Postcolonial Theory

Colonialism and its aftermath prompt a form of cultural studies that seeks to address questions of identity politics and justice that are the ongoing legacy of empires. Postcolonial theory has its origins in resistance movements, principally at the local, and frequently at nonmetropolitan, levels. Among its early thinkers, three seem of special importance: Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, and Frantz Fanon. Antonio Gram sci ( 1891- 193 7) was a founder of the Communist Party in Italy. In his Prison Notebooks (1971 ), he wrote insightfully about the proletariat, designated by him as subalterns; his thoughts regarding the responsibilities of public intellectuals inspired many, and his notion of hegemony and resistance proved influential. Paulo Freire ( 192 1- 97) was a Brazilian with a special interest in education. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed ( 1970) seeks to restore subjectivity to objectified, oppressed classes in society. Frantz Fanon ( 1925- 6 l) was a psychiatrist of Caribbean descent who participated in the Algerian independence movement. His two books, The Wretched of the Earth ( 1963) and Black Skin, White Masks ( 1967) inspired many anticolonial struggles and investigations of racism\u27s many manifestations

Freya Stark

Freya Madeline Stark lived for a century, and into that one hundred years she packed a life of extraordinary daring and ingenuity. Personally I would rather feel wrong with everybody else than right all by myself, she wrote in Baghdad Sketches ( enlarged edition, 193 7); I like people different, and agree with the man who said that the worst of the human race is the number of duplicates. Such a motto defines not only her approach to the world but also the character of the woman herself. She had no duplicate. The writings that resulted from her constant travels began as wonder-filled accounts of ancient storybook kingdoms of the Middle East and moved impressively toward a reflective consideration of the differences between a nomadic way of life and the stable urbanity that might have been her lot if she had decided to fit the mold of those around her. In these accounts of her own transformation she brought a growing body of readers not only into exotic locales but also to the brink of metaphysical questions about the meaning of life

Ben Okri’s Spirit Child: Abiku Migration and Postmodernity

The widespread notion of the abiku in Nigerian culture says volumes about the heartrending deaths of countless newborns throughout the region\u27s history. It also testifies to a belief in the permeability of the membrane separating the spirit world from our world. As the abiku puts it, in his family he is surrounded by people who are seeded in rich lands, who still believe in mysteries (F am 6), people who hold that one world contains glimpses of others (F am 1 0), and people who acknowledge a personal relationship with these spirits in the course of daily life. In western Nigeria, however, a mother who suspects that her newborn is one of these child-spirits must do whatever she can to persuade the baby to stay in this difficult world, rather than have it return to the spirit-world where it will be bathed in the ecstasy of an everlasting love (F am 18). Mothers will give such children names like Malomo-Do Not Go Again ; Banjoko-Sit Down And Stay With Us ; Duro oro ike-Wait And See How You Will Be Petted ; and Please Stay And Bury Me (Maclean 51, 57). Special jewelry and foods are prepared to tempt the baby to choose life, and circumcision for such young boys is frequently postponed (56)

Introduction: Unrecorded Lives

When anthropology student (and later, novelist) Amitav Ghosh set out from Oxford to Egypt in 1980 to find a suitable subject for his research, he may not have suspected the impact the trip would have on his life. He succeeded in completing the required tome for his degree and then went on to write In an Antique Land (1992), an unusually constructed book that deals with themes of historical and cultural displacement, with alienation and something we might these days, under the influence of postcolonial theory, call subaltern cosmopolitanism. Others might recognize the genre in which Ghosh is writing as one we have all tried our hand at, in one form or another: a record of discomfort in confronting the inconsistencies of another person\u27s-the other person\u27s-reality. The book is hardly recognizable as a novel; nor is it simply a historical investigation, since it blends an anthropological record with a travelogue, a diary, and speculations. Within the parameters of history, Ghosh told one interviewer, I have tried to capture a story, a narrative, without attempting to write a historical novel. You may say, as a writer, I have ventured on a technical innovation (Dhawan 1999: 24). In India in Africa, Africa in India we are attempting a parallel innovation : using what we know of the past to inform our understanding of the present Indian Ocean world; examining today\u27s imaginative interpretations of India by Africans and Africa by Indians to speculate on how, historically, these regions understood each other. Ghosh gathered evidence relating to a Jewish merchant operating in the twelfth century in Aden, and he was seeking to document, more remarkably, the merchant\u27s barely recoverable Indian slave. In the process, Ghosh learns as much about the interpretation his visit gets from the Africans he meets as he does about the merchant Ben Yiju\u27s reception in India and the role of the slave Bomma in the world of Indian Ocean commerce seven hundred or so years ago-for Ghosh was as much an object of fascination to the Egyptians as they were to him. There has been a coming and going for centuries, sometimes enforced, sometimes enthusiastically entered into, and one might have thought that this would have made for greater understanding among the various parties. But exactly the opposite was the case when the young doctoral student sat across from the aged imam in the Egyptian village and was told by him to stop doing the strange things that the villagers had heard were done by Hindus. Did his people bury their dead, or cremate them, he was asked. Was he circumcised? Did they worship cows? Is there military service for all in India, as there is in Egypt? Why did they not purify (i .e., infibulate or circumcise) their women? In fact, the imam and his villagers seemed to encourage him to remain apart from them, making sure that the young interloper did not enjoy the sense of community that they created during Ramadan. As Ghosh puts it, to belong to that immense community was a privilege they had to re-earn every year, and the effort made them doubly conscious of the value of its boundaries (A. Ghosh 1992: 76)

Postcolonial Theory

Rather than agreeing to any one meaning or referent, most critics these days speak of ‘post-colonialisms’ to refer principally to ‘historical, social and economic material conditions’ and at other times to ‘historically-situated imaginative products’ and ‘aesthetic practices: representations, discourses and values’ (McLeod 2000: 254). Arising from subaltern studies, its theorists embrace hybridity, indict alterity, analyze colonial discourse, and employ strategic essentialism to promote identity politics. Under its influence, a strain of self-interrogation has for decades run as an undercurrent through much of anthropology and archaeology. Topics including looting, repatriation, stewardship, and the transformation of disciplinary identity are now persistent tropes in the field. Indigenous archaeology, emergent cosmopolitanisms, building up knowledge from below—these now occupy ongoing archaeological work. Limiting its applicability, though, are charges against its homogenization of colonial experience, its perpetuation of academic imperialism, and its relative neglect, until recently, of regions such as Latin America

Firdaus Kanga

Firdaus Kanga was born in Bombay with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease), a condition that prevented his bones from growing beyond a certain point. Also this condition meant that his bones had the potential of breaking easily. As a result, he spent most of his early years bedridden, not attending school, leaving his home only occasionally to attend the cinema with his family. It was not until he was nineteen that he obtained his first wheelchair. Kanga \u27s family expected him to become a solicitor, but he did not find his experiences in law school satisfying. On the other hand, he did study journalism and, in 1987, was awarded a prize in a British Council short-story competition. After receiving a degree in history from the University of Bombay, he moved to England in 1989 and it was there that his publishing career began with the appearance of Trying to Grow in 1990 and a travelogue, Heaven on Wheels, the next year. He is now working on a second novel, which is set in India

Literature and the Evolution of Religious Discourse: A Concluding Essay

Religion and literature do not play identical roles in society, but they both rely heavily on imagination. This book has provided an examination of representative writings from both fields to demonstrate this fact, and to suggest points at which the differences between the two disciplines become less important. Viewed together, these examples. raise interesting questions regarding the viability of discussing enduring truths outside the realms of imagination. This paradox, in turn, points to the limitations of rationality · in the pursuit of such truths, and the inevitability of subjectivity in the quest for the objectively true. These are important philosophical questions, but some readers will be more interested in the historical and sociological aspects of the topic. Some may characterize the trajectory trac~d by these chapters as an example of Arnold Toynbee\u27s model for the collapse of a civilization - the civilization in question here being western Christianity. The first six studies focus on the words of Scripture, especially as they were reflected upon in sermons to imagine the end of time, and to call the congregation to personal conversion: as it happens, all six chapters demonstrate the sense of crisis culminating in the Reformation. A return to the Word was seen to be the best and effective Response to the clarion Challenge heard throughout Europe (I here use Toynbee\u27s vocabulary for the dialectical movement typical within civilizations). Subsequent chapters in this volume, however, use a similar vocabulary but take an increasingly secular tone. The movement in many is inward, a psychological self-analysis that yearns for conversion, as in the earlier chapters - but the desired movement of soul is not forthcoming. By the time we reach the volume\u27s closing chapters, the individualistic response has broadened: institutionalized religion has become not only irrelevant, but a hindrance to self-understanding and any hope for epiphany. In the place of religion, the scriptural Word conti nues to speak - but no longer with the commanding eloquence of unique revelation. What had formerly been accepted as sacred has become, for many contemporary writers, an unusually rich story from which one\u27s own imagination can extrapolate - one tool, among others, for the modern prophet\u27s idiosyncratic search. Validation of truth has moved away from the community