Abstract
Colonization whereas on one hand ruled the colonies with a political fist also undervalued the native culture. Therefore, cultural colonization was more consequential since the native mind, consciousness, and aesthetics were forced to internalize Eurocentric paradigms. In post-colonial discourse this situation is often explained as cultural violence undertaken by the colonizer. After indigenous cultures were declared antediluvian, regressive, and nowhere near western modernity the body of knowledge produced locally became insulated, and was consequently stymied. However, in post-colonial literature textual resistance became the central norm, and writers writing from margins began to question the hegemonic western aesthetics. Therefore, this paper argues that in the play Dream on a Monkey Mountain (1970) Derek Walcottby reinventing the western tradition of drama, rooted in Greek dramatic tradition, restores the lost luster of Caribbean dramatic forms. However, the process of reinventing western dramatic form, levied with cultural aesthetics of mongrel, produces a hybridized form of dramatic art. In his own right, Walcott believes in mixing and mingling cultural forms and holds no illusion against a tendency where the indigenous mind is distracted by utopian ideals of pure and total restoration of history and culture. By sticking to an experimental vision Dream on Monkey Mounting borrows from the western tradition of drama but not at the cost of staking out indigenous aesthetics to colonial body of cultural incumbents. Indeed, the hybridized dramatic form generates textual space for political and ideological resistance, and Walcott’s playimplicates colonization responsible for devaluation of local art forms, and insists on the urgency of revamping them.
Keyword(s)
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