The futile struggle for self-determination in Naipaul's protagonists

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to study V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men, Guerrillas and A Bend in the River through the lenses of some of the most prominent postcolonial thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Homi K. Bhabha , Simon Gikandi and Edward Said. It is an effort to compile and put forward the essential dichotomies marking the lives of the colonial subject (the men of color) due to the long tortured absurdity of the so-called civilizing mission of the West and the ambiguity of the ‘post-colonial’ world. Needless to mention NgugiwaThiong’o who explains the trauma of colonial education which is responsible for developing the colonial ideology. Apart from the study of the social, economic and political dilemmas in the post-colonial world, the colonial hangover that resulted in a distorted psyche of the colonial figure cannot be overlooked. In fact the psychological disorders were greater than the physical subjugation of these people. Living a life of ambivalence the lives of the natives are trapped ‘in-betweenness’ and ‘halfness’. Contradictions between ‘self’ and ‘other’, mimicking tendency, alienation, homelessness and the abandonment-neurotic are some of the major concepts that dominate the focus of the paper. Moreover embracing borrowed culture, language and life-style in a vain hope to decolonize them-selves ultimately throws them into the ever-prevailing, ever-tormenting wretchedness which has already been destined for them. Finally this research paper intends to question the authenticity of the term ‘decolonization’ dismissing the concept as vague and a mission impossible to achieve.