Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T20:19:47.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Image of Europe: Yinka Shonibare's Postcolonial Decadence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Robert Stilling
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1891 Oscar Wilde argued that “Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.” A hundred years later, the Anglo-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE takes up where Wilde left off, arguing that “[t]o be an artist you have to be a good liar.” This essay explores how Shonibare reinvents Wilde's antirealism for a globalized, postcolonial world. Building on Leela Gandhi's notion of “interested autonomy,” I argue that in works such as his 2001 photo series Dorian Gray, Shonibare turns to Wilde's aestheticism as a means of upending the relation between realism and politics found in Chinua Achebe's critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, rediscovering the disparate racial and sexual geographies at stake in Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and in Albert Lewin's 1945 film version of it. Shonibare's post-colonial decadence, I argue, demonstrates how decadent aestheticism may become central to postcolonial imaginings of the real.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 128 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 299 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness. By Joseph Conrad. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1988. 251–62. Print.Google Scholar
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Painter of Modern Life” and Other Essays. By Baudelaire. Trans. and ed. Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Chari, Hema. “Imperial Dependency, Addiction, and the Decadent Body.” Perennial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence. Ed. Constable, Liz, Denisoff, Dennis, and Potolsky, Matthew. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999. 215–32. Print.Google Scholar
Cormack, Alistair. “Migration and the Politics of Narrative Form: Realism and the Postcolonial Subject in Brick Lane.” Contemporary Literature 47.4 (2006): 695–721. Project MUSE. Web. 3 Sept. 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisp, Quentin. The Naked Civil Servant. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Danson, Lawrence. Wilde's Intentions: The Artist in His Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Evaristo, Bernardine. The Emperor's Babe. New York: Penguin, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Feldman, Jessica R. Gender on the Divide: The Dandy in Modernist Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Frankel, Nicholas, ed. The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. By Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Franklin, J. Jeffrey. The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Gagnier, Regenia. Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Gandhi, Leela. Affective Communities: Anti-colonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Black Diaspora Artists in Britain: Three ‘Moments’ in Post-war History.” History Workshop Journal 61 (2006): 1–24. Web. 22 Mar. 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Whose Heritage? Un-settling ‘the Heritage,‘ Reimagining the Post-nation.” The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of “Race.” Ed. Littler, Jo and Naidoo, Roshi. London: Routledge, 2005. 23–35. Print.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart, and Sealy, Mark. Different. London: Phaidon, 2001. Print.Google ScholarPubMed
Hart, Jonathan. Empires and Colonies. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobbs, Robert. “Yinka Shonibare MBE: The Politics of Representation.” Yinka Shonibare MBE. Ed. Kent, Rachel. Munich: Prestel, 2008. 24–37. Print.Google Scholar
Hynes, Nancy. “Re-dressing History.” African Arts 34.3 (2001): 60+. Print.Google Scholar
Khan, Naseem. “Taking Root in Britain: The Process of Shaping Heritage.” The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of “Race.” Ed. Littler, Jo and Naidoo, Roshi. London: Routledge, 2005. 133–43. Print.Google Scholar
Leighton, Angela. On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Levenson, Michael H. A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine 1908-1922. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Lewin, Albert, dir. The Picture of Dorian Gray. MGM, 1945. DVD.Google Scholar
Miller, Monica L. Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picton, John. “Yinka Shonibare: Undressing Ethnicity.” African Arts 34.3 (2001): 66+. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th anniversary ed. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. “Reflections on Exile” and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Seshagiri, Urmila. Race and the Modernist Imagination. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
Shankar, S. “Midnight's Orphans; or, A Postcolonialism Worth Its Name.” Cultural Critique 56 (2003): 64–95. Project MUSE. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shonibare, Yinka, MBE. “In Art, Anything Is Possible: A Conversation with Yinka Shonibare.” With Jan Garden Castro. Sculpture 25.6 (2006): 22–27. Wilson Web. Web. 19 June 2010.Google Scholar
Shonibare, Yinka. “Setting the Stage: Yinka Shonibare MBE in Conversation with Anthony Downey.” Yinka Shonibare MBE. Ed. Kent, Rachel. Munich: Prestel, 2008. 38–45. Print.Google Scholar
Shonibare, Yinka. “Yinka Shonibare.” With Anthony Downey. Bomb Fall 2005: 24-31. Wilson Web. Web. 19 June 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King's Horseman. Ed. Gikandi, Simon. Ann Arbor: Norton, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Spackman, Barbara. “Interversions.” Perennial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence. Ed. Constable, Liz, Denisoff, Dennis, and Potolsky, Matthew. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999. 35–49. Print.Google Scholar
Stevens, Wallace. “Anecdote of the Jar.” The Collected Poems. New York: Vintage, 1990. 76. Print.Google Scholar
Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism beyond the Nation. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Ellmann, Richard. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Bristow, Joseph. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Wilkes, David. “Still See No Ships, Lord Nelson? Giant Boat in a Bottle Unveiled on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth in Tribute to Naval Hero.” Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 25 May 2010. Web. 10 Jan. 2013.Google Scholar
Young, Robert J. C. “Ideologies of the Postcolonial.” 1998. Robert J. C. Young. N.p., 12 Dec. 2005. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.Google Scholar