Chapter 12
In: Nationalism and the Postcolonial
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Abstract
This chapter shows the concept of the nation as inseparably associated with acts of naming and performative speech acts, which Derek Walcott and Joseph Conrad use in their self-representations as authors. I argue that Walcott develops the figure of the ‘bastard’ as an authorial image and discusses the question of the nation-state in the Caribbean with terms such as genealogy, legitimacy, and hybridity in order to situate his literary achievements in relation to both the ‘Great Tradition’ of English literature, epitomized by Joseph Conrad, and simultaneously to a specifically Caribbean poetics. Walcott’s insult to Conrad in White Egrets, calling him a “bastard,” infers that the imagination of Conrad as author serves as a despicable example of European colonization through literature. Yet it is precisely the term ‘bastard’ that Walcott uses as a self-description of his relation to his Anglo-Caribbean heritage. In the context of Walcott’s figure of the ‘bastard’ and early postcolonial theory on hybridity, unexpected affinities between Conrad and Walcott are revealed which unsettle concepts of nation, belonging, and the role language plays in their negotiation.