Native Man as Threat: Colonialist Echoes in Anne Ranasinghe’s Creative Work
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70091/Atras/vol07no02.22Keywords:
Class, colonial impressions, native threat, Postcolonialism, Sri Lankan writingAbstract
With emphasis on its representation of the threats posed by “native men” to “white” women and women of the Europanized class, the present discussion reviews selected creative works of German-born Sri Lankan writer Anne Ranasinghe. Ranasinghe is a prominent figure in post-colonial Sri Lankan Writing, having been anthologized numerous times and whose work has been favorably received by local readers. The representation of the “native threat”, as suggested in this study, is a “blind spot” in Ranasinghe’s work that has escaped the critical eye, and which is important to broaden scholarly understanding of the writer’s work. The discussion is advanced through a close textual analysis of Ranasinghe’s short stories, “Desire” and “The Ambassador’s Wife”, and her poem “At What Dark Point”. The study uses a postcolonial reading to frame its analysis with critical views on “blackness” and the “black rapist myth” used for leverage. The study concludes that Ranasinghe’s restricted social experience and “class-centric myopia” encourage her suspicion of local men (from the social margins). At the same time, the momentum of radical left-wing politics in Sri Lanka in the 1970s triggers in the poet insecurities that she expresses in “At What Dark Point”.
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