The Wild East and the White Men’s and Mems’ Burden of Bravado

Abstract

This paper explores the theme of the burden of self-assumed superiority and bravado on the colonizers using short stories set in three different colonial contexts. Using these stories, the paper argues the colonizers themselves to be stuck in a precarious position, thanks to their need to constantly prove and demonstrate their bravery and superiority over the colonized. This situation forces the colonizers to assume poses and renders them vulnerable to the constant demands of self-aggrandizement. What is being enacted in such a situation is the same master-slave dialectics expounded by Hegel, wherein the master‘s authority is liable to gradual atrophy and erosion. This paper argues the same logic to be applicable to men in patriarchy who are similarly required to assume poses and demonstrate their ‘species difference’ from the ‘inferior sex’