Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective 1527530566, 9781527530560

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Part I. Un-Belonging through Displaced Borders
‘Women of Colour’ Feminism and Post-9/11 Ethnic Identity in the Poetic Discourse of Arab-American Women Writers • Omar Baz Radwan
War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging: Representations of Women in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns • Abin Chakraborty
18th Century Women Travel Writers: Their World, World View, and the Spirit of Adventure • Gatha Sharma
The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry of Umpierre through a Queer Lens • Gursheen Ghuman
Space, the Fifth Pillar of Feminist Literary Criticism: Militant Beach and Erotic Temple in the Seashore Narratives of Cristina Peri Rossia nd Anuradha Roy • Java Singh
Part II. Un-Belonging through the Democratic Global
Feminism in the Time of Neo-Liberal Women Empowerment: A Study of Select Indian Television/Online Advertisements • Kavya Krishna K.R.
Indo-Oriental Tantra in the West-From Knowledge to Commodity: The Recourse of a Privileged Discourse in the Popular • Ratul Ghosh
Colonial Modernity, Formation of the Nation-State and Tribal Identity: Localizing the Identity of Bonda Women in Pratibha Ray’s Adibhumi • Sarat Kumar Jena
Mapping Madness when the Moon Smiles: The Fashioning of Identity and Dis(Order) in the Female Body in Chandani Lokuge’s If the Moon Smiled • Tara Senanayake
New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: Politics of Exclusion • Juan Jose Cruz
Part III. Un-Belonging through Defiant Re-Writings
Revisting Edoa St. Vincent Millay, the Forgotten Authoress who Marked a Generation • Ana Abril Hernández
Fairy Tales and ‘Constraints of Structures’: Remapping Select Fairy Tales and Their Film Adaptations through a Feminist Lens • Eram Shaheen Ansari
From Damsels-in-Distress to Indomitable Rebels: Women on the Indian Screen • Sanghita Sen
Mahasweta Devi’s Imaginary Maps: A Critique of the Native Coloniser in Postcolonial India • Pamoda Jayaweera
Refiguring of Sita: Notes on Kumaran Asan’s Poetics of Freedom • Vipin K. Kadavath
Part IV. Un-Belonging through Defiled Bodies
Raped, Mutilated, and Murdered: Gendered Bodies from the Diaz Universe • Parichay Patra
From Connoisseurs of Art to Victims of Flesh-Trade: The ‘Other Woman’ in Shyam Benegal’s Mandi • Sarbani Barmerjee
Reading the Politics of Body through Films about the “Dirty War” in Argentina • Rarna Paul
Reclaiming the Vagina through Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and Responses in Indian Adaptations • Anum Fatima and Ariba Zainab
Reading Nidia Díaz’ Prison Diary as Embodied Matter through Karen Barad’s New Materialism • Baishali Choudhuri and Indrani Mukherjee
Contributors

Citation preview

G[NDERlD WAYS Of TRANSNATIONAL UN-B[LONGING fROM A COMFARAT1V[ lITERATUR[ PERSF[CTlV[ (OITW BY JNDRANI MUKHlRJll AND JAVA SINGH

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un -Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un -Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective Edited by

Indrani Mukherjee and Java Singh

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective Edited by Indrani Mukherjee and Java Singh This book first published 2019 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is avai lable from the British Library Copyright© 2019 by Indrani Mukherjee, Java Singh and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fonn or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior pennission ofthe copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-3056-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3056-0

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. viii Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Part I. Un-Belonging through Displaced Borders 'Women of Colour' Feminism and Post-9/11 Ethnic Identity in the Poetic Discourse of Arab-American Women Writers ............................................

2

Omar Baz Radwan War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging: Representations of Women in Khaled Hosseini's A

Thousand Splendid Suns .................... 25

Abin Chakraborty 18th Century Women Travel Writers: Their World, World View, and the Spirit of Adventure .......................................................................

37

Gatha Sharma The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry of Urnpierre through a Queer Lens ...

52

Gursheen Ghuman Space, the Fifth Pillar of Feminist Literary Criticism: Militant Beach and Erotic Temple in the Seashore Narratives of Cristina Peri Rossi and Anuradha Roy ..................................................................................... 69 Java Singh Part II. Un-Belonging through the Democratic Global Feminism in the Time of Neo-Liberal Women Empowerment: A Study of Select Indian Television/Online Advertisements .................................. 88 Kavya Krishna K.R. Indo-Oriental Tantra in the West-From Knowledge to Commodity: The Recourse of a Privileged Discourse in the Popular .......................... 106 Ratul Ghosh

vi

Contents

Colonial Modernity, Formation of the Nation-State and Tribal Identity: Localizing the Identity of Bonda Women in Pratibha Ray's Adibhumi 124 Sarat Kumar Jena ...

Mapping Madness when the Moon Smiles: The Fashioning of Identity and Dis(Order) in the Female Body in Chandani Lokuge's Ifthe Moon Smiled. 142 Tara Senanayake ..................................................................................

New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga' s The White Tiger: Politics of Exc1usion ................................................................................ 158 Juan Jose Cruz Part III. Un-Belonging through Defiant Re-Writings

Revisting Edoa St. Vincent Millay, the Forgotten Authoress who Marked a Generation ....................................................................... 176 Ana Abril Hernandez Fairy Tales and 'Constraints of Structures': Remapping Select Fairy Tales and Their Film Adaptations through a Feminist Lens .................... 190 Eram Shaheen Ansari From Damsels-in-Distress to Indomitable Rebels: Women on the Indian Screen 202 Sanghita Sen ......................................................................................................

Mahasweta Devi 's Imaginary Maps: A Critique of the Native Coloniser in Postcolonial India ................................................................................ 218 Pamoda Jayaweera Refiguring of Sita: Notes on Kumaran Asan's Poetics of Freedom ........ 226 Vipin K. Kadavath Part IV. Un-Belonging through Defiled Bodies

Raped, Mutilated, and Murdered: Gendered Bodies from the Diaz Universe................................................................................................... 242 Parichay Patra

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective

vii

From Connoisseurs of Art to Victims of Flesh-Trade: The 'Other Woman' in Shyam Benegal'sMandi ....................................................... 254 Sarbani Barmerjee Reading the Politics of Body through Films about the "Dirty War" in Argentina Rarna Paul

.............................................................................................

265

Reclaiming the Vagina through Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and Responses in Indian Adaptations ...................................................... 279 Anum Fatima and Ariba Zainab Reading Nidia Diaz' Prison Diary as Embodied Matter through Karen Barad's New Materialism ............................................................. 292 Baishali Choudhuri and Indrani Mukherjee Contributors ............................................................................................. 307

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Prof. Prasenjit Sen, Rector, JNU and Coordinator of the university research grant under the project UPE-II (University with Potential of Excellence-II), which made it possible for us to organize a Young Scholars' Conference on Gendered Myths of Conflict and Un­ belonging from August 2-3, 2016. Most of the papers included are revised versions of the conference presentations. Some were later additions from colleagues and scholars across the globe in response to the circulation of the Call for Papers. We would also like to thank Ms. Victoria Carruthers of the Cambridge Scholars Publishing who saw in our programme the potential of this book and offered to publish it. We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to Theo Moxham, Hannah Fletcher, Adam Runnnens, and the whole team of the CSP for their support. Finally, we thank all the reviewers and copy editors of these papers.

PREFACE

This book, as the title suggests, is about 'gendered ways of trans-national un-belonging from a comparative literature perspective'. Globalization and neoliberal polities have led to increasing numbers of people from all over the world to transit south to north/east-west finance-scapes of inland or international territories. At the same time, battles today are being fought not only on the borders between nations, ethnicities or c1ass-caste-race paradigms but also on a whole set of new frontiers such as issues of legitimacy, sexuality, trauma, and terrorism amidst widening spaces of law-and-orderly societies. The 'transnational' thus is not restricted to Ull­ belonging(s) related just to travel, immigration, and exile across nations, but also plays out through multipolar crevices of gendered identities, spatialities, and chronologies within 'nations'. It addresses 'gendered' as a site of precarity, alterity, fluidity, lesser, disadvantaged or dispossessed though, often, enabling and agency provoking. Most of the authors of this book are research scholars and/or faculty members of reputed universities from India and abroad who were participants at a Young Scholars' Conference on Gendered Myths of Conflict and Un-Belonr;inr; from a Comparative Literature Perspective (Under Project - University with Potential of Excellence -- II or the UPE­ II, Project ill 10, JNU), held from August 2-3, 2016. We, thereafter, also invited some other scholars and faculty members from other institutions to write for this volume. All the papers have been double peer reviewed by a distinguished scientific committee. The conference was a call to explore gendered myths of conflict and un-belonging against patriarchal tropes, social hierarchies, and misogyny. However, when we received all the papers, we found that they were actually addressing the processes involved in such alienation and struggle rather than just interpreting myths as such. Un-belonging in idioms of political and socio-economic memories encounter certain slippages that disturb language, geography, and history as habit making a push towards translation and comparitivism. Generally, these papers track spaces/times of real/ghost-like hybridity in such ways that any comparativist is forced to overcome issues of passive equivalence or sameness to propose, instead, a reification of the political and the personal, thus widening the scope of the study. Consequently there is a heightened sense of multi-layered and

Preface

x

rhizomic intersections of different kinds of gender related violence at play, un-weaving thereby predictable epistemologies. This new and rough un­ weaving, cuts across fixed paradigms of institutionalized gender designs on one hand and deconstructs and problematizes said fixed paradigms on the other. Thus questions of global and local transnationalism in our book address

how

the

authors

work

either

through

representations

or

perfOlmatives of their O\Vll geo-political location or often through those of foreign ones but, always sited in spaces of translocation, transit, and the transnational from where they can see both sides. The unique feature of this book rests on this aspect of the authors' locations, thus framing texts from a comparative literature and transnational perspective in this sense. The authors in this volume are unique in their double operation as they iteratively appropriate, reject, and hybridize hegemonic epistemologies. The double bind of the writers modifies the theoretical approaches they use. Thus, the book not only provides a reading lens but also adjusts its focal length to cast light differentially from other books with seemingly comparable headings. Hence the title of the book is justified as they explore and expunge the idea of 'gendered ways of transnational un­ belonging from a comparative perspective'. The papers are arranged in four sections: Un-belonging through displaced borders, the democratic global, defiant re-writings, and defiled bodies. In the first section, Un-belonging through Displaced Borders, all the

five

papers/authors track shifting borders across nations, within

nations, without nations or through the transnational. Omar Baz Radwan writes about the works of two Arab-American women poets, Laila Halaby's poem 'rage' and Angele Ellis's' 'The Blue State

Ghazals'.

They

resist

subtle

and

insensitive

ways

of

racial

discrimination, in order to expose the hegemonic discourse of the post

9111

situation and puncture stereotyped images of the Orientalist Arab and

the Christian American. Their poetry negotiates shifting borders of their 0\Vll citizen status, of Americans and Arabs in the Iraq war, of fear and rage of imposed patriotism, etc. 'What we see at play here are borders without and within nationslimages/consciousness. Abin

Chakraborty's

Hosseini's

paper

takes

A Thousand Splendid Suns,

us

to

Afghanistan,

in

Khaled

where women were caught in a

double contradiction. While they mourn those who were killed as a result of fighting against the Russians, they are pushed back into the regressive regime of the US supported Taliban. 'Can the white man save the brown woman from the bro\Vll man?' becomes a transnational matter.

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective

xi

Gatha Sharma explores two travel writings, Lady Montagu's and Mary Wollstonecraft's. Women travelling and writing in the

18th

century, when

any venture into the public sphere was considered as 'intrusion', was a very rare case of breach. But they break another border too, that is in spite of the orientalist gaze, Lady Montagu finds the harem as a safe personal space for women, very much wanting in the European world; while Mary Wollstonecraft is fierce in her criticism of Europe's lust for wealth and slavery. The Euro-centric borders become tainted with contradictions. Gursheen Ghuman's paper argues how the poetry of Luz Maria Umpierre locates the queer in trans-locations of a 'Third' space, which becomes the voice of rebellion. It negotiates realms of the personal and the public with respect to one's sexuality, in telTIlS of bodies in exile within heteronormative

knowledge

systems.

The

borders

tbat

her

poetry

drawslbreaks are fluid and unstable as they adventure with alternative cartographies of bodies and spaces, thus destabilizing the given-ness of dominant narratives of hierarchies, nOlTIlativity, and know ledges. Java Singh positions 'space' as a fulcrum to weigh in on selected writings of Cristina Peri Rossi and Anuradha Roy. The paper's theoretical approach, built upon the axioms of Elaine Showalter and Mikhail Bakhtin, concentrates on the portrayal of the seashore. Peri Rossi, with two nationalities - Spanish and Uruguayan, is always conscious of her location at tbe borders and Roy's narrative starts witb the tragic fallouts of the creation of a new nation. Singh analyses the play of the antithetical Bakhtinian chronotopes of tbreshold and tbe Gothic castle in tbe texts of these writers. The emergence of a common literary technique of the writers suggests a gendered alignment tbrough un-belonging across nations. The authors/papers in the second part sit on the edges of the global and the local to examine the breaks in globally mandated circuits tbat on tbe one hand, seek new products and new markets and on the other, exclude groups that do not confolTIl to their economic agenda.

In

these circuits,

imprinted with democratic codes, a movement from the margins to the centre, such as from an economically less developed country to an advanced one or of the centre to the margin, such as the imposition of dominant national paradigms on tribal populations, signifies progress. The papers in this section contest the notion of 'progress'. Kavya Krishna K.R. attempts to understand, tbrough advertisements, the paradoxical reconciliation of diametrically opposed cultural logic of feminism and of global capitalism. The paper analyses selected advertisements that were widely discussed and shared on social media for their apparent 'feminist' stand point. The "Top Girls" in these advertisements symbolise the gender-sensitive attitude to women empowerment of profit seeking

xii

Preface

corporate entities. However, her analysis reveals that the advertisements, as mouth pieces of global capitalism, merely appropriate the vocabulary of feminism without any attempt to address its politics. Ratul Ghosh traces the processes that have framed Indian tantra as a transnational cultural commodity. His paper explains that through the scholarship of numerous religious and philosophic scholars, by the first half of the 20th century, tantra had been established as an emancipatory discourse to Western materialism by explicating it as a quasi-scientific body of knowledge. Subsequently, celluloid, media, and digital channels were deployed for marketing sexual pleasure as a commodity. Ghosh explores how, in this strategy, the consumer becomes a student in the class of esotericism offered by the global culture industry. Sarat Kumar Jena gleans the renmants of coloniality in the construct of modernity foisted by the centre on the periphery. The misrepresentation of indigenous societies does not end when the colonial elite are jettisoned from power structures. The exclusionary democratic systems adopted by the decolonised nation-state institute a local elite who further perpetrate the misrepresentation. Jena's reading of Pratibha Ray's

(Adibhumi)

The Primal Land

reveals that Ray's construction of the sexuality of Bonda

women propagates a

reductive collective

identity of the indigenous

community and the translation of the text in English broadcasts the hegemonic representation of the Bonda to a global readership. The last two papers in Part II are commentaries on diasporic writings from Australia. Tara Senanayake views the Sri Lankan-Australian writer, Chandani Lokuge's

If the Moon Smiled

as a contributory element in the

invention of migrant identities and the creation of diasporic hybridity. The convergences between postcolonial and feminist approaches, whereby both formulations attempt a defence of the marginalised other, are brought to bear on the 'mapping' of the protagonist's body and mind. The paper considers the question whether the protagonist's eventual "madness" and transgression of sexual taboos are emancipatory or whether they confilTIl that the migrant woman's sub-altern condition remains unchanged as she moves from a traditional, less developed country to a modem, economically advanced society. Juan Jose Cruz studies the enumeration of the inevitable human toll of economic growth in

The White Tiger,

by Aravind Adiga -- the Indo­

Australian, Man Booker winner (2008). The epistolary form of the novel establishes a direct trans-national communication between a politically invisible Indian picaro and a global political leader. The letters foreground the struggles of the underclass as it contests the centrality of the oligarchs. The gleaming veneer of modernity espoused by multi-national corporations

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective

xiii

barely conceals the mercenary criminality upon which it is superimposed. Jose Cruz focuses on the 'new middle-class' portrayed in the novel to divulge that despite its "newness" it perpetuates the dominance of traditionally hegemonic groups. Part three, 'Un-belonging through Defiant Rewritings', comprises papers whose authors consciously choose, address or read through textual memories of generic and/or traditional tales, to re/de-construct different kinds of comparitivisms of gendered identities navigating global spaces. Ana Abril Hernandez, explores a poem 'The Penitent' from Vincent Millay's A

Few Figsfrom Thistles (1920) against its graphic adaptation in Graphic Canon Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (2013). She argues how an evolving and embodied subject of the

the poem struggles through her public/personal anxieties appertaining to her desires of freedom and equality from within a stifling patriarchal set­ up. The graphic rendition of the poem, however, sounds more self­ indulgent and less stressful as she seems to bear no regrets about her sexual adventures nor of her domesticated spaces. Eram Shaheen Ansari begins by noting that fairy tales perpetuate gender roles and that Walt Disney renditions reinstate such hierarchies as they infantilise issues of sexuality and gender. The female subject has no agency as she is docile and demure waiting for redemption by a 'noble prince'. She contrasts these with their recent adaptations that engage in critically undoing the patriarchal order through feminist stances. Likewise, Sanghita Sen addresses how most Indian films end up replicating prescribed gender stereotypes; yet some actually do argue in favour of women's agency, in spite of predatory masculine set-ups. Such set-ups exist not just on-screen but also off-screen, such as the censor board, community vigilante groups or even unfair courts. She analyses two films of the parallel cinema:

Bhawandar,

Mirch Masala,

set in colonial times and

the account of a rape in rural India, retold by an American

Indian. Thus filmic retellings of fictional or real stories record forbidden tales through transnational modes. Pamoda Jayaweera, a Sri Lankan herself, chooses to work with Mahasweta Devi's text

Imaginary Maps

to explore questions of un­

belonging in the Indian nation-state. Jayaweera mediates between concepts of the nation as a homogenous or plural entity through different critical discourse and submits Devi's texts to a post-colonial reading in order to articulate subaltern un-belonging. The indigenous are excluded in the progr amme of the nation-state through slavery, prostitution, and 'non­ information' in ways that sanitize neo-colonial drives as the national prescription.

xiv

Preface

'While there have been many retellings of Sita in the epic

Ramayana,

mostly framed within the nationalist bourgeoisie ideals of femininity, Vipin K. Kadavath dwells on Kumaran Asan's poem,

Sita

Chinthavishtayaya

to address how the national icon is given agency by locating her in a

prohibited dialogic zone of introspection. Sita is re-imagined as a thinking subject who can see through all the injustices she has suffered and who thereafter decides never to return to the palace of Rama. Part four is the climaxing of all ways of un-belonging to the materiality of the body. Lav Diaz' cinematic space is filled with women's bodies of the violently raped and mutilated, dead or the survived who transit through the purgatory trans-spaces across and beyond his films. It connects intertextually with sound tracks of whiplashes in the films of Pere Portabella, with a distraught lone woman in the work of Ritwick Ghatak and with Bufiuel's repertoire. It also intersects with Dostoevsky, Glauber Rocha, Jose Rizal, and the biblical characters of Mary Magdalene among many others. Parichay Patra argues that eventually only cinema remains as it consumes the world it sets out to inspect. Un-belonging of bodies spills over into all spaces without borders so that what remains is only the sound and light. In contrast to disappearing and spilled over bodies, Shyam Benegal's

Mandi

is a film full of women who practice their art of courtesan culture

but refuse to sell their bodies as prostitutes. Sarbani Banerjee argues how the market pulls everything towards itself as it commodifies women's bodies like

any

other

object.

The

women

craft

their

resistance

to

commodification, by seeking recourse to traditions of familial bonds among the brothel women as well as to the courtesan role - a combination of artful (re )presentation and sex work, they perform for their customers. Rama Paul's paper dwells on bodies that write back as inscriptions and that are located in Argentina's 'Dirty War'. Dead and disappeared bodies are spread all over the nation. But the living ones of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo silently mourn the 'disappeared' before the international gaze. As bodies are tortured, defiled, and mutilated, they become embodied markers of history and containers of knowledge. Yet, these bodies are denied the role of knowledge makers. The paper examines three films in this context

The Night of the Pencils Death and the Maiden (1994)

of violated bodies as knowledge makers/markers.

(1986), Imagining Argentina (2003),

and

show how the body foregrounds itself in repressive regimes on which a counter-narrative of resistance is played out. 'While this essay in no way refutes the violence suffered by men during such oppressive and violent regimes, its scope is restricted to the female body.

Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective Anum Fatima and Ariba Zainab look at

xv

The Vagina Monologues

and

its Indian adaptations. In patriarchal systems, the woman's body is reduced only to its reproductive and sexual organs. The paper interprets the transition of the body from a mere reproductive organ to a sexual one as effected in

The Vagina Monologues.

Though intended as a monologue, the

paper argues that the play is actually a dialogic narrative between the woman and the prohibited zone of her

0\Vll

pleasures and desires. It is

about her reckoning with its being cast as 'ugly' and 'dirty'. The writers subsequently examine cultural and linguistic challenges of reproducing the play for Indian audiences. The Indian production had to negotiate through different local societal taboos. It also had to encounter the conservative and regressive forces of the traditionalists. Yet the play became a huge success as the 'vagina' exposed the histories of violence on, and pleasures of, women's bodies. The last paper in this book reads Nidia Diaz' prison memoir through Karen Barad's concept of new materialism, focusing on the indivisibility of matter and meaning or that of the body and the mind. Nidia Diaz' prison

memoir

was

written

twenty

years

after

she

actually

faced

imprisonment and torture. Choudhuri and Mukherjee show that the memoir is an embodied narrative and materially agency laden as Diaz vividly recollects the events of torture and humiliation that she and her comrades faced. The body that was written upon, actively 'writes back' as it

rejects any kind of confOlmity or submission. The memoir is a

perfOlmative so that it recodes and reprocesses itself to defy and subvert any matters of societal or generic habit of language as a mere ritual of representation. Entangled performativity of the body and the memoir expose how representation has been reduced to a mere ritualistic habit of the mind and a semiotic of body movements. Thus gendered subjects in

the

selected

texts face

displacement,

discrimination, defilement and/or death due to forced exile or immigration to vile spaces such as distant lands, prisons, and brothels or due to compulsive breakaways from familiar ensconced spaces of home and domesticity. At the same time, all the authors (of papers) conscientiously take a threshold position as they plough through their chosen texts that negotiate across either historical, fictional, and/or mythical time-space­ materialities, so that a trans-national gendered perspective of un-belonging is further reiterated. It is this un-belonging that is like a double bind, result of the texts consciously chosen and the threshold position consciously taken by the authors, towards a new etiquette of empathy with the dislocated and the dispossessed. They labour from the outside of any national

literature

and are

critical of any

patronising paradigms of

xvi

Preface

prescribed/approved theoretical templates infolTIled by a new geo-politics of knowledge. The threshold positioning of the texts and the authors disrupts the epistemological order as they resist stereotypes of exiled and/or diasporic subjects, of hybrid or queer identities, of fixed textualities and often simply of an imagined self and the other. Spatio-temporal­ material borders of nostalgia, aspirations and immediate realities are reconfigured in very unique ways as sites of struggle that enable a different kind of actionable thinking aimed at delinking and decolonization. Such borders are also infolTIled by gender troubles so that masculinity and femininity are articulated as fluid, variegated, and unstable. The papers are now presented before you for your approval.

PART I. UN-BELONGING THROUGH DISPLACED BORDERS

'WOMEN OF COLOUR' FEMINISM AND POST-9f11 ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE POETIC DISCOURSE OF ARAB­ AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS OMAR BAZ RADWAN

Abstract Resistance to the appropriation of Arab women's bodies and cultural roles has been a cornerstone of Arab-American feminisms over the last three l decades. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the need to "write or be written" has assumed a greater urgency, with the rise of anti-Arab bigotry, the sweeping deployment of neo-Orientalist narratives of Arabs and Muslims in the service of U.S. foreign policy, and the sanctioning of racial and religious profiling vis-a-vis the Patriot Act. Arab-American poet Nathalie Handal writes, "'Who are you, if you answer and

others

still find it

necessary to redefine your identity without your permission? [ ... J How do you

define yourself when you're hyphenated, or maybe even bi­ 2 hyphenated, when you exist in the incessantness of in-betweenesses?" In

this article, I will analyse, using literary imagology as a methodological approach, the identity politics within rubrics of intersectional/transnational feminist discourse in the identity construction and ensuing mental images evident in the post-91l 1 poetic discourse of two contemporary Arab­ American poets, namely Laila Halaby's poem "rage" and Angele Ellis's' "The Blue State Ghazals".

1 . "Write or be -..vritten" forms one of the guiding principles of the Italian American Writers Association, as Barbara Nimri Aziz notes in the foreword to Scheherazade 's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing. It is a principle, Aziz argues, that has informed the proliferation of new works by Arab­ American writers, xii. 2. Nathalie Handal, ed., The Poetry ofArab women: A Contemporary Anthology (New York and Northampton: Interlink Books, 2001), 158.

Omar Baz Radwan

Key Terms:

Intersectional/Transnational

feminism,

3

Arab-Americans,

American ethnic literature, imagology, political poetry.

Arab-American women speaking out, \Vfiting, and mobilizing in resistance to American hegemonic cultural and political discourses, whether they are neo-colonialist, nationalist, heteropatriarchal, or indeed, feminist, is not a 3 recent phenomenon, a flowering in the aftemmth of the 9/1 1 attacks. Arab-American feminists have long understood that gender oppression carmot be divorced from other fOlTIlS of oppression or, more pointedly, that

cannot [emphasis in original] work without the collaboration of other systems of power and oppression."4 The need to

"an oppressive gender system

identify and investigate intersecting oppressions has also been at the heart of women-of-colour-feminism and many Arab-American feminists have claimed feminism of colour as their political and spiritual home. \¥hen U.S. governments use the 'plight' of Arab and Muslim women to generate support for war, when Arab nationalist leaders revoke women's freedoms in the name of 'cultural authenticity', when the mainstream women's movement takes it upon itself to voice the struggles of their Arab sisters, the bounding of gender struggle with racial, colonial, and national oppressions is clear. Strategies of resistance, then, for Arab-American feminists over the last two decades have predominantly been articulated within intersectional and transnational feminist frameworks. A transnational feminist vision prioritizes heterogeneous voices and experiences and the 5 "hybrid culture of all communities". This paper will examine how Arab­ American feminists have sought to re-envision Arab-American identity through intersectional and transnational feminist frameworks and will explore some of the struggles encountered in trying to move away from identity politics to a conception of identity as hybrid, plural, shifting, and continually negotiated. This analysis will then inform an imagological

3 . As Amira Iannakani notes, "Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, Arab American [sic] feminism has been portrayed and perceived, from a mainstream perspective, as suddenly relevant or newly forming," 231. 4 . Rebecca Aanerud, "Thinking Again: This Bridge Called my Back and the Challenge to "Whiteness," in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, eds. G. Anzaldua and A. Keating (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 70. 5. Ella Shohat, ed., Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press and New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998), 56.

4

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9f11 Ethnic Identity

reading of post-9/11 identity construction in the selected literary texts by Arab-American women poets. Using imago10gy as a literary tool, I will analyse the works of two contemporary Arab-American poets namely Layla Halaby's poem "rage" and Angele Ellis's "The Blue State Ghazals." Building on imagological constructions

of

cultural

hetero-images

as

well

as

auto-images and

feminist studies theories, this article addresses cultural representations of Arab-Americans evident in the subjective textual negotiations presented in the relevant literary discourse.

Feminism and the Poetry of Arab-American Women: Double Marginalisation The terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ramifications for Arab­ Americans

on

a

discursive,

experiential,

and

psychic

level

had

an

immediate and far-reaching impact on the cultural production of Arab­ American women's poetry. The writing of personal and cultural identities for Arab-American poets has always been inextricably shaped by politics. According to Arab-American poet and critic Hayan Charara, "engagement with the political, especially in terms of U.S. policy in the Middle East, seems to bring Arab Americans [sic] together more than any other 6 experience." Imagologist Joep Leerssen defines collective identities as "the awareness of a shared past [ ... ]. Historical awareness is at the very root of group identity."7 The shared historical awareness of the role of U.S.

foreign

policy

in

fomenting

crises

in

the

Middle

East

and

representing the Arab peoples as an alien 'other' to further political ends has been deeply felt in the poetry of Arab-American women; indeed, the political nature of identity has been a recurring theme since the emergence of Anglophone poetry by women poets in the 1960s. The events of 9111 brought home a culture of mistrust, intimidation, and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims on a scale never before witnessed in American society, spurring Arab-American women poets to become more daring and more direct in resisting through the written and spoken word. Challenging stereotypes of Arab women and men in American cultural and political discourse and highlighting the intercOlmectedness of sexism

6. Hayan Charara, ed., Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poefry (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2008), xxiv. 7. Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, eds., Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey (Amsterdam and New York: Rodop;, 2007), 336.

Ornar Baz Radwan

5

and racism that inform them has been a central preoccupation of Arab­ American women poets. The poetry both deconstructs and transfOlTIlS cultural

representations

of

the

Arab

community

through

diverse

stratagems, so that resisting is never simply a defensive or defiant stance but an opportunity to reclaim agency through asking larger questions of American society and etlmic identity. The need to find a space of belonging in a culture that marginalises them or seeks to assimilate them has seen Arab-American women poets chart a history of rebellions and accommodations vis-a-vis American and Arab culture. An over-looked aspect

of this work is the humour, sarcasm, and irony

commonly

employed to ridicule mainstream visions of Arab women and men. Feminism of colour intersectional theory becomes instructive for the reading of Arab-American women's poetry precisely because resistance to oppression is on multiple fronts, an oppositional stance that defies attempts to posit a unique Arab or Arab-American identity and argues for a multiplicity of readings. Indeed, Barbara Nimri Aziz, writing in charged that "we

[Arab-American writers]

2004,

expose little of the

real

conflicts we face [ ... ] I doubt if we can really advance without openly confronting the ills that afflict us, the barriers that confront us, internal and external. We are the opposite of the angry young artist at this point in our 8 joumey." 'While it remains true that Arab-American women poets, as

citizens

of the United States, have emphasised external prejudices and

injustice in their work over exploration of intra-communal matters, a number of contemporary poets are challenging essentializing definitions of Arab womanhood and Arab masculinity emanating from both private (intra-communal)

and

public

(Islarnist-nationalist)

discourses,

often

contextualizing these discourses through a relational examination of neo­ colonial and neo-Orientalist discourses.

Women of colour consciousness: "write or be written"

Laila Hamby: rage. In the poem "rage" from her poetry collection My Name on His Tongue (2012), Laila Halaby emphasises the outsider status of

the

Arab-American

in mainstream

American society

through

an

unflinching dissection of liberal multiculturalism. The speaker-poet projects a particular feminist reading of liberal multiculturalism onto the white middle-class mother, which is underpinned by the logic of obliviousness.

8. Nirnri Aziz, "Foreword," Scheherazade 's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing, ed. Susan M. Darraj (Westport CT: Praeger, 2004), (xv).

6

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9f11 Ethnic Identity

'While the thematic scope and various poetic voices found in Halaby's debut collection, together with her frequent recourse to homeland nostalgia, belie attempts to situate her as a protest poet in the vein of African­ American feminists Audre Lorde and June Jordan, her condemnation of U.S.-led wars in the Middle East and the Israeli occupation of Palestine are connnonly infused with the palpable anger and call to action of black protest poetry. "[R ]age" employs a first-person embodied experiential approach (Dowdy) in the unfolding of the exchange between the speaker­ poet and the liberal mother; yet, there is a concomitant strain of embodied authoritative agency in the strategy of resistance the poem undertakes, so that the text can be understood as a confrontational poem "challeng[ing] [ ... ] readers to act and to redefine their consciousnesses."9 I will argue that this challenge is directed at white liberal female readers, calling on them to recognise that their efforts at multicultural solidarity are embedded within an ethnocentric mind-set. Arab-American identity is primarily affirmed through negation, of what one is not: the hetero-image of the liberal American mother whose culture and values are white. Bell hooks has argued that whiteness as an etlmicity has not been prioritised in academic and cultural production: "In far too much contemporary writing [ ... ] race is always an issue of Otherness that is not white. ,,10 Halaby's resistance turns the mirror onto white women through what Renae Moore Bredin has termed "guerrilla ethnography". Halaby delegitimises the "white" concerns of the liberal mother's anti-war position by situating them within the hierarchies of power that inform them. A guerrilla ethnographic portrait of the liberal mother is consolidated through her

0\Vll

speech, which lays bare her true

misgivings about the war, and through the speaker-poet's construction of her whiteness in the accretion of imagotypes. "[R]age" is sub-titled: "the Iraq war, day

6", immediately

contextualizing

the rage within the post-9f11 Arab-American experience. The inclusion of "day

6",

a war in its infancy, speaks to all the horror that is still to come

and marks this day as being of particular significance in the speaker-poet's relational experience of the war. "[R]age" opens with the speaking "I" denouncing the war and registering her

0\Vll

powerlessness to affect

change:

9. Michael Dowdy, American Political Poetry in the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 27. 10. As quoted in Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postrnodern World," in Genders 10 (1991): 22.

Omar Baz Radwan

7

I am angry at everyone for not doing enough to stop this I am munb with fear and sadness for everyone involvedll The speaker-poet inculpates Western society as a whole for its failings "to stop this" and her empathy crosses cultural and psychic borders; the repetition of "everyone" would appear to signal that her "fear and sadness" is directed botli at the Iraqi people and the American soldiers compelled to perform tlieir duty.

mostly I am impotent which is why this safe school for little children is a blessing where people say how are you? and mostly mean it the Brazilian teacher leans outside, smiles you guys okay? my rage quiets throughout the sweet morning filled with giggles digging and singing crackers and popsicles stories and cuddles12 The public reahn of "school" is domesticated in its signification as a "safe" space, a "blessing", where the speaker poet's impotence, her knowledge that there is nothing one can meaningfully do in the face of war, is assuaged by the innocence and simplicity of childhood, "digging and singing

I

crackers and popsic1es

I

stories and cuddles". The speaker-poet

11. Laila Halaby, "rage," in My Name on His Tongue (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012), 97. 12. Ibid., 97-98.

8

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9f11 Ethnic Identity

infers that children and the spaces in which they reside bring out the best in

I how are you? I and mostly "how are you?" goes beyond a surface

people, or tbeir best/aces, "where people say mean it". The polite greeting

reading to a "mostly" sympathetic recognition of the speaker poet's Arab ethnicity and hence, engagement with the war, which is reflected in the Brazilian teacher's

"you guys okay?"

It is

significant that tbe one

unquestioned act of solidarity in the poem comes from a fellow person of colour. As such, for Halaby, genuine inclusion and communion for Arab­ Americans is embodied in transnational affiliations understood in the shared struggle of racial injustice by global racialised subjects. It is "tbe sweet morning

I

filled with giggles" that helps tbe narrator's anger to

subside, but it is the plight of children "over there" that makes tbe narrator finally snap and direct her feelings of impotence at a tangible target. The sanctuary of children's spaces wherein war "is all but forgotten"13 is shattered when tbe political infiltrates the domestic sphere:

we are headed to the car and I am ambushed not by a right-wing pro-war evangelical Christian parent who questions my nationality worries about om connections but by a well-traveled liberal mother who stops me puts her hand on my ann as you would to someone who is grieving and quivers I'm outrageJ14 The interplay of hetero-images at work here posits a binary demarcation of white America along socio-political lines, the conservative mind-set with its extemalised prejudices and fears of a multicultural society and a liberal anti-war anti-racist consciousness, righteous in its pro-multicultural enlightenment. The succession of tropes in the creation of the conservative parent imagotype ("right-wing," "pro-war," "evangelical Christian") is

1 3 . Ibid., 98. 14. Ibid., 98.

Omar Baz Radwan

9

mirrored in the imagined profiling of the speaker poet, whose "nationality" and "connections" speak to a neo-Orientalist portrait of the anti-American, Muslim/Arab fanatic, an ethnotype that reached new levels of hysteria after 9/11. The imagined conservative parent performs a surface alterity: Muslim/Arab culture as inimical to the democratic values of Christian America begets an inability to recognise the speaker-poet as a fellow American. 'While the conservative parent carmot see past difference, the liberal mother refuses to acknowledge difference at all. The trope of the "well-traveled / liberal mother" connotes a middle-class status and feminist areas of concern related to this status, in this instance, freedom of movement. The liberal mother's conspicuous solidarity is imbued with theatricality and

self-aggrandisement ("puts

her hand on my arm / as you

would / to someone who is grieving / and quivers") in contrast to the Brazilian teacher's easy exchange of sympatby

("you guys okay?"),

a

disparity further emphasised in tbe liberal mother's self-focused opening salvo:

"I 'm outraged".

The liberal mother never asks tbe speaker-poet

how she is feeling; she presumes their narratives are one and the same because of their shared opposition to the war:

then tells me about the gommet dillllers she arranges with fellow liberals to discuss her disgust

I need like-mindedpeople what an awfol, sickening, grotesque display . though I see her anger is genuine perhaps a reflection of my O\Vll her designer words make me want to spit15 The

imagotype

of

tbe

middle-class

liberal American

mother

is

consolidated through tbe tropes of "gourmet dinners" and "designer words". Her utter failure to comprehend the realities of war - starvation, homelessness, displacement, death - render her oblivious to the

grotesque display"

"sickening,

of discussing "her disgust" with "fellow liberals" at tbe

dinner parties she organises. The inclusion of "grotesque" is significant here as it connotes an image of the liberal mother as wearing a mask of

15. Ibid., 98-99.

10

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9111 Ethnic Identity

solidarity that is comically misshapen, a guerrilla ethnographic caricature holding a mirror to the ugly fayade of white liberal empatby. The liberal mother assimilates the speaker-poet within this dinner party grotesquerie when she says, "I need like-minded people , eschewing racial differences in favour of class solidarity. The speaker-poet recognises that the liberal mother's anger at the Iraq War is "genuine / perhaps a reflection of my O\vn" but it is the incongruity of her "designer words" that "makes me want to spit". However, the perception that their anger may come from the same place is quickly dispelled in the ensuing stanzas: "

bmlClles of toddlers climb the wooden equipment in front of us she points and shakes righteously these children she says and you can see she is struggling with her own fury

these children will not be able to travel her words have fmmd the keyhole to my locked-up anger which is purple in color red in vohune

childrenjust like these won't be able to live! shouts my voice in puce16

The unmasking of the liberal mother's true concerns about the war speaks to the consumerist drive at the heart of a neo-liberal society and of the attendant divide between the preoccupations of fIrst world and third world feminists. The individualist ethos lUlderpinning the auto-image of American identity prioritises choice, the agency one has over one's property and capital. For liberal feminists, this choice manifests in the pre­ eminence of agency over one's body. The universalizing principles of mainstream liberal feminism are enacted from a place of privilege: resistance COnfOlTIlS to the priorities and interests of the white middle-class woman, an ethnocentric ideology that ultimately supports the social order.

16. Ibid., 99.

Omar Baz Radwan

11

According to Leti Volpp, the motivations behind Western women's focus on specific gender-oppressive practices in the Third World may be ultimately self-directed, a projection of "what one fears for oneself'Y In this instance, the "well-traveled" liberal mother's "fury" about the war does not even stretch to women or children "over there"; her fury chiefly relates to the acquisitive (object-oriented) effects it will have on middle­ class Americans ("these children will / not be able to traver). It is this willfully self-serving reading of the war that finally ignites the speaker poet's "locked-up anger". The liberal mother's gravest transgression is to make middle-class American children the victims of war. She subsumes the speaker poet within this class-based consciousness of war ("these children"), absorbing ethnic differences in the service of Western consumerist interests. The speaker-poet who, up until this point, has been denied an opportunity to enter the dialogue, breaks the semblance of a maternal class-based solidarity by re-orienting the narrative back to those children who are actually suffering, assimilating the differences between "our children" and "theirs": "children just like these ! won 't be able to live /" Young children make sense of the world and explore their surroundings through play ("bundles of toddlers ! climb the wooden equipment / in front of us"), a commonality of innocence that transcends boundaries of class, race or nationality. The rage in this poem is compelled by a transnational maternal gaze that comprehends war as both the literal destruction of children and the decimation of childhood innocence. The speaker-poet is deined agency by the liberal mother (she is never once asked about her views on the war) because of the liberal mother's assumption that their anti-war consciousness is emanating from the same white middle-class consciousness. The liberal mother "points and shakes righteously", adding another layer to the guerrilla ethnographic portrait: the preachy middle-class feminist loud in her denunciation of U.S. foreign policy, deaf to the voices of Others. The assimilatory principle of a multicultural logic whereby a celebration of difference elides the systemic inequalities that continue to oppress the Other comes to the fore in this poem and points to the way in which the silencing of Arab and Arab­ American voices can operate on multiple levels. The speaker-poet reaffilTIls her agency by decentering the liberal mother's narrative, transfolTIling it from a middle-class consumerist consciousness to a transnational, Other-directed consciousness. The final stanzas consolidate the hypocrisy at work in the liberal mother's anti-war stance: 17. Leti Volpp, "Feminism versus Multiculturalism," Columbia Law Review 1 0 1 .5 (2001): 1 1 8 1 - 1 2 1 8 . JSTOR, accessed Decernber 1 1 , 2012, urI: http:// wwwjstor.org/stableI1 123774.

12

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9111 Ethnic Identity decormn broken I carry my three-year-old to safety away from my unfolded fury away from abstract visions of war and destruction away from liberal mothers and their intellectual outrage financed by working husbands American dollars and discussed over white china plates ofmarinated kebob18 The once "safe school / for little children" is no longer a "blessing", a

maternal-domestic sphere in which rage is dissipated by "giggles" 19 The liberal mother's cognitive dissonance towards Other children who have no safe havens has disrupted any tranquility that childliood spaces can bring to the speaker-poet and so "[she carries] her tbree-year-old

I

to safety",

away from tbis now-politicised space, "away from [her] unfolded fury". The code of polite middle-class society - conforming to the status quo has also been shattered ("decorum broken"). Halaby tums the tables on tbe dominant culture by creating a portrait of the middle-class liberal mother that renders her botb hypervisible and invisible (objectified tbrough a series of hetero-images: "well-traveled", "goUlTIlet dinners", "designer words", "intellectual outrage", "working husbands", "American dollars", "white china plates

I

of marinated kebob"). Liberal multiculturalism for

Halaby becomes a vehicle through which white people can feel better about themselves and their actions in the world. The embracing of ethnic food, gentrified communities, "intellectual outrage" towards the war, and solidarity with those affected, engenders a smug superiority, acting as a foil for the imperialist intent behind the invasion of a country "financed by

I

working husbands

I American dollars".

The potential for a multiplicity of

identifications with the Iraq War are erased in an act of Westem appropriation,

1 8. Halaby, "rage," 99-100. 19. Ibid., 97.

Omar Baz Radwan

13

what the speaker-poet identifies as "abstract I visions of war I and destruction". However, the speaker-poet's agency will not be erased; she refuses to buy into the logic of multicultural harmony and affirms her place of belonging is with the ethnic Other and "away from liberal mothers". The speaker-poet uses the language of the oppressor culture to operate in the service of the oppressed; the liberal mother's own words indict her and, together with the accretion of hetero-images put forward by the speaker-poet, hold up a scathing mirror to a white liberal female audience. Halaby's wounded mother contrasts sharply with the maternal identity of Angele Ellis's speaker-poet in "The Blue State Ghazals" analysed in the upcoming section; where Halaby's mother figure finds only falsehood in the outreach of liberal feminism, Ellis's activist mother sees the potential for feminist solidarity across the divide. In the fOlmer, Arab-American identity is affirmed through negation - the repudiation of a white cultural identity; in the latter, plural spaces of belonging open up as anger

IS

mobilised in the service of a cross-cultural "politicized maternity". 20

Angele Ellis: "The Blue State Ghazals". "The Blue State Ghazals" from Angele Ellis's first book of poetry, Arab on Radar (2007), draws on socio­ political affiliations in contemporary American society to articulate a gendered re-imagining of national identity. The 'blue states' refer to Democratic Party strongholds and the espousal of a liberal political ethos that supports federal intervention in civil rights legislation and that has, since the 1960s, consistently drawn on the support of minority voting blocs across race, gender, and class lines. The red states, Republican Party strongholds in the

South and Mid-West, are

seen to adhere

to a

conservative political philosophy of free-market economics and limited government that originally appealed to white voters who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The red state mentality has become synonymous with neo-colonialist white Christian values. The blue and red states, then, are symbolic of dueling visions of America's cultural identity and national character. Ellis's poem is both a state of the nation lament and an affirmation of communities of solidarity beyond tribal identifications of nation, etlmicity, race, class, or politics as the opening quote of the poem makes clear:

crying for all the other mothers". 21

"I 'm

It is significant, therefore, that Ellis

chooses the fOlTIl of the ghazal, a love poetry whose origins can be traced back to pre-Islamic Arabian verse, to bear witness to the fallout from the

20. The term "politicizedmatemity" comes from Ann Marie Nicolosi. 2 1 . Angele Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," inArah on Radar (Pittsburgh, PA: Six Gallery Press, 2007), 26.

14

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9fll Ethnic Identity

Iraq War.22

A

preoccupation with an unobtainable love interest, which

grew from the ghazal of the Bedouin 'UdhrI school in the Umayyad era and is exemplified in the poetry of 7th-century poet Jamll and his lifelong devotion to his beloved Buthayna, has come to define the ghazal in the popular imagination. Ellis's overtures to the traditional ghazal are on the level of theme rather than form, most clearly delineated in the idea of love as unconditional and unceasing. Ellis recasts the central themes of romantic love and loss in telTIlS of the love between mother and child, that love shared by mothers "over here" and "over there". The fOlTIlal properties of the ghazal - the meter, the refrain introduced in the first couplet and repeated at the end of the second line in each succeeding couplet, the internal rhyme preceding the refrain, and inclusion of the poet's name or pseudonym in the final couplet - are dispensed with in Ellis' free verse interpretation of fifteen umhymed couplets. "The Blue State Ghazals" opens with the following quote:

J'm cryingfor all the other mothers.23 The import of this quote for Ellis must be understood in the context of Sheehan's stated solidarity with the Iraqi peoples, so that "all the other mothers" can be read as grieving mothers "over here" and "over there"; maternal solidarity enacting a bridge to transnational relationality. Sheehan has become the most prominent figure in the anti-war movement, speaking out first and foremost as a "peace mom",24 and, thereby, following in a long tradition of women's activism that invokes what Ann Marie Nicolosi has called the "cultural currency of motherhood"." Nicolosi argues that this currency has provided a framework for the media and public to interpret women's activism in telTIlS that reinforce accepted gender roles26. Ellis does not choose to problematise the trope of the activist mother, nor indeed to investigate politicised maternity carried out in the service of the state, as her overriding concern is with how communities of difference can unite in a common cause: to act in recognition of

other mothers

has

the potential for alliance building outside of closed ethnic and national

22. On the ghazal's origins and thematics see Allen Ali. 23. Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," 26. 24. Peace Mom became the title of Sheehan's memoir. 25. Ann Marie Nicolosi, "Cindy Sheehan and the Politics of Motherhood." Genders 58 (2013): 1, accessed July 16, 2014, urI: https:IIWW"W.thefreelibrary.com ICindy+Sheehan+and+the+politics+of+rnotherhood%3A+politicized+matemity +.-a0356353843. 26. Ibid., ! '

Omar Baz Radwan

15

identifications. Yet it is these closed identifications that legitimised Sheehan's mainstream anti-war mother persona in the first place; if Sheehan was non-white, the intersection of gendered and raced attacks on her character would have blunted the populist appeal of her anti­ imperialist stance. "The Blue State Ghazals" can be read as a work of "spiritual activism" in Gloria Anzaldua's and Analouise Keating's sense of the term. The inherent contradictions in both recognizing difference and striving to break witb identity politics are brought to tbe fore in "The Blues State Ghazals", where the implications of Sheehan's race in the mainstreaming of the anti-war

movement

are

subsumed

within

the

commonality of the mother figure. For the speaker-poet, it is more important that we recognise grief and, by extension love, across the divide -

"all the other mothers"

-

for to do so implicitly calls into question an

American patriotism that commemorates the American war dead and not those Iraqi civilians for whom, in one foreign policy narrative, the war was fought. The opening sequence of couplets most keenly delineates tbe protesting voice in the language of motherhood: 811 7105

Hmnble-hearted mother, war is lUlkind. Weep on the bright splendid shroud ofyour son. I cry for the kids playing tag on the grass. They still believe that we are free and brave. Would thirty flickering candles make a target? We cup Oill flames as tenderly as babies' heads. Say fifteen hlUldred, fifteen thousand, a quarter million. We toll the deaths and those corne to mourn them. Unity is fragile as a child's paper chain. Doing a small thing, then dispersing into darkness.27 The date "8117/05" refers to tbe candlelight vigils tbat took place across America in support of Sheehan, the speaker-poet in attendance at one such vigil. Ellis employs literary antecedents to critique the masculinist auto-image of the "exceptional" American nation at the vanguard of democracy, waging just wars. The sacrificing American mother as a symbol of national pride is negated in the first couplet, a reworking of the final stanza from Stephen Crane's ironical anti-war poem, "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind", first published in 1899: "Mother whose heart

27. Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," 26.

16

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9111 Ethnic Identity

hung humble as a button not weep.

I War

I

On the bright splendid shroud of your son,

I Do

is kind,,28. In "The Blue State Ghazals", the patronizing

tone of Crane's speaker-poet is echoed in the government bureaucrat of today who may acknowledge tbat "war is unkind" and exhort tbe "humble­ hearted mother" to ''weep'' but who, in reminding the bereaved mother that her son's shroud is

"splendid",

engages with the time-honoured war

rhetoric of dying for a noble cause. The speaker-poet will "cry" instead for those American "kids" who are brought up to believe in tbe mythology of the "free" and "brave" American nation, tropes that march on the refrain of "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national antbem of tbe United States: "O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave". The third couplet further subverts America's valiant national character by

positioning

the

peaceful

anti-war

protestors holding "flickering

candles" as a "target" and imbuing this target with an auto-image of nurturing motherhood: "We cup our flames as tenderly as babies' heads". The iconography of childhood vulnerability and innocence - "kids playing tag on the grass", "tenderly as babies' heads", "fragile as a child's paper chain," "a small thing" - reclaims the war narrative from the fault line of patriotic duty. The protective instincts of motherhood, this iconography implies, can create cohesion and community in a way national sacrifice never can: "It is one thing to protest war as a political stand, quite another to

protest

war

as

the

antithesis

of

everything

that

motherhood

symbolises".29 However, the communal ''we'' that can put aside political, class, and ethnic differences to "toll the deaths" is a fleeting "we", broken as easily as a "child's paper chain". The collective act of "Doing a small thing" is tinged witb melancholy as the crowd tben "dispers[ es1 into darkness". There is a marked change of tone in the second sequence of couplets. Communal grief has been replaced by righteous anger and the voice of tbe citizen-mother has been reconfigured as an eyewitness activist, reporting the gmtuitous response of state-affiliated actors to an anti-war demonstration: 8120105

At war's doorway, a man places a makeshift sign. No Lies Told Today, Recruitment Center Has Been S!nJt Down.

28. As quoted in Joseph Katz. Stephen Crane in Transition: Centenary Essays (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1972), 8 1 . 29. Nicolosi, "Cindy Sheehan."

Omar Baz Radwan

17

The Fox cameraman betrays his politics, screaming: Arrest them, they assaulted my camera. A police dog bites the leg of a grandmother, retreating. Pepper spray spatters a woman's glasses as she is Tasered. Again, the air stings with outrage and involuntary tears. Handcuffs appear, with no magician's spell to spring them. Crimes against property will always be punished. The invisible ink on the Bill of Rights, appearing under fire.30 The shift in tone is emphasised from the outset as protestors congregate at a military recruitment station, "war's doorway". The speaker-poet posits an alternative American identity that counters the auto-image of the special character of the American nation as a morally superior power preordained to spread democracy, a legacy of the Manifest Destiny doctrine that legitimised the genocide of Native Americans. This auto­ image of the American nation enables neo-imperialist aspirations to be sold as benevolent nation-building and resistance to this state-sanctioned narrative is met with a "police dog", "pepper spray", "Tasered" bodies, "handcuffs", tropes that have come to define contemporary American officialdom's answer to dissent. Acquiescence to the American identity of officialdom can never be an option for Ellis, as acquiescence is never simply assimilation; it is the wholesale belief in America's right to perpetrate violence against the Other. Steven Salaita has examined how "imperative patriotism" has impacted the Arab-American identity in the post- 9/11 era:

Imperative patriotism assmnes (or demands) that dissent in matters of governance and foreign affairs is unpatriotic and therefore lUlsavory [ . . . ] Imperative patriotism is most likely to arise in settler societies, which usually need to create a jmidical mentality that professes some sort of divine mandate to legitimize their presence on indigenous land [ . . . ].31 If a candlelight vigil with the nurturing Main Street mom as figurehead is a

problematic

"target"

for

police

brutality,

no

such

sensitivity

is

countenanced towards the political grievances of perceived blue state

30. Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," 26. 3 1 . Steven Salaita, "Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism: Arab Americans Before and After 9111," in College Literature 32.2 (2005): 154-155. Project Muse, accessed 23 January 2013, urI: http://muse.jhu.edu/jomnalsllitisurnrnary/v032 132.2salaita.htrnl.

18

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9fll Ethnic Identity

malcontents who are routinely dismissed in mainstream discourse as fringe leftists and radicals, i.e. as outside of a collective "American" identity. The gendered gaze of the first sequence of couplets returns as the speaker-poet focuses on the "grandmother" bitten by a police dog and "a woman's glasses" spattered with "pepper spray" "as she is Tasered". 'Where the state apparatus sees subversives, the speaker-poet sees ordinary American women united against an unjust war and shedding "involuntary tears" as they are brutalised for exercising their rights. For Ellis, there are spaces to belong amidst identity;

and

plural

outside of the fraught in-betweeness of multi-racial

anti-imperialist

spaces

that

proclaim

an

alternative

American identity. Ellis can be situated, therefore, as an Arab-American writer who "challenge[s] homogenised depictions of Arab-Americans, forging

in

the

process

what

can

be

identified

as

revisionary

or

counterhegemonic spaces that redefine exclusionary conceptualisations of US citizenship and belonging."32 "The Fox cameraman" is the archetypal reactionary red state actor who professes allegiance to tbe Constitution whilst simultaneously championing the dismantling of the Bill of Rights in tbe post-91l1 era: "Arrest them, they assaulted my camera".33 At the center of the Fox News apparatus is the need to discredit liberal concepts of identity as contrary to tbe American

tradition.

The

Fox

ideologue

"betrays

his

politics"

by

prioritizing "Crimes against property" above the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly. The specter of Adrienne Rich's "The Blue Ghazals,,34 looms large here as property rights were a key component in the conservative movement's fight against civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the freedom to discriminate trumping racial equality as a basic tenet of individual liberty. However, as Ellis makes clear in her concluding sequence of couplets, the redlblue political and cultural divide is a "distortion" on many levels, not least on the level of officialdom, where the erosion of civil liberties post-91l1, most egregiously through The Patriot Act - "The invisible ink on the Bill of Rights, appearing under fire,,35 - was sanctioned by an overwhelming majority of Congress under the Bush presidency.

32. Carol Fadda-Conrey, Contemporary Arab-American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging. (New York and London: New York University Press, 2014), 139-140. 33. Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," 26. 34. Adrienne Rich, "The Blue State Ghazals," in Collected Early Poems 19501970 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1 995), 368. 35. Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," 26.

Omar Baz Radwan

19

In the concluding sequence, the speaker-poet, removed from on-the­

grOlUld events, assumes an authoritative voice to lament the mistrust, prejudice and alienation in American society engendered by security measures taken after 9/11: 8122105

I ignore alerts as the sky changes color: Yellow dawns, pollution-orange slUlsets, bloody nights. Is memory more than cards of identity? Enemies are faceless, fear the mirror of the soul. Any eye might be a lens, any vagrant a terrorist. Safety demands we swallow everything whole. Territories bear prints ofthe powerful and dying. I want to wash all the flags instead ofbmning them. Every map they show is distorted: Om souls are gerrymandered, whorls of red and blue.36 The date "8122/05" corresponds to the arrival of "Camp Reality" outside Bush's Texas compound, a group of pro-war and pro-Bush supporters who set up home opposite Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey". The first couplet is an allegory of the general populace's heightened fear of tlie terrorist Other in the post-9111 imaginary. The "alerts" that tlie speaker poet chooses to "ignore" have their referent in the colour-coded terror alert scale initiated by tlie newly formed Department of Homeland Security after 9111 where "yellow" carries an elevated risk of a terrorist attack, "orange" a high risk, and "red" ("bloody nights") a severe risk. Every "dawn" brings with it an elevated threat of a terrorist atrocity because 'yellow" was the baseline level used.37 There is a parallel referent here, as those members of the populace who refuse to be cowed by tlie constant tlireat of terror and speak out against U.S. foreign policy are met with intimidation tactics and state brutality ("bloody nights"). The auto-image of the hyper-vigilant state is further informed by "cards of identity", witli the allusions to racial and religious profiling vis-it-vis tlie Patriot Act and the REAL ID Act of 2005. The oppressive tendencies of identity politics, wherein "memory" is reduced to physical attributes of race, religion, or class in the social

36. Ibid., 27. 37. See the Department of Homeland Security website: http://"W"WW. dhs. gov/homeland-secmity-advisory-system.

20

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9f11 Ethnic Identity

consciousness, ultimately never benefit the state as "Enemies are faceless"; what people should fear, the speaker-poet intones, is not the bogus coda that signifies a potential terrorist but their 0\Vll prejudices: "the mirror of the soul". The speaker poet, in affirming a plural identity, does not single out Arab- and Muslim-Americans or even the collective bro\Vll as victims of discriminatory practices but charges that "any vagrant" might be "a terrorist" and, in a society increasingly nourished on the suspicion of one's fellow being, "any eye might be a lens". By honing in on class-based aspects of oppression through the disenfranchised community of the homeless, the speaker-poet remains aware that it is the marginalised in society who will bear the brunt of the national terror alert system. The insistent rhetoric of imminent attacks fed to a scared populace legitimises the war agenda and fear of the Other as "Safety demands we swallow everything whole". By invoking the tenn "Territories", with their boundaries of mine and yours, the speaker-poet once again harks back to the historicised auto­ image of Manifest Destiny and its neo-colonialist manifestations. The relocation of Native Americans to Indian Territories in America and 19th_ century expansionism in the Caribbean and the Philippines mirror latter­ day imperialist interventions in the Middle East, all of which "bear prints of the powerful and dying".38 The speaker-poel's wish "to wash all the flags instead of burning them" affirms politicised maternity as a spiritual alternative to destructive anti-nationalist identities, as the impetus to bum flags to protest injustice further cements a deeply divided society. It can also be argued that Ellis, in prioritizing the plural "flags", is making a transnational appeal to her Arab brothers and sisters "over there" whose desecration of the American flag (a ubiquitous image in mainstream media) also feeds off a unitary neo-colonialist understanding of the American identity. At the heart of Ellis' poem is a recognition that Arab-Americans will only feel part of a national American identity if the parameters of that identity move away from heteromasculinist, neo-colonialist defmitions to more inclusive spaces of belonging for all Americans.

Double marginalisation: Imagological Discussion and Conclusion An understanding that the experiences of Arab-American women can neither be divorced from their experiences as people of colour nor from their experiences as a diasporic people marginalised by an ongoing

38. Ellis, "The Blue State Ghazals," 27.

Ornar Baz Radwan

21

American imperial legacy "over here" and "over there". These have led Arab-American feminist scholars to look to intersectional and transnational models of feminism as strategies of resistance to mainstream representations of Arab-American identity, frameworks that in turn inform a reading of the texts.

The

concept

of

a

universal

sisterhood,

united

in

gender

emancipation, as espoused by hegemonic feminism, ignores the realities of systems of oppression that co-opt women. That women can be oppressed by other women and that this oppression often comes under the unwitting guise of solidarity forms a central theme of Laila Halaby's poem "rage". Halaby creates a hetero-image of the white liberal mother, revealing the fallacious intent behind her earnest stance against the Iraq War, and, in doing so, draws a guerrilla ethnographic portrait39 of the mainstream middle-class

feminist.

The

liberal

mother

believes

in

transnational

solidarity but her true concerns lie in the consumerist drive at the heart of American society, for what is most at stake is not the suffering of those "over there" but the potential consequences for the middle-class freedoms of those "over here". Halaby warns of the dangers of assimilating differences in a multicultural society when this assimilation is used as a tool for perpetuating hegemonic power. The speaker-poet's anger is not only compelled by the liberal mother's want of feeling for those who are actually affected by war but also by being assimilated into the liberal mother's

sphere

of white

middle-class

maternal

consciousness. For

Halaby, the risks for multi-ethnic immigrants, borne out by the legacy of previous generations, lie in buying into the dream of American prosperity with its attendant middle-class respectability, and forgetting that one is part of a "diaspora of empire"40 where one struggles against imperial oppression "over here" as well as on behalf of those "over there". When one rejects ethnic differences in favour of class and gender solidarity, Halaby intones, one is complicit with the domination of one's people. Halaby in "rage", therefore, can only extend the bridging of differences to people of colour communities "over here" and "over there", for white liberal America merely wears the guise of multiculturalism, it never practices the real thing.

39. R. M. Bredin, "Theory in the Mirror," in Other Sisterhoods: Literary Theory and u. s. Women of Colour, ed. Sandra K. Stanley, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 230. 40. Nadine Nabar, "Introduction: Arab Americans and U.S. Racial Formations," Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects, eds. Amani Jamal and Nadine Naber, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 17.

22

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9fll Ethnic Identity If,

for

the

speaker-poet in

"rage",

white

liberal maternal-based

solidarity is a source of suspicion and distrust, the speaker-poet in Angele Ellis' "The Blue State Ghazals" sees in "politicized maternity" (Nicolosi op. cit.) the potential for a space of belonging outside of an exclusionary patriotic American identity. The figure of Cindy Sheehan, tbe citizen­ mother protesting tbe Iraq War on behalf of "all tbe other mothers", is configured as an auto-image of an inclusionary American identity, bridging differences across race, class, and political affiliations, to argue for a vision of America that recognises the mother in the Other "over here" and "over there", a transnational feminist relationality rooted in the feminist as spiritual activist. This spiritual activism is based on the belief, as elucidated by Gloria Anzaldua, tbat "despite the many differences among us - we are all interconnected"41 and draws its strength from re­ imagining commlUlities of belonging: "the fact is that there

is

no other

work but the work of creating and re-creating ourselves within the context of community"42 [emphasis in original]. The speaker-poet protests tbe national myth of an exceptional American identity - an idea upheld across the blue and red political divide - tbat enables the U.S. government to justify neo-imperialist expansionism lUlder

the rubric

of benevolent

democracy-building and national security interests. A belief in American Exceptionalism sustains an "us" and "them" mentality and invites a reading of any citizen who resists America's

inherent superiority

as being

flUldamentally lUl-American. The speaker-poet, as citizen-activist-mother, invites solidarity with

all

of those who actively resist "imperative

patriotism"43; her concern is with how commlUlities of difference can lUlite in a common cause that is simply the shared recognition of our humanity. However, the final couplet, acknowledging that people fail to recognise themselves in the Other, confinns the bleak vision of America's future that lies at the heart of Ellis' ghazal.

4 1 . AnaLouise Keating, "Forging El MlUldo Zmdo: Changing Omselves, Changing the World," in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, eds. Gloria AnzaldUa and AnaLouise Keating (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 5 2 1 . 42. M Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies in Crossing, (Dmharn and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 283. 43. Steven Salaita, "Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism: Arab Americans Before and After 9111," in College Literature 32.2 (2005): 146, accessed January 23, 2013, urI: http://rnusejhu.edu/journalS!litisumrnary/v03 2 /32.2salaita.htrnl.

Ornar Baz Radwan

23

Bibliography Aanerud, Rebecca. "Thinking Again: This Bridge Called my Back and the Challenge to Whiteness." In

Visionsfor Transformation,

This Bridge We Call Home: Radical

edited by G. Anzaldua and A. Keating, 69-

77. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Alexander, M Jacqui. Pedagogies in

Crossing.

Durham and London: Duke

University Press, 2005. Ali, Agha Shahid.

Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English.

Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Allen If., E. "Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument." Tlie Massachusetts Review 31.4, (2002): 25-45. Anzaldua, Gloria and AnaLouise Keating, eds.

Home: Radical Visions for Transformation.

This Bridge We Call

New York and London:

Routledge, 2002. Aziz, Barbra Nimri. "Foreword." In

Scheherazade 's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing, edited by Susan M. Darraj, xi-xv. Westport CT: Praeger, 2004.

Beller, Manfred

and Joep Leerssen, eds. Imagology: Tlie Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. Bredin, R. M. "Theory in the Mirror." In Other Sisterhoods: Literary Tlieory and u. s. Women of Colour, edited by Sandra K. Stanley, 223243. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Charara, Hayan, ed.

Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press, 2008.

Dowdy, Michael.

American Political Poetry in the 21"' Century.

New

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Ellis, Angele. "The Blue State Ghazals." In

Arab on Radar,

26-27.

Pittsburgh, PA: Six Gallery Press, 2007. Fadda-Conrey,

Carol. Contemporary Arab-American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging. New

York and London: New York University Press, 2014. Halaby, Laila. "rage."

My Name on His Tongue,

97-100. New York:

Syracuse University Press, 2012. Handal, Nathalie, ed.

Anthology.

The Poetry of Arab women: A Contemporary

New York and Nortliampton: Interlink Books, 2001.

Jarmakani, Amira.

Imagining Arab Womanhood: The Cultural Mythology of Veils, Harems, and Belly Dancers in the u. s. New York and

Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

24

'Women of Colom' Feminism and Post-9f11 Ethnic Identity

Katz, Joseph.

Stephen Crane in Transition: Centenary Essays.

DeKalb,

Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1972. Keating, AnaLouise. "Forging El Mundo Zurdo: Changing Ourselves, Changing the World." In

for Transformation,

This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions

edited

by Gloria AnzaldUa

and

AnaLouise

Keating, 519-530. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Naber, Nadine. "Introduction: Arab Americans and U.S. Racial Formations. " In Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/1 1 : From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects, edited by Amani Jamal and Nadine Naber, 1-45. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Nicolosi, Ann Marie. "Cindy Sheehan and the Politics of Motherhood."

Genders 58

(2013). Accessed July 16, 2014. urI:

https:llwww.thefreelibrary.comlCindy+Sheehan+andHhe+politics+of+ motherhood%3A+politicized+maternity+ . . . -a03 563 53 843 . Rich, Adrienne.

Collected Early Poems 1950-1970.

New York: W. W.

Norton & Company, 1995. Sandoval, Chela. "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Pos1rnodern World."

Genders 10.

(1991): 1-24. Salaita,

Steven.

"Ethnic

Identity

and

Americans Before and After 9111." 146-168.

Imperative

Patriotism:

College Literature

Project Muse. Accessed January 23, 2013.

Arab

32.2 (2005):

urI:

http://muse.jhu.eduljoumals/lit/summary /v03 2/3 2.2salaita.html. Sheehan, Cindy.

Activism.

Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey through Heartache to

New York: Atria Books, 2006.

Shohat,

Ella, ed. Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press and New

York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998. Volpp, Leti. "Feminism versus Multiculturalism."

Columbia Law Review

101.5 (2001 ): 1181-1218. JSTOR. Accessed December 11, 2012. urI: http://www. jstoLorg/stableI1123774.

WAR, REBELLION, AND THE CRISIS OF UN-BELONGING: REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN KHALED HOSSEINI' S

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS ABIN CHAKRABORTY

Abstract The physical and cultural presence of women has always been contested territory, especially in relation to the struggles between empire and nation where each dominant discourse has sought to inscribe itself onto the physical or cultural presence of women in different ways. This has often led to the fe-assertion of entrenched orthodoxies, commonly bound with retrograde religious visions. This is especially true of Afghanistan which, from the days of the Soviet incursion, the reign of mujahideens, the rise and fall of the Taliban to the U.S.-instituted Karzai administration, has been marked by a torrid history where women have been both victims and loci of struggle and subjects of appropriation of dominant master-narratives in different ways. My paper would map this tortuous and, at times, traumatic trajectory through Khaled Hossenii's A

Key Terms:

Thousand Splendid Suns.

Afghanistan, women, body, nation, empire.

"The nationalist discoillse .. is a discourse about women; women do not speak here."1 " . . . nationalism has typically spnmg from masculinized masculinized hmniliation and masculinized hope.,,2

memory,

1 . Partha Chatterjee, The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999), 1 3 3 .

26

War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging

Introduction: Empire, Nation, and Women The predicaments faced by postcolonial nation-states around the world, while stemming from varied sources, have often been born out of complicated intersections of nation, empire, and gender, which have steadfastly undermined that vision of horizontal connadeship that is ideally supposed to be the bedrock of the imagined community of the nation. Instead, nationalist politics in different countries have often been imbricated in a typically patriarchal equivocation that has meant the consistent use of women as both icons and participants in nationalist movements even while denying them equality in socio-political structures. In fact, not only have patriarchal discourses championed the confinement of women within the domestic sphere by positing them as uncontaminable custodians of tradition but have vehemently opposed even those imperial laws that sought to provide comparative relief to colonised women by attempting

to

refOlTIl

certain

oppressive

traditional

customs

and

conventions. In the process, native women not only bore the brunt of colonial lust and violence, which itself led to countless atrocities in colonies and plantations, but even faced discrimination and inequality within their 0'Wll communities where too they were often violently subjugated. Women thus have consistently faced what Petersen and Rutherford3 have identified as "double colonization" that underscores their precarious position within the axes of empire and nation where they often struggle as unaccommodated subjects. Postcolonial studies have consistently focused on such struggles across various continents. In India itself, the nationalist discourse, from its very inception has been an essentially male-dominated discourse. Bankimchandra Chatlopadhyay's

Anandmath,

for example, a canonical text of Indian

nationalism, specifically imagines the nation as a distressed mother figure who needs to be rescued by her virile sons who even sing: "Ramani te nahi sadh ronjoy gao re,>4 (W'e have no interest in women, let us sing of triumph in war [translation mine] ). The same ideas were reinforced by Abainndranath's painting

of

Bharatmata

and

several

such

other

representations.

Interestingly, as Tanika Sarkar has sho'Wll, the first major nationalist, anti­ colonial procession took place on the streets of Kolkata only after the

2. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1 990), 45. 3. Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, eds., A Double Colonization: Colonial andPostcolonial Women's Writing (Oxford: Dangaroo Press, 1986). 4. Bankirnchandra Chattopadhyay, "Anandarnath," in Bankim Rachnaboli Vol. I, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, (Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, 1997), 609.

Abin Chakraborty

27

British government enacted a law that raised the minimum age of consent for marriage for Hindu women from 10 to 12 in the wake of several registered cases on young adolescent women dying on account of forcible penetration from their much older husbands.5 The novels of Ashapuma Devi or the fiction of Mahashweta Devi, to name only a couple, offer ample illustrations of these collusions of patriarchy and nationalism and the disastrous consequences they unleashed on Indian women. Intriguingly, the same tecbinque was also employed in Africa during the Negritude movement, as Leopold Senghor claimed that African women were "the source of the life-force and guardian[s] of the house, that is to say the depository of the clan's past and the guarantor of its future."6 Senghor thus pushed the African women firmly into the domestic realm to ensure the continuation of the clan though both childbearing and preservation of tradition. And since this domestic space was always beyond direct colonial control he could also assert that "the African woman does not need to be liberated. She has been free for many thousands of years."7 Such discursive frameworks deliberately ignored the unequal gender relations within the African society that have been repeatedly explored by authors like Chinua Achebe or Buchi Emecheta. Therefore, in

Anthills on the Savannah,

Beatrice remarks "That every

woman wants a man to complete her, is a piece of male chauvinistic bullshit that I had completely rejected before I knew there was anything like Women's Lib . . . You often hear our people say: But that's something you picked up in England. Absolute rubbish! There was enough male chauvinism in my father's house to last me seven incarnations."8 And it is because of this chauvinism that despite the involvement of more than 11000 women in the Algerian liberation movement, after independence, as Joane Nagel points out, Algerian women found themselves "back in the kitchen", forced to trade their combat fatigues for Islamic dress and the veil

(hijab) 9

All these examples cumulatively corroborate the fact that in

5. Tanika Sarkar, "Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife." Economic and Political Weekly, 28.36, 4 September (1993): 1 872. 6. Leopold Senghor, Prose andPoetry, eds. and trans. John Reed and Clive Wake (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1 965), 44. 7. Ibid., 44-45. 8. Chinua Achebe, Anthills on the Savannah (New York: Anchor PresslDoubleday, 1987), 88. 9. Joane Nagel, "Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations," Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 2 1 Number 2, March (1998): 254.

28

War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging

the conflicts between empires and nations, as Partha Chatterjee explains, "The figure of the woman often acts as a sign in discursive fOlTIlations"lO, in multiple ways, to inscribe the equations of power, without really taking into account the desires and demands of women themselves who often remain trapped in the role of passive objects of opposing discourses. All these typical features of the dynamics of empire and nation are fe-explored in Khaled Hosseini's A

Thousand Splendid Suns that

also seeks to map for

us an alternative approach for a more inclusive and compassionate future.

Afghan History and Women as Victims The issue of women's rights became a significant factor in Afghan politics after the incursion of the Soviet army into Afghanistan in support of a government manned by KGB recruits11. If empire is the extension of one's sovereignty

over

foreign

territories then

the

Soviet intervention in

Afghanistan, however oxymoronic it may seem, was nothing short of imperial intrusion as the Kremlin sought to control Afghanistan. This was done not just through the KGB agents, who were then occupying the corridors of power, but also through the direct presence of the Soviet almy, sent in accordance with the decision of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.12 Despite the fact that this new regime did implement a number of progressive laws, the people of Afghanistan were never willing to tolerate the imposed alteration of their traditional ways of life. Naturally, the emancipatory laws introduced by this new regime - women's education, abolition of forced marriages, raising the minimum age of marriage to 16 - were seen as an affront to Islamic traditions, leading to the emergence of Islamic insurgents knO\vn as the mujahideens who declared jihad against the existing regime. While on the one hand such conflicts inflicted irreparable loss on women like Laila's mother, who lost both her sons, it also placed women like Laila in

10. Partha Chatterjee, The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999), 68. 1 1 . Vasili Mitrokhin Archive. The Mitrokhin Archive consists of summarized notes taken by Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to the United Kingdom after the fall of the Soviet Union. Primarily, this collection contains items from his "Chekist Anthology," which covers activities of the secret Soviet organisation Cheka in places such as Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and Egypt. 12. "Alexander Lyakhovskiy's Account of the Decision of the CC CPSU Decision to Send Troops to Afghanistan," Wi/soncenter, accessed February 1 1 , 2018. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.orgldocumentlI 1 553 1 .

Abin Chakraborty

29

ambivalent positions as her grief for her elder brothers was contradicted by the benefits given to her by the same regime they had fought against. These benefits may be seen as the products of what Robert I.C. Young calls "colonial feminism",13 which was sharply at odds with the patriarchal and fimdamentalist bent that characterised anti-Soviet Afghan nationalism. Hakim, a schoolteacher and Laila's father in

A Thousand Splendid Suns,

stresses this ambivalence as he says: "Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they're more free now under the communists, and they have more rights than they ever had before . . . Of course women's freedom . . .is also one of the reasons people took up arms in the first place. "14 Following the frame of reference that has been set up, it would be logical to argue that laws implemented by tbe Communist regime had encroached upon that domestic realm over which a nation typically tries to retain its sovereign sway even while losing the external battle (It must be noted here that most Afghans considered tbe rulers of the new regime to be simply Soviet puppets and tbus part of the occupying force). As Tanika Sarkar remarks

Very often, an implicit continuum is postulated between the hidden, innermost private space, chastity, almost the sanctity of the vagina, to political independence at state level: as if, through a steady process of regression, this independent self-hood has been folded back from the public domain to the interior space of the household, and then further pushed back into the hidden depths of an inviolate, chaste, pille female body.ls Since the laws of the new regime encroached upon this particular realm of the female body and violated conservative Islamic notions of chastity and modesty, just as colonial laws in India violated the shastras' absolute authority over the female body, the nationalist reaction, was not only fierce and relentless but stridently masculine as well. Women thus became the sites over which the battles of 'empire' and ' nation' were fought and it foreshadowed the violent subjugation tbey would face after the eventual triumph of the nationalist forces, owing to the active assistance of the U.S. that saw Afghanistan as the final frontier of the Cold War - a fact tbat was stressed not only by statesmen but also

1 3 . Robert I.e. YOlUlg, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003), 97. 14. Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (London: BloomsbillY, 2007), 2 1 . 1 5 . Tanika Sarkar, "Nationalist Iconography: Image of Women in Nineteenth Century Bengali Literature." Economic and Political Weekly, 22.47, 21 November (1987): 2014.

30

War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging

by the

cultural wing of

the administration - Hollywood. In fact, after the

mujabideens, to whom the makers of Rambo

III dedicated

their fihn, take

control of Kabul the city not only becomes the site of a macabre civil war but also an infernal space for women who are raped and killed in scores, apparently "to intimidate civilians and reward militiamen".16 The narrator notes: "Mariam heard of women who were killing themselves out of fear of being raped, and of men who, in the name of honour, would kill their wives or daughters if they'd been raped by the militia."17 In the "imagined community"18 of the fractured Afghan nation, women thus continued to be beleaguered victims of lust and violence. It should be remembered that it is these mujahideens who were overtly

and covertly aided by the U.S.!9 as part of their own offensive against the former U.S.S.R and that the aided also included the Taliban, who eventually toppled the other factions and converted the state into the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan that imposed barbaric medieval laws on women. Ironically, the US offensive against the Soviets was also fueled by repeated references to the way in which Afghan women were being butchered or raped by Soviet soldiers and there were prominent American female socialites who backed and instigated governmental intervention in Afghanistan, precisely on these grounds20. However, as history itself shows, empires never really bother about anything other than their

0\Vll

interests and neither the statesmen nor the women who backed them, ever sought to ponder the consequences of assisting those with whom they sought to defeat the Soviets. As Rasheed remarks "Not that they give a danm in America, mind you. . . Don't expect help from them, I say. Now that the Soviets have collapsed, we're no use to them. We served our purpose. To them, Afghanistan is a

kenarab,

a shithole."21 Empire and

Nation thus align together and ensure the "double colonisation" of women. Voicing the lament of a distraught Laila, the narrator states: "The

16. Hosseini,A Thousand Splendid Suns, 226. 17. Ibid., 227. 1 8. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread o/Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 25. 19. "Brezenski Memoranda to Carter on Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan," sites.temple.edu, accessed December 1 1 , 2008. https:!!sites.temple.edulimmennanlbrezenski-memoranda-to-carter-on-sovietintervention-in-afghanistan!. 20. Joanne Herring, a famous Texan heiress and socialite, was extremely important in ensuring the CIA sponsored anti-communist covert operations in Afghanisthan. See George Crile, Charlie Wilson 's War (New York: Grove Press, 2007). 2 1 . Hosseini,A Thousand Splendid Suns, 190.

Abin Chakraborty

31

freedoms and opportunities that women enjoyed between 1978 and 1992, were a thing of the past now. . . The Supreme Court under Rabbani was filled now with hardliner mullahs who did away with the communist era decrees that empowered women and instead passed rulings based on Shari'a . . . ,,22 The nature of this transfOlmation becomes evident from Rasheed's treatment

of both Mariam and Laila who are forced to endure a

claustrophobic confinement punctuated with savage violence. Quite early in the novel we see how Mariam is forced to chew pebbles, supposedly as a punishment for her ill-cooked rice n This is only the beginning of a long phase of domestic violence marked by absolutely remorseless beatings that forced Mariam into a life of shivering fear. The narrator explains: "All these years and still she shivered with fright when he was like this, sneering, tightening his belt around his fist, the creaking of the leather, the glint in his bloodshot eyes"24 This violence is actually a result of a perversely aggressive masculinity that becomes evident when Rasheed explains,

I have customers, Mariam, men who bring their wives to my shop. The women corne lUlcovered, they talk to me directly, look me in the eye without shame. They were make-up and skirts that show their knees. Sometimes the women even put their feet in front of me, for measmements and their husbands stand there and watch . . . They don't see that they are spoiling their nang and namoos, their honour and pride . . . There's a teacher living do\Vll the street, Hakim is his name, and I see his wife Fariba all the time walking the streets alone with nothing on her head but a scarf. It embarrasses me frankly to see a man who's lost control of his wife . . . . But I'm a different breed of man Mariam. Where I corne from, one "Wrong look, one improper word, and blood is spilled."25 It is this ethic of violence that leads also to Laila's tOlment, especially after their failed escape bid. Not only does Rasheed severely assault Mariam, causing profuse bleeding, but he even kicks and punches Laila and keeps her and her daughter Aziza locked in a room for three days without water or food. As a native of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold, Rasheed

embodies

within

himself

that

perverse

chauvinism

that

characterised Talibani fundamentalism and through him the true extent of the domestic violence women reeled under during Taliban rule is revealed

22. Ibid., 232. 23. Ibid., 94. 24. Ibid., 215-16. 25. Ibid., 63.

32

War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging

to us. And these episodes of domestic violence are also complemented by brutalities executed by tbe Taliban tbemselves, as exemplified by tbe beatings experienced by Laila while trying to go to tbe orphanage to meet her daughter:

If she was lucky, she was given a tongue-lashing or single kick to the rear, a shove in the back. Other times, she met with assortments of wooden clubs, fresh tree branches, short whips, slaps, often fists. One day, a yDllllg Talib beat Laila with a radio antenna. \¥hen he was done, he gave a final whack to the back of her neck and said, "I see you again, I'll beat you lUltil your mother's milk leaks out of yom bones".26 Despite the supposed freedom from foreign rule, freedom for women remains elusive as ever and even the rights that they had earlier enjoyed are violently crushed. From the betrayal suffered by Nana, Mariam's motber, the misery endured by Mariam to the misfortune withstood by Laila - the whole novel becomes a ceaseless chronicle of women's exploitation dipped in blood and tears.

Hosseini's Representations of Feminist Self-Assertion But the novel is not simply a tale of pathetic victimisation. It is also a tale of heroic resistance based on the ever-growing bonding between two women who initially saw each other as enemies. Moved to murderous fury by the news of Laila's meeting with her long-estranged lover Tariq, Rasheed unleashes a horrible assault on both Mariam and Laila, in which, Laila would surely have been strangled had it not been for Mariam's decisive intervention. Overcoming years of fear and subjugation she finally decides to shape the course of her own destiny and Rasheed's murder becomes a heroic act of resistance necessary for their emancipation. Mariam's action connects her with the likes of Phoolan Devi and Commandanta Esther27 and becomes symbolic of postcolonial women's resistance against patriarchal violence28.

26. Ibid., 285-86. 27. Also see "Corumandanta Esther's Speech," schooliforchiapas, accessed February 1 1, 2018. http://www.schoolsforchiapas.orgllibrary/cornandanta-esther-speech­ congress-2001/. 28. Young, Postcoloniaiism, 1 16-17.

Abin Chakraborty

33

And just as Phoolan Devi had voluntarily surrendered herself9, Mariam too takes full responsibility for her action and submits herself to Talibani law only to ensure the safety and security of Laila, Aziza, and Zalmai and their future with Tariq. Her act foregrounds that ethic of love, hatmony, and altruism that is essential for successful nation-building, as opposed to the doctrines of violence and hatred practiced by Afghan warlords and the Taliban who seemed to have imbibed the lessons of their imperial progenitors. The family of Laila, a Tajik, Tariq, a PashtlUl, Aziza, their daughter, and Zalmai, carr ying the blood of his Kandahari father, represents instead an ideal example of that "horizontal comradeship" Benedict Anderson30 speaks of, and that Afghanistan lacked so badly. Just as Achebe imagines a new Nigeria through the female characters of

Anthills on the Savannah,

Hosseini too seems to imagine a new

Afghanistan based on the values of Mariam, Laila, and women like them. But such imaginings are also problematised by the reappearance of imperial assaults that provoke Laila's resentment regarding American bombing and the re-arming of old warlords. These troubling notions also make us aware of the fact that despite the condemnable reality of Talibani oppression

and

the

menace

of international terrorism,

all

our just

aspirations also run the risk of being appropriated by imperial discourses, which, in the long

run,

end up subverting those very hopes. These risks

become apparent from such statements as the following declaration by Laura Bush,

Because of om recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes . . . They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of plUlishrnent the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity ofwomen.31 Such statements are nothing more than revised versions of those old imperial tactics of, what Spivak summarised as, "white men are saving bro\Vll women from bro\Vll men".32 And they are used to justify imperial strategies which, far from securing peace and prosperity, breed destruction and terror that in turn keeps perpetuating the so-called "War on Terror'

29. Ibid., 1 1 7. 30. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. 3 1 . Laura Bush quoted in Pramod K Nayar, Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction (New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008), 147. 32. Gayatri Spivak "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Marxist Interpretations of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and La-wrence Grossberg (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988), 296.

34

War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging

that remains so pivotal for the weapons industry in USA}}. The forces of global capitalism can use whatever bait it takes to reel in new markets.

Conclusion And yet, despite these obstructions, Laila is able to sustain hope - hope for a better Afghanistan, founded on those principles of forgiveness, sharing and compassion, embodied by the relationship between Mariam and Laila, for the child she is carrying. The unborn child may well be said to represent the collective hope for an inclusive, compassionate, postcolonial utopia beyond empire and its aftermaths.

Such utopias need to be

constantly imagined and fe-imagined for us to strive against multiple fOlTIlS of aggressive masculinity, represented both by empires and nations, which keep disrupting lives and cultures in one way or another. Such a possibility finds yet another embodiment in the story of Roshi and Amra Ademovic in Hosseini's subsequent novel

And the Mountains Echoed.

Roshi was a victim of a savage episode of a family feud that resulted in the death of her entire family at the hands of her paternal uncle and subjected her to a horrible head injury that cracked her skull, exposing the brain. But in Amra Ademovic, a nurse from Bosnia, she finds an indomitable protector who not only nurses her back to health but even secures funding through numerous benefactors for her surgery that creates a foundation for her later success. As she becomes the author of an autobiography that documents her struggles and captivates global readership, she becomes yet another icon of feminist self-assertion that becomes possible only because of the kind of transnational solidarity that is formed between herself, Amra, who eventually adopts her, Markos Varvaris, a Greek doctor who

33. John. K Cooley, while talking about Congressman Charlie Wilson's role in the anti-comrmmist war in Afghanistan, remarks, "After long support for right-wing and anti-communist causes, such as the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, he discovered the anticommunist crusade in Afghanistan, a venture on a vast larger scale than anything he had seen in Central America. Always ready to promote the interests of Texas defense contractors who supported him, he got seats on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which often has the last word on Pentagon's budgets, including the huge and hidden 'Black' portions." John. K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Sterling: Pluto Press, 2002), 89. These connections remain integral to the fimctioning of empires, in past as well as present.

Abin Chakraborty

35

becomes Amra's colleague, an expatriate Afghan named Timur and several others.34 The utopian promise in Hosseini's fiction, thus, not only militates against patriarchy but also against the constricting cartographies of empire and nation to open a horizon of transnational solidarities that steadfastly oppose the reckless violence of war, waged under differing barmers. This "educated hope" or dacta spes,35 which comprehends the full extent of negation and yet survives, remains a key feature of postcolonial utopianism in general and Hosseini's fiction, in particular. Bibliography

Achebe, Chinua. Anthills on the Savannah. New York: Anchor PresslDoub1eday, 1987. "Alexander Lyakhovskiy's Account of the Decision of the CC CPSU Decision to Send Troops to Afghanistan." Wilsoncentre. Accessed February 1 1 , 2018. http://digita1archive.wi1soncenter.org/documentl 1 1553l . Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread o/Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. "Brezenski Memoranda to Carter on Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan." sites. temple. edu. Accessed February 1 1 , 2018. https:llsites.temp1e.edu limmermanibrezenski-memoranda-to-carter-on-soviet-intervention-in­ afghanistan/. Bloch, Ernst. The Utopian Function 0/ Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Chatterjee, Partha. The Partlw Chatterjee Omnibus. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999. Chattopdhyay, Bankimchandra. "Anandamath." In Bankim Rachnaboli Vol. I, edited by Jogeshchandra Baga1, 581-644. Ko1kata: Sahitya Samsad, 1997. "Commandanta Esther's Speech." Schools/orchiapas. Accessed February 1 1 , 2018. http://schoo1sforchiapas.org/wp-contentlup1oadsI20 14/03/Comandanta­ Esther-in-the-Congress-of-the-Union.pdf. 34. Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2013), 149-173. 35. Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenbmg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 106.

36

War, Rebellion, and the Crisis of Un-belonging

Cooley, John. K. Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism. Sterling: Pluto Press, 2002. Crile, George. Charlie Wilson 's War. New York: Grove Press, 2007. Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990. Hosseini, Klialed. A Tliousand Splendid Suns, London: Bloomsbury, 2007. -. And the Mountains Echoed. New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2013. "Memo to President Carter from National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski on December 26, 1979." sites.temple.edu. n.d. Accessed February 1 1 , 2018. https:llsites.temple.eduJimmermanibrezenski­ memoranda-to-carter-on-soviet-intervention-in-afghanistan! "Mitrokhin Archive." Wilsoncenter. February 2002. Accessed February 26, 2018. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.orglcollectionl52/mitrokhin-archive. Nayar, Prarnod K. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction. New Delbi: Pearson Longman, 2008. Nagel, Joan. "Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations." Ethical and Racial Studies. 21.2, March (1998): 242-269. Nagel, Joane. "Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations." Ethnic and Racial Studies Voume 21 Number 2, March (1998): 242-269. Petersen, Kirsten Holst and Arum Rutherford, eds. A Double Colonization: Colonial and Postcolonial Women's Writing. Oxford: Dangaroo Press, 1986. Sarkar, Tanika. "Nationalist Iconography: Image of Women in Nineteenth Century Bengali Literature." Economic and Political Weekly, 22.47, 21 November (1987): 2011-2015. -. "Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife." Economic and Political Weekly, 28.36, 4 September (1993): 1869-1878. Senghor, Leopold. Prose and Poetry. Ed. and Trans. John Reed and Clive Wake. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1965. Spivak, Gayatri C. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxist Interpretations of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-313. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988. Young, Robert J.C. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003.

18TH CENTURY WOMEN TRAVEL WRITERS: THEIR WORLD, WORLD VIEW, AND THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE GATHA SHARMA

Abstract

Francis Bacon considered the 'printing machine' as one among the three most potent inventions of all time. In England, the printing press forced new negotiations between political and literary circles by laying foundations of commercial authorship. The rise of print culture coincided perfectly with an upsurge in commercial literary aspirations of 1 8th century pamphleteers, essayists, poets, novelists, and travel writers. 1 8th century women writers, hitherto ignored, finally found an outlet to showcase their craft through this newly minted sphere of power. The 'travel-narratives' written by women writers of this period are in a league of their O\Vll. Women writers found a geme in the 'travel-narrative' where they not only experimented with their craft but were also able to present some original work. Lady Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters and Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Nonvay and Denmark are two such apt instances. Their real dare lies in undertaking a perilous journey to present a unique narrative in order to capture the imagination of the commercial literary market. 1 8th century, print culture, women writers, travel-narratives, commercial literary market.

Key Terms:

"Travelling it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller." (Ibn Battuta)

After the succession of the House of Hanover in 1714, the British Empire grew in wealth and importance under the watchful eyes of the Whig minister Robert Walpole and his successors. Socially and politically, the

38

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers

18th century was a period of tolerance, moderation, and common sense. England, sagaciously, learnt bitter lessons from its 17th century violent political past - tlie English Civil War (1642- 1651), Commonwealth Government (1649-1659), Restoration (1660) and The Glorious Revolution (1688) - and botli "established Church and political parties, pursued a placid middle path introducing sweet reasonableness into life" l "On literature tliis material welfare had its effect by endowing and stimulating research and original work.,,2 The spirit of the age found expression in the increased and varied output of prose writings - periodical literature, essay, prose narrative, and miscellaneous prose. Travel narratives became the most popular genre outperforming all otlier published works witli tlie exception of the novel. 18th century English literature is replete with 'travel narratives' written purely from the perspective of 'commercial literary aspirations' by men of letters. Lesser known but equally powerful are the 'travel narratives' by women writers. Although women travellers were few and far between, nevertheless hard facts - distance covered, countries visited, and books produced, in spite of severe lack of funds and social support - make a compelling case to take their autonomous and subversive perspective seriously. In this paper I will examine two travelogues - Lady Elizabeth Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) and Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written During A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1794) - located at different time zones and, try to prove how both tlie travelogues conformed to the literary conventions of travel writing and at the same time deflected from them to get noticed in an overcrowded literary market of 'commercial 'Writers'. Foucault says that in order to "bring to light power relations, locate their position, find out their point of application and the methods used."3 To capture the zeitgeist of 18dt century travel literature, an inquiry into the rise of 'print culture' and 'commercial authorship' is a must, as that had an emphatic impact on 18th century literary traditions. William Caxton established tlie first printing press in England in 1476 from which gelTIlinated a 'print culture' that reshaped statecraft and literature in England for the next one and a half centuries. The impact of Caxton's printing press was huge. It changed the simple and tedious craft of stationers. It reconfigured a network of writers of text letters, illuminators, binders, and sellers into an industry as a new sphere of power. TransfolTIlation of 'stationers' from humble craftsmen to a power 1 . Edward Albert, History o/English Literature (London: Harrop, 1979), 186. 2. Ibid., 224 3 . Michael Foucault, "Power," in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge and Nigel Wood, (New Delhi: Pearson, 2014), 1 12.

Gatha Sharma

39

to reckon with had much to do with the Tudors', and later the Stuarts' complete faith in the Company of Stationers. To this Company they gave the sole right of publishing and selling books 4 In return, they expected the Company to help the crown in curbing seditious or sacrilegious publications.5 Delegation of this power was both "an individualizing and a totalizing fOlTIl of power".6 Although the 'stationers' were forced to act as zealous 'hounds' of the crown through most of the religious and political controversies of the 16th and 17th centuries, they and through them printers and authors benefitted immensely. The ordinance of 1637 by the Star Chamber made printing of the author's and publisher's name compulsory on the book 7 Authors had now equal literary property rights along with the publishers over their books. The period between 'Restoration' and 'The Glorious Revolution' was defined by rivalries between "Confederate Printers" and "King's journalists". 8 Spirit of the times was such that Milton's Areopagitica became the bible for political parties. Milton's arguments, which did not find an audience three decades ago, became the flavour of the season. Both Whigs and Tories hired the best pens to influence opinions. "Both the parties were so finely balanced that shifting of few votes would bring in a new government."9 The Copyright Act of 1709 brought respectability and stability to a journalist's job. News became a commodity to be sold and purchased like any other product. It also brought much aspired commercial success for authors. Constant feuds between 'Whigs and Tories, sprouting of coffee houses and a staggering increase in the numbers of the reading public made writing and publishing very important. The 1 8th century saw pamphleteers exerting power over political parties and the reading public alike. The pen truly became mightier than the sword. By the time bitter political party feuds ended in 1730, the power of the written word had been established. New writers joined the print culture with real commercial ambitions. Among the ever increasing crowd of 'grub street' writers emerged a breed of women writers whose ingenuity lay in the narrative that they built around their books to get literary fame and critics' validation alike.

4. Wilber Cotez Abbot, "The Restoration Press," in Proceedings of the Massacwsetts Historical SOciety, 67, no. 3 Oct. 1941 May (1944): 28. 5. Ibid., 28. 6. Foucault, "Power," 1 12. 7. W.S. Holdsworth, "Press Control and Copyright in the 16th and 17th Centuries," The Yale Law Journal. 29, no. 8 June (1920): 848. 8. Abbot, "The Restoration Press," 45 9. Alber� History ofEnglish Literature, 238.

40

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers

A Dictionary a/British and American Women Writers 1 600-1800, has estimated that 317 women writers published their work from 1650 to 1 8 10.10 A bibliographical recovery project, now in progress, has counted approximately 500 British women writers for tlie period 1660-1800 11 Dale Spender observes: For women who had no rights, no individual existence or identity, the very act of writing particularly for a public audience was in essence an assertion of individuality and autonomy, and often an act of defiance. To -write was to be; it was to create and to exist. It was to construct and control a world view without interference from the 'masters' . 12

18th century English society considered writing and publishing by women a taboo, a demeaning task and an Ullllatural practice. It was a career that even famous women writers would not suggest to other women. Hannah More wrote: "A female Polemic wanders almost as far from the limits prescribed to her sex, as a female Machiavelli or warlike Thalestris."13 Hester Lynch Piozzi confitmed that writing was "not the natural Soil, whence Females are likely to find or fOlTIl a pelTIlanent Felicity."14 Critics' "rhetoric of belittlement,,15 - constant reminders to women writers of their intrusion into a sphere of which they have little or no knowledge; or their critique of the texts in the context of women writers' personal lives confilTIls that the new progressive ideals of the 1 8th century were not progressive enough to acknowledge women authorship. Though, some did accept it grudgingly. Dr. Johnson wrote in 1753, In former times, the pen, like the sword, was considered as consigned by nature to the hands of men . . .the revolution of years has now produced a

10. William McCarthy, "The Repression of Hester Lynch Piozzi; or, How We Forgot a Revolution in Authorship," Modern Language Studies. 1 8, no. 1 Winter (19SS): 107. 1 1 . Ibid., 107. 12. Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel (London: Pandora, 1986), 3, quoted in Cheryl Turner, Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century. (London: Psychology Press, 1992), 10. 13. Hanna Moore quoted in McCarthy, "The Repression of Hester Lynch Piozzi," IDS. 14. Ibid., lOS. 15. Ibid., 1 0 1 .

Gatha Sharma

41

generation of Amazons of the pen, who with the spirit of their predecessors have set masculine tyranny at defiance.16

Clearly there existed a huge circle of women writers undeterred by social and literary mores. The trajectory of the literary career of a few women writers clearly reflects the emancipation of women writers over time. Lady Montagu (1689-1762) was not able to publish in her life-time and Hester Thrale Lynch Piozzi (1741-1821) had to face censure purely on the basis of her second marriage, but a marked shift in attitude becomes visible with the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). Lady Montagu tried to use, rather unsuccessfully, her aristocratic privileges to get published. Hester Thrale Lynch Piozzi flaunted her status as the famous hostess of the ' Streatham Circle' to achieve literary success. Mary Wollstonecraft, on the contrary, did not even think of finding any excuse for her writings. She considered writing her birth right. In her seminal work on feminism, Vindications a/Rights a/ Women (1792), she declares: Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its 0\Vll principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves.17

She further asserts, "Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and I, that all will be right."l8 Her complete disregard for literary critics and absolute belief in her craft is an indicator of changing times. Although travel literature had a long history, it was accepted as a literary genre only after the 16th century. The period between 1600 AD and 1700 AD was a period of experimentation to bring 'credibility' to the craft, on the other hand, fictional travel stories were very popular. "Consequently, 1 8th century travel writers carefully constructed a 'theory' of travel literature which dominated the formation of the genre in that century."19 Technological improvements in roads, carriages and ships 16. Samuel Johnson quoted in McCarthy "The Repression of Hester Lynch Piozzi," 108. 17. Mary Wollstonecraft,A Vindication a/the Rights a/Woman, ed. Miriam Brody (London: Penguin, 2004), 22. 1 8. Ibid., 1 3 . 19. J . Kommers, "The Significance of 1 8th-Century Literature about the Pacific for the Development of Travel Literature," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Va/ken/umde, Deel. 144, no. 4 (1988): 492.

42

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers

meant that a far greater number of ordinary citizens, not just explorers and soldiers, had the opportunity to travel overseas and record their experiences. 18th-century travel narratives responded to the public's growing appetite for knowledge of the world, they wanted more accurate descriptions of the lands and peoples of distant regions to replace the more fictionalised accounts written in the Middle Ages till the 16th century, reflecting thereby the scientific spirit of the age. The first woman \Vfiter who emerged on the travel writing scene was Lady Montagu. She never hid her ambition to publish. Her Turkish Embassy Letters is the empirical record of the journey she undertook with her ambassador husband for his all-important posting as Ambassador of England to Turkey in 1716. Travelling to a non-European land was considered exotic, hence its account had a fair chance to get published. She had the example of William Dampier before her whose A New Voyage Round the World (1697) brought him great fame, many re-editions and translations. "Readers expected entertainment from travel literature. ,,20 Therefore, an important stylistic convention that developed in 1 8th century travel literature involved a fine balance between description and narration. Montagu recorded customs, traditions, culture, and history of the Netherlands, Gemmny, Hungary, Bulgaria, France, Morocco, Greece, and Rome along with Turkey. The 'tell-ability' of Turkish Letters lies in its eventfulness: Dutch maids' industriousness that makes Rotterdam the cleanest city in Europe; seven man-made canals that made Rotterdam a commercial-hub; quantity of fine merchandise and consequent improvement in Lady Montagu's bargaining skills; the magnificence of the Jesuit Churches whose relics were adorned with pearls, diamonds, and rubies though in Ratisbon's Jesuit churches, these were replaced by simple glass as "the good fathers have found it convenient to apply them to other uses"21; Popish countries' belief in 'Miracles'; ladies' gun championship in Vienna to test marksmanship; Vienna as a place where age doesn't matter and ladies have gallants well into their old age; practice of keeping dwarfs by the royals of Vienna; and so forth. One after another, Turkish Letters presents 'word-pictures'. Her perspective changes with the changing landscape. Her gaze while travelling through Europe is that of a rational human being. Like a true citizen of the world she observes cultural peculiarities, critiques them and attempts to build on a 'schemata' of her

20. Ibid., 490. 2 1 . Mary Wortely Montagu, The Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu During the Embassy ta Canstantinaple, 1 716-18 (London: John Sharp, I S20), 19.

Gatha Sharma

43

English readers back home by constructing "webs of meaning"22 through her "thick descriptions"23 of cultural norms. She examines the use of certain behavior or practices. Keeping a dwarf as a pet by the royals of Vienna is unusual but she detects friendlessness and resultant loneliness of princes behind it for "it is below them to converse with the rest of mankind,,24 so they are forced to seek "their companions among the refuse of human nature".25 She attends Calvinist and Lutheran churches in order to understand their practices and is naturally outraged by "priests' lies,,26 and "mobs' belief'27 in them. She juxtaposes the ornamentation of relics with the simplicity of the Anglican Church and finds her faith renewed. Unlike male travel writers, Lady Montagu is quite receptive of the Turkish invention "of ingrafting"28 to treat small pox and after proper scientific enquiry reconnnends its usage in the English court. Her narrative loses much of its critical acuity as she enters the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish Embassy Letters

is a gendered, proto-feminist and

rationalist proj ection of Turkish women. But Lady Montagu's own doubts and contradictions result in a somewhat inconsistent and fractured portrait of Turkish women, open to diverse readings. Her femininity is a binary construct - fascinated by the "anonymity provided by a veil"29 but bewildered by the life-long confinement in a 'seraglio'. Lady Montagu thinks that male travel writers have misrepresented Turkish women's lives by exaggerating their submissiveness and by portraying 'harem' as "a site of incarceration and oppression."30 She presents 'harem' as women's personal space, owned by them, a thing still aspired for by their European counterparts. Her insistence on Turkish women "being the only free women in the world,,31 brought censure from several quarters. Many critics questioned her 'detachment' while being an 'observer' and a 'participant' .

22. C. Geertz, The Interpretation o/Cultures; Selected Essays, (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 5. 23. Ibid., 5. 24. Montagu, The Letters o/Lady Montagu, 67. 25. Ibid., 67 26. Ibid., 67 27. Ibid., 67 28. Ibid., 130 29. Ibid., 55. 30. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, eds., Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodemify and Transnational Feminist Practices, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 123. 3 1 . Montagu, The Letters o/Lady Montagu, 39 & 1 1 5.

44

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers

1 8th

century travel itself was a challenge - shipwrecks, overcrowded

coaches, filthy inns - something not for the feeble brained or bodied. Travel

by

land

was

unsafe.

Moreover,

land

travel

required

pre­

arrangement of transport, local contacts, and legal documentation. Hence, a prerequisite for a traveller was the ability to face numerous problems, and the resourcefulness to find solutions for them. Lady Montagu was privileged enough to travel with an ambassador's crew. Mary Wollstonecraft's case, however, is curious, as she was a young English woman travelling all alone through Scandinavian countries with an infant and nursemaid in tow, looking after the business interests of her unfaitbful lover and fatber of the baby, Gilbert Imlay.

It is about four-and-twenty miles but as both I and my little girl are never attacked by seasickness though who can avoid ennui? I enter a boat with the same indifference as I change horses; and as for danger, corne when it may, I dread it not sufficiently to have any anticipating fears.32 Her daring is not only in undertaking a j ourney during war in

1795

but

also in accepting her mistake in Gilbert Imlay whom she found was a speculator and a thief by the end of her journey. "The 'life' that literary works seem to possess long after botb the death of the autbor and tbe death of tbe culture for which the autbor wrote is tbe historical consequence, however transfOlmed and refashioned, of the social

energy

encoded

in

those

works. ,,33

Mary

Wollstonecraft' s

travelogue is a sunnnation of European Enlightenment. Philosophical imprints of the Cartesian principle,

'I

think, therefore

I

am', Immanuel

Kant's 'Have courage to use your reason' and Baconian principles of inductive reasoning are clearly visible in Wollstonecraft's text. Rene Descartes studied medieval science for many years and got disillusioned by its unsystematic methods. He writes in his eventually reached the decision to study my

Discourse on Method, "I

0\Vll

self, and choose the right

path."34 After devising a method based on trutb and only truth, clear thinking, systematic analysis of problems and rational methods to find solutions for them, he declared to "move the earth from its orbit and place

32. Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, (London: Centam i Open Gate Press, 2005), 170. 33. Stephen Greenblatt, "The Circulation of Social Energy," in Modern Criticism and Theory, eds. David Lodge and Nigel Wood, (New Delhi: Pearson, 2014), 412. 34. Rene Descartes, Discourse onMethod, (Project Gutenberg). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.h1m 7.

Gatha Sharma

45

it in a new orbit".35 Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark is a strong appeal for the progress of the human race through continuous cultivation of the human mind. It presents a word­ picture of a strong ethical sense combined with enviable powers of observation to discern corrupt practices and a deep desire to change the world for the better. Wollstonecraft' s intellectual strengths are of her own making. Her travelogue is a critical commentary on the human lust for property and the consequent corruption in society. Through her well­ constructed

arguments,

Wollstonecraft proves

that the

shortage

of

currency and the deliberate hoarding of goods are making people poor and desperate.

Inferring

one

conclusion

from

another,

she

conducts

a

systematic analysis of commercial frauds and concludes, "Having no employment but traffic, of which a contraband trade makes the basis of their profit, the coarsest feelings of honesty are quickly blunted. You may suppose that I speak in general terms. ,,36 Her reformatory zeal is pan­ national and is based on her deep understanding of geopolitics and financial matters.

The taxes before the reign of Charles XII were inconsiderable. Since then the burden has continually been growing heavier, and the price of provisions has proportionately increased nay, the advantage accruing from the exportation of com to France and rye to Germany will probably produce a scarcity in both Sweden and Norway, should not a peace put a stop to it this autunm, for speculations of various kinds have already almost doubled the price.37 While contemplating "the future improvement of the world,,38 she recognises the role of wealth and commerce in furthering the cause of not only scientific endeavors but artistic pursuits as well. At the same time, she has a word of caution: "England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to undelTIline the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence; the tyrarmy of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank."39 Her curiosity and wisdom impresses her host in Norway who really appreciates "men's questions"40 asked by her.

35. Ibid., 23. 36. Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, 103. 37. Ibid., 32. 38. Ibid., 179. 39. Ibid., 128. 40. Ibid., 19.

46

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers Mary is a humanist to the core. She reminds readers of Kant' s 'scholar

guardian' but she is one step ahead of that ideal.

She appreciates

Norwegian society for its 'free thinking' and 'atheism.' While Kant's 'scholar guardian' is deeply rooted in his church and duties of clergy, Wollstonecraft is happy that in Norway "religion does not interfere with their employments".41 Travelling through these three countries, she also realises the importance of women's education. She categorically states that infantilisation of women leads to the improper development of their minds. No society can grow evenly when half the demography is improperly educated. She argues that the female mind would benefit by exposure to a good, methodical education. She alleviates men's anxieties by asserting that they would be the end beneficiaries of women's education. Wollstonecraft, time and again, mentions the importance of the largeness of heart and openness of mind that comes with education and exposure to other cultures and countries.

Sweden and Denmark are

picturesque but the "uncultivated inhabitants,,42

make her realise the

importance of 'to\Vll' civilisations despite their inherent risks of knavery and debauchery: "The more I see of the world, the more I am convinced that civilisation is a blessing not sufficiently estimated by those who have not traced its progress; for it not only refines our enj oyments, but produces a variety which enables us to retain the primitive delicacy of our sensations. ,,43 Her scathing comments on the lack of ethics in business and governance, the rigid hierarchy in social structure, and hypocrisy everywhere, convey her deep belief in social equality and universal education. She writes, "As in travelling, the keeping of a j ournal excites too many useful inquiries that would not have been thought of had the traveller only determined to see all he could see, without ever asking himself for what purpose."44 Montagu's 'subj ect' remains elite Turkish women. She shows no desire to inquire about poor women of Turkish society. Her oft-reiterated stance - "very imperfect accounts of the manners and religion of these people"45 by

travel

writers

because

"the

Turks

are too

proud to

converse

familiarly"46 with strangers and that too ' commoners'- confilTIls her white aristocratic subj ectivities. This further gets reconfirmed by her obvious disregard for the unjust practice of slavery:

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Ibid., 90. Ibid., 1 2 1 . Ibid., 24. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 8 1 . Ibid., 8 1 .

Gatha Sharma

47

The fine slaves that wait upon the great ladies, or serve the pleasmes of the great men, are all bought at the age of eight or nine years old and, educated with great care . . . Those that are exposed to sale at the markets, are always either guilty of some crime, or so entirely worthless, that they are of no use at al1.47 Mary, an ordinary woman, travelling without any of the prerogatives that Lady Montagu enjoyed, invests more in common people who open their home and hearth for her. Mary is grounded, acutely aware of the realities

of the world unlike Montagu.

Montagu

is

wholeheartedly

concerned with the elite women almost blind to the exploitation of slave women and girls, always ignoring the travails of poor Turkish women. Wollstonecraft's portmanteau is large enough to accommodate observations and experiences of all kind. She comes across as a real open-minded person, comfortable in her

0\Vll

skin, more than willing to make others

comfortable - a true citizen of the world. Her narrative has 'a narrative part' and 'an instructive part' instead of description and narration:

Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when they were erected ; but size, without grandem or elegance, has an emphatical stamp of meanness, of poverty of conception, which only a commercial spirit could give.48 At times her travelogue resembles a thesis on philosophy. Everything picturesque gets amalgamated with something sad. She appears to be world weary. Every letter ends on a sad note. Death is a 'leitmotif as most of her thoughts - transience of natural beauty,

solitariness

of her

apartment, reflections on afterlife, Gothic piles or the purpose of human life - end with reflections on 'Death'. Her constant thoughts on 'Death' points towards her depressed state of mind.

"How dull, flat,

and

unprofitable/Are to me all the usages of this world."49 The journey to the continent proved to be highly educative for these women writers. It transfOlmed their lives. Lady Montagu learnt the 'Turkish' language during her year-long soj ourn in Turkey. Wollstonecraft learnt rowing and became an expert at it during her stay in Norway. Further, more than just the new skills, it was the broadening of their world-view that was heartening. After a year-long stay in Turkey and primarily after the acquisition of the Turkish language, Lady Montagu' s

47. Ibid., 8 1 . 48. Ibid., 124. 49. Ibid., 170.

48

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers

perspective shifts from the intellectualisation of the Turkish elite women to the accurate portrayal of ground realities. Her earlier jubilation over "anonymity provided by a veil,,50 changes into despair over identity, theft, and a "faceless, nameless existence of Turkish women in public spaces"Y She appears to be enamored of the material culture - the physical beauty of Turkish elite women, richness of their dress, opulence of their jewelry, creativity in their hair styles, magnificence of their table, and interior decoration of their apartments. Nevertheless the "stiffness and fOlmality of marmers,,52 among Turkish ladies tire her out. A cycle of maturation is evident from letter

26

to letter

55.

To Wollstonecraft, tbis transformation

comes witb a price. Through her deep involvement in Gilbert Imlay's business

interests,

marketing,

she becomes

and involvement

in

familiar with many evils of black such activities

also

leads to moral

degradation in a human being. This comes as a big revelation to her. Silently she witnesses an alteration in Gilbert Imlay's character.

Ah! shall I whisper to you, that you yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce more than you are aware of ; never allowing yourself to reflect, and keeping your mind, or rather passions, in a continual state of agitation ? Nature has given you talents which lie dormant or are wasted in ignoble pillsuits.53 Women travel writers have added new fOlTIlS and concepts in travel writing literary traditions. Constructing a narrative discourse based on her 'willingness' to engage witb tbe 'other', Lady Montagu enables her readers to imagine new ways of thinking. She also employs scientific methods of 'ethnographers' to collect factually correct information. "An etbnographic understanding is developed tbrough close exploration of several sources of data. Using these data sources as a foundation, the ethnographer relies on a cultural frame of analysis. "54 Lady Montagu tries to understand Turkish society and religious traditions through various sources. Her long conversations with ' effendi' and Begum Fatima are genuine attempts to have "an ernie perspective" i.e. the "insider's point ofview".55 She visits the 'Shahi mosque ' and witnesses

50. Ibid., 55. 5 1 . Ibid., 99. 52. Ibid., 126. 53. Ibid., 1 84. 54. Brian A. Hoey, "A Simple Introduction to the Practice of Ethnography and Guide to Ethnographic Fieldnotes," Marshall University Digital Scholar, 64. illl: https://works.bepress.comlbrian_hoeyIl 2/download!. 55. Ibid., 54.

Gatha Sharma

49

an alTIly parade despite personal risks, in order to acquire first-hand information

of

the

Ottoman

Empire.

Lady

Monlagu's

long-term

engagement with Kahya's lady, Princess Fatima, Sultana Hafiten, and other noble ladies helped her to understand the realities of the mythical Turkish 'Harem' or 'seraglio ' . Her subsequent mastery over the Turkish language boosts her "participation observation" 56 further. Ethnographic fieldwork also involves the technique of 'interview ' . "Interviews provide for what might be called targeted data collection by asking specific but open-ended questions. ,,57 Lady Montagu brings her

0\Vll

set of interviewing

skills, not different in any possible way from an everyday conversation, letting the interviewee answer without being restricted by pre-defmed choices. Most of her conversations are in fact purely spontaneous and without any specific agenda. At Belgrade, she shared her lodgings with a principal effendi, a member of an elite group whose services were preferred both by the court and the mosque, "a lawyer and a priest being the same word in the Turkish language".58 Like a seasoned interviewer she exhibits the art of asking the most controversial question with a civilized delicacy. She engages with the interviewee in order to have an infolTIled opinion. Srinivas Arvamudan observes:

Montagu remarks upon cultural differences, as all travelers do; at the same time, she contests the normative masculine vision of her Western predecessors, noticing different phenomena, and correcting previous misrepresentations from her perspective as a woman. Montagu reshapes the genre of early travel narrative as a vehicle that simultaneously signals "romance," "science," and "satire"; aspects of "Behn," "Defoe," and "Swift" adhere to the epistemological positions she takes.59 Mary Wollstonecraft's travelogue foreshadows the Romantics of the

191h century. Her travelogue exhibits inherent characteristics of the Romantic Movement -

individualism,

tough

stance

against

scholasticism

and

primitivism, faith in native wisdom, and delight in Nature 's beauty.

Whilst men have senses, whatever soothes them lends wings to devotion; else why do the beauties of nature, where all that chann them are spread armmd with a lavish hand, force even the sorrowing heart to acknowledge

56. Geertz, The Interpretation o/Cultures, 7. 57. Hoey, "A Simple Introduction to the Practice of Ethnography," 53. 58. Montagu, The Letters o/Lady Montagu, 98. 59. Aravamudan Srinivas, "Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the Hammam: Masquerade, Womanliness, and Levantinization," 62, no. 1 ELH Spring (1995): 34.

1 8th Century Women Travel Writers

50

that existence is a blessing? And this acknowledgment is the most sublime homage we can pay to the Deity.60 1 8th century women travel writers are interesting but, more interesting than them is the journey they undertook for their self-realisation and development. Lady Montagu and Mary Wollstonecraft played important roles in the propagation of new ideals of the 18'" century. Their travelogues were apt vehicles to restart negotiations with various cultural and literary forces of their times. They reshaped the 'literary market' by focusing solely on the readers, providing them with a new, more personal style of the travelogue. Favorable commercial reactions to their travelogues made literary circles more receptive to women writings.

Bibliography Abbott, Wilbur Cortez. "The Restoration Press." In

Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 67:3 (Oct. 1941 - May.1944): 22-54. Albert, Edward. History ofEnglish Literature, London: Harrop, 1979. Arber, Edward. A transcript of the registers of the Company of Stationers ofLondon, 1554-1 640, A.D. London: Stationers' Company, 1875. Bacon, Francis. Novum Organum. New York: P.F. Collier, 1902. Foucault, Michael. "Power." In Modern Criticism and Theory. Edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 326-348. New Delhi: Pearson, 2014. Descartes, Rene. A Discourse

on Method. Proj ect Gutenberg.

ht1p://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm Geertz, C.

The Interpretation of Cultures; Selected Essays.

New York:

Basic Books, 1973. Greenblatt, Stephen. "The Circulation of Social Energy." In

Criticism and Theory,

Modern

edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood. 408-

437. New Delhi: Pearson, 2014. Grewal,

Inderpal and Caren Kaplan. eds. Scattered Hegemonies; Postmodemity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

Hoey, Brian A. "A Simple Introduction to the Practice of Ethnography and Guide to Ethnographic Fieldnotes." Marshall University Digital Scholar, 2014. https:llworks.bepress.com/brian_hoeyIl 2/downloadl . Holdsworth, W.S. "Press Control and Copyright in the 16th and 17th Centuries."

The Yale Law Journal.

29:8 June (1920): 840-858.

60 Wollstonecrafi, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, 124.

Gatha Sharma

51

Kommers, J. "The Significance of 18th-Century Literature about the Pacific for the Development of Travel Literature."

Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Dee/.

Bijdragen tot de

144:4 (1988): 478-493.

McCarthy, William. "The Repression of Rester Lynch Piozzi; Forgot a Revolution in Authorship."

Of,

Row We

Modern Language Studies.

18:1

Winter (1988): 99- 1 1 1 . Montagu, Mary Wortly.

The Letters of Lady M W. Montagu During the Embassy to Constantinople, 1716-18. Vol. I. London: John Sharp, 1820. https:/lbooks.google.co.in!books?id�oIIDAAAAQAAJ.

Srinivas, Aravamudan. "Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the Hammam: Masquerade, Womanliness, and Levantinization."

Em.

62: 1 Spring

(1995): 69-104. Todd, Janet, ed.,

1 660-1800.

Turner, Cheryl.

Century.

A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers,

Totowa N J: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985.

Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth

London: Psychology Press, 1992.

Wollstonecraft, Mary.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. London: Centaur I Open Gate Press, 2005.

-. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: Penguin, 2004.

Edited by Miriam Brody.

THE VOICE OF REBELLION IN THE POETRY OF UMPIERRE THROUGH A QUEER LENS GURSHEEN GHUMAN

Abstract The primary focus of this paper will be on exploring how queer sexualities reside in the Third space, on the 'other' side of the borders to become a voice of rebellion. Luz Umpierre creates a new language - a hybrid that is free from its colonizing shackles; that ruptures the patriarchal hegemonies and hierarchies established by a heteronormative society. This voice rises in counter-discourse to challenge what has been naturalised as the "flotillal". Umpierre reinscribes the body while rewriting what it means or could mean to be a woman. We will see how she appropriates the actions and deeds (like the act of cooking), which by being reiterated time and again have come to be traditionally associated with the "good woman" and decolonises them. She uses eroticism as a tool to make visible queer desires that have been silenced and made invisible by the

act of

homogenisation. The 'ungrammatical' bodies as texts have been placed outside the ambit of the recognizable. By representing them, she reveals the cultural codes of naturalisation that have been used by the hegemonic discourse to decree certain bodies as nOlmal and grammatical while rendering others as ungrammatical or even impossible. She raises her voice against this negation of recognition to certain 'abnOlmal ' bodies, a process that she shows to be leading to a real and symbolic violence. By foregrounding alternate histories and knowledges, she subverts the concept of an only truth, of universalisation of history and colonisation of knowledge. Key Terms: Counter-discourse, hybrid, ungrammatical, violence, alternate.

This paper will explore the poetry of Luz Marfa Umpierre, and how she uses it as a counter discourse to oppose prevalent structures. Eurocentrism

Gmsheen Ghuman

53

and Occidentalism have claimed their hegemony over the systems of knowledge and its production, disseminating their own truth as the only Truth, while effacing and obliterating those truths and histories that cannot be moulded and made to fit within their ambit. The paper will look into how Umpierre tries to decolonise knowledge, how she subverts the universality of history, how she rewrites the body and the signification of being a woman, and how she challenges the processes of naturalisation and nOlmalisation. By 'queering' the space and displacing borders, Umpierre negates the dichotomy of either being homogenised or not being recognised in the least. Instead of giving in to the dichotomised categorisations, she elects to map alternate geographies of bodies and spaces. She does so by raising her voice from her own Third Space,l where she challenges the nOlmative rules governing beings as well as the space-time continuum through a queer lens. In her poetry one can observe a deliberate distancing from what is considered 'nOlmal' . These are tools used to reveal the heteronOlmativity that until now, in the words of Eve Sedgwick, "has been allowed to masquerade so fully as history itself."2 Umpierre's voice of contestation is a geopolitical alternative of knowledge that emerges from the south as a response to that of the north. This is in reference to what Walter Mignolo explains as "the south is not, of course, a simple geographic location but a 'metaphor for human suffering under global capitalism'."3 This discourse of the south, "that of philosophy of liberation, is grounded in the first phase of modernity and comes from the subaltern perspective - not from the colonial / Christian discourse

of Spanish

colonialism

but

from

the

perspective

of its

consequences. "4 In this way, by resituating the point of articulation and thinking, the poetry of Umpierre engages with a critical consciousness of this geopolitics of knowledge. In her texts there is a subversive negotiation of the image of the "angel del hogar" or angel of the house, the conception of the woman that has been normalised as the ideal to be attained. Umpierre works towards breaking the dominant script through an alternative ordering of the home space. The act of cooking, traditionally associated with the "good woman"

1 . For more information see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture. (London and New York: Routledge, 1 994). 2. Eve Sedgewick, "Queer and Now," in The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, ed. DonaldE. Hall and Annarnarie Jagose (London: Routledge, 2013), 10. 3. Walter Mignolo, "The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference," in The South Asian Quarterly 1 0 1 , no. 1 (2002): 66. 4. Ibid., 66.

54

The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry ofUmpierre through a Queer Lens

of the house, becomes a delicious metaphor for queer sexual encounters. In her poem titled "Only the Hand that Stirs Knows What's in the Pot", she writes:

I cater to friends eight COlise meals for deliverance, for arousing passions, melting aphrodisiacs for pulsating lovers. fermentation in my grey cells, fool's parsley from my breasts, savoliy aromas from my loins, all for the guests in my banquets. 5 In these lines a re-elaboration of the borders through a queer imagery is visible. Umpierre dislocates the dominant social gender constructions to situate queer feminine desires within the 'holy' space of the home. Hers is a colliding discourse that resignifies the "home" through a queer lens, and she does so by refolTIlUlating this space from the interior itself. Her poem continues:

I don't share my recipes with them; One a man, the other a woman; both wanting my gist, my mysterious herb, my prescription. I don't deliver!6 Thus, she refutes all attempts at homogenisation. The act of weaving is also turned into a metaphor for the uniting of women in the fight against those who want to deny them their rights. Writing to women she says we must "hilar en fino, / hilar, hilar, hilar, / al mundo" (weave fmely, / weave, weave, weave, / the world) and in this way "unir, unir, crear brocado/ el tapizi que salve a nuestras musas" (unite, unite, create of silk brocade/ the tapestry/ that will save our muses). 7 There is subversion of what are considered to be "womanly activities" into acts

5. Luz Maria Umpierre, "Only the Hand that Stirs Knows "What's in the Pot," in "I'm Still Standing": Treinta Aiios de PoesiaiThirty Years ofPoetry, eds. Daniel Torres and Carmen S. Rivera (Bloomington: Third Woman Press, 2001), 1 1 8-1 1 9. 6. Ibid., 1 1 8. 7. Umpierre, "The Mar/Garita Poem," in "I'm Still Standing," 128.

Gmsheen Ghuman

55

of emancipation. "With this association, the poet is subverting a tradition of submission and powerlessness and transfOlming it into a tool for women's autonomy."8 She is not willing to surrender her Third space - a space of resistance - so that the world can be moulded witbin the dominant outline of generic confonnity. She refuses to let it be 'knowledgefied'. Umpierre

articulates

an alternative

vision

of the

woman,

thus

destabilizing gender and sexual hierarchies. The poem titled "Titulo:

Poema en que se trata de 10 que hay y no hay mah rui",9 contains only two lines, "Women are not roses; / they are all margaritas".10 The poem is composed in the fOlTIl of an email directed from Juana de Asbaje, a baroque poet of the 17th century, to Ana Castillo, a Chicana novelist and poet of the current century. The subj ect of the email is "newly defined concepts".u Thus this poem, playing on the space-time continuum, is a rewriting and an ungrammatical translation of the definition of a woman. In rejecting the imagery of the pure beauty of a rose and instead foregrounding the woman in the image of a margarita - an exhilarating cocktail - she is wilfully choosing hybridity over purity. This type of an act is what Stuart Hall describes as "a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity".12 There is an uncertainty of origins and a reclamation and rewriting of the body. Edourd Glissant talks of such multiplying, fragmented, plural identities as a "huge opening and as a new opportunity of breaking open closed gates".13 The email, by being directed from a poet of the 17th century to one in the 21st century, is a fOlTIl of rej ection of chronological linearity and shattering of the time-space continuum established by a euro-centric discourse. With this poem Umpierre brings forth "the discontinuity [of space and time] on the other side of colonial difference",14 and by rejecting the established order she instead embraces chaos. Even the

8. Elena M. Martinez, "Lesbian Themes in Luz Maria Umpierre's The Margarita Poems ... y Gtras Desgracia. And other Miifortunes ... ," Conjluencia 2, no. 1 (1996): 70. 9. Umpierre "Titulo: Poema en que se trata de 10 que hay y no hay mah na'," in I'm Still Standing, 120. 10. Ibid., 120 1 1 . Ibid., 120 12. Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 235. 1 3 . Edomd Glissant, "Les Divers du Monde est Irnprevisible," in Conference Proceedings Beyond Dichotomies. (California: Stanford University, 1998), 2. 14. Walter Mignolo, "The Geopolitics of Knowledge," 70.

56

The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry ofUmpierre through a Queer Lens

structuring of the poem in the form of an email as well as its length is a deliberate distancing from the established normative framework. While the rest of the poem is in English, the title itself is a hybrid of Spanish and local jargon. This heterogeneity is an embracement of the impure and the illegitimate. "By writing in Standard English, Umpierre appropriates a language that is considered privileged and is the one utilised in the United States by the powers she purports to resist. This act of engagement helps to shift the power of discourse back to her so that she can unleash attacks on her aggressors and on the discriminatory practices that accompany their actions. "15 She also challenges the perfOlmances of inaction and acceptance that have been assigned to women. In her poem "In Response", she writes: My name is not Maria Cristina I speak, I think, I express myself in any voice, in any tone, in any language that conveys my house within. The only way to fight oppression is through resistance: I do complain I will complain I do revise, I don't conceal, I will reveal, I will revise.16

There are certain characteristics and qualities, which by being reiterated over and over again have been naturalised as belonging to and inherent to women. Waiting, patience, passivity, and defencelessness are considered customarily typical of the female gender. Umpierre breaks this cycle, and changes, reinterprets, and subverts the discursive codes that constitute women. By declaring that "I will revise", she highlights the need to undo old structural discourses, and reconstitute them from the margins. In the introduction to this collection of poems The Margarita Poems, the poet talks of 'Margarita' . She describes Margarita as "an intoxicating drink, a flower back home in Puerto Rico, the title of a traditional 'danza' that was a favourite of my mother, and the name of a woman I love. Margarita is all of these and none. Margarita is my muse, Margarita is my poetry, Margarita is my imaginary lover, Margarita is my SELF. ,, 17 15. Alma SimOlUlet, "Delegitimising Oppressive Culture: The Voice of Counter Discoillse in Umpierre's Poetic Work," 27-28. 16. Umpierre, "In Response," in I'm Still Standing, 6 1 . 17. Umpierre, "In Cycles," in I'm Still Standing, 105.

Gmsheen Ghuman

57

Infusing such a multiplicity of significations to the word margarita simultaneously is a rejection of a lineal defmition. Margarita at the same time can signify one or multiple things. There is a fluidity of identity, an identity that is ever mutating and flows through various borders. It is not fixed. She rejects the labels and the process of categorisation through which the world views everything. These are labels soaked in heteronOlmativity. Umpierre subverts the coloniser's tools to use them in opposition to the very same colonial structures. Rewriting what it signifies to be a woman she says: My name is not Maria Cristina I am a Puerto Rican woman born in another barrio. Om men. . . They call me bitchy for I speak without a twisted tongue and I do fix all leaks in my faucets. My name is not Maria Cristina18

She says that she was born in "another barrio", that is, she lives in "an other" location, her voice comes from the Third space, a space where we see the manifestation of what Mignolo calls the colonial difference, a conflictive place, a place from which they burst the monopoly of a single truth, a single knowledge, and a single history. Umpierre's poems are inundated with plurisignifications and multivocalities. By reiterating over and over that "My name is not Maria Cristina", she rejects labelling and classification. She rejects the role that has been historically assigned to her by the heterosexist discourse, a discourse that is exclusive and that excludes. She revels in a bastardised performance of femininity that is evident in her poem titled "Cuentos sin hadas", or Tales without fairies. She talks of the doll that laughs, makes noise, frightens, shocks, takes a piss, talks, walks, loves, and wears little clothes. She writes "La muiieca que rie, la muiieca que espanta. / La muiieca que mea, la muiieca que habla. / La que camina y se mueve, la de la ropita enana. "19 This is a version of the woman that prescribes her 0\Vll identities and moves between them without being entrapped in detelTIlinisms that do not allow her to even speak. Furthermore, she rejects the religion that is a legacy of colonisation. She shows it to be an imported religion that has been forced upon the people by obliterating their own existing cultures by labeling them as "barbaric practices". Mignolo says, "This experience, in which global I S. Ibid., 61

19. Umpierre, "Cuentos sin Hadas," in I'm Still Standing, 87.

58

The Voice ofRebellion in the Poetry ofUrnpierre through a Queer Lens

designs emerged, is emptied when a given global design is exported and programmed to be implanted over the experience of a distinct place. ,,20 Umpierre raises the pertinent questions of whose god it is, and who has claimed this god to serve their 0\Vll purpose, thus revealing the inherent hypocrisy in religion. In the poem, "Dios se muda" or "God has moved", she writes that "EI Senor se marcha hacia blancos suburbios, / de casa con yardas, de arboles, de frutos, / de gente aristocrata y coches de lujO."21 Translated this would read "The God has moved towards white suburbs, / of houses with yards, trees, fruits, / of aristocratic people with luxury cars." She reveals the religious discourse that has been used to construct and legitimise hierarchies. Her poetry becomes the site of the emergence of a critique of cultural practices and their performance, and there rises a conflict because of the difference in the arrangement and positioning of histories. In her poem ttl.Sacrilegio? ," one can note an intent to decolonise this religion. She scandalously writes "Virgen sin virginidad, / virgen gorda y flaquita I .................... I Deja que yo te masturbe."22 This would mean "Virgin without virginity, I fat virgin and the thin one I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Permit me to masturbate you." By sexualizing the image of the Virgin Mary, Umpierre uses the process of queering the body as a site of resistance, and thus she appropriates the religion herself. The title of the poem - "Sacrilegio" or Sacrilege - is placed within question marks, a mode of interrogating and putting to doubt if this act of infusing life into the passive and cold stone statue of the Mother can truly even be considered as committing sacrilege. It is a voice of dissidence that ruptures the hierarchical structure put in place for the purpose of controlling and managmg. Her discourse arises in a conflictive place, a place that is beyond the margins and in between borders. The conflicts that surge from these borders burst dichotomous discourses. She declines the recognition that would grant her legibility, given that such a recognition would come at the cost of homogenisation. Instead she takes pleasure in being the repudiated 'other'. Thus, she escapes the trap of adopting a knowledge that is "more servile with respect to the powers of order than amenable to the requirements of truth. ,>2}

20. Walter Mignolo, "The Geopolitics of Knowledge," 69. 2 1 . Urnpierre, "Dios se Muda," in I'm Still Standing, 30. 22. Urnpierre, "l.Sacrilegio?" in I'm Still Standing, 83. 23. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Press, 1 990), 54.

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Umpierre embodies what Gayatri Gopinath tenns as "impossible desires". She writes, "discourses of sexuality are inextricable from prior and continuing histories of coloniality, nationalism, racism and migration. ,,24 She elaborates further saying, "contradiction to the globalisation of 'gay' identity that judges all 'other' sexual cultures, communities and practices against a model of Euro-American sexual identity ... [these texts are part of] an emerging body of queer of color scholarship [that] has taken to task the homonormativity that centers white gay male subjectivity, while fIxing the queer, non-white racialised, and / or immigrant subject as insufficiently politicised and 'modern'."25 Umpierre raises her voice against the silencing and obliteration that occur because of the universalisation of the singular legitimate epistemology, a process that she reveals to be constituted of acts of systemic violence. She unravels the patriarchal systems that have been imposed over knowledge systems, and in its place, she talks of the need to rewrite a world freed from the barriers of the coloniser. She rejects the organisation of knowledge and the order established by this. In its place she delights in madness and in the absurd. She rejects this knowledge that has been appropriated by the heterononnative society, an act that reveals such a society's "stubborn will to non-knowledge".26 She ruptures the logic that denies her the very possibility of the existence of a queer body. Madness is subverted into a recourse to a response from below, putting into structural chaos the discourse that has been imposed from above. Rejecting the logic of the coloniser, she instead embraces a rabid madness, which is reflected in these verses: I am crossing the river, :MAD, afflicted by the rabies for those who'll call me sinful, insane and senseless, a prostitute, a whore, a lesbian, a dyke because I'll fall, I'll drop I'll catapult My Self into this frantic 24. Gayatri Gopinatb, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2005), 3. 25. Ibid., I I . 26. Michel Foucault, History a/Sexuality, 55.

60

The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry ofUmpierre through a Queer Lens excitement for yom SEX my yellow margarita, my glorious daisy.27

Walter Mignolo talks of the need to construct alternative macro-narratives that aren't just "revisionist narratives nor narratives that intend to tell a different truth", but instead they are narratives directed towards "the search for a different logic ... , changing the telTIlS of the conversation as well its content ... to displace the 'abstract universalism' of modern epistemology and world history, while leaning toward an alternative to totality conceived as a network of local histories and multiple local hegemonies.,,28 She changes the way in which culture perceives as well as conceives the world. She shakes and changes the territory, and therefrom sprouts an other logic - a logic that rejects chronological linearity and unidimensionality. This other logic functions beyond the scope of occidental cartography, occupying new defiant liminal spaces. Revealing tbe logic as belonging to coloniality is a manifestation of what Mignolo propounds regarding "border" tbinking. He says, "border thinking that leads to decoloniality is of the essence to unveil that the system of knowledge, beliefs, expectations, dreams, and fantasies upon which the modem / colonial world was built is showing, and will continue to show, its unviability."29 Thus, her poetry effectively challenges tbe legitimacy of tbe universality of knowledge. We witness a restitution of subaltern knowledges that had been suppressed by tbe hegemony of the written letter. She embraces an orality in her poems. Daniel Torres declares that Umpierre's poetry: Defender y afinnar otro modo de ser alterno al gringo, en nuestro acento caribe y jibaro de aspiracion de eses muy particular, que se reproduce en estos versos altamente orales, como en toda su poesia: Yo ehtoy ehtudiando entre loh blanquitoh, sf. Ehtoy en la cufia del elitihmoh iplis! El espanich diplamen eh a'onde ehtudio aqui Y me dicen que no entienden como yo jablo, spo 27. Umpierre, "Immanence," in I'm Still Standing, 108. 28. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2000), 22. 29. Ibid., ix. 30. Daniel Torres, ed., "Un Encuentro con Luzrna," in "I'm Still Standing": Treinta Aiios de PoesialThirty Years o/Poetry, (Bloomington: Third Woman Press, 2001), 9.

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Umpierre creates a new border space from which emerge alternate knowledges, a knowledge that breaks the hegemony of knowledge and sense. Through her language and manner of speaking Umpierre replaces the universality of knowledge by a multivocal pluriversality. There is a fragmentation of order and logic. According to Walter Mignolo the colonial difference is constituted by alphabetic writing, which is used in the construction of an imaginary of the modem/colonial world.31 Mignolo also shows how colonial translation as a tool was deployed in the absorption of the colonial difference. According to him border thinking is a "restitution of the colonial difference that colonial translation (lUlidirectional, as today's globalisation) attempted to erase."32 This is one of the objectives of the voice raised by Umpierre as well. Her voice embodies "the erasure of the colonial epistemic difference from the perspective of what has been a subaltern form ofknowledge".33 There is a desubaltemisation of knowledges that go beyond the occidental conceptions of knowledge. Language, which has been a tool of oppression, is converted into a weapon for decolonisation. Silencing the dissident voices, as well as being silent about ungrammatical beings is the way in which the colonial knowledge system is implemented. This is a way of rendering their very existence as impossible. The claims in the coloniser's discourse of working towards the revelation of the truth are proved to be false. In fact, the entire process is aimed at suppressing truths to maintain the hegemony of the discourse in power. The nOlTIlative society "excludes certain fOlTIlS of individual and social experience or acCOlUltS for them in incomplete and prejudicial ways. ,,34 Umpierre speaks up against this exclusion and deleterious representations of the queer bodies and beings. Umpierre's voice surges and arises from the colonial difference. She uses her words as a counter-discourse to "recover distinctive fOlTIlS of identity that the prevailing sign system neutralises or obliterates. "35 She decentralises this organisation of knowledge by changing and disturbing the definitive center of enunciation, and by naming the absent location of enunciation. She uses queerness to pull out and bring forth a new language, a language that does not adhere to the norms and does not follow the directives put in place for this purpose. It is a language freed of boundaries that flourishes on the other side of the border. 3 1 . Walter Mignolo, Local Histories Global Designs, 3 . 32. Ibid., 3 . 3 3 . Ibid., 7. 34. David William Foster, Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991): 5. 35. Ibid., 6.

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The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry ofUmpierre through a Queer Lens

She articulates the histories of queer sexuality that have been buried. In "The Mar/Garita poem", she says: Buried, cemented in, 20 feet do\Vll, lUlder the sea, 50 chains, two cinder blocks, vaulted metal, concrete; subcutaneous, subterraneous, mummified, petrified in her language. 36

In the opinion of Eve Sedgwick, the "discussions of linguistic performativity have become a place to reflect on ways in which language can really be said to produce effects: effects of identity, enforcement, seduction, challenge.'m The word 'queer' is "fraught with so many social and personal histories of exclusion, violence, defiance, excitement. ,,38 The language created by Umpierre transmits these tensions, turning itself into a means of achieving freedom. The sentences, verses and words do not align with each other in an organised manner. Instead, they express and transmit the chaos and the devastation of the fractal complexities of these histories. She makes use of language to highlight a space that escapes from the normative conceptions of the fOlmation of identities. Language is representative since it signifies as well as codifies our very existence. We cannot situate ourselves outside language given that we see and understand the world through its representations. In the process of colonisation, it is language that is used to deny representation to someone, and thus deny them their very existence. Umpierre responds in opposition by creating her 0\Vll language from the margins that permeates into the interiors deliberately infusing an illegitimacy into the words. This language purposefully bastardises the interior of the process of representation. Umpierre makes possible the fOlTIlUlation of a subversive discourse that is a counter-discourse to the hegemonic representations. Her other ungrammatical language is a response to a heterosexist reading that excludes homoerotism. This new language is an arm for raising the voice against the invisibilisation of bodies that fall outside normativity. She 36. Umpierre, "The Mar/Garita Poem," in I'm Still Standing, 126. 37. Eve Sedgewick, "Queer and Now," 10. 3 8. Ibid., 8.

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gives voice to queer desires that have been silenced by heteronOlmativity. The deliberate selective myopia of the hegemonic discourse when faced with these ungrammatical desires is revealed. She understands the histories of language that are used to reproduce the coloniality of power, and by decolonizing them she reveals its use in the reconstruction and deconstruction of narratives. She armounces in one of her poems that "This is the day in which I I must invent a language I to heroinely save hers. "39 She wants to use this language as a tool of emancipation. The poem continues: Llena tu boca mujer mujer sabia llena tu boca con todas las palabras que has guardado en el estomago, en el esofago, en el Colon, en el recto, en la matriz, en las bilis, en la colmnna vertebral, en los rifiones, en el vaso sanguineo, en los ovarios, en los tubos de falopio, en la vagina. Llena, llena tu boca con ese grito de pasion agreste y viertelo.40

She does not create a mellifluous language, as is required in the normative poetry. She does not talk of the need for a soft language; instead she creates a language that is representative of the epistemic violence in the subjugation of queer sexualities. She creates a language to demolish this violence and free itself of its patriarchal shackles. The body is a text, and its representation brings it to existence. By writing a woman that does not exist in the hegemonic texts, Umpierre demands that they recognise this 'ungrannnatical' body, but without submitting to any fonn of homogenisation or fitting into any categorisation.

39. Umpierre, "The Mar/GaritaPoem," 127. 40. Ibid., 130.

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The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry ofUrnpierre through a Queer Lens

The body, through the process of nonnalisation, which in itself is far from being natural, has been naturalised. And the bodies that do not follow these nonns are either marginalised or their existence denied. Umpierre, in her Third space, shows the existence and the representation of the bodies that do not fit witbin tbe lines clearly demarcated by tbe heterosexual society. Umpierre's poetry is based on tbe premise tbat the body does not have an inherent truth. We create the said truth through tbe gaze, a gaze that can be turned blind by tbe normalised representations. She reveals the deceit of the naturalness of 'grammatical' bodies. She challenges the labeling of the bodies into boxes based on dichotomous categorisations of male/female, heterosexuallhomosexual/, normal/abnonnal. She works from the premise that a body at the same time could be one or the other, or none of these or all of tbese at tbe same time. She renders tbe labeling process futile and ineffectual. Bodies, like identities, are sho\Vll to be notoriously unstable in her poems, as is evident in her definition of 'margarita' that has been mentioned earlier. The languages of the body that Umpierre creates show her attitude of protest against the process of naturalisation. She changes the codes of seeing the body as a text, agitating the cultural codes through which we perceive the body. The body as a territory has been colonised. Umpierre rejects the map of the conquest of the body, and in its place redraws decolonial cartographies. The society, by regulating our bodies, attempts to regulate our sexualities. The dichotomies that belong to this are hierarchised, and in turn it is these hierarchies that organise and structure our society. When the body is grammaticalised and naturalised, it leads to the existence of a space of abjection. It creates excluded bodies that are denied recognition. These hierarchies generate a symbolic and real violence, and use it against the bodies that do not repeat and reproduce the nonns of such a society. Umpierre appropriates this space of abjection and turns it into a space of dissidence, a space to subvert the exclusion of ungrammatical bodies. It is a space where she challenges the entire process of naturalisation of certain types of bodies as itself being a constructed process. The dissident voice of Umpierre inverts the violence that is wielded and unleashed by this process to instead create a dehierarchised environment in which the bodies that incorporate difference exist. She states, breaking the hegemonic claim of the colonisers over their history as the universal History: Los dos simbolos islefios: el mar, mi mar, verdoso, azul,

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65

y la garita, el puente del vigia, del colonizador que observa desde el Morro la entrada de las naves, la garita que evita que smja la union de las palabras "isla" y "mar." Hay que salvar el mar I la musa y demoler las gritas del Diablo en el Morro de mi mente. Hay que extraer de la palabra Margarita, el mar que yace atado detras de los rifles cafiones y bombas nucleares que vigilan desde la garita. Si vamos a crear nuestra historia, nuestra lengua, debemos liberar el mar de la garita.glu glu glu glu glu.4 1

Umpierre, through her poetry, fulfils a double purpose - she gives visibility to the excluded desires and sexualities and at the same time she reveals the mechanism that the hegemonic discourse uses to naturalise certain desires and a certain sexuality as nOlmal. In this poem, she rethinks language from a different location. It is a celebration of the impure. The creation of a new language by Umpierre challenges both, nationality and coloniality as oppressors, as well as knowledge and reason as universalised. Mignolo speaks of a "transnational dimension of plurilanguaging", that is "the way language is conceptualised in relation to both colonial control and national ideologies, on the one hand, to knowledge and reason on the other".42 Umpierre situates her movement of decolonisation in queer sexualities. Cherrie Moraga says, "it is historically evident that the female body, like the Chicano people, has been colonised. And any movement to decolonise them must be culturally and sexually specific. "43 By situating herself in the queer space she breaks the binomial "natural". This Third space, on the other side of nOlmativity, erases the borders and eliminates the limits to sexuality, nationality, race, etc. She 4 1 . Ibid., 128-129. 42. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Colonialify, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. 219. 43. Cherrie Moraga, The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 149.

66

Tho Voice ofReholionin the Poetry ofU�iertt through a Queer Lens

vi,ibiE,e, the gu�r de,ire, by re,iding in and thinking from the beeders, and not enly by 'peaking of the,e borders from the O\I,ide. Instead of trying to find and move in a definitive truth, Umpierre" poetry looh for, and mcrunters, a Third 'pace that i, a space of Eminal tran,itions and trn,forrmIion.. She challenge, the ,tructural beeders nd constraint, of JXletry it,elf. Her poem •

•

0 -

"

•

"

• 0

0

•

0

"

"

0

0

"

"

0 P A DR E

PAD RE

44. Urnpierre, "'The Writer's Block,» inI'm Still Standng 52

"

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67

By referring to these agents of patriarchy as "assassins", she reveals how the denial of recognition to people who do not fit within gender dichotomies function. Further, a Latin American editorial house rejected her first anthology expounding her encounters with racism because, according to the editor, she did not 'write like a woman'. It is this very rigid defining of masculinities and femininities as fixed that Umpierre is trying to counter in her texts. Her texts are a rejection of binding identities. She even had trouble getting several of her anthologies published since they were seen as not long enough. Thus, she is challenging the literary conventions not only through language but also through the structure and construction of texts. It is a fight against the barriers that are constructed due to the presence of the concept ofnOlmality/abnOlmality. To conclude, Umpierre, through her poetry, topples the naturalised understandings of knowledge. Hers is a discourse that by fracturing identities liberates languages from their colonialised history. By refusing to be silenced, or homogenised and universalised, Umpierre inverts the 'normal' to create and de-create borders, adding alternative significations to geographies, and undoing these frontiers. Her voice rises from the 'other' side of the colonial difference, and it challenges the regimens of normalisation. She uses the very language of the coloniser against him to articulate queer subjectivities, desires, and sexualities that have been invisibilised and silenced. Bibliography

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Press, 1990. Glissant, Edouard. "Les Divers du Monde est Imprevisible." In Conference proceedings Beyond Dichotomies. California: Stanford University, 1998. Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2005. Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 222-237. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. Martinez, Elena M. "Lesbian Themes in Luz Maria Umpierre's The Margarita Poems... Y otras desgracias. And Other Misfortunes.... " Confluencia 2:1 (1996). 66-82.

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The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetry ofUrnpierre through a Queer Lens

Mignolo, Walter D. "The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference." The South Atlantic quarterly. Duke UP 101, no. 1 (2002): 57-96. -. Local Histories / Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2000. Moraga, Cherrie. The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry. Boston: South End Press, 1993. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "Queer and Now." In The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, edited by Donald E. Hall and Annamarie Jagose, 3-17. London: Routledge, 2013. Simounet, Ahna. "Delegitimizing Oppressive Culture: The Voice of Counter Discourse in Umpierre's Poetic Work." Centro Journal 20:1 (2008): 22-35. Torres, Daniel. "Un Encuentro con Luzma." In "I 'm still standing ": Treinta Anos de PoesiaiThirty Years o/Poetry, edited by Daniel Torres and Carmen S. Rivera, 7-15. Bloomington: Third Woman Press, 201 1 . Umpierre, Luz Maria. "I 'm still standing ": Treinta AFios de Poesiai Thirty Years 0/ Poetry, edited by Daniel Torres and Carmen S. Rivera. Bloomington: Third Woman Press, 201 1 . William Foster, David. Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.

SPACE, THE FIFTH PILLAR OF FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM: MILITANT BEACH AND EROTIC TEMPLE IN THE SEASHORE NARRATIVES OF CRISTINA PERI ROSSI AND ANURADHA ROY JAVA SINGH

Abstract The practice of gynocritics, enunciated by Elaine Showalter, attempts to read the female difference in texts by women writers.

In

addition to the

four pillars of difference identified by Showalter, space emerges as a substantive basis for differentiation of female texts through the lines of analysis developed in the first part of the paper.

In

the next part, Mikhail

Bakhtin's literary chronotope is explicated as a tool for reading the spatial differentiality of texts. Finally, the paper attempts to decipher the distinct female spatial strategy that emerges from reading the selected short stories of the iconic post-modernist voice of the Hispano-Uruguayan writer, Cristina Peri Rossi 1, and Anuradha Roy's novel

Sleeping on Jupiter.

Key Terms: Space, gynocritcs, seashore, chronotope, threshold.

Locating the Female Difference The sea is a "natural" frontier, located at the margins, yet when it is cast in literature and mythology, it occupies centre stage. Ram, Ravana, and Ulysses fulfil their destinies by making journeys across the sea, Captain Ahab in

Moby Dick

chums the sea in search of his adversary and

Hemingway' s Old Man Santiago seeks his prized quarry in the sea.

1 . All translations of Peri Rossi's works cited in the paper are mine.

70

Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

However, Virginia Woolf's characters in

The WaveSZ

never venture into

the sea, they step up to it without stepping into it, they hear it, they look at it from the shore, occupying the interstitial sandy space between the fluidal sea and solid land. The feminine difference is palpable in these distinct treatments of the sea. Motifs of conquest, revenge, glory that dominate male rendered mythology and sea-centric canon works, are set aside. Privilege is accorded, instead, to the sea as a frontier of consciousness and the shore bordering becomes no-man's land where the received past and numerous future aspirational states jostle each other. As

the

spatial

manifestation of the

interstitial

stage

in human

consciousness, the seashore becomes the space for exploring marginality and belonging, memory and departure in the selected works of two women writers. Anuradha Roy's recent novel, which featured on the Man Booker long list for

2015,

is set at the shore as are numerous stories by the iconic

post-modernist Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi. Treatment of space in general and the seashore in particular in these narratives offers a possible anchoring for feminist literary criticism. Elaine Showalter3 advocated the practice of gynocritics to disrupt the centre located within androcentric approaches of "hismeneutics", as only by

such

decentering

autonomy.

In

could

"helTIleneutics"

acquire

epistemological

order to further the proj ect of evolving a substantive

approach to reading "Female texts"4, Showalter postulates four models of difference: biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural. Feminist criticism from the biological perspective emphasises the body as a source of imagery.

In

the texts selected for this paper, the image of menstrual

blood appears repeatedly. Decaying fishing nets bleed their menstrual blood on abandoned beaches, walls are writ with menstrual blood, a setting sun leaves blood stains in the sky in Cristina Peri Rossi's stories. In Anuradha Roy's novel, a girl child claws the red beads from the membrane of a forbidden pomegranate making them burst, symbolic of shedding of the uterine membrane, unfertilised ova and mucosal tissue at the start of the menstrual cycle. Linguistic criticism locates the difference of women's writing in its use of language, it examines whether a "female" language is discernible in women's writing. Woolf in her landmark essay caught the germ of linguistic feminine difference when she described the futility of imitating a

2. Virginia Woolf, The Waves, (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2000). 3 . Elaine Showalter won the 2012 Truman Capote award for literary criticism. 4. Showalter categorizes women's \Vfiting as Feminine, Feminist, and Female, wherein only the last is autonomous, it is free of both imitation and responsiveness. See "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness."

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"man's sentence", which she finds unsuited in "weight, pace, and stride" for use by a woman writer.5 Neither Peri Rossi nor Anuradha Roy are diffident in their portrayals of violence, yet their lexicon and syntax has a markedly feminine cadence. Psycho-analytic criticism delves into the female psyche, Showalter signals the critical interest in a mother-daughter configuration as a source of female creativity as a significant carry over from female psychoanalysis. The quest for a bond with the mother as a metaphor for a need to know one's origins is a principal motif in

Sleeping on Jupiter.

Cristina Peri

Rossi explores the same bond in "Tsunami", where the fears of the mother that made her anxious and vigilant live on in the daughter; in "La Anunciaci6n" the mother' s pain at losing a child fills her so completely with sadness that it leaves no room for vengeance or rancour. The only recourse from her sadness is love. Finally, it is only from the cultural vie\vpoint that a comprehensive understanding of women's writing can be dra\Vll because it provides the social context in which ideas of women's body, language, and psyche evolve. Concepts of perception, self-perception as well as awareness of others' perception and silencing of women's contributions to literary culture, are the multiple foci of the lens of feminist cultural criticism. One of the interesting aspects of Showalter's study is how she, at once, invokes and interrogates the existence of a female literary tradition or any female commonality. Thus, she is on guard against

adfeminam

arguments

"[t]here is clearly a difference between books that happen to have been , written by women, and a 'female literature .,,6 The texts selected for this paper are squarely placed in the 'female' tradition because they demonstrate the four differences demarcated by Showalter. The four pillars are like nested Matryoshka dolls, biology within language, language within psyche and psyche within culture. A tiny doll, of space, can be nested within the larger doll of culture as an approach to feminist literary criticism. It is a widely acknowledged view that social relations are constructed and negotiated spatially and are embedded in the spatial organization of places.7

5. Virginia Woolf, A Room o/One 's Own (San Diego: Harcourt, 1989), 76. 6. Mary Eagleton, "Literary Representations of Wornen," inA History o/Literary Feminist Criticism, edited by Gill Plain and Susan Seller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 109. 7. Nancy Duncan. "Replacings," in BodySpace: Destabilizing Geographies 0/ Gender and Sexuality, ed. Nancy DlUlcan (Abingdon: Routledge, 1 996), 4.

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Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

Space as a Substantive Element in Gynocritics The common thread of space runs through the various places that constitute culture - the house, the school, the temple, the cafe, the work place - each spatially

organised place is

inalienable from cultural

perceptions. Linda McDowell, the noted feminist geographer, maintains that it is now widely argued that location - the standpoint - of the theorist makes a difference to what is being claimed.8 By the same token, locations featured

in the text also make a difference to what is being

claimed. 'When

women writers move the narrative onto abandoned beaches populated by militants or temples embellished by erotic sculptures they reject ghettoised interiors and prescribed places - they contest, subvert, and appropriate prescribed spatiality, the places become agency-laden, critical, and liminal, breaking prescribed frontiers. Thus, space emerges as a substantive perspective in the cultural viewpoint demarcated by Showalter, and the location of the characters along with the spatialization of that location in a literary narrative makes a difference to what is being said. The space that emerges from the pens of Peri Rossi and Roy ceases to be an "inert and static entity on or through which cultural forces operate",9 it becomes an autonomous element of material culture.

Relocating Space in the Chronotope Space is always impregnated with time in a literary work. Bakhtin articulated the inseparability of spatiality and temporality in his concept of the literary chronotope. Bakhtin identified five maj or chronotopes and five minor ones, among these, the minor chronotopes of threshold and its antithetical chronotope of the Gothic castle are of particular interest to the attempted readings of the selected works of Peri Rossi and Roy. Though Bakhtin treated time as the primary axis, in perceiving the chronotope of threshold, he seems to hint at some circumstances that may dissolve the primacy of time over space.

In

the chronotope of threshold,

8. Linda McDowell, "Spatializing feminism," in BodySpace: Destabilizing Geographies 0/ Gender and Sexuality, ed. Nancy Duncan (Abingdon: Routledge. 1996), 27. 9. Myra J. Hird. "New Feminist Sociological Directions," in The Canadian Journal a/Sociology, Vol. 28, no. 4 Autumn, (2003): 451, accessed October 26, 2016. urI: "WWw.jstor.org/ stable/3341837.

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time is essentially instantaneous. It is as if it has no duration10 because when crisis events occur in threshold places - such as the staircase, the corridor - that is, places defined by in-betweeness, time stands suspended, in dissonance with biographical time. This admission dilutes the primacy indicated by tbe title of the foundational essay, Forms ofTime" and of the Chronotope in the Novel, and so establishes tbe first point of departure in readdressing the hierarchy of time and space in the chronotope. The second directional divergence that leads away from primacy of time over space relates to whether centrifugal or centripetal energies are dominant in a text. All categories of novels selected by Bakhtin for explicating the major chronotopes are teleological in nature, that is, the narrative moves towards one final moment. Such narratives call for monologic chronotopes where space is in lock-step with time. Where the narrative does not enjoin to one final end it generates a centrifugal vitality, instead of a closure, multiple resolutions of conflicts are posited. The telos is displaced by the kairos: several critical, decisive moments occurring in a network of situations that communicate with each other - dialogic chronotopes operate in such narratives, a single moment of time stands witness to dynamic transformations of space12, creating an open-ended anticipatory dialogue. Clearly then, post-modern narratives, which are not aligned to any significant plot pattern, are highly centrifugal, and tbus generate dialogic chronotopes. Joy Ladin examines the functioning of chronotopes in the centrifugal environment, "Chronotopes flow in a series of hints, glimpses, dissolves, defming consciousness, world and values via evanescence rather than stability."13 The transgender critic reaffilTIls the chronotopic fusion of temporality and spatiality as an inherent feature of all language and, therefore, of all texts but also admits tbat in a centrifugal narrative the fusion may stand deferred. The mapping of such texts pulls space out into the cognitive foreground from the lock-step of time-space. It is interesting to note that even though the title ofBakhtin's work, Forms of Time, referred to here, signals the primacy of time, all the minor chronotopes are constituted by elements of space - road, to'Wll, parlour, castle, and tbreshold. While deliberating upon tbe chronotope of tbe road, 10. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 248. 1 1 . Emphasis, mine. 12. See Jolm Agnew for geographical and topographical perspectives of space. 1 3 . Joy Ladin, '''It was not Death': The Poetic Career of the Chronotope," in Bakhtin 's Theory of the Literary Chronotope Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, eds. Nele Bemong et aI., (Gent: Academia Press, 2010), 133.

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Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

Bakhtin remarks, "the road is a particularly good place for random encounters . . . People who are normally kept separate by social and spatial distance can accidentally meet. . . The road is especially (but not exclusively) appropriate for portraying events governed by chance."14 Just as the road is an appropriate space for random encounters, the seashore by its very geographic placement represents the final threshold. It is suggestive of transitions, it dissolves the borders of solid ground approaching, yet not attaining, the fluidity of the sea. It offers immense potentialities and so becomes an apposite space for "resurrections, renewals, epiphanies". If a chronotope of the seashore were construed then it would have to be located within the motivic chronotope of threshold that is connected with "the breaking point of life, the moment of crisis, the decision that changes a life (or the indecisiveness that fails to change a life, tbe fear to step over the threshold)."15 The Motif of Rescue in the Chronotope of the Seashore

The chronotope of the seashore in the selected stories of Cristina Peri Rossi carries the motif of rescue as opposed to the motif of conquest, which is integral to several male representations of the sea. Among the selected stories, Tsunami and Naufragos overtly describe two contrasting rescue attempts - the contrast lies in the magnitude of the rescue and in the outcome of the attempts. The motif of rescue is also etched out in less bold lines with greater metaphoric complexity in "La Anunciaci6n" where it plays out through two distinct metaphors - the retrieval of miscellaneous discarded debris from tbe sea and tbe defence of an apparition of the Holy Virgin from militants - both effected by a child. The chronotope of tbe seashore, which is the space-time configuration of the events on the seashore, in all these narratives is inextricably linked with the rescue motif. In order for tbe "event" of rescue to take place the spatiality must be fraught with danger, victims and the saviour must populate the space at the same time, and the temporal framing must focus sharply on that moment in time wherein solely the spatial location of each character at the critical moment will confer the status of victim or saviour on them.

14. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 243. 15. Ibid. 248.

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Centripetal and Centrifugal Energies The spatial-temporal unity in the chronotope of the seashore can be understood

through

a grid

of rarification-saturation

and

slowness­

acceleration. Keunen!6 draws upon the Bergsonian construct of Duration!7 to map out four possibilities of temporal experience. He terms these forms extreme because they are independent of biographical time. All events due to their inherent dialogic nature!8 can be located on the cartographic space generated by the dual axes, each of which represents a process of change ­ change in spatial information and change in the awareness oftime. Accelerated Time La A nunciacion

Rarified space

Saturated space The Old Man and the Sea

Slow Time Figure

16.

5.1:

Location of Selected Texts on Keunen's spatio-temporal grid

Bart Keunen, "The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Film: Bakhtin,

Bakhtin 's Theory of the Literary Chronotope Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, eds. Nele Bemon et al. (Gent: Academia Press, 201 0), 35. 17. Bergson's duree (duration) or lived time of every day mundane experience is Bergson and Deleuze on Forms of the Time," in

similar to Bakhtin's real time, horizontal time or historical time on which the abstracting mind does not exert any influence, the mind suspends its imag(in)ing in this temporal experience. See Ibid.,

1 8 . An

43.

event is always a dialogic unit in so far as it is a correlation: something

happens only when something else with which it can be compared reveals a change in time and space. See Holquist,

16.

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Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

Rarification and saturation are the two terminal points of the spatial axes; while in a rarified state the spatial infonnation remains static, undisturbed by new stimuli; in a saturated state spatial infOlmation undergoes a radical change under the impact of a constant flow of new information. The axis of temporal awareness calibrates the slO\vness or acceleration of reactions to new information. Keunen explains slO\vness and acceleration as temporal variables dependent on memory and anticipation. 'When memory is the dominant force in consciousness, reactions are slow, when anticipation commands consciousness, reactions to new information are accelerated. Sometimes, the observing consciousness halts the processing of information in such a way that an effect of slowing do"Wll occurs: at other moments, the impression of acceleration arises, because the consciousness reacts in an lUlusually alert way to the new information . . . temporal processes . . . slowing do"Wll and acceleration are related to the way in which consciousness deals with memory and anticipation.19

In slow time, preponderance of memory makes consciousness passive, accelerated time consciousness is active because knowledge from memory is subjugated to new infonnation and anticipated states. Though Keunen's analysis suggests that in the chronotope of threshold there is a "strong involvement with nmemonic material",20 the transfonnative power of threshold, as seen in the seashore narratives, seems more suggestive of preponderance of anticipation over memory. Centripetal narratives that are directed towards a telos are characterised by rarification and slO\vness because the comprising events are detennined by chance, not by consciousness. Even though the adventure novel may transport its characters through several exotic faraway lands, the spatiality does not alter - each land is fraught with similar dangers in different fonns. The adventure chronotope is thus characterised by a technical, abstract connection between space and time, by the reversibility of moments in temporal sequence, and by their interchangeability in space, "what happens is Babylon could as well happen in Egypt or Byzantium and vice versa".21 'When time is reversible in a narrative and events are governed by chance and the end is pre-determined, then the characters' spatial awareness carries little weight towards understanding the narrative as III

19. Keunen, "The Chronotopic Imagination," 43. 20. Ibid., 45. 2 1 . Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 1 00.

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cognitive construct. By contrast, when kairos, a network of conflicting situations, dominates the narrative then the emergent saturated, accelerated chronotope puts in play the cognitive processes of evaluation, deciphering and reasoning. The motif of rescue foregrounded in the chronotope of the seashore acquires differentiated meanings depending on the spatio­ temporality that devises it. The Victim, the Rescuer, the Saviour, and the Martyr

"La Anunciaci6n" and "Naufragos" both describe rescue attempts. The protagonist of the fmmer is a young boy who seems engaged in a mindless game of picking stones and other debris from the sea bed. He rescues them as if they were animate creatures. He thinks he is alone, until one day when he sees a woman dressed in white walking in from the sea towards the shore. He revers her as the Holy Virgin is revered in his village church and builds a temple for her. Eventually, his efforts at invoking the divine power in the apparition are seen to be misdirected and futile. The sea, which is the enemy, destroys the temple. At the same time some soldiers who had been hiding in the woods start firing at the boy. At this juncture, the boy becomes the saviour and the goddess from whom he expected miracles, finds herself in need of rescue. The other rescue story, "Naufragos" describes the fates of two survivors in the immediate aftemmth of a shipwreck. The man, having reached the safety of the shore, decides to come back to rescue the woman. 'Whereas in "La Anunciaci6n" the chronotope of the seashore generates an ambience of abandonment on the sea shore, and locates the rescue attempt outside the sea, focusing on the objects and the apparition salvaged out from the sea, "Naufragos" shifts the narrative space further away from the borderland to the fluid sea itself. Locating the story in and within the sea makes the chronotope less saturated. The flow of information itself is condensed to what is conveyed by the sea alone with minimal intervention of other forces, consequently the chronotope is more rarified. The space, though in a constant state of tUlTIloil from the very start of the narrative, does not undergo radical change; the modulations in spatiality are purely emphatic not transformative. But Peri Rossi manages to transplant the chronotope of threshold from its natural soil of "saturated" space to a "rarified" one by accelerating time. Her unusual pairing for a centripetal narrative, establishes a gender difference clearly illustrative of Hartsock's construal of the concept,

78

Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism Women and men, then, grow up with personalities affected by different bmmdary experiences, differently constructed and experienced inner and outer worlds, and preoccupations with different relational issues. This early experience forms an important grOlUld for the female sense of self as connected to the world and the male sense of self as separate, distinct and even disconnected.22

The rarified space in accelerated time is shared by the woman who is on the verge of drO\vning and the man who is her self-appointed saviour. Self-appointed because she is too weak to even call out for help. The man does not respond to her cry for help but to the imperative of an egoistic consciousness. A consciousness that infOlTIlS perception through (self) imagination rather than fact-based knowledge is the stimulus for change. The actions of the man are driven by his self-image. He believes that because he has survived the ship\Vfeck he has certain exceptional qualities, like astuteness, intelligence, and foresight. Having survived, he feels invulnerable. He acknowledges that his decision to rescue another drowning passenger is prompted by "a certain sentiment of vanity and smugness rather than generosity".23 Accelerated time is important because outcomes of life and death are determined in an instant. Thus, in the final moment the drowning woman crosses the threshold over to safe land, whereas the man sinks in waters made dangerous by his self-image. How does Peri Rossi saturate space and accelerate time in "La Anunciaci6n"? The spatial situation is saturated, that is it lUldergoes brisk changes in response to new infOlmation. Though the story seems to occur on the same strip of beach, the space experiences a radical transfOlmation from an abandoned sand strip to, first, a playground for a child, then to a commanding arena for a monarch or a temple potent with powers of the Virgin and then to a battlefield where the lone saviour stands against the mighty enemy. As is typical of the chronotope of threshold, time is instantaneous, its duration is infinitesimal and therefore inestimable. We may tenn this archaeological time because it reveals "several fonns of connexion, several hierarchies of importance, several networks of detennination, several teleologies. ,,24 The temporal experience thus is highly concentrated as the protagonist responds to an accelerated salvo of stimuli. The stimuli

22. Hartstock, "The Feminist Standpoint," 226. 23. Cristina Peri Rossi, "Naufragos," in Cuentos Reunidos (Barcelona: Lmnen, 2007), 374. 24. Michel Foucault, Archaelogy of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002), 5.

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have a distinctively internal origin - the yOlUlg boy's memory and anticipation drive his perceptions. Peri Rossi gives new information about the boy's past experiences and future anticipations that together detelTIline the present. She deftly diffuses the frontier between past and present with a simultaneous evocation of the two antithetical chronotopes. The extract below illustrates this unusual technique.

The fishing boats were stre\Vll about in the sand, abandoned. Wild flowers grew from within the spongy wood. Green stalks and a white cro\Vll between sodden, splintered planks. The wood is dying slowly. It dies battered, leaning on the sand. A seagull glides in the air, wings forming a cross, chest dark, it lands slowly. It lands on a useless oar of the boat plunged neck-deep in sand. Earlier, when fishermen used to go out to sea, every boat was mounted with a grand lamp, like an eye which lit up the water and the fish to the depths. A round and lUllidded eye, casting a powerful and serene gaze. The fishermen cleaned it, polished it, focused its light and sailed by it. Now the nets hang decayed with mould and leave their menstrual blood on the sand25 Is it accurate to call this seashore, or the boats on it abandoned? It is demonstrably inhabited, as there are boats, planks, seagull, lamp, and nets visible. The narrative is driven by movements of non-human actors fishermen are part of the given synchronic history, all other elements are spaced diachronically - the flowers are in flush, the planks are dying, but the mould on them is alive; the soaring seagull seeks a resting place, the oar that had found its grave in the sand is resuscitated as the bird's perch; and the frayed, decayed net, useless for catching fish is fertile. These alterities

of

dynamism

in

the

seemingly

static

are

emblematic

of

Showalter's "female" writing that contests the rigidities of a male structure through its own strategies of language, body, and psyche, and in the selected extract, of space. The compounded strategy creates a distinctive projection of space. The dynamic seashore is of course reflective of the meteorological forces of erosion, resource exhaustion and technological obsolescence but is also a spongy womb enabling birth, a menstruating entity affirming its fecundity and a route for rediscovery. The use of the Spanish word

acorchada,

in the original text, to

describe the wooden planks demonstrates the contestability of space where competing, contradictory forces are always present.

In Spanish acorchada

is an auto-antonym; it can mean a wood that is moist and spongy like cork but, it can also mean a wood so completely desiccated that if worked upon 25. Cristina Peri Rossi, "La AnlUlciacion," in Cuentos Reunidos (Barcelona: Lumen, 2007), 166.

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Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

it would make the tool bounce. The authorial intent of Peri Rossi was to depict the spongy cork as moistened wood26. But, mindful of the Barthesian decapitation of the author which argues for the substitution of the "language itself for the person who until then had been supposed to be its O\vner",27 her intent, can at best, be accepted only partially. Thus, both meanings remain valid in an object-oriented reading. Extrapolating the linguistic indeterminacy to space reveals the multi-subjective potential of space. Peri Rossi shows how the same space can create differentiated meanings. She alludes to the biblical title of the story "La Anunciaci6n" by describing a worship ritual, wherein it is not the devotional intent of the faithful that is foregrounded but the dynamic spatiality of the designated place of worship. In the story, a woman, perhaps an apparition, presents herself as a vision of the Holy Virgin Mother to a young boy who decides to install the vision as a miracle maker. In order to worship the Goddess, he seats her on a throne with a sceptre by her side, a cro\Vll on her head, a soft carpet beneath her feet, shielded by her army. He builds a defensive balustrade to keep out the enemy. The throne and the protective wall are made of sand, the sceptre and the cro\Vll are constructed of twigs and branches, the army comprises sharp polished glass fragments. Such spatiality evokes the chronotope of the Gothic castle with its denotive traces of legends, myths, weapomy, and hierarchical relationships but simultaneously subverts it by the antithetical chronotope of threshold marked by evanescence. The sand wall will dissolve with the first lick of waves, burying the anny of glass pieces. The fragile cro\Vll and sceptre will disintegrate in the gush of sea wind. The contrast between the chronotope of the Gothic castle that calibrates the space controlled by tradition and the chronotope of threshold that infuses the same space with liminality is demonstrative of a female difference that goes beyond binaries of power and resistance, male-female, hegemonic-subaltern or oppression-subjugation. It charts a new cartography where the question is one of "freeing life wherever it may be imprisoned or of tempting it into an uncertain combat. ,,28 The dynamic spatiality brings about a change in the designations of the saviour and the victim. The goddess appears as a saviour at the start but, needs to be rescued at the end. The boy's status undergoes a gradual elevation from a rescuer to a saviour to a martyr. 26. In an online c01llrlllmication with the \VTiter. 27. Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 143. 28. Giles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri, What is philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 1 7 1 .

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\¥bile saviours in both stories - the young boy in "La Anunciaci6n" and the shipwreck survivor in "Naufragos" - meet with death in the end, the means to that end generate different chronotopes. The young boy dies fighting the soldiers on the beach in the open air; the shipwreck survivor drowns, his lungs filling with water, devoid of air. In their attempts, the young boy is elevated to the status of a martyr because he dies defending an idea - his martyrdom is made accessible by the site of this death - the space he once ruled as a dominion and was able to tranSfOlTIl into a place of faith. The space where the shipwreck survivor meets his end is the bottom of the sea, gasping for air, lashed with torrential water from above and pulled in by the heaviness of the sea below "with its dirty green sludge and its calcareous dregs".29 Alternation and Simultaneous Evocation of Antithetical Chronotopes

The chronotope of the Gothic castle pervades "Naufragos", whereas in "La Anunciaci6n", Peri Rossi alternates between the two antithetical chronotopes, of the Gothic castle and of threshold, to highlight the contrast between the seashore as a liminal space pregnant with possibilities and dead weight of the established structures of the dense forest and abyssal sea on either side of it. A similar technique of chiaroscuro is visible in Anuradha Roy's novel. Sleeping on Jupiter is about a young girl, Nomi, a survivor of the Bangladesh war; she is placed in a religious ashram where she is raped as a child by the godman; she manages to escape to a nearby town and eventually goes to Norway as an adopted child. Nomi returns to the town as a documentary film maker to discover the prehensile and redemptive powers of memory. The novel also casts three women in their sixties, who are taking a vacation together for the first time. They are in the seaside town to visit nearby temples. The narrative of Sleeping on Jupiter alternates between two chronotopes, each instituting its distinct, corresponding cognitive scheme. Events in the main shrine temple and the ashram are marked by the chronotope of the Gothic castle whereas the chronotope of threshold unifies time and space in the occurrences on the beach, the railway station, the hotel and in the ancient temple decorated with erotic sculptures that has ceased to be a place of worship. The ashram is described in the image of a Gothic castle. It has "high gates made of metal sheets with a line of iron spikes above", a barbed wire 29. Peri Rossi, "Naufragos," 376.

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Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

fence runs along its perimeter, a hatchet man who punishes those who flout ashram rules. The innemlOst room is the location from which Guruji (the lord of the castle) wields his power. The weathervane serves as a talisman - Nomi believes that she will be set free when it points north. The main temple at JhamlUli is dense with an aura of the mysterious powers of the gods. Its legend of the dead guide and its inherited rituals also establish an analogy with the Gothic castle. In addition to a site for worship, which inspires awe, the temple is also a dangerous space that instils fear. Inside the shrines the stone floors were so slippery with grease and water that they had to edge along the walls, holding them for support. They bowed their heads at a dozen altars. In the sanctum sanctorum lit only with flaming torches, priests brought oil lamps towards them, dispensing benediction, their menacing faces in the flickering light.30

The temple at Jharmuli, like the Gothic castle, is saturated with historical time and with traditions that date back several millennia. The present carmot penetrate the past in the spatial arrangement of the castle. However, the impenetrability is breached when the narrative shifts to the Sun Temple - now merely an object of architectural and historical curiosity, not of worship. The day before the first ceremony at the temple centuries ago, a mason had toppled to his death from the tower; not long after the king had been struck by leprosy. Because of the bad omens, the temple had never been used for worship and even now had a menacing, secretive 100k.31

In the main shrine, the priests - the carriers of age-old traditions - are "menacing". The spatiality has permeated their consciousness, whereas in the Sun Temple, the "menace" is frozen in the past. It does not obligate visitors to "bow their heads". Instead in this space, marked by erotic sculptures, bereft of tradition, Latika, who is given to using "many age­ defying creams and serums" is finally successful in her efforts to defy time, by getting involved in a romantic encounter at an age when her friends have settled comfortably as grandmothers in familial structures. The contrasting images of affection captured in the two chronotopes are created by varying the spatiality. In the main shrine the women are going deeper into the layers of historical time towards the sanctum sanctorum, whereas in the Sun Temple they climb "forbiddingly vertical"

30. Amrradha Roy, Sleeping on Jupiter (Gurgaon: Hachette India, 2015), 96. 3 1 . Ibid., 1 87

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steps to reach their destination. Here the representational significance of the chronotope is projected in relief; contrasting space-time unities confined closed space and historical horizontal time of the main shrine creates an affect that contrasts directly with the one generated by the open elevated space and vertical time. The latter is the result of a struggle between "living historical time and the extra temporal other-worldly ideal"32, whereas the horizontal conception time results from a surrender to inherited history. Roy like Peri Rossi conducts a melody of alterities through her selection of spaces and their changing semantics, a historic temple ceases to be a marker of tradition, it draws its contemporary significance as an escape from the religious to the sensual; an ashram suppurates with sexual and psychological trauma within a veneer of spiritual exaltation. Both structures, the historic and the erotic temple, standing on the seashore, are located on a solidity-fluidity spectrum. The chronotope of rescue operates as a momentary flash when Lata, one of the older women, finds renewed desire at the erotic temple. However, in the opaqueness of the gothicihistoric temple the old man who collapses due to the heat and suffocating ambience will perhaps meet his end, the self­ proclaimed saviour of Naufragos. The chronotope of the Gothic castle snuffs out the chronotope of rescue. 'Female' Spatial Strategy

A chronotopic analysis of the texts marks out two 'female' techniques for effecting spatial strategy. The alternation between the chronotope of threshold and the chronotope of the Gothic castle highlight the contrast between established nOlmative structures and liminal spaces. The contrast demonstrates that it is the liminal spaces that sustain aspirations and suggests how such spatiatily provides a creative impetus to "imag(in)ing" as yet non-existing relationalities. The second technique of simultaneous evocation of the antithetical chronotopes directly challenges the assumption of stability of inherited centres and the socio-political systems they propagate, chief among these, androcentric, patriarchal, homogenizing collectivities.

32. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 158.

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Space, the Fifth Pillar of Ferninist Literary Criticism

Bibliography

Agnew, John. "Space and Place." In Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, edited by John Agnew and David N. Livingstone, 316330. London: Sage, 201 l . Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, edited by Michael Holquist. Austui: University of Texas Press, 19S1. Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." In Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 142-14S. London: Fontana Press, 1977. Bemong, Nele and Pieter Borghart. "Bakhtui's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives." In Bakhtin 's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, edited by Nele Bemong et aI., 3-1S. Gent: Academia Press, 2010. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. What is philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Duncan, Nancy. "Replacings." BodySpace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, edited by Nancy Duncan, 1-9. Abuigdon: Routledge, 1996. Eagleton, Mary. "Literary Representations of Women." In A History of Literary Feminist Criticism, edited by Gill Plain and Susan Seller, 1051 19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Foucault, Michel. Archaeology ofKnowledge, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. Abingdon: Routledge, 2002. Hartsock, Nancy. "The Femuiist Standpoint. Developing the Ground for a Historically Specific Feminist Materialism." In The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Volume I, edited by Linda Nicholson, 216233. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997. Hird, Myra I. "New Feminist Sociological Directions." The Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 2S, no. 4 Autumn, (2003): 447-462. Accessed October 26, 2016. urI: www.jstor.org/ stable/3341S37. Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 1990. Abingdon: Routledge, 2002. Joy Ladin, " 'It was not Death': The Poetic Career of the Chronotope," in Bakhtin 's Theory of the Literary Chronotope Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, edited by Nele Bemong et aI., 131-15S. Gent: Academia Press, 2010. Keunen, Bart. "The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Fihn: Bakhtin, Bergson and Deleuze on FOlTIlS of the Time," in Bakhtin 's Theory of the Literary Chronotope Reflections, Applications,

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Perspectives, edited by Nele Bemon et aI., 33-S6. Gent: Academia Press, 2010. McDowell, Linda. "Spatializing feminism." BodySpace: Destabilizing Geographies a/Gender and Sexuality, edited by Nancy Duncan, 23-44. Abingdon: Routledge, 1996. Peri Rossi, Cristina. "La Anunciaci6n." Cuentos Reunidos, 166-183. Barcelona: Lumen, 2007. -. "Naufragos." Cuentos Reunidos, 374-378. Barcelona: Lumen, 2007. Roy, Anuradba. Sleeping on Jupiter. Gurgaon: Hachette India, 201S. Showalter, Elaine. "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness." Critical Inquiry: Writing and Sexual Difference, Vol. 8, no. 2, Winter, (1981): 179-20S. Accessed March 31, 2013. urI: www.jstor.org/stableIl3431S9. -. Essays on Women Literature Theory. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Woolf, Virginia. A Room a/One 's Own. San Diego: Harcourt, 1989. -. Waves. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2000.

PART II. UN-BELONGING THROUGH THE DEMOCRATIC GLOBAL

FEMINISM IN THE TIME OF NEO-LIBERAL WOMEN EMPOWERMENT : A STUDY OF SELECT INDIAN TELEVISION/ONLINE ADVERTISEMENTS KAVYA KRISHNA K.R.

Abstract

Recent years have seen the emergence of a 'new genre' of television/online advertisements based on the theme of 'women empowelTIlent' / 'gender equality' by neo-liberal companies. They are widely discussed and shared on social media for their apparent 'feminist' stand point. While it is a global trend, this paper tries to understand this development by particularly looking at a set of televisionfYouTube commercial series released between 2014 and 2016 in the Indian context. It is already understood that the epistemology and practice of feminism and the cultural logic of global capitalism are diametrically opposed to each other. If so, what triggered the increased interest in women empowelTIlent in neo­ liberal companies? Are the advertisements as progressive as they seem to be? Can the term feminism be easily interchanged with the tenn women empowerment? 'Which section of women do these advertisements represent and address? Can the analysis of these new advertisements add to or problematise the existing feminist questions/concerns in the Indian context? By addressing these questions, the paper tries to expatiate the appropriation of feminism by global capitalism through the visual texts of advertisements and impact of the same for the political project of feminism. Gender, advertisement, visual culture, Indian Middle Class, intersectionality.

Key Terms:

Kavya Krishna K.R.

89

Introduction

Anybody who is interested in the question of feminism might have noticed the emergence of a number of television advertisements in recent years that ostensibly speak for women empowerment and gender equality. One who wishes for gender sensitive representation of women in popular visual culture feels contented that the 'new generation' / 'new geme' of advertisements has moved far away from stereotypical representations of women. We see that the slogans and issues once raised by feminist movements are now taken up by global capitalism. The paper tries to look at this process of appropriation of feminism by global capitalism and the impact of the same for the political project of feminism. While this trend is a global phenomenon after the post liberalisation era, the paper keeps the focus on the Indian context using select television and YouTube/online commercials. Studies on the 'gender sensitive'/'women empowelTIlent' tum in advertisements trace the phenomenon back to the Dove Real Beauty campaign launched by Unilever in 2004, which was aimed at Western markets. However, in the Indian context it is a more recent development that proliferated around 2010 onwards. The Vogue magaznie advertisement My Choice (2015) featuring Deepika Padukone that stirred hot debates on advertisements, women empowerment, and feminism was one-of-a-kind moment. It revealed the impact of the geme of the 'women empowerment' advertisements in the Indian public sphere. Among the many discussions it triggered: the different positions on women's liberation; the limitslborder lines set for how much liberation women can claim; the intolerance towards women proclaiming sexual liberation; and the elitism of upper class/caste feminism and its slogans need special mention1. There are several Indian television commercials that ostensibly air the message of gender equality like Ariel Soap Powder's Share the Load, Airters The Boss or the Tanishq's Remarriage. All of them niform the argument and fit very well nito the category of advertisements that are pertinent to the paper. The paper concentrates on two thematic advertisement series by two brands. These advertisement series clearly pronounced themselves as 'gender sensitive/women empowerment' initiatives through the choice of the series title. The paper analyses the Bold is Beautiful (2015) series by Anouk Contemporary Ethnic Apparel along with Myntra and Respect for Women (2014-) series by Havells Home Appliances. The Anouk-Myntra

1 . As the Vogue advertisement and the debate it created itself can be a separate paper elsewhere it is not discussed in detail here.

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Feminism in the Time of NeD-Liberal Women Empowerment

advertisements are of two to three and a half minutes duration and can easily qualify as short movies on gender issues as they have a definite plot, setting, narrative structure, and development of characters, and they are produced mainly for YouTube/Online viewership. The Havells series, featuring advertisements of the conventional duration of twenty-five to thirty-five seconds, is produced for television. 'While this paper analyses only two advertisements, the arguments in the paper are infolTIled by the analysis of two other advertisement series the Change is Beautiful (20152016) series by Biba, and Her Life, Her Choices (2014-2016) by Titan Raga. The analysis of the select advertisement series will try to answer the following questions: How can one understand/read the new and increased interest in women empowelTIlent taken up by multinational companies in the fOlTIl of commercial advertisements? 'What are the products they try to sell and what is the class/caste/category of women who are represented in the advertisements and which is the category of women they target as consumers? In the multi-lingual Indian context what is the significance of the linguistic medium of these advertisements? What indications do they provide about the changing nature of Indian middle-class consumers and their notions on gender? Do these 'new' advertisements show a fundamental change in perspective from the Indian nationalist framework of thinking about women's issues in the tradition-modernity dyad? While it is well known that the project of feminism and that of capitalism are diametrically opposite to each other, what makes corporate companies use the slogans once raised by feminist movements as a tool to sell their products? How can we understand the shift from the representation of women as objects of the male gaze to an active, independent, liberal subject who has control over her life? Does this mean that the project of feminism is already over, and we are moving through a postfeminist phase? How can one differentiate the political project of feminist movements from the feminist slogans appropriated by the corporate companies as an advertisement strategy? These questions make clear the two intersecting directions the paper takes; the first problematises and evaluates the projection of the new geme of advertisements by multinational companies, a global phenomenon roughly from 2004 onwards, as seemingly progressIve 'gender sensitive-women empowelTIlent' and second approaches the same issue in the Indian context so as to see how the analysis of the geme adds to the existing works on Indian feminism!s and the prospects and dilemmas it puts forth for the project of feminismls in contemporary India.

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Theoretical Background

Tracing the history of television advertisements in the Western and Indian contexts makes it clear that women were always the target of advertisements for home related products. The reason is obviously that in a patriarchal familial system, women were/are assigned the responsibility of the home and it waslis considered her duty to buy the household essentials for the smooth functioning of the domestic system. The advertisements of an earlier mode thus portrayed older women as caretakers of the family, responsible for procuring food, cleaning, and other household products whereas the young woman was sho\Vll as preoccupied with trying to perfect her beauty to get the right man in the case of beauty products 2 In the Indian context by the 1990s onwards the advertisements began to show a category of a 'new Indian woman' as Rajeswari Sunder Rajan telTIlS it. 3 The 'new woman' is an urban, middle-class, upper caste, educated career woman who has an independent income and exercises control over spending it.4 But her education and social awareness are directed towards her ability to maintain "a family of the right size (two children, invariably one boy and one girl), providing right nutrition for her family, being excessively hygienic and exercising conscious and deliberate choice as a consumer."5 So from the 1990s onwards we can see an emerging trend of targeting the career woman as a potential consumer in Indian television commercials. The purchasing power, the new roles they play in society, their increased viewership of television, etc. were stated as the reasons for targeting them as a group by advertisers. (Chatterjee and Laxman 1991: 25) 6 From the 1990s the 'modem' and 'liberated' woman began to be represented in television advertisements. It was also the period during which policies for economic liberalisation were being introduced in India. Against the backdrop of almost fifteen years of the portrayal of the

2. Nicki Lisa Cole and Alison Dahl Crossley, "On Feminism in the Age of Consmnption." Consumers Commodities and Consumption: A News Letter of the Consumer Studies Research Network,_Vol. 1 1 , no. 1, December (2009): n.p., accessed JlUle 15, 2016. urI: http://csm.carnden.rutgers.eduinewsletters/i l- llcole _crossley.htrnl. 3 . Rajeswari SlUlder Rajan, Real and Imagined Women: Gender Culture and Postcolonialism. (Routledge: London 1995), 130. 4. Ibid., 30. 5. Ibid., 1 3 1 . 6 . Adite Chatterjee and Nandini Laxman, "Cashing in on Women Power," The Economic Times, BrandEquity, September 25, (1991): 25.

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Feminism in the Time ofNeo-Liberal Women Empowerment

'modern woman' in Indian advertisements, the paper poses the question What is the major shift one can see in the new geme of 'women empowerment' advertisements after 2004? These advertisements not only portray/represent the career woman; they do a kind of sloganeering for woman empowelTIlent and make blatant claims of gender sensitisation. They appropriate and use the slogans once raised by feminist movements across the globe as an advertising strategy. What is disturbing in this project is the alliance of global capitalism with feminism. Before looking at the dilemmas this liaison puts forth for the feminist question of equality let us look at the women these advertisements represent in comparison to the earlier advertisements to examine how they articulate an identity fOlTIlation for women based on consumption. The young women represented in this new geme of advertisements are already liberated, individuated, modem subjects. They are what Angela McRobbie terms "Top Girls,,7 Pointing out the neo-liberal attitude towards young women and their representation in the Western world Angela McRobbie says that "young women in contemporary society are posited as 'Top Girls', as though they have won rights and gained equality, as though feminism has done its work, and is now no longer needed as a political force.,,8 She says that media, popular culture, and in general the public domain, have played a key role in mobilising consent for the world of neo-liberal values. Using Judith Butler's phrase, she calls this a sphere where one can detect a kind of orchestration of power 'at the juncture of everyday life'. In McRobbie's words,

Representing Few Young Women as ITop Girls '.

lUlpack this field and inspect the pathways of contemporary neo-liberalism as it looks to one sector of the population, yOlUlg women, as a group with immense potential. The political project of neo-liberalism promotes deregulation, privatization and the shrinking of the public sector and welfare state, while at the same time reSillrects an ideal of the social according to the values of the market. It speaks loudly about choice and freedom, it despises the 'dependency culture' and it promotes self-reliance and individualization through mobilizing notions of human capital, as Foucault with great prescience understood and dissected in his lectures in 7. Angela McRobbie, "Top Girls? YOlUlg Women and the Sexual Contract." (Lecture for the Harriet Taylor Mill-Institute for Economic and Gender Research at Berlin School of Economics and Law, April 8, 2011), 1, accessed January 10, 2017. illl: http://www.harriet-taylormill.de!images/docsisonstIHTMILecture McRobbie .pdf). 8. Ibid., 1

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the mid 1 970s The Birth of Biopower. But the question I raise is how young women come to be the subjects of address by these new constellations of power? How does what used to be a feminist kind of political discourse come to be co-opted and absorbed by the neo-liberal project?9

One answer she suggests is from the human capital perspective. The demand for human capital of the neo liberal times and as the after effect of the increasing visibility of women in the labour market and their economic potential has given the market forces "an unprecedented opportunity to borrow a vocabulary of 'gender justice' from the domain of social democracy and give it a new inflection, to re-interpret the idea of women's issues according to a vocabulary of individualization, meritocracy, aspiration and achievement. "10 McRobbie further states the problematic of this increased 'luminosity' (a term she takes from Deleuze)" accorded to the young women/Top Girls in the neoliberal cultural space. The attention paid, the opportunities provided come to operate as a substitute for feminism which has been cast into the past. Governmental and commercial forces intersect to produce a horizon of possibilities for young women now informed by, even shaped by, former feminist ideals. Sexuality, access to consumer culture and the gaining of qualifications and thus the capacity to work define the terms of the sexual contract while political participation is relegated to a marginal role. Such a contract in effect leaves the gender hierarchies that exist more or less intact, while women appear to have won a range of freedoms and entitlements which make the case for a renewed feminism irrelevant or unconvincing.12

The paper tries to argue that the new geme of women empowelTIlent advertisements in the Indian context presents a similar category of 'Top Girls' that Me Robbie talks about in the Western context. In the Indian context the 'Top Girls' have some added characteristics. In addition to their meritocracy and individual achievements, here the representative 9. Ibid., 2 10. Ibid., 2 1 1 . McRobbie says that she has borrowed the term luminosities from Deleuze and it is something which diffuses power; spreads rays of light across the bodies of yOlUlg women. Young women or AI girls come to be regarded lUlder the spotlight a theatrical process that highlights their visibility and movement. This power works through many media channels repetitively, while it is also absorbed by governments as a light hearted post-feminist way of speaking about gender or sexuality. 12. Ibid., 16.

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Feminism in the Time ofNeo-Liberal Women Empowerment

'Top Girls' will be invariably from the upper middle-class, upper caste families and from urban areas. We will see later in the analysis that in the Indian context the 'female body' even ifit is of the 'Top Girl' continues to be used as an important terrain for differentiating or balancing the nation and its tradition in the neo-liberal times as it was in the period of nationalist discourse against colonialism. In one sense these advertisements present a section of upper/middle class and upper caste women who have benefitted from the feminist movement in the last decades (even though it will never acknowledge the history of feminist struggles). We have already arrived at a stage where we realize that feminism is not singular, instead we have multiple feminisms. Intersectionality of class, caste, race, religion, sexual orientation among other socio-political aspects with feminism is well understood and important. These advertisements ignore the existence of different categories of women and the differences in the feminist issues they raise; instead they celebrate a few upper/middle class, upper caste women's liberation as a stage that the entire women folk have arrived at. Thus, these advertisements foreclose the possibility and need for further movements for equality that feminismls has to fight for, women marginalised due to their class, caste, and race, religious or sexual identity. Consumption as an Act of Identity Formation. Studies, in the Western context, on feminism and consumption with respect to the new women empowelTIlent advertisements state that these advertisements interpellate young women as strong, independent decision makers, money makers, and as sexually driven beings. But it is the act of consumption that allows them to express their individuality. Women are represented in the new geme of advertisements as independent social actors who express their identities and independence through consumption.13 It is true that consumption is an act of identity formation through which individuals illustrate personal distinction from and sameness to others. Scholars like Bourdieu14 (1984), Baudrillard15 (1981) and Jameson16 (1992) have commented in detail on consumption as an act of identity fOlTIlation based on life style and appearance and the consequence of the same in maintaining class

1 3 . Cole and Crossley, "On Feminism in the Age ofConsurnption," n.p. 14. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique o/Taste, trans. Richard Nice, (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984), 376. 15. Jean Baudrillard, Sinutlacra and Sinutlation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 89. 16. Fredric Jameson, "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic o/Late Capitalism, (Verso Books: New York, 1992), 3 1 .

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distinctions in a liberal economy. On the one hand it remains a fact that consumption is never an act of empowelTIlent. It is a system that increases debts and adheres one to the system of global capitalism. On the other hand, the presentation of consumption as an act and expression of identity fOlTIlation is more problematic. It is disturbing that in the new geme of advertisements women's liberation is premised on their alliance with global capitalism. Women's liberation is projected in these advertisements as freedom and power to acquire goods. Cole and Crossly (2009) 17 interrogate the intersection of women's independence from discourses and practices of consumption and express their doubt about the fruitfulness of the same for the project of feminism. They say that, The epistemological foundation of feminism and feminist identity historically has been the eradication of inequalities. Feminism in that sense is diametrically opposed to consumer practices which support the dominance of global capitalism. Global capitalism is a system which thrives on the exploitation of labor, theft of resomces, and facilitates vast accumulation of wealth among a tiny percentage of global elite, while simultaneously impoverishing the majority of the world's population. Fmther, since consuming is a singular act of identity formation and expression, we question whether women's empowerment through consmnption at the individual level lUldermines the possibility of gendered social change at the collective level. 18

We have to understand that global capitalism's base is not the feminist philosophy of equality. It does not aim to provide freedom from the patriarchal system as feminism does. So, we should not confuse the intentions of both. The case of the Dove Real Beauty advertisement series of 2004 that is considered to have spearheaded the trend of women empowerment advertisements provides clarity regarding the complexities of the appropriation of feminism by global capitalism. The advertisement clearly broke the stereotypical representation of picture perfect ideal white models for advertisements of beauty products in the West and showcased a number of women of different body types, colour, and ethnicity and stated that it is all right to be different and asked women to be comfortable with their 0\Vll body, its size, shape or colour. But in reality, it is a matter of commonsense understanding that the beauty products that Dove/ Unilever tries to sell can be successful only if women aspire for an 'ideal beauty' and only if they are not comfortable with the differences in body/skin

17. Cole and Crossley, "On Feminism in the Age of Consumption," n.p. 1 8. Ibid., n.p.

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Feminism in the Time ofNeo-Liberal Women Empowerment

types. So, what was the advertisement actually doing; was it saying it is okay to be different or was it reminding them that you are different, so you need to buy tbese beauty products or was it trying to win the goodwill and attract attention of new women achievers, as potential consumers of Dove products, by making a politically correct feminist statement. The same Unilever makes advertisements that projects 'white colour' as the standard for beauty in non-Western countries like India through the advertisements for fairness creams like Fair & Lovely makes clear the company's double standard. However, the fact to be noted is tbat "Dove sales jumped to 4 billion dollars from 2.5 billion dollars in tbe campaign's inaugural year" 19 While analysing the content of selected advertisements, it must be borne in mind that the basic premise of functioning of neo-liberal capitalism is exploiting resources as well as sentiments to increase profit and not the creation of an egalitarian society. Analysis of Select Advertisements

Let us do a close reading of the selected advertisement series20 Bold is Beautiful (2015) by Anouk Contemporary Ethnic Apparel along witb Myntra, the online shopping portal. The series consisted of five advertisements, four of which portrayed what can be called as 'reel' women or professional actors, the fifth - the title advertisement in the series showed well knO\vn 'real' women achievers from the fields of film, journalism, and business, who had all trod difficult paths to success. Four of the advertisement titles are: "The Visit", "The Calling", "The \Vbispers" and, "The Wait" and the fifth bears the same name as the series. "The Visit" shows a lesbian couple awaiting the visit of one of their parents to reveal their sexual orientation and their decision to live together. The second one, "The Calling" shows a pregnant woman who is an engineer larchitect deciding to quit her job at a leading company to work from a home office of her 0\Vll as she is facing discrimination in her present job because of her pregnancy. The third one, "The Whispers" is Bold is Beautiful

19. Ann-Christine Diaz and Natalie Zmuda, "Female Empowerment in Ads: Soft Feminism or Soft Soap?" Advertising Age India. September 2, 2014, accessed March 25, 2016. http://www.adageindia.inlmarketinglcmo-strategy/female-empower ment-in-ads-soft-feminism-or-soft-soap!articleshow!45704394. ems. 20. The advertisements analysed in this paper are those which were released between 2014 and 2016. Advertisements released after July 2016, are not analysed in detail even though watching them have informed this paper. The first draft of this paper was \Vfitten for presentation at YOlUlg Scholars Conference at CSPILAS JNU on 2-3, August 2016.

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about a motber and her girl child coming to stay in a flat in a city. The neighbours are curious and disapproving of her being a 'single mother' . The motber boldly takes on the prying questions of the neighbours. The last one, "The Wait" shows a young girl confidently walking alone into a bar and ordering a glass of white wine; when a middle-aged man tries to flirt with her with her she il1llovatively and imaginatively resists it and breaks the silence against the harassment. The AnouklMyntra advertisement series raises issues of lesbianism, reproductive/maternity rights, gender discrimination in the work place, the problems faced by single/divorced mothers, and questions about tbe public spaces women can occupy, among other concerns. All these issues are without any doubt important for feminism. But when we do a close reading, we notice certain patterns in these advertisements that reveal their blinkered

view:

the

settings

are

invariably urban,

all

the

women

represented are educated, upper caste, upper middle-class, career women who have arrived at a stage of liberation or independence at which they can exercise command over their life. In all of them the camera focuses clearly on the costumes and make up and tries to highlight the 'femininity' through visuals that of course is the main agenda of the advertisements as it

is

trying

to

sell

women's

clothes.

The

language

used

in

the

advertisements is predominantly English with a mixture of Hindi. Only one advertisement has a sentence in Tamil. The use of English and Hindi not only suggests tbe characters ' class background but also provides them a

pan-Indian

identity

irrespective

of

regional/ethnic

or

linguistic

differences. One can argue that these advertisements can easily qualify as short movies and not just advertisements because the durations vary from

2.26

to

3.21

narrative,

minutes and all of tbem have a tbeme/topic, story line/plot,

characters and setting.

commercial is

35

to

40

The usual length of a Television

seconds, it rarely exceeds one minute. We may

infer tbat this advertisement series (that rarely appears on TV) is made primarily for viewership on YouTube/online web portals. Anouk has produced this

advertisement series

together with Myntra, an online

shopping website. If we think about the category of consumers who may buy a comparatively costly brand like Anouk through an online shopping website, we can understand why the progressive/ feminist advertisement series has to appear only on YouTube and why it has to feature only a certain class/caste of women. Added to this, the wide scale sharing of the seemingly progressive YouTube advertisements on social media sites gives the companies an additional free of cost reach to the section of society that uses these facilities, who are their target customers.

98

Feminism in the Time ofNeo-Liberal Women Empowerment The so called 'real ' women achievers the title advertisement of the

series portrays, explicitly state that contemporary-ethnic apparel makes them feel confident. The advertisement suggests that more than, or in addition to, their caliber and hard work, what they wear or how they appear provides an identity or status for women achievers in their professional

or

social

space.

So,

we can understand that in these

advertisements consumptioniuse of a brand becomes part of an identity fOlmation. As we have already discussed in the earlier section it is true that consumption is an act of identity fonnation through which individuals demonstrate personal distinction from and sameness to others. Thus, it helps in maintaining class structures in a neoliberal economy; it is equally tenable that consumption is never an act of empowennent. Further, linking 'appearance' of women to their achievements makes the kind of women's liberation these advertisements celebrate more vulnerable. As I mentioned in the earlier section, how the body of the 'Top Girl ' in the Indian context balances tradition and modernity in neo-liberal times can be easily made clear from the description of the product 'Anouk'. Anouk is a brand which produces 'contemporary' 'ethnic' apparel and the women characters sho\Vll in their advertisements too are those who balance the 'modem' denoted by the contemporary and the 'tradition' denoted by the ethnic. As Partha Chatterj ee21 and other scholars have discussed with respect to the question of Indian women in the nationalist discourse, in this new geme of 'women empowennent' advertisements too, it is the body of the upper class! upper caste women that balances tradition and modernity. She is shown doing this balancing act both through her clothing and the decisions she takes in her life. For example, the girls in the first advertisement "The Visit" may be lesbian but they do maintain reverence for their parents and seek their blessingsipennission for their relationship. They follow the Indian tradition and invariably want to be connected to their ' great Indian family' despite their non-nonnative sexual identity and personal choices. They confinn and maintain the popular concept of feminine beauty as shown in the careful dressing up and makeup sequence. The woman in "The Calling" may have quit a job because the company discriminates against her due to her pregnancy, but at the end she affirms tradition by being a responsible mother. She balances work and familial life by creating an office space at home for herself.

Her

'bold'

action

does

not

involve

challenging

gender

discrimination at the work place or demanding maternity benefits. And the

2 1 . Partha Chatterjee, "The Nationalist Resolution of Women's Question," in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, eds. Kurnkmn Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 3 1 9.

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question of how one can start an office on her 0\Vll after deciding to quit a high paying job due to pregnancy remains. Collective action or recognition of group identity for women never forms part of the agenda of these advertisements. It is the individual, her achievements and choices that gets proliferated as 'women empowelTIlent'. 'While the other four advertisements had a positive response from YouTube viewers, the advertisement titled "The Wait" that shows a young lady in a bar received negative comments. The comments can be summed up thus: being in a bar or drinking or smoking is not women empowerment and compared to the other advertisements in the series this advertisement has less viewership. This difference in reception also makes clear the 'limitslboundaries' set for the representation of 'women empowerment' by the educated Indian middle­ class viewers for an advertisement to be accepted/well received. 'What we can understand from the analysis is that in the Indian cities it has become difficult for a 'standard Indian middle-class family' to survive with the earnings of a single member due to the increased living cost and consumerist life styles. In a sense, it has become necessary that women too have to work and earn.22 So, from the economic point of view women have to be 'empowered'; she has to be educated, employed, stylish, and progressive and should be ready for the neo-liberal career market as it is necessary for the smooth functioning of the family and thereby the progress of the country. But she is not supposed to overthrow her 'dharma ' as an Indian woman. She is "perennially and transcendentally wife, daughter, mother or homemaker who saves the project of modernization without westernization.,m As Tejaswini Niranjana24 puts it elsewhere, for Indians "good modernity is only skin deep" (1991:86). Following her argument, we can read the figure of the woman and the theme of 'women empowelTIlent' as the representational strategy that these advertisements use to maintain a successful balance between (deep) tradition and (surface) modernity. Analysing the series "Respect for Women" by Havells together with one of the advertisements in another series "Hawa Badalegi" by the same brand reveal the double standards and shallowness of the 'progressive/women empowelTIlent' advertisements. The Havells

Respect for Women.

22. See Aravind Rajagopal (2001) and Lee1a Fernandez (2009) for studies regarding Indian middle class, advertisements, and consmnption. 23. Rajan, Real and Imagined Women, 133. 24. Tejaswini Niranjana, "Cinema, Femininity and Economy of Consmnption," Economic and Political Weekly. Review o/Women Studies Vol. 26, Issue no. 43, 26 October (1991): 86.

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Home Appliances advertisement series "Respect for Women", first telecast in 2014, consists of a number of advertisements that follow the same pattern. All of them are set inside middle-class houses. When the husband asks the wife to do a job like making chutney, coffee or ironing clothes, instead of doing it the wife brings home appliances like a mixer grinder, coffee maker or iron and asks the husband to do it himself. All these advertisements come with the comment either within the narrative or as \Vfiting that "she is a wife not a kitchen appliance". Havell's advertisement series unlike the advertisements discussed earlier is made mainly for TV so they are all 25 to 35 seconds long. These advertisements invariably qualify as 'progressive and empowering' as they ask men to respect women and to share her workload at home. Its target group is the working women with purchasing power, who has to balance both home and the work place and thus in essence the advertisement is not detaching household chores from women. Conclusion

Placing the above-mentioned advertisement series beside an advertisement from another series "Hawa Badalegi" (2013-) by the same brand, Havells, for another product - the ceiling fan, shows the shallO\vness, fissures and gaps in the so called 'progressive' advertisements and in the liberal idiom of equality they offer. Havells came up with an advertisement in 2016 that valorises a 'dark' complexioned girl eligible for preferential treatment by applying for a job in the reserved category because she rejects that chance, saying that she is ready to compete in the general category. It also shows a student picking up a book from a number of books being burned as part of a student protest and also a government servant refusing to use the official vehicle for personal purposes. The anti-reservation stand of the advertisement was debated widely on online platforms. The advertisement provoked an online petition campaign by Dalit groups. The easy way in which the advertisement put together the issue of caste reservation along with a well to do high government official using her 0\Vll car and a stance against student struggle is disturbing. This advertisement clearly points to the category of the Indian middle-class whose aspirations these new gemes of 'women empowelTIlent' advertisements target. The middle class/upper caste fear any kind of fundamental change, its attitude towards caste reservation, its fear of any political struggle and especially student politics are revealed through these advertisements. The question of caste and class carmot be disentangled from the question of feminism. The importance of understanding the intersection of caste and gender in the Indian context for

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feminism is ablUldantly clear in existing feminist scholarship as in the article "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender"." Tracing the history of students' movements across the globe demonstrates the power of students as a political group in making changes in society. We have also seen the fear and oppressive attitude of the neo-liberal government and the Indian middle-class towards student struggles in contemporary India, whether it is at Hyderabad Central University26 or Iawaharlal Nehru University27. In that sense these new advertisements offer a language of change (especially centering on the theme of women empowerment) that will not threaten the comfortable lies about equality, liberation or progress on which the Indian middle-class exists. It showcases and celebrates a comfortable consumerist modem life which does not, in any way, affect the safe balance between tradition and modernity. The 'new geme' of women empowerment advertisements that celebrates the upper caste/middle class woman as somebody who has already arrived at a state of liberation and equality successfully projects their achievements and choices as something easily gained out of their individual meritocracy or as a proliferation of the neoliberal consumer market and global forces. It forsakes the feminist movement of so many decades that helped at least a few women to reach a level where they can have economic independence and make at least a few independent choices in life. By showing women as a monolithic category that has already 25. Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana. "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender." In Subaltern Studies IX, eds. Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarthy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 234. 26. For further details on the student agitations in Hyderabad Central University see the following news reports. "Rohith Vemula's Suicide Triggered a New Political Wave," The Wire, January 19, 2018. https:llthewire.inI215269/rohith­ vemula-suicide-triggere d-a-new-political-wave/. "The Clarity of a Suicide Note," The Hindu, January 2 1 , 2016. http://"W\VW.thehindu. com/opinionlop-edJdalit-scholar-rohith-vernulas-suicide­ letter-clarity-of-a-suicide-note/article 1401 7737 .ece. 27. For fmther details on the JNU student agitations see the following news reports "JNU row: What is the Outrage all About?" Internet Desk, The Hindu, February 16, 2 0 16. http://"W\VW.thehindu. corn!specialsiin-depthlJNU-row-"What-is-the-outrage-all­ about!article 14479799. ece. "Taking Back Om Universities," Akeel Bilgrarni, The Hindu, March 9, 2016. http://"W\VW.thehindu. com/opinionlleadffaking-back-omuniversities/article 141440 1 O.ece. ""Why our Universities are in Ferment," Nivedita Menon, The Hindu, February 15, 2 1 06. http://"W\VW.thehindu. corn!opinionlle ad/Why-om-lUliversities-are-in-ferment! articleI5617644.ece.

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arrived at a state of liberation it forecloses the possibility of further feminist interventions o£!for the majority of Dalit women who could not even now exercise 'choice/freedom' as the problems of their gendered subjectivity intersects with their caste/c1ass/religious/sexual identities. It accentuates the view that women are already liberated, and we have reached a post-feminist phase that I believe is not true at least in the case of India. The political project of feminismls still has problems to tackle in the Indian scenario. Those who argue that the new geme of 'women empowelTIlent' advertisements is really progressive may argue that the mass reach of television commercials covers even remote villages. It is true that through advertisements as a popular media the vocabulary of feminism appropriated by global capitalism reaches out to a large number of people. The paper is not negating the reach of mass media, but it questions the model of 'empowelTIlent' disseminated through this reach - this model eliminates the possibility of equal subjectivity and any fundamental change for the same subaltern mass it reaches. We have to understand the politics behind the use of 'women empowerment' as a metaphor for the end of patriarchy through the mechanisms of neo-liberal markets and policies of neo liberal governments in contemporary times. The shift in the choice of vocabulary from 'feminism' to an apolitical telTIl 'women empowerment' needs attention. Nivedita Menon has written about the use of the telTIl 'women empowerment' by development policies of the Indian government. She says that the National Policy for the Empowerment of women (2001) states as one of its objectives the mainstreaming of gender perspective in all the development processes.28 She points out that this seemingly progressive move is double edged. "Making gender a component of development depoliticises feminist critique of patriarchy as well as feminist critiques of 'development' and of corporate globalisation. Feminism is halTIllessly transformed by this process into 'women's empowerment' and ally of the state building capitalism. Essentially empowering women makes them agents within the overall development agenda of the State. It is not surprising then that the NGOs which work with the government have noted that government officials make it clear that they prefer the word "Stri Shaktikaran (Women's Empowerment) to narivad (feminism)"".'9 Thus the need of the hour is not to be deceived by neo liberal global capitalist agendas camouflaged as 'women 28. Nivedita Menon, Seeing Like Books India, 2012), 216. 29. Ibid., 217.

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empowerment' offered through mass media but to think and configure new strategies for a renewed feminist politics for contemporary times. Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. 198 1 . Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of Taste, translated by Richard Nice. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984. Chanda, Ipshita. "Birthing Terrible Beauties: Feminism and Women's Magaznies." Economic and Political Weekly. Review of Women Studies. Vo!.26, Issue No 43, 26 October (1991): 67-70. Chatterjee Adite, and Laxman, Nandini, "Cashing in on Women Power", The Economic Times, BrandEquity, September 25, (1991): 24-26. Chatterjee, Partha. "The Nationalist Resolution of Women's Question." In Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. Edited by in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, 306-333. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989. Diaz Ann-Christine and Natalie Zmuda. "Female Empowerment in Ads: Soft Feminism or Soft Soap?" Advertising Age India. September 2, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2016. http://www.adageindia.inlmarketing/ cmo-strategy/femaleempowelTIlent-in-ads-soft-feminism-or-softsoapl artic1eshow/457043 94.cms. Fernandes, Leela. "The Political Economy of Life Style: Consumption, India's New Middle Class and State Led Development." In The New Middle Classes: Globalizing Lifestyles, Consumerism and Environmental Concern, edited by Lars Meier and Hellmuth Lange. The Netherlands: Springer, 2009. Jameson, Fredric. "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" in Postinodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. New York: Verso Books, 1992. Lisa Cole, Nicki and Alison Dahl Crossley. "On Feminism in the Age of Consumption." Consumers Commodities and Consumption: A News Letter of the Consumer Studies Research Network, Vo!' 1 1 , no. 1, December (2009): n.p. Accessed on June 15, 2016. urI: http://csrn.carnden.rutgers.eduinewslettersl l l - l /cole_crossley.htm!. McRobbie, Angela. "Top Girls? Young Women and the Sexual Contract." Lecture for the Harriet Taylor Mill-Institute for Economic and Gender Research at Berlin School of Economics and Law, April 8, 2011, 1-9. Accessed January 10, 2017. urI: http://www.harriet-taylor mill.de/ images/docs/sonstlHTMI_Lecture_McRobbie.pdf).

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-. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. Sage: London, 2009. Menon, Nivedita. Seeing Like a Feminist. New Delhi: Zubaan and Penguin Books India, 2012. Niranjana, Tejaswini. "Cinema, Femininity and Economy of Consumption." Economic and Political Weekly. Review of Women Studies Vo1.26, Issue no. 43, 26 October (1991): 79-89. Rajagopal, Aravind. "Thinking About the New Indian Middle Class: Gender Advertising and Politics in an Age of Globalisation." In Sign Posts: Gender in Post-Independence India. Edited by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, 57-94. New Delhi: Kali for Women and Rutgers University Press, 2001. Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. Real and Imagined Women: Gender Culture and Postcolonialism. Routledge: London 1995. Tharu, Susie and Tejaswini Niranjana. "Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender." In Subaltern Studies IX, edited by Shabid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarthy, 232-260. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Voigt, Kevin. "Women: Saviours of the world economy?" CNN, October 26, 2009. Accessed July 15, 2016. http://edition.cnn.coml2009IWORLD/asiapcfll 0125!intl.women. global. economy/ . Advertisements

Anouk and Myntra. Bold is Beautiful. "The Visit." Posted by Myntra, May 28, 2015. Video, 3:21. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�Ef27m50cK6Q. "The Calling." Posted by Myntra, December 3, 2015. Video, 2:26. www.youtube.com!watch?v1z5rAFAvqCs. "The Whispers." Posted by Myntra, May 28, 2015. Video, 3: 12. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�d7Bfi6d5mQk. "The Wait." YouTube. Posted by Myntra, May 28, 2015. Video, 3:05. www .youtube.com!watch?v�aG9_2_3RYxw "Myntra Bold and Beautiful Campaign featuring Real Women." Posted by Myntra, March 3 1 , 2015. Video, 1:59. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�MK7fMDzzr 1 8 . Biba. Change is Beautifol. "Change the Convention." Posted by bibaindia, December 29, 2015. Video, 2:03. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�aS_wwC8P12I.

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"Change the Conversation." Posted by bibaindia, March 8, 2016. Video, 1 :38. www.youtube.com/watch?v�6_FIPOkczio, "Mother's Day Special." Posted by The Square Peg Films, May 9, 2016. Video, 2:31. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�P4u8f_v-IJ Titan Raga. Her Life Her Choices. "When is the Right Time to Get Married?" Posted by Titan Watches, April 23, 2015. Video, 0:45. www .youtube.com/watch?v�iRAs4hYbFJg. "The Raga Woman of Today." Posted by Titan Watches, December 10, 2014. Video, 1 : 16. www.youtube.com/watch?v�XRobOjVI9s Titan Watches. Real Women. "Pranothi Speaking." Posted by Titan Watches, March 5, 2015. Video, 0:36. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�Km-IjFIB8Vw. "Akansha Bali Speaking." Posted by Titan Watches, March 7, 2015. Video, 0:46. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�MrrrnwazWlik "Reema Speaking." Posted by Titan Watches, March 6, 2015. Video, 0:39. https://www .yotube.com/watch?v�rTLivFvKPwI. Havens. Respectfor Women. "Mixer Grinder." Posted by Havens India, April 25, 2014. Video, 0:40. www.youtube.comlwatch?v.2YKFG7u7ZA. "Coffee Maker." Posted by Havens India, May 16, 2014. Video, 0:40. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�MaJfOmNMqos. "Iron Box." Posted by Havens India, April 26, 2014. Video, 0:33. https://www.youtube.comlwatch?v�TN_mGzEP6RM, Havens. Hawa Badalegi. "Anti-Reservation Ad." Posted by Dr. Ambedkar's Caravan, March 26, 2016. Video, 0:40. https://www.youtube.comlwatch?v�Al TrevAyvvc. Vogue. My Choice. "Vogue Magazine." Posted by Vogue India, March 28, 2015. Video, 2:35. https://www .youtube.comlwatch?v�Ktrv7IEhWRA. On Dove Real Beauty Campaign. "A Video on Dove Real Beauty Campaign 2004." Posted by Madeleine Horton, December 15, 2014. Video, 7:34. www.youtube.comlwatch?v�IF09bmZh4uo.

INDO-ORIENTAL TANTRA IN THE WEST­ FROM KNOWLEDGE TO COMMODITY: THE RECOURSE OF A PRIVILEGED DISCOURSE IN THE POPULAR RATUL GHOSH

Abstract

'Oriental sex', as Edward Said observed, was "as standard a commodity as any other available in the mass culture". Historically sexuality, as it was categorically constructed in the West through manifold proliferations of religio-confessional and literary discourses, began to sense a serious lack of spirituality in the late 19th century. At that precise juncture, Oriental discoveries delivered the most precious element: the exotic religio-sexual culture of the Indo-Oriental world, namely, tantra. Evidently, the cultural renmants of scientia-sexualis found a new shelter in magia-sexualis. Tantra soon established itself as a sexual category in Buro-American society. It promised two things: one, to revitalise the mundane sexual practices of the West by addnig elements of spirituality in sexuality; second, it ensured that sexual practice has a higher meaning - the pleasure in carnal activities would complement metaphysical upliftment; sexual climax could result in spiritual apotheosis. In this paper I explore how 'Indo-Oriental' exotic religious sexuality gradually developed as a commodity, a lifestyle product for the Euro-American society in the post­ colonial world. I explore how it has formulated a distinct sub-genre of celluloid, media, and digital narratives promoting tantrism as a transnational cultural commodity in the global market. Finally, I will observe, how the heteronOlmative patriarchal definition of femininity is revalidated through this global transfusion of tantric sexual culture. Key Terms:

Orientalism, tantra, sexuality, post-colonialism, scientificity.

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Introduction

The representation of KCimasiitra and tantra1 as 'Indo-Oriental'2 esoteric sexuality in the West has been twofold. The primary impression of tantra was pejorative. Tantra was seen as a repulsive savage practice of drunkermess and perverse sexual orgies. Early 19th century orientalists like James Mill (The History of British India), Abbe Dubois (Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, 1 807) to William Word, H.H. Wilson and even Sir Monier Williams depicted §iJkta and tiinlne traditions as dreadful, denigratnig, perverse, and despicable .' In the latter half of the 19th century, tantra was still being belittled by the likes of Dayananda Saraswati4 and Swami Vivekananda,5 who were keen to propagate the glorious Brahminical Vedic past of Indian antiquity as a nationalist cultural response to the colonial attempt to appropriate the Indian question of 'culture'. Despite 1 . Although Kiimasiitra has been epitomised as the Indian erotic manual of 'lovemaking', it also discusses different aspects of elite citizen lifestyle and domestic conjugal/courtesan relationships (Doniger, 'It Isn't All about Sex' 18-37; Doniger and Kakkar xi-xiv). On the other hand, tantra is reportedly a post-Vedic (composed between 400 B.C.E and 200 C.E; this time span is ascribed to Kamasutra as well) heterodox religious cult with autochthonous ritualistic roots comprising a secret practice of ceremonial religio-sexual rites between the male adept and his female consort(s) or yogic partners (Harper and Bro"Wll 17-24). The notion of sexuality in these two texts is very different. Kiimasiitra promotes heteronormative erotic notions of lovemaking that sincerely conforms to the social stratifications and patriarchy-ascribed gender roles (Doniger, 'The Mare's Trap'). On the other hand, Tantric sex is a subversive practice of complex body-cultivation that requires control of sexual fluids even altering gender roles physiologically. Moreover, the tantric idea of sex is entangled with the notions of gaining supernatural power (Urban) and attending spiritual apotheosis through corporeal practice. Nevertheless, the Western reception of both tantra and Kiimasutra incited the proliferation of sexual discourse and tickling cmiosity of an emancipatory exotic sexual practice. Hence, the two bodies of texts could be categorically put on a cornmon platform. 2. 'Oriental' is a broad category within which the Middle East and South-East Asia are also included. As the specific focus of the paper is on the Kiimasutra and Tantric texts, which belong to the Indian antiquity, the term 'Indo-Oriental' seems more appropriate. 3 . Hugh Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study a/Religion (Oakland: University of California Press, 2003), 51-52. 4. Hindu reformer and founder of Arya-Samaj (1 824-1 883). 5. Arguably the most influential reformer of Hinduism, considered an icon of Hindu nationalistic revival. Fmmder of Ramakrishna Math and Mission (1 8631902).

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tantra being rooted in the indigenous cults and beliefs of the pre-Aryan autochthonous people6 it was a subversive practice that challenged the Vedic and Brahmanical patriarchal social systems. Hindu nationalism worked hand in hand with orientalism and tried to obliterate tantra and other marginalised cults from the history of Indian religious practices while overdrawing Oriental imaginations on projected classical Hinduism. However, the publication of Richard Burton's famous translation of Kiimasutra from The Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares (prior to the publication of The Book of Ten Thousand Nights and One Night) in 1883 aroused much curiosity. Consequently, perceptions about tantra began to change in the early 20th century with John Woodroffe's visit to India. Adopting the name Arthur Avalon, he was initiated into tantric practices, and gradually explored the philosophical foundation of tantra. However, a new scholarship in Indian religion and philosophy began with Agehananda Bharati, Mircea Eliade, Heimich Zimmer, and other scholars. Though these scholars helped to uplift Hindu religious philosophy in the West, they also tried to homogenise diverse religious developments as Vedic orthogenesis. In due course, tantra was established as a liberating religio-corporeal discourse in the West. The "other Victorian" sexual understanding of the West, which has been "incapable of imagining new pleasures,"7 found that Indo-Oriental esotericism could infuse a deep spiritual meaning to the mundane sexual activities as an Ars-Erotica or erotic art. The corporeal climax could be transcended into spiritual apotheosis, and the vital powers of the practitioners would be elevated through various bodily cultivations and exercises. Subsequently, a nimbus of mystification began to grow in the West regarding tantra and other esoteric sexual practices of the exotic Orient. In the globalised world of cultural commodities - with extensive celluloid, digital, and internet media representations, 'Indo-Oriental' esoteric sexuality has become a trans­ cultural neo-religious phenomenon unfolding new domains of sexual culture in the West. 8 This article is intended to be read as a foreword to the issue of celluloid and digital media representations of 'Indo-Oriental' esoteric sexuality as a global trans-cultural commodity. In postmodern Western society, 6. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism. New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1959; N. N. Bhattacharyya, History o/the Tanlric Religian (1982. New Delhi: Manohar, 2005), 156-159. 7. Michel Foucault, The History 0/ Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1978), 7 1 . 8. Hugh Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study o/Religion (Oakland: University of California Press, 2003), 203-263.

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continuously negotiating with the issues of cybersex, religious "bricolage"9, and digital exoticism, the 'Indo-Oriental' sexuality tended to provide an emancipatory discourse on religion and sexuality. This article also delves into the politics and polemics of the proliferation of 'Indo-Oriental' sexuality with reference to Edward Said's notion of orientalism and Foucauldian analysis of Westem sexuality. Birth of a Product: The Discourse of Ambiguity and the Ambiguity of the Discourse

An interplay of problematic overlapping domains hovers over the critical understanding of orientalism and Oriental historiography. The latter controls the dynamics of the whole body of discourse and counter­ discourse on the fOlmer. In this process, the discourse of orientalism seems to get overburdened with the thrust of deriving the colonial truth by contextualizing the imperial repertoire of knowledge as it has been produced through observations and representations. This helTIleneutic of representations, and its inherent methodological enigma has left orientalism epitomised as a self-referential10 paradigm of postcolonial thought. For example, the narrative of orientalism was generally built upon the writings and musings of British travellers, adventure enthusiasts, bureaucrats and public servants, chieftains of imperial military and law-enforcement personnel, missionaries, and at a later stage by academicians and researchers, who began to translate literature and scriptures for a more 'genuine' depiction of Oriental reality. The project of orientalism was a discourse without a cogent spatio temporal referencell, one which denied 9. V. Altglas, V. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Ericolage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10. One might find self-referenciality both in the orientalist body of literature and the post-colonial critique of orientalism. For example, H. H. Wilson says in his sketch on Sakta comrlllmity of India that "the conduct of the Shaktas is such as to remind of the horrid dance of the naked savages rOlmd their hlUllan victims described in Robinson Crusoe" (1855, 49). i.e., an imagination (and misrepresentation) of a (religious) narrative is being compared with the narrative of an (literary) imagination, and both are reportedly depicting the characteristics of orientalism. The pedantic study of orientalism has created a matrix of representation and self­ referenciality so enormous and encompassing to nurture our chief postcolonial discourse; it is ahnost lost in its 0"Wll interlinked contOlll"s. 1 1 . Edward Said himself was ambiguous while explaining the nature of the Oriental construct, whether it was inherently imagined, or corresponds with reality (Clifford 260).

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factual accountability and encouraged an imagined construct of a cultural space. This space was perceived as a heterotopia to the orientalists and translated as a utopia /dystopia to their readers. This is a space that was apparently unintelligible to the West without the mediation of the orientalists. This process of imagination based on representations made essentialisation, inclusion, and stereotyping imperative. Thus the homogenisation of autochthonous socio-cultural tropes and traditions emerged thereafter. Later, as postcolonial studies disseminated with a stem critique of orientalism and gained motion, the process of de-orientalisation of the writings of the empire eventually backfired on the cultural front12. It only began to empower the project of orientalism by putting it within the complex dynamics of power-relations between the empire and the colony. In the corpus of a distorted knowledge of the East, Said imbued the notion of power and authority and explained it as a discourse. This new-fangled postcolonial discourse then began to proliferate through the most sacrosanct ideological apparatus that produces the most influential systems of thought: the academia. This proliferation, in due time, exceeded academia and diffused in the mass culture as a commodity that propels curiosity and exoticisation in the guise of quasi-academic knowledge. Among the Oriental "knowledge" commodities, Said observes, '''Oriental sex' was as standard a commodity as any other available in the mass culture. ,,13 To problematise the methods of the study of orientalism by showing how it has played a crucial role in the said process of commoditisation, I propose the telTIl phagodiscUJTosis14 to demonstrate the case of orientalism and its discontents in the postcolonial academia. PhagodiscUJTosis denotes the continuous process in which a discourse devours another discourse to

12. The mention of general critics of Edward Said is avoided here, (Clifford; Ahmed; YOlUlg) who rightly pointed out that Said's analysis divides the human agency in a dyadic split of 'westerners' and 'represented others' and the inherent essentialisation has given rise to the categorical possibility of Occidentalism (Carrier; Bilgrami), which equally befalls under same demarcations. On the other hand, the paper prefers to problematise the whole mechanism of discmsivity associating orientalism. 1 3 . Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 190-9 1 . 14. In cell biology, phagocytosis (from Ancient Gree�ayci"v (phagein) means 'to devour',KlfrOC; (kytos) means 'cell' or 'hollow vessel' and osis means 'process' or "condition". I have replaced the 'cytosis' with the word 'discUlTo', which is the Latin root of the word 'discomse' . http://\VWW.biology-online.orgidictionarylPhagocytosis , accessed Apirl 7, 2017.

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produce a counter-discoursel5, and makes a whole oeuvre of self­ referential knowledge that is constantly under scrutiny - seeking theoretical soundness, archaeological (in a Foucauldian sense) accuracy, and genealogical authenticity. This very condition of postcolonial understanding of orientalism has made the whole matrix of perception and representation of orientalism in the West highly fragile. This fragility helped the Culture Industry penetrate into the body of knowledge to fulfil the purpose of commoditisation albeit making the condition of pedanticlintellectual appropriation of the commodity imperative. Hence tantra is everywhere, on the internet and everywhere it is inherently claimed to be authenticated by quasi-academic references of knowledge or pedantic resource persons who have been initiated to that system of cognition. Such references to institutionalised knowledge and expertise work as a qualifier of quality assurance standard for such products16. The commodity must make sure that it possesses the privileged secret knowledge17 of the ritual practices, traditions and rites; it must demonstrate its connection with a mystical lifeworld to which the consumers do not have access18 but to which a virtual access could be

15. Remembering Foucault: "we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can corne into play in various strategies" (Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol. 1, 1 00). 16. For example, in the web-page of Tantra Temple in Seattle, which is reportedly "dedicated to helping all people gain an lUlderstanding of Sacred Sexuality as taught by various traditions reaching back many thousands of years and those that are emerging today", we find three quotations (http://wvrw.tantratemple.us/ ) from a contemporary orientalist (Nik Douglas, the religious explorer and author of a popular tantric sex manual The Spiritual Sex, see http://wvrw.tantraworks.comlbionik.htrnl ); a popular theologist (The Phenomenon ofMan (1955) by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin); and tantric sex trainer and web­ sensation (Corynna Clarke, see http://wvrw.corynna.comlabout-dr-corynna-clarke). So, a reference to 'expert' knowledge with quasi-academic, media-certified popular reputation is an essential condition for commoditisation of Indo-Oriental esoteric sexuality. 17. Foucault might have liked to describe this phenomenon as "a return of knowledge", or to be precise, "insertion of subjugated knowledge", as "blocs of historical knowledge which were present but disguised within the body of flUlctionalist and systematizing theory and which criticism which obviously draws upon scholarship has been able to reveal" (powerlKnowledge 81 -82). 1 8. At this point I would like to requote from Said with an added sentence: '''Oriental sex' was as standard a commodity as any other available in the mass

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purchased; it must work as a channel to the hidden repertoire of esoteric experiences that would elevate the corporeal disposition of an individual. As Luckmarm conceived about 'privatization of religious consciousness' ,19 that could be interpreted as privatisation of the psychosomatic condition and experiences in post-communal globe, this commodified knowledge of the Orient tends to show the ways to certain transcorporeal conditions that are absent or untraceable in one's current religio-cultural locus. This lets the consumer construct an individual space, a privilege of a private knowledge-property, an access to an otherwise inaccessible religio­ corporeal esotericism resulting in the "privatization of sacred cosmos"20. It contests the alleged essentialist materialism of the Western rationalist culture by providing an access to the mystical spiritualist Oriental tradition - the commodification of sexual pleasure ensures the consumer the best of both worlds. The sceptical Westerner gets the spiritual cognition that is accessible through belief per se; knowledge-commodity transfOlms into faith-commodity. 'We, The Other' Orientalists

Although I am trying to critique the notion of phagodiscurrosis in the study of orientalism, it is admissibly the only tool available to depict the ruptures in the grand narrative of post-colonial understanding of orientalism. This leads to a methodological predicament. For example, we criticise discursive fOlmation of narratives for fracturing and weakening the territory of knowledge, knowing well that only such formations could resist the process of submerging the narratives into the grand-ness, leading to generalisations and homogenisations in the first place. However, for now we have to contain this quandary and proceed with our explorations, which would also characterise the nature of the aforementioned confusion. The incitement to the knowledge of the Far East was reportedly never a result of pure curiosity of the colonisers endowed with the self­ proclamation of a cultural superiority. This had an undeniable relationship with colonial modes of economic productions, pivoted by administrative underpinnings. As Ronald Inden concludes, the goal of the production of colonial knowledge was to remove "human agency from the autonomous Others of the East and placing it in the hands of the scholars and leaders of culture, with the result that readers and \Vfiters could have it if they wished without necessarily going to the Orient" (Said 1 9 1 ) . 19. Thomas Luckrnann, "The Structural Conditions o f Religious Consciousness in Modem Societies," Japanese Journal a/Religious Studies, no. 6. (1979): 1 2 1 20. Ibid., 123.

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the West" through the deployment of the notions of "oriental despotism" and "Asiatic mode of Production".21 Simply put: the agency of orientalism worked duly to fulfil the imperial propaganda. Hugh Urban summed up the proposition of lnden by saying that the "orientalist discourse on lndia was closely linked to the larger British imperial project."22 But does this proposition entirely stand on its empirical legitimacy? As the Calcutta Review publishes an extensive research on the "superintendence of native religious institutions; and discontinuance of Pecuniary Payments to the support of Idol Temple of Jagannath: Parliamentary return"", the orientalist intelligentsia actually criticises the government's patronage of the primitive native pantheistic religions or idolatry, because it was morally reprehensible to the Christian monotheism and the believers of the post-enlightenment mechanical philosophy. To the orientalists, it was a mere strategic political step without taking the religious and ideological preoccupations of the enlightened Europearmess into account.24 The report describes how the gathering of pilgrims at the famous Hindu temple in Puri is ill-managed, exploited and how "tens of thousand" of peoples are voluntarily or involunterily sacrificed under the wheels of the chariot of Jagarmath. Taking this as an exemplifier, the review further denotes: This . . . fostering care . . . exhibited that government to the Christian world, not merely as the royal protector, but as the intimate friend and patron of the Hindu and Mohommedan religions.. The principal that proved the support of idolatry -wrong in that instance, was applicable to all others.25

Motivated by religious vigour, the orientalists critique government policy from an ideological perspective.26 The old administrative leadership is being censured and new political interventions are being welcomed for curtailing the financial enablement of native religious institutions. Hence, 2 1 . Ronald B. Inden, Imagining India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 52. 22. Urban, The Power ofTantra, 7. 23. The Calcutta Review Vol. 17, ( 1 844): 1 15-1 1 6. 24. Ibid., 1 16. As the essay SlUllS up the colonial political tactics: 'The power of the Government was at first based purely upon the military force; but it was felt desirable to secme by love what has been obtained by fear . . . a readiness was shO\vn to honour their temples, to endow their worship and do what the native Othought to promote its prosperity'. 25. Ibid., 1 16. 26. Ibid., 1 1 6. Those who, between 1790 and 1 820 . . .held the highest offices in India were, on the whole, an irreligious body of men; who approved of Hinduism much more than Christianity, and favored the Koran more than the Bible.

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the question arises whether the project of orientalism served the colonial mechanism of governance and control, or the agency of orientalism had its own ideological stakes and cultural agendas for which it subtely tried to outmanoeuver the colonial administration.27 Hence we see an expedient politicisation of religious hatred, not necessarily in favour of the administration, but fmding favours in administrative policies of intimidation. As mentioned earlier, Said's Orientalism promulgated that every colonial event and object of knowledge could be understood from the perspective of the binary between Oriental imagination and its postcolonial resistance. Postcolonialism and orientalism ultimately purloined the Orient of their right to explicate their own situation according to their own polythetic categories.28 This has affected the issue of religion and culture

27. Abbey Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, tr. by Henry K. Beauchamp (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1905), xv. That outmaneuvering was successful as the rulers depended on the observations of the scholars to lUlderstand the land and its people. French Missionary Abbe Dubois, who studied Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, "Wrote a hateful and utterly misguiding account of tantric practices. In 1 804, Lord William Bentinck, the future Govemor­ General of India (1828-35), bought the French manuscript of his work and "Wrote later, "In a political point of view, the information which the work of the Abbe Dubois has to impart might be of the greatest benefit in aiding the servants of the Government in conducting themselves more in union with the customs and prejudices of the natives". 28. For example, Richard King (86) refers to Richard G. Fox (Sprinker 146) who has shmvn how "Sikh reformers in the 1920s accepted Orientalist stereotypes of the Sikh, and yet used them to create a mass movement in opposition to British colonialism". Nevertheless, that notion is problematic as he himself appended the reference to Peter Van-Der Veer proposing that the construction of Sikh identity was not British imagination, it was rather a British policy to empower the Sikh cornrnlUlity so that they could annex the territory strategically to the empire: "if someone wanted to enlist in the anny, he had to become a Sikha in the process of conversion and the changing of names that can be followed closely" (Veer 54). Clearly, orientalism had nothing to do with it. However, King himself shows similar speculative notions when he states that "the same transformation can be seen in the Hindu context, where orientalist presuppositions about the 'spirituality' of India, etc., were used by reformers such as RammohlUl Roy, Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda and Mohandas K. Gandhi in the development of an anti-colonial Hindu nationalism" (King, 86). The 'spirituality of India' is a polyvalent notion. It played a crucial role when Islamic conquest in India began from the 8th century followed by territorialisation, habitation and centuries of coexistence of apparently conflicting religious communities, causing numerous heterogeneous developments of local cults. The development of nationalism is always a mediated process and the religious fervour is an essential element of the

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more severely due to visceral homogenisation and Eurocentric categorisation of religion (King, Breckenridge, and Veer). David Kopf, on one hand has accused Said of being overtly structural, archival and ahistorical and on the other hand he has argued that Said has only used "intellectual rubbish,,29 to prove that the Western intellect has misrepresented and distorted the East. Kopf has proposed that the true contribution of the Westerners in depicting the East has been undermined in the subservient discourse and counter-discourse on orientalism.30 In other words, there is reportedly more in the body of Oriental research that is devoid of empirical prejudice and depicts a different and authentic picture of the East. This possibility of a perfect revelation has propelled the century long curiosity regarding continuous production of a neD-Oriental body of knowledge. The global culture industry has utilised and exploited this curiosity and persistently delivered new commodities infused with garbled knowledge-corpuscles of/from the East. Every other enterprise declares that it delivers the most authentic experience of the mystic and mysterious Orient. As argued earlier, the consumer, who is incited to the discourse but is not equipped with critical apparatuses to evaluate the authenticity of the knowledge, nevertheless is aware of the possible presence of a grand exotic knowledge hidden in the Orient: a knowledge the authenticity of which is constantly being questioned by new cognitive discoveries, a knowledge that is constantly being contextualised and re-contextualised by the critics of orientalism and the critics of those critical positions thereafter. The orientalist discourse thus produces curious consumers for the global market to sell cultural commodities from the Orient. The more nationalist recrudescence, hence it was inevitable that Hindu nationalism has built upon 'spirituality of India' and a lot more. The mentioning of 'orientalist presuppositions' itself is a presumptuous notion that extols orientalism unnecessarily. So, my question is: can the 'Orient' really speak? 29. David Kopf, "Hermeneutics versus history," Journal ofAsian Studies 39.3, May (1980): 499. 30. My argument is, the very idea of locating the 'authentic' and truly representative docmnents is a very problematic one. Kopfhimself could be taken as an example. In his most revered volume British Orientalism and Bengal Renaissance (1 969), Kopf has lauded H. H. Wilson as the harbinger of a more rational, chronological, and scientific method in orientalist research. Curiously, in another long sketch about the 'Saktas', Wilson compares the Hindus with 'savages of America', calls them "barbaric", "benighted", "degenerate", "cannibals"(3 1), explicates tantric worship and rituals of the goddess as the dance of "furies and demoniacs" accompanied by "obscene songs and indecent gestures" (50). Wilson reportedly watched over their movements like a spy to find out "the abominations which, under the name of religious rites they practice'''52).

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we try to make our exploration and scrutiny of the Orient and orientalism more authentic, discursive, scientific, and methodical, the more we try to censure the non-categorised nebulous Oriental knowledge-stereotypes, it actually incites more people into the discourse. Thus, the discourse of orientalism is proliferated by igniting curiosity in the world of academia but catering to the world of commodities. We are the 'other' 'orientalists', undoubtedly. Scientia Sexualis VIS Ars Erotica: The Discourse of a Commodity

In his History of Sexuality, Michael Foucault suggests the idea of scientia sexualis that is intended to produce "scientific truth" about sexuality in the West. Simultaneously, Foucault observed that the Eastern civilisations have been practicing an ars erotica or erotic art since antiquity, where "truth is dra\Vll from pleasure itself' through educational discourses on sexual knowledge and pragmatics, devoid of any "law of the permitted or the forbidden".31 KCimasiitra and tCintric texts, with their pedagogic narrative design and unrestricted postulations on human sexual possibilities, fitted suitably in the category of ars erotica. Simultaneously, Foucault observed that Western society has actually treated scientia sexualis as an extraordinarily subtle fOlTIl of ars erotica. The power­ mechanism of producing the truth had multiplied and intensified the perception of pleasure by finding "pleasure in the truth of pleasure". 32 However, a detailed analysis of both the representations and receptions of Kiimasutraltantra in the West might lead one to resolve that a distinct fOlTIl of scientia sexualis was also present in ars erotica. This is the hypothesis that I shall try to substantiate in this chapter. The post­ enlightenment Western scientism, which considered the scientific approach to explain the world as the solely acceptable method of acquiring knowledge, is still a dominant and authoritative model of worldview. The Oriental scholarship, which was at first critical, belittling and then respectful and curious about the East, has always tried to use scientificity as a parameter to measure the veracity of any Oriental element of knowledge.

3 1 . Foucault, The History a/Sexuality, 57. 32. Ibid., 7 1 .

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According to Ronald [nden, the colonisers concluded that "the Indian mind is.. devoid of 'higher', that is, scientific rationality".}} Hence the primary challenge to the Indian intellectual resistance was to prove the worth of Hinduism in the arena of science. That is why in articles like 'Is Hindu Music Scientific', "the question, therefore", remains not whether the components and structure of Hindustani classical music is "possible, but whether it is scientific".34 The solution, however, is predictable, as Percival concludes his scientific exploration by saying, "if Hindu music is to be improved scientifically . . . then that improvement can only come from native musicians who have mastered the science of European music."35 In 1877, Uday Chand Dutt, an Ayurveda specialist and a medical officer at Serampore, wrote a book on ancient Indian systems of medical treatment entitled The Materia Medica of the Hindus with a Glossary of Indian Plants with George King, the superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Calcutta. As Dutt tried to assign the ancient Indian medical manuals a glorious position in the history of medicine36, the Calcutta Review found that the importance of his research, will be felt when they are called in (as often happens) to attend a patient who has long been under native treatment: they will be able to lUlderstand the line of treatment that has been previously adopted, far more clearly than has hitherto been the case and will of COlise be able more intelligently to shape their O"Wll treatment accordingly.37

Evidently the same criticism was also accorded for native religio-cultural beliefs and traditions. Gangadas Basu, in his Aryajiban Arthiit Hindu ACiir Byabahiir Prabhrtir Baigiiiinik byiikhyiin (The Scientific Explanation of Evolution of the Aryan life Signifying Hindu Practices) (1885) attempted to scientifically explain Hindu (whom he considers the only true Aryans) rituals and beliefs.38 These naive attempts to construct a Hindu scientificity as a historical category have been launched as part of the Hindu nationalist propaganda regarding the revival of Hinduism, which was not unknO\vn to

33. Ronald B. Inden, Imagining India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 990), 264. 34. H.M. Percival, "Is Hindu Music Scientific?" Calcutta Review, Oct (1 886): 282. 35. Ibid., 295. 36. Udoy C. Dutt and George King, The Materia Medica a/the Hindus (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1877), v. 37. The Calcutta Review (1 877): vi. 38. Gangadas Basu, Aryajiban Arthat Hindu Aciir Byabahiir Prabhritir Baigniinik byiikhyiin (Calcutta: Girishchandra Ghosh, 1 885).

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the British. But they disparaged such efforts of false scientification by stating that there was no 'actual science' present in such analysis: The procedme is the very reverse of scientific and shows that the men who adopt it, though they profess to be in possession of great scientific knowledge, are completely innocent of it. . . science is not science ifit does not agree with facts . 39 . .

Although the approach of Basu was propagandist, and truly not much scientific rationality was present there, what we keenly observe is a state of conflict. The Indian intelligentsia tended to prove their worth through scientism, and the British were ever watchful in protecting their territory of 'science' that was the legacy of their enlightenment and justified the colonial authority over "savages". However, as discussed earlier, pioneering orientalist scholarship of the early 20th century changed the scenario. Tantra was established as an emancipatory discourse to Western materialism by being explicated as a quasi-scientific body of knowledge, where the parameters of scientificity transcended the paradigms of natural sciences. Day by day the definition of 'science' broadened and began to encompass cognitive and psychological aspects of the human mind. It was progressively being ascertained that the universe is beyond one's intelligibility if sJhe uses only natural science or a priori knowledge to explicate it. This resulted in scientification of the metaphysical, (one can remember the 1932 seminar of Carl G. Jung40 on The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga'!) that was the only condition that could secure the position of Indo-Oriental esoteric sexuality in the West. Tantra specialist Arthur Avalon (alias of Sir John Woodroffe) was invited to be one of the patrons of the Indian Rationalistic Society (1919) who once declared in their first bulletin that, We, the members of this society feel convinced that science supplies us with the most reliable knowledge attainable about nature . . . that ideas and institutions which corne within the range of science should be judged by the data which it furnishes.42 39. 'Vernacular Literature' in The Calcutta Review (1 877): xiv. 40. Carl G. Jung, The Psychology ofKundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 4 1 . As JlUlg constantly recreated the Tantric worldview as a scientific paradigm in the lectures, he has been influenced by Count Hermann Keyserling who was intrigued by the 'old Indian science of the soul' (JlUlg xix). 42. Arthur Avalon quoted in Cathleen Taylor. Sir John Woodroffe: Tantra and Bengal (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 83.

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Along with depicting tantra as a distinct religious practice with an intense philosophical foundation, Sir Woodroffe changed the perception about tantra and other systems of Indian ritualistic body-cultivations and sexual rites by ensuring that a reference of scientia sexualis could be detected within ars-erotica. In Introduction to Tantra Sastra, he wrote: Medical science of to-day seeks to reach the same results but, uses for this purpose the physical methods of modem Western science, suited to an age of materiality; whereas in the sarnskaras the super physical methods of ancient Eastern science are ernployed.43

As it goes in accordance with our previous hypothesis, this notion of the possibility of tracing out an "ancient eastern science" in 'ars erotica' was significant. The keenness of Indian translators to demonstmte Kfunasiitra as a 'scientific' body of work on human sexuality even after Indian independence was evident. The foreword to the translation of Kiimasiitra by Dr. S.C. Upadhyaya (1961), which reportedly is the first most authentic, "up-to-date" and "literal" translation of the treatise, points out that, in the Kfunasutra, "the entire range of the topics on love has been laid bare, with a cold scientific thoroughness unparalleled in Sanskrit literature."44 It has been designated as the "science of erotics,,45 which is a "work of undeniable importance to members of medical profession"46. This recurring recourse to scientism47 stands in support of my hypothesis. FurthemlOre, the search for Scientia sexualis in 'Indo-Oriental' sexuality is prominent in the web representations of it. Tantra has been epitomised as a spiritual science that constitutes a cosmophysiological mapping of the human body in a trans-phenomenally sacred universe. Tantric ritual­ practices have been designated as physiotherapeutic medical practices that are supposed to provide a remedy to all sexual shortcomings and enhance the experience of overall embodied cognitions of human life. Following Von Stuckrad, we can call it a "pseudo-science" that has immensely contributed in developing a popular attraction towards esoteric ritual43. John Woodroffe (alias Arthur Avalon), Introduction to Tantra Shastra (195 1 . Madras: Ganesh, 2004), 105. 44. S.C. Upadhyaya, KamaSutra of Vatsayana (Bombay: Taraporevala, 1 974), vi. 45. Ibid., ! ' 46. Ibid., book cover. 47 See Foucault, Power/ Knowledge, 1 9 1 . He brilliantly observes that, "whereas in erotic art what is medicalised is rather the means (pharmaceutical or somatic) which serve to intensify pleasme, one finds in the West a medicalisation of sexuality itself, as though it were an area of particular pathological fragility in human existence."

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practices. He beautifully sums up the situation in his book The Scientification a/Religion: The problem with the 'pseudo-sciences' is that it has not always been easy to identify the exact difference between discarded and accepted forms of knowledge . . . these marginalized forms of knowledge continued to be attractive as an alternative to what was perceived as reductionist knowledge of nature in the sciences. This led to an intricate entanglement of various discourses in the large field of religion, science, and public culture.48

The synresthesia of scientia sexualis with ars erotica within a narrative of exotification and sensitisation caused the mystification and proliferation of 'Indo-Oriental' esoteric sexuality in the West. However, was this newfangled discourse truly emancipatory?49 Possibly not, because even if it arguably elevates sexual experience to a metaphysical terrain of ecstasy, it eventually binds the seeker with the commodity. It calls for a complete submission to the essentially mediated (through commodities encompassing scriptural knowledge and necessitating spiritual pedagogy) route to knowledge and spirituo-somatic experience, as is the given nature of ars erotica. It orchestrates the necessary conditions to make the consumer a student in the class of esotericism offered by the global culture industry. 50

48. Kocku Von Stuckrad, The Scientification of Religion: A Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800-2000. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), viii. 49. I shall not accord with Foucault that "in societies with a heritage of erotic art the intensification of pleasure tends to desexualise the body" (powerlknowledge 1 9 1 ), as tantra rather proposes to transcend the embodiment of sexuality and transform it into spirituality. Again, I disagree with him when he says "'liberating omselves" requires "desexualisation" (191). Foucault eventually vilifies the economy of sexual pleasure itself, which is the limitation of his theory in general it rather works as another "repressive hypothesis" that thrusts postrnodern condition towardsposthumanism. 50. The prolusion of the website .-www.erosexotica.com. states that, "Pleasure and sexual understanding await you here. To become a member is to become a student, for delights unknmvn are yoms for the learning". (http://ww-w.erosexotica.com/index1 .htrnl/ accessed February 22, 2017). The consumers are generally advised to follow the video sessions, attend the workshops or classes and continue training and practicing for successful achievement of the sought out esoteric experience. Similar attempts could be seen in popular western pornographic sex-advice videos like Nina Hurtley 's Guide to Sex, where a pedagogic narrative is imperative as well. Each episode is labeled as a 'lesson' on Nina Hmtley's web page: http://-www.nina.com/ninahartley.php. In fact, the

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The Indo-Oriental esoteric discourse on religion and sexuality has never been an emancipatory discourse, as no discourse can fundamentally offer emancipation; it fabricates a loop that begins with power and ends with commodity. Bibliography

Altg1as, V. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics ofEricolage. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Alnnad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classe, Nations, Literatures. New York: Verso, 1992. Basu, Gangadas. Aryajiban Arthat Hindu Aeiir Eyabahiir Prabhritir Eaigniinik byiikhyiin. Calcutta: Girishchandra Ghosh, 1885. Bi1grami, Akeel. "Occidentalism, the Very Idea: An Essay on the Enlightenment and Enchantment." Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, no. 33 Aug. 19-25, (2006): 3591-3603. Bhattacharyya, N. N. History of the Tantric Religion. 1982. New Delhi: Manohar, 2005. Carrier, James G. Ed. Occidentalism: Images of the West. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1995. Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. Lokiiyata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism. New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1959. Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Doniger, Wendy. "The 'Kamasutra' : It Isn't All about Sex." The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 25, no. 1 Winter (2003): 18-37. Dubois, Abbey (Tr. Henry K. Beauchamp). Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1905. Dutt, Udoy C. and George King. The Materia Medica of the Hindus. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1877. Doniger, Wendy and Sudhir Kakkar. Vatsayana Kamasutra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Doniger, Wendy. The Mare 's Trap: Nature and Culture in the Kamasutra. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger Books, 2015. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penginn, 1978.

sexual-pedagogy has become so prominent in erotic or pornographic visuals, we may conclude that a new mechanism of 'pedagogia-sexualis' has emerged.

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-. PoweriKnowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 19721977. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Ghosh, Sri Nath. Baijiiiinik Hindudharma (Hinduism: Scientific, Philosophic and Theosophic), Part 1, 2 and 3. Calcutta: Classic Press, 1904. Harper, Katherine Anne and Robert L. Brown, eds. The Roots of Tantro. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. Inden, Ronald B. Imagining India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Jung, Carl G. The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the Mystic East. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Kopf, David. "HelTIleneutics versus history." Journal of Asian Studies 39.3, May (1980): 495-506. Luckmann, Thomas.1979. "The Structural Conditions of Religious Consciousness in Modem Societies." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, no. 6 (1979): 121-137. Percival, H M. "Is Hindu Music Scientific?" Calcutta Review, Oct (1886): 277-295. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Sprinker, Michael, ed. Edward Said: A Critical Reader. New York: Wiley­ Blackwell, 1993. Taylor, Cathleen. Sir John Woodroffe: Tantra and Bengal. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. The Calcutta Review Vol. 17, Part 1, ( 1 844). The Calcutta Review July (1 877). Upadhyaya, S.C. Kama Sutra of Vatsayona. Bombay: Taraporevala, 1974. Urban, Hugh B. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion. Oakland: University of California Press, 2003. -. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in the Western Esotericism. Oakland: University of California Press, 2006. -. "The Cult of Ecstasy: Tantrism, the New Age, and the Spiritual Logic of Late Capitalism" in History of Religions, Vol. 39, no. 3. February (2000): 268-304. -. The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies. London & New York: LB.Tauris, 2010. Von Stuckrad, Kocku. The Scientification ofReligion: A Historical Study ofDiscursive Change, 1800-2000. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.

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Wilson, H. H. "Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindu." Calcutta Review; Jan (1855): 31-67. Woodroffe, John (alias Arthur Avalon). Introduction to Tantra Shastra. 195 1 . Madras: Ganesh, 2004. Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London and New Yark: Routledge, 1990.

COLONIAL MODERNITY, FORMATION OF THE NATION-STATE AND TRIBAL IDENTITY: LOCALIZING THE IDENTITY OF BONDA WOMEN IN PRATIBHA RAy'S ADIBHUMI SARAT KUMAR JENA

Abstract

Representation of tribal society and culture in popular media in tbe early 20th century and even later may be seen as a political endeavour of the colonial elite and the local elite, both are equally responsible for tbe' (mis)representation of indigenous societies and cultures. Similar colonial practices have been continued in free India. The 'ethnographic novel' that appears as a minor geme of the modem Indian literary canon may be examined in this context. This paper examines the debate of 'representation' vis-a-vis 'mis-representation' of social and political identities of Bonda Women in Pratibha Ray's Adibhumi (The Primal Land, 1993). Ray's construction of the sexuality of Bonda women by borrowing heavily from available local myths and folktales propagates a collective identity of tbe indigenous Bonda community and the later translation of the text in English fe-organises its global readership under a hegemonic representation of the Bonda. This may be studied as an extended consequence of colonial modernity, heavy industrialisation in the Eastern Ghats in the 1960s and political (re)formation of tbe nation-state in post-colonial period. Key Terms:

Tribal, indigenous, Odisha, nation-state, feminism. Introduction

Pratibha Ray's Adibhumi (The Primal Land 1993), a saga of the Bonda ethnic society and culture, is the first work of fiction about the indigenous community of tbe Koraput district in Odisha. Ray received a fellowship from tbe Government of Odisha in tbe 1980s for her postdoctoral research.

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She lived for a considerable period with the indigenous community to carry out her post-doctoral research on the identity of Bonda women and the gendered space they occupy. The feminist outlook of Ray is prominent in all her works Ya}naseni (The Daughter of the Sacred Fire 1984), Mahamoha (The Great Illusion 1997), and Adibhumi. These narratives address certain issues of gendered myth and identity, but they often remain blind to the intersectionalities of differences and conflicts between tribal and hegemonic myths, and traditions. In Yajnaseni and Mahamoha the women are self-assertive; Draupadi and Ahalya are portrayed as transgressors of the mythic space codified by the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and Hindu ideology and principles in general. In Adibhumi, on the other hand, Ray represents a somewhat reductive identity of the Bonda women. She claims knowledge of indigenous viewpoints of the myths she had collected during her stay at the Bonda hills in the 1980s and 1990s1 Her definition of the identity of the Bonda women draws from her close observation of the community during her research; yet the Bonda women in the narrative of Adibhumi are never allowed to break the hegemonic stereotypes of their mythic representations. This contrasts with her portrayals of Draupadi and Ahalya in Yajnaseni and Mahamoha who, as expressive and self-assertive women, could challenge the set code of Hindu ideology and principles. Ray's depiction of tribal identity in Adibhumi on the other hand, perhaps casts doubt on the potential of that identity as a source of a revolutionary stand of the tribe against the existing socio-political order. There is a visible and conscious high caste Hindu ideology interwoven into the narrative ofAdibhumi. Hence, for Ray the tribal myths are passive, fixed in a nostalgic past, devoid of regenerative power. The non-tribal "myths" generated by upper-caste attitudes, however, are explicated and explored as enabling and empowering for women of higher social orders. There is an inherent contradiction in this intellectual investment of Ray as she seems to deny the [mdings of her 0\Vll research while she lived with the Bonda community. She does not accept the scope of replay of tribal myths for empowerment and liberation as she distances herself from them in Adibhumi. Thus, 'othering' them. The narrative is imbued with prejudice and a complete lack of engagement with the tribal narratives and myths. In this case the following observation of Iatindra Mohan Mohanty may be taken into consideration wherein he compares the narratives of Yajnaseni, Shilapadma, and Adibhumi. He notes that: -

1 . Pratibha Ray, interview with author, April 19, 2014.

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A good example is Yajnaseni, which is at the same time, an account of the Mahabharat, a study of relationships, a probe into the mental states of distress, dismay and emptiness, a protest against male chauvinism, a declaration that all war is futile, and finally a rejection of heavenly benefits in favolli of the limitations of the human world. In about 450 pages the novel is a comprehensive accOlUlt of Draupadi as she sees herself with relation to various Mahabharat incidents and characters an interesting work with a strong intelligent contemporary feminist attitude towards the great, ancient epic. A similar attitude is also seen in Shilapadma, which combines a fictional accOlUlt of the times when the Konark temple (the famous thirteenth century temple) was built, with contemporary realities, and with implied feministic motivation . . . Yet differently, in Adibhumi, another important novel, dealing with the Bonda tribes of Southern Orissa, and rooted in the concerned locality, the past and the present are not seen as separate segments, but as continmUll that sustains the movement oflife.2

For Jatindra Mohan Mohanty, the strong feminist portrayals in other novels of Ray are enabled by the women's negation of their historically accorded status, whereas in Adibhumi, the tribal women follow the path, the "contniuum" established ni the past for them by patriarchal hegemonic non-tribal structures. The "movement" in fact, is simply motion without advancement. His critical observation prepares the ground to study misrepresentation in Ray's Adibhumi. The Postmodern Representation of the Tribal Identity: Critique of Modernity and Formation of the Nation-State in Pratibha Ray's Adibhumi

The narrative of Adibhumi is set in the lush green hills of the Eastern Ghats in the undivided Koraput district. In the 1960s the implementation of the Green Revolution} and the introduction of mining industries and hydro power projects4 ni the undivided Koraput district lead to political movements in the region. These movements were a reaction to the contemporary problems of the politically destabilised Odisha state. During 2. Jatindra Mohan Mohanty, History of Oriya Literature (Bhubaneswar: Vidya, 2006), 642-643 . 3 . Vasundhara, Development Policies and Rural Poverty in Orissa: Macro Analysis and Case Studies (Bhubaneswar: Vasundhara, 2005), 14, accessed June 25, 2013. http://planningcommission.nic.inireports/sereport/ser/stdy_dvpov.pdf 4. William Stanley, "Machkund, Upper Kolab and NALCO Projects in Koraput District, Orissa," Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 3 1 , no. 24 June 15 (1996): 1533. urI: http://wwwjstor.orglstable/4404278. Accessed June 25, 2013.

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industrialisation the planners and developers faced confrontations with the tribal occupants of the forest lands. The indigenous people and their culture sprawling across hills and mountains, rivers and springs, forest, and flora and fauna faced massive displacement. In the 1960s the introduction of industrialisation policies, market economy, and materialist culture in the Eastern Ghats in Odisha brought forth great social and political difficulties for the indigenous people. The ethnic identities of the tribal society and culture in the 1960s in the Eastern Ghats presented a serious obstacle to the homogenisation policies of the state government and the central government. The conflict was born out of the concept of nation formation by the democratic leadership of the 1950s and 1960s in India, which did not grant due acknowledgement to tribal rights. Indian nation building was based on socialist, secular, and democratic systems through a progressive and inclusive Constitution. Yet social disparities and discrimination of pre-independent and colonial India, which was very feudal, could not be overcome. Development agendas conceived through adopting technological advancements in agriculture and large-scale industrial mobilisations in the 1950s, led to massive social, cultural, political, and economic disparity caused by unprecedented displacement of tribal peoples of the country. William Stanley has commented on the huge changes and socio-economic disturbances that occurred after independence: After independence, the Indian state assumed the responsibility for "economic grmvth and national progress" via adoption of the dominant development ideology. This development pattern based on western models involving the transfer of high-level technology, heavy capital investment only strengthened the pre-existing power structures and feudal patterns. Centralised planning, macro development and British political and a bureaucratic administration model have resulted in wide income disparities.5

'While accounting for industrial revolution and development, William Stanley finds that the exploitation of the Eastern Ghats is an outcome of the capitalist principles adopted for the industrialisation of India. He notes: Since the 1 970s, after exhausting the resources in the south, north and west of India, mainstream Indian industries have begun exploiting the resources of the Eastern Ghats area of which the state of Orissa accounts for 36 per cent. This area is rich in resources and the process of transferring resources from the periphery to the centre is now visible. In the 1950s Orissa did not 5. Ibid. 1533.

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Colonial Modernity, Formation of the Nation-State and Tribal Identity have any industry except for a few saw mills and some ice factories near Cuttack. The state had two large dams in 1950 as against 149 in 1990. Exploitation of its natural resources began in the 1 950s with the building of the Hirakud dam and the Romkela steel plant, later followed by mines and more dams.6

The industrial revolution in the 1960s appears as a political marker in the history of the Eastern Ghats. It is a period when two distinct societies the tribal and the non-tribal, came in close contact with each other. The fact remains that the non-tribal society has always been the policy maker and occupies the pinnacle in the power hierarchy wherein tribal societies are left as the powerless and submissive group. They lie at the periphery of the democratic system. The non-tribal centre constantly attempts to alter peripheral tribal identities through socio-economic changes, political stands, industrialisation, policies for refOlmation and development, and spread of popular culture. In popular culture, tribal identity is shown as heterogenic and ambiguous. The narrative of Pratibha Ray's Adibhumi may be studied as a fictional account that attempts a serious engagement with the ethnic identities of the Bonda tradition, society, and culture dictated by a non­ tribal, high caste Hindu and elitist point of view. Overtly, the narrative of Ray's Adibhumi - comprised a hundred chapters in its English translation, sets up a postcolonial scrutiny of socio-economic systems. In a different assessment than Iatindra Mohan Mohanty, Prafulla Kumar Mohanty's , observation of Ray s Adibhumi may be seen as a political representation of the critic's non-tribal high caste Hindu consciousness. Mohanty has high regard for Ray's treatment of ethnic life. He writes: Pratibha's novels are always well researched; she uses authentic reality in her fictional mode. Her anthropological research into the life of the Bonda's in the Bonda hills of Orissa (as yet inaccessible to modern civilization) has resulted in another masterpiece; in her Adibhumi (The Primal Land). Pratibha opens up and exposes this enclosed world to the readers with a rare sympathy for the rigid value construct of the "unfortunate" people. Unfortunate because the Bondas are the victims of their own logic and belief?

6. Ibid., 1533. 7. Prafulla Kumar Mohanty, "The Novels of Pratibha Ray," Odisha Review, January (2013): 39-40, accessed Jlll1e 25, 2013. http://orissa.gov. in!e-magazinelOrissareview12 0 1 3/Janiengpd£l3 8 -42 .pdf.

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Prafulla Kumar Mohanty's critique of the narrative of Ray's Adibhumi confitms the hegemonic infantilisation of indigenous people and culture. The purportedly well-intentioned stance can offer only "sympathy" to the "unfortunate victims". The patronizing tone of Mohanty's reading of Pratibha Ray's representation of the Bonda community is highly problematic. The community has its 0\Vll social and cultural traditions and indigenous knowledge systems that non-tribal accounts are unable to, or unwilling to access and understand as autonomous elements that sustain an alternative socio-economic structure. The anthropological research by Ray makes an observation that compares the co-existential societies and cultures in contact with each other. The research findings of Ray bring to the fore a realistic narrative that pretends to articulate a tribal voice, yet that voice is always filtered through non-tribal control systems. Similarly, the tribal viewpoints in the narrative of Adibhumi are controlled by the non-tribal consciousness of its author The Bondas are repeatedly branded as unfortunate, violent, and homicidal by Ray in Adibhumi. The author heightens the homicidal nature of the Bonda when she writes: Hadi ran away in anger into the forest. But when he grew hungry he returned to his father's hut to look for food. His mother was away, working in the fields. There was nothing to eat. His father was sleeping on the verandah, drunk with landha, his head pillowed on a wooden plank. The blood rose to Hadi's head. Was he to live in fear of his father? He dragged an axe out of the thatch and brought it do"Wll on his father's head. It cut through the skull, through the plank, into the mud floor. 8

The Bonda in the narrative of Adibhumi has been represented as animal-like and savage who has lost control of his thought processes, who is blood thirsty and is a menace to civilisation. "Civilisation", largely comprised non-tribal individuals, is represented as an antithesis of indigenous culture. Several instances of murder and death in cold blood produce a sense of horror and revulsion in the narrative of Adibhumi. As a result, the non-tribal "civilized" readership, which lives far away in the coastal districts of Odisha who comprise the very first authentic audience of Ray's Adibhumi as well as its global readership via English translation, conceives a dreadful image of the 'Bonda male'. In the translator's preface, Bikram K Das puts a question mark on the authenticity of the homicidal nature of the Bonda that brings forth a debate on the non-tribal 8. Pratibha Ray, Adibhumi (The Primal Land), trans. Bikram K. Das (1993. New Delhi: Orient Longman Limited, 2009), 45.

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assumptions of Ray stemming from the agenda of nation fOlmation and nationalism. He writes, "The men of the tribe have acquired a fearsome reputation for aggression, violence and criminality - which is not entirely deserved. " The landscape and ecology of the Eastern Ghats in Adibhumi is the focus of Santosh Tripathy's appreciation of the novel. He finds the compassion and magic realism in Ray's Adibhumi appropriate and agrees that the Bonda identity has been given its proper ecological context in the fictional treatment of Ray. Tripathy states: In this novel the creative persona of Pratibha has aided a life giving force, a vitalizing strength and an insight which has rendered this novel as a classic masterpiece. The ecstatic mind of Pratibha has also played with the ecological philosophy of the primitive Bonda in a sympathetic and mysterious way.9

The landscape and ecology of the Eastern Ghats is a prominent part of the narrative, however, it is not a "sympathetic" portrayal. Ray aligns the imagery of dense jungles, jagged mountain edges with the agenda of emphasizing an innately combative tribal ethos. The violent construct of the Bonda identity may be traced in the beginning of the novel where the entire community is sho\Vll "in battle with nature for thousands of years". Ray presents a traumatic introduction to the Bonda community in the first chapter of Adibhumi. She writes: Four thousand feet above the gorge where the Machchkund tumbles into the plains, along the mOlUltain ridges and in the valleys on either side, hidden in the jungle, back turned to civilisation, locked in battle with nature for thousands of years, a primitive aboriginal society has survived. Its children call themselves the remo, which means 'man.' But the name given by the plainsmen to the remo is 'Bonda,' which means 'naked' or 'savage. > 1 0

The introduction of the Bonda community in the very beginning of the narrative of Adibhumi not only subjugates the inhabitants of the Eastern Ghats but also its landscape and ecology. The mountain ranges of the Eastern Ghats in the Malkangiri area, the river Machchkund, the adjacent jungles, etc. in Adibhumi have been depicted as an inferior track of 9. Santosh Tripathy, "Enticing Fictions and Illustrative Creativity of Pratibha Ray," OdishaReview, February March (2013): 123, accessed JlUle 25, 2013. urI: http://orissa.gov.inle-magazine/orissareviewI20 14/feb-march/engpd£l1 26-130 .pdf. 10. Ray, Adibhumi, 2.

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civilisation. The contrast between the landscape and ecology of the tribal people and the civilised coastal districts of Odisha, presents a unilateral anxiety of the unknown. Ray sketches the Bonda as dreadful and incongruous but stays silent on the dread inspired by the destabilisation and dislocation of millennia old cultures on account of the insatiable appetite of the civilised for natural resources. Thus, an unprejudiced scrutiny disproves Tripathy's assessment of the narrative as "a sympathetic and mysterious" treatment of "the ecological philosophy of the primitive Bonda way". Ray is deft at the craftsmanship of plot construction. An engaging story telling techinque is achieved by interweaving tribal myths with the non­ tribal, high caste designs of dismissive trivialisation or regressive Brahamanical patronizing attitudes. Given Ray's extensive research, it is hardly surprising that Adibhumi has the advantage of a rich play of mythical elements, but their arrangement in the narrative only serves to reinforce the isolation and intransigence of the tribal community. The notion that the Bonda myth is merely an instance of historical determinism is made visible by Nityananda Patnaik. In the introduction to Primitive Tribes of Orissa and Their Development Strategies (2005), Patnaik sees the manifestation of the Bonda myth in the demography of the inhabitants of the tribal districts of Odisha. He considers the Bonda myth as a matter of historical fact, an evolutionary outcome of the habits, culture, tradition, and customs. According to Patnaik the tribal myth is a replica of the indigenous society's distant past. He notes: Of the 250 or more Indian tribal groups, 62 live in Orissa, each varying in culture, language, economic life and level of literacy. The 1 3 tribal groups, namely Birhor, Bondo, Didayi, Dongria-Khond, Juangs, Kharias, Kutia Khond, Lanjia Saoras, Lodhas, Mankidias, Paudi Bhuinyas, Soma and Chuktia Bhunjia, having pre-agricultural level of technology and extremely low level of literacy have been recognized as "Primitive Tribes" of Orissa. These tribes remain confined to their 0"Wll small world and a probe into its history clearly shows that after a few generations the past turns into mythology. 1 1

The production of the tribal myth delineated by Patnaik for the Bonda community is typical of the exclusionary perspective of the non-tribal view point. Ray follows the same track backward, she draws her characters with the same strokes that sketched the exclusionary myth in

1 1 . Nityananda Patnaik, Primitive Tribes of Orissa and Their Development Strategies (New Delhi: DK Print World, 2005), 1 .

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the first place. Enunciation of the legend of Bundi Mahade;J2 at the beginning of the narrative asserts the feminist stance of the author, but Ray fails to sustain her stance in her depiction of the contemporary Bonda woman. Ray indulges in an agenda of re-creating a mythical Bonda woman based on her research that is at great variance from the female protagonists in her other novels. In order to understand this, a close reading of the mythical elements in Yajnaseni may be taken into consideration. The central character in Yajnaseni is Draupadi. She is one of the five holy virgins of the Hindu myth depicted in the classical epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. During Draupadi's incarnation as a sacred woman in Yajnaseni, Ray writes: All the grievances, all the silent hurts and reproaches of life today, in these last moments, I place here. In life, regrets will remain. "What agonies did I not suffer for preserving dharma? I had thought that on the strength of my adherence to dharma and fidelity as a whole I would be able to accompany my husband to heaven. Yet I had but touched the golden dust of Himalaya's foothills when my feet slipped and I fell! Five husbands but not one turned back even to look. Rather Dharmaraj Yudhishthir, lord of righteousness, said to Bhim, "Do not turn back to look! Corne forward!"13

12. The legend is set in the fictitious capital Chitrakota (now Chitrakonda in Malkangiri District in Odisha) in the Bastar kingdom (the area lies across Chhattisgarh, MP, and Odisha) and the Bonda Mountains (Malkangiri, Eastern Ghats, Odisha). The rebellion inside and outside Bastar that eventually takes over the throne of Chitrakota by killing the king is a conspiracy against the good king of Bastar. The enemy easily took the young maiden queen Bundi Mahadei as prisoner and her son who is the only heir to the throne of Chitrakota. The enemy offered to marry the young queen and rule the kingdom of Bastar. The queen asked the enemy to wait for a year, as she has to observe death rituals for her deceased husband. The queen managed to run away from prison to the forest along with her son and four loyal warriors and continued to search for safety. In the course of time, BlUldi Mahadei reached the center of an lUlknown forest smrounded by the Bonda Mountains inhabited by the Bonda tribe. The Bonda accepted the queen as their mother and she continued to live among the Bonda as a friend of the c01ll1lll Ulity. She taught them archery and all other art of war and turned the clan into a valiant army, which in return remain loyal to Bundi Mahadei and took the responsibility of the safety of the queen and her son. Since then, the Bonda remains vigilant and suspicious of everyone. It is by command of Bundi Mahadei that the Bonda would kill anyone whom it fmds suspicious in the Bonda MOlUltains. The queen did not return to Bastar, instead continued to live among the Bonda and ruled the Bonda kingdom. 1 3 . Pratibha Ray, Yajnaseni, (The Dwghter of the Sacred Fire), trans. Pradip Bhattacharya (1984. New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 1995), 2.

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The character of Draupadi appears as rebellious in Yajnaseni, whereas in the original myth found in the epic Mahabharata, Draupadi is shown as a submissive persona. Draupadi in Ray's Yajnaseni is depicted as a subversive voice of the 20th century that goes on rebelling against set tradition, custom, and patriarchy constructed around the Hindu myth. The identity of Draupadi in Yajnaseni is an outcome of the democratic gendered space in Ray's fiction. Draupadi questions her own identity in the patriarchal structure. Ray writes, "Was woman merely man's movable or immovable property, male and female slaves, horses and elephants? Being a woman, did I not have right even over myself, my own soul? If they had rights over this body of mine, did it mean they could do as they wished with me?"14 Let us now compare how the tribal women are depicted in Adibhumi. Ray did come in contact with the oral tradition of the Bonda tribe during her short stay on the Bonda hills15, yet in Adibhumi the Bonda women are made to 'fit' into the Hindu mythical structures of the narrative. The sexuality of the Bonda women conveyed through their nakedness IS depicted as a divine curse for laughing at a goddess who was bathing: Sita Takrani took off her clothes and ornaments and plunged, stark naked, into the bubbling waters of the stream. Just then, a file of Bondunis descended from the mountain. They did not walk naked then; their bodies were clothed and their long hair was oiled and combed into sleek buns. As Sita Takrani emerged from the stream, a hornbill flew overhead: "teyn teyn teyn" it screeched, as though laughing at her nakedness. Could the Bondunis ignore its call? "Phish!" they bmst out laughing, right to the goddess's face. "What!" the goddess cried out in rage, "Can you, being women, laugh at the sight of a woman's body? The whole world shall laugh at you in the kali age, the evil times to corne! Naked you shall be to every eye! And not a hair shall cover your heads; you shall walk with your heads shaven, bare from head to foot! But beware! If you try to cover up your nakedness or grow hair on your scalps, not a blade of grass will grow on these mOlUltains! The Bonda people will be destroyed!"16

A close study of the tribal myth in Adibhumi reveals that it is a stereotype of the Hindu myth about Bonda people. At several points the main myth in the narrative that governs the Bonda myth is a myth of the hegemonic coastal area driven by non-tribal Hindu ideologies and 14. Ibid., 235. 15. Pratibha Ray, Bhagaban Ra Desh (The Country of the Gods) (Cuttack: Nalanda, 1991). 16. Ray, Adibhumi, 25.

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principles. Hence, it may be estimated that in Ray's Adibhumi the tribal myth is modelled upon the imagination of the non-tribal myth. The Bonduni, the women of the Bonda tribe, plead with the "mighty" Hindu goddess as they are ashamed to be naked: Wouldn't the selani die of shame? Their tears melted the goddess's heart. After all, she was mighty Sita Takrani; she could kill or preserve. She pulled a single thread out of the border of her sari. "Take this," she said. "Weave a garment of yourself, to cover up yom shame in the kali age! But let it be no wider than the length of this thread, and wear it below your navel and above your thigh. If you weave it any wider the land shall remain as bald as your skulls! That is your punishment."17

There are several references to the Ramayana in the narrative. Such a mythic representation of the Bonda women, at the mercy of Hindu gods, deserving of being cursed for laughing, becomes part of the civilisational project of subjugation of the ethnic identity of the Bonda tribe. One can also read a tone of humiliation and trivialisation of the landscape and ecology of the Bonda land, when the hornbill "screeches," the women, like trained parrots, unthinkingly mimic its mocking sound, as if their close affiliation with nature makes them obtuse and impermeable to the goddess' wisdom. The extract also suggests that the denudation of the mountains is somehow the fault of the Bonda people themselves. Ray takes a problematic view of the sexuality of the Bonda woman at various junctures in the novel. They are represented as mere objects of desire and lust. At one place, Ray paints picturesque ethnographic detail of the Bonda women, only to fmish it with a dark stroke of the "curse". She writes: The selani wears the ringa, a foot wide and three feet long, hand-woven, dyed vivid red, yellow, blue or green, with stripes of different hue, below the navel. It hangs from a brass waistband or a twmia, a length of string tied round the waist; one end of the ringa is tucked into it at the front while the other is draped armmd the upper thigh. At the back, the ringa hangs across the buttocks. The selani can bend easily as she works in the rice fields or the jlUlgle; the hips are free. Her back, the buttocks and calves are lUlcovered; the ringa arolUld the waist is the entire garment she wears. This is the cmse that goddess Sita Takrani has put on the selani.18

17. Ibid., 25. 1 8. Ibid., 24.

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The clothing is described vividly whereas the women's part-nudity is dismissed as a "curse", a hegemonic, civilised gaze admires the woven, draped fabric but deprecates tbe nakedness of tbe upper body. Ray is regressive and biased in the way she mentions the socio-cultural and demographic details of the community members, couched in the magical as well as in the real. She writes: And if she a -..vife she cannot give her man connubial bliss? "When the Bonda child grows into a dhangra his wife is already in decline. What physical pleasme can she give? Then what is such a marriage worth? If you ask the Bonda his amused smile will tell you: it is the wife's care that matters: the pleasmes of the flesh are available in plenty. Each village has a selani dingo, to which the dhangra had ready access. And nearer horne, there is the daughter-in-law or the brother's wife to look after him. The father-in-law is thirty-five; the daughter-in-law twenty-two. The mother-in­ law is at least forty-five. "What is wrong if the daughter-in-law takes good care of her father-in-law? And why should not the father-in-law turn to her for comfort? Can he be denied? Like a raging torrent, desire rises of itself, born ofBhagban's will. What can man dO?19

In a tribal marriage it is customary for the man to be younger than tbe woman.20 As someone who grew up in the hegemonic coastal regions of Odisha, Ray finds the customs an oddity because it differs from the Hindu marriage where the wife is younger tban the husband. Ray extrapolates the age-inversion to establish a pseudo-explanation for the man's sexual interest in younger women. The representation of the selani dingo (the female dormitory) is further evidence of judgemental puritanism. The Selani dingo in every Bonda village is a cultural marker and bears a traditional value for the Bonda society but in the narrative it appears reductively as a habitation of flesh and desire, stripped of its cultural significance. The young women of the community learn to grow and lead the communal life in the respective selani dingo of the village. It is a means for ensuring their freedom in the socio-cultural and socio-economic spheres of life, which include the important decisions of making a choice of sexual partners and marriage. Ray claims that the myths, beliefs, and legends she exploited in Adibhumi, are based on the oral tradition of the Bonda tribe. However, it 19. Ibid., 5 1 . 20. The Bonda wife is a mother to her husband who takes care of the house and the man. The marriage takes place when the boy is in his childhood and the girl is yOlmg. Hence, the yOlmg wife takes care of the much yOlmger husband. This custom is not cornmon in coastal Odisha and never practiced by the non-tribes.

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seems that the accounts of the myths collected by the author as a researcher are not free from the impositions of her 0\Vll self-consciousness.21 The text portrays a tumultuous interaction between the tribal and the non-tribal world views. Since the beginning of the concept of the 'Orient', civilisation has adopted a binary oppositionality against the tribal system, deeming the latter hostile and violent because it is inaccessible, independent, different, and autonomous. Ray's Adibhwni may be compared with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1 899). Both texts are representative models of colonial power and human subjugation largely displaying the hierarchy of misrepresentation of the ethnic identities supplementing the idea of nation fOlmation. The nameless indigenous woman who appears in the narrative of Heart ofDarkness as the concubine of the almost-divine colonial overlord, Kurtz may be compared with Adibari toki of Ray's Adibhwni. When she meets the non-tribal world, Adibari suffers an unwanted pregnancy and untimely death after having gone through a long period of assault and sexual violence, which is the reason for her amnesia and agony. The women characters in Pratibha Ray's Adibhumi are submissive figures who lack the capacity and will to revolt. If like Adibari toki they defy the norms, they are offered no redemption. Adibari joins the project office at Mudulipara and becomes the first Bonda woman to grow hair and to clad a saree against the belief of the community. Adibari falls in love, never discloses the name of her secret lover, she becomes pregnant, runs away from the village to a nearby to\Vll and works in a dhaba, where she is again molested and forced into prostitution. Finally, she appears as a lunatic and dies. As a complete contrast, Mahasweta Devi's fictional narratives that are set on the Santali backgrounds, feature tribal women who rise above the set codes of patriarchy. This is a very marked difference in the way the tribal woman is depicted by the two writers. In the narrative of Adibhumi, the feminist outlook of Ray does not infolTIl her representation of tribal women, her women characters are marred with an elitist non-tribal Hindu ideology. Mahasweta Devi's feminist viewpoint in her tribal narratives stands in complete contrast with Ray's. Susie Tharu and K Lalita examine the feminist perspective of Mahasweta Devi. They note that Mahasweta Devi heightens the feminist approach by addressing the caste and class

2 1 . The legend of Patakhanda Mahapuru and Damuli Dei in Adiblnimi is another instance where Ray's crafting of the plot of the narrative may be compared with Abalya of Shilapadma, another mythical persona of the epic Ramayana. However, the paper does not elaborate on this aspect.

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hierarchy, where her motive is to establish a feminist order of its defying the existing norms. Tharu and Lalita write,

137 0\Vll

by

Throughout Mahasweta Devi's varied fiction, women's subjugation is portrayed as linked to the oppressions of caste and class. But in the best of her -writings she quite brilliantly, and with resonance, explores the articulation of class, caste, and gender in the specific situations she depicts.22

Mahasweta Devi's tribal narratives - Aranyer Adhikar (The Rights of the Jungle, 1979), Agni Garbha (The Fire Unbound, 1978), and Chhoti Munda Evam Tar Tir (Chhoti Munda and His Arrows, 1980) - bear out Tharu and Lalita's argument. Sexual abuses initiated by the government officials as a demand of the postmodem democracy project that is achieved by affecting the 'female body' of a tribal woman by physical and sexual assaults by non-tribal men is a method of violence atrocity to control the tribe. Representation of sexual assault in Mahasweta Devi's Draupadi (Draupadi, 1978) may be seen from its political triumph from a Marxist point of view of the fOlmation of the nation-state. Mahasweta Devi displays a number of challenges to non-tribal institutions in her fictional narrative. However, her representation of the sexuality ofDopdi Mejhen in Draupadi is not free from the politics of 'nation-state'. Devi appears as a modest custodian of the 'tribal voice' of modem India - her tribal narrative has a 'tribal voice' that participates under the influences of her elite Marxist principles. On the other hand, Ray's depiction of Adibari toki as a tragic, hopeless victim may, at best, be seen as a sympathetic lamentation for the powerless, without commensurately apportioning the culpability for her lamentable state on the hegemonic non-tribal power structures. She writes: Now Adibari was no more than an lUlfortunate chapter in Bonda history. But the Bonda never bothers to write his own history: he becomes a page in someone else's history as he continues his struggle for survival. Adibari was forgotten. None of the politicians, social workers, educators or government officials who visited the Bonda country asked about the first Bonduni ever to have worn a sari. Now there were crowds of sari-clad Adibaris in the Bonda country.23

22. K. Lalita and Susie Tharu, eds. Women Writing in India: The 20th Century (Vo!.I!) (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1993),235. 23. Ray, Yajnaseni, 197.

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The "politicians, social workers, educators [and] government officials" are let off on the light charge of being umnindful of the tragic condition of the Bonda women, they are not shown as responsible for it. Ray creates a compounded horrific structure while representing the locals of the Bonda hill. The Bonda land is geographically and politically challenging, it deifies easy accessibility. As an antidote of civilisation, it is seen as a land of horror. The land as depicted in the narrative carries the stigma of horror, and the Bonda identity is also portrayed as horrendous and beastly. She writes: The komars and gaudas followed the Dombs into the mountains, but were never entirely sure of the Bonda's reception. They lived always in a shadow of fear but the hope of profit lured them on. They were the Bonda's subjects: he was their king. The babus came, took the Bonda's offerings and returned to the plains. They never stayed overnight for fear of being killed. Every official shared this dread of the Bonda; in their eyes he was a cruel' drunken beast barely hmnan. As every visitor to the Bonda cmmtry had attempted to change him, the Bonda was convinced of a conspiracy to destroy the tribe. This made him cling all the more fiercely to his beliefs: all doors and windows were shut against the winds of civilization (Ray 1995: 91).

Ray also suggests that the Bonda religion is devoid of ideology and philosophy, it is constructed on mere practicality. The Bonda's relationship to his gods is based on terror, not love, Gods and spirits join hands to keep the Bonda in poverty, for in their wisdom they know that wealth breeds vice. So, to keep the Bonda virtuous, they destroy his crops, afflict his children with disease, kill off his cattle. He has to propitiate them constantly in order to survive.24

Ray provides a cynical narrative of the changes that occurred due to the clash of two distinct vie\vpoints. Constant, continuous attempts of the non-tribal system to modify the tribal system are a part of the politics of the homogenizing control of the project of the nation, nationalism, and sub-nationalism. Commenting on the "civilisation" of Somra, Ray writes: When Somra became Somanath, he lUlderwent a change. His dress, appearance and behaviour were somewhat different from that of the other Bonda. He seldom returned home during the holidays; when he did, he did not dance with the others, did not put on a loin-cloth, drink or visit the

24. Ibid., 200.

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dingo at night. He was constantly brooding. If he ever spoke his mind it was not to his father, not to the selanis, the disari of the gods: it was only in Mangla Dhangrarnajhi that he confided.25

Ray's portrayal of Somara Sisa in the frame of civilisation seems a futile attempt at trying to negotiate his hybrid identity in terms of un­ belonging to moderinty or the traditional. Somara's hybrid identity shaped by Ray becomes symbolic of the collective identity of the Bonda tribe antithetical to both the modem civilisational project and traditional tribal ethos. Conclusion

Postmodern Odia fiction, which continues to address the dominant themes of the subaltern, brings in discourses on the poor, women, tribes, untouchables, and 'other' marginalized groups that may be seen as a continuation of the colonial institutions of Empire. These dominant themes of the subaltern play an important role since the inception of fictional narratives in modern Odia literature, which may be seen as an outcome of the meeting of British and Odia modernity institutions as formation of 'nation-state' projects. In Adibhumi the colonial model of nation formation is seen as a dominant mode of addressing tribal identity. The narrative of Adibhumi may be seen as a complex structured text that has several layers of problems in its representation of the etlmic identities of the Bonda tribe. A close observation of Ray's narrative in Adibhumi and the representation of her feminist outlook, treatment of gender and myth, and sexuality of the Bonda woman, nature of fear and horror, landscape and ecology of the Eastern Ghats, and the clash of tribal and non-tribal systems articulates the harsh realities of such confrontations. Though richly informed by her extensive research in the area, the narrative fails to use the wealth of information to enter deep into the complex causality of these confrontations.

25. lbid., 231-232.

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Colonial Modernity, Formation of the Nation-State and Tribal Identity

Bibliography

Baral, K.C. "Ethnography and Fiction: Verrier Elwin's World." In Between Ethnography and Fiction: Verrier Elwin and the Tribal Question in India, edited by TB Subba and Som, Sujit, 9-26. New Delhi: Orient Longman India, 2005. Conrad, Joseph. Heart ofDarkness. 1 899. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2010. Lalita, K and Susie Tharu, eds., Women Writing in India: The 20th Century (Vol.II). New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1993. Mohanty, Jatindra Mohan. History of Oriya Literature. Bhubaneswar: Vidya, 2006. Mohanty, Prafulla Kumar. "The Novels of Pratibha Ray." Odisha Review, January (2013): 38-42. Accessed June 25, 2013 http://orissa.gov.inIe-magazine/OrissareviewI20l 3/Janiengpdf13842.pdf Mund, Parashurarn. Mulia Pila. 195 1 . Cuttack: Manoj Prakashan, 2002. Patnaik, Jitendra Narayan. Growth of the Oriya Novel. New Delhi: Sarup Book Publishers, 2009. Patnaik, N. Primitive Tribes of Orissa and Their Development Strategies. New Delhi: DK Print World, 2005. Ray, Pratibha. Adibhumi, (The Primal Land), translated by Bikram K. Das, 1993. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2009. -. Yajnaseni (The Daughter of the Sacred Fire), translated by Pradip Bhattacharya. 1984. New Delhi: Rupa Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1995. -. Mahamoha (The Great Illusion). Cuttack: Adya Prakashani, 1997. -. Shilapadma (The Stone Lotus). Cuttack: Adya Prakashani, 1983. Ray, Pratibha and Rangra, Ranavir. "Real and the Spiritual: Ranavir Rangra in Conversation with Pratibha Ray." Indian Literature, Vol. 39, no. 2 (172), Accent on Oriya Short Story, March-April (1996): 125135. Accessed June 25, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stableI23336l02. Ray, Pratibha. Bhagaban Ra Desh (The Country of the Gods). Cuttack: Nalanda, 1991. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Draupadi" by Mahasweta Devi. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, no. 2, Writing and Sexual Difference. (Winter, 1981), pp. 381-402. http://links.jstor.org/stableI28 l 9 8 l 24. Accessed January 31 , 2012. Stanley, William. "Machkund, Upper Kolab and NALCO Projects in Koraput District, Orissa" Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 31, no. 24 June 15 (1996): 33-1538. Accessed June 25, 2013. url:http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 4404278.

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Tripathy, Santosh. "Enticing Fictions and Illustrative Creativity of Pratibha Ray." Odisha Review, February - March (2013): 126-130. Accessed June 25, 2013. url:http://orissa.gov.inIe-magazine/orissareviewI2014/febmarch!engpdtn 26-130.pdf. Vasundhara. Development Policies and Rural Poverty in Orissa: Macro Analysis and Case Studies. Bhubaneswar: Vasundhara, 2005. Accessed June 25, 2013. http://plarmingcommission.nic.inireports/sereportiser/stdy _dvpov.pdf.

MAPPING MADNESS WHEN THE MOON SMILES: THE FASHIONING OF IDENTITY AND DIS(ORDER) IN THE FEMALE BODY IN CHANDANI LOKUGE' S IF THE MOON SMILED TARA SENANAYAKE

Abstract

The invention of migrant identities and the creation of diasporic hybridity have been central themes in the corpus of work by migrant writers of Sri Lankan origin. The representation and fe-presentation of women as the "Sri Lankan Oriental Other" is also a key aspect in the Sri Lankan expatriate novel. Chandani Lokuge's If the Moon Smiled is a story that charts the saga of a Sri Lankan woman in Australia who has lost her "self' and yearns for "home" as the migratory experience fails her. The trajectory of inquiry in this study relates to the manner in which Manthri's identity is negotiated, as a woman and as a female migrant. The presentation of the corporeal female body as the site for the "mapping" of a rigid cartography by the patriarchal order will be examined as the author seems to suggest that such "mapping" will only result in a state of "madness". Thus, different levels of madness - madness brought on by the lack of identity, the conflict between "home" and "received" culture, the loss of roots, and the inability to follow routes will be examined in this paper. Key Terms:

Female identity, mapping, hybridity, disorder, diaspora.

Silence gives the proper grace to women. Sophocles,Ajax What we consider madness . . .is either the acting out of the devalued female role or the total or partial rejection of one's sex-role stereotype. Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness

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Written during a time when the invention of migrant identities and the creation of hybridity are the central themes in the corpus of work by migrant writers of Sri Lankan origin, Chandani Lokuge's novel If the Moon Smiled presents a story of lost love, memory, and lost selves. Hailed by Penguin Australia as a "a stirring and lyrical novel, a poignant tale about the powerful bonds that shape a woman's life"l, it is the debut novel by a writer of Sri Lankan descent, who was born in Sri Lanka and is now based in Australia. Chandani Lokuge has explained that her main concern in writing is to explore "the problems of migrants'? Indeed her collection of short stories, which preceded the novel, is aptly titled Moth and Other Stories since "just like moths, people are attracted to experiencing life in foreign lands and they are destroyed by the resulting flames of isolation and loneliness."3 This novel brings the female perspective to the fore, as it maps the life of Manthri, a Sinhala Buddhist girl belonging to an upper caste/class family. She has been brought up 'conservatively' and has been given away in marriage in the marmer deemed 'traditional'. The novel follows Manthri, scene after scene, from her childhood. Within a few pages the protagonist experiences her first menstruation, an event considered so significant that it has to be marked by purifying rituals: Wrapped in a long white sheet, I am led out of my room to the well in the courtyard. I am permitted to say nothing. . .there is a hush, an anticipation . . . I am not prepared for the sudden splash of icy water or for the smashing of the pot. But my mother smiles reassmingly: "All the evil spirits have flown away now."4

Thus, Lokuge highlights the passage from one life to another, in this case from girl to woman, as a recurrent motif and compares it to transmigration: "Smiling, not smiling. She looks back often, but she does not return. With every experience we are reborn but something in us is lost in the rebirth."5 Chandani Lokuge has borrowed her title from the first line of Sylvia Plath's poem The Rival. The story, like the poem, deals with a maelstrom of emotions and encapsulates the universal idea of slow simmering resentment - the kind that is forged over years of tempering and tolerance. This indeed is the emotional state of Manthri as she "loses" herself in

1 . Chandni Lokuge, lfthe Moon Smiled (New Delhi: Penguin, 2000), Cover blurb. 2. Ibid., ! ' 3 . Ibid., ! ' 4 . Ibid., 1 4 1 . 5. Ibid., 1 2 .

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Australia and yearns for "home". The comparison to the moon speaks of the waxing and waning of Manthri's emotions, her frame of mind and her passivity and resignation. On a more literal level, it relates to a deeply entrenched cultural belief that moonlight had a powerful effect on human behavior and resulted in lunacy. The author has used this central symbol of Sri Lankan culture and suggests that the moon smiles at those who have sought to map madness. Lokuge weaves her tale in the shadow of this smile and presents place and body as the dominant tropes of her text. Manthri gradually becomes schizophrenic and her tragedy can be explained in the tenns of the motif of "place and displacement", which is, as Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin argue, "a major feature of post-colonial literatures"6. Yet the predicament of Lokuge's protagonist carmot be construed simply as the case of a failed immigrant. Manthri is "brought" to Australia by her authoritarian husband, without any effort on his part to understand whether his wife is a willing emigrant. Added to her incapacity to adjust in an alien land, Manthri has to grapple with issues that are deeply grounded in her gendered body - a body "which is both a site of patriarchal inscription and a moving image of repetitive displacement physical, ontological and psychical."7 If the Moon Smiled is thus a novel about growing up, a Bildungsroman in a sense. It is also a novel that represents the complexities of the diasporic experience, depicted poignantly by a female expatriate writer. Lokuge has created a fusion of issues pertaining to postcolonialism and those of repressed femininity. Situated in such a context, the trajectory of inquiry in this study relates to the manner in which Manthri's identity is negotiated, as a woman and as a female migrant. The presentation of the female body as a site for the 'mapping' of a rigid cartography by the patriarchal order will be examined as the author seems to suggest that such 'mapping' will only result in a state of 'madness'. The Fashioning or Non-Fashioning of Manthri - a Girl, a Woman, a Wife, a Mother, and a Migrant

As Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar contend in their seminal work The Madwoman in the Attic, there was a time in history when women,

6. B. Ashcroft et aI., The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post­ Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), 8. 7. Anway Mukhopadhyay, "If the Moon smiles on the Mappers of Madness: A critique of the Cartographers of Insanity in Chandani Lokuge's if the Moon Smiled," Transnational Literature VoL 5. no. 2, May (2013): 1 .

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specifically upper and middle class women of the 19th century, had no "ontological reality" and were "expected" to be "Cyphers" (nullities or vacancies) who according to Anne Finch "existed merely and punningly to increase male 'Numbers' by pleasuring men's bodies or their minds, their penises or their pens"8 Indeed, literary history suggests that the ideal woman (male) authors dreamt of generating was always an angel; an idea that prompted Virginia Woolf to comment that "the angel in the house is the most pernicious image male authors have imposed on literary women."9 Patriarchal structures dictated that this angel should have the eternal feminine virtues of modesty, beauty, purity, chastity, and selflessness, yet she has no story of her 0'Wll. History after all is his story and there is no place for her story [emphasis mine] . Hence it was believed that the purpose of a woman's life was to be the object who pleases men as "him to please/ Is woman's pleasure".'o This absence of her (story) can be read as a serious lack in literary history where women were viewed only as a corpo (reality) in relation to men. Throughout history and indeed even to-date many women experience confinement in their daily life. Their confinement was both literal and figurative, as most women were imprisoned in men's houses as well as their texts. The notion of "anxieties of space" as identified by Gilbert and Gubar was very important to women (of the time) as confined as they were, it would have been natural for the angels in the house to become "repressed angels" in no time, yet patriarchal culture was so hypocritical that "female speech and female presumption, any revolt against male dominance was viewed as being daemonic."ll Any attempt at emerging as a "female individualist" only resulted in the woman being labeled as being of "dis/eased" mind and body, such women were considered a danger to society and were relegated to the attics as madwomen. However, when social and cultural structures appeared to support women's struggle for independence, self-discovery, and fulfillment, women in fiction began to reflect these changes. Thus, women's fiction turned to important questions concerned with female identity as (mostly) 8. Anne Finch, The Poems ofAnne Countess of Winchi!sea, ed. Myra Reynolds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1903), 4-5, quoted in Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000): 9-10. 9. Virginia Woolf, "Professions for Women," in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, 1942), 236-38, quoted in Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 20. 10. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 23. 1 1 . Ibid., 35.

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women writers tried to highlight a fictional heroine who goes through the process of developing an identity and self. This point is further accentuated with reference to Jane Eyre: Problems encountered by the protagonist as she struggles from the imprisonment of her childhood toward an almost lUlattainable goal of mature freedom are symptomatic of difficulties Everywornan in a patriarchal society must meet and overcorne.12

Postcolonial literary creativity presents a discourse in which resistance to the identities imposed by patriarchy and the attempt to construct alternative identities is seen. Until recently, feminist theory has been equated with postcolonial theory as both theories are said to follow "a path of convergent evolution".13 As Leela Gandhi contends, "both bodies of thought have concerned themselves with the study and defense of marginalised 'Others' within repressive structures of domination and, in so doing both have followed a remarkably similar theoretical trajectory."14 Given such a background, where can we place Lokuge's novel? If the Moon Smiled talks about the "Other woman in the attic" (to use Gandhi's term) as Manthri is presented as a "gendered subaltern" who is violently displaced and silenced due to contesting representational systems. As Gayatri Spivak elaborates in her essay "Can the subaltern speak?": Between patriarchy and imperialism, subject constitution and object formation, the figme of the woman disappears, not into the pristine nothingness, but a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the 'third-world woman' caught between tradition and modernization.15

Manthri's body and mind are mapped according to patriarchal dictates at a very tender age. As Pavitra Tantrigoda states, "as a little girl, tales from Buddhist scripture which carry invocations of 'ideal' and 'sacred' womanhood are narrated to her, reinforcing a gendered cultural identity predicated upon unequal power relations. "16 The novel opens with Manthri 12. Ibid., 35. 1 3 . Ashcroft et al., The Empire Writes Back, 249. 14. Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 83. 15. Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Marxist Interpretations of Culture, eds. Laurence Grossberg and Carly Nelson (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988), 306. 16. Pavitra Tantrigoda, "Fractured Selves! Conflicting Identities: Sri Lankan Female Migrants in Chandani Lokuge's ifthe Moon Smiled' in ContinuitieslDeparfwes:

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as a little girl who "blends her voice with his [the father's]: as these flowers must fade, so must my body towards destruction go"17 highlighting the Buddhist doctrine of universal impermanence. Further Lokuge posits popular Sri Lankan cultural beliefs that compel a woman to resign herself to her fate and deny her passion and wishes, to ultimately find detachment from life itself. Indeed, Manthri's gendered subjectivity is formed thus: As another dawn breaks, the child she was, the girl, the maiden, beckons her from the edges of life. She wishes she had spent more time with her, known her better. But she gave up somewhere along the way. She glimpses her now and then. A firefly, sparkling just out of reach . And in the sight of this truth she is reborn as wife and, again, as mother.18 A few pages later, Manthri is inculcated with the image of the 'ideal' Sinhala Buddhist woman. Manthri's mother, who COnfOlTIlS to this role, tells the tale of Yashodara' s devotion to Buddha, in the hope that Manthri too will emerge as a gendered subject. When the little girl queries, "Will I also be married like that Amma?" the mother replies thus: "Yes Manthri, you will, and like a floral offering to a deity, you will blossom for your husband and derive value from him. "19 This statement is severe in its implications as Lokuge seems to propound the cultural belief that a woman has no value without a husband. Manthri will become a mere "floral offering" to her husband who has been elevated to the status of a "deity". So, whilst Buddhist doctrine advocated impennanence and detachment, the female body is prepared for marriage, attachment, and patriarchy. One wonders if the implication here is that women carmot achieve Nirvana? Thus, is the woman made subaltern again? Moreover, for all our feminism and advances in socio-cultural politics with regard to female empowennent, many women still remain "offerings" for their husbands, even in this so-called "modem age". Thus the "mother-woman" ethic is instilled in her as Manthri is molded to be a "mother-woman", a woman who "idolized (her) children, worshipped (her) husband and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface

Essays on Postcolonial Sri Lankan Women 's Creative Writing in English, eds. Dinithi KarlUlanayake and Selvy Thiruchandran (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa, 2001), 65. 17. Lokuge, {[the Moon Smiled, 3. 1 8. Ibid., 38. 19. Ibid., 7.

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themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels."20 Although her sexuality is regulated by religious and patriarchal control, "you must be like the nelum flower, blossom free of the mud in which it is born, unsoiled by it"21, the text subverts the location of Manthri's subjectivity within hegemonic discourses, as a sexual awakening can be seen in Manthri: She wades into the water . . she would be a lotus. Which would she be - a pure white nehun or a blue rnanel? . .but do they talk together sometimes? Or kiss? .. she brushes her lips on purplish-blue petaL.she touches the stamen with her tongue. She is aware of a luminous inward glow, of water stirring against thighS.22

Thus, the text presents an "alternative narrative of female desire"23 Manthri is passionate and desires an intense life and Lokuge uses the myth of Mohini, (or !be myth of the she-demon who appears in the guise of a mother and lures young men towards destruction) to present a "submerged tale of a phantom self that is located outside !be precincts of laws and conventions on female sexuality."24 A key motif in the novel, this phantom "desiring" self that lurks within Manthri's sub-consciousness is in conflict with !be "good" Sinhala Buddbist girl, wife, and mother she is expected to be and struggles to be. With echoes of Jane Eyre and The Yellow Wallpaper, Chandani Lokuge creates "another self' who emerges from within the protagonist to defy norms and transgress sexual taboos. This "exotic" phantom self "commands, controls and rips free and rushes with streaming hair towards the river"25 into the embrace of Thilakasiri, the servant. Graham Huggan has claimed that "exoticism describes rather a particular mode of aesthetic perception - one which renders peoples, objects and places strange even as it domesticates them, and which effectively manufactures otherness even as it claims to surrender to its immanent mystery."26 Indeed, by introducing cultural myths and phantom selves, Chandani Lokuge seems to willingly COnfOlTIl to Huggan's notion of !be postcolonial exotic and fetish. A key element of postcolonial writing 20. Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1 899. New York: Norton, 1 994), 655. 2 1 . Lokuge, {[the Moon Smiled, 3. 22. Ibid., 1 1 23. Tantrigoda, "Fractured Selves! Conflicting Identities," 66. 24. Mukhophadhyay, "If the Moon Smiles on Mappers of Madness," 2. 25. Lokuge, {[the Moon Smiled, 29. 26. Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (London: Routledge, 2001), 1 3 .

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in English, and in this case of Sri Lankan writing in English, Lokuge has used examples of the Sri Lankan exotic, some with blatant slippages, to market her novel among her Western readership. However, this is a digression on which this paper will not elaborate. Convention has repressed Manthri's desire for Thilakasiri. A sexual experience outside marriage is taboo as is intercourse with a man from a lower class. And Manthri's vulnerability makes her the perfect candidate for Mohini. According to Tantrigoda, "these cultural fables represent the dangerous and threatening sexuality embodied by women that falls outside the boundaries of social control and, thus, can become the potent site of chaos and madness. "27 Indeed, instead of being an empowering factor, this erotic disruption leads to Manthri's further marginalisation and victimisation within the tale as she struggles to be the "ideal" wife/mother. Manthri enters a typical "arranged marriage" and this submerged self that has broken free becomes the cause of subsequent marital/sexual tension within the novel. Manthri "fails" to prove her virginity on her wedding night as is required of her, as the sheets carry no stain. This failure has drastic consequences for her marriage. Her conservative and misogynistic husband Mahendra, accuses her of "wantonness and treachery" and of pretending to be a pure, innocent virgin. In the absence of the "so-called proof' of virginity Mahendra sees his wife as a "serpent". His traditional upbringing does not pennit him to recognise his wife's body as being filled with violent passions. In his search for a docile, submissive and "pure" wife, he is convinced of Manthri's profanity, and becomes an agent who controls her body. Manthri's extreme passivity might make modem readers cringe as she accepts all the wild accusations against her and does not voice any protest. This brings to mind Luce Irigaray's argument about the latent design to exclude women from the production of speech, as their identity is reduced to being the mere, negative 'Other' of the masculine.28 Manthri's identity is thus totally re-fashioned on the wedding night as she assumes a guilt, which shapes her whole life thereafter. Soshana Felman states that the woman is 'madness' while at the same time 'madness' is the very absence of womanhood"29. The woman is 'madness' to the extent that she is the devalued other, different from man, 27. Tantrigoda, "Fractured Selves! Conflicting Identities," 68. 28. Luce Irigaray quoted in Shoshana Felman, "Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy," in The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics a/Literary Criticism. HOlUldrnills, eds. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1989), 136. 29. Felman, "Women and Madness," 147.

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in the presence of the masculine norm that occupies the space of reason. But 'madness' is the 'absence of womanhood' to the extent that 'womanhood' is what precisely resembles the masculine universal equivalent, in the polarised division of sexual roles. If so, Felman argues, the woman is 'madness' since woman is difference; but 'madness' is 'non-woman' since 'madness' is the lack of resemblance. Thus, Manthri is mad due to the very fact of being a woman as well as for trying to deviate from the norm. The phantom resurfaces at key moments throughout the narrative and Manthri is in constant conflict to defeat her. This phantom self is more real to Manthri than her real self. Later in life Manthri attempts to kill this phantom woman, which is a futile attempt that leads to attempted suicide and to a sanatorium for mentally disturbed people. Traces of The Yellow Wallpaper perhaps? This attempt to extinguish the phantom self can be read as a moment of denial and an attempt at being "like a Nelum flower, detached from desire"30. In a culture that takes pride on "virtuous" wives and mothers, Lokuge shows that desire outside of social control will only bring about chaos and madness. This is what the narcissist self of the Masculine universal equivalent tries to eliminate, under the label 'madness' is nothing other than feminine difference. As Felman concludes, '''woman must resemble woman to be woman: a semblance of woman that serves the man: or the exact metaphorical measure of the narcissism of man. ,,31 Although Chandani Lokuge presents an "alter-native" to dominant discourses, this alternative narrative does not triumph, nor is it sho\Vll to be empowermg. Instead, the text reinforces stereotypes and together with references to the phantom woman, seems to represent/re-present women as uncultured, passionate, corporeal, and therefore condemned beings. Thus, portraying the female body and sexuality as derogatory aspects of being a woman. Manthri, the Unwilling Migrant

Salman Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands says that the imagination of the home country is very strong and infOlTIls the perception of the diasporic writer: It may be that -writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates are halUlted by some sense of loss, some mge to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of saIt . . . om identity is at once plmal and partial.

30. Lokuge, {[the Moon Smiled, 65. 3 1 . Felman, "Women and Madness," 147.

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Sometimes we straddle two cultures; at times we fall between two stools. But however ambiguous and shifting this grOlUld may be, it is not an infertile category for a -writer to occupy.32

Lokuge rejects the idea o f a "privileged migrant space" and yet has resisted the temptation to gleefully mine her homeland's tragedy for literary mileageY Techniques of representational realism are used to bring to life the real Sri Lankan setting, while the protagonist's quest for home proves futile. Manthri is a psychiatric patient in the present narrative moment, as she 'remembers' and 're-members' the events that led to her nervous breakdO\vn - among them, forced relocation to Australia, the sense of disconnection she feels in the adopted land, estrangement from her husband, daughter, and son. According to Rosemary George's notion of "home," home is built upon a "pattern of self-inclusions and exclusions and is a way of establishing difference.,,34 Yet Mantliri is burdened witb a heavy load of cultural baggage as she travels, and this does not allow her to settle down or assimilate. Her yearning to return home to Sri Lanka is seen from the opening paragraph: "The Wattle is in full golden blossom and tbe most beautiful tbing in the garden just now . . . In the wattle's haze, I see my father's village. "35 Thus in her yearning for the past, her 'real home' she carmot create 'another' home: "Home, she must think, staring up into a spot of clear blue sky. Wbere is home?,,36 The author can be credited for her poetic prose as the lyrical beauty of her words captures the mood and setting of the preferred homeland Sri Lanka. The Foreign Homeland

Manthri has to migrate witb her husband and children not because she wants to, but as "her path now lies with her husband and children". 37 There is little excitement in the prospect of moving: One grey dawn in February, I gaze do"Wll from the clouds at the brown and green jigsaw puzzle of Australia. It seems complete without us. How will it

32. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, (London: Granta, 1991), 10. 33. Lokuge, {[the Moon Smiled, 1 . 34. Rosemary George, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth Century Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1 . 35. Lokuge, {[the Moon Smiled, 1 . 36. Ibid., 1 3 1 . 37. Ibid., 48.

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Mapping Madness when the Moon Smiles fit us in? Would we be sawed into new shapes? I think of falling away to the smfOlUlding emptiness: a being without centre or circmnference, to disintegrate like ash in air.38

Thus, despite moving to a purportedly liberal space, she is unable to redefine her identity accordingly as she is denied any mobility or fluidity. Instead she is kept trapped within patriarchal structures: she cannot work, has to remain in the house playing the roles of wife and mother that is the traditional identity of the South Asian woman. Manthri has no voice to resist, she passively submits to her husband at every level. She is limited to the supelTIlarket and the house, locked inside walled structures of domesticity, tbereby driving her to be a 'madwoman' (in the attic) in a sense. Lokuge thus reinforces the stereotype of woman as "other" and woman as "South Asian Oriental other". "I am a blank space even in my children's lives,,39 prompts us to query if Manthri is a failure as a mother as well? Their home in Adelaide is full of Sri Lankan artifacts, they listen to the music of Amradeva and Manthri has to brnig up their children in a mock cultural world - a little Sri Lanka in Adelaide, like, one believes, many other Sri Lankan migrant women. Yet the question remains, is this attempt to create the cultural order of 'home' and bringing up children accordnigly, practical? Or even possible? Through the characters of Nelum and Devaka we see that tbe culture and rituals tbat defnied Mantbri' s youtb are meaningless to her children who are second generation migrants. But the expectations parents have of children in a migrant setting is a conflict that is paramount to the migrant situation. Mahendra who migrated "for the children's education" tries his best to prevent his children from becoming "Australian". Yet he expects his son to become a doctor, a traditional pathway to "make it" in this Western world. Nevertheless, ever the misogynist, he expects his more studious daughter to accept a traditional marriage. However, gender roles are reversed as Devake succumbs to the pressure of his sexist father and becomes a drug addict. His habit borders on the verge of a psychiatric illness - this can be seen as another level of madness, a madness brought about by the lack of identity, tbe conflict between the "home culture" and the "received culture", loss of roots and the inability to follow the nOlmative routes of the new homeland. Hence Devake characterises the failure of the preferred male child, and thereby the breakdown of patriarchy ni a sense. Both Nelum and Devake struggle to conform to any identity, hybrid or singular. At the end of the novel tben, 38. Ibid., 48. 39. Ibid., 75.

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the whole family borders on some kind of madness. Does the moon smile on anyone then? Or does the moon bring about madness to both Sri Lanka and Manthri's family in Australia? The Sri Lankan Civil war is seen through the eyes of Mahendra, the Sinhalese (as opposed to Sri Lankan) migrant in Australia. The expatriate lives in Australia, away from the violence and political 'madness' of Sri Lanka, away from terrorists and suicide bombers, secure in his diasporic existence. Yet they are affected by news of "home" and their reaction is thus: "we are fortunate to be out of that bloody mess. Let's count our blessings."40 If the Moon Smiled was written during the height of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and like many of her contemporary writers, Lokuge too is guilty of lacing her novel with cliched images of the conflict. While the civil war is by no means a central image in the novel, the argument of Anway Mnkhopahdyay seems pertinent here. He contends that mapping madness in Manthri's body is also representative of the Sri Lankan nation state that faces civil war. Accordingly, Manthri's body is "corruptible" yet it must remain "pure" for a deity named "husband"'tl. Likewise, "the purity of the peopled landscape of the nation state must be preserved by mapping the category of the 'people in such a way that that outcast individuals or groups produce by their exclusion an illusory demographic centre." Thus, a neat connection between the body of Manthri, the Nation State and its margins emerges. If deciphered along these lines we can agree that "the body of Manthri is used as a "bounded system" by the patriarchal order to separate corruptible boundaries of the body from the core essence of purity . . . in parallel, Sri Lanka, by trying to enshrine a rigid cartography of national boundaries is driven to civil war.'>42 Conversely this rigid "mapping" of the body and state result in a condition called "madness". As Mnkhopadhyay contends further, the whole novel foregrounds the way in which the mappers of madness try to conceal their own insanity. The passionate body and the body politic are controlled and disciplined, an act that results in extreme psychosis. Manthri's parents fail to see the contradiction in their religious beliefs, Mahendra's sexism blinds him to the point of insanity and Manthri too, due to the denial of her passions is driven to a psychotic point of no return. Parallel to this, the Sri Lankan state tries to discipline the madness of its margms.

40. Ibid., 68. 4 1 . Mukhopadhyay, "If the Moon Smiles on the Mappers of Madness," 4. 42. Ibid., 5.

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Mapping Madness when the Moon Smiles

Conclusion

Thus, the novel concludes with Manthri being unable to divorce herself from traditional identities. Her migration to the West results in the erosion of her identity as she fails to adapt in a different context. Chandani Lokuge identifies the migrant condition as "an unbearable lightness of being".43 The characters in the novel begin their journey from the homeland as "voluntary exiles". Yet in their yearning for 'home' and difficulties in letting go of the 'home' culture, they find it difficult to assimilate and create new, hybrid identities. Although an imaginative and literal 'return' home is staged, the quest of the migrant is futile. The "home space" has become a "fractured space" and the Sri Lanka they knew before is now an 'imaginary homeland'. In their yearning to move away, especially in the case of Mahendra, they have turned their back on the homeland and past. Homeland is now in a suitcase, a past that now as an exile, they yearn for very much. Migrants have a "hawker like capacity to carry ancestral baggage around"44 and as a result of this the characters in the novel fail to "fit in comfortably into the expatriate category like confident mimic men"45 The conflict between first and second generation migrants is sho\Vll as Manthri's subjectivity disintegrates in the West. The redeeming factor in the novel is that her daughter Nelum is able to embrace a more empowered subjectivity as a doctor and as a woman embodying the 'liberal feminist ideals' of the West. In the context of how 'madness' can be reflected upon a 'dissolved subject', Michel Foucault states that: It is at this point that the mirror, as an accomplice, becomes an agent of demystification . . . the madman recognizes himself as in a mirror in this madness whose absurd pretensions he has denounced. . . his solid sovereignty as a subject dissolves . . . He is now pitilessly observed by himself. And in the silence of those who represent reason, and who have done nothing but hold up the perilous mirror, he recognizes himself as objectively mad.46

43. Lokuge, If the Moon Smiled, 1 . Lokuge borrows the phrase from Milan Kundera's novel Nesnesitelna lehkost byti which is translated into English as The Unbearable Lightness a/Being (London: Faber and Faber, 1984). 44. Vijay Mishra "New Lamps for Old, Diasporas Migrancy Border," Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences 1 1 . 1 (1995): 78. 45. Lokuge, personal communication with the author. 46. Michel Foucault, "The Birth of the Asylum," in The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 153-154.

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However, the situation differs with regard to the protagonist; she "desires" self-individuation, yet the myth of individuation fails to accommodate the aspirations of "this" woman. Although an alter narrative/ alternative identity is presented, this model fails to triumph as patriarchal forces crush the "Other" and cement the identity of the third world woman as the "unencumbered other" who is not accommodated in society as well as in fiction.47 Ironically, however, Manthri never becomes "objectively mad" as Foucault states. Rather it seems as if she perceives sanity in her madness. She can now "see" through the other people around her: her daughter who visits her, the asylum attendants, and the priests. She may not react in word or deed and a fashioning of identity may elude her. Yet Lokuge's portrayal leads us to believe that Manthri in her (in) sanity and isolation at the asylum gains a critical consciousness to question the forces around her. Indeed, Manthri tells her tale, even in madness. Sri Lankan novels in English, as well as many other post-colonial novels, largely create alternative narrativeslidentities that triumph over patriarchal and ideological discourses. Although Lokuge has presented such an alternative, Manthri is unable to break out of the cultural imposition of madness as she does know how to avoid speaking both as mad and as not mad. Hence the challenge facing women today is to "re­ invent" language, to re-Iearn how to speak not only against, but outside the phallogocentric structure, to establish a discourse that would not be defined by masculine meaning.48 Women's writing (and by extension postcolonial writing) will triumph only when women decide to un-learn the language of men and speak the language of women. Thus, instead of remaining mute in the face of labels like "the mad woman" and "the devalued 'Other' of patriarchy", the Manthris of this world must realise that it is their prerogative to "recover a self, a queen".49

47. Cannen Wickremagamage, "Women and Madness," MPhil Class Notes, (2014). 48. Felman, "Women and Madness," 24. 49. Sylvia Plath quoted in Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 92.

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Bibliography

Ashcroft, B. G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Chesler, Phyllis. Women and Madness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, edited by Margo Culley. 1899. New York: Norton, 1994. Felman, Shoshana. "Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy." In The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. Houndmills, edited by Catherine Be1sey and Jane Moore, 133-153. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1989. Foucault, Michel. "The Birth of the Asylum." In The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantbeon, 1984. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. George, Rosemary Marangoly. The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth Century Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge, 2001. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translated by Micheal Henry Heim, London: Faber and Gaber, 1984. Lokuge, Chandani. If the Moon Smiled. New Delhi: Penguin, 2000. -. Personal Communication, 2015. Mishra, Vijay. "New Lamps for Old, Diasporas Migrancy Border" III Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences 1 1 . 1 (1995): 78-146. Mukbopadhyay, Anway. "If tbe Moon smiles on the Mappers of Madness: A critique oftbe Cartographers of Insanity in Chandani Lokuge's Ifthe Moon Smiled," Transnational Literature Vol.5. no. 2, May (2013): 112. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta,1991. Spivak, Gayatri. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxist Interpretations of Culture, edited by Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, 271-313. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988. Tantrigoda, Pavitra. "Fractured Selves/Conflicting Identities: Sri Lankan Female Migrants in Chandani Lokuge's If the Moon Smiled" In Continuities/Departures: Essays on Postcolonial Sri Lankan Women 's

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Creative Writing in English, edited by Dinithi Karunanayake and Selvy Thiruchandran, 63-75. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa, 2001. Wickrarnagarnage, Carmen. "Women and Madness." MPhil Class Notes, 2014.

NEW MIDDLE CLASSES IN ARAVIND ADIGA'S THE WHITE TIGER : POLITICS OF EXCLUSION JUAN JOSE CRUZ

Abstract

In this article I discuss the portrayal of the underside of India's liberalisation progrannne in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. Contrary to examples from other countries, the new middle classes consist mostly of members with a privileged background, who maintain the class/caste complex. This is so because economic liberalisation is being conducted by the political and social groups that have prevailed since independence. As a result, the overwhelming majority of Indians are blocked from upward mobility - unless they resort to crime. Such is the case of the novel's anti­ hero Balram Halwai, who retells his story from his origins in rural Bihar to running a profitable firm in Bangalore. Key Terms:

Poverty, caste, India, liberalisation, (New Middle Class)

NMC.

I remember a quotation from Vikram Chandra, exhorting Indian writers in English to write fearlessly, regardless of being labelled the diasporic privileged who got rich on the problems of the motherland. "India is full of elephants and snakes and mysticism, and also cell phones and nuclear weapons and satellites . . . Remember that Gandhi's audience was not just Indian, but also everyone else."l Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize-winning novel, The White Tiger (2008), seems to follow Chandra's advice on 1 . Vikram Chandra, "The Cult of Authenticty: India's Cultural Commissars Worship 'Indianness' instead of Art," Boston Review February March (2000): 42, accessed October 13, 2016. urI: http:// bostomeview.netlvikram-chandra-the­ cult-of-authenticity.

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writing about India to probe how far double-digit economic growth inevitably takes a human toll. According to the plarmers of liberalisation in the early 1990s, wealth should spread from an ever larger, new and assertive middle class, to the lower social groups across castes. Liberalisation has succeeded in reducing the figures of absolute poverty, but as Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen contend, the condition of the bottom groups will barely change in the near future2; other sources even maintain that the actual consumption level has declined in rural areas.3 Adiga proves such a critique by means of the anti-hero Balram Halwai, one among the billion Indians who do not get a share in post-socialist prosperity. At the beginning of the narrative, he does not even have a name, he is an invisible "Munna" who makes his way towards progress, and each step upwards is marked by a change in his identity. In the end, the fOlmer chai worker from Laxmangarh in Bihar, turns into a taxi driver­ servant ("Country Mouse") in Delhi, and eventually becomes a successful businessman indirectly involved in the IT sector in Bangalore (where he introduces himself as Ashok Sharma). The novel shifts between the poles of backward Bharat and modern India, so the reader learns of the burdens of a country unable to propitiate social cohesion through liberalisation and globalisation. It is no surprise that the narrative in The White Tiger is labelled Dickensian. As Adiga conceded in an interview: it is important that -writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society. That's what -writers like Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens did in the 19th century and, as a result, England and France are better societies. That's what I'm trying to do it's not an attack on the COlUltry, it's about the greater process of self-exarnination.4

2. Jean Dreze and Arnartya Sen, (An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. London: Penguin, 2013), 29; Surinder S. Jodhka and Aseem Prakash, "The Indian Middle Class: Emerging Cultures of Politics and Economics." Berlin: Komad Adenauer Stiftung, no. 1 2 (20 1 1 ): 52; Leela Fernandes. "Nationalizing 'the global': Media Images, Cultural Politics and the Middle Class in India." Media, Culture and Society, 22, (2000): 614. 3. A.I. Sebastian, "Poor-Rich Divide in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger," Journal ofAlternative Perspective in the Social Sciences vohune 1 , no. 2 (2009): 230-23 1 . 4. Stuart Jeffries, "Roars of Anger," The Guardian October 16, 200S, accessed November 19, 2016. https://\VW\V.theguardian.comibooks/200S/octl1 6/booker-prize.

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

But his vision separates from Victorian morality: Balram establishes a transport start-up for IT workers in Bangalore and approaches middle­ class status with the money he took from his boss after killing him. He tests the fragile social system on which his prosperity is being built and he also shows how flexible accumulation works in the new India. Balram ostensibly was the driver for the family, but his duty included the roles of servant, cook, masseur, and even counsellor. Once he murders his boss in Delhi, he is free from feudal ties, and liberalisation facilitates his introduction into a versatile market of goods and services in Bangalore. Ironically, by killing Ashok (with a totem-like broken bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label), Balram succeeds in doing what Naxalite guerrillas had failed to do decades before. Such a promotion of the individual over society and celebration of the market forces exclude Balram from the social mores Dickens pursued in his work. The novel is structured around seven letters Balram writes to the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who is visiting the city. The epistolary technique provides the education of a Hindustani picaro who manages to see through the story of BharatlIndia: Please lUlderstand, Your Excellency, that India is two cOlUltries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my COlUltry. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well off. But the river brings darkness to India the black river Mr. Jiabao, I urge you not to dip in the Ganga, lUlless you want yom mouth full of faeces, straw, soggy parts of hlUllan bodies, buffalo carrion, and seven different kinds of industrial acids.5 . . .

This and other constructions in the novel have been subject to criticism and even political controversy: while some found the novel offensive to the nation6 others blamed Adiga for gloating over underdevelopment, a sensitive topic that allures Western readers into an orientalist catharsis.7 These arguments tum life in India, or the Third World in general into an aporia. In this respect, the Brazilian writer Silvano Santiago can assist us in considering the amphibious nature of Adiga's novel: on the one hand, it foregrounds the underclass and the struggling groups who contest the centrality of the oligarchy - be it Nehruvian, or that of the brave new entrepreneurs encouraged by the economic refOlTIlS; on the other, the

5. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (Noida: HarperCollins India, 2009), 14-15. 6. Ana Cristina Mendes, "Exciting Tales of Exotic Dark India: Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger," Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 45:2 (2010): 286. 7. Chandra, "The Cult of Authenticity," 22.

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author presents a topic that deserves attention, at home and abroad.8 Balram thus speaks to us from the borders he crosses as he changes names and occupations. He begins his education towards 'another-self in Dhanbad, where he suffers exploitation but also learns to practice subaltern opposition. By luck, pluck, and dhamm, he manages to make his way to Delhi as a chauffeur, and then to Bangalore as the CEO of a taxi fleet company. One can argue that the Light provided him upward social mobility, whereas the Darkness kept him among the jati of rickshaw pullers that his father was trapped in. Josy Joseph recently quipped that "in this country, it is okay to do practically anything: use fake promoters, accept bribes, commission murders, intimidate media, manipulate courts and grab power. The one big rule: don't get caught."9 Balram reaches the top following the national culture of success: "Kill enough people and they will put up bronze statues to you near Parliament House in Delhi - but that is glory, and not what I am after. All I wanted was the chance to be a man - and for that, one murder was enough. ,,10 Balram's entrepreneurship can clean up his criminal record: he is guilty in the eyes of the Indian police as well as the relatives of his boss Ashok, feudal overlords in Bihar. Or can it? His venture in the IT sector paradoxically alienates him from the middle-class status that he pursued. The closest he becomes is a mimic servant of an employer hybridised between his American education and his position in the caste system. Balram carmot, on the run, cherish the fruits of management, even though he is not after bourgeois respectability. Beyond the fa,ade of a successful boss in Bangalore lurks a vindictive man who takes revenge on oppression and exploitation. The Indian New Middle Class (NMC) did not rise solely from the economic refOlTIlS of the 1990s. Its roots are found in the coalition of state apparatus (mostly controlled by the Congress party), urban capitalists, and affluent fanners since independencell and it was meant to be managed by professionals and civil servants educated in the colonial period. This state­ sponsored middle class legitimised Nehruvian socialism by providing basic services to the subaltern groups without substantially halTIling the 8. Silviano Santiago, "Critica cultural, critic a literaria: Desafios do fim de seculo," Revista Iberoamericana, volumen 63, no. 180, July-September (1997): 367. 9. Josy Joseph, A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India (Noida: Harper Collins India, 2016), (xi). 10. Adiga, The White Tiger, 3 1 8. 1 1 . Partha Chatterjee, "Democracy and Economic Transformation in India," Economic andPolitical Weekly, vohunes13-16, 19-25 April (2008): 56.

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

interests

of the oligarchy complex, especially in rural

areas.12

The

narrative, however, takes other views on socialism. Balram 's family's life in Laxmangarh did not partake of the progress of citizens in the largest democracy in the world. Their poverty demoted them in the caste system, from sweet makers to rickshaw pullers. Balram speculates why his mother's cremation was the most dignified moment in her existence: "My mother 's body had been wrapped from head to toe in a saffron silk cloth, which was covered in rose petals and jasmine garlands. I don't think she had ever had such a fine thing to wear in her life.,,13 Her funeral is but one example in

The White Tiger

to show a dysfunctional

state where patronage substituted redistribution. But nowhere in the novel is the decadence of the old middle class best exposed than in the local school in Laxmangarh:

If the Indian village is a paradise, then the school is a paradise within a paradise. There was supposed to be free food at my school a government program gave every boy three rotis, yellow daal, and pickles at lunchtime. But we never ever saw rotis, or yellow daal, or pickles, and everyone knew why: the schoolteacher had stolen Oill hmch money. 14 The teacher had a legitimate excuse to steal the money - he said he hadn't been paid his salary in six months, yet he was terrified of losing his job, because though the pay of any government job in India is poor, the incidental advantages are numerous. Promising children like Balram ''White Tiger', as a school inspector called him for excelling in his class 15 - were entitled to receive a scholarship and so promote their educational and professional future. But Darkness (in his case the burden of paying off a costly dowry in his family) pushed Balram out of school and then away from the prospect of a belter life. The end of the semi-autarkic industrial regime spurred overseas investments and new niches were open for the old ruling-groups to profit from. This included banking and financial services, and most importantly the information technology industry.

The question of who belongs to the

middle class in India is a contentious issue, and depending on the parameters to follow, between

6 to 20 per cent of the population belong

in

that segment.1 6 No Western country with the exception of the United

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Jodhka and Prakash, "The Indian Middle Class," 45. Adiga, The White Tiger, 16. Ibid., 32-33. Ibid., 25. Dreze and Sen, An Uncertain Glory, 268.

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States would have such a large number (between 72 to 300 million) of consumers. But Balram Halwai, as the son of a rickshaw puller, could hardly belong to this group. Globalisation assigned India the role of an outsourcing hub; to be credible for the markets, the nation followed neoliberal tenets that secured large profit margins for foreign investors and their local associates. Whereas the neoliberal doxa, as Rohit Chopra has observed, reinforced the position of the old power cliques, benefits have trickled down very slowly17, if at all, into the less privileged areas. Besides, it brought about a cultural phenomenon of crass consumerism and a gradual discourse of intolerance.18 The developmentalist Congress party that started the reforms has been losing favour with the winners in the process, now more inclined to an openly business-friendly Bharatiya Janata Party eager on disciplining minorities.19 Balram recurrently compares the nation with a rooster coop in a market in Old Delhi: a bold system of social control that does not resort to military coups or uprisings: Hundreds of pale hens and brightly coloured roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench the stench of terrified, feathered flesh . . . They know they're next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop . . . The very same thing is done with human beings in this COlUltry?O

Indian cabinets set themselves to privatise state-owned assets and sectors,21 which had employed thousands on the state-roll - and most now 17. Rohit Chopra, "Neoliberalism as Doxa: Bourdeiu's Theory of the State and the Contemporary Indian Discourse on Globalization and Liberalization," Cultural Studies, volume 17 no. 3/4 (2003): 423. 1 8 . William Mazzarella, "Middle Class," in Keywords in South Asian Studies, (2004): 1 - 1 , accessed January 2, 2017. urI: https:/lwvrw.soas.ac.uk!south-asia­ instituteikeywords/file24808.pdf. 19. Amy Bhatt et aI., "Hegemonic Developments: The New Indian Middle Class, Gendered Subalterns, and Diasporic Returnees in the Event of Neoliberalism," Signs volume 36, no. 1 (2010): 135; E. Sridhran, "Gro-wth and Sectoral Composition of India's Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization," India Review, vol 3, no. 4 (October), (2004): 422; Bipan Chandra et aI., India Since Independence (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008), 683. 20. Adiga, The White Tiger, 173. 2 1 . Chopra, "Neoliberalism as Doxa," 438;

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

dreaded to be trapped in the rooster coop. This new "discourse of hegemony"22 is understood in different sound bites, from "Shining India" or "Make in India", to acche din. A subplot in the novel focuses on Balram driving his boss Ashok and the latter's kin to the headquarters of different parties in Delhi during an election campaign, bribing politicians to secure a tax avoidance scheme. Subaltern Balram is with tbem but has no part in their plan: At a red light, I looked at the rear-view mirror. I saw my thick moustache and my jaw. I touched the mirror. The angle of the image changed. Now I saw long beautiful eyebrows curving on either side of powerful, fmrowed brow muscles; black eyes were shining below those tensed muscles. The eyes of a cat watching its prey. Go on,just look at the red hag, Balram-that's not stealing, is it? I shook my head. And even ifyou were to steal it, Balram, it wouldn't he stealing. How so? I looked at the creature in the mirror. See-Mr. Ashok is giving money to all these politicians in Delhi so that they will excuse him from the tax he has to pay. And who owns that tax, in the end? Who hut the ordinary people of this country you! ""What is it, Balrarn? Did you say something?,,23

Liberalisation was not solely on the agenda of the Congress and BJP and their allies. The mention of a leader named the Great Socialist brings to our minds populist politicians who embraced globalisation and neoliberalism. He too is involved in scams and corruption activities, like the rest of the body politic. As Balram points out, "The Great Socialist himself is said to have embezzled one billion rupees from the Darkness and transferred that money into a bank account in a small, beautiful country in Europe full of white people and black money."24 Apart from the main parties, Congress and BJP, other populist leaders are also mentioned. A veiled reference to Bihar's controversial Chief Minister Laloo Prasad is made, especially in flashbacks of Balram's time in Bihar. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) that held power for Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?," In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 83. 22. Leela Fernandes and Patrick Heller, "Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India's Democracy in Comparative Perspective," Critical Asian Studies, volume 38, no. 4, (2006): 503. 23. Adiga, The White Tiger, 244. 24. Ibid., 98.

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decades in West Bengal is also shown as unconcerned about the plight of the lowest sections of society. The CPI(M)-led coalition ruled for the rezoning of rural areas so that they could be opened up to commercial exploitation, and gentrified areas in Calcutta for a market of middle-class and upper-middle-class home owners.25 It reportedly overhauled labour legislation too to secure prospective foreign investment in the state.26 In any event, the Great Socialist is the Indian politico who best negotiates with vote banks erstwhile captive to a now declining Congress under the gaze of Sonia Gandhi, who "was holding a hand up in the poster, as if waving to me - I waved back."27 Adiga's narrative problematises the claim that benefits of liberalisation are available to all social classes. The India of Darkness is represented by Ashok's relatives in Laxmangarh, who live off feudal practices that they force upon landless peasants. The Buffalo was one of the landlords in Laxmangarh. There were three others, and each had got his name from the peculiarities of appetite that had been detected in him. The Stork was a fat man with a fat moustache, thick and cmved and pointy at the tips. He o"Wlled the river that flowed outside the village, and he took a cut of every catch of fish caught by every fisherman in the river . . . His brother was called the Wild Boar. This fellow o"Wlled all the good agricultural land around Laxmangarh. If you wanted to work on those lands, you had to bow down to his feet, and touch the dust under his slippers, and agree to swallow his day wages . . . The Raven o"Wlled the worst land, which was the dry, rocky hillside around the fort, and took a cut from the goatherds who went up there to graze with their flocks. If they didn't have their money, he liked to dip his beak into their backsides, so they called him the Raven.28

These specimens in the novel indicate the pressures that so many peasant families experience, which may lead indebted individuals to commit suicide, or to join the informal labour pool in the cities. When

25. Leela Fernandes, The Violence of Forgetting: Poverty and Change in Post­ Liberalization India," CriticalAsian Studies, 42:2 (2010): 268; Douglas Hill and Adrian Athique, "Multiplexes, Corporatised Leisme and the Geography of Opportunity in India," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vohune 14, no. 4 (2013): 607. 26. Chopra, "Neoliberalisrn as Doxa," 420. 27. Adiga, The White Tiger, 135. 28. Ibid., 24-25.

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

migration is seasonal, the men return "leaner, darker, angrier, but with money in their pockets"29 and thus social transfOlmation is short-circuited. The India of Light is embodied in Mr. Ashok and his wife, Pinky Madam, Non-Resident Indian (NRI) professionals educated in the United States, who are on an extended business visit. Ashok is a typical upper­ caste man: he married a Christian Indian woman in the States and does not feel comfortable with the systemic corruption on which 'Shining India' stands: "Ifyou were back in Laxmangarh, we would have called you the Lamb,,30 thinks Balram while driving him around. The basic rationale for liberalisation was to put an end to a dysfunctional, bloated state. At that juncture, the lower segments of the middle classes experienced a process of adaptation to survive in the new regime. Some had for capital only their promotion through affirmative action policies, as was the case of members of Schedule Castes, Tribes, and later Other Backward Classes. They had an interest in keeping the political status quo and vindicated it by means of what Lucia Michelutti describes as the vernacularisation of democracy.31 Their interest was even more articulate when and where reservation managed to dent the caste system.32 Balram sees Vijay as an example of social ascendancy through patronage: Vijay, the bus conductor from Laxmangarh. My childhood hero had a new lUlifonn this time. He was dressed all in white, and wore a white Nehru cap on his head, and had rings of solid gold on eight of his fingers! Public service had been good to him. I waited by the gate and watched. The Stork himself came out to see Vijay, and bowed do"Wll before him, a landlord bowing before a pigherd's son! The marvels of democracy!33 The man on the right was my childhood hero Vijay, the pigherd's son turned bus conductor turned politician from Laxmangarh. He had changed

29. Ibid., 26. 30. Ibid., 142. 3 1 . Lucia Michelutti, "The Vemacularization of Democracy: Political Participation and Popular Politics in North India," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, volume 1 3 (2007): 642. Partha Chatterjee, "Democracy and Economic Transformation in India," Economic andPalitical Weekly. Volumes 13-16, 19-25 April (2008): 60-61 . D . L . Sheth, "Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class." Economic andPolitical Weekly, volume 34, no. 34 35 (2009): 2508-2509. 32. Ibid., 2505. 33. Adiga, The White Tiger, 103.

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lUliforms again: now he was wearing the polished suit and tie of a modern Indian businessman. He ordered me to drive toward Ashoka Road. 34 It is in this context that the NMCs respond to the new regime. Their membership is forged by the wealth of their original class and caste, which provided them the economic means and educational tools to manage India in the global division of labour. These English-speaking, degree holding, overseas-trained professionals usually have a Hindu Brahmin backgrOlmd35 and unlike migrants in the Gulf region, they do not contribute remittances but knowledge power. 36 They will enable India to, in tandem with China, debunk the West. Balram expresses this stance in his introductory letter to the Chinese PM: "the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the bro\Vll man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse."37 Neoliberal policies have further gerrymandered physical spaces to favor the NMCs. Gentrified areas in the cities are immune to the political arena where patronage rules; at the same time, they contribute to the patronage. On the one hand, they help maintain the system, via fiscal accountability, or more likely by having their way through the power bloc with bribes - which eventually contributes to the populist policies of the Darkness. On the other, the NMC demands a polis within the city to keep the mass of fellow citizens away but within reach and at their service.38 Civic organisations on behalf of the NMC have their voice heard by the administration; and their pressure pays off in the fOlTIl of rezoning, subsidies defrayed from the public budgets, and other entitlements. For their part, local authorities boast of plans for "renewal" or "environmental

34. Ibid., 270. 35. Leela Fernandes, "The Political Economy of Lifestyle: Consumption, India's New Middle Class and State-Led Development," in The New Middle Class: Globalizing Lifestyle, Consumerism, and Environmental Concern, eds. H. Lange and L. Meier (London: Springer, 2009), 229. 36. Chopra, "Neoliberalism as Doxa," 432. 37. Adiga, The White Tiger, 5. 3 8 . Kalpana Sharma, Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia 's Largest Slum (Delhi: Penguin, 2000), 192; Leela Fernandes, "The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India," Urban Studies, 41 : 1 2 (2004): 2420; Mira Kamdar, Planet India: The Turbulent Rise ofthe World's Largest Democracy (London: Pocket, 2008), 120.

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

development", which are code words for slum clearance.39 Thus, the NMC assumes the nation is beyond the pale: since corruption is widespread at all levels, no moral code can enforce their contributing to the lower groups, either in the Darkness or at the doorstep of their gated communities.40 It is in these comfort zones that we place Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam in Delhi, "the capital of not one but two countries-two Indias. The Light and the Darkness both flow into Delhi."4l Their site in the megalopolis is Gurgaon, a space created to keep the managers of Shining India: Ten years ago, they say, there was nothing in Gmgaon, just water buffaloes and fat Punjabi farmers. Today it's the modernest submb of Dellii. American Express, Microsoft, all the big American companies have offices there. The main road is full of shopping malls each mall has a cinema inside! So if Pinky Madam missed America, this was the best place to bring her.42

Fledgling, affluent suburbs in large Indian cities become loci to keep captive consumers-cum-entrepreneurs. The excerpt above acknowledges the symbolic capital of professionals trained in the United States. To compensate for their decision to return (and for the loss in income), neoliberal India offers them a niche for their leisure.43 As Leela Fernandes points out, these areas do not merely respond to the demands of the NMC, they create the material conditions for those demands to spring in the first place.44 Balram's employers casually commute to the malls as an extension of their living space, more so when they (especially the wives)

39. Douglas Hill and Adrian Athique, "Multiplexes, Corporatised Leisme and the Geography of Opportunity in India," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vohune 14, no. 4 (2013): 606. 40. Josy Joseph, A Feast o/Vultures: The Hidden Business 0/Democracy in India (Noida: HarperCollins India, 2016), 83. Milllla Saavla, Middle-Class Moralities: Everyday Struggle over Belonging and Prestige in India (Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2010), 1 1 8- 1 19. Margit Van Wessel, "Talking about Consumption. How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life," Cultural Dynamics, vohune 16, no. 1, (2004): 1 10. 4 1 . Adiga, The White Tiger, 252. 42. Ibid., 122-123. 43. Chopra, "Neoliberalism as Doxa," 436; Paula Chakravartty, "White-collar Nationalisms," Social Semiotics. vohune 16, no. 1 . (2006): 48-49. 44. Fernandes, "The Political Economy of Lifestyle," 227.

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miss the American lifestyle. Fernandes' point is better illustrated in yet another excerpt that shows the vicious circle of the IT sector driven to overwork to satisfy compulsive consumption. Vitiligo-Lips, Balram's co­ worker, describes the earning-spending routine: "My master's daughter works in [a call centre] too. I drop her off at eight o'clock and she comes back at two in the morning. I know she makes pots and pots of money in that building, because she spends it all day in the malls." He leaned in close the pink lips were just centimeters from mine. "Between the two of us, I think it's rather odd girls going into buildings late at night and corning out with so much cash in the morning. ,,45

I will not be discussing gender relations in The White Tiger, particularly the contrasting masculinities of American-educated Ashok at one end and the pimps in a red-light district in Old Delhi on tbe other. It'll suffice to mention that female subordination, such a central trait in the Darkness, coexists with the matrix of consumerism and mobility promised by the India of Light. Late in the novel, Balram attains a Buddba-like enlightenment while sitting under a banyan tree in Bangalore - marketing femininity under custody: Men and women in Bangalore live like the animals in a forest do. Sleep in the day and then work all night, until two, three, fom, five o'clock, depending, because their masters are on the other side of the world, in America. Big question: how will the boys and girls girls especially get from horne to the workplace in the late evening and then get back horne at three in the morning? There is no night bus system in Bangalore, no train system like in Murnbai. The girls would not be safe on buses or trains anyway. The men of this city, frankly speaking, are animals.46

This job niche of "the new Indian woman . . . domesticated by social codes of heteronormative patriarchy"47 was waiting to be exploited by an inspired man like Balrarn, soon to become Ashok Sharma, CEO. And from the perspective of sexual mores, by keeping intact the modesty of tbe Indian woman, he conjures away the lewdness of foreign-educated Pinky.

45. Adiga, The White Tiger (Noida: HarperCollins India, 2009), 127. 46. Ibid., 298. 47. Amy Bhatt et aI., "Hegemonic Developments: The New Indian Middle Class, Gendered Subalterns, and Diasporic Returnees in the Event of Neoliberalism," Signs. volume 36, no. 1 (2010): 1 3 1 .

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

Gurgaon city platming pretends to be unaware of life conditions in the global South. Its amenities ignore the model of the Nehruvian project, and gentrification aims to delete the anticolonial memory. Real estate speculation creates a postmodern suburban landscape, where Western consumerist sites coexist with condominiums named after royal British estates: The name of the apartment building was Buckingham Towers B Block. It was next to another huge apartment building, built by the same housing company, which was Buckingham Towers A Block. Next to that was Windsor Manor A Block. And there were apartment blocks like this, all shiny and new, and with nice big English names, as far as the eye could see.48

Since Balram and the servants of the other neighbours have to be available at all times, the complex includes quarters for them to live in; close enough to be handy, but strictly separated from the sphere of their employers, "sometimes at the back, and sometimes (as in the case of Buckingham Towers B Block) underground."49 No matter how modem Gurgaon pretends to be, each complex is a small-scale model of social stratification, where Lightness and Darkness are co-dependent. This co-dependence is perceptible too in the consumption habits of servants: Balram patronises 'real' local markets that shoulder the malls, where fake goods are available for customers who want to mimic the new rich. The following is an instance of free-market rationale: "I bought my first toothpaste that night. I got it from the man who usually sold me paan; he had a side business in toothpastes that cancelled out the effects of paan. "50 Balram purchases apparel and toiletries to smarten up, so that he can sneak into a shopping centre and watch people like his employers spending their time and money: I was conscious of a perfume in the air, of golden light, of cool, air­ conditioned air, of people in T-shirts and jeans who were eyeing me strangely. I saw an elevator going up and do"Wll that seemed made of pure golden glass. I saw shops with walls of glass, and huge photos of handsome European men and women hanging on each wall. If only the other drivers could see me now!5 1

48. Adiga, The White Tiger, 128-129. 49. Ibid., 128. 50. Ibid., 150. 5 1 . Ibid., 152.

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But servants, finally, are walled off the resources that facilitate mobility. Balram is resigned to overworking at the service of his employers for the sake of not returning to his native village. Ashok and Pinky brutalise him, mock his lack of formal education, and even plot for him to be blamed for the death of a child run over by Pinky. Symbolic violence and symbolic capital underscore the caste/class markers at Buckingham Towers, as much as physical violence does in Laxmangarh: "We have left the villages, but the masters still 0\Vll us, body, soul, and arse." 52 Neither stimulus from the liberalised economy nor the action of a technocratic NMC encourage the social mobility that will enable India to be on par with China. MurmalBalram!Ashok Sharma are thus avatars of the same individual, one among the millions, waiting expectantly to belong proudly to tlie nation and share the boom of the Asian Century. It is not ghar wapsi, but another, more inclusive kind of contract that the 'White Tigers seek. Bibliography

Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. Noida: HarperCollins India, 2009. Bhatt, Amy, Madhavi Murty, Priti Ramamurtliy. "Hegemonic Developments: The New Indian Middle Class, Gendered Subalterns, and Diasporic Returnees in the Event of Neoliberalism." Signs. volume 36, no. 1 (2010): 127-152. Chakravartty, Paula. "White-collar Nationalisms." Social Semiotics. volume 16, no. ! . (2006): 39-55. Chandra, Bipan, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee. India Since Independence. New Delhi: Penguin, 2008. Chandra, Vikram. "The Cult of Autlienticty: India's Cultural Commissars Worship "Indianness" instead of Art." Boston Review February March (2000). Accessed October 13, 2016. urI: http://bostonreview.netlvikram-chandra-tlie-cult-of-autlienticity. Chatterjee, Partha. "Democracy and Economic TransfOlmation in fudia." Economic and Political Weekly. Volumes 13-16, 19-25 April (2008): 53-62. Chopra, Rohit. "Neoliberalism as Doxa: Bourdeiu's Theory of the State and the Contemporary fudian Discourse on Globalization and Liberalization." Cultural Studies, volume 17 no. 3!4 (2003): 419-444.

52. Ibid., 168.

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New Middle Classes in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

Dn\ze, Jean, Amartya Sen. An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. London: Penguin, 2013. Fernandes, Leela. "The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India." Urban Studies. Volume 41, no. 12 (2004): 2415-2430. -. "The Political Economy of Lifestyle: Consumption, India's New Middle Class and State-Led Development." In The New Middle Class: Globalizing Lifestyle, Consumerism, and Environmental Concern, edited by H. Lange and L. Meier, 219-236. London: Springer, (2009): 219-236. -. "The Violence of Forgetting: Poverty and Change in Post­ Liberalization India." Critical Asian Studies, volume 42, no. 2, (2010): 265-272. Fernandes, Leela and Patrick Heller. "Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India's Democracy in Comparative Perspective." Critical Asian Studies, volume 38, no. 4, (2006): 495522. Guba, Ramachandra. Patriots andPartisans. Delhi: Allen Lane, 2012. Hill, Douglas and Adrian Atbique. "Multiplexes, Corporatised Leisure and the Geography of Opportunity in India." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, volume 14, no. 4 (2013): 600-614. Jeffries, Stuart. "Roars of Anger." The Guardian October 16, 2008. Accessed November 19, 2016. https:llwww.theguardian.comibookS/2008/octl16ibooker-prize. Jodhka, Surinder S. - Aseem Prakash. "The Indian Middle Class: Emerging Cultures of Politics and Economics." Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, no. 12 (201 1): 42-56. Joseph, Josy. A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India. Noida: HarperCollins India, 2016. Karndar, Mira. Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the World's Largest Democracy. London: Pocket, 2008. Mazzarella, William. "Middle Class." In Keywords in South Asian Studies, 2004. Accessed January 2, 2017. urI: https:llwww.soas.ac.ukisouth­ asia-instituteikeywords/file24808.pdf. Mende� Ana Cristina. "Exciting Tales of Exotic Dark India: Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 45:2 (2010): 275-293. Michelutti, Lucia. "The Vernacularization of Democracy: Political Participation and Popular Politics in Nortb India." Journal ofthe Royal Anthropoiogical lnstitute, volume13 (2007): 639-656.

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Saavla, Minna. Middle-Class Moralities: Everyday Struggle over Belonging and Prestige in India. Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2010. Santiago, Silviano. "Critica cultural, critica literaria: Desafios do fim de seculo." Revista Iberoamericana, volumen 63, no. 180, July­ September (1997): 363-377 -. "Uma literatura anffbia." In 0 Cosmopolitismo do pobre: Crftica litenrria e crftica cultural. Belo Horizonte: UFMG (2004): 64-73. Sebastian, A. J. "Poor-Rich Divide in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger." Journal ofAlternative Perspective in the Social Sciences. Volume 1, no. 2 (2009): 229-245. Shamm, Kalpana. Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia 's Largest Slwn. Delhi: Penguin, 2000. Sheth, D. L. "Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class." Economic and Political Weekly, volume 34, no. 34-35 (2009): 250210. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 66- 1 1 1 . Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Sridlnan, E. "Growth and Sectoral Composition of India's Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization." India Review, vol 3, no. 4 (October), (2004): 405-428. Van Wessel, Margit "Talking about Consumption. How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life." Cultural Dynamics, volume 16, no. 1, (2004): 93-116.

PART III. UN-BELONGING THROUGH DEFIANT RE-WRITINGS

REVISTING EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, THE FORGOTTEN AUTHORESS WHO MARKED A GENERATIOW ANA ABRIL HERNANDEZ

Abstract

The literary work of the feminist poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay (1 892-1950) has gone through different stages of popularity. In the last few years the publication in graphic fOlTIl of an adaptation of some of Millay's poems has brought this poet forth again thariks to their graphic version in the Graphic Canon Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest published in 2013. This article examines one of the poems published in her second collection of poetry, A Few Figsfrom Thistles (1920), entitled "The Penitent" in tbe light of a comparative multimodal approach of the original poem and its visual representation, in an attempt to deepen the paradoxical identity of tbe American poet. Edna St. Vincent Millay, intermediality, Subject-in-process, identity, graphic.

Key words:

Introduction

The poetess, playwright, and American feminist activist Edna St. Vincent Millay (1 892-1950) is tbe third woman author to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 as well as the first woman to receive this award as we know it today. This American \Vfiter was born in Maine in 1892 in a family where culture occupied an important place in the lives and work of her parents: Henry Tollman Millay (a school teacher and later headmaster) and Cora Lounella Buzelle (a nurse). At the age of twenty, Millay - who

1 . This article has been developed by the author with the support of the Programa de Financiacion de fa Universidad Compfutense de Madrid-8antander Universidades of Spain.

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chose to be called by her middle name "Vincent" in line with her rebellious social attitude - wrote the poem "Renascence" that would bring her fame and international recognition as a poetess. It was published in The Lyric Year in 1912, and five years later it appeared as the opening sonnet of her first collection of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems (1917). Millay's second (and possibly more rebellious) collection of poems, A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), presents, in a transgressive tone, a vindication of heterosexual and homosexual love through semi-biographical poems. According to the critic Artemis Michailidou: Millay's reputation as the 'New Woman' of the twenties was arguably established with the publication of A Few Figs from Thistles. The appearance of this collection almost coincided with the introduction of the Nineteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution, which extended suffrage to women.2

In tbis second volume, tbe true spirit of tbe 'New Woman' tbat Millay was about to incarnate found its poetic base. It became the quintessential book of poetry addressed to the youngest generation of Americans who had experienced tbe results of the First World War. Millay struggled to be the voice for the youngest generation advocating for their freedom and their right to free language from the formalities and social constraints that had dominated during the previous generations. Written after the trip to Europe tbat Millay made with her motber, A Few Figs from Thistles appeared parallel to tbe growth and development of the Jazz Age and the spirit of the 'Roaring Twenties' embodied by the insurgent authoress. The success of this collection was soon followed by that of her subsequent books of poetry: Second April (1921, witb a more elegiac tone); The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (1922); Distressing Dialogues (1924); The Buck in the Snow, and Other Poems (1928); Fatal Interview (1931); and Wine from These Grapes (1934). This article discusses one of the sonnets contained in her poetry collection, "The Penitent" which shows a female protagonist imprisoned in a household from which she wishes to escape. It examines the identity of this authoress by investigating how she presents the characters in this poem in an attempt to draw a number of connections between the story told beyond tbe lines and Millay's life. This study is going to carry out a comparative analysis between the poem and its adaptation to the graphic 2. Artemis Michailidou, "Edna St. Vincent Millay and Anne Sexton: The Disruption of Domestic Bliss," Journal ofAmerican Studies 3 8 (2004): 68.

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Revisting Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Forgotten Authoress

medium in comic form created by Joy Kolitsky and published in the Graphic Canon VoL 3: From Heart a/Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (2013). By considering this poem in the light of a new (intermedial) interpretation the present study seeks to analyse the personality and identity of its author through the vision that she had of her own "[". The starting point for this claim is that, Millay's work, largely reflects her 0\Vll experiences and feelings, as Diane F. Freedman stated in her critical study Millay at 100: A Critical Reappraisal.' This investigation will also draw on examples from this poem about paradoxical elements that existed inside and outside the body of our authoress. As Arthur DuBois's once claimed: "[Millay was a] precocious child, poet, woman and mystic. [And] for each of these terms there is in Millay a corresponding contrasting quality."4 In order to approach the ambiguous personality (even to herself) of this "public poet" - as her biographer Nonnan A. Brittin describes her in his preface (1967) - in all its complexity, this article is based on Julia Kristeva's semiotic perspective of the modem subject. By applying Kristeva's study on female subjectivity and its fonnation within a primarily male society, this paper will investigate Millay's dynamic identity in the process of self-discovery through identities in process, never closed but with sharply-defined labels. This new subject emerges from the negotiations between the position of the individual as a speaker and her position as the 'object' receiving the comments and actions of others. Therefore, Millay's unsatisfied longing for her 0\Vll independence as a woman lives in a pennanent tug-of-war through her poems with a sense of belonging to a pre-established patriarchal society. Brittin states that paradoxes and ambiguity are representative of Millay, particularly in her oscillation between a private and a public self.' Millay always made a strong defense of a life free from male domination. This stance seems to be at odds with her internal anxiety to get married before the age of thirty because, as Daniel Mark Epstein noted: Millay "saw the clock running out,,6 after her sister Nonna's marriage. In addition to this, her strong defense of the abolition of female enclosure in the house 3 . Diane F Freedman, ed., Millay at 100: A Critical Reappraisal (Illinois: Southern Illinois University, 1995), 8-9. 4. Arthm Dubois, "Edna St. Vincent Millay," Sewanee Review January-March (1936): 80-104. 5. Norman A. Brittin, Edna Sf. Vincent Millay. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1 967), 136. 6. Edna St. Vincent Millay. A Few Figs from Thistles. New York: Frank Shay Publisher, 1922, 160.

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does not appear to match the apparent acceptance of subjugation to a man­ centered society in which we see the protagonist of her poem "The Penitent." The Paradoxes of Millay's Empiric and Poetic 'I's' in her Life

For Julia Kristeva, the question of female status is not a static condition, but a permanent process of formation of subjectivity closely related to tbe context(s) of the subject and, of course, to tbe tool used to interact with tbe others: language. Language is thus no longer a static meaning system with a lUlique directionality as claimed by the psychoanalytic theorists; it evolves and changes with the subject as it also represents the subject's inner changes. As Kristeva states, the process is what energises deconstructing the signs with which the individual expresses his or her identity: "The process dissolves the linguistic sign and its system (word, syntax), dissolves, that is, even the earliest and most solid guarantee of the lUlitary subject."7 Jacques Derrida once stated that writing is a process of a never-ending quest for meaning. For him, texts were just a part of a whole whose center is in pemmnent movement or, using his term, 'deferred'. This was the basis for his celebrated theory of 'deconstruction' that states that texts can only claim authority to the inner signs that compose them, thus denying all the formerly granted authority to the outer world that they were supposed to re-present. Traditional pairs of 'opposites' share a missing piece that the other presents. This absent piece in each is, at this point, what Derrida referred to as the 'trace' : the far and remote origin of a non-existent origin, a 'deferred center' 8. The removal of rigid structures: human's 'opposite' (nature) and men's 'opposite' (women) accounts for a virtual impossibility to close-up identities separated from their counterparts. Millay's intense struggle for women's independence and social recognition as equal citizens to their male counterparts is in sharp contrast to the last lines of this poem. "The Penitent" tells the story of a repentant woman who has a "little sorrow / born of a little sin"9 who "found a room all damp witb gloom I and shut [them] all witbin"lo witbout repentance.

7 Julia Kristeva, "The Subject in Process," in The Tel Quel Reader, ed P. French and R-F. Lack, (New York: Routledge, 1998), 134. 8. Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1967). 9. st. Vincent MiUay. A Few Figs, (11. 1-2). 10. Ibid., (II. 3-4).

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Revisting Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Forgotten Authoress

The poem seems to show a sort of multiplicity of beings in it beyond tbe protagonist, namely Sorrow and Sin (which are personified in tbe poem). This implies an extension of Millay's feelings of seclusion to all women's feelings of patriarchal control, granting universal reach (and complaint) to this issue. This feeling of confinement is intensified with the use of colour as a symbolic device to highlight tbe somber atmosphere of the house. The image of a "room all damp with gloom"ll and the statement that "gloom went in that room" 12 reminiscent of a descent to Dante's Inferno, emphasises the claustrophobic effect of isolation. After this descent, the protagonist does not change her mind as one might well have expected her to after such a cathartic experience. On the contrary, this dO\vnfall seems to have intensified her impenitent character. The poem also shows an interplay of shadows and lights. The former imprisonment leaves room for a way out that also changes the tone of the poem towards a lighter one when the protagonist decides to "put a ribbon on [her] hair I to please a passing lad".13 'While the first two lines show no clear reference to the gender of the narrator, the third and final stanza recognises it as a woman when it states that in order to "save [her] soul,,14 she has to "put a ribbon on [her] hair".15 The next line addresses this issue explicitly when the poetess identifies the poetic character as "a wicked girl",16 and concludes with irony that "if [she] can't be sorry, why, I [she] might as well be glad!"17 It seems a little difficult to reconcile Millay's accepted longing for female emancipation witb the "pleas[ing] a passing lad" statement. These words appear in the poem as a liberating act for the narrator to get out of her domestic enclosure. Curiously enough, she is not interested in pleasing a specific man, but any man, letting loose her sexuality and desire. This is supported by the last stanza, which starts with a defiant line: "So I got up in anger".18 This stanza clearly vindicates the New Woman's right for the coexistence of two traditionally separate selves in women. Millay argues that women can be both scholars or artists (as herself) and men's object of desire, exemplified in tbe poem in tbe act of "[taking] a book [she] had I

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 1 8.

Ibid, (1 3). Ibid, (1 1 1 ). Ibid., (11 19-20). Ibid, (1 15). Ibid, (1 20). Ibid, (1 22). Ibid., (11 23-24). Ibid, (1 17).

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and put[ting] a ribbon on [her] hair".!9 The ribbon suggests a call for the liberation of female sexuality and her celebration of it. However, through the

fact

of relating

women's

liberation (her

longing

for women's

liberation) to the male will, the authoress suggests a certain maintained bond (somehow imposed belonging) with her male-dominated society. Once again, the tension between Millay's longing and her belonging show up in the poem. The scholar Cheryl Walker discusses in her book Masks Outrageous and Austere the life and work of several writers of the 20th century, among which we find Edna S1. Vincent Millay. In her research, Walker says that although Millay "thought of herself as a fighter and a feminist" she was somehow forced to face the "good girllbad girl syndrome"20. As Walker points out, we come across another paradox in Millay's life. On the one hand, there is the self-image of the femiinst whom she sought to portray through her lectures and her tours of public readings. On the other hand, there is the woman behind the poetic voice that "actually wanted desperately to please the public and this meant, in a significant way, pleasing a masculine-centered culture. ,,21 Already from her second volume of poetry, some paradoxes, or in terms of Kristeva, cues of a "subj ect-in­ process", begin to appear through her poems. They show an individual identity that is not static and whose context strongly influences the construction and dynamism of its identity.22 The sardonic and veiled conservative style found in "The Penitent" points to the difficult identity of the authoress herself, of her empirical

'I'.

The serious health problems afflicting Millay worsened after the death of her husband. She had to go home alone, where she would live her toughest year, until her death in

1950.

Her body, her silent pain container, suffered

greatly, leading her through several nervous breakdowns caused by the negative criticism that her poetic political propaganda received.

In spite of

this, she always maintained the openly rebellious and youthful tone that had once made her so famous as a writer and public figure. Millay had always tried to keep up the 'public figure' side of her personality (with

19. Ibid., (11. 1 8 - 1 9). 20. Cheryl Walker, "Women on the Market. Edna St. Vincent Millay's Body Language," in Masks Outrageous and Austere: Culture, Psyche, and Persona in Modern WomenPoets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 139. 2 1 Ibid., 139. 22 For a discussion of the notion studied by Kristeva of the role of the linguistic sign as a mediator between the subject and its context see Lopez-Varela "Intertextuality and Intennediality as Cross-cultural Communication Tools: a critical inquiry."

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Revisting Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Forgotten Authoress

world reading tours and conferences), appearing as a person of strong character whilst struggling to hide from view her intense longing for a family life embodied in marriage. As noted by the critic Barry Ahearn, the public facet of her identity was indeed devoted to "present[ing] herself on the stage and in print as a woman liberated from traditional female roles. ,,23 The pressure of a deep-rooted patriarchal society brought her to the church to marry the man who would become her husband (the Dutch importer of coffee Eugen Jan Boissevain) at thirty-one years of age. But this is not the only trace of the influence of society we can perceive on the 'psyche' of this poetess. The tension between claiming freedom for women and the acceptance of their subordination to men in poems like "The Penitent" are symptomatic of Millay's feelings toward her 'ego' and her 'superego' in Freudian terms. From this mixture emerges a third 'I' of Millay: her poetic voice. It functions as a mediator between what she felt inside of her and what she felt she had to show publicly. In other words, the voice of her poems is herself as much as it is the image of herself that she wanted to show as the 'New Woman' of the Twenties. This process of the never-ending quest for one's own identity recalls Kristeva's subject, for which we are always building and re-building ourselves aided by our context. In fact, this negotiation of identities problematises the solidified 20th-century paradox of a woman-poet. It helps to create new identities through literary means via a multiplicity of references.24 Her poetic voice was the outsourced remedy for her 'problematic' being, the output and the ultimate expression of her literary subject-in-process. The narrator of many of her poems represents this mixture of interior and exterior (soul­ body) calling upon reconciliation between the two parts. As Walker clarifies, the relationship between the private and the public is so close that even when she changed her position on the political situation during the Second World War, "consciously or not, she was also engaged in an attempt to change the character of her persona".25 In fact, as we can read in Walker's study, Millay's empirical and poetic "I's", can be extended to the literary text itself, where Walker talks about this authoress as "a poet of the body who presented the text and her 0\Vll flesh as mirroring one another".26 Walker explores the portrait of the concerns and anxieties at 23. Barry Abeam, "Poetry: 1900 to the 1 940s," American Literary Scholarship Volume 2009 Issue 1 (20 1 1 ): 382. 24. Diane F Freedman, ed., Millay at 100: A Critical Reappraisal (Illinois: Southern Illinois University, 1995), 8. 25. Walker, "Women on the Market," 1 4 1 . 26. Ibid., 145.

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struggle in Millay's poems as an extension of the poetess' means of social visibility and recognition. Walker's idea about the connection between Millay's poems and her own body as outer symbols of her identity correlate in Judith Butler's gender perforrnativity in her study Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Walker states that some poems like "The Poet and His Book", are transfOlmed into the poet's 0'Wll body.27 This stands in line with Helene Cixous' and Elaine Showalter's notions about 'feminine writing' as the communion between the female body and the work of literature. In this way, Millay experienced life mediated by a poetic personality alluded to before in this research, as now "the text becomes a new body and that body becomes the text of survival".28 FurthemlOre, in her study, Cheryl Walker recalls the statement made by Susan Gubar on the text as a materialisation of the authoress and vice versa. She claims that with the body as text, "many women experience their own bodies as the only available medium for their art, with the result that the distance between the woman artist and her art is often radically diminished. "29 Intermedial Dialogue in 'The Penitent': A Visual and Textual Identity Struggle

The domestic sphere is another key issue addressed in Millay's literary career through a complex unfolding of personalities. According to Artemis Michailidou, "Millay was already labeled in the Seventies as a writer [who1 had also contributed to the tradition of domestic poetry".30 We can even see how the house where Millay places her protagonist in "The Penitent" stands as the well-kno'Wll image of women in her time, in the closed sphere of the domestic realm. This creates a general sense of claustrophobia and enclosure in the so-closed space of her house. In adapting these poems to the comic book fOlmat, this sense of patriarchal control over the female protagonist of the poem (that we identify with the author herself) becomes more evident with the image of a room that is locked (see Figure 1 1 . 1 below). The feeling of guilt is also intensified in the visual medium through the blackish and devilish appearance of the two

27. Ibid., 142. 28. Ibid., 142. 29. Ibid., 142. 30. Artemis Michailidou, "Edna St. Vincent Millay and Anne Sexton: The Disruption of Domestic Bliss," Journal a/American Studies 3 8 (2004): 67.

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other characters of the poem: her "little Sorrow" and her "little Sin", as we can see in Figure I L L

Fig. 1 1 . 1 "The Penitent"

31

One of Millay's biographers, Norman A. Brittin, refers to this poem as a "nursery rhyme"32 (80). In fact, its tone becomes more relaxed towards the end, when the speaker claims: "One thing there' s no getting by

-

/ I've

been a wicked girl, said I; / But if ! can't be sorry, why, / I might as well be glad"33. Not only does the protagonist show an absolute lack of

3 1 . Joy Kolitsky, "The Penitent," in R. Kick, ed. The Graphic Canan Val. 3: Fram Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest. (Hong Kong: Seven Stories Press, 2013), 1 8 5 . 3 2 . Norman A . Brittin, Edna St Vincent Millay. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1 967), 80. 33. Millay, A Few, 11. 2 1 -24.

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repentance, but she explicitly rejoices in her wickedness. In visual terms, this literary tension also decreases as the graphic designer (Joy Kolitsky) does not overload the images with black colour and leaves more blank spaces instead towards the end, suggesting a more open sphere when the narrator leaves the closed house walking towards the street, as shown in Figure 1 1 .2.

����

Figure 1 1 .2. "The Penitent"34

This informal and self-indulgent tone, Brittin claims, is common in this second volume that is said to have "intensified the [so-called] "Millay legend" of impulse and naughtiness,,35 in the spirit of the youngest generation after the First World War. The oppressive atmosphere recreated in this poem is further highlighted by the semiotic resource of framing, used here as a pictorial bounding in which we see the protagonist as a prey in a quasi nightmare environment.36 This representation is shown as the

34. Joy Kolitsky, "The Penitent," in R. Kick, ed. The Graphic Canon Vol. 3: From

Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest. (Hong Kong: Seven Stories Press, 2013), 1 8 8. 35. Norman A. Brittin, Edna St. Vincent Millay. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1 967), 80. 36. For a deeper analysis of this and other semiotic resources in interrnedial representations of works of literature, see Abril-Hernandez "The Image beneath

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reflection of the internal and enclosed space (the domestic household) against which the poetess fought, even being an inspiration for later poetesses such as Anne Sexton. In the poem the reader has no information about the "book" the narrator takes with her before heading for the street. But the images show a small picture of the book "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson ( 1 836) as being the one that she grabs (see Figures 1 1 .3 and 1 1 .4). At this point it is important to notice that although Millay combines traditional poetic forms (like the sonnet) with more rebellious feminist messages, her poems are reminiscent of the classic forms, like 1 9th-century English Romanticism and American Transcendentalism. In fact, as Brittin states, including her most celebrated poem - "Renascence" published in her fIrst collection Renascence and Other Poems - "like much of her poetry . . .is in the tradition of American transcendentalism.'>37 This can be perceived in the association we see between the "being" inside the person, with what Emerson called the "Supreme Being;" that is, the spirit of nature.

Figure 1 1 .3 "The Penitent,,38

the Word: Intermedial Study of the Text and hnage in Joseph Conrad's Heart of

Darkness." 37. Norman A. Brittin, Edna St. Vincent Millay. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967), 70. 38. Joy Kolitsky, "The Penitent," in The Graphic Canon Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest, R. Kick, ed. (Hong Kong: Seven Stories Press, 2013), 186.

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