LETTER: Colonialism turned inward
‘Lord of the Flies’ is not a direct critique of colonialism but can be hijacked
Roger Graham is probably right that the message in Lord of the Flies does not have to do with colonialism per se (Lord of the Flies about Humans’ Evil Nature, May 2). In my article on Robinson Crusoe I should rather have spoken of a “reading”, than its message. But Mr Graham might be interested to know that the lens for this reading is Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony, in which he shows that colonialists tend to soon shed their veneer of civilisation to descend into hierarchies of brutal exploitation. Often these turn inwards, as when the Dutch at the Cape hanged their own for petty thievery or homosexuality, or the British savaged Boer farms in the 1900s. So with a bit of latitude hijacking William Golding for a critique of colonialism can work. Hans Pienaarvia e-mail
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