In the 1970s, when the ideas of Third Worldism had reached their apex, I became enamored of the work of two gifted writers: V. S. Naipaul and his brother, Shiva Naipaul.
Intellectually and emotionally, the Naipaul brothers were caught up in the experience of the Indian diaspora in Africa and South America as a direct result of the circumstances of their birth, which gave them a different perspective on the so-called Third World from what was conventionally offered by Western devotees of dictators in Castro's Cuba, Forbes Burnham's Guyana, Ben Bella's Algeria, or Nasser's Egypt.
The Naipaul brothers viewed the ideological terrain of anticolonialism and Third Worldism with an astringent eye.
Seepersad Naipaul had as a teacher, and later rival, the Marxist C. L. R. James, who denounced colonial overlordship, while insisting on the value of Western civilization; V. S. would later describe James as "The master of all topics." By way of their father and James, who embraced Western tradition, the brothers brought Enlightenment values to their mordant descriptions of the goings-on in the newly liberated nations of the Caribbean and Africa.
Amid a torrent of positive press for Tanzania, Guyana, and Libya, Shiva Naipaul asked: "What do terms like 'liberation,' 'revolution,' 'socialism,' actually mean to the people-i.e., the masses-who experience them?" In his blistering 1978 travelogue about East Africa, North of South, he tried to respond.
Shiva Naipaul portrayed a region corrupted by fantasies of wealth but backed by nothing of substance.
As taken as I was by Shiva's North of South and V. S.'s Guerrillas, my next three Naipaul books put me on even firmer ground.
https://www.city-journal.org/vs-and-shiva-naipaul
Intellectually and emotionally, the Naipaul brothers were caught up in the experience of the Indian diaspora in Africa and South America as a direct result of the circumstances of their birth, which gave them a different perspective on the so-called Third World from what was conventionally offered by Western devotees of dictators in Castro's Cuba, Forbes Burnham's Guyana, Ben Bella's Algeria, or Nasser's Egypt.
The Naipaul brothers viewed the ideological terrain of anticolonialism and Third Worldism with an astringent eye.
Seepersad Naipaul had as a teacher, and later rival, the Marxist C. L. R. James, who denounced colonial overlordship, while insisting on the value of Western civilization; V. S. would later describe James as "The master of all topics." By way of their father and James, who embraced Western tradition, the brothers brought Enlightenment values to their mordant descriptions of the goings-on in the newly liberated nations of the Caribbean and Africa.
Amid a torrent of positive press for Tanzania, Guyana, and Libya, Shiva Naipaul asked: "What do terms like 'liberation,' 'revolution,' 'socialism,' actually mean to the people-i.e., the masses-who experience them?" In his blistering 1978 travelogue about East Africa, North of South, he tried to respond.
Shiva Naipaul portrayed a region corrupted by fantasies of wealth but backed by nothing of substance.
As taken as I was by Shiva's North of South and V. S.'s Guerrillas, my next three Naipaul books put me on even firmer ground.
https://www.city-journal.org/vs-and-shiva-naipaul
No comments:
Post a Comment