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   kc4u Teacher
   College - Senior

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   Humanity in a desperate bid to survive is the philosophical implication of the vision of the human condition that comes out of a text like Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe shipwreck into an apparently haunted and deserted island might well be seen as an allegory of the existential situation--man, being thrown into a rather alien universe. Darwin's ideas of a "struggle for existence," where there is only a "survival of the fittest" through the process of 'natural selection' are relevant over here. Defoe anticipates the Darwinian world but also anticipatorily forecloses it with his championing humanist spectacle of indomitable human will. Not only does Crusoe survive and adapt to the alien space but he saves Friday, 'civilizes' him, teaching him English and converts him to Christianity. Towards the end, the island is veritably called Crusoe's "colony."

   But one must be sensitive the imperial workings of this humanist success-story. Crusoe's more-than-survival or better put, his transformation of survival into mastery is an allegory of the colonial process. He colonizes the island, silences Friday by imposing the colonial tongue and the colonial faith system on him. His survival is thus scarred from within by this colonial spectre.

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   Posted by kc4u on Friday November 6, 2009 at 9:55 AM