A Struggle Between Literary and Self-Cannibalisation. The Bront\uebs\u2019 Reversal in V.S. Naipaul\u2019s Guerrillas

This article discusses the after-lives of Charlotte Bront\ueb\u2019s Jane Eyre (1847) and Emily Bront\ueb\u2019s Wuthering Heights (1847) as they have been rendered in V.S. Naipaul\u2019s tenth novel Guerrillas (1975). Following the concept of \u2018literary anthropophagy\u2019 theorised by Oswald de Andrade in 1928 and then adopted by several postcolonial writers as a metaphor of reverse appropriation, this article argues that Naipaul\u2019s novel can be read as an extreme form of literary cannibalism. Naipaul\u2019s violent appropriation and \u2018digestion\u2019 of the Bront\ueban works are exemplified by the ironic interconnections among the characters of the novels, their gender role reversals, the peculiar reshaping of the colonial subtext, and the trope of rape. In particular, by means of these strategies, the author subverts the Victorian assumptions of order and creates a chaotic world in which the Bront\ueban references become the tools for a postcolonial \u2018cannibalisation\u2019 of 19th century fiction. In this light, literary cannibalism is not a mere rewriting of English literature, but Naipaul\u2019s personal way of interrogating and \u2018can - nibalising\u2019 himself through the reversal of the English canon

Caryl Phillips, A View of the Empire at Sunset (London, Vintage UK, Paperback, 2018, 324 pp. ISBN 978-178-470-901-3)

Caryl Phillips, A View of the Empire at Sunset (London, Vintage UK, Paperback, 2018, 324 pp. ISBN 978-178-470-901-3)by Alessia Polatt

The \u201cMyth of Tusitala\u201d in Samoa: R. L. Stevenson\u2019s Presence in Albert Wendt\u2019s Fiction

The legacy left by Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific is undeniable and still really strong, and it represents a priceless heritage and source of inspiration for many postcolonial writers of the area. The aim of the paper is to investigate the strong influence of Stevenson\u2019s life in the Pacific on the imagery of the Samoan novelist Albert Wendt, trying to reread the relationship between the two authors through the analysis of Wendt\u2019s literary production. Analyzing Albert Wendt\u2019s Stevensonian references in Flying-Fox in a Freedom Tree/Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) and The Mango\u2019s Kiss (2003), I will argue that Stevenson\u2019s image in Wendt\u2019s texts could be seen as a sort of \u201ctotem\u201d in the Freudian sense of the term, a symbol deeply related to the sacred and the figure of the forefather, but also the center of love and hatred for the Samoan community wherein the Scottish writer spent his last years from 1888 to 1894

New Paths in Black British Literature. Global Trajectories towards "Home"

My PhD thesis New Paths in Black British Literature. Global Trajectories towards “Home” deals with the current shift of the traditional concepts of “home” and “migration” towards the notions of “homecoming” and “reverse migration” in Black British literature. Indeed, the evolution of postcolonial studies and the recent development of a transnational approach in literary studies (Jay 2010) have led to a renewed interest towards the subaltern voices, especially in relation to the phenomena of migration and diaspora as they have been depicted by Black British authors. Starting from Gayatri Spivak’s assertion that “Today the ‘subaltern’ must be rethought” (Spivak 2000), the aim of my PhD thesis is to reconsider the image of “subaltern people” in Black British literature through the investigation of the effects of globalization on the literary and personal experiences of Caribbean and South Asian migrants of first and second generation. In particular, my focus will be on the phenomenon of “return migration”, according to which diasporic subjects decide to leave the UK and come back to their ancestral homelands. From this perspective, I will analyse the different narrative devices used by those postcolonial authors who have depicted stories of return of the first generation – V. S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, Dennis Ferdinand, Caryl Phillips, Kiran Desai, Shoba Narayan, Amit Chaudhuri, and Nadeem Aslam – as well as the more recent accounts of Tariq Mehmood, Andrea Levy, Atima Srivastava, and Hardeep Kohli for the second generation. I will focus on some precise topics: migrants’ communal search for a community of belonging in both the adoptive and the original country; their relationship with the new notions of space and place, as well as with the new global metropolises; and the reconfiguration of the concepts of home and homeland, with the resulting desire of homecoming. These topics will be approached through a trans-disciplinary methodology which includes a series of discursive formations, such as Migration and Diaspora Studies, and Global Studies. Starting from this theoretical perspective, I will consider how Europe has been “provincialized” (Chakrabarty 2000) in Black British works - also in relation to the recent sociological shifts - by focusing on the migrants’ desire to return home, and finally suggesting a new tendency, according to which migrant flows are reversing towards East. In this light, I will propose the definition of “reverse migration” to indicate English people who decide to migrate to the former British colonies, especially to India. The theorization of this new tendency will be supported by the analysis of some novels which reveal the “reversed” migration’s stories of their white British characters

Una ridiscussione dei concetti di home e identity nell’Asia globalizzata: il caso di These Foolish Things (2004) e How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013)

The evolution of postcolonial studies in the last thirty years and the development of a transnational approach in literary studies (Jay 2010) have led to a renewed interest towards the subaltern voices, especially in relation to the phenomena of migration and diaspora and their global effects. In this light, the idea of 'home' is characterized by a sort of porosity and by a new geographical and emotional conceptualization which inevitably influences the personal and collective identities of migrant communities.The aim of the paper is to analyze these topics from a cultural and literary standpoint through the examination of the two different kinds of migrant flows and postcolonial scenarios depicted in These Foolish Things (2004) by the English author Deborah Moggach, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) by the Pakistan novelist Mohsin Hamid. In these novels, the chaotic Indian framework – the former margin of the British empire – is torn between its colonial past and the current effects of the permeability of its borders. It is, therefore, a perfect global context, wherein the experiences and the feelings of the modern Indian identities are reinterpreted by the two authors.

Racconti di viaggio e potere in H. R. Haggard: rappresentazioni del colonialismo in Africa tra cultura, scienza e letteratura

From a cultural point of view, at the end of the XIX century, race was represented in-between an attempt of a verisimilar narration of what the white British explorers had seen in the colonies and the proliferation of the racial theories promulgated by the academic sciences. However, that form of representation is rarely connected with the socio-political aspects of the British empire, as well as with matters of power in general. This can be a problem because the direct experience and its cultural implications cannot be considered distinctly; therefore, the article seeks to examine the relationships among power, science, and narration in the late colonial literature, in order to deeply analyse the complexity of the colonial experience in its relation with the literary scenario. The scientific and anthropological advancements, the several journeys of exploration and the expansion of the boundaries of the world, the racial classifications, and the religious and political aspects of the colonies are part of the novels and romances of the time, but mainly treated from a Eurocentric point of view. The article considers all those elements, as well as the link among travel literature, colonial romances, and the construction of the Other. Furthermore, the African characters of H. R. Haggard’s romances are examined through the lens of the pseudo-scientific theories of the second part of the XIX century in order to demonstrate how much they have influenced each other. The British colonial apparatus has improperly exploited both travel literature and the scientific theories to justify and support the colonization of Africa, thus creating a juxtaposition between black and white people highlighted by the colonial romance and the new-born anthropology. The article also examines how much the colonial propaganda took into consideration and was influenced by travel writing and romances, thus shifting the already unbalanced relationships of power in the colonies. Le forme attraverso le quali la cultura razziale di fine Ottocento in Inghilterra viene rappresentata sono il punto d’incontro tra la verosimiglianza del contesto imperialista inglese, sostenuta dai racconti di viaggio degli esploratori, e i suoi aspetti più teorici promulgati dalle accademie scientifiche. Eppure raramente esse vengono poste in relazione con le questioni socio-politiche dell’epoca e così la rappresentazione letteraria appare come scollegata da qualsiasi intreccio di potere. Questo non può essere considerato vero, come non si possono dividere esperienza e cultura. Sono esattamente queste al contrario le relazioni che il saggio si propone di approfondire per riuscire a considerare, attraverso le sue molteplici sfaccettature, la complessa esperienza coloniale e soprattutto il suo rapporto con il mondo letterario. Le nuove scoperte in campo antropologico e scientifico, i numerosi viaggi di esplorazione con il conseguente allargamento dei confini del mondo, le classificazioni evolutive e razziali, così come le questioni relative agli aspetti politici e religiosi delle terre coloniali sono tutti presenti all’interno della narrativa dell’epoca, nella maggior parte dei casi trattati da un punto di vista eurocentrico. L’articolo intende indagare il profondo legame esistente tra questi elementi, e in particolare tra letteratura di viaggio, romanzo coloniale e costruzione dell’Altro. Si prenderà in considerazione il rapporto tra la descrizione dei personaggi africani in alcuni romanzi di H. R. Haggard e le teorie evolutive e pseudo-scientifiche della seconda metà del XIX secolo allo scopo di dimostrare quanto le une siano state influenzate dalle altre. Nel corso dell’argomentazione si evidenzierà l’uso improprio della letteratura di viaggio e di quella scientifica fatto dall’apparato coloniale britannico per sostenere e giustificare l’opera di colonizzazione dei territori africani, in una continua contrapposizione tra neri e bianchi sottolineata dal romance coloniale e sostenuta anche dalle teorie antropologiche dell’epoca. Si cercherà di approfondire, inoltre, fino a che punto la propaganda colonialista sia stata fedelmente perseguita e agevolata dai testi di fiction e non-fiction, e utilizzata per spostare gli sbilanciati equilibri di potere nel contesto coloniale

Racial Genealogies and Intertextuality in Contemporary Britain: Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child

The aim of the paper is to examine the different family dynamics depicted in Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child (2015). In particular, it will be demonstrated how the author exploits the trope underlying the title of the novel and a web of intertextual references to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in order to portray the complexity and the dramatic nature of those aspects of family relationships which derive from the social and racial dynamics of nineteenth-century English society

Blurred identities and transnational sexuality in Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie’s recent fiction

Postcolonial literature has always been interested in exploring what is double, ambiguous, multiform, and migrant. Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie have notoriously dealt with those topics in their novels, such as in their most celebrated The Shadow Lines (1988) and The Satanic Verses (1988). The postcolonial theory of 1980s pervades their masterpieces, especially considering scholars’ focus on the costs of the blurring global phenomena on migrant processes. Tejander Kaur has properly underlined how diaspora experience of the 1980s “has assumed newer and vibrant dimensions. The experience of migrancy and Diaspora also engenders various problems and facts of journeys and relocation in new lands e.g. displacement, up-rootedness, discrimination, alienation, marginalization crisis in identity, cultural conflicts, yearning for home and homeland etc.” (Kaur 2008, p. 8). Moreover, Victoria Arana has accurately added that migrants “sought to affirm their personal process of renegotiation, their cultural diversity, and the denial of rigid borders between black and white” (Arana 2005, p. 237). Those prerogatives have been the seeds of a harsh debate begun in 1987 among postcolonial scholars and novelists to point out the inadequateness of the term “Black” and of similar notions, “terms that mask the ‘constructedness’ of much more complex racial and ethnic identities” (236). Nowadays those same identities have undergone another significant change due to the collapse of historicism and of the centre-periphery dichotomy, as well as to the spread of globalization. In their more recent production – especially in Sea of Poppies (2008) and The Golden House (2017) – both Ghosh and Rushdie investigate the influence of such phenomena on migrant identity by observing and narrating multiple processes of erection of blurred identities in a changing world. The Golden family in Rushdie’s text and Ghosh’s coolies on the vessel Ibis are groups of migrant people who do not hesitate to abandon their beliefs for a “rebirth” in a new host land. By looking for new belongings in foreign lands – else/nowhere places which do not assure to welcome them – migrants from the Asian continent wish to remove every link to their past lives and worlds thanks to the acquisition of a new identity, a goal achieved at the expense of deep inner conflicts. The characters of Dionysus Golden and Baboo Nob Kissin are epitomes of that condition. They both embody the difficulties and aspirations of their communities; moreover, in the middle of their migrant journey, they also experience a personal “migration” towards a new gender identity which should lead them to a sort of “reincarnation” into a spiritual – but also a physical and actual – femininity. Gender and migrant identities thus escape from the traditional and usually accepted definitions which see XXI-century young migrants like Dionysus and the respectable gomusta of colonial India like Nob Kissin as prototypical emblems of virility. Therefore, in their novels, Ghosh and Rushdie deal with transgender, transnational, and transcultural movements: the vicissitudes of the characters twist and turn through two multicultural microcosms – contemporary New York and the vessel of the East Indian Company Ibis – which are temporally distant, but strongly convergent

A Struggle Between Literary and Self-Cannibalisation

This article discusses the after-lives of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) as they have been rendered in V.S. Naipaul’s tenth novel Guerrillas (1975). Following the concept of ‘literary anthropophagy’ theorised by Oswald de Andrade in 1928 and then adopted by several postcolonial writers as a metaphor of reverse appropriation, this article argues that Naipaul’s novel can be read as an extreme form of literary cannibalism. Naipaul’s violent appropriation and ‘digestion’ of the Brontëan works are exemplified by the ironic interconnections among the characters of the novels, their gender role reversals, the peculiar reshaping of the colonial subtext, and the trope of rape. In particular, by means of these strategies, the author subverts the Victorian assumptions of order and creates a chaotic world in which the Brontëan references become the tools for a postcolonial ‘cannibalisation’ of 19th century fiction. In this light, literary cannibalism is not a mere rewriting of English literature, but Naipaul’s personal way of interrogating and ‘cannibalising’ himself through the reversal of the English canon

Una ridiscussione dei concetti di home e identity nell\u2019Asia globalizzata: il caso di These Foolish Things (2004) e How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013)

L\u2019evoluzione degli studi postcoloniali negli ultimi trent\u2019anni e lo sviluppo di un approccio transnazionale nell\u2019ambito degli studi letterari (Jay 2010) ha condotto a una nuova forma di interesse e a nuove proposte di studio dei movimenti migratori, ormai sempre pi\uf9 spesso legati agli studi sulla globalizzazione e ai suoi effetti. In questo contesto, i concetti di \u201chome\u201d e \u201cidentity\u201d hanno subito una forte messa in discussione: in particolare, l\u2019idea di \u201chome\u201d \ue8 oggigiorno caratterizzata da una porosit\ue0 e una sorta di provvisoriet\ue0 che hanno portato a uno sdoppiamento del concetto stesso, sia da un punto di vista geografico sia emotivo, che inevitabilmente finisce per influenzare le identit\ue0 soggettive e collettive, migranti e non. Scopo dell\u2019intervento \ue8 l\u2019analisi di tali tematiche da un punto di vista culturale e letterario attraverso lo studio dei diversi movimenti migratori e scenari postcoloniali descritti in These Foolish Things (2004) dell\u2019autrice inglese Deborah Moggach e How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) dello scrittore indiano Mohsin Hamid. Tali testi tratteggiano due diverse realt\ue0 dell\u2019India moderna legate ai concetti di migrazione e formazione identitaria, da una parte in relazione al rapporto tra l\u2019India e la sua ex madre-patria inglese, dall\u2019altra in riferimento alla nazione indiana come emergente realt\ue0 politico-economica. Il \u201ccaotico\u201d contesto indiano, in passato posto ai confini dell\u2019impero britannico, oggi a met\ue0 strada tra questo stesso passato coloniale e gli effetti presenti della permeabilit\ue0 dei propri confini, \ue8 pertanto il contesto globale entro cui le esperienze e le sensazioni delle moderne identit\ue0 indiane sono reinterpretate dai due autori. L\u2019approccio di analisi scelto sar\ue0 pertanto transdisciplinare e includer\ue0 non solo i concetti cardine del discorso postcoloniale, ma anche i Migration and Diaspora studies e i Global studies, suggerendo un allargamento dei tradizionali confini della critica postcoloniale verso una paradossale \u201cprovincializzazione\u201d (Chakrabarty 2000) del concetto stesso di confine