Transcending Genealogical Boundaries in Vicious: A Postcolonial Reading

Abstract

Essentially relentless and hegemonic in nature and extent, settler colonialism regulates its continuity through the occupation, and exploitation of lands and possessions. Settler colonialism operates in terms of interlocking structures of oppression built-in race, wealth, etc., in tandem with a process of decolonization to operate to transcend this erasure by means of resistance in greater force. This conflict unsettles the native’s genealogical relationship with history and culture and problematizes the issues of provenance. Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, presents the imperial world as compartmentalized while Wolfe's Settler Colonialism and Elimination of the Native blurs the division of good and evil i.e. colonizer and the colonized, of this Manichaean world by expounding how violence is a weapon of the colonizer, which according to Fanon, is later stolen by the colonized and the clash between them though leads to decolonization yet turns them into an obsession for each other that Schwab’s Vicious complicates. I argue that the characters of V.E. Schwab’s Vicious represent the compartments of the colonial world; Eli and Victor represent the colonizer while Serena and Sydney represent the colonized and their aggressive confrontation leads the novel’s narrative towards decolonization yet renders them as Fanonian ghosts, in tandem questioning the credibility of the perceived good of the colonizer and enforced evil of the colonized.