Resisting Cultural Cannibalism: Oppositional

Narratives in Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to

Heaven

Fiona R. Barnes

What terms from the PC theory text did you run across as you read? Neo-colonialism Capitalism/Commodification of Jamaica Decolonization Resistance Cultural Estrangement/Cultural Imperialism Hegemonic/hegemony/Indigenous Master Narrative/Subaltern Speech Genre/generic foundations/Hybrid (literary form)

Barnes’ ArgumentThesis:The novel enacts and describes the multiple struggles

against cultural cannibalism and for decolonization on literary and geographic terrain in Jamaica.

1. Clair learns to oppose the domination of Eurocentrist history and culture and returns to Jamaica to unearth the “repressed or resistant history” of her native land.

2. On a narratological level, Cliff extends and critiques the traditional bildungsroman form by transforming the individual bourgeois quest plot into a collective struggle for social justice.

Cultural Cannibalism Harry/Harriet says to Clare: “Our homeland is

turned to stage set too much. Tourism and its romanticization of Caribbean culture. Creating a “fake archaeology of history” or false media

scripts reprogram popular memory. Cliff’s novel weaves together the submerged stories of

past and present popular resistance struggles in Jamaice in order to confront the fake Western archaeology of the country’s history with a more “genuine” or inclusive one.

The Film – foregrounding historical/cultural conflict P. 206 – exposes the fake archaeology

constructed by the foreign filmmakers. P. 26 of essay. But, Cliff doesn’t make the answer simple.

p. 26 the resistance fighters and their own costuming How is it possible to return to a “real” or “genuine” history

without contamination?, asks Cliff

Clare as conflicted Torn between mother and father Between Britain and Jamaica Between black and white Once her political loyalties clarify, we see her (p. 28)

“abandoning her English university graduate work in the European Renaissance in favor of teaching reading, writing, and indigenous Jamaican History to school children in Jamaica . . . attempting to evade cooptation by Western master narratives.”

Clare becomes, according to Barnes, a kind of modern day Nanny – “resist[ing] the domination of the master codes of literary genres and/or historical narratives, and constructs a new paradigm for post-colonial subjects.”

The novel’s form as conflicted Genre = code. The ideology of the form is as important as the

theme and content of the text. Bildungsroman. What is it? (Middle class quest motif. Young

individual leaves home, searching for self, finds answers, returns home and lives happily every after.)

Post-colonial modifications of form: Been-to narrative – protagonist travels to center of empire and

back, usually becoming alienated from both indigenous and imperial cultures in the process.

Protagonist’s development parallels the political and social awakening of their country.

Cliff’s modifications of the form: Clare’s middle class fortunes are intertwined with two other

characters (Christopher and Harry/Harriet) exposing the spectrum of suffering in Jamaica.

Parallel plot lines undermine linear narrative of bildungsroman and politicize the novel.

The ending as conflicted Their deaths resist the readers’ desire for a happy

ending, which goes against the grain of the bildungsroman and is therefore anti-imperial, counter-hegemonic.

But, their deaths also deny hope of the success of resistance. Like Nanny and her band of Maroons, they are destroyed, betrayed by a traitor and wiped out.

P. 30 – Cliff from “Clare Savage as a Crossroads Character.”