse of the tradition in order to heal the
hurt postcolonial ego. However, though they deny the western lifeworld and
poetically turn to Islamic faith, according to Naipaul, there are queues in Pakistan to
migrate to America for a better life escaping from the failure of decolonization. This
paradox becomes evident when those who become physically ‘de-territorialized’
from the postcolonial world to advanced nations, desire to return to their former
territories. Ralph Singh in The Mimic Men shows the embarrassing truth that he does
not belong to any territory; the native Caribbean or new metropolitan London and
becomes a psychological cripple. Similarly, characters such as Prasojo, Shafi and
Sitor in Among the Believers show the same symptom when they are not fully
detached from their origin and psychologically live like ‘natives’ wherever they go.
A character such as Sitor in Indonesia finds his ultimate psychological comfort in
discovering the lost code of his nativity which was initially destroyed by the
colonizers who later re-emerge in a spectral presence to re-discover it for him.
Naipaul detects that this recovery of native essence finally heals the hurt soul of the
postcolonial subject. The attempt to re-actualize the nostalgia of the pre-colonial
lifeworld that is confirmed by the above code is evidenced by Naipaul through a
political symptom of totalitarianism in A Bend in the River. Synchronizing the
evidence in the above three texts, this paper concludes that no psychological
stability is possible for the postcolonial man unless if he chooses to do the
‘impossible’ in achieving more innovative goals to become ‘more master than
master’.
