THE CONCEPT OF THE SELF AND THE OTHER: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF SIDDHARTH KARA'S COBALT RED: HOW THE BLOOD OF CONGO POWERS OUR LIVES

Abstract

This thesis explores the postcolonial notion of Self and Other in the Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, by Siddharth Kara. The study considers the text as a narrative non-fiction to be a part of English literature as a discourse system, as it relies on testimony, description of the setting, symbolism, recollection of history and moral statement to represent the current cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The research fills a gap in the field of postcolonial studies, which has had little literary focus on extractive capitalism and critical mineral economies. The study examines the concept of representation, dehumanization, ambivalence, and subaltern voice, through a qualitative close reading of the texts, drawing on the work of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The analysis reveals that Kara represents the powerful Other, a global technological world, multinational corporations, and the consumers of technology, whereas the Congolese miners, children, women, displaced families, and mining communities are marginalized as Other. The study reveals the reliance on invisible labour, poisonous environments, physical pain and past exploitation for modern advancement, clean energy and digital comfort. It also asserts that Cobalt Red breaks with moral distance, as the ordinary lives of consumers are intermingled with Congolese suffering, but that it poses questions of mediation, as the voice of the oppressed is heard in an outside voice. Cobalt Red is an important postcolonial work that demonstrates colonial power structures' continuity in twenty-first century extractive capitalism, the thesis argues. Thus it extends the scope of postcolonial criticism into the world of narrative non-fiction, to bring the latter into contemporary discussions of representation.