Alice Walker's Colonial Mind
by
Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure, Ph.D.
Department of English Language and Literature
Univ of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614
Despite varying, contradictory, and sometimes controversial attitudes of people of African descent in the African Diaspora, there is one truth: Black people in Africa and in the African Diaspora share more common experiences than is usually recognized and have the right to address or speak to these experiences. Marse Conde, the Guadeloupian multi-talented writer whose several novels crisscross the African Diaspora, has cogently argued that "Members of the African Diaspora should not remain isolated within their national shells. It's not a Pan Africanist per se, but rather a way for 69-70)
From this perspective, one can make the case that Alice Walker was right to write about African-American missionaries going to Africa to "civilize the un-civilized"
and to speak condescendingly about "tribal scarifications" and other Olinka customs in The Color Purple. She was right, too, to condemn and fictionally express her views concerning the inhumanity of clitoridectomy practices in Africa, commonly known as female circumcision, and to theorize about what she or her characters' thought has been leading African men to mutilate young African girls' bodies. Though her endeavor is praiseworthy, her approach to Africa in Possessing the Secret of Joy is very problematic and troubling: the analysis of the female circumcision and its origins is put forth amid colonialist and neo-colonialist discourses that permeate the novel until one postcolonial reassessment that occurs towards the end of the novel when the damage to Africa, African men and women has already been done. In this paper I argue that in Possessing the Secret of Joy Alice Walker has "colonized" an African female body and endowed her African-American characters with neo-/colonial attitudes toward Africa and Africans. These moments of colonialist and neo-colonial discourses last until Tashi, renamed Tashi-Evelyn-Mrs. Johnson-- the three names are used separately as
narrative device, depending on whether or not Tashi is
in Africa or America, or is in Africa as an
American-attempts to re-read what an Italian colonialist
woman has written about Africans being natural and
"possessing the secret of joy." Until this exercise in
postcolonial or "anti-neocolonialist reading," Possessing
the Secret of Joy is as colonialist as Joseph Conrad's
novella Heart of Darkness. Equally troubling is that
even the seemingly postcolonial/anti-neocolonialist
questioning of the Italian woman's "colonialist discourse"
remains inconclusive at best.
Thus, contrary to Angeletta KM Gourdine's
assertion that reading Possessing the Secret of Joy is
"a dual exercise in reading culture"-- an African
American woman created "the fictional world within
which the novel's African protagonist [Tashi] lives and
Tashi emigrates to the United States of America and is
married to African American man (237)-- I argue that
reading Possessing the Secret of Joy is a multiple
exercise in colonialist and anti-neocolonialist discourses.
Not only does Possessing the Secret of Joy contain
characters endowed with colonial-like attitudes, but it is
permeated by several moments of European
subjugation of Africa, including the colonial building
where Tashi is imprisoned after being accused of
murdering M'Lissa, the woman who circumcised her.
Chinua Achebe has argued, in his "Colonialist
Criticism," that a colonialist criticism comprises three
major parts: "Africa's inglorious past (raffia skirts),"
"European brings the blessing of civilization," and
"African returns ingratitude" (70). In Possessing the
Secret of Joy female circumcision is characterized as
part of the "Africa's inglorious past" where men continue
to savagely mutilate female genitals for their own sexual
desires. Also, the novel contains moments in which
European and African-American missionaries bring "the
blessing of civilization" by banning the Olinka practice of
female circumcision. According to Achebe, pivotal to a
"colonialist mind" is "its claim to a deeper knowledge
and a more reliable appraisal of Africa" than the
Africans have shown themselves "capable of":
To the colonialist mind it was always of
the utmost importance to be able to say: "I
know my natives," a claim which implied
two things at once: (a) that the native was
quite simple and (b) that understanding
him and controlling him went hand in
hand-understanding being a pre-condition
for control and control constituting
adequate proof of understanding. (71)
Not only does Possessing the Secret of Joy borrow its
title from a colonialist text, African Saga, by an Italian
woman who was raised in Kenya, but it maintains the
same colonialist discourse throughout its narrative until
Tashi, Olivia, Benny, Pierre, Raye, and Mbati,
re-examine Mirella Ricciardi's understanding of the
African and add a postcolonial spin. From this
perspective, Gourdine has cogently argued that "the
incredulity inherent in Ricciardi's novel is shared by
Walker and guides her construction of Tashi, who
emerges at the novel's end spiritually intact and despite
the 'physical devastation' of her circumcision" (238).
Thus, a reading of Possessing the Secret of Joy must
include an analysis of the epigraphs that sets the tone for
its narrative. The five-sentence excerpt from Mirella
Ricciardi's African Saga is colonialist through and
through. For not only does Mirella Ricciardi claim
"deeper knowledge and more reliable appraisal" of
Africans, but she portrays the latter as "quite simple."
First, she says she was always on good terms with "the
Africans and enjoyed their company," though
commanding them on the farm was something else
insofar as they had watched her grow up. Second,
Mirella Ricciardi claims that thanks to her extensive
safaris, she "had begun to understand the code of 'birth,
copulation and death'" whereby the Africans lived.
Furthermore, she knows black people so well that she
feels comfortable in claiming that they "are natural" and
"possess the secret of joy" that helps them endure and
"survive the suffering and humiliation inflicted upon
them." Additionally, she posits that Africans are "easy to
live with" because they are "alive physically and
emotionally," but confesses that she had not been able
to deal with "their cunning and their natural instincts for
self-preservation" (Possessing the Secret of Joy vii).
This "I know my natives" colonialist attitude is later
echoed in a conversation between Tashi and M'Lissa.
When M'Lissa asks Tashi to describe what an
American looks like, Tashi claims that it is easier to
define an African than to describe what an American
looks like. According to her, it is easier to say what "an
Olinkan or a Maasai" looks like because they are
"brown or very brown. They are notably short
(Olinkans) or tall (Maasai). But no, shortness or
tallness, browness or redness, is not what makes an
American." Realizing M'Lissa's incredulity, Tashi defines
an American as "a wounded person whose wound is
hidden from others, and sometimes from herself. An
American looks like me" (208). Earlier in a courtroom
scene, the prosecutor argues that Evelyn-Tashi-Mrs.
Johnson's mental disturbance has been caused by being
in America for many years and that "American life is, for
the black person, itself a torture" (162).
As hinted at above, the colonialist discourse of
Possessing the Secret of Joy originates in part from
The Color Purple, as evidenced by the second
epigraph, a nine-paragraph passage from The Color
Purple. The passage describes a wedding ceremony
that takes place in London and therein Olivia is angry
with Tashi because, when they left for London, the
latter was preparing to "scar her face." Through
scarifications, Olivia contends, the Olinka people hope
to return to "their own ways," "even though the white
men has taken everything else." When Nettie vows to
bring civilization to the Olinka people by helping to stop
"the scarring or cutting of tribal marks on the faces of
young women, Olivia informs her Tashi is going to get
circumcised, though he has told her that "nobody in
America or Europe cuts off pieces of themselves." (ix)
As for the third epigraph, it is supposedly from a
bumper sticker, but it reads like a proverb, "When the
axe came into the forest, the trees said the handle is one
of us." (xi) I agree with Gourdine that the sentence
generates a "cultural context" for Possessing the Secret
of Joy insofar as the "forest, the wilderness, and the
dark continent are at once Africa and blackwomen
[sic]'s bodies." (239)
Several moments of pre-colonial, colonial,
post-colonial, and neo-colonial Africa permeate the text
of Possessing the Secret of Joy; these moments are
linked, directly or indirectly, to Tashi and other
characters. From the opening pages of the novel, we
hear from Olivia reminiscing on the days when he and
his parents, African-American Christian missionaries,
made their way "through jungle, grassland, across rivers
and whole countries of animals" to arrive at the Olinka
village. Olivia also describes the young Tashi's hand as
"a small dark hand and arm, like that of a monkey"
(7)-later in the novel, the monkey becomes a more
powerful metaphor to describe the Olinka young people
who are stricken with AIDS. In another scene, Adam
remembers the children's "nakedness" and the men's
"seedlike tribal markings on their cheeks and the greasy
amulets they wore around their necks. I noticed the dust
and the heat. I noticed the long flat breasts of the
women who worked barebreasted, babies on their
backs" (13).
Africa is also defined from the perspective of taboos. In
one scene Adam brags about having broken and defied
"the strongest taboo" in the Olinka society: "making love
in the fields." For Adam, it was triumphant to defy a
taboo that no Olinka had yet dared to defy for fear of
damaging the crops; "lovemaking in the fields
jeopardized the crops; indeed, it was declared that if
there was any fornication whatsoever in the fields the
crops definitely would not grow--no one ever saw us,
and the fields produced their harvest as before" (27).
Also while sitting in a courtroom where his wife is being
accused of murder, Adam lambastes African men for
not only refusing to see their children's suffering but for
considering suffering to be taboo itself. He wonders,
indeed, if by taboo they mean "'sacred,'" in which case
nothing could be "publicly examined for fear of
disturbing the mystery," or if the suffering is so "profane"
that they must not explore it, lest they corrupt young
people (161). The point to be made, albeit the
colonialist tone, is that Adam sees the Olinka traditions
and customs as colonial as the white man's subjugation
of the Africans.
Also, Possessing the Secret of Joy contains some
specific echoes of Africa's colonial period. In a letter to
his niece Lisette, Mzee, also referred to as the Old Man
and whose real name is Carl [Jung!], recalls how
twenty-five years ago "the natives of Kenya"
"spontaneously" called him Mzee-actually a Kiswahili
word for "old man" or a term of address as in "Mzee
Jomo Kenyatta." He also recalls how "every person of
color" cheered and thanked him every time he would
say that "'Europe is the mother of all evils,'" and how the
names given whites by Africans were suggested by the
whites' behavior. Equally interesting is how Carl--a
clear pun on Carl Jung; he is the disciple of Freudian
and Jungian psychological theories-- identifies himself
with the suffering Tashi, an identification that echoes
Marlow, Joseph Conrad's character in Heart of
Darkness, who travels to the dark interior of Congo
searching for his European self in Mr. Kurtz. In effect,
Carl sees his Self and himself in Tashi and Adam, a self
he has often "felt was only halfway at home on the
European continent" in his "European knowledge of the
experiences of its ancient kin. For Carl, what has been
done to Tashi has also been done to him via a "truly
universal self" which he calls "the essence of healing"
that he "frequently lost" in his "European, 'professional'
life." (83-84)
Through Lisette, who becomes Adam's lover, Walker
recalls the French colonization of Algeria and how the
latter fought hard to recover its independence. To
Lisette and her father, a clergyman, Algeria meant their
"house and gardens and servants and friendships (with
the servants)" and "hot sun" which, in addition to having
been born there, made Lisette feel "native to the land."
Lisette recalls the "old colonial story" in Algeria, of
"places-restaurants, nightclubs, schools,
neighborhood-Algerian natives could not go to," in spite
of which the Algerians remained "so beautiful,
hospitable as Africans are, especially our servants and
playmates. The children taught me Arabic." Of course,
it is this "colonial paradise" that led Lisette to hate
France and protest their return to a country where she
had never been and in which his father would never find
" a niche for himself that was rewarding." Lisette points
out that the Christian minister, though amid Moslems,
possessed "more power in Algeria, and a more
conspicuous place in society, than he ever could have
had in France." Noteworthy is the fact that Lisette does
not condone what the French did to Algeria, as she
seems to admire the way the Algerians, tired of being
killed, "body and souls," and "of being treated worse
than dogs" by the French, fought back.
Any study of colonialist discourse as applied to Africa
would be incomplete if it did not include an analysis of
the crucial role played by the missionaries in fostering
the colonial rule. V. Y. Mudimbe, in The Invention of
Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of
Knowledge, has underscored the momentous role that
the missionaries played, along with the explorer and the
soldier, in determining "modalities and the pace of
mastering, colonizing, and transforming the 'Dark
Continent.'" More specifically, Mudimbe posits that the
missionary's objective has been "the most consistent: to
expand 'the absoluteness of Christianity' and its virtues."
Furthermore, the missionary was "the best symbol of
the colonial enterprise," because he dedicated himself
"sincerely to the ideals of colonialism: the expansion of
Civilization, the dissemination of Christianity, and the
advance of Progress" (46-47). In Possessing the
Secret of Joy, we learn that the Olinka people saw
M'Lissa as a "national monument," "a prized midwife
and healer," while "Christianized" Olinkans " who also
turned to Western medicine" shunned her (61). More
revealing is how Tashi's female circumcision and its
physical and psychological effects actually results from
the conflict between the Olinka traditions and
Christianity. Indeed, it is suggested that Tashi's
predicament could have been prevented, had Catherine,
Tashi's mother, agreed with M'Lissa to do it at the
proper age and time. But having "gone Christian,"
Catherine had "turned a deaf ear to" M'Lissa. As I will
argue later, the grown-up Tashi went to M'Lissa to get
circumcised/mutilated as an anti-colonial/postcolonial
act, "wanting the operation because she recognized it as
the only remaining stamp of Olinka tradition" (63).
Equally pivotal to the missionary's colonialist discourse
in Possessing the Secret of Joy is the death of Dura,
Tashi's sister who bled to death after being circumcised,
which is attributed to Christianity and Olinka traditions,
through (Catherine) Nafa. M'Lissa informs
Tashi-Evelyn that when the missionaries called "the
'bath' barbaric," the Olinka chief, "who was always
grinning into the faces of the white missionaries," told
the latter that "he was a modern man. Not a barbarian,"
they told him that as a chief he could stop the barbaric
"bath." According to M'Lissa, the Olinka chief stopped
the barbaric "bath" not because he sympathized with
women but to prove to the white missionaries that he
was a chief (252). Citing A. J. Christopher, Mudimbe
reminds us that the missionaries "sought, whether
consciously or unconsciously, the destruction of
pre-colonial societies and their replacement by new
Christian societies in the image of Europe'" (47).
But the "new Christian societies in the image of Europe"
concept does not seem to have had an immediate
impact on Nafa. For though no one was certain the
Olinka chief would make women "return to
circumcision" (252), Nafa, when she learned that "the
new missionaries were black, she felt certain the village
would be returned to all its former ways and that
uncircumcised girls would be punished. She could not
imagine a black person that was not Olinkan, and she
thought all Olinkans demanded their daughters be
bathed." And though M'Lissa told her to wait, Nafa
defiantly refused and helped in holding Dura, her
daughter, down while M'Lissa cut her outer female
genital parts (253). Of course, as suggested by the
attitudes of Adam in Possessing the Secret of Joy and
his parents in The Color Purple (whom Nafa mistook
for Olinkans), the African-American missionaries were
equally opposed to "tribal scarifications" and female
circumcision which they characterized as barbaric
practices. It is worth noting that both Tashi and Dura
echo Muthoni in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's novel The River
Between, who dies of female circumcision trying to
reconcile two irreconcilable traditions: Kikuyu and
Christian. As a matter of fact, Muthoni's and Tashi's
desires to get circumcised are driven by a will to defy
Christianity by maintaining their tribal custom. Realizing
that people are shocked to see her at the circumcision
ceremony, because she is the daughter of Joshua who
has converted to Christianity and preached against
circumcision, Muthoni explains that she has not run way
from the new (Christian) faith but that she wants "'to be
initiated into the ways of the tribe. How can I possibly
remain as I am now? I knew my father would not let me
and so I came'" (43). As is to be shown later, this is
exactly how Tashi explains her reasons behind going to
M'Lissa to get circumcised. Given references to
Kiswahili language and to Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan
leader who led Kenya to its independence from Great
Britain to become its first president and wrote about
female initiations and other rites of passage in Facing
Mount Kenya, one can argue that Alice Walker was
aware of Ngugi's character. What is troubling in the
presentation of the missionaries' colonialist discourse in
Possessing the Secret of Joy is the authorial voice,
Walker's, that seems to side with the missionaries' stand
against Olinka customs.
Africans, Chimpanzees, Monkeys,
and the Origins of AIDS
In its condemnation of African primitivism Possessing
the Secret of Joy has tapped into another controversy:
AIDS and the African connection. Early in the novel it is
mentioned that the second floor of the building where
Tashi is incarcerated houses "a mounting number of
AIDS victims, sent to the prison" because the hospital is
swamped. Also, the novel points out that though for
almost a year the government has denied the AIDS's
existence in the country, it was now grudgingly
acknowledging that AIDS exists in the country, but that
there is "no official speculation about what might have
caused it printed in the news." (90-91) Later in the
novel, this need for speculation serves as a narrative
device for Alice Walker because it provides Adam and
Olivia, two African Americans, the opportunity to
theorize about the African connection to the origins of
AIDS.
It is worth noting that Walker is right in criticizing the
politics of some of the African governments concerning
AIDS and HIV. That is, some African governments
would rather deny the existence of AIDS cases in their
countries than damage the tourism industry. And she is
not the only black writer who has fictionalized this. In
Silence That Is Not Golden by Tibbie S. Kposowa,
an African writer from Sierra Leone who lives in the
United States, Hon. Misalie Lamboi, Minister of Health
in an imaginary African country, denies the existence of
AIDS in his country until he is diagnosed HIV positive.
Though Lamboi later takes responsibility for the lack
health policies regarding AIDS, people still condemn
him for failing to disseminate "'tons of literature on
AIDS sent to his ministry by the World Health
Organization for distribution among citizens" (101).
Both Kposowa and Walker demonstrate how AIDS is
crippling Africa and rendering its future utterly bleak. In
Possessing the Secret of Joy, Olivia saddened by the
AIDS-stricken students, laments, "It is bitter to watch
them die: their country's future doctors, dentists,
carpenters and engineers. Their country's fathers and
mothers. Teachers. Dancers, singers, revels,
hell-raisers, poets" (246).
Then the novel veers into a speculative mode about the
origins of AIDS. Adam tells "the intellectuals" that
AIDS may have originated from a neighboring country
where scientists injected people with a contaminated
polio-vaccine made "from cultures taken from the
kidneys of the green monkeys" and that this vaccine
against polio, because it lacked purification, was an
HIV carrier. Contrapuntally, a "dying student" posits
that according to the story he heard "Africans caught
AIDS not from monkeys but from his teeth!" More
revealing, but equally speculative in nature, is the theory
of the Olinka "intellectuals" theory according to which
AIDS is a white man's conspiracy against the Africans,
something similar to the syphilis experiment conducted
on black men in Alabama, the "kind of experiment that
would not have been hazarded on European or white
American subjects." Olivia finds it unbearable that these
"intellectuals" died believing that "an African life is made
for experiments and is expandable" (247).
As for young girls who die of AIDS, the cause is
attributed to the unhealthy and unclean tools used during
female circumcision. That is, women get infections from
"the unwashed, unsterilized sharp stones, tin tops, bits
of glass, rusty razors and grungy knives used by the
tsunga." Notice how many of these rugged tools are
embedded in a colonialist discourse insofar as they
point directly to "Africa's inglorious past." Also
noteworthy is how the women's case differs sharply
from the men's case, as it is compounded by painful
intercourse characterized by "tearing and bleeding,
especially in a woman's early years," because the
opening to the vagina has been so tightly sewn that it
cannot "enlarge on its own, but must always be forced,"
which produces "infections and open sores" (247-248).
By now it should be clear that Alice Walker blames the
African man for infecting his woman with AIDS. Olivia
reports that Adam thinks that the "anal intercourse kills
women too," as testified by one the AIDS patients.
After his wife's death, the AIDS-stricken man explains
that not only had they been married for three years
without children but they had been unable to make love
as husband and wife "normally" do. So he had resorted
to anal intercourse without understanding that this way
of making love was costing "her, and him, her life"
(248). Also, M'Lissa tells Tashi that she should not be
ashamed of anal intercourse because that is "how boys
do each other while waiting for the girl's dowry," which
takes a long time to raise (240). Though I am not an
expert on the African man's sexuality and how African
men make love, I am tempted to argue that anal
intercourse in Africa, at least the Africa presented in the
novel, is both Walker's invention and European gift to
an ex-colonized country. Besides, Adam contradicts his
own argument in the early pages of Possessing the
Secret of Joy when he points out that when he was not
with Tashi, described as "a fleshy, succulent fruit," he
dreamed of lying on his stomach "between her legs," his
"cheeks caressed by the gentle rhythms of her thighs.
My tongues bringing no babies, and to both of us
delight. This way of loving, among her people, the
greatest taboo of all" (28). One can deduce that the
Olinka people see anal intercourse as taboo as they do
cunnilingus.
A more powerful evidence that the discussion about
AIDS intertwines with a colonialist discourse occurs
toward the end of Possessing the Secret of Joy where
a young Olinka man dying of AIDS mistakes Adam for
a missionary father and implores him to hear his
confession. Despite Adam's denial of being a "father,"
Hartfort insists on telling his version of how AIDS
originated, a version that reads like a postcolonial story
that laments the disappearance of " harmony in the
world between man and nature" in "the old days."
According to the lament, men suddenly became
creatures and beasts, "In the not so old days we people
were hunted down and killed or stolen from our land
and families to work for other people far across the sea.
Hunted we were, like we hunt the monkey and the
chimpanzee" (257-258).
Echoes of neo-colonialism and neo-colonial practices
by foreign governments and scientists permeate
Harfort's tragic tale. First, a pharmaceutical company
hired local boys to hunt monkeys for them in exchange
for money. The men in the factory, mostly Americans,
Australians, New Zealanders, Germans, and Dutch, are
described as "strange" people who resembled the
doctors that the local boys had seen in films or on TV.
More important, however, is how the white-clothed
white scientists did not see the local boys as human
beings, but instead insisted on reminding them how they
"had always hunted monkeys and chimpanzees."
Implicit in the white scientists' attitude is the
identification of the local boys to the monkeys and
chimpanzees as seen in the Tarzan films. Hartfort relates
how he "grew to identify, and sometimes mimic, chimp
and monkey behavior. Monkey gestures." Furthermore,
the monkey and the chimpanzees' behavior is compared
to the behavior of human beings insofar as the "mother
always placed the baby behind her body, the little one's
arm reaching around to her breast" while the father was
fighting and screeching to warn others (259). Of course,
it is common knowledge that the chimpanzee is the
closest animal to a human being, by 98%.
The comparison between the chimpanzees and the
Olinka young men reaches its climax when Harfort
describes the screaming of the monkeys as "very
human," which their faces make "even more human."
That is, everything "they think, everything they fear,
everything they feel, is as clear as if you'd known them
all your life. As if they'd slept in the same bed as you!"
(260). Yet, it is not clear why Hartfort feels compelled
to confess for his decapitation of monkeys and
chimpanzees or why Walker's Adam spends so much
time re-telling Hartfort's story, a story that Adam calls
"the evil of civilization" (261). At any rate, as suggested
by the way Harfort concludes his confession, Adam has
accepted to play the role of a priest, "Father, thank
you for hearing my confession," to which Adam
meditatively responds that though he is not a priest, he
is "a man of God." (263) Equally interesting is how the
agony of the monkeys and chimpanzees at the hands of
Hartfort parallels Tashi's female genital mutilation at the
hands of M'Lissa.
"We Are all Sisters: Female Circumcision and
Neo-Colonialist Discourse
In Possessing the Secret of Joy, no other character
exemplifies a case of colonialist discourse than
Tashi-Evelyn-Mrs. Johnson whom Alice Walker claims
as her sister. In an epistolary note to the reader Walker
argues that because she does not know what part of
Africa her ancestors came from, she claims the
continent. She adds, "I suppose I have created Olinka
as my village and the Olinkans as one of my ancient,
ancestral tribal peoples. Certainly I recognize Tashi as
my sister" (283). As mentioned above, it is
praiseworthy for black writers of the African Diaspora
to claim a common heritage. But it becomes
problematic when the main objective underlying this
claim is to criticize and scorn Africa and Africans for
their primitivism. Though in the past Walker has
described herself as a Womanist , I would argue that
Possessing the Secret of Joy articulates its critique of
and opposition against female circumcision in Africa
from a "Western-feminist" perspective.
Kadiatu Kanneh has warned us against this sort of
reading in her essay, "Feminism and the Colonial Body,"
a practice of "Western feminism which involves the
representation, the discussion and manipulation of Third
World women." What happens is that the discussion
changes to "a different kind of acculturation of the body,
where what is literally inscribed in the flesh, and, by
implication, in the sexual freedom and expression of
African women," is perceived as "a difficult agenda for
Black women and White women." Kanneh further
deplores how in Western feminism female circumcision
"has become almost a dangerous trope" for "the muting
and mutilation of women-physically, sexually and
psychologically-and for these women's need for
Western feminism. Circumcision, clitoridectomy, and
infibulation, become one visible marker of outrageous
primitivism, and the Third World woman" (347).
As hinted at above from the analysis of how the
African-American and European missionaries view
Olinka customs and as is to be argued later, throughout
Possessing the Secret of Joy Tashi's female
circumcision and the varying consequences derived
from it function as markers of "outrageous primitivism,"
sexism, African men's sexual selfishness and brutality; it
is also assumed that the African woman can heal from
the scars inflicted upon her in Africa and discover her
sexuality only in the West, in this case America. During
a therapy session Evelyn tells Raye, her
African-American therapist who replaced Mzee, that
she discovered "what was supposed to be down there"
only after she came to America. Evelyn claims that
"beyond the function of the breasts," her "own body" as
"the female body" was "a mystery" to her:
From the prison Our Leader said we must
keep ourselves clean and pure as we had
been since time immemorial-- by cutting
out unclean parts of our bodies. Everyone
knew that if a woman was not circumcised
her unclean parts would grow so long
they'd soon touch her thighs; she'd
become masculine and arouse herself. No
man could enter her because her own
erection would be in his way (119).
Toward the end of the conversation, however, Evelyn
seems to contradict herself by revealing that she "used
to stroke herself," though it was taboo, and that she and
Adam used to make love in the fields. She also reveals
that though they made love via "cunnilingus," oral
stimulation of the clitoris or the vulva, she always
experienced orgasm. Also later in the novel M'Lissa
reveals that she too used to follow her mother to the
forest where she, after her mother had left, would play
with "a small smiling figure with one hand on her
genitals, every part of which appeared intact." She
would then lie down to compare her vulva to "the little
statuette's." She adds, "Hidden behind a boulder, I very
cautiously touched myself. The blissful, open look of the
little figure had aroused me, and I felt an immediate
response to my own touch." (213) These sexual
revelations suggest that M'Lissa and Tashi, though
young then and before circumcision, knew and still
know what is "down there" and that they were aware of
their female bodies. Otherwise, Walker is suggesting
that female circumcision has so erased these sexual
experiences and the awareness of their bodies that only
a therapy session can bring their memories back.
At any rate, Evelyn's therapy session with Raye
suggests that not only are African women ignorant of
their own female bodies and sexuality, but they lack
control over them. To borrow from Chandra Talpade
Mohanty's postcolonial theoretical concept, Evelyn is
presented as "an 'average third world woman'" who
"leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine
gender (read: sexually constrained) and her being 'third
world' (read: ignorant, poor, un-educated,
tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized)."
As implied through the characters of Raye, Lisette, and
Olivia, Tashi-Evelyn sharply contrasts to "the (implicit)
self-representation of Western women as educated, as
modern, as having control over their own bodies and
sexualities, and the freedom to make their own
decisions" (Mohanty 176). In Possessing the Secret of
Joy, Raye, in stark contrast to the uneducated Tashi, is
characterized as a woman who, though a descendant of
slaves, has "studied at the best of the white man's
school." In her ignorance, on the other hand, Tashi
recalls what Raye does as "an ageless magic, the
foundation of which was the ritualization, or the acting
out, of empathy." Furthermore, she calls her psychiatrist
"a witch," a "spiritual descendant of the ancient healers
who taught" Olinka "witch doctors" (131-132).
Probably aware of the negative image of the African
woman as ignorant of her sexuality, Walker has
mitigated Tashi-Evelyn-Mrs. Johnson's image by
universalizing her suffering across continents, class, and
ethnicity. When Evelyn is introduced to Amy Maxwell
by Raye, she learns that even a white girl from a rich
white American family from New Orleans can be
mutilated. Like Tashi, Amy Maxwell used to touch
herself when she was young until her mother discovered
and put an end to it by putting "hot pepper sauce" on
her finger first and then by asking a doctor to excise her
clitoris (185). Also through Amy Maxwell, Tashi learns
that she is not the first African woman to come to
America; many African women who came to America
as slaves were sold into captivity "because they refused
to be circumcised, but many of them sold into bondage
circumcised and infibulated." Equally painful is what
these African women had to endure from the American
doctors who invaded the slave auction blocks to
examine "these sewed-up," "naked and defenseless"
women in order to learn "to do the 'procedure' on other
enslaved women" in the name of "Science." Also, the
American doctors "wrote in their medical journals that
they'd found a cure for the white woman's hysteria"
(186).
Noteworthy is how Evelyn reacts to the "distressing"
conversation. Not only does she angrily leave Raye's
office by slamming the door, but she rationalizes that
because Louisiana was once ruled by France Amy
Maxwell's mother may have had "trouble
communicating with her doctor, who was perhaps like
me a stranger from another tribe." But this
rationalization, which should be understood as Evelyn's
reluctance to believe that a white girl could be
circumcised, does not last very long as Amy Maxwell's
mother gradually becomes another M'Lissa. That is,
perhaps "Amy's mother had meant her daughter's tonsils
after all" (188). It is worth noting that Alice Walker
consciously universalized the female genital mutilation
and meant for Tashi-Evelyn-Mrs. Johnson to be a
microcosm for all the circumcised and infibulated
women the world over. In the first paragraph of her
epistolary note to the reader, Alice Walker informs us
that "one hundred million women and girls living today in
African, Far Eastern and Middle Eastern countries have
been genitally mutilated" and that this practice is
growing among the immigrant population of the United
States and Europe (281).
Clearly, this sort of universalism makes Tashi and other
women in the novel become what Mohanty has called
"'Women as category of analysis, or: we are all sisters in
struggle." By "category of analysis" Mohanty refers to
"the crucial assumption" that all women "across classes
and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a
homogeneous group identified prior to the process of
analysis." In other words, the "homogeneity of women
as a group is produced not on the basis of biological
essentials but rather on the basis of secondary
sociological and anthropological universals." From this
perspective, Tashi, Dura, M'Lissa, Amy Maxwell, and
millions of other women victims of female genital
mutilation are perceived as "a single group on the basis
of a shared oppression" because they are bound
together by "a sociological notion of the 'same-ness' of
their oppression." Thus, "the discursively consensual
homogeneity" of Tashi and other women" as a group
has been "mistaken for the historically specific material
reality of groups of women" (Mohanty 176). According
to Mohanty, the assumption is that women are
perceived as "an akready constituted group, one which
has been labeled 'powerless,' 'exploited,' 'sexually
harassed'" (176-177). This is exactly how Tashi, Dura,
M'Lissa, and Amy Maxwell, are characterized in
Possessing the Secret of Joy. As the next section will
argue, Tashi and these other women are presented as
women who have been victimized by men.
Colonialist Anthropology: Female Circumcision
and African Male Violence
The failure of Alice Walker and Possessing the Secret
of Joy is to have not taken the time to investigate the
real reasons behind female circumcision instead of using
an always-already colonialist discourse from an
anthropological book written by a French
anthropologist. Indeed, it is through the reading of
Marcel Griaule's Conversation with Ogotemmàli that
Tashi learns about how female circumcision came
about. Noteworthy is that it is Pierre, Tashi's step son
from the relations between Adam and Lisette, who
introduces the book to Tashi. The explanation reads
like a story of creation from the Dogon people,
according to which the "God Amma" created earth and
a feminine body:
"This body, lying flat, face upwards, in a
line from north to south, is feminine. Its
sexual organ is anthill, and its clitoris a
termite hill. Amma, being lonely and
desirous of intercourse with this creature,
approached it. That was the occasion of
the first breach of the order of the
universe." Because the "termite hill rose
up, barring the passage and displaying its
masculinity," God "cut down the termite
hill and had intercourse with the excised
earth. But the original incident was
destined to affect the course of things
forever" (169).
Also attached to this myth of creation is how the spirit
later endowed each human being with "two souls of
different sex, or rather with two principles
corresponding to two distinct persons. In the man the
female soul was located in the prepuce; in the woman
the male soul was in the clitoris" Therefore, men are
circumcised to rid of their "femininity" while women are
excised to rid them of their "masculinity (170). Pierre
concludes that it is men's fault that people have been
permanently locked "in the category of their obvious
sex." Also we learn that female circumcision is not only
pharaonic-Cleopatra and Nefertiti were
circumcised-but it is also a very old civilization that
"spread northward, from central Africa up toward
ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean" and that it
"predates all the major religions." (172) Later, Tashi,
fascinated by what the book says about the origins of
female genital mutilation, reads how the "'dual soul'" is
dangerous and how "' a man should be male, and a
woman female. Circumcision and excision are the
remedy.'"
Here again, Alice Walker both fails to question and
seems to agree with the colonialist discourse of Marcel
Griaule's anthropological book, with its "I know my
natives" assumptions. Instead of questioning what Pierre
is reading or what she is reading herself, Tashi identifies
with the First Dogon woman for whom during birth "'the
pain of parturition was concentrated in the woman's
clitoris, which was excised by an invisible hand,
detached itself and left her, and was changed into the
form of a scorpion'" whose "'pouch'" and "'sting
symbolized the organ: the venom was the water and the
blood of the pain.'" What is more, Tashi tells us that she
read over and over the passage about "'an invisible
hand'" and that pain was what she felt "at the moment of
parturition," because pain was not only what she felt
giving birth, but she lacked "a clitoris to be concentrated
in" (173).
By now it must be clear that Possessing the Secret of
Joy blames man and God for the female genital
mutilation and infibulation. Early in the novel Tashi calls
their Olinka Leader "our Jesus Christ" who implores his
people, especially uncircumcised women, to resist
European ways and stay clean (120), while later in a
courtroom scene Adam posits that every man in the
courtroom had had his penis cut off, then he would
understand that his "condition is similar to that of all the
women" who have been circumcised (162). To Pierre,
a man wants a woman to be circumcised because he is
"jealous of woman's pleasure" insofar as the woman
"does not require him to achieve it. Thus, when "the
outer sex is cut off, and she's left only the smallest,
inelastic opening through which to receive pleasure, he
can believe it is only his penis that can reach her inner
parts and give her what she craves. But it is only his lust
for her conquest that makes the effort worthwhile. And
then it is literally a battle, with blood flowing on both
sides" (178). To M'Lissa a man excises the woman to
make "her into a woman," because it "only because a
woman is made into a woman that a man becomes a
man" (241).
Kanneh has argued that when Western feminism
characterizes the "Black Third World" woman as a
victim of men's violence, "The battle over the Black
Third World woman's body is staged as a battle
between First World feminists and Black Third World
men" (348). In other words, the battle over Tashi's
body becomes the battle between Alice Walker, Raye,
Pierre, Adam, Marcel Griaule, on the one hand, and the
Olinka man, on the other. According to Mohanty this
polarizing discourse in which women are defined as
"archetypal victims" "freezes them into
'objects-who-defend-themselves,' men into
'subjects-who-perpetrate-violence,' and (every) society
into powerless (read: women) and powerful (read: men)
groups of people." From this perspective, Alice Walker
and Possessing the Secret of Joy have failed to do
what Mohanty has argued is the best way to interpret
male violence: "Male violence must be theorized and
interpreted within specific societies, in order both to
understand it better and to effectively organize to
change it. Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of
gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and
political practice and analysis." (178) For, indeed, the
explanation and analysis of female genital mutilation of
Tashi are not only woven into a colonialist discourse
from two colonialist books written by two Europeans,
but they are also predicated upon what Mohanty calls
"the privileged and explanatory potential of gender
difference as the origin" of female body mutilation
(179).
Thus, "the privileged and explanatory potential of
gender difference as the origin" of female circumcision
prevented Alice Walker from discussing the fact that in
Africa "the actual cutting is only part of a rite that young
people undergo as an initiation rite into adulthood.
According to Diana C. Menya, during these rites of
passage ceremonies young children learn about "the
secrets of their society" as well as "acceptable social
and sexual behaviors," thus "protecting society from pre
and extra marital sex, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and
sexually transmitted diseases." Menya theorizes that
Alice Walker was probably afraid of "lending a degree
of respectability to the abhorrent practice of female
genital mutilation." Walker's silence on these issues as
well as discussing female circumcision "out of its cultural
context" resulted in an "ethnocentric view of an
outsider" (423).
One way to rescue Alice Walker may be to argue that
she wrote Possessing the Secret of Joy out of a
trickster tradition insofar as while the entire narrative
borrows both its colonialist discourse and explanation
of female circumcision from two colonialist texts, in the
last section of the novel Tashi is allowed to question the
truth about the African in Mirella Ricciardi's African
Saga. When Mbati fails to explain to her what the
Italian woman meant by African women "possessing the
secret of joy," Tashi becomes anti-colonial: "Oh, I say.
These settler cannibals. Why don't they just steal our
land, mine our gold, chop down our forests, pollute our
rivers, enslave us to work on their farms, fuck us,
devour our flesh and leave us alone? Why must they
also write about how much joy we possess?" (270). In
an ultimate anti-colonial and anti-neocolonialist move
and re-reading of the excerpt from Mirella Ricciardi'
African Saga, Adam, Olivia, Pierre, Benny, Raye, and
Mbati carry a banner in "huge block letters" reading,
"RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY!" (279).
Thus, Possessing the Secret of Joy, like a piece
Bebop song that starts in one key to end in a
completely different key, starts with a colonialist
discourse borrowed from a European colonialist text
and ends with anti-neocolonialist revision of that text,
even if this anti-neo-colonialist sentiment that closes the
novel is also directed against neo-colonial Africa, as
exemplified by the presence of illiterate soldiers who fail
to prevent Adam and others from displaying the
bannner.
NOTES
This essay was originally presented at the National
Conference of National Association of African
American Studies on February 11, 1999 in Houston,
Texas.
This is a sort of new theory I am developing in
opposition to the Post-Colonial theory as proposed in
Bill Aschroft's The Empire Writes Back or in Padmini
Mongia's Contemporary Postcolonial Theory. My
contention is that the current postcolonial theory is
inadequate as a theory to be applied to African
contemporary realities because colonialism is there
under different forms, including IMF and the World
Bank.
For a definition of Womanist see Alice Walker's In
Search of our Mother's Garden: Womanist Prose.
New York: Harcourt, 1983.
====================================
REFERENCES
Achebe, Chinua. "Colonialist Criticism." in Hopes and
Impediments: Selected Essays. New York:
Doubleday, 1988: 68-90.
----------------Things Fall Apart. 1959. Reprint, New
York: Doubleday, 1994.
Gourdine, Angeletta KM. "Postmodern Ethnography
and the Womanist Mission: Postcolonial Sensibilities in
Possessing the Secret of Joy." African American
Review 30.2 (Summer 1996): 237-243.
Kanneh, Kadiatu. "Feminism and the Colonial Body."
In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill
Aschroft et al.. New York: Routledge, 1995: 346-348.
Menya, Diana C., review of Possessing the Secret of
Joy, by Alice Walker, Lancet 341.882 (Feb. 13,
1993): 343.
Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis,
Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." In
Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader,
edited by Padmini Mongia. New York: Arnold, 1996:
172-197.
Ngugi, wa Thiong'O. The River Between. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann, 1965.
Pfaff, Franáoise. Conversation with Maryse CondÇ.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. 1982. Reprint, New
York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich,1992.
----------------Possessing the Secret of Joy. New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.
http://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/mvuyekure.html