Milli mála - 01.01.2013, Blaðsíða 131
131
see the native culture as backward and barbaric, much in line with
Edward W. Said’s definitions on European ideas about the Orient
(Said 1995: 7). Also, while Jenkins’s colonialists feel that Western
standards should replace “backward” Eastern ways of thinking, they
nevertheless feel threatened if the natives become too similar to
their colonial superiors. In Homi K. Bhabha’s terms, this reflects a
“desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference
that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha 1994: 86, his emphasis).
This is seen, for example, in Jenkins’s The Holy Tree (1969), where
the native Eking’s accusation against expatriate Harold Elphin is
hushed up. Eking is seen to have no right to criticise the European
Elphin because Eking is only a backward native, and his mimicking
Western ways in writing open letters of complaint to the newspa-
pers is simply dismissed as revolutionary: “It did not matter wheth-
er what he had written was true or false […] All that mattered was
that no native should be allowed to accuse Englishmen, especially
in their own language” (Jenkins 1969: 78).
Jenkins’s foreign stories thus lend themselves easily to a postco-
lonial reading, as these texts explore the ways in which fixed ideas
of racial difference and Western cultural advantage determine
British or European attitudes towards their formerly colonial sub-
jects. The concept of Eastern people as “a subject race, dominated
by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than
they could possibly know themselves” (Said 1995: 35) is echoed
throughout Jenkins’s foreign stories. Moreover, quite a few of these
are concerned with inter-racial relationships and prejudice towards
half-caste children, and here Jenkins shows up British (or Scottish)
racism as a disease that in most cases is incurable. Two texts which
showcase this approach well are the novel The Expatriates (1971) and
the short story “Imelda and the Miserly Scot” from the collection A
Far Cry From Bowmore & Other Stories (1973), and to which this dis-
cussion now turns.
The Expatriates and “Imelda and the Miserly Scot” are in many
ways similar stories. They are mostly set in post-independence
Kalimantan (Borneo), have Scottish protagonists, and are clearly
focused on the racial divide which exists between white expatriates
and natives. Both narratives satirise the expatriate community, with
INGIBJÖRG ÁGúSTSDÓTTIR