Catachresis of Ideological Narratives: A Comparative Analysis of Virginia Woolf`s “A Room of One`s Own” and Sol Plaatje`s Mhudi

 Author: Sabrina Rahim.

The representational politics of the West to define its constitutive other has been countered by the postcolonial studies via strategic re-presentation and reclaiming identities of the colonized. While doing so, the postcolonial intellectuals have utilized the strategy of “catachresis” which Bill Ashcroft defines as “the process by which the colonized take and reinscribe something that exists traditionally as a feature of imperial culture” (30). The notion of “catachresis” was originally introduced by Derrida as a misusage of a sign in poststructuralism. This was further popularized by Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in postcolonial studies as an appropriation of apparently a pure colonizer`s ideology or narrative by the colonized as their own. This paper argues that western “ideological narratives” can also be “catachretized” (Gayatri Spivak 70) before the concretization of these narratives by the writers or intellectuals. To substantiate this idea, the paper analyzes Virginia Woolf`s “A Room of One`s Own” written in 1929. In her essay, she discusses the feminist ideas of the late nineteenth century that women should practice their identity through various strategic means of power. Her work is the first documentation of a feminist ideological notion. On the other hand, Sol Plaatje`s Mhudi written in 1920 before the documentation of “A Room of One`s Own” presents the same idea of women`s empowerment that the West was formulating as its enterprise. Plaatje`s novel had timely enunciated their origins within the African History catachretizing the “ideological narratives” before documentation negating the image of non-west as patriarchal.

Virginia Woolf in her essay propagates the notion that women need to create a space to perpetuate their autonomy. She also suggests that the means of regulating that space is through the power which she identifies as the economic and intellectual power. She brings to the limelight the issues of women within the circle of intellectuals when she refers to universities and literature in libraries of England being patriarchal. Contrary to this, Plaatje, an activist against colonization was aware of the strategic role of “saviors” that the west would partake in future to engage in extending the form of colonization that is neo-colonialism. He, in his novel, traces the struggle of women in creating and practicing their autonomy in their spaces two hundred years before the contemporary time. This African novel presents the agenda of women's agency that the West presents to be the pioneer of, within the African roots. This documentation of the ideological narratives that the West was in process of formulating in the early twentieth century to counter the gender hegemony is a catachresis of the narrative on Plaatje`s part.

Furthermore, the role of women as an intellectual that Woolf suggests in asserting women's identity as equal to that of men is also presented in Plaatje`s work. The protagonist Mhudi who aims to avenge her tribe`s massacre takes on the role of a fighter and a politician. The idea of an intellectual that Virginia Woolf purports is that women need to educate themselves and represent themselves. This representation of women by women themselves is depicted in Platjee`s work when the protagonist Mhudi, Barolong women, and Hannetjie work together to politically engage in a fight against King Mzilikazi. The political pursuit is interpreted as an intellectual pursuit because the writing reiterates political ideologies. Thus, the act of writing is a political activity and vice versa. Moreover, Mhudi is an intellectual, who procures the trust of the women by persuading other women to fight for their rights. This projection of active women from the colonized lands is the archival representation of what white feminism at that time had been proclaiming. This shows that even though, the West claims to be the original enunciator of the feminist ideology, the ideological narrative was not nonexistent in pre-colonial times in colonial lands. Thus, through tracing the feminist ideology of the West in African history, Plaatje provides a catachresis of the philosophical narrative of women as intellectuals that Virginia Woolf documented afterward.

Another aspect that Virginia Woolf adds to the White feminist ideology is the means of establishing a space for women. The space that Virginia discusses is established through money. While Plaatje suggests that physical power, solidarity, and political ideologies are important to create the space important for the women to achieve their goals as autonomous individuals.  Through projecting the problematic of gender issues, Plaatje not only highlights these issues and their technicalities but similar to Western Feminist ideology provides the alternatives used in history to counter the patriarchal oppression through space. Thus, delineating the origin of technicalities of the feminist discourse and its alternatives provided by the West in the African culture catachresis the feminist ideological narrative.

To conclude the discussion, the essay argues that catachresis of the ideological narrative is possible which transcends the time of their concretization. This is explained through the comparative analysis of Feminist ideologies perpetuated by Sol Plaatje`s  Mhudi and Virginia Woolf`s “A Room of One`s Own”, where the Western narrative of feminism was being formulated and Platjee had catachretized that narrative before its documentation in the form of Woolf`s work.

Works Cited:

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.

  Plaatje, Sol T. Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago. Lovedale, South Africa: Lovedale Press, 1930. Internet resource.

Spivak, G. ‘Identity and Alterity: An Interview’ (with Nikos Papastergiadis) Arena 97: 65–76, 1991.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929. Print.