The Schooner’s Flight: Deconstructing the Post-colonial Oeuvre of Autochthony & Culture

Abstract

Colonial experience, despite sapping the subaltern from
their very elementary freedom, seems to have a dramatic impact on their
indigenous language, culture, and civilization. Postcolonial literature is
repercussive of the socio-political impasse betwixt the colonial master
and the colonized. Derrida’s theory of ‘Deconstruction’ was an epochmaking event, which had a significant denominator: the critical
rereading of the texts that have been thought of as embodying universal
values in the Western canon. In this paper, the intent is to show the
failings and fallacies of globalization and pluralism. Deconstructing any
literary text introduces us to the mechanics of building a society
conducive to socio-political and cultural autochthony, through retrieving
history with of those who were marginalized. The paper also brings into
light the predicament and calamities of the colonized subjects who are
striving to entrench the equality in every walk of life, claimed
vociferously by the multicultural societies. The Schooner’s Flight is
considered among the chef d’oeuvre of the postcolonial epoch, which
articulated the standpoint and plight of the downtrodden during
colonialism. This paper seeks to draw a parallel between the ideological
claims of universal tolerance and the societies today as a model of
ensuing gap. It offers an insight into the contemporary cultural scenarios
daunted by uncertainty and unpredictability and the reconstruction of
formerly colonized societies providing ghetto identities to the colonized
masses. Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, like all political theories,
have a myriad of interdisciplinary facets and idiosyncrasies. Apparent
isonomic practices in these societies are not significantly detached from
the age-old practices of colonial and imperial subversions, labeling the
human beings through their color, caste, religion and linguistic
affiliations. This paper is a qualitative inquiry of the data which leads to
the conclusion of the study.