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Reference
[Review of:] Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State / by Philip Holden. Madison :
University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
MADSEN, Deborah Lea
MADSEN, Deborah Lea. [Review of:] Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State / by Philip Holden. Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2009, vol. 45, no. 3
DOI : 10.1080/17449850903065333
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:92441
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Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 45. 3 (2009)
Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State, by Philip Holden, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, pp., $55.00, ISBN 978 0 2992 2610 7
The book is framed by Singapore, ending with a chapter on Lee Kwan Yew's autobiography, and beginning with Holden’s account of his arrival at the National University of Singapore to teach postcolonial literatures.
Although the term “postcolonial” does not appear in his title, by only the second page of his introduction Holden finds himself formulating a distinction between “transnational cultural studies” and postcolonialism, as he seeks to describe the paradoxes of Singapore's colonial history and its distinctively Asian modernity.
The dialectic of history and futurity is explored in this book through a series of autobiographical texts written by the leaders of decolonization struggles who became leaders of new nation-states: India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, and Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew. This geopolitical diversity underlines the focus on literary genre that is Holden's central interest. The
“national autobiographies”, to use Holden’s term, that are addressed in this book are linked into a genre through the concept of decolonization. They are, as Holden describes: “autobiographies in which the growth of an individual implicitly identified as a national father explicitly parallels the growth of national consciousness and, frequently proleptically, the achievement of an independent nation-state” (5). In this respect, these texts are like conduct books, prescribing the formation and behaviour of the representative citizen-subject, as well as biographies of exceptional national leaders who have led their countries into modern futurity through their leadership of the independent nation. These texts are brilliantly contextualized, first though Holden’s analysis of imperial autobiographies, like those written by Cecil Rhodes, Nathaniel Curzon, Hugh Clifford and Frederick Lugard, to reveal the strategies by which “attempts to project the social imaginary of the colonial state” (8) are made. Holden then turns from imperial elites to colonial elites in a chapter that considers autobiographical narratives of the decolonization struggle, written by Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, Marcus Garvey and Mohandas K. Gandhi.
After the case studies devoted to Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Mandela, and Lee Kwan Yew, Holden’s conclusion reminds us of the existence of life writings that interrogate the paradigm for national autobiography set out in his preceding chapters. This is a refreshing note on which to end; one which sounds a call to further study in this area. The importance of Holden’s project is simply yet powerfully stated in his introduction: “National autobiographies offer unique possibilities as an arena where the micronarratives of the literary text and the metanarratives of nation and history meet” (6-7). Holden’s emphasis upon what narrative theory refers to as the discourse versus the story of these autobiographies, the how opposed to the what of the narratives, stresses his point. This book is a lesson in how best to bring together historical inquiry with close attention to the literary text. Holden's discussions are enriched by his extensive archival researches; his textual analyses are nuanced with fine theoretical sophistication. I confess that I was a fan of Philip Holden’s work when I picked up this book; to say I was not disappointed is an understatement.
Deborah L. Madsen University of Geneva
