Mary Cobb Wittrock  (University of Maryland)
Language and Empire: Encountering Words/Encountering Worlds from a Postcolonial Perspective

Shekar Kapur's 2002 film, Four Feathers, examines the postcolonial theme of center and margin, as proposed by Gayatri Spivak, on multiple levels, exploring personal transformation in individual encounters, social practices and cultural identities. The friendship between two characters in the film Harry Feversham, an Englishman, and Abou Fatma, a Sudanese slave, provides interesting insights between two people considered pariahs in their own society, but who move from the margins to the center of the discourse between their two cultures. What can their interactions tell us about the notions of language and empire? Abou speaks both English and Arabic, and Harry learns some Arabic in addition to speaking English. However, both characters can be seen as subaltern, as defined by Spivak, in being denied a dialogue between speaker and listener. Frantz Fanon advocates that speaking a language also means adopting the culture of that language. Do Fanon's ideas about language and culture apply here? The interactions between Harry and Abou offer different perspectives on this notion. Fanon also promotes that a black man, in order to escape the "evilness" of being black, must don a 'white mask' psychologically in order to be integrated completely and universally into (white) society. Abou covers himself with a white powder in the movie, giving him an appearance of wearing a white mask. Does his physical appearance suggest a psychological state described by Fanon? Does Abou don the 'white mask' that Fanon describes? Inversely, Harry uses a brown paint to darken his face while in the Sudan. What sort, if any, are the psychological implications for Harry? By extension, does Homi Bhaba's theory on hybridity apply, that is, do Harry and Abou adopt characteristics of each one's culture or do the two characters get 'subsumed' in the masks they are wearing?

On another level, what sort of encounters does Shekar Kapur, citizen of a former British colony (India), present by interpreting a film originally belonging to the genre of empire cinema, a genre which sought to construct the identity of the "colonized" from the perspective of the colonizer? Usually, the 'colonized' wants to tell his own story about his own country. In this case, however, we have a non-African interpreting a film about British colonization in Africa. Should one consider Kapur as offering a marginal interpretation of encounters in British colonization in Africa, that is, as a non-African is his interpretation irrelevant or inaccurate? Or, originating from a former British colony himself, does his perspective offer some global norms in British colonization, and therefore, can his interpretation on encounters be considered central? What inferences can be made from the encounters vis-à-vis language and empire? Has Kapur changed the 'language' of traditional empire cinema, or does this film represent a transition from empire cinema to global cinema?

This paper will attempt to address the themes of postcolonial vs. global cinema as well as the representation of language and empire in cinema.