“In Between Places” is a study in literary geography at the end of empire. It begins from the premise that decolonization itself is a question of place and the relationship of people to places. From this premise, the dissertation explores the narrative techniques that emerge from this moment of historical transformation, in which decolonization was inevitable but not yet fully achieved. The formal elements of decolonial fiction—an emphasis on the individual transformation of place, the incorporation of narrative settings both temporary and fragile—express the ways that spatial relations were central to the political aims of late colonial and early postcolonial writers from across the globe and who express a range of complicated cultural politics. This dissertation begins with an introduction that situates British decolonial fiction in terms of theories of space and place, the transition between modernism and postcolonialism, and current critical debates surrounding forms of anticolonial critique in the twentieth century. In the subsequent four chapters, the dissertation provides case studies of the narrative fiction of Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Doris Lessing. Combining formal analysis, archival research, and literary and political history, this dissertation reconstructs the ways that colonial and postcolonial subjects respond to the places they inhabit—at the level of the room, the house, and the city. To tell this story, the chapters move from the abstract space of geopolitics to different sites within urban environments and domestic households. “In Between Places” explains how place functions aesthetically and politically; how Caribbean, African, and English sites were physically marked by colonialism; and how midcentury writers of decolonization used literary setting to resist myths of imperial belonging as well as to uphold them.

諾貝爾文學獎得主奈波爾(V. S. Naipaul)可以說是當代文學中最具爭議性及最難以捉摸的一位作家，因為他對自己祖國千里達的前殖民國英國懷有一種好惡相參的矛盾態度。奈波爾的自傳性小說《抵達之謎》，故事橫跨三十年，描述一位曾被殖民的離散敘事者其人生旅程。旅程始自敘事者還是一個得到牛津大學獎學金的十八歲學生，終至敘事者成為在英國有立足之處的作家，其間歷經迷惘、錯置、覺醒、安頓等過程。在後殖民批評及文學的「信條」下，奈波爾的作品理應對大英帝國表示出一種明確的對抗態度，但其作品卻幾乎未能達到此一預期，而這也使得他必須承受遭指控為背叛者的衝擊。批評家普遍將奈波爾稱為英國的喉舌，而本論文旨在提供一個有別於此的觀點。本論文想要處理的關鍵問題如下：奈波爾是否真的是大英帝國的擁護者？如果不是的話，他如何與英國性(Englishness)協商以換取發言位置？ 論文首章對奈波爾及《抵達之謎》的批評做簡短的回顧。第二章以法農(Frantz Fanon)的觀點來檢視敘事者與白人女性角色的關係，以說明敘事者從崇拜英國文化到擺脫對英國謬誤幻想的發展。筆者也嘗試描繪出敘事者成為一個作家的軌跡。藉此，筆者認為敘事者經歷一段從目光狹隘的英國經典作家模仿者，到寫自己人生故事的作家的歷程。在第三章，本文認為在倫敦及英國鄉間的停留期間，敘事者看出帝國中心的破敗以及英國文化核心中英國性的矯揉造作。第四章首先就「離散」這個概念做一回顧，並說明奈波爾及《抵達之謎》如何能置於這樣的概念之下來解讀。筆者指出，敘事者同時身為離散者及流亡者的身份，使得他能夠取得一個「對位」的觀點，而此觀點幫助敘事者發展其後殖民牧歌，揭發英國性背後的殘酷。第五章揭示筆者對現存奈波爾批評中潛在缺陷的根本關懷。本論文希望藉由提供非主流但具建設性的觀點來補足現存的奈波爾批評。 / A Nobel laureate in literature, V. S. Naipaul is arguably the most controversial and elusive writer in contemporary literature because his signature is his ambivalence on England, a country which once colonized his mother country Trinidad. Spanning thirty years, The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul’s autobiographical novel, delineates an ex-colonial and diasporic narrator’s life journey—from an eighteen-year-old schoolboy granted a scholarship to Oxford University to a writer gaining a foothold in England—of disorientation, dislocation, awakening and anchorage. Under the “doctrine” of postcolonial criticism and literature, Naipaul’s works are expected to express an explicit and confrontational attitude towards the British Empire, but his works hardly come to terms with such expectation, which makes him bear the brunt of the accusation of being an apostate. This thesis aims at providing a different viewpoint from criticism in general which labels Naipaul as the mouthpiece of England. The pivotal issues this thesis intends to tackle are as follows: Is Naipaul really an exponent of the British Empire to the core? If not, how does he negotiate with Englishness for a position of enunciation? The opening chapter offers a brief review of criticism about Naipaul and The Enigma of Arrival. In Chapter II, I examine the narrator’s relationship with white female characters in the light of Fanon’s perspective, trying to illustrate the progression in which the narrator at first worships the English culture but at last sheds his false fantasy. I also try to chart the trajectory of the narrator’s becoming a writer. By doing so, I intend to argue that the narrator undergoes a course from a blinkered colonial emulating English canonical writers to a writer writing his own life story. In Chapter III, I argue that during his stay in London and the English countryside, the narrator discerns the dilapidation of the imperial center and the artificiality of Englishness in the heart of English culture. Chapter IV begins with a review of the concept “diaspora” and how Naipaul and The Enigma of Arrival could be situated in this concept. I point out that the narrator’s identity as a diasporan and an exile enables him to obtain a “contrapuntal” perspective that contributes to the narrator’s postcolonial pastoral which exposes the cruelty behind Englishness. The concluding chapter reveals my ultimate concern about the latent flaw in the established Naipaul criticism, unfolding my intention to make this thesis complement the Naipaul criticism by contributing an alternative yet constructive perspective.

Thesis (MA (English Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This project seeks to analyze the representation of identities in Shiva Naipaul's travel narrative North of South: An African Journey (1978) as encoded in the binaries of primitive / traditional; civilized / modern; settler / native; civic / tribal and neo-colonial / liberated. By analyzing this select series of identities, this project aims to explore the fractured nature of identity as constructed in the post-colony. It will argue that the identities are rendered unstable by the ungrounded nature of the post-colonial space in which they are located. Naipaul concludes his travel narrative by qualifying the postcolonial situation as an abortion of Western civilization in the trope of Conrad's Kurtz. Naipaul implies that any identity in Africa is a simulacrum, a phantom double, a copy of something that was not there to begin with. He attempts to articulate the diverse cultures that he encounters as though he were apart from them without recognizing that he is essentially and inextricably a part of the various cultural articulations themselves. It is easy to criticize Naipaul, therefore, as a non-starter. With the advantages of hindsight, however, it is possible for the contemporary reader to recognize these instabilities as evidence of the post-modern phenomenon in which reality is not an absolute. As a modernist writer, Naipaul's efforts to understand these instabilities of identity as an articulation of culture are circumvented by a Sisyphean struggle wherein he attempts to establish a sense of ontological alterity in the narrative yet implicates himself, as well as his invocation of archival literature and hence his ultimate position of disillusionment, hopelessness and doom. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie projek poog om die verteenwoordiging van identiteite in Shiva Naipaul se reisverhaal, North of South: An African Journey (1978), gekodeerd met die binere van die primitiewe / tradisionele ; beskaafde / moderne; setlaars / inheemse; staats / etniese; en neo-kolonialisme / vryheid, te analiseer. Deur die analise van die gekose reeks identiteite, neig die studie om die gebroke aard van identiteit in In post-koloniale omgewing te ondersoek, en te redeneer dat die identiteite bemoeilik word deur die ongegronde natuur van die postkoloniale ruimte waarin hulle voorkom. Naipaul omvat North of South om die post-kolonialistiese situasie te kwalifiseer as In aborsie van die Westerse beskawing in die metafoor van Conrad se Kurtz. Naipaul impliseer dat enige identiteit in Afrika In simulacrum is, In spookbeeld, 'n kopie van iets wat nooit was nie. Hy poog om die menigte kulture wat hy ondervind te omskryf asof hy van hulle verwyder is, sonder om te besef dat hy volledig deel uitmaak van die geleding van hierdie kulture, en dit is daarvolgens maklik om Naipaul as 'n mislukking te kritiseer. Met die duidelikheid van In moderne leser se terugblik is dit wei moontlik om hierdie onkonsekwenthede as bewyse te sien van die post-modernistiese verskynsel waarin realiteit nie In absoluut is nie. As In modernistiese skrywer is Naipaul se bemoeienis om hierdie onbestendigheid van identiteit as 'n omskrywing van kultuur te verstaan belemmer deur 'n Sisyphiesestryd waarin hy poog om In sin van die andersheid van die aard van die werklikheid in die storielyn te vestig, maar tog impliseer hy homself asook sy gebruik van argiefmateriaal, en vandaar sy uiteindelike posisie van ontnugtering, hopeloosheid en verwoesting.