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R O B I N V I S E L, Othering the Self:Nadine Gordimer s Colonial Heroines, WHITE, JONATHAN Nadine Gordimer's Re-Visionary Literature:The Conservationist and July's PeopleSAID, EDWARD Culture and Imperialism FANON, FRANTZ The Wretched of the EarthASHCROFT, BILL GRIFFITHS, GARETH TIFFIN, HELEN The Post-colonial Studies ReaderNadine Gordimer and David Goldblatt, Lifetimes Under Apartheid
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INTRODUCTION
July's people proposes the inevitability of blacks being given back their native land by positioning South Africa in the midst of revolution, a "millennium" for black control. Whites are fleeing the country in terror, bombs are going off in the major cities, and the international airport has been closed down. One young family of five is whisked away by their long time servant, July, deep into the bush to his village. Presumably, it is simply a temporary place to escape from being killed. Apparently it upholds a perfect amity between the white family and their black servant but later we see the crisis of adaptation the Smales family faces in a totally different environment. Their hardship, limit of tolerance, adaptability capacity is weighed throughout the novel during their escapade in July's village.
DOMAIN OF CULTURAL CONFLICT
Leading a life under the deep entrenchment of capitalism in the apartheid regime Bam Smales and Maureen Hetherington Smales are hardly concerned about the ongoing political turmoil in their country until they are forced to leave their dwelling place. They are the masters in their own house whereas July as usual a submissive figure, constantly serving his maters' want. Smales family is not aware of the "racial distinction" between blacks and whites. Though they are liberal about their servant July and their anti-apartheid attitude towards July is laudatory, their ignorance about feigned equality between blacks and whites reveals their condescending attitude. This unawareness later acts as a driving force of instigating conflict while they start living in July's village.
Cultural conflicts occur as soon as the Smales family enters into the domain of July. On their first morning in the native village, living in the mother-in-law's hut, the juxtaposition Maureen observes with, "July, their servant, [url=http://www.davidhabchy.com]barbour outlet[/url] their host," typifies the paradoxical situation the white family finds themselves in. July occupies an uncanny role that is more indefinable by the day; he further complicates the matter by not overtly acknowledging his dual status to his employers. In contrast, both husband and wife entirely "lose" the definition of prescribed roles in their privileged lives, which brings out unexpected personality and physical changes that are repulsive to the both of them. The filth of living for weeks in the village, the lack of "normal" pursuits such as shopping, going to the salon, working during the week, attending international conferences, the lack of privacy, and being surrounded day in and day out by only native blacks begins to alter their view about themselves and predicament of coping with that new environment leads them to enter in a psychological battleground. The polished, sophisticated, and hygienic Smales has discovered themselves amidst insanitary people who lack any idea about sanitation. Maureen tries to adapt herself with her surroundings through joining with the village women during harvest time. But there is [url=http://www.jeremyparendt.com/Barbour-Paris.php]barbour france paris[/url] also conflict in July's mind also; he does not let Maureen to join them. It seems quite impossible for July to come out of his previous position.
CULTURE CONFLICT: PERSONAL CONFLICT
The white children [url=http://teacher.jthcsx.com/yongwei/guestbook.asp]hollister[/url] seem assimilating easily with similar-aged black children, while Maureen and July are the only characters that appear to be infused with power as the full situation unveils itself Maureen's daily voice diminishes in the bush, but her mental acuity and focus strengthen her and prepare her for eventual escape. Her tolerance limit has become invalid and she cannot anymore bear her inner conflict. July, On the other hand, gradually withstands her, displaying through language that does not fear for the first time to lay bare suppressed opinions:
-Me? I must know who is stealing [url=http://www.ktbruce.co.uk/barbourjackets.php]barbour.co.uk[/url] your things? Same like always. You make too much trouble for me. Here in my home too. Daniel, the chief,
My's-mother-my's-wife with the house. Trouble, trouble from you. I don't
want it anymore. You see? - His hands flung out away from himself.
-You've got to get it back.-
-No no. No no.-hysterically smiling repeating... She was stampeded by a wild rush of need to destroy everything between them.
July, "..had worked for her [Maureen] for years. Often Bam couldn't follow his broken English, but he [July] and she understood each other well." But now things have changed a lot, they are now so engulfed by their cultural clash that their good chemistry is now lost.
CULTURAL CONFLICT: RELATIONSHIP AT STAKE
How are the protagonists' relationships influenced by the "temptation of possessions" proffered by capitalism? It can be argued that Maureen deserts her family in the bush in order to reinstate herself within the previous comforting security of capitalism. For example, Maureen and the children, in their culture, are strongly portrayed as consumers of "new things". Can it be understood that pre-revolution Bam, as the provider of money, was merely the cash cow that his wife and children milked in an attempt to negotiate happiness in the cultural mores around them? Once he is unable to fulfill his duty, he is rejected. Maureen defines herself by "things" bought or brought to her by the three males who have taken care of her entire life: father, husband and servant.
Maureen's children have instilled within them the surrounding cultural currency.
They are described at first by being most excited by novelty. Bought items in their lives bring enjoyment, no matter how trivial the object: "the children, excited, as it seemed nothing else could excite them, by a new possession. Nothing made them as happy as buying things." Once in the bush, not comprehending what has happened at first, they demand Coca-cola instead of water; the solution they keep proposing is to go and "buy some," even if a store is no where in sight. It has been their dialectic of privilege throughout their young lives.
Bam quickly [url=http://www.osterblade.com]moncler sito ufficiale[/url] loses his power and status once his "cheque-book" and prestigious career as architect are suddenly worthless in the new village economy that is thrust upon them. Bam, as he is seen after the precious gun is discovered stolen, is emasculated by losing his possessions: "He lay down on his back, on that bed... and at once suddenly rolled over onto his face, as the father had never done before his sons... She looked down on this man who had nothing, now. There was before these children something much worse than the sight of the women's broad backsides, squatting." Left with only shame, as he is undefined as a man without his money, career, vehicle, and gun, he abruptly gives up. This gradual insignificance of his character is liable for splitting up a conjugal life. So, Maureen and Bam become alienated from one another because they cannot identify with each other outside of their former domestic context, which defined them both.
1.5 [url=http://www.par5club.com/louboutin.php]louboutin pas cher[/url] DISPOSSESSION AND DISLOCATION OF POWER
Along with the conflict of culture the whites here are dislocated and dispossessed. Maureen and Bam, however, never fully adapt to their environment because their self-definitions rely on their status as possessors. Now dispossessed, politically, culturally, and economically, they cling to their few remaining belongings in order to maintain their identities. The bakkie, in particular, becomes an object of contention for them. They fear July's [url=http://www.tagverts.com/barbour.php]barbour online shop[/url] appropriation of the bakkie both because he now controls their only means of escape and because his ownership of the vehicle inverts their relationship with him. In Johannesburg, they supervised his movements in the city. Now, however, July frustrates their futile attempts to maintain their independence by implicitly claiming the bakkie as his.
The gun, a potent colonial [url=http://www.agentparadise.com]woolrich outlet[/url] [url=http://hnccbw.com/E_GuestBook.asp]abercrombi[/url] symbol of domination, is desired by one revolutionary young man Daniel who is believed to have run off to fight for/with the "Rusias" and the "Cubas," according to the village chief. A mixing of political and economic [url=http://www.gotprintsigns.com/abercrombiepascher/‎]abercrombie soldes[/url] realities or threats swirls within the black village in the bush, as they attempt to understand and fight against 350 years of confusing colonial rule. The notion seems to be one of continual conquest: if not the Afrikaner or British, then the "Rusias." The stolen gun becomes a point of frustrating climax as July refuses to go look for it; Maureen is stunned by that refusal, along [url=http://www.ktbruce.co.uk/barbourjackets.php]barbour jackets[/url] with his subsequent verbal defense as he slips into his native language to excoriate and reject her. This focuses on the dispossession of the whites during apartheid.

CONFLICT IN LANGUAGE
Once again, a confrontation with July underscores Maureen's predicament, since he will not allow her to improve her status to him and, thus, the other villagers. She desires an effective means of communication with him, but such communication proves impossible because of the limits of his English. The English they spoke in Johannesburg was not a problem because "it was based on orders and responses, not the exchange of ideas and feelings."
Maureen: A victim of cross cultural adherence
The colonial woman is pulled in one direction by her sex, another by her color. This conflict of identity and allegiance is exemplified in Nadine Gordimer's portrayal of the white African woman who is intellectually and emotionally alienated from white colonial society and at the same time physically barred from black Africa. Through her rebellion against the patriarchal order as she struggles to define herself in a hostile environment, the heroine uncovers the connections between patriarchy and racism under colonialism. She begins to identify with the black Africans in their oppression and their struggle for autonomy, but she cannot shed her inheritance of [url=http://www.giuseppezanottipaschere.com]giuseppe zanotti soldes[/url] privilege and guilt. Ultimately she is shut out from the vibrant life of black people, rich - as it seems to her - with pain and possibility. Nadine Gordimer's great subject is the young woman who ventures forth from the white enclave, who breaks out of the sick relationship between white mistress and black servant, and identifies her own quest for an independent identity with the blacks' cultural, political and, finally, military quest for freedom. For her heroines, "blackness" is linked to sex, sensuality and imagination, to water and blood, and the politics of liberation. Gordimer's heroine's embrace of blackness leads her to become [url=http://www.jingantewei.com/news/html/?19650.html]woolrich sito ufficiale Help With Tips For Interview Confidence - written by Roseanna Leaton[/url] a revolutionary in increasingly concrete terms. However, as the heroine's at first tentative, mostly imaginative participation in the black revolution becomes more active, more realistic; she is caught in the crux between sex and race. As a woman she identifies with the black liberation struggle, but as a white she bears a legacy of privilege which her good intentions cannot cancel out. Her heroines draw the strength to think and act independently from their very position of weakness, of irrelevance in the power structure. Gordimer's white South African women are in a sense outside the brutal pact between the male colonizer and the male colonized. But Gordimer refuses to let the white heroine off the hook as a fellow victim; she insists not on woman's passivity, but on her shared responsibility, her collusion in racism. T h e white woman is not allowed to claim innocence; nevertheless, she is increasingly prevented by the social and political conditions of apartheid from acting upon her responsibility. Furthermore, she is increasingly cut off from blackness, both by government decree and the rising hostility of her black brothers and sisters. In Gordimer's fiction, then, the ambiguous, self-divided figure of the white girl or [url=http://www.ktbruce.co.uk/mulberrysale.php]mulberry outlet[/url] woman is the site of the hesitant, fraught rapprochement of white and black. She is the site of connection, while she is made to realize the impossibility of connection. Her female characters are both internal battlegrounds in [url=http://www.rtnagel.com/louboutin.php]louboutin pas cher[/url] which the conflicts of South African society are played out, and meeting places where illicit relationships between the races develop. In July's People, Gordimer tests her white heroine in the aftermath of the revolution. The ambiguous ending of this novel, "She runs," is more artistically truthful because the inner conflict propels her to choose the way of elopement. At the end of July's People Maureen Smales is described as a cornered animal panicked by her new found freedom from the white-defined role as mistress of a comfortable suburban household. When she is forced to redefine her relationship with her former servant July, now her family's protector, she is offered the opportunity to transform herself into a fellow African. But she cannot. Maureen, the good middle-class South African daughter and wife, who observe the liberal decencies in her relationship with her black inferior, clearly is a dead-end heroine for Gordimer.
CONCLUSION
The pressure of life under apartheid renders the protagonists of this novel to realize a different life which is inebriated by the clasp of capitalistic system. Here humanity is shuddered, nobility is decayed and ethics is erased. The crisis of identity cries here for a pedestal. In this nerve-racking sphere the conflict of culture overlaps with personal conflict of "self".
Trauma and Threads: Re-structuring Cultural extremities in Nadine Gordimer's July's PeopleArticle Summary: The paper is about the socioeconomic crisis in South Africa under the acidic captivity of apartheid stoked and sustained by white imperialists, this paper examines and discusses Nadine Gordimer's concern and perspectives on cultural conflict resulted from the kinds of power shifts that occur when people become displaced from their comfort zones and have to adapt to new ways of thinking and being.
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