Postcolonial theory and autobiography definition

com Website: www.authorspressbooks.com Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice ISBN 978-93-87651-98-2 Copyright © 2018 Editor Disclaimer Concerned authors are solely responsible for their views, opinions, policies, copyright infringement, legal action, penalty or loss of any kind regarding their articles. Neither the publisher nor the editor will be responsible for any penalty or loss of any kind if claimed in future. Contributing authors have no right to demand any royalty amount for their articles. Printed in India at Krishna Offset, Shahdara Dedicated to My Sweet Daughter Diya Foreword At a recent seminar held at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gorakhpur University I took the opportunity of being the Keynote Speaker to express my suspicion that terms or phrases such as “rewriting” or “counter discourse” or “writing back” carry a certain violence, a certain confrontational energy. This energy may be emotionally mobilising but may not be politically productive in the long run, because its oppositionality seems to invoke and reiterate a neat and clear binary; and neat and clear binaries seldom work when it comes to talking about messy things like culture and identity, because there is no such thing as a “pure” culture and no such thing as a “pure” identity. We are all culturally impure, but some of us revel in the notion of being a “pure Hindu” or a “pure Indian” when such purity is just a linguistic lie. Very often language is used to prop up notions of cultural purity. English still continues to be regarded in some quarters as a “foreign” (and therefore untouchable) language. This is why it gives me great pleasure to provide the foreword to this book because it continues the healthy project of engaging with the postcolonial condition using what some still regard as “the coloniser’s language.” I congratulate Mr. Dipak Giri for putting together a volume that does not believe in geographical, racial, national, gendered boundaries as unbridgeable. The range of authors discussed here – from Achebe to Roy – is a testimony to the ever-expanding contours of postcolonial writing. The focus on fiction – Dattani being the only playwright dealt with here – seems apposite because sometimes a condition requires the length and breadth of a novel for its adequate treatment. The care with which each contributor has tried to negotiate the tricky terrain of postcoloniality is worthy of note. Volumes such as these are always welcome, because the postcolonial condition is so over determined by innumerable and powerful historical, socio-cultural, and economic forces that careful, tentative but persistent identification of these forces and their impact is always to be undertaken. I hope that this volume will excite many minds, restart many conversations, invigorate many thoughts, but not in the spirit of loud, confrontational anger. Let us be humbled by the acknowledgement that pure oppositionality is intellectually unhelpful and that dealing with our own postcolonial hybridities with care and understanding may be the way forward. Niladri R. Chatterjee Professor, Kalyani University West Bengal Contents Foreword Introduction 1. A Tryst with the Self: Migrancy, Diasporicity and Identity in Selected Short Stories of Jhumpa Lahiri 7 13 21 Shilpi Basak 2. Things Fall Apart: An Exploration of Pre-and Post-Colonial Life in Late 19th Century Nigeria 29 Rabi Kanta Roy 3. A House of My Own: A House for Mr. Biswas 39 Dr. Shachi Sood and Dr. Saleem Wani 4. The Impact of Binaries in Constituting Social Conflicts: A Reading of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry 48 Mahendran U 5. Depiction of Religion as an Oppressive Weapon in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus 58 Dr. Romina Rashid and Asma Zahoor 6. From Migration to Madness: Female Migration in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace 67 Gouri Kapoor 7. When the Subaltern React and Create a Space of Their Own: Re-locating Identity in Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger Samiksha Sharma 80 10  Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice 8. An Attempt to Study Familial and Marital Discourse in Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry 87 Shweta Verma 9. Social Deprivation and Identity Issues in Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger 99 Tabish Wani and Rumana Nisar 10. An Ecofeminist Study of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale 104 Ragini Kapoor 11. Rootlessness and Quest for Identity in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife 115 Surabhi K. 12. A Postcolonial Overview of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 121 Supriya Mandal 13. Food as a Metaphor for Identity and Isolation in Selected Stories of Jhumpa Lahiri 134 Dr. Prachi Priyanka 14. Multi Approaches of Writing: V. S. Naipaul 143 Dr. Brajesh Kumar Gupta “Mewadev” 15. The Colonialism and the Changes in the Postcolonial World 154 Sujoy Barman 16. Awakened by Darkness: An Exploration of Shamanic Archetypes, Voicing Female Experiences in Selected Novels of Margaret Atwood 168 Alik Jha 17. Glocalisation through the Lens of Postcolonial Mimicry and Hybridity: A Study of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines 174 Rabindra Sutradhar 18. Home and beyond, between National Identity and Culture: A Reading of Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night Amrita Datta 181 Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice 19. Postcolonial Dilemma of Language: A Study of Male Protagonist in Anita Desai’s In Custody  11 189 Tinku Das 20. Revisiting the Colonial Discourse: A Study of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart 198 Saurabh Debnath 21. Interrogating National Identity: A Postcolonial Study of Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions 208 Dipak Giri Notes on the Contributors 218 Index 221 Introduction Impacted by the poststructuralist and postmodernist idea of decentering, postcolonial theory that came into being as a critical theory focusing colonial experience from the perspective of the colonised at the end of the twentieth century, started to challenge the universalist claim of literature. As a theory, it equates with colonial sympathies in the canon, and substitutes the colonial metanarratives with counter-narratives of resistance, by rewriting history and affirming cultural identities through approaches such as nativism, separatism, cultural syncretism, hybridity, mimicry, active participation and assimilation. Supported by an anti-essentialist view of identity and culture, postcolonial theory critiques cultural hierarchies and the Eurocentric modernity. The major theoretical works that are done in the area of postcolonial theory are Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s In Other Worlds (1987), Bill Ashcroft’s The Empire Writes Back (1989) and Homi K Bhabha’s Nation and Narration (1990). In literature, indigenous people from late colonised and marginalised countries have found their voices to an increasing rate. They are attempting to assert their own visions, tell their own stories and reclaim their experiences and histories. If we trace back to history, we see postcolonial literature first made its appearance in Africa and soon spread out all over the continents except Antarctica, most notably Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Chinua Achebe and Nadine Gordimer set the stage of postcolonial literature. Since then it has been growing in rapid number and many writers from across the globe have started writing 14  Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice their novels, plays and collections of poetry. Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, Buchi Emecheta, Doris Lessing, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys and Derek Walcott from Africa and the Caribbean, Mulk Raj Anand, Kamala Das, Nissim Ezekiel, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamala Markandaya, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Raja Rao from South Asia, mostly Indian in origin, Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry from Canada, Peter Carey, A.D. Hope, David Malouf, Judith Wright from Australia, Keri Hulme, Alan Duff from New Zealand, Hanif Kureishi, Graham Swift, Buchi Emecheta from England and Seamus Heaney from Ireland deserve to be noted. Now the area of postcolonial literature has become so broad and ever-expanding that the task of encompassing it in an anthology has become a tough work. Still the present anthology is an endeavour from the part of authors and contributors to comprise the ever-widening area of postcolonial literature into twenty one well written chapters of different perspectives which the authors hopefully see serve the window through which the glimpses of many unexplored regions of this area of study will be caught. The very first chapter of this anthology is Shilpi Basak’s paper proposing to take the problematic issue of selfhood and diasporicity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s selected short stories. Attitude to homeland and hostland, sense of rootedness and uprootedness are dealt in detail to understand the nuances of selfhood in diasporic situation. Focus is made on the negotiations of home and host cultures which often culminate the concept of hybridity. It also shows how migrancy effects and affects identity and how the equation changes over generations. Next Rabi Kanta Roy’s paper is an attempt to show an insight of pre-and post-colonialism on Igbo community in late 19th century Nigeria as presented in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. It is argued that the interaction between the Whites and the Igbo people had both negative and positive consequences. That the Europeans greatly influenced the life style of Igbo community is evident in Achebe’s novel. Introduction  15 Jointly prepared paper of Dr. Shachi Sood and Dr. Saleem Wani that follows next shows an individual’s search for authentic selfhood which is symbolised in his desire to turn his state of unhousement into enhousement in V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas. Biswas’s desperate desire to have a house of his own is an allegorical representation of the colonial man’s desires to locate his place at a strange and alien world The painful impingement succumbed to a psyche of a man due to economical disturbances, is not to be underestimated in line with that of the traumatic experience getting out of deliberate social discriminations. The former can be sought out, if a considerable effort is practiced consistently, whereas, the later is being dumped upon with layers of interior motives by a section of people in the society. It has created an unbridgeable vacuum both in structural as well as political levels. Mahendran U’s paper The Impact of Binaries in Constituting Social Conflicts: A Reading of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is aimed at tracing down such discrimination perpetrated against the disempowered weaker section. Conspicuously, the countless attitudinal prejudices are being sustained with an ulterior impulse. The novel taken for study consists of binaries in countless perspective. However, the major three dimensions such as, political, segregative and economical will alone be elaborated because they prove to be holistic and recurring in nature. If that is carried out, it can be deducted how the binaries get shaped in the form of regulatory mechanisms of the society. Jointly prepared paper of Dr. Romina Rashid and Asma Zahoor analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus from the religious point of view. Religion from the times immemorial has been one of the major institutions influencing the lives and mindset of people in various communities. This agency has been, however, exploited by many for their own benefit. In the novel, Chimamada Ngozi Adichie has given a considerable space to the understanding of religion. She highlights varied viewpoints in which religion can be comprehended by people simultaneously giving a slice of neocolonial intervention that Britain has made in African states using religion as a tool. 16  Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice Gouri Kapoor’s paper analyses how the experience of migration influences the character development of the protagonists in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace through a focused textual analysis. In both novels, the mental unhinging of the characters occurs because they are unable to negotiate with the harsh realities they are brought in contact with due to migration. Both of them were compelled to migrate because of the men in their lives. As the migration in their case was more of a compromise than a volitional act, they crumble under the pressures of living in a cultural environment which alienates them and makes them feel like outcasts. Samiksha Sharma’s paper When the Subaltern React and Create a Space of Their Own: Re-locating Identity in Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger explores how Balram as a pivotal character, in spite of being born inferior, reacts against it and uses every means to come out of it. Through Balaram, the paper also shows Adiga’s concern over the evil face of poverty, exploitation and alienation. Conforming to the idea that novel deals with the significance of relationships and to what extent is family important in a person’s life and to what consequences a person faces when his family life is on the verge of collapse and its after effect, Shweta Verma’s paper studies Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry by taking into consideration the familial and marital discourse which occurs in the life of the protagonist and his closed ones. Jointly prepared paper of Tabish Wani and Rumana Nisar effectively highlights the social deprivation and identity issues in Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger. The paper also brings into light the deprivation of basic rights of citizens like education and health and the exploitation of people by upper hand. Ragini Kapoor’s paper makes a postcolonial ecofeminist study of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Advocating human rights of women and giving a clarion call for the destruction of gender-based injustices, the paper explores the possible ties of combating patriarchal structures of power and domination that refuses a woman’s equal claims as an individual in society. It raises Introduction  17 a voice for the protection of Canadian environment, organic living, and the deep rooted relation and bonding between nature and humans. Surabhi K.’s paper tries to address the plights and trauma of a married woman in a diasporic land in the novel Wife by Bharati Mukherjee, her journey of rootlessness and gradual assimilation in a hostland during which the life is distorted. Supriya Mandal’s paper shows how eminent postcolonial novelist Arundhati Roy in her much awaited novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness has unwrapped the military insurgency in Kashmir and in tribal area, lambasted the rise of Hindu right wing and portrayed the deprivation of Dalit and the plight of transgender and women. In doing so, she has exhibited the Euro-American imperial policy in India and tried to unmask the Indian political parties’ populism that helps them to cope with the common people. Dr. Prachi Priyanka’s paper explores how food is metaphorical as regards identity and isolation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s select stories. Dr. Brajesh Kumar Gupta’s paper discusses how Naipaul as a postcolonial writer has written about slavery, revolution, guerrillas, corrupt politicians, the poor and the oppressed, interpreting the rages so deeply rooted in our societies. Naipaul’s writing style is characterised by the use of simple yet strong words woven together in grasping narratives that reflect the dark realities of the world we live in. Naipaul very early experienced a profound alienation, both from the close-knit family life of his Brahmin ancestors and from the social and political life of his native Trinidad. Sujoy Barman’s paper, entitled “The colonialism and the Changes in the Post-Colonial World” is an attempt to find out the relation through the world, on the basis of power like economical power, power of arms and modern war weapons, cultural power etc. Every country in the world depends on the rest of the world. Some are depending to spread their commercial markets, to create a big consumer society. These are developed countries. On the other hand, the countries who are developing, they are depending over 18  Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice rest of the developed countries for their co-operations in the national progress. This is the twenty first century relation. But at the very beginning of the colonialism, the relation was different when one country dominated others especially for the economical profits, utilisation of the natural resources. As the time advanced, with economical relations, other relations were included. Then culture, religion, language became other parts of the colonialism. And there are found a lot of changes in cultural, socio-economical, political, religious changes when two or more countries come into contact with each other. Behind these changes, there are many reasons. People, from one country, accept the norms and cults of another country. When people do such imitations, there are some reasons. At the same time, there are both negative and positive results, coming from the imitation. The paper “The Colonialism and the Changes in the Post-Colonial World” is based on these critical situations of the world. It explores to find out the reasons for imitation by the people, the exact situation after the imitation, its negative or positive effects both on the imitating and imitated people. The aim of Alik Jha’s paper is to explore some novels of Margaret Atwood through the lens of Shamanic Archetype that lays bare Atwood’s attempts to break-away from male-oriented myths and archetypes and voices the genuine female experience and at the same time paves the way for the creation of new archetypes which would celebrate female identity and freedom. Rabindra Sutradhar’s article aims to explore the theme of Glocalisation in the light of postcolonial mimicry, hybridity and third space identity in Amitav Ghosh’s masterpiece and Sahitya Academy winning novel The Shadow Lines and provides examples from the novel the application of some postcolonial elements such as memory, imagination, identity, ambivalence, nationalism, space/place, worlding, Diaspora, hybridity, unbelonging etc. The title The Shadow Lines implicitly alludes to the point that there are no clear boundaries amongst people who have lived with hybrid and diasporic identities for a long time. What is more, Ghosh’s attempt to project the issue of glocalisation is hinted in the structural pattern Introduction  19 of the novel which is divided into two parts, ‘Going Away’ and ‘Coming Home’. Throughout the novel Ghosh throws light on migration, cross-border connection and relationship, cultural interaction, inter-racial marriage, double identity as both coloniser and colonised etc. Most of the characters in the novel as we observe are globe-trotters. They move in so many directions that ultimately the identity of a distinct and discrete homeland and culture become blurred and the world where no boundaries and value of border, religion, race, or caste are acknowledged becomes glocal and there would be occurrences of mimicry and hybridisation. Amrita Datta’s paper describes how Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night, an English language narrative by a young Kashmiri Muslim evokes the Kashmir’s tumultuous history as lived experiences. The narrator in the narrative cannot consciously or unconsciously able to get rid of his Kashmiri identity and culture. The paper also involves the question of inability to build up connection with so called nationalism and national identity, belonging, location, rights, citizenship, exclusion and oppression. Tinku Das’s article explores the linguistic conflict in postcolonial society through the male protagonist in Anita Desai’s In Custody. Saurabh Debnath’s paper aims to present a serious discussion regarding the colonial issues that Chinua Achebe has portrayed in Things Fall Apart, a unique piece of literary art in the world of fiction. This is Achebe’s first and perhaps best-loved novel, published in 1958 in the midst of the Nigeria’s renaissance. It focuses on Nigeria’s early experience with colonialism, from first contact with the British to widespread British administration. Dipak Giri’s paper Interrogating National Identity: A Postcolonial Study of Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions tries to explore the problem of national identity in postcolonial India. Validation and promotion of one religion at the expense of others has given birth to the problem of communalism in postcolonial India. Putting on the mask of secularism, the nation-state India in postcolonial period has held the real face back from public. India as a community taken birth in 20  Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice postcolonial era has appeared more an imagined community for Hindus than a united community for other religions. The discourse of religion has made national identity more exclusionary than inclusionary. At the centre of this discourse, Hindus stand head and shoulders above other Non-Hindus. Such rise of nation out of discursive basis of power has stirred questions to many. Many postcolonial writers have come openly to challenge this. Still the way Dattani has done this in his play Final Solutions is an achievement in itself. Along with dealing with the theme of ‘transferred resentments’ of one community against another as regards question to national identity the paper also shows how the playwright has tried to draw the possible solution to end such violence and animosity through adoption of the policy of forgetting or forgiving. Before winding up, I wish to say few words addressing to those whose aid I always seek in my life. First of all I want to thank that Omnipotent Power which is at the root of all creation. Then I want to express my special thanks and gratitude to Authorspress for bringing out such an amazing anthology. I am also thankful to my family which is guiding force to all my achievements. Finally I want to thank all my contributors only for whose valuable works this anthology has got its final shape. April, 2018 Cooch Behar, West Bengal Dipak Giri dipakgiri84@yahoo.in