2014 pei-ling hu all rights reserved

169 Pages·2014·0.78 MB·English

© 2014
PEI-LING HU
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
POST-DECOLONIZATION SECESSION:
THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE NATION-STATE
IN CONTEMPORARY POSTCOLONIAL/WORLD LITERATURE
by
PEI-LING HU
A dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School-New Brunswick
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in Literatures in English
Written under the direction of
Richard Dienst
And approved by
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________

New Brunswick, New Jersey
October, 2014
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
POST-DECOLONIZATION SECESSION:
THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE NATION-STATE
IN CONTEMPORARY POSTCOLONIAL/WORLD LITERATURE
by PEI-LING HU
Dissertation Director:
Richard Dienst

This dissertation presents the phenomenon of post-decolonization secession and
its literature as important new topic and genre for postcolonial studies. It draws on legal
documents from international law, human rights law and UN doctrines to examine the
paradox within the presumably inalienable, yet context-confined, right of peoples to self-
determination. Although in UN’s 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to
Colonial Countries and Peoples, the first introduction of the right of self-determination in
international law, it was set up to be the right of all peoples, it is only practiced as a
binding, legal right in the context of decolonization. The UN-assisted decolonization
process insists that self-determination happen along colonial borders, and newly
independent postcolonial states inherit colonial territories. Postcolonial independence
achieved in this manner retains the racial fault lines from the colonial era, which
facilitates the reenactment of the dialectics of the settler and the native, hindering the

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development of a sense of national consciousness. This dissertation reads post-
decolonization secession as delayed decolonization endeavor emerging out of strong
(ethno)nationalist sentiment. It argues that post-decolonization secession lays bare the
conditions and terms of the decolonization process, and of becoming/being postcolonial
itself.
This study discusses four post-decolonization secession movements—
Biafra/Nigeria, Gorkhaland/India, Tamil Eelam/Sri Lanka, and South Sudan/Sudan—
alongside five secession literary texts: Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country,
Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss,
Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and Dave Eggers’s What Is the What. It traces the
evolution of the concept of the self-determination right after 1960 and the world’s
changing response to these secession crises in postcolonial regions. The literature not
only bears testimony to these shifts but also examines aspects of the situation that the
political and legal processes cannot resolve. While politically and legally, secession
aspiration is always conflated with state-building, secession literature reminds us that
secession movements are first and foremost anti-state projects, especially in the post-
decolonization context. Secession literature dwells on this anti-state sentiment and pre-
state phase, and suggests “non-state nationalism” as an alternative mode of a people’s
political being and a new type of sovereignty.

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Acknowledgements
I have had the good fortune of participating in many graduate seminars in the
Department of English led by some of the most inspiring scholars in the field. It was in
these seminars that I developed my interest in interdisciplinary studies and sharpened my
knowledge in contemporary literary criticism. I want to thank Richard Dienst, Brent
Edwards, David Eng, John McClure, Sonali Perera, María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, and
Edlie Wong for their instruction and encouragement. I must extend a special thanks to
Richard Dienst, my advisor. This dissertation could not have been written without his
guidance, support and optimism along the way.
I am also indebted to the stimulating conversations I have had over the years with
friends and colleagues in the department who share the same research interests with me.
It was in these thought-provoking conversations that I developed the seeds of this
dissertation. I want to thank Shakti Jaising and Nimanthi Rajasingham for bringing
together the Postcolonial Interest Group and for their indefatigable email reminders of
gatherings to be held, to Ja Yung Choi, Nami Shin and Eui Young Kim for our girls’
night outs chatting about literature and life, and to Enock Aloo for numerous coffee
breaks together filled with refreshing discussions on the various topics we share common
interest in and for the rewarding experience of co-presenting in graduate seminars.
For helping me go through the past years and reminding me to keep on breathing
and smiling no matter what, I have many wonderful friends to thank. Jerry Weng gave
me a home away from home in New Haven, Connecticut, and welcomed me with warmth
whenever I needed to escape from New Jersey. My workout buddies, Joni Shao and Carol
Yeh, dragged me to the gym when nothing seemed to cheer me up. Brian Hsu, Helen

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Huang, Oona Wang and Henry Wu gave me emotional sustenance and camaraderie over
the years of my Ph.D. study. Special thanks are due to Louis Wu, who helped me gather
library materials when I worked off-campus and had limited access to the library. Old
friends from Taiwan, Meichi Chen, Francis Kao, Leo Liang, Joyce Chen, Edison Chang,
Ying-chih Chen, and Gwen Wu and my beloved cousin Teresa Yang, made me laugh and
taught me how to be carefree for just a few hours whenever I visited them.
My family back in Taiwan, my sisters Joe and Summer, and my parents, gave me
the most unflagging support throughout this long journey. They never forgot to remind
me that they would always be there for me. I send immeasurable thanks to my mother,
who came to the US to help me manage the last stages of this dissertation by taking over
some of my other obligations in life. I would not have been able to run to the finish line
without her unselfish devotion.
Finally, this dissertation is for my husband, Wolfgang, and our 5-month old
daughter, Anika. Your presence and love gave me the stamina I needed to complete this
work and finish what I had started years ago. And as we move on to the next chapter of
our life together, I will always remember that, no matter what challenges life will bring
next, In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft.

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Table of Contents
Abstract of the Dissertation ii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 46
Chapter 2 71
Chapter 3 99
Chapter 4 123
Coda 151
Works Cited 160

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1
Introduction
The basis of statehood, and of unity, can only be general acceptance by the participants.
You cannot kill thousands of people, and keep on killing more, in the name of unity.
There is no unity between the dead and those who killed them.
Julius K. Nyerere, “Why We Recognized Biafra”

I. An Overview of the Historical Developments of the Right of Self-Determination in
International Law
Separatism and secession are complex and contested topics that have long
interested legal scholars and political theorists. Discussions and debates of separatism and
secession center around sensitive issues such as the right of self-determination, the model
of nation-state, nationalism, international recognition, implementation of democracy, and
more recently secessionist referendum. The definition of secession, like the studies of the
practice itself, is also still up for debate. The broadest and most literal definition of
secession is basically leaving or breaking away. The use of the word secession in political
context could refer to a breakaway from any sovereignty, or only the breakaway from a
state by which the new state was previously governed. Peter Radan gives a broad and
inclusive definition of secession as “the creation of a new state upon territory previously
forming part of, or being a colonial entity of, an existing state” (2008, 18). Under this
definition, secession would be one of the most common ways of creating a new state
throughout history: from the first wave of nation-building—the decolonization of the
Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, secession of Greece from
the Ottoman Empire (1822), the secession of Belgium from the Netherlands (1831),
2
Finland from the Russian Empire (1917)—to the second wave of nation-building that
witnessed the decolonization of Africa and Asia in the mid twentieth century from
western superpowers, and then to another wave of nation-building in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first century, which I will call the third-wave, that sees ethnic groups
within an existing state seeking political independence.
The establishment of the United Nations in 1945, which, by way of membership,
consolidated the political model of nation-state and state identity, is usually viewed as the
watershed in the transition of the definition of secession: from a broad one to a narrow
one. While the establishment of new states taken place prior to 1945 is considered “a
matter of fact and not law,” political scientists generally agree that the international
community post-1945, more established with solid sense of geography, borders and
power dynamics, deals with secessionist movements after 1945 with more reservation
and scrutiny (James Crawford, 108), although at the same time enshrines the right of self-
determination of peoples in international law. Aleksandar Paković and Peter Radan also
state in their co-edited book Creating New States that the reason why the year 1945 was a
decisive moment in the genealogy of secessionist movement is first and foremost the fact
that “until the establishment of the UN in 1945, the right of self-determination was
recognized neither as a political nor a legal right” (2007, 20). In the foundational
document of the United Nations, Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United
Nations, it is stated as early as in Article 1 that one of the purposes of the UN is “to
develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights
and self-determination of peoples” (Article 1(2)). Since the UN’s founding in 1945, the
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right to self-determination became, as the term itself makes it clear, a right, a right of
“peoples”.
However, the applicability of this principle upheld in the Charter of the United
Nations has been the center of debate for decades, and the conditions under which such a
right of peoples can be claimed and justified has remained unclear. James Crawford
makes the observation that “since 1945 the international community has been extremely
reluctant to accept unilateral secession of parts of independent States if the secession is
opposed by the government of that State” and that “since 1945 no State which has been
created by unilateral secession has been admitted to the United Nations against the
declared wishes of the government of the predecessor State” (390).1 Many post-1945
examples of movements of self-determination, especially those unilateral and outside of
the context of decolonization—the only UN practice where self-determination achieved
the stature of an applicable legal right—are largely contested and gain little recognition
or support from the world community and the UN. Therefore, postcolonial secession is
significant because, while the first introduction of the right of self-determination in the
international law set it up as a universal right for all “peoples,” it is only practiced as a
binding, legal right in the context of decolonization.
While there are many different kinds of secession—Radan divides them into five
categories: colonial, unilateral, devolutionary, consensual and dissolving—my project
here focuses on one of the most contested types of secession: those unilateral and outside

1 Crawford lists all cases of secession and dismemberment after 1945 in non-colonial context here: “Since
1945, the only new states emerging from situations which were not formally recognized as colonial, i.e. as
covered by Chapters XI or XII of the Charter, have been: Senegal (1960); Singapore (1965); Bangladesh
(1971); the three Baltic States: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (all 1991); the eleven successor States of the
former Soviet Union: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Moldova, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan (all 1991) the five successor States of the former Yugoslavia: Slovenia,
Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) (1991-
2); Czech Republic and Slovakia (1993); and Eritrea (1993)” (391).