En mangfoldighed af spejle: Europa og modernitet i rejselitteratur fra Asien og Afrika

This paper explores some ways of understanding ‘Europe’ through a reading of selected travel texts written by non-Europeans. In particular, I focus on three texts written by Indians who travelled to Europe and England between 1750 and 1900, though there are also references to other travel accounts. The main argument of this paper is that such accounts complicate any given definition of ‘Europe’ as well as the values and assumptions of certain usages of terms like ‘Europeanness’, ‘modernity’ and ‘science’. The non-European travel texts show a consciousness of ‘difference’ and can at times contain elements of cultural essentialism, but they do not display a simplistic opposition to ‘Europe’ or the cultural products commonly associated, rightly or wrongly, with Europe

Tabish Khair in Conversation with Ajay K Chaubey

Born in Ranchi and educated up to his MA in Gaya, Tabish Khair, PhD (Copenhagen), DPhil (Aarhus), is a Professor of English in Denmark and the author of a number of acclaimed books. Winner of the All India Poetry Prize, Khair’s novels – The Bus Stopped (2004), Filming (2007) and The Thing About Thugs (2010) – have been shortlisted for awards including the Hindu Prize, Man Asian Prize, DSC Prize for South Asia. His last novel, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, was dubbed the ‘best 9/11 novel’ by the New Republic and ‘unmissable’ by the Times. A study by Khair, The New Xenophobia, will be published by Oxford University Press in January 2016. Professor Khair, while being in Denmark, spoke to me through email promptly and positively on several aspects of diaspora, narratives of migration and rationale of ‘brain-drain’ and the theoretical contours of the Indian diaspora in the wake of multiple terrorist attacks in the West

Døre, der lukkes

Døre, der lukke

Significance of the Scream: Otherness in Postcolonial and Gothic Fiction

Born and educated in Bihar, India, Tabish Khair has won the All India Poetry Prize and published a number of critically acclaimed collections of poetry, including Where Parallel Lines Meet (2000) and Man of Glass (2010), and novels. His novels have been translated into various languages and short-listed for a dozen major awards, including the Man Asian Prize, the Encore Award and the Hindu Best Fiction Prize. He has also written or edited several ground-breaking studies and anthologies, including Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels (2001) and Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing (2005). Apart from contributing to major academic and literary journals, he writes regularly for the Hindu in India and papers in UK. His latest novel is How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position. Khair now lives in Denmark, where he is an Associate Professor at Aarhus University. Home page: http://www.tabishkhair.co.ukStarting with an examination of some of the gothic tropes used to narrate India in colonial literature (fiction and non-fiction), this paper will look at some highly visible postcolonial narratives of/about India and compare them to 19th century Gothic narratives. It will argue that the problem of narrating otherness can only be resolved partially – and in very different ways – by Gothic narratives and postcolonial ones. It will propose that the imperial Gothic sometimes manages to address aspects of colonial otherness that overtly postcolonial texts cannot access.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Border crossings in the African travel narratives of Ibn Battuta, Richard Burton and Paul Theroux

This article compares the representation of African borders in the 14th-century travelogue of Ibn Battuta, the 19th-century travel narrative of Richard Burton and the 21st-century travel writing of Paul Theroux. It examines the mutually constitutive relationship between conceptions of literal territorial boundaries and the figurative boundaries of the subject that ventures across borders in Africa. The border is seen as a liminal zone which paradoxically separates and joins spaces. Accounts of border crossings in travel writing from different periods suggest the historicity and cultural specificity of conceptions of geographical borders, and the way they index the “boundaries” of the subjects who cross them. Tracing the transformations in these conceptions of literal and metaphorical borders allows one to chart the emergence of the dominant contemporary idea of “Africa” as the inscrutable, savage continent

Reading ‘Fundamental British Values’ Through Children’s Gothic: Imperialism, History, Pedagogy

This paper reads the U.K. Government’s “fundamental British values” project alongside two children’s Gothic novels, Coram Boy (2000) by Jamila Gavin and City of Ghosts (2009) by Bali Rai. In 2011 the U.K. Government outlined what it described as “fundamental British values” (FBV), making it a requirement for U.K. schools to promote these values. Many critics have shown that the root of FBV lies in Islamophobia and imperialist nostalgia and suggested that the promotion of “British” values in school will exclude minority groups already under siege from racist elements in contemporary Britain. Other critics argue that the promotion of FBV reduces opportunities to explore issues of belonging, belief, and nationhood in the classroom. This article argues that the Gothic fictions of Jamila Gavin and Bali Rai offer a space in which to critically examine British history (and so, its values) in a way that is acutely relevant to these education contexts. Coram Boy and City of Ghosts use the Gothic to interrogate aspects of British history elided by the FBV project. That is, they point to Britain’s imperial and colonial history and offer a rejoinder to the Government’s insistence that “British Values” equate to democracy, respect for the rule of law and mutual respect and tolerance of those from different faiths and religions. Furthermore, Gavin’s and Rai’s use of the Gothic creates a space in which the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in FBV can be explored. However, their “gothicized” histories of Britain do not render the idea of shared values invalid. The diversity and interconnectedness of the characters offer an alternative version of identity to the patronising and arrogant FBV project, which is aimed at promoting a national identity based on sameness and assimilation. Rai and Gavin look to Britain’s past through the lens of the Gothic not only to refute nationalism and racism, but also to offer a productive alternative that gestures towards a more cosmopolitan vision of identity

The Rape of Parwana: Mukul Kesavan\u27s Inscription of History and Agency

It would not be too much of an exaggeration to claim that, with the odd and honourable exception (such as Amitav Ghosh\u27s The Calcutta Chromosome), the current Indian English fiction boom-boom depends heavily on two distinctive \u27narrative styles\u27 — a kind of domestic realism and a kind of magic realism. Rohinton Mistry, Kiran Desai, Vikram Seth (in A Suitable Boy), Arundhati Roy (to an extent) and so many others usually paint in a more or less \u27realistic\u27 idiom on a middle class domestic canvas. On the other hand, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Chandra, Rukun Advani and a few others take recourse to various devices of magic realism even when their framework remains a kind of middle class domesticity. There ma

Caste in Indian English Fiction: More Oppression?

Rephrasing Toni Morrison\u27 one may claim that the imaginative and historical terrain upon which most Indian English writers journey is in a large measure shaped by the obscured presence of the \u27castial\u272 other. Statements to the contrary,3 insisting on the meaninglessness of caste to the modern Indian identity, are themselves full of meaning. The world, Morrison has stated, does not become raceless or will not become unracialized by assertion. Similarly, India will not become casteless or unstratified on caste lines merely by assertion. However, the Indian English writer\u27s attitude to caste is exactly that- assertive and evasive; and, sometimes, pitying or derisive. In that way it is slightly different from the white American attitude to the racial \u27other\u27 as examined by Morrison. The Indian upper caste attitude is more one of dismissal than of subdued confrontation. This is in keeping with the history of casteist exploitation in India, as this exploitation has been based on religion, apathy and a stable social order and, unlike Western slavery-based racism, not on direct force or confrontation